4.0.3a Tanking/Protection Field Manual :: Fordring's Groupies (Updated: Dec 2, 2010) - Page 2

_sl0t_ · 10/14/10, 6:58 PM

Why is CS always listed as a key ability for us?
Against the boss dummy, my CS was hitting for about 1.2k (all physical) while my HoR was hitting for about 400 physical and 1k holy.
Shouldn't we choose HoR over CS even against single targets?

I've been only in heroics after the patch, but I found it easier to hold threat on multiple targets spamming AS after GC procs, regardless of the charges of HoPo I had.
My rotation against multiple targets is:
[AS -> HoR]* -> Jud -> SoR, with Holy Wrath and Consecration in between cds.

Yesterday I was able to spam AS and HoR six time in a row with GC procs, quickly raising my threat against three targets at the same time and preventing spell casts thanks to AS silence.
I know I wasted 3 charges of HoPo doing that, but I think it was well worth it.

I'd also suggest using Avenging Wrath before pulling multiple targets to maximize your initial threat. With the 2 minute cooldown, we should be able to use Avenging Wrath every other pull in Cata.

Some other changes I noticed:

I had problems using melee range spells, like HoR or SoR. It seems their range is shorter, making it harder to handle several mobs at the same time.
AS jumping range was increased.
Apparently tanks are no longer immune to daze. (I got dazed by trash mobs after a mass fear effect)
Overall dps is fairly lower. I wasn't using any addons, but according to someone's else recount my dps was around 2.5k, about half of the dps I was doing on heroics before the patch. (It might be my rotation though)
Despite our larger health pools, we definitely lost some survivability.
Doing a heroic HoL I died at the stone elementals on the way to the second boss (I can't even remember the last time they were able to even scratch my HP) and the healer actually had to heal me when I stood on the sparks on the third boss.

I don't know if any of these changes are intended or permanent.

arlen · 10/14/10, 8:43 PM

Originally Posted by qixxin

I'd disagree that any hit over the melee cap is wasted. While it does provides very little threat, it still is required to cap our taunts (assuming they are still spells).

Taunts are now capped if you're melee capped. It's built into your spec.

DWHughes · 10/14/10, 10:01 PM

Where do you recommend stopping at as far as reforging. Currently, I have 22.96 dodge, 20.39 parry, and 44.13 Block. With the 15% block value from Holy Shield, I am at 102.48 combined without taking into account any boss miss chance. Anyone have any idea how DR is going to affect these calculations in longer boss fights? Are we going to be better off pushing avoidances way above the minimum in order to mitigate the DR factor or should we be looking to hold a standard 102.4 avoidance?

• frmorrison · 10/14/10, 11:45 PM

The profession section needs more information:

For Alchemy, you normally get 25% of the flask's benefit and an extra hour duration. Currently, 300 stamina so you get 80 stamina bonus (it should be 120 stamina bonus, so either the flask is going to be buffed or it will not follow the rule).

For Engineering, the profession benefit is you get to use the Belt and Glove enchants on top of other enchants. So you get Grounded Plasma Shield which gives an average 18k absorb (unsure of cooldown) and Quickflip Deflection Plates (1500 armor for 12 seconds/every minute for an average of 300 armor).

d503 · 10/15/10, 12:15 AM

Originally Posted by arlen

Taunts are now capped if you're melee capped. It's built into your spec.

*In a raid environment with a spell hit debuff applied.

More specifically, when Melee hit capped, you have a total of 15.5% spell hit (including our 6% bonus). You still need a bit more to cap taunt, unfortunately.

Maelstrom · 10/15/10, 3:02 AM

As a fun side-note, taunts appear to be pseudo-melee attacks now. Whilst doing our weekly Yogg+0 run I noticed I could interrupt the crusher tentacles' Diminish Power with hand of reckoning alone. This would also indicate that taunt is probably running off of the melee hit table.

Darthpred · 10/15/10, 3:39 AM

Thanks for the work in the first place

I have to say something more so...

Originally Posted by emptyrepublic

Righteous Fury - This ability remains unchanged from before by greatly increasing your threat generated, however Blizzard has been nice enough to remind Paladins in the tooltip that this ability makes you a better tank.

Not fully correct. It has effect only on Holy spells before and now...

Originally Posted by Blizzard

Righteous Fury now increases all threat generation instead of affecting just Holy spells.

It's a buff for the RF.

Originally Posted by emptyrepublic

The ability priority for single target tanking is as follows:

Shield of the Righteous > Crusader Strike > Judgement > Avenger's Shield* > Consecration > Holy Wrath

For area tanking the following priorities are used (this is a proposed rotation for now):

Shield of the Righteous > Hammer of the Righteous > Judgement > Consecration > Holy Wrath

* This is assumed AS has been glyphed for single target.

AS is still a good threat increase even on single target without a glyph, especially with GC proc and no other buttons to hit.
Also as mentioned before me you'll need at least 1 HoPo to use SotR so i see opening as Judgment/AS -> CS/HotR -> SotR. Exception is when you'll pull just after previous pack with some HoPo left.

I also feel [Glyph of Holy Wrath] will be an option to the major glyphs for crowd control because of lots of elementals and dragons in the new content (Ragnaros minions and so on). Before Cataclysm hits it is useless but it may have its place in future.

Pursuit of Justice feels more like PvP/optional talent even with the HoPo generation. There is not so much bosses with Sutn, Fear and Immobilize effects in WotLK content and I even didn't noticed a lot of them in Cata instances previews for now. Eternal Glory for a chance of WoG+SotR combo maybe, it's optional too.

Originally Posted by Zaroua

Glyph of Salvation should definitely be a choice, especially since it basically becomes a second Hand of Protection that works on spells.

That's not quite correct. Glyph's tooltip says "Hand of Salvation no longer permanently reduces threat over time but instead reduces all threat as long as Hand of Salvation lasts." For me it looks like returning to old "Blessing of Salvation" variant with much lower working time but not HoP. Hand of Protection defends from physical damage and prevents from using physical attacks, not reducing threat anyway. And also Glyph or Hand itself doesn't make casting unavaliable.
But still yes, this glyph can be a choice. Just need some tests to be sure.

Originally Posted by _sl0t_

Why is CS always listed as a key ability for us?
Against the boss dummy, my CS was hitting for about 1.2k (all physical) while my HoR was hitting for about 400 physical and 1k holy.
Shouldn't we choose HoR over CS even against single targets?

I have 1.7k CS and 1.4k HotR against single target. Are you sure about your numbers?

Zaroua · 10/15/10, 4:52 AM

The 5% Block Value meta (Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond, 81 stam 5% block value, requires 3 blue gems) increases our block value to 31% of the total damage dealt, which should make it the meta gem of choice for us. The only fights where the 2% armor meta could be considered on par is on fights where there is unblockable physical damage mitigated by armor.

The new Effulfgent meta - 2% spell damage reduction - now functions properly, making it a worthy choice for encounters where the elemental damage is more dangerous than than melee attacks.

The mastery change went live on beta and it is ridiculously easy to cap out on block in 333/346 gear. In other words, it'll be possible to enter the first Cata raid instance with 26-27% avoidance plus the block cap and 60%DR from armor.

The downside to all this is that we'll end up stacking avoidance and armor, which in the end making our mastery terribly dull because it has such a ludicrously low cap ceiling.

Edit: Apparently I either made some basic mistake/am stupid or this got changed, but in any case the 5% block value meta pushes block to 31% of the total damage.

Sahas · 10/15/10, 12:46 PM

Originally Posted by Failmonster

i was wondering what everyone's thoughts on Reckoning and Judgements of the Pure. seems to me that Judgments�*of the Pure's haste buff works very well with Reckoning.�*faster haste = moar threat and an extra attack is always nice. has anyone run some numbers on this? i am spec'd for it at the moment and i want to make sure i'm not a complete baddy. thanks guys. love the site!

Theck's initial sim which was run from numbers/data gathered in the last two weeks puts JotP as 3rd worst for threat.

Check here for his method and explanation.

Regarding an earlier post comparing the two HoPo generating abilities, it should be noted that our single target rotation should always be focused on CS rather than HotR due to the fact that CS just hit harder on a single target than HotR. From there, the rotation is pretty static assuming you're prioritizing your abilities correctly and depending on what you have glyphed/talented.

The AoE rotation is a bit more fluid, especially if you are accounting for GrC procs. If the goal is to have the most threat on the most targets at the same time, then yeah, you're not going to adhere to the strict HotR, J, HotR, X, HotR, ShoR. GrC procs will most likely be prioritized for utility in snagging stray adds or supplementing threat on various targets that have not received as much damage from you as others.

Theck · 10/15/10, 1:01 PM

Comments from the peanut gallery:

1) As Darthpred mentioned, unglyphed AS is still better than Holy Wrath or Consecration for single targets. If mana isn't an issue, Cons does more damage than Holy Wrath thanks to AP scaling and Vengeance. For a single-target scenario, ShoR>CS>J>AS>Cons>HW would probably be the ideal queue, using Consecration only if mana permits. I'd also glyph Consecration for single targets if using that system, as the cooldown increase is irrelevant on a 9-second cycle.

2) I haven't worked out the numbers for AoE rotations yet, hopefully I'll get to it soon. From tinkering around in heroics, my impression is that it will turn out to be HotR>AS(unglyphed)>HW>Cons>J>ShoR. I don't know that it's going to be that strict though, as AoE tanking right now is very reactive; it can be better to use abilities based on the situation (e.g. breaking rotation to ShoR a mob you've just lost aggro on).

Once Inquisition opens up at 81, it will likely go to the front of the queue. Also note that as of yesterday, Crusade is bugged and not affecting Hammer of the Righteous (either portion), and the T10 2-piece bonus is not affecting the Holy portion. Both of those make AoE tanking a lot dicier.

3) RE: talent specs, your "Guardian" spec has 2/2 Hallowed Ground and 0/2 Reckoning. Consecration is such a weak part of our single-target rotation that HG is not a significant DPS increase, while each point of Reckoning is around 100 DPS if reforging to reach block cap. My experience so far is that Hallowed Ground is simply unnecessary for either single-target or AoE tanking. I could see someone making an argument for 1/2 in it to make mana usage less tight, though not at the expense of Reckoning (likely by dropping one point out of Improved Judgements at 80).

I have a fairly thorough talent spec guide up over at maintankadin that has some heavy survival (i.e. WoG and HMLK) builds in it, feel free to steal them if you like.

4) Glyphs: You left Glyph of Crusader Strike off of the list, though it's anemic enough that nobody will miss it. SoT/ShoR are the big two from a threat perspective, I run with HotR as my third since our AoE threat can use all the help it can get, and the other single-target options (Judgement and CS) are both weak. Note that those calculations are not including the recent buffs to Retribution - I'm hoping to re-run those simulations this weekend with the updated coefficients.

<edit> And as always, if you have questions or specific numbers that you'd like crunched for the guide, just send me a PM and I'll do what I can.

tkoreaper · 10/15/10, 1:12 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

For Engineering, the profession benefit is you get to use the Belt and Glove enchants on top of other enchants. So you get Grounded Plasma Shield which gives an average 18k absorb (unsure of cooldown) and Quickflip Deflection Plates (1500 armor for 12 seconds/every minute for an average of 300 armor).

I am able to stack on my belt, cloak, and helm. Glove enchant is not stackable if you're using the web armor. I'm guessing that is because web armor doesn't add a "use" to the item like all the other chants do.

_sl0t_ · 10/15/10, 1:46 PM

Originally Posted by Darthpred

I have 1.7k CS and 1.4k HotR against single target. Are you sure about your numbers?

Yup, but it just occurred me that CS is indeed better than HotR because of Vengeance.
Since Vengeance provides AP and most of the HotR damage is holy, which is based in STR, CS probably scales better than HotR, making my dummy numbers worthless.

Btw, is there any particular reason for not making our SP scale from AP instead of STR?

Regarding the glyphs, IMHO the Glyph of Focused Shield is just amazing. I went raiding in ICC yesterday and used it in all boss fights, replacing for something else after to have the shield jump on trash. A must have really.
The Glyph of SoR is also amazing for threat generation. With full Vengeance, 3 charges of HoPo and the glyph my SoR was criting for 47k.

I'd like to post some numbers from our ICC 25 BQ heroic from yesterday. I was off-tanking and the main tank was also a pally. What's the best way of doing this?

paladinus · 10/15/10, 2:13 PM

Originally Posted by emptyrepublic

The Guardian (0/32/9) - This spec picks up Divine Guardian which provides a straight 20% damage reduction to all party/raid members in range. It also picks up Guarded by the Light to take advantage of Word of Glory self-healing.

The Striker (0/31/10) - This spec picks up both ranks of Reckoning and both ranks of Pursuit of Justice.

Being a level 80, I chose "The Guardian" build but with a change. Instead of using the last four talent points for Improved Judgment and Crusader, I chose to use two points in Improved Judgment and two points in Judgments of the Pure for the increased casting and melee haste grouped with Seal of Truth to hopefully work to my advantage. I felt that Crusade was only useful for working my way down the Ret talent tree. I may choose Crusade after I hit level 82 to get the Pursuit of Justice, but I am not sure whether I may or may not choose to go with Rule of Law when I get to 85, but right now I am still leaning towards doing a 3/33/6 build and using the 3 points in Holy for Judgments of the Pure. The crits for CS, HotR and WoG might be nice, but I will have to test and see if they outweigh the 9% hast increase from a Judgment.

Originally Posted by emptyrepublic

Whatever you knew about the Paladin tanking rotation needs to now be tossed out the window. The previous 9/6 rotation that proved to be highly reliable is no longer possible. The rotation is also heavily effected by HoPo (as described above) so the order of abilities matter in order maximize the usage of HoPo. Because of this protection now uses a priority/clash resolution system like many other classes.

While it is true that the rotation as we know it is gone. I have been testing my AoE tanking in randoms and I have found that leading off with Avenger's Shield (with the Dazing Shield Glyph) then casting Holy Wrath followed up with Consecration is doing really well with getting initial threat with groups. I also stack 2 points of Holy Power and then use SotR (with the 10% glyph for 80% damage) followed up with 1 more stack of Holy Power and then casting Word of Glory (for some threat from healing). The entire time when Grand Crusader procs Avenger's Shield is used immediately. While this set up works fine for groups and most bosses in random heroics. I have yet to test it in ICC because I know this strategy will not work on Saurfang during the Blood Beast spawn, but after I have had a chance to tweak and test a good single target system on him, I will post my findings. I hope that this might help anyone with their Paladin AoE tanking. Any feedback on this is certainly welcome and appreciated.

One more thing, I have a macro that I spam for my 2 stacks of HP, SotR + 1 stack of HP, WoG that works really well with the global c/d's and it has a rotation that is as follows:

HotR, Judgment, CS, SotR, HotR, WoG

I am still working on this to try and figure out something to add to the end to fit in another CS with something else to get up to 3 stacks on the following rotations for SotR damage.

Darthpred · 10/15/10, 3:27 PM

Originally Posted by _sl0t_

Regarding the glyphs, IMHO the Glyph of Focused Shield is just amazing. I went raiding in ICC yesterday and used it in all boss fights, replacing for something else after to have the shield jump on trash. A must have really.
The Glyph of SoR is also amazing for threat generation. With full Vengeance, 3 charges of HoPo and the glyph my SoR was criting for 47k.

Fully agreed with you here. So many glyphs I want to put in and so little place for them. This will end up in taking lots of erasing dust to raids and changing glyphs to the needs of the specific pull.

And I got some troubles with reforging. Mastery is great but when do I have to stop reforging other avoidance stats to it? Where is the reasonable limit for drop doge+parry down? It was asked before but still no answer to that

A litte offtop but need to ask.
Is it worth to take Hallowed Ground instead of Reckoning for ICC raids? Consecration's mana cost creates some panic in me when it comes to AoE tanking. Even Sanctuary+Judgements of the Wise seems unable to return such big numbers back quickly.

Palisade · 10/15/10, 3:58 PM

What real benefit, if any, would the dazing shield glyph add to our arsenal? It seems counter intuitive to me to use it. Vengeance procs off of getting our heads kicked in, so don't we want the mobs hitting us (as before?)

Originally Posted by Darthpred

And I got some troubles with reforging. Mastery is great but when do I have to stop reforging other avoidance stats to it? Where is the reasonable limit for drop doge+parry down? It was asked before but still no answer to that

The answer I got out of maintankadin was to get around 22% dodge, 22% parry and then fill in with block for the 102.4% (including of course the 5% miss and 15% holy shield.)