Fjord

I hear "Paladins have better threat" repeated like a mantra but do they really? Sure you've got great threat doing non heroic shattered halls in spell damage gear but once you get to the point where you are min/maxing mitigation you're probably only getting spelldamage off your sword. Some might have a burst trinket or something in the mix but there are alot of good defensive trinkets out there.

Also with holy shield vs shield block a huge point in shield block's favour is that it has a 5sec cooldown but 6sec duration and its not on the global cooldown. A paladin will have holy shield occupying their global cooldown about 25% of the time. Not that we really have much else to do but still.

Really the 1200hp is the biggest thing though. Would you really want what is effectively a warrior with no enchants tanking anything difficult?

 

Cathela

Someone's already said this, but it needs to be restated because so many people don't realize this: a properly geared paladin can avoid crushing blows just as well as a warrior in the worst case, and significantly better in the best case. 65% base avoidance can be achieved in pre-raid gear, and with a Libram of Repentance you can push crushing blows off the table with Holy Shield alone. At that point, Holy Shield becomes just as good as Improved Shield Block for that purpose, and extra crush-avoidance from Redoubt is simply a bonus.

And the "need more stats" thing really isn't true either. There's no need for mp5 or intellect if you're tanking anything serious; on Malchezaar for example, the mana gained from Spiritual Attunement is more than enough to let me spam the max rank of everything without worrying about mana at all -- and if I do say so, my gear gives pretty damn good mitigation. Really, you could convert the strength on warrior tanking gear into spelldamage, and you'd be 95% of the way to ideal paladin tanking gear.

The only inherent gearing difficulty for a paladin tank is the lack of stats from the ranged slot -- librams provide flavor bonuses only. There are other difficulties presented by the gear Blizzard has chosen to put in the game, but that's the only gearing problem that's truly native to the class.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

zenos

im uncrushable unbuffed, i have less health than warriors with equal gear but nearly equal mitigation, as well as the additional benefits and disadvantages of being a paladin tank.

I can tank kara fine although we haven't gotten to nightbane as well as tank every heroic i've attempted.

As far as holy shield goes, on fast hitting mobs, moroes being a great example, holy shield gets eaten up before the cooldown just like shield block. If redoubt procs it will make you uncrushable as well, but often overlaps holy shield for a diminished advantage.

the beauty of a paladin tank on moroes is blessing of sacrifice, which makes the off tank nearly ornamental, a good combat rogue will do in a pinch.

And redoubt suffers from a similar problem that warriors have with rage, as our gear gets better you see it less and less often.

On our kara raid tonight i had a 15 or so second span where moroes didnt lay a hand on me.
I'd be surprised if redoubt proccd the entire battle.


This is basically generation 2 of the paladin tank, with generation one being pathetic.

In the next step blizz really needs to make our skill set mesh.

Revenge is a perfect example, as your gear gets better revenge procs more and more often, its one of the things they really got right on a warrior tank, we need similar attention to detail to overcome the last hurdle, and some method of equalizing health pools.


http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/?#...furion&n=Zenos

 

Cathela

I think what people are referring to with that is that paladins have the option to sacrifice mitigation for threat in situations where it's called for. Warriors aren't completely incapable of this, but they can't do it nearly as well since their threat doesn't scale as strongly.

Shield Block is 5 second duration. The old ISB talent was three points to extend the duration to 6.5 seconds, and the first point also increased the number of blocks from one to two. Now, the talent is only one point to get an extra block; the duration stays at 5 seconds.

And Shield Block is off of the GCD because warriors need it to be; their threat comes almost entirely from active abilities that trigger GCD (Heroic Strike being the exception) so having to spend a GCD every five seconds to keep mitigation up would put a serious dent in their threat generation -- and it wouldn't exactly make the class more fun to play.

Paladin tanks on the other hand really only have to use the GCD for three or four things: Consecration (8 second CD), Holy Shield (10 second CD), JoR/SoR (8-10 second CD), and possibly Exorcism (15 second CD). So it really doesn't hurt to have to spend a GCD on Holy Shield.

You'd have to tune our mitigation to the point where it's situationally worth giving up 1200hp. Fast attackers are supposed to be our forte, but Theras' simulation in the other thread seems to indicate we still don't quite have an edge there. Hopefully we get some good tweaks in 2.1.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

zenos

On a hard hitting mob where you have basically infinite mana from spiritual attunement yes, paladins can double a warriors threat output per second easily.
Max level consecration spam by itself would equal a warriors entire threat output, and this is with a spell damage weapon and pure tank gear otherwise.

 

Cathela

Dammit. I feel like an idiot every time something like this doesn't occur to me. Gotta try that next time.

That's true, but the better your gear the less you need it as well. If you're crush-immune and only getting hit 4 times every 10 seconds, then Redoubt doesn't matter in the slightest because Holy Shield does everything you need anyway. When you're taking a lot of hits (fast attacker or AoE), then it's there for you. So a lower proc rate with improved gear is a behavior of Redoubt, but I really wouldn't call it a problem.

Good point, and it's easy to forget that. Whatever the problems we have now, there's no way we could have dreamed of tanking something like Karazhan six months ago.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

• Theras

Just a minor correction: we're currently on Generation Four of the Paladin tank.

Generation 1: Seal of Fury increased the threat output of anybody you cast it on by a significant amount, making Paladin tanks possible, but largely insignificant given that you could cast it on a vastly superior Warrior. Disappeared at the end of Open Beta.

Generation 2: Seal of Fury and Judgement of Fury generated absolutely absurd levels of threat with combined with Consecration. Really absurd. And completely independent of gear, too. I remember one time after killing 6/8 of Garr's adds, we switched to him and I started hammering away with my Fury combo of doom; I pulled aggro at around 30%. This was after a multiple minute lead.

Generation 3: Righteous Fury without suitable tanking gear available was the Dark Times.

Generation 4: Today.

Hopefully Generation 5 is truly viable in the end game.

<Illidari Demon Hunter>

 

Fjord

True paladins are capable of more threat than warriors but if you're at the point where you can sacrifice mitigation do you really need a full tanking spec? Actually tbh I can't remember a fight since prepatch bwl where warrior aggro was a problem.
The single point still adds a second to the duration of shield block.
Right clearly shieldblock has to be off GCD or it would be a huge pain. My point was that paladins are going to frequently encounter situations where they can't use a skill because holy shield is on GCD. For example with 1 second left on holy shield your consecrate cooldown is up, you have no choice but to wait at least 2.5 seconds to consecrate again, likely slowing down other abilities in doing so.

Going to call bullshit there.

 

• Theras

Seconded. Even assuming the max spell damage weapon currently available (Bloodmaw Magus-Blade) with a spell damage enchant, you are going to be looking at a Consecration that yields somewhere around the 170 threat per second ballpark. I'd really like to know what crazy voodoo tanking his Warriors are pulling off if they're holding aggro with the same DPS as a Wand Specialization Priest with a Black Stalk

<Illidari Demon Hunter>

 

suicuique

So, you can output constant 1.6 K Tps?
This is a honest question ...though i somehow doubt it.

 

suicuique

But you did notice the discussion that is going in the warrior threads, that shield block MIGHT be on a second roll?
If that is the case, a warrior would need a blocking chance of 25%+ to push crushings off the table with shield block.
I'm not sure that this is the case, just wanted to point out, that there are indications that it might be so.

Bottom line: chances are that 65% shield block is what you need.

 

Cire

Without Avengers Shield, in my experience, they do not. I've been tanking Khara for a month now. I have done it with several different protection specs (trying to find a balance where I could tank effectively and heal *well* when needed). If you get 1 or 2 resists to Righteousness judgement early, the mob is gone. I guess it's the same if a warrior misses a couple of sunders or revenges /shrug. In normal 5 mans I never lose anything, because I'm in 4/5 "of the Righteous" gear, the gear that I can get 2 shot in when in Khara.

I think that Pallies with Avengers Shield definately have better initial threat, and against undead and demons our TPS is on par with warriors. Our warrior tank can often steal aggro from me on normal mobs if he has enough rage. I have about 200 Spell Damage while tanking in Khara, and I could get more but don't want to be using a remodeled Phantom Blade :p

 

• Chicken

Zenos is heavily overstating the Paladin's capabilities in my opinion; in the kinds of fights you'd get the infinite mana for constant max rank spam, you won't be wearing the kind of gear that allows you to put out that threat. When I go all out currently my single target threat generation would be around 800 to 1000 TPS.

I think I could hit close to that number stated by Zenos in my full spell damage gear, but my full spell damage gear involves the loss of about 3.5k health, 120 defense, 20% avoidance, and 15% shield block, which is obviously not suited towards the kinds of situations you'd achieve infinite mana from Spiritual Attunement. (Well, obviously you'd get into a lot more situations like that with that kind of gear, but having a tank who can aggro everything but can't take the damage is a bit of a waste)

All Paladin tanks I know of are reporting crush immunity with Holy Shield up when they hit 67.4% combined miss/block/parry/dodge on the character screen, so either it works differently for Warriors, or it's on a single roll.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

suicuique

If it really is as you report, I think it also clears the case of warrior crushings (and how much vanilla blocking chance you need to push crushings off the table)
Because it doesnt make sense in the slightest that blocks aber being handled differently for paladins vs warriors.

EDIT: And thanks for your TPS numbers. Good to know. I find that 800 Tps is usually the limit a warrior can achieve (while focussed on aggro). Going beyond that is very very hard.
GCD is merciless in that respect.

 

Enkidu

The most glaring problem with paladin tanks is obviously the lack of health, both base and through itemization budget.

You can mitigate crushing very well, true. Is that really enough against seriously hard hitting mobs though? Your HP and straight up mitigation are the only answers if you want consistency there (coming from a person who collects all gear be it avoidance stamina AC etc for different situations, so yeah, avoidance streaks are cool and make me laugh, but they're just that - streaks).

The lack of abilities like demoralizing shout and thunderclap compound this further if these debuffs are not available in a raid (dps warriors would usually not have Imp.DS, UW is the best rage/sec talent there is, no dps warrior likes TC botting). You don't need a hard hitting boss mob [Karazhan bosses need not apply, save for a maybe a romulo with a permanent daring) to crush you in order to end you in that case, a hit + cleave from a mob like Kazzak should suffice without demo shout up (haven't played with him much, but flying by he hit for 9k on 14k AC in def stance if memory serves).

The bottom line is a 3000 HP difference between the tanking classes is too substantial (check some profiles, some tauren warriors are already near 15k unbuffed), and the itemization budget doesn't look like it will make it any better, to the contrary. With the health situation addressed there really isn't any reason why paladins would not make viable and in some situations/encounters prefered end game tanks.

 

Grendel

Had comprehensive response. Eaten by forums. Can't find a setting to change time out period in user CP. Grr.

With max +damage weapon in game and no outside buffs, Consecration racks up 183 TPS. Certainly versus Attumen and Moroes, spiritual attunement did not provide more mana than I was expending, so max Consecration spam is only really feasible if you're not cycling other abilities.

Rather demanding mitigation mechanics notwithstanding, my biggest concern as a Pally is the functionality of taunt. Even with a "Target's target" macro set up, any latency means I'm frequently taunting mobs off a raid member who isn't under attack. Personal experience suggests it's an inherently unreliable taunt method and one that should be replaced by either a direct ranged taunt of a single mob, a template based AoE taunt or an ability that channels aggro from another party member to the paladin.

Thoughts/experiences?

 

suicuique

If it's anything like warrior's "intervene" ability (from a mechanical point of view) it is highly unreliable. Even more so when you consider aggro reducing/dumping abilities of your raid members (think vanish/feint dead/fade/invuln pot/...).
It is not uncommon for me intervenening to a member who dumps his aggro and I end up being quite a distance away from the mob and his NEW target.
Sucks.

If it's not comparable ... forget what I wrote ^^

 

zeidrich

I've rarely had problems with RD. Occasionally it misses, but not frequently by any means. I find it highly reliable.

The only thing I can't do that I'd like to occasionally is use it to taunt a single monster off an OT or something. It's all or nothing.

 

Daine

From what I've experienced, we can't tank end-game for most of the reasons stated above. Here's my armoury:

http://armory.wow-europe.com/#charac...erhood&n=Daine

Now, with that I'm fine for the first bosses of Kara. Pre-fix Romulo was too much for me, even with my 15.3k health from standard raid-buffs. Mostly it was down to not having the HP to absorb a 2-3 hit combo through Daring, though maybe that's down to me not being kept topped up, taking an unlucky crushing or Daring not being removed fast enough. Didn't look close enough to say conclusively. Either way, knowing that this is one of the easier fights in Karazhan puts me off trying to improve my gear any more, as I know I'll never stand up to anything bigger unless I outgear it.

Threat in Karazhan and normal instance runs is never a problem, but then in Kara you have Exorcism as an extra aggro grab. I do wonder about our aggro on say, a humanoid 25-man raid-boss. Anyone tried a paladin on post-fix Gruul? Would be interested to hear about the results, as right now I'm prot specced out of necessity to fill a void in the guild rather than the fact that I think I can make it work.

Also, a slight aside - A paladin uses up more buff slots than any other tank I imagine. Having to keep up RF, an aura, standard raid buffs plus our reactive buffs such as Redoubt and Reckoning will push other buffs off, no? Not sure exactly how this mechanic works and not tested it, but is it possible that this leaves us at another disadvantage?

 

zeidrich

I tanked Romulo on our first kill over a warrior because we were short on interrupts and wanted the shield bash on Julianne.

If you couldn't do it with 15.3k health, then your warrior wouldn't be able to do it either. The problem in that case was either your healers sucking or your dispellers sucking. Take your pick.

On the other hand, I would say that pre-nerf romulo is probably the fight where the tank is most likely to die from spike damage if daring doesn't come up fast enough. I would say the risk is higher for a tank death during daring that in phase 2 prince.

As for risk of tank deaths, if your dispellers or healers are slow any tank, warrior, paladin or druid will die. That, and interrupting julianne's heals were the only thing making the fight even remotely challenging. If there was no risk of a tank death, the encounter would be unloseable.