[Paladin] MTanking viability thread - Page 11

Cathela · 04/04/07, 6:31 AM

Originally Posted by sahamet

In thinking about trying to maximize HP in order to achieve some sort of parity with a warrior tank, I considered a couple items I had scoffed off a few days before: Gauntlets of the Iron Tower and Helm of the Stalwart Defender. At first the mix of resilience and defense rating seemed like a joke, as I tend to shrug off resilience as a purely PvP stat. But I remembered that someone had noted in another thread that resilience is worth twice its rating in defense for purposes of nullifying crits. Since it and the defense rating are spread on the same item you get a more efficient budgeting of stats (and compared at least in the helm's case to the next best tanking, Eternium Greathelm, budgeting isn't wasted on strength). Are these items actually worthwhile? Gearing for block rating or straight dodge/block/parry otherwise should allow you to hit sufficient crushing mitigation to outweigh the loss of defense rating, but I haven't tried running any comparisons to see whether the gain is sufficient enough compared to alternative choices for those slots.

And in general, might Resilience gear in certain slots be useful for maximizing stamina while still attaining the appropriate levels of defense skills? It seems like this line of thought hasn't been broached as yet, and it might be a way in which to make paladins a more viable option for MTing in the absence of the fixes which 2.1 might hold?

The thing is that even if you've already reached crit immunity, defense is still enormously useful for stacking the other avoidance methods in order to reach crush immunity. It takes 15 points of defense rating to "fill in" 1% of your hit table, vs 19 points of dodge rating, 25 points of agility, or 31 points of parry rating. Block rating is the only stat that's more efficient, at about 8 points of block rating per 1% block. So in all likelihood, a paladin that wants to eliminate crushing blows is going to be stacking a substantial amount of defense over the 490 required for crit immunity. And if you're going to have all that defense anyway, resilience isn't going to be doing anything.

The only case where resilience would be useful is if you're trying to stack block value heavily and use base block as your primary means of filling the hit table. There are two problems I can see with this:

First, it's only going to work if there's enough block itemization in the game to push you to crit immunity without being at 490+ defense, and I'm not sure there is.

Second, and probably more importantly, stacking block at the expense of low dodge/parry/miss means your Holy Shield charges will on average get consumed faster, increasing your risk of being left open to a crush during the period before you can refresh Holy Shield. It's very rare when tanking that the mob will only attack four times in ten seconds, which means that you're really counting on at least one or two attacks being completely avoided in order to stretch the charges out.

Which is not to say that Stalwart Defender is bad. It's got more armor and stamina than EGH, which might make it the better helm if you can afford to lose the avoidance. But I don't see the resilience helping you, realistically.

Xelopheris · 04/04/07, 6:33 AM

As far as paladin tanks go, there's one that really needs to be addressed -- Shield Block

The fact that Holy Shield has the same amount of charges per cooldown time while offering less +block definately sucks, but there's a more hidden problem.

Picture Prince phase 2. If a paladin has enough dodge/block/parry that when Holy Shield is up, he is crush immune, then he has a 30% chance maximum of not avoiding an attack when it's down. That means 15% of it is going to be crush, and the remainder, less than 15%, hit. Here's where the problem lies. If a warrior is in this situation, they shield block, have a second or two of easy rest where they can be guaranteed no crushes, then a few seconds where they're liable to be crushed, but their cushion is going to come back up within 5 seconds. Meanwhile, the Paladin popped Holy Shield right away and it went pew pew pew pew and blew all four charges in four seconds. Now the paladin is shitting himself, because he's got 6 seconds where he has no way if making himself 'definately' immune to a crushing blow. Redoubt can pop up, but it's unreliable. A pally tank can just take crush crush crush crush at this point and not be able to do anything about it.

Cathela · 04/04/07, 6:36 AM

Originally Posted by suicuique

Why?
1h spec increases only the physical damage AFAIK.

e.g. TC damage is unaffected by 1 h spec too.

But the Warrior talent affects a far greater fraction of a warrior's damage output than the Paladin talent. Even if the Paladin version affected Holy Shield, the Warrior talent would still be superior.

Cathela · 04/04/07, 6:38 AM

Originally Posted by Xelopheris

Picture Prince phase 2. If a paladin has enough dodge/block/parry that when Holy Shield is up, he is crush immune, then he has a 30% chance maximum of not avoiding an attack when it's down. That means 15% of it is going to be crush, and the remainder, less than 15%, hit. Here's where the problem lies. If a warrior is in this situation, they shield block, have a second or two of easy rest where they can be guaranteed no crushes, then a few seconds where they're liable to be crushed, but their cushion is going to come back up within 5 seconds. Meanwhile, the Paladin popped Holy Shield right away and it went pew pew pew pew and blew all four charges in four seconds. Now the paladin is shitting himself, because he's got 6 seconds where he has no way if making himself 'definately' immune to a crushing blow. Redoubt can pop up, but it's unreliable. A pally tank can just take crush crush crush crush at this point and not be able to do anything about it.

Yep, exactly. I made a more detailed version of this argument a couple pages back, but you've captured the essence of it right here.

Mokoto · 04/04/07, 4:30 PM

I encountered a little snag in tanking this week, I tried to off-tank Gruul and build up hate but I just could not get enough hate to always be second on the hateful strikes list... I was only at about 300ish threat per second, is there something I am doing wrong?

Keep in mind really the only damage I am taking is the Hateful strike.

I am finding that sometimes, off-tanking is horribly bad for me.

• Chicken · 04/04/07, 4:33 PM

Originally Posted by Mokoto

I encountered a little snag in tanking this week, I tried to off-tank Gruul and build up hate but I just could not get enough hate to always be second on the hateful strikes list... I was only at about 300ish threat per second, is there something I am doing wrong?

Keep in mind really the only damage I am taking is the Hateful strike.

I am finding that sometimes, off-tanking is horribly bad for me.

Off-tanking is just something Paladins aren't too good for; Holy Shield is too large a part of our threat for that. It's doable in Karazhan at Moroes as Moroes is Undead and thus you get a slight extra threat boost (Not to mention a fair amount of aggro build time depending on how you're doing the fight), or at Curator since your threat gets a very nice boost during any Evocates, but I'd strap on the heal gear and let a Druid handle off-tanking in a fight like Gruul.

Mokoto · 04/04/07, 4:38 PM

Originally Posted by Chicken

Off-tanking is just something Paladins aren't too good for; Holy Shield is too large a part of our threat for that. It's doable in Karazhan at Moroes as Moroes is Undead and thus you get a slight extra threat boost (Not to mention a fair amount of aggro build time depending on how you're doing the fight), or at Curator since your threat gets a very nice boost during any Evocates, but I'd strap on the heal gear and let a Druid handle off-tanking in a fight like Gruul.

We ended up doing that, I had no problem I was still useful, but I hope Blizzard addresses that.

Iol · 04/04/07, 5:52 PM

Here's a tip for horde paladins:

Put a High DPS weapon (ie: King's defender with +40 spelldmg) on, Judge wisdom and use Seal of Blood, Kings, might if you think your aggro needs a boost, enjoy the double wisdom procs with a really not bad source of holy dmg threat, and just about enough mana to maintain Judging re-sealing and max rank consecrate.

Roana · 04/04/07, 7:57 PM

Originally Posted by Chicken

Off-tanking is just something Paladins aren't too good for; Holy Shield is too large a part of our threat for that. It's doable in Karazhan at Moroes as Moroes is Undead and thus you get a slight extra threat boost (Not to mention a fair amount of aggro build time depending on how you're doing the fight), or at Curator since your threat gets a very nice boost during any Evocates, but I'd strap on the heal gear and let a Druid handle off-tanking in a fight like Gruul.

If it's any comfort, warriors don't do all that well in the same role either, since the only rage you're getting is from auto-attacking (barring the occasional AE) and Bloodrage once per minute; plus, Revenge won't proc. My TPS take a very noticeable nosedive when I'm not being attacked.

Exewut · 04/05/07, 4:31 AM

You can always stand in the cave in, that's what I do. This might be more problematic for a pally since he has low HP, but you should be able to do it at the start of the fight without a problem.

PsiVen · 04/05/07, 4:42 AM

I'd strap on the heal gear and let a Druid handle off-tanking in a fight like Gruul.

This is best, but the week our usual feral tank wasn't there I went in to OT and my threat was fine. Unfortunately, by threat was fine I mean 'KTM indicated threat was fine' because that was the week he was nerfed into the ground and didn't even Strike once, but as long as I had the mana to spam my abilities I generated about as much threat as our usual OT.

The problem of course, is that I have much less HP and armor than a Druid for soaking strikes late in the fight when they're actually occurring, and if I have less than 2 crazy shadow priests in my group I'm going to need overhealing to keep generating threat.

Mokoto · 04/05/07, 1:25 PM

Originally Posted by PsiVen

This is best, but the week our usual feral tank wasn't there I went in to OT and my threat was fine. Unfortunately, by threat was fine I mean 'KTM indicated threat was fine' because that was the week he was nerfed into the ground and didn't even Strike once, but as long as I had the mana to spam my abilities I generated about as much threat as our usual OT.

The problem of course, is that I have much less HP and armor than a Druid for soaking strikes late in the fight when they're actually occurring, and if I have less than 2 crazy shadow priests in my group I'm going to need overhealing to keep generating threat.

Yeah I didn't get much over heals, how much threat per second were you generating, I was at about 300-350?

Snow · 04/10/07, 3:47 AM

I heard a rumor from a quite reputable source that the current 2.1 build has Ardent Defender at 30% damage reduction below 35% health. If this is their idea of making prot paladins "viable" I don't know what to say. Anyone more math-savvy than I want to punch some numbers and see if that even helps us at all?

Mokoto · 04/10/07, 4:21 AM

Originally Posted by Snow

I heard a rumor from a quite reputable source that the current 2.1 build has Ardent Defender at 30% damage reduction below 35% health. If this is their idea of making prot paladins "viable" I don't know what to say. Anyone more math-savvy than I want to punch some numbers and see if that even helps us at all?

You never want your tank lower then 50% for any period of time.

For soloing and trivial encounters I suppose, but for hard hitting mobs, this can still get leap frogged more times then it would actually be useful.

• Chicken · 04/10/07, 5:10 AM

It should help somewhat, let's say the average boss will hit you for 5k damage, and if you have 15k health that means you'll pretty much always need an extra hit for the boss to kill you, but that's just a feeling, I'm not good enough at math to be able to calculate it properly. It might make me reconsider my spec somewhat, currently I can say that for both heroics and raids I rarely miss the current version of Ardent Defender, but upping it to 35% would make it at least be more useful.
Edit: I missed the part about the damage reduction being lower; wonder if that'd mean changing it into a 3 point talent...

I'm personally more interested in the promised overhaul of Tier 4 and Tier 5's Protection pieces though.