Is there any up to date info on how the two rotations (with and without inq) compare on single target? I tried both, but its really hard to tell the difference between the two, since inq rotation is very sensitive to missed CS's (when you put up inq, but fail to get off a SotR during it). I do like seing 90k+ crits though.
Why I care? First of all, i'm playing in 10man, plus we've had an issue with pushing ragnaros phase 3 with one meteor for a while, so we had to max out all we could (I tried standing in fire on purpose). Second, there are fights where it simply gets too boring if you stop worrying about your damage (cough baleroc).

I also find major glyph choice to be pretty tight on some encounters. E.g. on rag I'm forced to use divine protection, holy wrath (probably not needed anymore), focused shield for more DPS. This sometimes leaves me out of mana in below 20% phases, and doesn't leave space for utility like salvation (which would be very nice for kiting the boss when roots are wasted by mistake).

Could u please give me an advice about new T13 tanking trinkets? Need to choose 2. I bet all the tanks would choose Indomitable Pride - Items - Sigrie? but what about the second? There is implemented very good trinket for all other tanking classes Soulshifter Vortex - Items - Sigrie, but prot paladins should be already block capped or nearly. So what should we choose? Get a trinket from old content, or use an awful trinket for dodge Resolve of Undying - Items - Sigrie, or change our gearing model to make the proc useful?

What will u choose?

Look up Theckd's work on maintankadin. He has more numbers than you can process in one setting regarding pretty much every permutation of rotation. These threads summarize the optimal rotation but if you want to know approximately how much dps you lose/gain with a combination of Inq he has tables upon tables of sim results.

Why is Resolve of Undying awful? It doesn't have an active use, I'll give you that, but 990 static dodge is just incredible from a trinket alone. I haven't been on the PTR yet but if the current trend continues, in which stam trinkets are pretty worthless for paladins (and one of them even procs mastery), it's best combined with the 1650 VP trinket.

I've argued (and many tanks agree with me) that stamina is more valuable than dodge/parry once you've reached block cap, at least in heroic modes where bosses actually hurt. And that's with a 1.5:1 itemization; in other words, most tanks would take 30 stamina over 20 or fewer dodge rating (and in many cases, would take 30 stamina over 30 or 40 dodge rating).

990 dodge rating is definitely a lot, but I'm not convinced it's actually better than 775 stamina if you're already hitting block cap. I wouldn't call it an awful trinket, but unless total damage reduction suddenly becomes important in Dragon Soul (unlikely), it's not very compelling either. Especially since one of the alternatives is Fire of the Deep, a mastery trinket with a nice dodge on-use clicky.

If tank death in Dragon Soul is anything like what I've seen in Firelands (short bursts of 2-4 damage events in 3-5 seconds), then I think the added EH of the stamina trinket is still going to be superior, despite the crappy proc.

The real bursts in damage intake are usually caused by boss hits coinciding (in most cases) with elemental damage, in which case avoidance is useless, I agree stamina will always be valuable for that alone. Firelands was pretty elemental damage heavy compared to earlier instances this expansion, so I'm guessing it boils down to how melee and elemental damage ratio's will turn out to be in Dragon Soul.

That being said, it doesn't hurt to try pick up an extra trinket for swapping around depending on the bossfight. Also, I think the stamina trinkets seem pretty weak. The mastery proc of Vortex as said by gnumme is useless for any FL geared paladin, and I'm not really sold on the 54% last attack damage shield from Indomitable Pride. As you said those attacks that bring you to 50% will often be a succession of multiple hits, if a 20k hit brings you below 50% you'll get a 10k shield, 10k dmg absorbed per minute. If that would have been a generously large Ragnaros 100k hit, that would make a 54k shield. That starts looking like something but it's not reliable enough to really make or break that much. Personally, I'd much prefer an avoidance clicky, but I may be nitpicking.

Good one I'm still using it alot and 400 resistance for 10 sec on a 1 min CD is a major advantage in FL for alot of fights not sure why I didn't bring it up
I'm not sure how other paladins are doing it, I just bound Scales to WoG. Coming from a DK I tend to react pretty quickly to sub-35% drops and just push WoG, wether Scales is up or not. On the other hand, not having motivated raiders and forfeiting on Raggy hc, I haven't used it once since and just stuck to my mastery reforged to avoidance trinkets as I feel for current content 200k+ raidbuffed is more than plenty.

Anyone test the proc on Souldrinker yet?

DPS reports for DKs are reflecting a 15% proc rate. I haven't seen any logs which reflect how it interacts with prot abilities yet, however any melee ability that hits appears to proc it for DKs.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

For us I guess that would be ~20 CS, ~22-24 melee, and possibly 7-8 Shields per minute in any given stand still fight (Ultraxion), or roughly 7.5 ppm (or for true ppm [60 / 2.6] * 0.15 = 3.46 ppm on melee - unbuffed, no talents, etc.). Figure 210,000 health * 1.5% = 3,150 damage * 2 * 1.06 = 6,678 healing. Or roughly 400 dps and 835 hps. Rough napkin math, obviously, and I'm not 100% positive it works with SotR, but it's probably safe to assume it would.

Since 4.3 made dodge and parry have the same diminishing returns, is it still necessary to keep dodge/parry within 1% of each other?

The DR is not linear but hits harder the more dodge/parry you stack. Having dodge and parry around the same percentage raidbuffed will have you 'loose' the least amount of stat budget to DR.

There is nothing in 4.3 patchnotes regarding dodge/parry. They have had the same diminishing returns since 4.0, and since they don't share it, you should try to keep them as close as possible.

Regarding Righteous Defense, it requires you to target a raid member, so you don't have a choice here. To use it as a normal taunt, you need a macro along the lines of /cast [@target,help][@targettarget] Righteous Defense (of course, side effects can include accidentally casting it on your other tank and taunting adds you're not supposed to tank).

Righteous Defense works fine if you use it on a mob, even without a macro. It has been this way for as long as I can remember.

You can use any way. However, I like to use it on a player when I see agro on non-tank in my Grid. I added RD to Clique bindings and that helps me a lot.

Anyone test if the survivability T13 2P Bonus combined with Judgement Glyph are worth swapping out SotR or CS or Censure Glyph?

That might be worth testing to see if the Judgement Glyph surpasses the CS in terms of threat, but its a bit of a sideshow because the Judgment Glyph, once you've got 2-piece, is also a (modestly) survival glyph which is something the other glyphs you mention don't provide at all.

The Judgement-glyph might be a sheer matter of preferance, unless you are having a lot of low-percentage wipes. My tanking-instinct tells me to take any boost at survivability over a slight DPS gain.

The problem with the judgement glyph is the survivability gain is so small. 25 absorption per second is only 7500 during a five minute fight. If you used a better DPS glyph, you could help kill the boss a couple seconds faster, meaning you could negate a hit on the scale of 70,000. It's really not as cut and dry as just going for pure survival.

And more to the point, valuing it at a full 25 absorb per second isn't completely valid. It's not enough to change how your healers play or which heals they choose. So in practice, it will end up simply increasing overheals. Example:

Start at health H, boss hits you for X, healer tops you off with a heal of size Y>X; overheal is Y-X
Start at health H, boss hits you for X-Z (Z absorb bubble), healer tops you off with a heal of size Y>X; overheal is Y-X+Z

This is no different than the mantra we've been repeating all expansion: total damage taken (or healing per second generated) isn't the end-all, be-all metric. You have to consider the practical effect on your survivability to properly evaluate a mechanic.

The only case where the J glyph provides a clear benefit is in a death scenario where that extra 500 absorb makes the difference between life and death. That's probably a rare situation, but it's also true that we're likely to be getting a Judgement bubble in most of our multi-second spike death scenarios. Again, worth thinking about, because the opportunity cost of dropping the CS glyph is pretty low.

I will probably still run SotR/SoT/WoG once I get 2-piece, because I feel the WoG glyph gives me a little more benefit than J will since it's controllable survivability. But I wouldn't criticize someone for using the J glyph, provided they understand why they're using it.

Updated the OP. Biggest changes formally moving it from a PTR thread to a Live thread, plus changes to Gems and an expanded explanation of how CTC works and a bunch of smaller changes in other areas. As always, please let me know if you find anything that needs fixing.

The biggest thing I ended up not including was an update to the old Stat-weights. After a lot of back-and-forth, I ended up deciding that it was pointless because the decisions are too clear-cut. By this point of the expansion, tanks' first priority is reaching CTC, which should be doable with gear from JP and 5-mans, and that means stacking mastery. Once that's reached, you should stack Stamina. As gear improves, gems and enchants can be gradually shifted over to a heavier weighting of Stamina.

Minor corrections to the Mechanics & Rotation section:

1) The Judgement buff has adjusted the single-target queues slightly. They should be:
939: SotR>CS>AS+>J>AS>HoW>Cons*>HW*
I39: SotR(if Inq or Sacred Duty buffs active)>Inq>CS>AS+>J>AS>HoW>Cons*>HW*

AS+ is AS during a Grand Crusader proc (i.e., if it will grant Holy Power). The difference between AS+>J>AS and J>AS is small, so if you want to skip that detail you can just omit the AS+ entries. However, both are ahead of AS>J prioritization from 4.2.

The text should also be updated to reflect this: "where X is filled with AS, HoW, J, Cons or HW in that order based on availability and mana constraints" becomes "... J, AS, HoW, Cons..."


2) Link to the single-target sims is missing after "Theck maintains a comprehensive model of our single-target DPS rotations in case you want more detailed information about our single-target priority queues." (link: Maintankadin • View topic - Theck's MATLAB thread - Cataclysm/4.x).

Hi Theck,
I have a question regarding Grand Crusader and Hammer of Righteous. Do the individual hits of the aoe count toward the AS procs (=number of procs increasing) and how does this change our rotation considering fights like Warmaster Blackhorn (tanking both elite adds together on one side)? I´m currently running on SoT and SotR glyphs and consider swaping CS for HotR for fights like this(and swaping out FS ofc). I looked into your Maintankadin Thread and there was no mention if and how this changes our rotation or if it is included in the sims.