[Paladin] MTanking viability thread
 

I know that this has been discussed in other threads (http://elitistjerks.com/showthread.php?t=9336), 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.

Personally my gear choices are completely prot-based and I'm wondering (as I'm letting healing gear get sharded instead of spending DKP on it) if it's a wise move.

Our guild has been somewhat avoiding the 25mans out of probably logistical reasons. (We've just set a timeline to try and allow people some breathing room to do their 5-mans and heroics and whatnot before pressuring them into raiding.) So we started 10-mans march 1st, and we'll be starting 25-mans april 1st.

My gear is getting there,
16.67% Dodge
17.52% Parry
15.82% Block
6.76% Miss

With the heroic libram, that puts me at only ~3-4% away from crush immune with only holy shield (according to tank points), and I have some gems to change out and enchants to put on that will push me over that limit.

Personally, I think that once a paladin gets to the point that they're crush immune with solely holy shield, they become better at withstanding burst damage than a warrior because if a mob consumes all charges of holy shield redoubt can still push them off the table, while a warrior has no such liberty.

What I'm finding from my guild though is that:

a) A warrior doesn't have to work as hard on stats to start with, so becomes the de facto tank. (Warriors don't get excited about being immune to crushing blows, they just toss up shield block and it's assumed)

b) Prot warrior suck at their secondary role (dps) way more than I suck at my secondary role (healing) since the only thing I really lose over being holy is mana efficiency which can be made up by chugging pots.

so

c) Any encounter where we have to choose between tanks warrior and paladin, the warrior gets chosen because the raid's more comfortable with what they know, because the warrior has more HP because of his base hp, and the fact that he doesn't need to stack avoidance to not get crushed, and in general he's just got more "toys" like last stand and shield wall in case things go south.

BUT

Since b) is typically the case, if we need a second tank occasionally, a paladin is wanted more than a second warrior, since if we're not tanking, we can bring more to the table than a prot warrior who is not tanking.


I'm going to continue to build my tank gear up, and work on resistances for hydross. But for now I don't think that my guild is looking at Paladins to be main tanks for the most part, not necessarily because they're inviable, but because we still have Prot warriors, and asking a prot warrior to DPS while a prot pally tanks seems stranger to most than asking a prot pally to heal while a prot warrior tanks. (But I often mak^H^H^H ask prot warriors in my 5-mans to DPS while I tank).

I think that paladins can make viable MTs BUT the main things that's preventing it are the fact that prot warriors can really do nothing but tank, that people are already used to warriors tanking, and there's no fights at the moment where you actually think "Man this would be easier with a paladin tanking"

A couple of fights with a disarm that couldn't be prevented by a weapon chain (preferably demon or undead) would go a long way to promoting gearing up alternate tank classes.

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.

I'd stay the way you are for the time being. Collect healing gear on the side, of course. As others have said, you'll want multiple tanks for future fights, and if your guild starts running dual Karazhans.

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.