If it's not possible to press the SB before you get hit after debuff, then wouldnt a paladin be a better choice to avoid the crushing since our 100% block/parry/dodge/miss from redoubt will be up for a greater proportion of the fight than the warriors from shield block. Thus there is a greater chance that a debuff followed by a hit will be blocked by a paladin than warrior.

Elog:
Enlighten me please how is it "very clear that dodge+parry+block>100% does not take away all crushings/crits"?

Liar:
Defensive stance?
Also there are several bosses that will kill u with a 4k crushing blow in naxramas meaning u most likely in many situations wont benefit from the ardent defender.

Bellator:
This will all become quite theoretical since we are talking about fights designed for how the game is now and not with expansion abilitys/talents in mind.
But like elog said having insane amounts of block but not enough total reduction % so that u still leave room for 15% crushing blows would not matter since the blows would hit as often as if u had no reduction %.

You can design around Defensive Stance. If you really want to include Defensive Stance, have the boss hit for 10% more so it negates the Defensive Stance bonus, and still kills the Warrior but let's the Paladin live (albeit with less hp than now).
But that is not the point, the numbers can be modified to fit any scenario. It's about the idea :)

For those express situations where it happens like that, yes paladins are good. But tanking is so much more that. Warriors will have a spell immune ability so on a boss like twin emps we would be able to totally reflect a 4k AE etc. There are so many different things to tanking that it will be quite impossible to state which would be the better tank until we have seen how the encounters are designed.
My points has just been that I dont think blizzard will ever make a class that can function as a better tank than warriors can, for the sole reason of philosophy by the designers.

Noone is talking about Paladins being the superior tanks. It is just that Paladin tanks want a niche where they perform better than the other two tank classes without the fight going into the gimmick area (such as my example I hope).
Druids are already better tanks on Jindo, does that mean they are the best tanks in the game? No.

Liar:
Well I am talking more overall and dont see paladins or druids comming close to warriors.
There might be one thing or 2 in a boss fight druids/paladins do better than warriors but for a whole fight I dont really see (/and dont wanna see) any competition.
Btw who the fuck cares how well u can tank a boss in ZG? I mean u can let a rogue tank him and still kill him...
Nah I know u are illustrating your point nvm.

Pyros:
Ok it might not affect AoE's I dunno but then the 4k shadowbolt that hits right after.
Its a spell reflect, dont think it will hit the caster though but rather just reflect it in to the air. I am quite sure this will work in boss fights since it wouldnt make sence if it didnt really. Prot is meant for instances and this is a prot ability. This also does nothing towards the boss meaning he wont be immune to it, (like shieldbashing a healing twin emps).
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...or/spells.html

Jedi, Elog

Elog, you are forgetting miss/dodge/parry, and for the rest of this post will assume that 100% miss/dodge/parry/block = 0, or damn close to 0% change of getting a crushing.

Think i slightly rushed what i meant by it, was working. Will better explain.

Very Rough figures when tanking for paladin or warrior in equivalent gear:-
Miss = 5%
Block = 15%
Parry = 15%
Dodge = 10%

Therefore here both paladin and warrior have 45% "avoidance".
(Note, i realise block is not avoidance, but couldnt think of a better word)
During this time, both the warrior and paladin have the same chance of getting a crushing = 15%

Warriors get their shield wall which takes avoidance above 100%
Paladins get their holy shield + redoubt which takes their avoidance above 100%.
Under both situations chance of a crushing is 0%

The key here is that the paladins 100% "avoidance" will be up on average for a greater proportion of the fight than the warriors, and because you said you cant react to the debuff before getting hit, then SB has to be spammed throughout whenever CD is out to best avoid being debuffed then crushed.

This means on any debuff the probability that a paladin will be in their 100% "avoidance" state is greater than that of the warrior, thus the chance of getting a debuff followed by crushing is less for a paladin making them ideal

Sanctified Crusader brings quite a bit to the table. A Ret paladin isn't going to match the damage output of a dps class, but that's not really the point. What's important is that Sanctified Crusader is a 2% boost to the output of all dps on that target (even more if you consider the proc-on-crit talents that a lot of classes have.) Total up the boost that Sanctified Crusader gives to the entire raid, plus the Paladin's own damage, and it's a very nice addition to raid dps.

Pallys can quite easily get 3% hit, it is only tier 2.

While redoubt got a nice buff and holy shield is useful, Shield block is superier, since it doesn't use the GCD. Of course, this is intended.

Pallys can tank if the Pally put forth the effoct to get a proper spec (at least 31 in Prot) and uses the correct gems (+def, stam, and armor) in his gear.

What is sad is a Warrior only needs 19 in his Prot tree to get most of the tanking goodies. What is good is a Pally with 31 in Prot may be a better tank than a 0 in Prot Warrior, which currently in the live game is not true.

It'll be enough to spam Holy Shield indefinitely. The math is easy: 240dps incoming damage means you recover 24 mana per second from healing. Holy Shield lasts 10 seconds and costs 240 mana. Bingo. Spammed HS will generate more threat than anything a Ret-spec can do with the same amount of mana.

If you're tanking something that hits a bit harder, say 1000 dps incoming, then you're getting 100 mana per second from healing. That's enough to do anything you want. So any paladin in that situation will be spamming Consecrate and judging Righteousness or Command as often as possible. But the Prot paladin will also have access to Holy Shield, so again Prot will come out on top. (It's sort of the same reason that Shield Slam puts Prot warriors on top of threat generation for tanking raid bosses -- when the rage/mana available is high enough, all that matters is how many abilities you have to spend it on.)

Check out the BC rank of Sanctuary. Damage absorbed goes from 24 up to 80.

Nope. Nothing in Ret matches the threat/mana efficiency of Holy Shield, and in unlimited-mana situations Holy Shield gives Prot paladins an extra mana->threat dump that Ret doesn't have.

If surviving a bit longer at low health isn't useful, why do warriors use Last Stand? Lifegiving Gem? Shield Wall?

Ranged multi-target threat. A pull as well. Granted it's more of a PvP ability with the daze, and in raids you can just have a hunter pull into a Consecrate, but it's still got it's uses.

They're mixed by design, and in my view they're better that way. Giving all specs access to some offensive talents and some defensive talents leaves us with more freedom to spec the way we want.

Divine Purpose would be largely wasted in Prot. If you're stacking +defense gear to boost your mitigation as a Prot tank, you've already pushed your incoming PvE crit rate damn close to zero (maybe even all the way to zero). So why would you spend talent points to push it into the negative? But in Ret it makes sense: A Ret paladin isn't going to be carrying around a bag full of +defense gear. If a situation comes up where he needs to tank, he has 5 points of built-in crit fortification that go a ways towards making up for a lack of +defense.

And Reckoning wouldn't add to a Ret paladin's raid role -- you aren't getting crit while you're DPS'ing with a two-hander (or at least I hope you aren't.)

That, and I think you'll have situations where you'd rather have your Prot paladin OT'ing so your Arms warrior can do dps and be adding his 5% melee damage debuff for your rogues.

Versus current tanking abilities:

Warriors currently tank all new content
Warriors gain-
spell reflect
6% more spell mitigation
new sunder "replacement"
new "intercept"
-3 rage on offensive abilities
5% stam
30% more shield absorbtion

Druids are able to tank pretty much any content, at least in theory.
Have tanked anything not in naxx as a practical (not gimmick) use.
Most people assume that they will eventually tank anything.
Acknowledged advantage on sustained threat, certain gimmicks
Druids gain-
New high threat stacking DoT to use excess rage on
New high threat mortal strike like ability that buffs the DoTs
-5% chance to crit (uncrittable with 16 def)
5% more stam and agi
passive health regen aura (sortof)
15% fear and stun resist
15% chance to avoid AoEs (not just damage, but also debuffs?)

Pallies currently tank lower blue instances
Pallies gain:
AoE ranged taunt on moderate cooldown
base consecrate
mana becomes rage
some other stuff, but I don't understand pally tanking well enough to say. Want to clarify for me?

Prot isn't meant for instances. It sucks for PvP. That's totally not the same thing. And this spell could very well be one of those worthless pve skill that is useful for pvp(cloak of shadows thing for rogues, the summon shadow barov stuff of priests etc...). Currently, there's not many encounters where having a castable reflect would make a difference, or would be overpowered. We're talking of a 100%resist everytime the cooldown is up here. It's a good pvp tool, might be decent for lowbie instances and very specific fights, but my guess is it will be useless most of the time in raids.

Math is good, as opposed to just throwing around theory:


So tanking is 3 things, mitigating, sustaining, and holding aggro.

(Im using level 60 numbers, but with the new talents, things will change at 70 but I feel like I the math I have is more solid for level 60)

So from the sustained DPS thread on this board, the dps of a rogue/mage going all out with no conserns for aggro is around 600dps give or take.

So the paladin must generate around 600 threat per second to hold aggro. This is ignoring the rogues inate threat reduction or the mages threat reduction from ranged, but lets do worst case, of a mage standing in melee range with no aggro reducing talents...(not that thats smart but it is worst case)

Paladin white damage is a small part of the equation, lets say 150dps, which fully raid buffed in my healing gear I can do so I assume that should be an easily hitable number espcially with + weapon skill, and + to hit from the prot tree.

Then holy damage:

First Seal of Rightousness, which given a 2.0 speed weapon, hits about 30 holy damage each swing, so 15 holy damage each second.

Juding that seal deals 162 (low end) holy damage, you can judge every 8 seconds, so 20 holy damage each second.

The mob is hitting you every 2 seconds about, running retribution aura which deals 20 damage back per hit you deal another 10 holy damage each second.

Blowing Max rank concecrate deals 384 holy damage over 8 seconds, so 48 more holy damage each second.

Assuming you block approx 50% of the time, (spamming holy sheild for +30% + 5% base, + defense gear) on a block with holy sheild and blessing of Scantuary you return 261 holy damage each block, /4 (for two swings from the monster.. 65 holy damage per block.

So adding it all up the paladin generates 15+20+10+48+65 = 158 tps.

Paladin is running rightous fury for and has it talented for an addtional 110% holy threat.

So (158*1.1) + 158 = 331tsp (holy) + 150tsp (white) = 481tps.

Not even taking into account the rogues natural threat reduction, if they are doing 600dps, with blessing of salvation on they only deal 420tps. ***The paladin is up 61tps each second the fight goes on.***

Assuming the rogue has 30% threat reduction from blessing of salvation, the paladin can hold aggro, add in some decent spell damage gear on the paladin, more white dps, or another paladin running scanity aura (10% more holy damage) this gets even better.

-------So given current numbers the paladin can hold aggro over a fully geared rogue/mage------------

(I think this was allready basically known by the community, but its nice to actually see the numbers on it, the real flaw with pally tanking is that so much of the threat relies on them being hit, that if the mob peels off, they have little way to get it back. Enter taunt skill)

But can the paladin susstain it.

We go back to our theoretical mob that hits every 2.0 seconds, and lets say he deals 8000 unmitigated damage a hit.

(Is this even close to a correct ammount? I have never tanked a raid boss so I have no idea.)

The paladin has 60% mitgation so takes approx 1600 damage a second.

If the paladin is healed for roughly that ammount each second, he gains 160 mana per second.

So does 160mps sustain those aggro abilities?
-------------------------------------

Seal of rightousness costs 170 mana to cast, and 75 mana to judge. Assuming a 8 second cycle thats 31mps

Holy sheild costs 320 mana every 10 seconds, so 32mps

Concecrate costs 568 mana every 8 seconds, so 71mps.

So a total of 31+32+71 = 134 mps.

If the 10% healing to mana skill stays in, the paladin actually gains 16 or so MPS, not counting BoW, JoW, Oils, Pots etc.

-----------------------------------

So correct me if Im wrong, but it looks to me like as long as the math stays the same and continues to scale in a similar fassion paladin tanks will indeed work. Better than a warrior? I dont know, but at least viable.


-----------------------------------

On vengence, assuming you can get about 25% crit (so 15% from gear, 5% from talents, and 5% base) with a 2.0 speed or so tanking weapon you can pretty much be perma vengenced, (8 seconds per charge, so 4 swings, with 1/4 refreshing it) so 15% more white damage and 15% more holy damage. Now on top of that you can run Imp Scanity Aura (6% more healing and 10% more holy damage)

So you lose ret aura (unless you have 2 pallys in the tanking group) So minus 10 tps off 158 = 148 tps from holy.

So 150(white dps) *.15 + 143 *1.1(Rightous Fury) *.25 (Vengence and Scanity) = 175.2 + 375 = 550 tps

So if 69.2 tps is worth losing ardent defender for then go for it. (also you gain more ret stuff 3% more damage etc)

------------------------------

/edit some numbers off, I think its right now

I think a serious question to raise is whether paladins even want to tank anymore? I think in the last two years, the people who rolled a paladin wanting to becone a tank have either rerolled or lost that desire through a strict conditioning regime of buffing and healing. I think the amount of paladins (from my experience) that are truly excited about Blizz trying to make us viable offtanks again are very few, and people that are playing paladins now want to play the support class role, not the tank.


But hey, that's just my two cents :)

Prolly true. I know I gave up the ghost of tanking a while ago.

However, I would very much like to tank in the following two situations:

Warrior logs off for the night, or we are short one for the raid. I would much rather swap gear and tank than call the raid.

Tank goes down and the mob starts munching healers/dps. I hate hate hate this situation. As it stands now I can bop one healer then fruitlessly pore holy damage into the mob and watch as it slowly but surely whipes the raid. The snap taunt makes me happy in the pants that I can grab aggro and try to do something, sure it may not save the wipe but it sure as hell would be more effective and fun than anything I can do now.

You could add the 10% more 1H damage for more tps

I think the optimal tank build would be 9/41/11, getting 10% int/70% to not lose cast time, 41 in Prot, and -2 sec on judgments/3% to parry/SoC (for stunnable mobs)

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=aVLZVGtu0hd0teoVbhz

Great analysis, Vinsent. I agree that using level 60 numbers makes sense, because that's what we're all familiar with. We can't really draw conclusions from level 70 numbers without knowing how much damage level 70 mobs do, how many hp a level 70 character has, etc.

Also, +spelldamage would boost the paladin's threat output (and this is available "free" from JotC even if it's not geared for.) So a paladin using JotC would have an even better threat margin than you've shown.

The problem I have with Vengeance as a tanking talent in a 0/31/30 build is that you'd have to gear for crit to make it work. Even if you use stuff like Mongoose pots and LotP you'll still need at least 10% crit from gear to make it work. That's a lot of crit, and you're sacrificing something else from your itemization to pick it up: either mitigation, stamina, or spelldamage. (And if you're giving up spelldamage then that's actually working against your threat generation.) That's why I really don't see this kind of split-tree tanking build as being workable.

Now if you're 41 points in Ret, then you have access to Divine Purpose, which relaxes your gear-mitigation requirements a bit and lets you pick up the extra crit. Plus, you'll have Sanctified Crusader and the talent that boosts judgement crit rate -- so in that situation I think Vengeance will be a very useful tanking talent. Prot's still going to be the superior tanking tree, but Ret has a very different flavor that will still make Ret paladins very viable tanks.

Holy will even be decent with Blessed Life and the talent that converts intellect to spell damage. Divine Illumination will get you 10 seconds of half-cost aggro moves if you need them, and you'll have Holy Shock as a threat burst, or a small emergency heal.

Pyros:
U say prot isnt meant for instances?
Ok I see how talents like imp shield wall, defiance, anticipation, shield spech, imp sunder armor, imp taunt are not meant for instances, sure u are sooo right.... Really get a clue please.
Also maybe its cause u are not playing a warrior yourself but spell reflect is gonna be one of the most imba tanking abilitys out there.

I work full time and when I get home I raid, so prot aint a problem for me to be. If I want pvp I spech for it for a weekend and respech back again after.

On another note think I would spech something like this for expansion:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=TAZVZiVtohMdcest

I think we can safely assume that this ability won't work vs. mayority of boss class mobs, just like disarm/stuns don't. Arguement that it's "protection ability" doesn't make sense - it's shield-related, so it's put in protection school. Where else should it go? Arms? But yeah, it's awesome ability (again, just like stuns and disarm) when available.

What sense it got then? It's another poor attempt of making shield carring warriors more viable in PvP/small scale PvE. Yes, it will probably reflect spell back to caster, but whole spell description is extremely puzzling - it got no cooldown (can be spammed?) for example.