I'll agree with this, as a Prot paladin. I'm still wearing a few greens, and there are still quite a few blues I can get, but I'm already sitting at 10.5k HP and 488 defense unbuffed. And 220-ish spell damage, mostly from my [wowitem]Greatsword of Horrid Dreams[/wowitem], which I have yet to get enchanted.

As Edge said, Paladin threat generation is the best in the game right now. Why is this important? DPS races. If you want to do as much damage as possible without pulling aggro, you want a paladin tanking. Sure, he make take a bit more healing sometimes, but the fight is over faster. It's not just multiple targets, but single target as well. Open with an Avenger's shield crit for 1100, which is 2k+ threat. Start to front load threat from a full blue rage bar, and you can start DPS sooner as well. A paladin gets more threat from Prayer of Mending and the Priest reflective power word: shield as well.

I hear people saying that because of spell damage, a paladin takes a hit in mitigation. Well, there is no law against having more than 1 set of gear. I mix and match my soloing gear (lots of spell damage) with my pure warrior-esque mitigation gear depending on circumstance. My mitigation gear can look exactly like a warriors (in fact, I'm wearing the warrior D3 Spaulders of the Bold right now, due to nothing better). It's hard to tell with Redoubt procs, but my gut feeling is that we block more attacks than a warrior as well. It's hard for me to think of times when Redoubt and Holy shield aren't up, even against single targets (means a 70-80% block rate most of the time). I'm currently looking at aquiring more +block rate stuff and seeing how close to a 100% block rate I can get.

A Paladin can also be bubbled by a priest at will, with no worries about rage. If the priest is specced for the reflective bubble, so much the better. We may have 1-2k less HP than a warrior, but every 15 seconds we can use a 1.5k extra HP via a priest bubble. Being bubbled on the pull is even better, as the healers don't have to worry about heal threat at the start. By the time they need to heal, I've got plenty of aggro over them.

We're getting people attuned to Karazan now, so we're a bit slower than other guilds. But in 5 mans right now, I no longer buff people with salvation, and they still can't pull mobs off me. We generally don't bother with CC besides an occaisonal sheep, either, as I can hold 5-6 mobs easy.

Paladins are versatile. They can achieve near warrior-like mitigation if needed, or with a switch of some gear, generate a tremendous amount of threat. Which I think is a nice niche for them.

With my prot paladin, atm what i can see from experience is that i can, through gear choices and mix and match, improve my threat per second or my mitigation, depending on whats needed on a particular encounter.

Stuff that dont hit too hard, i can put more spelldmg to do more treath and let the dps do more. Stuff that hit hard and where every bit of mitigation counts, heals keep my mana up so i lose the INT and mp5 for more "warrior" gear with raw mitigation on.

The other thing thats really nice about paladin tanking is the synergy with warriors. We heard a lot about Druid / warrior synergy but, a Paladin tank is also a high DPS tank. (relative) For example, let the prot paladin tank and the warrior DPS on trash. Then on the single boss type fight the warrior tanks and the paladin can off heal and buff through aura's the Warrior's tanking. It results in overall faster clearing.

What i felt in my experience is that all 3 classes can MT, and OT. But they all shine a LOT more when you pair 2 of them to share the tanking done. And it goes smoother to make them switch MT and OT jobs on a per pull basis rather than say class A should always MT over class B.

Only if that happens on all fights and not just some fights, don't you agree?

Ok, dumb question, because I've only run with our protection paladin once on my rogue and we're still leveling them up - how much threat per second can you realistically pump out?

As a point of reference, I should be well over 400 block value soon and my tps (threat per second) will be ~743 in my opening 6 second cycle of slam, shield block, revenge, 2x sunder on a target with 20% mitigation. When I shift over to devastate at 5 sunders my TPS jumps to ~762. If you assume I can HS spam through that cycle (heavy incoming dps) I'll generate almost 1k threat per second. Outside of a patchwerk style fight, HS spam is not going to be sustainable with my 1.6 speed weapon, but there is usually enough rage for me to hit 1-2 HS in a cycle. I'll get somewhere between 1,200 and 1,600 threat on the pull from an opening shield slam (depending on the mobs mitigation). A rogue would need to generate ~1,350 dps to pull aggro, a mage at range would be in the neighborhood of 1,200 dps.

Single target, is the paladin threat anywhere even close to that? I know you guys will kick my ass if there's multiple targets, but if you can beat me single-target I'm going to be surprised. I think a druid can beat me, but I've never seen a threat cycle for them and I'm not sure what it would entail.

I think that point was refuted recently on this very board (may have even been Fellwraith who did that, I forgot; the point was that this statement was true for Warriors in T2 vs AQ Druids but is not true anymore); apart from that you didn't really answer my question. Is it a problem if Druids are the better choice on some high burst physical fights?

Magical damage fights? Physical damage with magical damage burst fights? Fights that require strategic potting?

That's pretty much the gist of it based on what I have seen. Consecrate is bar none the best AE threat generation you can get, but in rage-heavy fights Devastate completely floors any single target threat a Paladin (or any other class for that matter) can push. This is mostly due to lack of abilities not on cooldowns: JoR spam is probably slightly above using only Shield Slam to boost threat over white damage with Defiance I'd bet, and when you start throwing a lot of Judgements for this extra threat you burn through mana a lot faster. However, Paladins are not dependent on getting hit to generate threat, and in fights where you are rage starved a Paladin will be able to consistently generate high amounts of threat, probably more over the long term than a Warrior or Druid.

If a feral druid can't tank, he can dps and retains a lot of flexibility.
If a paladin can't tank he still brings blessings and some healing to the fight.
If a prot warrior can't tank, he's very sub-par in a raid.

Feral tanking is something new, and should be appreciated. That druids can tank is a good thing. It spices up more of the game and allows people to have fun.

However, Protection's overspecialization into tanking only made sense when they were the only tank possible. If there are going to be more fights where tanking is not what they do, or that they are not needed for, then they will need alternative actions to take.

This gets tricky due to the fact that a lot of Paladin threat is (a) reactive and/or (b) dependent on spelldamage gear. I don't have numbers in front of me right now, but my instinct after some back-of-the-envelope calculations is that in the most favorable case of an undead/demon target that attacks very fast, a paladin would be a fair bit ahead of a warrior. In the least favorable case of a non-demon, non-undead attacker that hits slow and hard (which is closer to the norm for raid bosses), a paladin would fall a bit behind a warrior.

Hmm don't you mean 415 Def or do you have resilence also?

It's hard to pin down Paladin threat values, specifically for the reason Warriors are complaining about their threat abilities: scalability. Paladin threat scales very well. For every 1 holy damage we inflict, we get 1.9 threat for it. With the recent change, it's no longer just damage, but all holy spells get 90% more threat (assuming improved righteous fury). If we want more threat, we wear more spell damage. A paladin with 500 spell damage will generate far more threat than one with 0. And we can accomplish this with a change of gear.

Let me try and toss some numbers here, to give you an idea. I don't have much time at the moment to fully work some math, but I'll try to get to it later.

A fully Prot paladin opens with Avenger's Shield. Currently, in my tanking gear with 220 spell damage, I do almost 550 holy damage with this(1100 crits). That's 1040 threat (1.9 multiplier). That's easily enough to start Gheal spam, but I won't need it just yet because the mob hasn't hit me yet and I still have a priest bubble.

At 10 yards, I judge Righteousness, for 500 more holy damage(950 threat). It's important to note that Judgement isn't on the GCD, nor does it trigger it. So I just did 2k threat in less than a second. In order to pull it off me at this stage, a Rogue needs to do over 3000 damage(his 29% less threat modifier and doing 110% more threat than me), and a mage needs to do 2600 (130% more threat, unsure of what modifers a mage has).

Now I start my regular threat cyle. Activate seal of righteousness again (once the GCD from avenger's shield is done), then hit holy shield, then consecrate just as the mob hits melee range. In the next 8 seconds, the following happens:

5 swings with my 1.6 speed weapon. 100 white damage x 5 = 500 threat. 5 hits with seal of righteoussness at 140 holy damage per: 1300 threat. 1800 threat total.

800 holy damage from Consecrate over 8 seconds: 1520 threat

2 Holy shield blocks (4 charges, lasts 10 seconds, being conservative) at 150-ish holy damage a hit. But holy shield has 35% more threat (additive). 300 x 2.25 = 675 threat.

Another judgement of righteousness after 8 seconds for 960 more threat.

At the end of 8 seconds, I've generated about 6000 threat, or about 750 threat per second. This is being consertive, as a baseline. I didn't take into account blessing of sancturary (55 more holy damage per block for 105 more threat) or Ret aura (26 holy damage everytime I'm hit, for 50 threat, depends on mob attack speed). I didn't take into account crusader being on the target (if you have a ret pally, he'll keep it up for 200+ more spell damage). I didn't take into account sanctity aura (10% more holy damage with the above numbers would be about 6500 threat). And ideally, I'm aiming for 4 blocks in 10 seconds to use all my holy shield charges (1350 threat in 10 seconds).

It wouldn't be odd to expect 7500 threat in 8 seconds. Or 900 TPS. And that's with 200 spell damage. If more threat is needed, I can add 200 more spell damage. Granted, I'll lose some mitigation then, but it's nice to have the option to do that.

See post #39. Armor and defensive stance aren't the only things that soak physical damage. Get more block value, it's a critical part of the warrior mitigation/threat scaling mechanics now. It sucks if you're stunned, incapacitated or feared, but it does make for a fairer comparison. Assuming comparably tiered gear, you're probably only looking at a 5-10% difference at most.

There's more fights than I care to count where you'd be better off having a burstable mitigation ability - particularly one that prevents a follow-up attack that's a crit/crush. It buys your healers time to catch-up.

One of the few physical-only spike damage fights is patchwerk. Twin emps is physical, but shield block should be superior to higher armor values there. Any other fight is going to have magic damage, and typically that magic damage is what kills your tank.

Yep, it really comes down to druids don't get their ideal itemization nearly at all. At the moment its irritating me the most with Feral DPS gear but its also irritating the lack of itemization of Stamina for druids for tank gear.

Edit: Make note quest itemization is a lot better unfortunately Dungeon/Raid drops from what have been seen so far are pretty terrible.

Using a relevant and easy example, Blindeye the Seer is the first boss you kill in the Maulgar encounter, and due to his being constantly stunned, only hitting for 2-3K (can't remember, he didn't hit me much), and having a damage shield, he is extremely hard for a warrior to tank. A paladin with Avenging Wrath, Spell Damage Trinkets, and a Full mana bar can create enough initial agro that he will be dead before a warrior would have sundered, a lot of that extra speed coming from the ability of all classes to 100% nuke from the getgo.

The underlined part is false. I did some threat theorycraft half a month ago, and it shows that in rage heavy fights feral druids out-agro Devastate warriors, and this was even assuming 20% crit for a prot warrior (cruelty spec and some heavy agility gear for Shield Slam/Devastate crits, 1h weapon spec) and Shield Slam with 400 block rating, and this is post druid threat nerf.

Druid TPS, this is a level 60 figure not 70 btw and doesn't take into account stacking Lacerate:
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...th/Threat3.png

Got the warrior TPS model somewhere which is based around level 70, 20% crit, Shield Slam, Revenge, 2 x Devastate combo with some Heroic Strikes, and he is just behind the driud. Also im told that 20% crit was unrealistic for a prot warrior even raid buffed, so it might practically be lower. Druids in TBC have loads of more AP and will be pumping out even more threat per second.

Edit: Found the warrior model and druid model for level 70, mob has 25% damage reduction
Warrior with 20% crit, 1k AP, 400 blockvalue at level 70 = 844 TPS without Defiance, 970 TPS with Defiance
Druid with 30%crit, 1.5k AP at level 70 not using Lacerate = 954 TPS without feral instinct, 1064 TPS with Feral Instinct

The druid calculation is actually a bit misleading an potentially a bit higher. The innate threat of the last rank of Maul is unknown, so im using the innate threat from the level 58 rank of Maul. Druid TPS is potentially for that reason 10-20 higher

The above calculations includes glancing blows, the removal of glancing blows when a warrior uses Heroic Strike and a druid uses Maul, mob damage reduction, rage calculations based upon rage available. All values except the new rank of Maul have confirmed threat values so using a lower rank value for maul, tghe calculations include Miss/Dodge/Parry. Feral Instinct for druids is additive (130% + 15% = 145%) while warriors Defiance is multiplicative (130% * 115% = 149.5%)
What these calculations don't take account for: Blocked damage

Warrior 6 second Cycle: Shield Slam, Revenge, 2 x Devastate with 5 sunders, 2 x Heroic Strikes, warrior is using a 70 DPS 1.7 speed weapon so he can with a better weapon produce even more threat though its not gonna be that much of an increase.
Druid 6 second Cycle: Mangle, 3 x Swipe, Maul on Every Swing

All the calculatiosn has been based upon rage availability as well for a prot warrior with 3/3 Focused Rage and a druid with 5/5 Ferocity, rest is standard full feral tanking spec and a prot warrior with 5/5 in cruelty. Again, it has been pointed out to me that 20% critchance is very high for a warrior in tanking gear, if this is indeed incorrect please point it out.

Not including heroic strike in the warrior 6 seconds cycle?

Yepp 20% crit chance is way off, it's more like 10% raid buffed.

As far as mitigation goes, I don't see a huge difference between warriors and druids, the fact is, in most situations, both can MT very well in a raid situation now.

The biggest difference I see is the extreme difference in DPS that both tanks provide, which is not noticable in a raid situation, but very noticable in a 5 man. Our feral druid has 24% crit, 19k armor and around 30%? dodge, his average DPS is about 2-3 times that of a protection warrior; on single target damage, while tanking, he will keep up with most of our MS warriors (again, while tanking).

As a raid leader, in a raid situation, both tanks are viable, but, to be frank, simply because most 5 man content is "DPS based", a warrior is really not the optimal choice for a tank in a 5 man, which, in my opinion, is the main difference between the classes right now. Druids simply do a rediculous amount of damage while tanking, which, again, in my opinion, ecplises any kind of utility that a prot warrior brings to the table (Or any warrior really)..The druids own utility not withstanding (though, they do have a lot of it.)

I guess we will have see how itemization works out...Right now though, as far as raiding MT's go, they are balanced...5 man MT's? Not so much

We use a druid on HKM, a druid on the Prince, and probably will use a druid for any other hard hitting boss mob we encounter in the near future, until itemization can bring our warriors up to par on the mitigation.

For smaller group content, it also has the advantage of increasing raid dps a fair bit. With druid tanks outputting very respectable damage, a feral tank + dps warrior (either full dps, or pseudo-dps through a defiance/fury build) is the most versatile double tank team we can find.

A big problem for the present is that some of the old tanking items are fairly hard to replace, whereas when you're levelling and instancing, everything seems to be druid loot.

For the future? Did this a while ago for a thread earlier. Never got around to adding paladins... guess I should fix that.

Link to a spreadsheet comparing druid and warrior mitigation @ t5
http://putstuff.putfile.com/36945/5818078

L70 Raid Buffed Warrior
Max Health 18545
Armor 26233
Mitigation % vs Lvl 73 68.69
Mitigation%, with def stance 71.82
Combined Avoidance% 62.55
Decreased Chance of Crit% 5.80
Block% 15.72
Block Value 331

L70 Raid Buffed Druid
Max Health 20141
Armor 27528
Mitigation% vs Lvl 73 69.71
Combined Avoidance% 59.54
Decreased Chance of Crit % 4.97

I saw that on the US boards and asked a question i never got answered: How in the world did a warrior attain 26k armor raid buffed?

Here is the tanking set i would put together for a warrior, not saying its optimal bot i was primarily shooting after armor without saccing secondary stats like defense and stamina:
http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=656 - Tier 5 Tanking Set, 5 pieces, 6136 armor
Boots: http://www.thottbot.com/?i=59881 - 872 armor
Belt: http://www.thottbot.com/?i=59867 - 713 armor
Bracers: http://www.thottbot.com/?i=58964 - 555 armor
Rings: http://www.thottbot.com/?i=60276 + http://www.thottbot.com/?i=54816 = 450 armor
Cloak: http://www.thottbot.com/?i=59770 = 285 armor
Shield: http://www.thottbot.com/?i=54910

[top] 4872 armor
Warriors shouldn't in general use armor trinkets or the green armor neck there is available.

Total armor: 13883
Total armor after Thoughness: 15271
Add around 230 agility or so raid buffed

460 armor = 15731

Also, he is likely to have around 600 less armor because Gladiators Shield wall is a prime PvP Shield you need to attain in the arena, and very few warriors can do that. In this case we assume he has it available though. This is around the highest amount of armor you can attain unbuffed.

Now would you please mind telling me where a warrior draws another 10.5k armor from standard buffs alone, because it seems that your estimated value is either completely out of sync or i have missed something somewhere.

It's a spreadsheet. If there's a problem with my math go unhide the sheets and tell me where.

Both the warrior and druid are fully raid buffed and consumabled.

I went over them now. I noticed you put on Ancestral Fortitude, this was something i had not expected because when i looked at the druid numbers (27k armor) i was thinking "ah thats without inspiration etc. and only using standard buffs" given the fact that several druids now is at 25k armor unbuffed without saccing too many stats, so Inspiration/AF should bring a druid to 30k+ at least.

It makes much more senese now, removing Ancestral Fortitude the warrior drops to 21k approx.

Given the fact that the warrior loses his ability to pop healing potions when using Ironshield i think this is indeed very fair. Warriors are generally known for their "emergency buttons" when tanking, and given the fact that the warrior actually sacrifices an emergency button for those armor numbers it all seems dandy to me. Having said that, i feel that Somnaumbulus focused too much on avoidance on the druid part and forgot their real strength on high spike damage handling, but sinse you just took the numbers and put them in a sheet i won't point that itemisation problem on you.

Now get going with those paladin numbers! Excellent job :)

I think you need to look more closely. AF is factored for the druid too. The buffs are identical, barring ironshield. There's a toggle to turn ancestral multiplier off, on the buffs sheet. If you toggle it, you'll see the druids armor drop appropriately too.