Enchanting for Mastery will probably be a good idea getting ready for raids, but its worth noting that there has been some interesting work done on the WoW tanking forum, in which its suggested that by the time paladin tanks are working on Sinestra, we'll be reforging Mastery OFF our gear to avoid wasting points, because we'll already be well past block-capped. GC popped in to note that this was regarded as a valid concern, so there's a decent chance Paladin mastery will undergo some tweaks before Cata comes out.

I very much appreciate summary pages - a one stop shop for all my reference pts.
However - when you update the OP - can you add a note in the History portion on what you changed ?

It is a fairly sizable post - difficult for me to eyeball a change.

Thank you !

New build on Beta made some changes in tanking.
First, SotR now deals a bit less damage. But it still scales from AP at ~0.6 damage per point of AP (for 3 HoPo) as additional damage. For 1 HoPo scale is ~0.098 additional damage per point of AP
Base damage is solid and stated in the quote for lvl 85 paladin.
For example numbers of AP and SotR damage for 85 pally with 3 HoPo

Unbuffed -- 6773 AP = 7722 damage
BoK buffed 7099 AP = 7914 damage
BoM buffed 7450 AP = 8130 damage

To prove the coefficient in BoM buffed numbers
(8130 - 3656)/7450 = 0.6

I made this with no gems and enchants so numbers may be incorrect for raid situations.

Change of Shield of Templar give as a great starting threat generation
Divine Plea -> J -> SoTR seems to be really great threat boost executable in ~3 seconds every 2 minutes.

Didn't made any tests on Wrath of the Lightbringer and Guarded by the Light due to limited time. If someone can check this before me please post the results.

I stumbled into the Unholy DK thread and saw this as a reforging how-to and would like to shamelessly steal it for the purposes of the field manual.

Here are my thoughts on how it would work for us and please see the questions below in italics for points of discussion...

Follow this thought process when reforging as an Protection Paladin:

Are you hit capped?

• If yes, then reforge any excess hit into expertise.
• If no, then reforge any haste, crit and expertise – in that order – until you reach the hit cap.

Are you already at the expertise hard cap (55 expertise)?

• If yes, then go to next question.
• If no, then reforge any excess haste, hit and crit – in that order – into as much expertise as possible.

Are you hit capped and expertise hard capped?

• If yes...
  Are you still having threat problems?
  • If yes, then reforge excess expertise, excess hit, and haste - in that order - into crit.
  • If no, then go to the next question.
• If no, return to the first question.

Do you prefer mitigation or avoidance?

• If mitigation, then reforge excess expertise, excess hit, haste, and crit - in that order - into mastery.
• If avoidance, then reforge excess expertise, excess hit, haste, and crit - in that order - into dodge.

This is essentially structured like a series of if/else statements for you those of you familiar with programming. I mostly focused on reforging from mainly threat related (hit/expertise/crit) stats. I defaulted to dodge when reforging into an avoidance stance since there is uncertainty still with the parry-haste question.

At anytime do we want to reforge dodge/parry/mastery into a threat stat (hit/expertise/crit)?
Is the above if/then series ideal for Protection Paladins? If not, why?

The Avoidance vs. Mitigation/Mastery question...

Is it ever interesting to reforge mastery into avoidance or avoidance into mastery?
For survival what is our gearing strategy? Do we prefer to maximize mitigation and push mastery or do we prefer to maximize avoidance and gear dodge (or parry)?


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

My answers are based on live:

Hit and expertise are great for threat generation and DR is hitting dodge and parry really hard. IMO reforging dodge/parry (whichever is higher) into hit/expertise is a good idea if you're missing too many attacks.


No.
Any excess of hit should come before haste and crit.
Besides, I don't think reforging can be as simple as a series of if's.
I think we should also consider the bonus value for reforging. (e.g. if the item gives 40 haste and 80 crit and you want more expertise, reforging crit would give you twice the amount you'd get from haste)
And that's not counting gems and enchants...


Yes.
We need to reforge dodge/parry (whichever is higher) into mastery to get 102.5% combined defenses. Blocking prevents spikey damage and procs Reckoning, which is great for threat generation.


I think we should first aim for 102.5% defense. If that means exchanging avoidance for mitigation, so be it.
Avoidance is always better than block for survival, but that might hurt our threat generation.


I don't know about Cata gear, but right now dps gear usually gives more str and sta than tanking gear and can be also a great source of expertise.
That made me replace my tanking cloak and libram for dps ones.
God knows I wanted to kill the dps that got [Lana'thel's Chain of Flagellation] in my last BQ kill.

Hit cap should not be the first question. Expertise up to the dodge cap is going to make a larger difference (referencing Theck's work), so we should not be reforging to hit cap over expertise (below 26). In regards to mastery/avoidance, it is going to be easy to cap mastery with the current numbers being thrown around. That should be higher priority than avoidance for one large reason. Unblocked hits are the new crushing blows (version the next). Eliminating them will make worst case scenario 30% longer TTL.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker | Upcoming Tanking Changes

Some really substantial changes to how mastery works for us (and warrior tanks). Combined with the ShoR/GbtL changes, I'd say its safe to say that everything is currently back up in the air. Also, its clear the Blizzard really likes Vengeance in its current incarnation and they have shown far more willingness to tweak coefficients than to cut Vengeance itself.

Block normally blocks 30% of a hit. Holy Shield increases the amount blocked by 10% (additively). A paladin with the holy shield buff will block 40% of the hit instead of 30%.

I somehow doubt that change is going to last long. It's just going to result in a retread of Wrath tank gearing. In Wrath any armor piece without bonus armor was crap, unless there was no existing bonus armor piece for that slot. Now it's going to be that any tank piece that doesn't have dodge and parry on it is crap, because you have to hit the block cap.

Don't follow you, Xequecal. If you want to hit the block-cap, mastery will get you there a lot faster than dodge or parry. Mastery actually reduced damage at a slower rate than dodge or parry before, it simply gave you the EH benefit of allowing you reach the blockcap.

Paladins SHOULD still be able to reach the blockcap, but not soon. We haven't seen the gear yet so obviously no one knows for sure, but the ballpark is that it'll be reachable by the end of the 2nd tier or possibly sometime in the 3rd tier of Cata raiding, assuming you're stacking Mastery as much as possible, using Mastery trinkets, etc.

It will take a good bit of math to work out whether mastery is still superior to dodge and parry given these changes and its also a function of raid boss mechanics which we don't really know all that well yet. I suspect Mastery will still be a good stat for us, but everyone is just guessing right now.

I admit I haven't done the math yet, but my understanding of the "new tanking paradigm" is that EH isn't the end-all be-all that it was during vanilla Patchwerk. By that I mean, we aren't exactly scared of getting killed between globals. Maximizing our ability to take a single hit should not be as important as in the past.

I think the difference between having 95% block and 100% block coverage is going to be almost trivial honestly. In the past if we didn't have completely certain block, it meant we couldn't add it to our EH, but I think now even our worst case scenario allows us to take an unblocked hit a few times before we die. It might make healer's jobs a bit more twitchy, but they have a lot more tools to combat that.

I think we need to take an honest look at what we lose by fully capping block, and ask if the trade off is worth it. It very well might be, but as the numbers fluctuate around it becoming more and more costly and eventually we're going to lose a lot of stamina and avoidance, which in a world where we live longer and have more active survival tools ourselves, might not be the best TTL scenario.