If paladin tanks are taking substantially less damage I'd say there's a balance problem, and no, it's not because of lower value from Vengeance.

Regarding rotation macros: as Theck said, they're not the optimal way to play. Optimal is what we do here. Sacrificing maximum threat for an easier rotation is a personal decision and not relevant to a theorycrafting thread about optimal play.

I have a question about the reforging section at the beginning of this post.

I am assuming this is written from a level 85 perspective. Could someone please elaborate on why not to reforge Dodge or Parry?

Lets use an item like [Gauntlets of the Kraken] which only has Parry.

According to the "guidelines" this item would be reforged into Mastery (I am assuming)?

Am I missing a post discussing a break even point between Dodge/Parry/Mastery?

I would think you would first need to evaluate Parry vs Dodge and attempt to balance these stats to each other because of DR.

Or is Mastery so much better compared to Parry & Dodge that aside from Hit and Expertise you would reforge into Mastery?

Ticktac,

The breakeven point beyond which Mastery becomes superior Parry/Dodge is low enough that hitting it will pretty much be a given, and that's above and beyond the "real" reason people reforge into Mastery - smoothing damage intake. Look at Theck's post at the top of this very page (page 6) for the discussion and numbers you overlooked. Actually, look at Daler's post as well, and... heck, really its like the top half of this page. How did you miss that?

The damage-smoothing aspect of Mastery is an important point which people sometimes forget about.

For example, a fairly common question is: "I've got chest piece (or whatever) that has a whopping ton of dodge and a moderate amount of hit. I'm over hit-cap and threat isn't a problem anyway after about 30 seconds. Shouldn't I reforge the hit to Mastery instead of the Dodge?"

Assuming you're not already block-capped, the answer is no - keep reforging the dodge. Yes, you'd actually take less damage by reforging the hit. However, your initial, primary objective in reforging is to get closer to blockcapped, not so much to reduce overall damage taken, but to smooth your intake of damage. Healer mana matters, and the smoother the tank's damage intake, the easier it is to heal. Since the chest piece has more dodge than hit, you'll get more mastery out of the reforging by using the dodge instead of the hit, and thus gets your closer to your goal.

It's not so much the stacking and maintaining of Vengeance that I'm bothered about. The fact is, there is a point (At block cap) in which we will always be mitigating 40% of a physical hit, will we then therefore only be stacking a 60% power Vengeance, whilst the other tanks that will occasionally be taking a 100% whack will stack up a vengeance with a higher attack power gain.

The maximum AP gained from Vengeance is only limited by your HP, it will be same wether you take 100% or 60% hits.
So the only thing affected by taking only 60% hits is the size of the "stacks" with which you build up that maximum. You may need to take 1 or 2 more hits, but that's it.

You might also argue that, due to us reforging heavily to mastery and thus ending up with less avoidance, we will be taking more hits that contribute to Vengeance than other tanks.

Actually your primary concern here should be that currently block capping requires you to sacrifice a significant amount of stamina, which is going to affect Vengeance more than any of the other factors mentioned.

Judging from Beta, the lost AP from stacking Mastery and losing Stam-driven Vengeance should not be a problem.

The real question is Mastery vs Stamina as a tanking stat. Its a complicated question, mostly depending on the interaction of 1) How many "worst case" blows it takes to kill a tank, combined with 2) How much of the incoming tank damage is blockable. IMO, barring a Saurfang-like boss with pure physical, blockable attacks, I'm skeptical Mastery will surpass Stamina as the stat we want to stack, but I can envision situations in which you might want an EH set vs a Block set like we used to do back in BC. I'm looking forward to it.

Alright, I've updated the manual to reflect the 4.0.3a changes. I believe I've gotten everything relating to Protection. I encourage regulars to please give it a once over and PM me if there are any glaring mistakes or typos. Hopefully most item/spell links will also be working now that Wowhead has changed over their database. To be clear I'm not listing spell coefficients since that would lead to madness and that's not terribly necessary to track. I've updated cooldown times when needed and definitely changed mechanics changes that effect game play or rotation.

I'll start off another point of discussion; what are the implications to the rotation now that Divine Plea will provide us with 3 Holy Power instantly? Since Divine Plea is on 2 minute cooldown I don't see much changing, but it does allow us to open with a fully charged SotR for large initial threat. It will also allow us to push out 2 fully charged SotR within 2 GCDs of each other every 2 minutes as opposed to 6 normally. Not terribly significant for short fights, but perhaps the implications are greater for fights longer than 4-5 minutes.


Follow the development of the Paladin Protection/Tanking Field Manual; find additional instructions and the to-do list at the link below:

» Paladin Protection Field Manual 4.0 Version - To Do List

I think it'll just make new priority like this:

I purposefully left it out, because I think AoE rotation priorities change a little bit. Consecrate and HW being higher in the queue, while Judgement goes down a bit unless low on mana...etc. Should make another flow chart, instead of making one more complex.