Contents

1 Patch Notes 2 The Basics 2.1 Talents 2.2 Gear 2.3 Threat 2.4 Survival 3 Talents and Glyphs 4 Stats and Gear 4.1 Enchants 4.2 Professions 5 Threat 5.1 Single Target 5.2 Multiple Target 5.3 Openers 6 Survival 7 Credits & Errata

[top] Patch Notes

[top] The Basics

This section summarizes the detailed analysis of the later sections. If you want to know what to do but don't particularly care why, this section is for you.

[top] Talents

The baseline spec is 0/31/5: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
The last 5 points go into your choice of Pursuit of Justice, Reckoning, Rule of Law, and Hallowed Ground.

Prime glyphs: Seal of Truth is mandatory. Choose between Shield of the Righteous (single target), Hammer of the Righteous (AoE), and Word of Glory (survival) for the other two.

[top] Gear

Our goal is 100% combat table coverage (CTC), meaning that every boss swing is a block, parry, dodge, or miss. The best way to accomplish this is to stack Mastery as high as possible. Even if you can’t reach 100% CTC, Mastery gives you the best bang for your buck in damage reduction.

• [Fractured Amberjewel], [Puissant Dream Emerald], and [Fine Ember Topaz] are our preferred gems.
• [Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond] is the strongest meta.
• Reforge Mastery onto every item that doesn’t have it. Reforge threat stats (hit, expertise, crit, haste) into Mastery when possible and Dodge or Parry otherwise.

[top] Threat

Notation
We describe our rotation as a priority queue.

A > B > C

means:
Hit A immediately when it comes off cooldown.
Hit B if it’s available and A is still cooling down.
Hit C if neither A nor B are available.

Single target

Shield of the Righteous > Crusader Strike > Avenger's Shield > Hammer of Wrath > Judgement

Multiple target

Inquisition > Hammer of the Righteous > Avenger's Shield > Consecrate > Holy Wrath

[top] Survival

Patch 4.2 adds a new cooldown - Holy Shield - to an already long list: GoAK, LoH, AD, DP, Mirror, WoG, and potions. These abilities help you survive situations where your risk of death is elevated. These situations range from the obvious - a special attack on a predictable timer - to the more subtle but no less deadly, like a debuff that disables or distracts your healers. Here are a couple guidelines for using cooldowns effectively:

• Use cooldowns before you take damage. If you use GoAK at half health, 90k HP, the cooldown is effectively adding 90k more HP before you die. If you wait until you reach 20k HP, it only adds an effective 20k HP. Waiting to use your cooldowns until you’re at low HP is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Your cooldowns only benefit you as much as you use them. You get the most mileage out of consciously using them in dangerous situations, but you’re better off macroing them to your threat rotation than not using them at all.

[top] Talents and Glyphs

Theck’s done a thorough analysis of the DPS value of each talent over at Maintankadin:
Maintankadin • View topic - Theck's MATLAB thread - Cataclysm/4.x


Same data for glyphs: Maintankadin • View topic - Theck's MATLAB thread - Cataclysm/4.x
There are a few major glyphs worth considering for utility (descriptions TBD):
Glyph of Divine Protection
Glyph of Holy Wrath
Glyph of Ascetic Crusader
Glyph of Lay on Hands
Glyph of Rebuke
Glyph of Turn Evil

[top] Stats and Gear

Our goal is 100% combat table coverage (CTC), meaning that every boss swing is a block, parry, dodge, or miss. The best way to accomplish this is to stack Mastery as high as possible. Even if you can’t reach 100% CTC, Mastery gives you the best bang for your buck in damage reduction.

• [Fractured Amberjewel], [Puissant Dream Emerald], and [Fine Ember Topaz] are our preferred gems.
• [Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond] is the strongest meta.
• Reforge Mastery onto every item that doesn’t have it. Reforge threat stats (hit, expertise, crit, haste) into Mastery when possible and Dodge or Parry otherwise. Try to balance your raid-buffed Dodge and Parry: when buffed only with Kings, you want Parry + 155 = Dodge if you raid with Mastery food, and Parry + 65 = Dodge if you use feasts.

Reaching the CTC cap is possible in T11 gear and will only get easier as we gear up in T12. There are two schools of thought on what to do with the extra item budget: changing blocks into dodges/parries with more Fine Ember Topazes, and increasing maximum health with more Puissant Dream Emeralds. These options will be further discussed in the thread.

As we progress into T12, we’ll be faced with a choice between our Tier 11 and Tier 12 4-piece bonuses versus increased stats on higher-level gear.
Tier 11: Increases the duration of your Guardian of Ancient Kings ability by 50%.
Tier 12: When your Divine Protection expires, you gain an additional 12% parry chance for 10 sec.
This question could also use further discussion.

[top] Enchants

Slot	Enchant
Head	[Arcanum of the Earthen Ring]
Shoulders	[Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz]
Back	[Enchant Cloak - Protection]
Chest	[Enchant Chest - Greater Stamina]
Wrist	[Enchant Bracer - Dodge]
Hands	[Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery]
Legs	[Drakehide Leg Armor]
Feet	[Enchant Boots - Mastery]
Weapon	[Enchant Weapon - Windwalk]
Shield	[Enchant Shield - Blocking]

[top] Professions

Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting provide bonus Mastery, while Alchemy, Leatherworking, Inscription, Enchanting, and Mining provide Stamina. As we reach CTC cap in T12 gear, that distinction will lose importance. Engineering provides another minor cooldown, [Quickflip Deflection Plates]. Herbalism, Tailoring, and Skinning are suboptimal.

[top] Threat

Notation
We describe our rotation as a priority list.
means:
Hit A immediately when it comes off cooldown.
Hit B if it’s available and A is still cooling down.
Hit C if neither A nor B are available.

[top] Single Target

Theck has a great analysis of a variety of rotations: Maintankadin • View topic - Theck's MATLAB thread - Cataclysm/4.x

                                                              DPS            TPS            SHPS            E     I  
  Q#  Priority                                                 V=100%  V=30%  V=100%  V=30%  V=100%  V=30%   %     %  
  29  SDSotR>ISotR>Inq>CS>AS>J>Cons>HW                         16277   10637  48833   31913     0       0    1.7  40.5
  13  SotR>CS>AS>J>Cons>HW                                     16094   10514  48283   31544     0       0    1.6   0.0
  12  SotR>CS>AS>J>HW                                          15886   10401  47658   31202     0       0    2.8   0.0
  23  SDSotR>ISotR>Inq>CS>AS>J                                 15780   10243  47340   30730     0       0    7.5  40.5
   1  SotR>CS>AS>J                                             15642   10156  46925   30468     0       0    7.3   0.0

  43  WoG>SotR>CS>AS>J>Cons>HW                                 14749    9651  44247   28954  1335     951    1.7   0.0
  35  WoG>SotR>CS>AS>J                                         14291    9288  42872   27863  1335     951    7.5   0.0
  34  WoG>CS>AS>J                                              12568    8183  37704   24550  1615    1150   10.5   0.0

  62  ISotR>SDSotR>Inq>CS>AS>HoW>J>Cons>HW                     17618   11544  52853   34633     0       0    0.0  43.0
  51  SotR>CS>AS>HoW>J                                         17245   11292  51735   33876     0       0    0.3   0.0
  68  WoG>SotR>CS>AS>HoW>J>Cons>HW                             15999   10493  47997   31480  1335     951    0.0   0.0

As you can see, Consecrate and Holy Wrath are pretty bad.

[top] Multiple Target

TBD

[top] Openers

TBD

[top] Survival

Patch 4.2 adds a new cooldown - Holy Shield - to an already long list: GoAK, LoH, AD, DP, Mirror, WoG, and potions. These abilities help you survive situations where your risk of death is elevated. These situations range from the obvious - a special attack on a predictable timer - to the more subtle but no less deadly, like a debuff that disables or distracts your healers. Here are a couple guidelines for using cooldowns effectively:

• Use cooldowns before you take damage. If you use GoAK at half health, 90k HP, the cooldown is effectively adding 90k more HP before you die. If you wait until you reach 20k HP, it only adds an effective 20k HP. Waiting to use your cooldowns until you’re at low HP is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Your cooldowns only benefit you as much as you use them. You get the most mileage out of consciously using them in dangerous situations, but you’re better off macroing them to your threat rotation than not using them at all.

TBD - abilility by ability breakdown

[top] Credits & Errata

Major thanks to Theck for the hard work and ingenuity that’s gone into his MATLAB models. Thanks as well to all the contributors on both Elitist Jerks and Maintankadin.

Changelog
6/20/2011: Initial revision

With the fact that Guarded by the Light has no attachment to Holy Shield now, due to the change in skill, and that we can at best pop one WoG every 20 seconds, is Guarded by the Light even seen as a worthwhile talent anymore? The shield part is only viable if you are basically AT full health already anyways, and the +10% heal on WoG isn't that big a deal, I would think.

Maybe shifting the 2 points from Guarded by the Light to Eternal Glory, would prove better, because then we have the 30% chance to WoG and then SotR right after. I got a feeling, if a bunch of paladins stop using it entirely, Blizzard may take note, and rework it somehow (for such a deep-tree talent, it sure isn't doing much anymore, come 4.2).

Taking Eternal Glory instead of Guarded by the Light is choosing a threat talent over a survival talent; for as long as threat is trivialised by Vengeance and survival is still an issue (i.e. through most progression content) that is not a good trade-off to be made.

I would argue that Guarded by the Light is still a strong survival talent in many situations, and I certainly won't be dropping it for 4.2.

Might as well make the change in leg armors from Charscale to Drakehide. Also, you have the Gear section listed twice, but I suspect you know that.

Could put the patch notes between the summary and analysis to split the two.

You may wish to add a Nota Bene regarding items with either Dodge or Parry Rating and Hit or Expertise Rating in very unequal proportions. In these cases one can often gain more Combat Table Coverage by reforging the avoidance stat into Mastery than if one were to reforge off the threat stat. A case in point would be the Pauldrons of Roaring Flame - Item - World of Warcraft (320 Dodge Rating, 142 Hit Rating).

With regards to the Professions segment, Alchemy can also provide a bonus to Mastery (Mixology + Elixir of the Master - Item - World of Warcraft).

General rule of thumb on that (from my Derivations thread on MT):

For overall damage reduction, you'd reforge the threat stat unless it was extremely unequal, as in 10% of the avoidance on the item.
For CTC, the threshold is much higher, at around 66%.

In regards to unbuffed dodge/parry, since everything is rating-based now we just need to balance the ratings. You get 549 STR from Horn of Winter, which is 576 after Kings. That should give you 155 parry rating. If you're using a feast instead of mastery food, you get 90 dodge rating from that. You'd also need to account for the parry rating gained from the 5% of your STR from kings, which complicates matters, but for us that's easily solved by just buffing kings.

Thus, I'd say the best advice is probably "buff yourself with kings, then try and optimize such that your parry rating is 155 lower than dodge if you use mastery food, or 65 lower if you use a feast."

As far as this goes:
Shield of the Righteous > Crusader Strike > Avenger's Shield > Hammer of Wrath > Judgement

I take a slightly different approach that maths out to slightly more damage, especially if RNG is on my side.

The basic priority is the same but what I do at 3 holy power (and has been discussed elsewhere I believe) is to have a conditional for Shield of the Righteous as follows:

if HP low or healers have to move, and WoG is off cooldown
-> Word of Glory
elseif Sacred duty or Inquisition are up
-> Use Shield of the Righteous
else
-> Use Inquisition

You can find that conditional in the Single Target threat portion of the OP's post.

I'm not sure if i agree with this or not. When still gearing, i think it is quite common for players to get "globalled" by bosses, from a melee swing and a breath, or melee swing and electrocute style situation. As such even though the overall CTC may be higher, it is probably a better survivability choice to get the earthen ring head enchant of 90 stam, 35 dodge