I know that this has been discussed in other threads (Paladin TBC Talents/Spec Discussion, feel free to lock if the discussion is deemed pointless.

I am in a fairly new guild and we are working on clearing Kharazan (all down except Nightbane) and gearing up for 25 man content. For the last month or so I have been using my Pallie as the MT/OT for our KZ runs (we had no warrior at first and our feral tank recently went back to resto). Lately our 1 warrior has upgraded his gear to be on par with mine, and he's now pretty much MTing non-undead/demon bosses in KZ and obviously the Maiden.

My dilemma is at the moment my healing gear kinda sucks, and we're at the point where I need to decide if I'm going to continue with the Paladin as a tank or start gearing him to do what pallies do best (heal).

Here's the armory link:
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...Terenas&n=Cire

Health 10387
Mana 5748

Armor 12862
Dodge 12.88%
Parry 16.05%
Block 22.21%


Need to upgrade a couple of enchants and get several gems upgraded, but overall the gear isn't bad. If I decide that he's not viable as a tank in 25 man content I'll save the cash and not upgrade :p (as he tanks fine in KZ atm).

So, are Paladins viable tanks for 25 man content? My personal opinion is that they are probably not. Warriors simply have more tools at their disposal to deal with the "oh shit I'm going to die" situations. Shield block seems to me to be > Holy Shield/Redoubt combo. We have no Shield Wall or Last Stand. Our health is significantly lower than Warriors, and apart from initial aggro, our TPS is lower than a Warrior who is being beat on by a boss. If you consider Paladins to be viable MTs in 25 man content, which stats do you deem most important for them?

I enjoy all aspects of my paladin, and will be happy to go back to being a heal bot if needed. At the moment I will stay protection, as I am 1 of 2 tanks currently in our guild. Should I continue to upgrade my gear and be ready to MT/OT in 25 man content? Should I powerlevel my 60 warrior and use him when we need a tank?

Pallies = healers. Eod.

User was banned for a week for this post.

Given that we know there are itemization changes in store in the upcoming patch, it's reasonable to say that there may be other talent or ability changes that go along with it. I don't think anyone believes that a Paladin is truly equal to a Warrior tank right now, but it's too early to throw in the towel imo.

After this startling piece of discussion and commendable insight, I'd like to weigh in.

Anyway as it currently stands, we are weaker but definitely a possibility as main tank; a lot of things can be surmounted through gearing, but we definitely have less advantages compared to a Warrior, and less advantages compared to a bear as well.

As anyone is likely to tell you, steady damage doesn't kill tanks, spike damage does; and having a lower amount of base health is simply a disadvantage for that. Crushing blows are something you can get rid off with Holy Shield up with sufficient gearing based on what I have noticed over time, and Holy Shield is pretty much comparable to Shield Block when it comes to uptime (10 seconds and 4 blocks versus 5 seconds and 2 blocks).

To me your avoidance and health do both look a bit low, I'm not that much better geared, but I have a fair bit of dodge more, and slightly more health; and I'm often considered someone who is obsessed with avoidance (I could re-socket my gear for a lot more stamina, but prefer going for the higher avoidance route).

What I personally find an annoying lack is the fact that we don't have any debuffs to reduce our incoming damage; that's often why the damage we take is higher. But for the purposes of this thread that's not really meaningful (You'd just have to convince a Warrior to keep up Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout for you in a 25-man).

Personally I'd recommend perhaps trying what I refer to as a midway build. My own spec is a good example of it; I have most of the mitigation talents while also picking up talents in Holy up to Divine Favor. You'll need to get creative with ranged pulling without Avenger's Shield though!

Pally tanks for Kara are great, lack of stam and those few extra % points of avoidance that we lack make it not worth using a paladin tank in anything further. There are some interesting anecdotes in the prot itemization thread of paladin OTs on Hydross and such, so there is still utility, but its not (yet) the MT.

Idiot.

On a related note, what is the mathmatical advantage of HS vs SB? HS can handle 3 hits in a row (assuming only 1 in the remaining 5s). It's not huge, but there would seem to be a slight measurable difference.

Holy Shield generates a good amount of threat when you block, but the much bigger % afforded by Shield Block (75 vs 30) makes it much easier for a Warrior to avoid crushing blows by spamming SB. Having 100% block when you pop SB assures you're going to block your next 2 incoming attacks whereas whether or not HS goes off is much less predictable. You might block all 4 of the next attacks if Redoubt is up, or you might not block any of them. This makes it hard to use it in a predictive fashion (Hateful Strike, etc), but that's only a factor in a small amount of fights and it's somewhat difficult to do even for a warrior if you're going full out threat building. SB is definitely the better of the two abilities, imo.

I believe statistically HS would be better, because as you said, if 3 hits come in 5 seconds, HS can block it, but SB can't. If more than 4 hits come in 10 seconds, neither effect can deal with them.

The other thing is, there is less downtime for HS than SB because you have to refresh it less frequently. For example, each time HS or SB fades, there's a period of time between when you hit the refresh and the time the server actually accepts it.

One thing I guess to consider is the difference between what happens if say, 6 attacks connect in a 10 second period through holy shield and shield block.

a) Shield block you could have Block Block Crush, Block Block Crush
b) Holy shield you could have Block Block Block Block Crush Crush

Increasing the spike threat slightly in favor of the warrior.

On the other hand, 4 connecting attack in 5 seconds, say through flurry or something would give you.

a) SB - Block Block, Crush Crush
b) HS - Block Block Block Block.

Another thing to consider when comparing the two is that the paladin is (I think) generally going to have higher general avoidance ratings than the warrior since he NEEDS to make up the 65% gap in order to prevent the crushes whereas the warrior kind of gets that as a freebie. So the warrior is probably liable to work on HP faster and less on avoidance, meaning that the paladin is more likely to dodge/parry/avoid hits during Holy Shield duration, making it less liable to consume a charge. This of course is circumstantial and depends on the players who you're comparing.

Currently vs sub level 65 mobs I can ensure that unless all 4 charges get expended, I will block, parry, dodge, or be missed by every swing while holy shield is up. Given a few more entirely obtainable points of avoidance, I can ensure the same results versus level 73 bosses as well. Currently I run at about 8% chance to be hit by bosses with solely holy shield up. Libram of Repentance will put that to about 3%, and adding some dodge enchants and gems will remove that entirely.

SB is definitely the easier of the two abilities before the paladin is able to fill his hit table.

After that point, I think it's debatable.

I know this is not really answering your question, but if you only have 1 tank geared for tanking I would certainly consider staying prot (at least until you either find more warriors that are willing to tank or until the announced item rebalancing of 2.10). There will be quite a few fights where you will need more than 1 tank (dare I say all of them) in 25 man raids.

Haha.

I've been thinking about that myself -- there's a definite advantage for Holy Shield in being able to move charges around in a 10-second window instead of a 5-second window, but I don't think there's an easy way to quantify it -- and of course there's the potentially higher chance for a paladin to take 2 crushes in a row in the case of 6 attacks within 10 seconds.

Rough math:

Suppose a warrior has (miss + dodge + parry) = 50%, and suppose he takes 2 attacks in one SB period and 3 in the next. He can't be crushed in the first SB, but he can be crushed in the second one, if he expends blocks on the first two blows. The chance of him getting crushed is thus (0.5^2)*0.15 = 3.75%.

A paladin with the same avoidance rate taking the same total number of attacks (5) in one Holy Shield period can only be crushed if the block charges are used on the first four attacks. Thus, his chance of getting crushed is (0.5^4)*1.5 = 0.9375%.

So in this case, the paladin's chance of getting crushed is one quarter the warrior's chance.

Suppose now we have 6 blows in 10 seconds, 3 for each Shield Block. The warrior has a 3.75% chance per SB to take a crush. This gives:

Warrior's chance for one crush: 7.36%
Warrior's chance for two crushes: 0.14%, and they will never be back-to-back.

For the paladin, the math gets hairy, but I think it works out to:

Paladin's chance for one crush: 3.13%
Paladin's chance for two crushes: 0.14%, and they will always be back-to-back.

This ignores Redoubt, of course. Adding that would make it really tricky to calculate.

Letting something potentially useful get sharded is never a wise move. I'm Prot myself and I MT a Karazhan each week, but I've picked up 3-4 nice healing upgrades that would have been sharded otherwise, and you can bet I'm damn glad to have them on Aran.

If your loot system encourages the sharding of useful loot, then probably needs to be looked at. (In my view, DKP is entirely unnecessary for Karazhan anyway.)

Thanks for the input. I have a question about stats, particularly block. I read as many of the Paladin threads as I have time to, and a lot of warrior threads. It seems that 25% to block is what warriors look for to ensure that they cannot be hit by a crushing blow. Has an equivalent value been established for Pallies? I have been working to improve my block value as much as possible, and it may be too high.. I honestly hardly ever see crushing blows in my combat log as is. I have trinkets and gems that I could swap out for more Parry/Dodge/Stam if needed.

I dropped a lot of +Dodge items because I was having problems generating enough aggro on non ud/demon mobs (needed to get more HS procs).

I cannot imagine trying to level and gear my warrior at this point, so will likely continue on the tankadin path for now. I agree 100% with Chicken's post and particularly:

Honestly it's the reason that I felt leveling my Warrior might not be a bad idea. If a warrior is not available (Heroics) it is almost impossible to tank some of the pulls if you only have 1 healer. I have hope that it will be a bit easier to up my Stamina with future itemization changes, and would love to see consecration apply some sort of demo shout type debuff. We just need something other than the retarded Ardent Defender to slow down the massive hits that we take.

Meh, took off guild dkp discussion. Not relevant to the discussion.

Lets just say in our current system if I take healing gear I will fall behind for tanking gear, so I'm not going to start until I've first collected the tank gear I want.

Which is approximately 67.4% base avoidance on your character sheet.

Thanks for not criticizing my typing skills earlier, I was trying to input the question from a PSP (flight delays can bite me).

The statisical work outlined by Cathela was exactly what I was asking for, though I admit I simply had not considered the implications of 6 blockable hits- from a purely statisical standpoint, wouldn't I be correct in thinking that there would be a 41% (ish?) chance that you'd have Redoubt up, leading to 70% avoidance (no libram) vs 73s becoming uncrushable? That would tend to sway the numbers a litlte more. I got that simply because of 5 charges and .9^5- did I screw up the math there?

So maybe it's a statisical anomily that has no real life applications, but it's potentially a fairly slight but possible realistic advantage.

Putting aside classic ideologies and guild acceptance, the bottom line is pretty simple.

Paladin tanks will only survive as long as the itemization is there to back it up.

It's quite easy to find in the armory paladin tanks with over 10k hp, 18% dodge/parry/block, 15k ac right now (all unbuffed) so I going to have to agree as long as the itemization is there I don't see why not.

The only real issue is with fights where the boss spams fear.

Stamina:

Paladins have less base hp than warriors, on the order of 1000+ IIRC. While (and correct me if I'm wrong) prot paladins can get +6% stamina while prot warriors can only get+5% stamina, that 1% stamina is not going to be 1000HP for any reasonable value of gear. Hell, for 1% stamina to be even 100HP you need 1000 stamina.

Hence, prot warriors (even leaving aside that prot warrior sets will probably have more stamina than prot paladin due to paladins needing more stats) will always have more HP and be superior for fights which depend on surviving "one-shot" type abilities assuming equal armor mitigation (and both can wear plate of the same iLvL, so there should be equal armor mitgation, as they have the same +armor talent).


Equal ability to avoid crits.

Warriors have a more consistent ability to avoid crushings. Paladins with sufficiently high block rating should be able to do the same, provided that Holy Shield is up and Redoubt has procc'd, but warriors don't need to rely on a proc.

Defensive stance grants 10% flat mitigation, vs improved righteous fury 6%. Improved defensive stance grants a further 6% spell damage reduction, spell warding grants a further 4%. Warriors have better passive mitigation.

Equal ability to parry/dodge and to gain further parry dodge, leaving aside again that warrior gear can probably get more due to paladin item budget being spread thinner.

As such, paladins are directly inferior for MITIGATION in every way.

The hope for paladin tanking must lie in the things paladins have that warriors don't:



1) Ardent Defender- honestly seems preferable to rely on superior stamina and mitigation than this, short of a gimmick fight where everyone is constantly semi-Enfeebled or something. Not really a niche.

2) Ranged taunt- this one has definite possibilities- wouldn't it have been amazing to have back in the day on a fight like Sartura (or Noth for that matter)? Bit gimmicky, and not so much an MT thing probably, but such is life.

3) Divine Shield- rarely going to want to do it as the MT, but still an awesome "oh hell" move provided that you have a few seconds before the mob would be able to nuke the raid (especially combined with the ranged taunt on tauntable mobs).

4) Threat output. This is the big one, since it's applicable to most fights whereas the first ones are gimmicks. Can a paladin tank maintain an acceptable level of mitigation but output more threat? For a DPS burn fight, provided it doesn't also stretch the limits of MT survivability, it is very conceivable that the best solution is the tank with the best threat output.

If a paladin cannot out-threat a warrior tank, yeah, no hope for paladins as *MT* on anything non-trivial. If they can, there's potential.

Anyone got data for warrior vs paladin threat output vs the same type of mob? I've had my first run with a paladin tank in SH last night, but he was a) 47/14/0 holy spec and b) woefully undergeared and yet because of that run I have at least some confidence in paladin tanking..

Picture this. "Welcome to level 70, holy paladin. For your first level 70 instance, we will make you tank SH. What o you mean you never tanked before and you've never seen SH before? What do you mean you have only one piece of gear with +defence? Never mind, we'll tell you what to do! Oh, and we had a PuG rogue without improved sap and like level 63 weapons."

Amazingly we one-shotted everything and only one wipe, which doesn't count because it was the rogue screwing up and inadvertently pulling an extra pack of mobs, so it wasn't too bad, and gave me confidence he could at least hold aggro off the healer

As soon as a paladin hits 70% total miss/block/dodge/parry against level 73 mobs, they become significantly harder to crush than a warrior against anything that hits more than twice every 5 seconds.

At that point having either Redoubt or Holy Shield up is enough to be uncrushable, and it's clearly easier to have one or the other or both of those abilities up than it is to have Shield Block up.

Paladin mitigation mechanics lend themselves very well to situations where there are many quickly incoming hits.

Past that, pallies produce a ton of threat, and the threat abilities scale very well with additional +spell damage gear. Warrior threat still doesn't scale well with gear.

It's not too hard to imagine boss mobs where a paladin is the preferred tank: think in terms of

a) something that attacks at a 1.0 speed, where both sorts of tanks are going to eat crushes but a paladin will eat far less because of Redoubt. the tricky part is making paladins preferable to druids on this sort of fight.

b) a flat DPS race, where DPS needs to be able to go all-out.