Fiola

It would definitely help you to create a RD macro that simply does /taunt target and /taunt target's target. This macro can be cast on friendlies as normal, but can also be cast on a mob to taunt it off of its current target.
(I'm not sure about the proper wording, but there's a working macro out there)


If I might make a suggestion, have you tried reversing the order of RD & /assist? Your current method sounds like "/assist, RD", but "RD, /assist" accomplishes the same thing while being almost instantaneous. (Using it like this, I usually only have problems with resists and other tanks taunting at the same time)

 

◊ Oggie

Be it ever so simple, this one seems to work well:

 

Lunkhedd

Let's try to quantify that. Some starting assumptions:

• Contiuum Blade with a +40 spell damage enchant, Judgement of the Crusader on the target, and no other sources of spell damage, for a total of 351 spell damage.
• 3% melee hit from precision and no other sources of melee or spell hit (giving 80.6% of melee attacksand 83% of judgements landing).
• 5% spell crit chance (only affects JoR).
• Blessing of Sanctuary.
• No Sanctity or Retribution auras (or Thorns).
• Exactly four blocks per 10 seconds, giving 100% of Holy Shield charges used.
• 4% of all spell damage is lost due to level-based resists.
• Reckoning is active 10% of the time.
• 5/5 1-handed weapon specialization, affecting both physical and SoR damage.
• All fractions rounded down to approximate lag.
• Improved Judgement is available, Improved Seal of Righteousness is not
• base dps of SoR with a one handed weapon at level 70 is 35 (this is a wild guess)
• 600 attack power, 5% melee crit, and 30% physical dr on the mob
• 3/3 Improved Righteous Fury

Consecration: (512 + .96 * 351) * .96 * 1.9 / 8 = 193 tps
Holy Shield: (155 + .05 * 351) * 4 * .96 * 1.35 * 1.9 / 10 = 169 tps
Blessing of Sanctuary: 46 * 4 * .96 * 1.9 / 10 = 33 tps
Judgement of Righteousness: ((208 + 228) / 2 + .73 * 351) * .83 * .96 * 1.9 * 1.025 / 8 = 91 tps
Seal of Righteousness: (35 + .092 * 351) * .806 * .96 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.9 = 119 tps
Physical melee damage: (41.4 + 600 / 14) * .806 * 1.05 * 1.1 * 1.1 * .7 = 60 tps

Total: 665 tps

Sanctity Aura would bring that to around 720 tps. Avenging Wrath is about an 11% bonus averaged out over time, and optimal usage will increase it only a bit (e.g. using AW 3 times in a 7 minute fight is about a 14% boost).

Switching to Seal of Vengeance instead of Righteousness, and assuming a 5 stack up at all times, I get:

Seal of Vengeance: (120 * 5 + .17 * 4 * 351) / 12 * .83 * .96 * 1.9 = 105 tps
Judgement of Vengeance: (120 * 5 + (1.5 / 3.5) * 351) * .83 * .96 * 1.9 / 8 = 142 tps

For a net gain of 37 tps over SoR.

Needless to say, these numbers are significantly lower than what raiding paladin tanks are reporting in this thread in what should be similar gear. What could account for the discrepancy?

 

• Nite_Moogle

With 351 spell damage SoR is going to be 50 DPS or more. Your estimate is pretty low, I think, with 500 +dmg it's around 125 damage on a 1.8.
10% chance to go off and 10% up time are different things.

 

◊ Vulajin

Personally I use the following one, which is a very slight refinement on yours:

This does the same thing as your macro, circumventing any auto-self-cast behavior, but it also allows the ability to still be used even if your current target happens to be targeting you. For example, if you are tanking several mobs, and only one or two decide to run off and attack the priest, you can still use this macro, and just click on your priest, or his unit frame, or hit F-whatever-corresponds-to-him. Minimal target switching ftw.

(edit) Erm, yes, Snow's post below me would be right. Apparently you don't notice obvious things like that when you're as enamored with your macros as I am. >_>

 

Snow

Err, the first macro given does that as well, since you cannot cast Righteous Defense on yourself, it simply turns to the "select-target" hightlighted cursor should you hit it on a mob currently targeting you.

Yeah, just purely from anecdotal evidence, if your simulation is showing SoV outperforming SoR in anything but a "build secondary hate" situation, I would think something is off.

 

◊ Vulajin

Raid buffs. Also, your Reckoning uptime is definitely off. Of course, that's a function of how fast you're being attacked. If you assume a magic world where 10% proc rate means every 10th attack causes a proc, then 10% uptime would be achieved if you were only being hit once every 8 seconds, and 100% uptime if you were being hit 10 times every 8 seconds. Of course, this isn't the case at all in actuality, but you definitely want to look at that Reckoning uptime.

(edit) Simple formula to figure out whether an arbitrary swing is affected by Reckoning. For that to be the case, you must have had a Reckoning proc at some point over the last 4 iterations of your melee swing timer, or the last 8 seconds (whichever is shorter). Over that time span (whichever one is applicable), let's assume you received on average one attack every 2 seconds (in other words, assuming one target being tanked). Each of those attacks had a 10% chance to proc Reckoning. To figure out the chance that any one of them procced it, you just take the complement of the chance that none of them procced it (which I would assume everyone knows). So...

Timeframe = Min(SwingTimer * 4, 8)
NumSwings = Timeframe / 2
Chance Reckoning procced = 1 - (0.90 ^ NumSwings)

So, assuming your weapon is 1.80 speed (Continuum Blade), your chance on any given swing to get any extra attack is:

Timeframe = 1.80 * 4 = 7.20
NumSwings = 7.20 / 2 = 3.60
Chance Reckoning procced = 1 - (0.90 ^ 3.60) = 0.3157

31.57% uptime is a damn sight better than 10%.

(edit 2) Even neglecting your estimate of base SoR DPS, which is probably way off, this new Reckoning uptime mark brings melee TPS up to 72.24 and SoR TPS up to 143.17.

 

◊ Oggie

SoR, BoSanc (and possibly HS?) do not suffer level-based resists. JoR does. JoR can crit. 20% DR is a bit closer than 30% dr even without Sunder, I think, and 700 AP is probably a bit more accurate (none of these are huge, I'm just trying to throw out things).

With Continium Blade, I get 48-67/2, or 57.5 per hit, and about 16.5% of +damage per swing (according to some back of a napkin math and assuming charecter sheeet was correct on my +damage).

How much will that change up your numbers?

 

• Nite_Moogle

SoR's coefficient is based on weapon speed, it's 10% per second (or very close to it) so it's really easy to figure out when doing DPS calculations. Figuring out its base damage without being near the game is the hard part thanks to the retarded formula that shows on wowhead and thott :P

 

◊ Vulajin

SoR rank 9 with no talents indicates that it adds 53-73 Holy damage to attacks. Problem is, I'm not sure what speeds the max and min are based off of.

With +347 spell damage, I hit for 112-113 with my Stellaris (1.90 speed). Maybe that helps.

 

Liand

The TPS is probably closer to:

Consecration: (512 base + 1.14 coeff * 351 spell) * 0.92 resist * 0.83 resist * 1.9 RF / 8 seconds = 165 tps
Holy Shield: (155 base + 0.05 coeff * 351 spell) * 4 charges * 0.92 resist * 0.83 resist * 1.35 bonus * 1.9 RF / 10 seconds = 135 tps
Blessing of Sanctuary: 46 base * 4 charges * .92 resist * 0.83 resist * 1.9 RF / 10 seconds = 26 tps
Judgement of Righteousness: (218 base + 0.73 coeff * 351 spell) * 0.92 resist * 0.83 resist * 1.9 RF * 1.025 spell crit / 8 seconds = 88 tps
Seal of Righteousness: (25 base DPS + 0.092 coeff/second * 351 spell) * 0.806 melee hit * 0.92 resist * 1.1 1H Spec * 1.4 Reckoning * 1.9 RF = 124 tps
Physical melee damage: (41.4 base DPS + 700 AP / 14) * 0.806 melee hit * 1.05 melee crit * 1.1 1H Spec * 1.4 Reckoning * 0.8 DR = 95 tps

Total: 633

It's lower because Lunk missed a lot of resists in his calculation. Our single-target threat really isn't all that much better compared to other tanking classes, but I think a lot of people believe so, because 1) our threat scales pretty well (for example, with Wrath of Air totem up for +101 spell damage, the total TPS would go up to 691), 2) our threat is front-loaded (less chance of losing mobs on the pull, especially with Ardent Defender), and 3) we're the only class with infinitely scaling AoE threat (Consecrate).

As for SoR base DPS, it's around 25. It varies a bit depending on the weapon, because the holy damage bonus is actually affected by your AP (somewhere around 1 DPS increase per 400 AP).

 

Lunkhedd

Well, not quite. Reckoning only triggers off damaging attacks, according to the tooltip, so if the paladin has 50% avoidance, which seems reasonable, the chance of Reckoning going off on any given (physical) attack is only 50% * 10% = 5%. That changes your number a bit:

1 - (.95 ^ 3.6) = 0.169

That's still a lot more than 10%, of course . I picked 10% specifically to counter the "gets worse with more avoidance" argument, but I didn't check the number and it seems it was more pessimistic than it should have been.

I have seen partial SoR resists in my combat log (I remember it due to being surprised to see it ), so I'm pretty sure it's not immune to level-based partials. I'll post a screenshot if I see it again just to have some actual evidence, but that could be some time off. I'm sure some of the fancy combat log parser addons can be set to highlight it.

A weapon oil and spell damage elixir will make a respectable change in the numbers, since paladin threat scales pretty well with spell damage, but it's nowhere near enough to reach the 800-1k tps threat values people have posted so far. Come to think of it, though, those probably credit Prayer of Mending and such to the tank. I wonder if that's enough to make up the difference?

Speaking of Prayer of Mending, has anyone yet been able to test whether it gets boosted threat from Righteous Fury when cast on a paladin?

 

◊ Vulajin

Good catch on the avoided hits not proccing Reckoning. It was a pretty quick calculation done on the spur of the moment, so I'm not surprised I missed something. However, given that fact, it seems like this whole TPS calculation is probably something better left for a spreadsheet so that you can accommodate all the variables. After all, specific avoidance values matter both for Reckoning and for your Blessing of Sanctuary, Holy Shield, and Retribution Aura (do most tankadins use Ret Aura while tanking? it seems like Devotion Aura, being basically a drop in the bucket of mitigation, would be less useful anyway) threat per second.

Accommodating buffs and getting more accurate calculations would be quite possible with a spreadsheet -- and a TPS spreadsheet would be useful as hell for paladins to determine how to maximize their own threat.

 

Azurai

Too many stats, imo. I still think paladins are absolutely the best multi-target tanks. Paladins in shattered halls make it obscenely easy.

However, there's just way too much in stat point allocation to make paladin armor up to par for MTing 25 man raid bosses.

For warriors, agro = str/ap, hit, crit/agi

For paladins, agro = str/ap, hit, crit/agi, spell damage, spell crit/int

You're losing threat if you go straight ap or sd as a paladin, and the itemization tends to suck so you get pieces that have nice sd/spell crit but also manage to have 43 spirit.

The real thing holding paladins back is that Blizzard doesn't want them to be MTs. Same with druids. Blizzard spends to many 'item points' towards useless stats that keep their hybrid 'spirit' (no pun intended) but at the same time they won't acknowledge the fact that a feral spec druid or a ret paladin is not going to do any good healing, especially not in that gear with the paltry amount of IP devoted to healing.

Blizzard still believes hybrids can fulfill multiple roles but still won't acknowledge the fact that multiple gear sets are a fact of WoW and they need to start making the item selection more robust for hybrid classes.

Making separate t4/5/6 sets is a good start, but the way they did the armor makes a lot of it inferior to random epics with more focused stats meant for other classes.

 

• Chicken

You can pretty much ignore anything that doesn't provide the optimal benefit in my opinion. So you can pretty much discount str/ap and crit/agi (Since white DPS is pretty meaningless from a threat point of view; definitely not worth improving), which puts as at an equal amount of stats 'needed'. And to be honest you can get rid of spell crit as well. Crit is a bit more valauble for a warrior since it's also a bit of a Rage boost in a low rage situation, but since the Paladin's mana regeneration is purely based on incoming healing and nothing else that saving grace isn't present.

It's really closer to:

For warrior, agro = Barely scaling, but slightly improvable by str/ap, hit, crit/agi
For paladins, agro = spell hit, hit, spell damage

And even then spell hit and hit would only be needed for Seals and Judgements.

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

 

Fiola

I've seen plenty of partial resists on SoR procs while instancing. A combat text mod that reports your damage should show a few resists on a given 70 instance run.


The tooltip is based on the speed of your currently equipped weapon. The high number is for a 2H weapon, the low number is for a 1H weapon. (Base damage, before +dmg is considered)

 

Nich

Speaking for myself only, I've noticed that, when being fairly mana conservative against non-undead/demon targets, I can hover around the 300-400 TPS mark.

If it happens to be my favourite mob, the dual-wielding Shiva-like demons inside of SLabs, then I've managed to push up around 1200 TPS.

According to KTM, anyway.

My Armoury profile has my default tanking set: 165 spelldamage from Continuum Blade, + Chest/Gloves of Righteousness (they're not too horrible, considering I make use of the 10% consecrate discount to cast it more often). No spelldmg enchants to sword, or thread on legs. Pre-TBC libram to increase spelldamage of JotC, so a marginal gain but it could be better.

No totems; using BoSanct and JotC, and non-improved Ret aura.

Of course, I'm not taking anywhere near enough damage to keep my mana bar full, so the constant spam cycle of Judging, re-Sealing, SBing, Consecrating, and tapping Exorcism (and, when available and I have the GCD to spare, hammer of pewpew), is burning my mana pretty hard - JoW helps a little, not not appreciably.

I tend to use Vengeance instead of Righteousness tho', because without testing I feel like JoV's extra judgement damage makes up for lost Reck procs on Right, tho' I'll sometimes switch to SoR if the judgement timer isn't about to come up for use.

1200 TPS isn't nothing to sneeze at, but it's extremely situational, and the sustainability of it is debatable. Not to mention it takes perhaps 15 or 20 seconds to reach that point, and by then the demon is almost dead.

 

• Grogzor

The thing is, A Warrior is capable of tanking any fight where tanking in the traditional sense is used. ie. Not the mage from High King.

There are plenty of fights where paladins and druids can tank, but there are fights where you guys just wont cut it for one reason or another.

IMO, Prot paladins would be better OTs but then you get into the fundamental problem with hybrids. Hybrids shine in a guild that cannot min/max. If you need a healer for one fight and an OT for another, a Paladin will work for smaller guilds. Larger guilds on the other hand can say, "We want to progress, best way to do that is Min/Max" If we need a healer for a fight, we take someone resto or holy spec, we need an OT for a fight, we take someone Prot or Feral spec."

Eventually you get to the point where gear and just knowing the encounter will allow someone specced holy/prot to fill in the roles. It just makes it harder at the beginning.

 

zeidrich

My problem right now is that we've got protection warriors, and if you need a tank for boss X, the guild needs to choose between the protection warrior and the protection paladin. We've both got similar gear levels, but in general, I have lower mitigation, lower hit points, I can't break fear, I can't disarm, I can't shield wall, there's a lot of things that a warrior just does better. So on those fights, which is pretty much all of them, I get asked to do my secondary role.

Meanwhile, I'm spending DKP on tanking upgrades and focusing all of my money for enchants into fueling my tankability.

But it's getting to the point where, if I'm tanking, sure I do great. But if I'm not tanking I start to think, man, a retribution paladin would be doing better than me right now.

And when I'm not tanking is on pretty much every boss except R&J.

It's not that I can't tank. It's that there's no great reason so far that I should ever tank over a protection warrior. And that I do better in my off role than they would do if they were to go DPS. In fact with the unlimited rage they get from tanking they would probably do more DPS than if they were trying to DPS while I tanked.

Blizzard puts in multi mob fights like maulgar but then it's the mages and shaman who tank in there. When we go there, maybe I might be able to tank the priest or something, but we'll have 2 prot warriors in there, so i'll probably heal for that too.

That's what IMO is holding me back from tanking. The fact that there's no fights really where you say "Man, this would be easier if we had a paladin tanking" but there's a lot where if you're tanking it with a paladin, people would think "Man, this would be easier with a warrior who could do x"

 

Goreshot

A significant portion of problems with all three hybrid classes, not just Paladins, could be solved by adjusting itemization. A Protection Paladin might not be able to tank all raid-level bosses, but if he could offtank trash and perhaps MT the lesser raid bosses and still provide 75%+ of the healing that a pure Holy Paladin would provide, then they would be viable as actual hybrids rather than as hybrids with multiple sets of gear (and a 50/100g respec) trying to fulfill the same role as a "pure" class. If Blizzard just acknowledged this and GAVE Paladins gear that had 80% of the mitigation of a warrior with 80% of the healing of a priest, then zomg, you just got yourself an ACTUAL hybrid.

Part of the reason that Shaman fell behind Paladins in pure healing before TBC was because a significant portion of Shaman itemization was dedicated towards the "offensive caster" portion of their hybrid class, even though everyone and their mom knew that practically all Shaman in raid settings were Resto and thus needed absolutely no ilevel points wasted on +spelldamage. If Blizzard had decreased the ilevel cost of those stats in Shaman gear (and thus gave them more of it), then that problem never would've appeared.

At least this way you're embracing the hybrid classes, rather than telling them they need to get one set of gear for each talent tree they have, and forcing them to respec every time they want to change roles.

 

zeidrich