Can you elaborate a bit more on your gear? I'm curious what you're wearing that produces such a large gap in (apparent) mitigation between you and a warrior. Are you preventing crushing blows?

That aside, excellent write-up. I do wish we had less intellect and mp5 on our tanking gear.

Changes appear to be "in progress" for the next patch. 4/5 T5 has been completely changed, with slightly more stamina, no mp/5, and tons of block rating/value. It's not overall a great buff (the helm is unchanged as of yet, there's no dodge on the set, 14 parry rating, lots of int), but it certainly seems to indicate that more changes are on the way.

Keeping in mind that the helm has not changed appreciably:
The PTR's are currently offline, so by tomorrow the stats may well change again.

Do Paladins really intend to try tanking raiding instances? After watching our Druids in Kharazan compared to our Protection Warriors, even they have admitted to themselves they aren't going to be able to keep up.

This is the heart of the debate, I would have to say yes, or why have the talent spec at all? There is no reason that you need an optimized tanking build (0/43/17 or some such) for tanking 5 mans/heroics, so if its not viable in the "end game" why have the spec at all? For jollys? So I can spend 50 more gold respecing to yell lolcaptainamerica?

The hybrid tanking specs have to be a viable end game tank or they have no reason to exist. In PvE, given the option you dont take the second or thrid best tank there is no reason to.

The way paladins talents are set up they dont work very well as an OT, or number two man. They dont generate threat if they are not getting hit, and if they are not taking damage they dont get healed which runs them out of mana.

The only role that a prot speced paladin does well is main tanking, they dont dps well, and while they heal okay, if your just going to be healing...why are you specing prot?

Paladins and Druids should not be superior to warriors, nor should warriors be superior to them. If all three tanking classes are not viable specs in end game then there is no reason for the specs.

You certainly dont spec Protection for pvp, or solo grinding.

On topic do you have a list of the new stats? It will be a while till I am able to check the test relm for myself.

You're going to have a long and miserable existence as a tanking paladin with that mentality.

The answer is, you bring one prot warrior, one feral druid, and one prot paladin, and it allows you to bring an arms warrior and fury warrior, and still have plenty of offtanks for any type of encounter.

Or you can just bring 3 prot warriors who basically do nothing on single boss encounters.

Prot paladins and feral druids have utility and buffs beyond what a prot warrior tends to bring in a non-tanking role. And they can heal. That is the true value of paladin/druid tanking. Simpler raid compositions that can handle more encounters.

Aye, i'm looking to have a 'full-time' prot paladin and bear druid in my raid team, mainly because of their utility. Now, melee DPS is slightly borked at present, and as such i'm not overly fond of dropping a mage for a fury warrior given gear parity and if the choice was available to me. There's a reason feral and paladin tanks are in the game, and as we've bearly scratched 25 man content (only 7 25 man bosses have been killed) we can't say for sure when you'll need what. Yes, your MT should be a prot warrior, yes, in my opinion you should have 2 on equal gear parity easily available to you. However, taking 3 Druids and Paladins allows you more blessings and a hell of a lot more options. Same reason every top guild's killshots i've been seeing recently has a Shadowformed priest somewhere among the toons.

Hmm.... as soon as the darn armory updates I'll post a link to my profile. Or you can just search for Youngblood on EU Dunemaul. Admittedly my gear is sub par compared to some other prot paladins (I blame work, IAAL >_< ) but it should not be so noticable for the healers imho.

PsiVen, those changes you posted are excellent news. However, I have no idea how they will stand up to harder bosses, or how they will compare to other tanking classes. But lets hope they are not changed back...

Yes, I fully intend to try tanking raid instances. Actually, Vinsents explanation was so good I'll just leave it at that. And sadly, druids got nerfed.

Why should that be? Why should there even be a tanking tree if it's only meant as a gimmick? A paladin loses so much healing and PvP viability when going deep protection. Any result less than a fully competitive raid main tank would make specing prot pretty damn useless.

And why should Blizzard say that we are healer/tank hybrids if they only really mean us to go for one of these two options? With the right spec warriors can dish out a lot of damage, and with the right spec paladins can heal very well. So why tie paladins to healing only, thereby forcing warriors who want to DPS into tanking? That makes no sense.


Oh, and before the official EU forums went phooie yesterday the thread there got some blue attention. Of course, that doesn't exactly mean anything, but at least its been passed on. I'm still hoping for a result.

Clicky to cardplace.com

EDIT: Typo

That ring is very similar to three epic tanking rings of higher ilvl, but all of the other rings have armor eating away their item value. If you anticipate getting ahold of the Shermanar Great-Ring, Violet Signet of the Great Protector, or Ring of Unyielding Force, you are likely to be choosing between sidegrades to accompany the amazing Elementium Band of the Sentry ( http://www.thottbot.com/?i=59584 ). I'd sell it, as you'll need the money.

Well, the thing is that it's a much bigger deal with "sub-par" gear than it is with better gear. That's why I asked if your gear removes crushing blows when you have Holy Shield up. Until you reach that point, yeah, your healers are going to notice a huge difference between you and a warrior. Once you get rid of crushes, you start looking much better to your healers.

As the people right above this mentioned, until you can reliably get rid of crushing blows without relying on a proc there's no realistic fashion in which you can tank single boss mobs and do it as well as a warrior can. For content that isn't bleeding edge a Paladin will make a fine tank, and a heavy prot build makes you nigh impossible to pull aggro of off when you're free to consecrate spam, but to try and believe that you're going to tank as effectively as a warrior both from the standpoint of equal mitigation and threat generation just isn't a realistic view of the game right now. It's pretty clear from the last two rounds of druid changes that Blizzard does not intend to have 3 interchangeable tank classes, and they intend to keep warriors at the top of the boss tanking list.