Bronwyn

Question: has any of the present Prot-Paladins ever tanked RoS Phase III? I plan on using our Paladin as MT there, but I don't know how badly he will be affected by the mana-burn (which on a warrior is a rage burn)

 

• Chicken

I haven't heard of anyone actually trying it, I think the general assumption was that the mana burn damage would get too high; the actual mana being burned shouldn't be an issue (As with a warrior tank, that would be a predictable damage spike your healers should work around, so your Prot Paladin should near instantly have some mana to work with again after it hits). The reason the mana burn would be too high compared to a warrior is that a Prot Paladin is less efficient at dumping large amounts of their mana than a warrior is at dumping large amounts of rage (Basically, the same reason you don't hear of many feral druids tanking him either). Edit: And of course you'll already be using at least a Prot Warrior to tank for phase 2, which is another reason why you rarely hear of any other classes tanking phase 3.

I'd love to hear if it works out, because there's certainly some advantages to using a Prot Paladin for that phase of the fight.

 

Shalcker

You can spam Righteous Fury if you want to drain your mana fast, it's 24% of base mana every global cooldown not busy with aggro/survival skills.

 

Prinsesa

I think a better basis of comparison would be to compare equal amounts of itemization points, as opposed to equal amounts of rating, although your point is well taken.

With regards to the Taunt/Growl/RD change, a melee hit would have a 9% chance to miss against a level 73 mob. To negate that, you would need 142 hit rating.

If we have Precision, and assume RD is no longer affected by spell hit, this would drop to 95 hit rating.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....63815BffMm.png

 

Muphrid

Equal quantities of rating cost the same, do they not?

 

Prinsesa

Apparently they do. My bad.

Offtopic: Hi Muphrid! I was wondering when I'd see you grace these forums.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....63815BffMm.png

 

Muphrid

Heh, I popped in this thread mostly for noticing your name.

Sort of on topic, it's the equal stat weight that is one of the robust features of the rating system. Often I see people suggest that all ratings convert to a percentage with the same conversion, but this would force Blizzard to give each rating a different item point weight (well, as long as they stubbornly hold on to their item point allocation system, anyway).

 

falonub

I'm leveling a paladin to possibly go prot and I have a few basic noob questions . This is my first paladin ever so I'm sure it'll be stupid retarded what I ask but here goes. I was looking at the OP's and a few others that posted, their talents and was wondering if 0/49/12 was the "cookie-cutter" build for prot paladins? Also the talent "Weapon Expertise" I notice that no one actually has it, but with weapon skill being converted to Expertise in 2.3 is this still going to be a skipped talent? And more-so a comment, It's a shame Imp. SoR is in Holy Also, when you're tanking are you using devotion aura for armor or retribution aura for the threat?(probably the noobest question right there =X)

 

• Snowy

Yes, 0/49/12 is the "cookie-cutter" build -- you can't really go wrong with it. Right now Weapon Expertise is a really worthless talent -- I actually haven't studied the 2.3 talent trees that much yet so I can't comment on 2.3 builds.

As for tanking, the aura you run is a judgement call by you. Basically it comes down to survivability vs threat. Use the aura that helps your weaker point. Generally for me, I run Retribution Aura in 5 mans and heroics -- I'm usually tanking multiple mobs and want as much threat as possible. For harder hitting bosses in Kara, I'll switch to Devotion Aura. (after all you can pop Avenging Wrath to front load a lot of threat in boss fights) Generally when I run heroics though I run with Retribution Aura since I'm running with very good groups -- so healing isn't an issue, but putting out as much threat as possible is. That just illustrates how it's a judgement call. If you were running it with a bunch of people in blues, then maybe threat isn't an issue at all and you'd want to run Devo instead to help the healer out a little bit.

Benefactors' Bar, where you get free English lessons:

 

• Chicken

Weapon Expertise definitely will not be skipped next patch. Not only is expertise very good, it's also 10% extra stamina. I'd say any paladin that seriously wants to tank and skips Weapon Expertise isn't thinking properly.

I'd expect something like this to become the new "cookie-cutter" build really: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Basically it means trading Reckoning for Weapon Expertise. It's a mild loss in threat, but the 10% extra stamina is easily worth it, as are the lower amount of parries (Both from losing reckoning and from expertise). The threat loss isn't as large as it might appear at first sight as well, both expertise and reckoning will improve your auto-attack + seal threat.

Another variation possible on the above build if you really do want Reckoning is dropping Anticipation for Reckoning; but that requires at least a certain level of gear since Anticipation is a fairly good contribution to both crit (0.8%) and crush immunity (3.2%).

 

kalbear

I think you'll see more people drop spell warding for improved PoJ. Improved judgment may also be dropped in favor of improved SotC, given the boost it's going to get. It really is going to depend on the group.

It'd be interesting to dip back into reckoning after suitable gear (presumably post-Kara). That would make a good farmer and a good raider build, since the defense isn't going to be so important for aoe farming.

I believe we figured out that (roughly) each point of expertise is about .4% improvement in threat, right? Reckoning is slightly less than a 5% improvement in threat, so the overall loss isn't as great, and you get an increased amount of HP from the lack of parries.

 

• Gromweld

If you haven't seen it, the thread on the General Forums that someone started about my guild:
WoW Forums -> TANKADIN > Illidan , World First ??

The thread mainly discusses how/if Paladins are candidates for MT positions in raiding. Classic example of how good these forums are compared to the WoW Boards. Rational discourse, I hardly knew thee.

It's amusing how many of the posts are complaining about how this (tanking Illidan) proves we don't need buffs, even the HP buff in 2.3. The people complaining about Paladins taking away MT positions are also highly entertaining.

 

Braque

Hi,

My raid group and I have been working on the Kaelthas encounter, and I've been given the pleasure of tanking 3 weapons. The last two nights I've been putting JoW on them, and refreshing the judgements on all them by cycling between them, without problem. Then last night we had a slight change of set up (more melee) and I thought it'd be useful to put JoL on one and JoW on another, and suddenly the judgements wouldn't refresh.

Has anyone else tried keeping multiple different judgements up when multi-mob tanking?

I've kept JoC or JoW up, with SotC, on 3 weapons at once without problem, but as soon as I try to mix judgements they don't appear to refresh on melee hits.

And confirmation of this problem? Or reports of people doing this successfully (on Kael weapons or other mobs).

We had someone in the raid recording combat logs, so I can probably get hold of them if this turns out to be something we can't explain.

 

• Chicken

Spell Warding versus PoJ is semi-interesting. PoJ's speed boost would be the primary contributing factor here, since I'm pretty sure that Spell Warding works out better on an overall damage taken reduction perspective. And 15% extra movement speed is pretty good in case you need to run after or away from something to survive. One thing is it's a 2 point talent versus a 3 point talent, so you'd have to scrounge a talent point from somewhere else too, though PoJ already becomes better than a boot speed enchant at 2 points.

Improved JotC would mostly just give your raid group 3% extra crit; not to be sneezed at I suppose if you're keeping up JotC anyway. But not really a large boost to your own performance any more since it'll no longer improve the holy damage component of the Judgement.

The mechanics of judgement "refreshing" are actually rather strange in general. You don't actually refresh the judgement as such, instead meleeing when a judgement is up will simply apply a totally new judgement instead (You can see this in effect on mobs that reflect spells, you'll end up putting a judgement on yourself).

Some other conjecture, especially based around the fact that the judgement melee refresh window was only 10 seconds before patch 2.1, leads me to belief that casting or refreshing a debuff judgement basically applies an invisible buff to you with a 20 second duration (Also refreshed by the Crusader Strike effect). This buff has the effect of causing you to refresh whichever debuff judgement you cast last, as long as you "own" the judgement. Because of that, you also can't keep up different types of judgements at the same time, but can put up an amount of judgements of the same type theoretically equal to the amount of hits you can do in a 20 second period.

 

Shalcker

Will it make you crit-vulnerable if new improved seal of crusader gets reflected that way?

 

• Chicken

That's something worth testing actually. I'll see if I can make some time to log on the PTR and try this out. If anyone else wants to try it out, Shard-Hide Boars make perfect test subjects for trying out spell reflect mechanics.

It's not really a major concern though, I can't really think of a raid boss currently in-game that reflects spells. There's a fair few 5-man bosses that do so, and a few trash mobs however.

 

Left

In theory, it could (whether it does is subject to testing). However, in practice as long as you remain uncrushable in a boss fight you should remain uncrittable as well. So even if you got it reflected onto you in a boss fight you could still push off the 3% crit chance with block.

It seems that it would matter more for trash, where Holy Shield charges are likely to get used up and Redoubt might not be up.

 

Shalcker

Since specials use two-roll system, while you cannot get melee crit with holy shield up and uncrushable status (autoattack uses single-roll), you can still get crit from special (and then block it).

I checked logs, and all ranged attacks seems to count as specials too (that is, i see autoshot crits blocked by monsters or in pvp).

 

• Chicken

Mob specials don't crit regardless of how much defense you have though, it's an example of how player and npc mechanics are different. It would be interesting to test if mob specials crit if you have some debuff on you which increases your chance to be crit though.

 

Fiola

Yes. I was tanking for Heroic Slave Pens run, and had judged Sanct. Crusader (+3% crit JotC) on one of the spell reflecting mobs.


I took a crit and died. Bewildered, I checked my defense tab and noted that I was over 490 Defense and should have been uncrittable. Then it dawned on me that JotC had been spell-reflected ...


If you pick up the 2.3 iJotC, you might want to stick to JoW for spell reflecting mobs if you use debuff judgements at all. (Unless you're over-geared and exceedingly bored)

 

Fiola

I think it's mob spells that don't crit.


MCing a mob in Ramparts the other day, my mob got several MS crits, and I'm pretty sure I've received physical special crits as a tank (back when I was undergeared in lower level instances)

 

kalbear

Right. I just think you're going to see people take the ability because they like running faster as a matter of course. It might not be as good for certain encounters as spell warding, but I suspect you'll see it anyway. Honestly, I'll likely go this way because running fast is more fun for me.

No, it's not a good boost to your performance given the non-reliance on crits for paladin tanks. But a 3% raid crit is fairly large. I suspect it strongly depends on the makeup of the group in question. Some are going to be more mana-based, and those groups will still want JoW. Others will really want a 3% damage boost because they're not mana-limited. It also depends on whether you have a ret paladin in the group as well; if you don, clearly you shouldn't get it as it'll be redundant.

 

Cathela

You could only drop down to 2/5 Anticipation that way; any less and you wouldn't have the 20 points necessary to reach tier 5.

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