Sentinels did have Radiance before the patch, I am 99.9999% sure of this. I wish the wws reports didnt expire since but I would love to hear other theories what gave an amazingly low avoidance rate on sentinels.

To add onto Nakari's point above, all of our damage skills scale with AP now, except for SotR. There's no question that traditional DPS plate is going to give you more damage output than something stacked with BV.

FWIW my block value is around 850 in my tank set with full raid buffs. In my DPS set it's just shy of 700. On the flip side, I have about 1000 more AP in my DPS set. The damage output of the two sets is extremely obvious at 70, and there's no way the difference in ShoR damage is enough to close the gap.

EDIT: 1474 DPS on Gorefiend last night in my ret gear with [The Brutalizer] as my weapon. I'll bet I can break 1500 once I get my "real" DPS weapon enchanted. 3840 HotR crit = mmmmmmmmmm.

Wow Web Stats

Quick math for dps:

1 AP = 0.071 white dps + 0.048 HotR dps + 0.05 SoV dps + 0.02 JoV dps = ~ 0.17 dps (assuming a bit of armor)

1 blkval = 0.28 SotR dps

1 str = 2.3AP + 0.575 blkval = 0.552 dps

So, from a raw stats point of view 1 str = ~2 blkval = ~3 AP for dps

The itemization costs are roughly 1 str = 1.5 blkval = 2 AP, which means that strength is also the most itemization-efficient stat for dps, followed by block value and then by AP. Hence for example, [Item not found!] is better than the identical-ilevel [Bloodlust Brooch]. (Well, actually right now it isn't, but if we had SotR at level 70 it would be.)

So basically dps plate will be your best choice for dps, because it has strength on it. If you can't get strength, then block value is better than AP, but in a lot of cases the gear with AP on it will still be better just because it's designed for dps whereas gear with blockvalue is almost always designed for tanking and therefore has points "wasted" on stats like avoidance and stamina that don't help with dps. (The autoblocker is an exception.)

For soloing it's trickier since you'll want avoidance to trigger HS and BoSanct.

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On a separate note, is anyone else getting the feeling that the AS bounce range reduction was included in the Ret hotfix? I was doing lowbie quests earlier today for the loremaster achievements and it definitely felt like the bounce range was lower.

[e]: And if so, can anyone figure out whether the 3% damage reduction from Shield of the Templar was added?

As of this morning I was still getting some pretty absurdly long AS bounces at the undead invasion camp in Winterspring. The Ret hotfix is definitely live on Uther, too.

Just one little tidbit:

For soloing I switched back to BoW. Fights really don't last long enough 1v1 for BoS to shine (still not used to things dying in 8-10 seconds as prot, but I'm not complaining!). The mana gain on an individual fight is pretty similar to BoS when you're wearing DPS gear, but more importantly it allows regen between fights and time spent traveling from point A to point B. This is even more pronounced when you do things like herbalism, skinning, or whatever quest that has you clicking random stuff. I happen to be an herbalist, and the new self-HoT means I can judge wisdom as well to keep up the pace.

That said, BoS dominates for AoE pulls. It's borderline obscene.

I have one built, but I don't have mana calculations or anything done on it, it is somewhat primitive compared to the ret one. I can summarize the calculations for you though.

Str is your best stat by a wide margin. Block value is okay, but not good enough to wear tanking gear. All other stats are just inferior. The mana calculations I did for it showed that you should be able to maintain HotR, SoR, and Judgement but nothing else. JoW, BoW and maybe a totem will cover you for those, they are cheap. Your damage should be just fine, though you really start to fall behind on AOE situations because you can't possibly cast consecrate without OOMing nearly instantly with your pathetic mana recovery. I suppose you could just tank the AOE pull though, you are wearing plate and a shield and have full prot talents, even in dps gear you are pretty tough.

With the original implementation of SoR tanking gear was actually better than dps gear in many cases. As it is now, scaling on BV isn't good enough and you should wear full plate dps gear.

I wouldn't bother, simply because Divine Plea comes at level 71 as well. I'd rather have the extra kill speed from standard DPS gear. Int scrolls might be an option for soloing though, as they should be pretty prevalent with so many people doing inscriptions now.

Thanks, Tilted and Cathela. Great points. I had a similar experience last night, also with retribution gear + [The Brutalizer] + [Bulwark of Azzinoth], and did 1096 DPS on Rage Winterchill (WWS), over a fight about twice as long as your Gorefiend kill (man does Gorefiend drop like a rock now...) where I had to run in and out of melee range depending on Death and Decay location.

I'm now pretty excited to hit 75 and then 80, to see how our single target DPS is.

Hello,

I'm relatively new to tanking as a Protection Paladin. I leveled up using the refer a friend bonuses while grouped up with said friend doing quests up to my current level, which is 60. Therefore most things died long before needing to really worry about Threat generation or personal DPS. Now that I'm 60 and can start getting the better gear Outland has to offer and with an eye towards Lich King, what stats should I be looking for if my planned role is to be the main tank in 5 mans instance runs & 10 man raids?

I found a post that listed the following Scaling values, but they were from a pretty old post:
Spell Power 1.5
Block Rating 1.4
Stamina 1.0
Defense Rating 1.0
Dodge Rating 1.0
Parry Rating 0.9
Agility 0.7
Block Value 0.2
Armor 0.05

Any insight would be a great help to me.

Thanks

As a personal note, I have never liked assigning relative values to stats, simply because they change as soon as you equip a certain piece of gear. For tanking in general, it's always going to be a balance of threat generation vs. survival. When you're first starting out, survival is almost always paramount, and as you gear up you'll find you need to generate more threat so that you DPS can kill stuff quickly enough. For survival, I have always gone with the mentality to get "enough" HP (where "enough" can vary from one fight to the next), then go straight avoidance. However, there have been thousands of posts debating this very topic, so I won't go into much detail beyond that other than to say it's worked great for me at 70.

Threat is another issue entirely. It's definitely worth picking up some DPS gear as you go because you'll never know when you might come across a fight where survival is a total non-issue but you need to be able to grab aggro fast. Leotheras in SSC comes to mind as the fight in BC raiding where this holds true, as he hits like a sissy on a tank, but if (when) a DPS pulls aggro after a threat dump they'll get destroyed.

Long story short: diversity in gear is a good thing.

I've got to agree with Tilted here. Your general priorities are to get uncrittable, then 'some' avoidance and 'some' mitigation and 'a fair amount' of HP. After that I'd focus on a TPS set (str/stam/hit/+dam- maybe?), a brick wall set (AC/SBV/stam), and an avoidance set (dodge/parry/stam). As you start out, all 3 sets start looking identical or close to it, then start splitting off and spread up.

I also would not worry a ton about most prot pally stats as of right now, especially not older recommendations based on pre 3.0. Str is a very high value stat, as is stamina, and realistically you're not getting uncrittable before Wrath launches unless you really push for it, so you pretty much just need to worry about 80.

Str, stamina, some crit perhaps, high dps weapon, and try to get some good amounts of hit, and stick to plate- don't be tempted to downgrade in case you do end up tanking some 5mans. Defense, dodge and parry are all very nice for tanking the lower instances (sub heroic 70s).



As to Sanc/BoW, I've noticed a break even of 3 mobs or so, depending on gear. Some int here or there might not be the worst idea on leveling gear, depending on what slots we're talking about. I found that when going up against an elite, or well seperated/caster mobs, stay in full ret and BoW, but if I can pull a 2:1 melee:caster ratio (quite possible most of the time in Wrath from what I've seen), Sanc tends to win. Of course, with Plea it's you're not gonna be totally in trouble regardless of blessing.

Edit:
PS, best tip I can give to a new prot pally is, quite simply, get a gearswap mod. Personal favorite is Itemrack because I can hold down 'alt' on a gear slot whenever I open my character pane and change that item to anything it has an icon of in the list next to it. It lets you dynamically queue up swaps to happen when combat drops too-so if I know I want a high TPS couple of trinket for the next couple pulls (but want to keep the rest of my gear the same), I queue it up as we're finishing off the pull and am ready to go and still able to keep the number of general itemsets to the minimum.

Alternatively, ClosetGnome and....I know there's another, but it escapes me. Use what you'd like, of course.

Has anyone been able to figure out the stacking on JoL yet? There's a lot of confusion about it over on maintankadin. Here's some weird aspects:

a) It seems to generate threat even when overhealing.
b) If multiple paladins cast it, all procs are for the exact same amount.
c) Judgement of Wisdom has just been nerfed so that only one paladin can cast it; no mention of JoL.

What's going on? Is it stacking or not? Have they nerfed it or not? Are we really getting all the threat it seems to be generating? What does everyone have the same healing?

GC states that pallies will get a glyph that changes RD from "up to 3" to "single target" plus buffs it in some other way. The discussion is interesting for anyone who hasn't been reading up on RD's flaws.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Dev Decision Making

Which then completely kills our aoe taunting ability.
There must be some rule that paladin glyphs must either have minor bonuses, or have major downsides.

(Re: my earlier idea of using 1-2 pieces of +int gear for soloing to buff abilities that return a % of total mana)
That's a good point, but even with DS+JoW you're going to either have to hold back on some abilities for mana conservation or spend some time drinking, at least in my experience. On beta I had to run SoW while soloing if I didn't want to have downtime. Since the extra mana pool will also boost the mana regen from DS, I think it might be worth wearing one or two-pieces of high-int gear if it lets you use SoR instead of SoW.

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In other news, I posted my Holy Shield suggestion on the beta forum. If you've got beta forum access, feel free to stop by and talk about what an awesome idea it is.

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And in yet other news:

Later in that thread there's a very sensible suggestion to change RD to always taunt your current target, and then also taunt two mobs assisting your current target. Same functionality as the current one, except that you can use it on a mob near you and have a guaranteed taunt on that mob, even if the mob's target is out of range/LoS/etc. The only thing you really lose is the ability to cast RD directly on a player (which I've found handy when I see someone's hp dropping on the raid bars) but I think that's a small price to pay.

Another suggestion (this one from me) was to just have a glyph to add a taunt to HoJ, similar to the Mocking Blow glyph (and obviously for the taunt to function even on stun-immune mobs.)

This can lead to problems when mob is caster and tauntable... you might need to use HoJ for it's spell interrupt portion, and having it automatically taunt your target isn't always desirable.

Actually I'd like first target of Avenger's Shield being taunted for 3 seconds. It's kind of appropriate for the ability, it's expensive as hell...ect. I like it more than HoJ.

The only problem with this would be for fights like the Twins, where it's important to ride the MT's ass, but not be taunting. In those situations, I've found Avenger's Shield to be invaluable.

Edit: Don't post in the morning....Twins aren't tauntable. That would actually work fine.

It wouldn't work on things like Hyjal Aboms where you only want one specific mob. Seems like a bad idea IMO. What's the problem with just giving us another spell? The code is already there, none of the other tanks are going to QQ, just do it already.

Since AS is already the first thing I reach for when RD fails me for whatever reason, I'd probably like this one, but it seems a bit cludgy to make it have an extra effect on only one of the three targets hit. I'm still a fan of adding a short silence to AS, if they're going to do anything there.

I'd really like to see the taunt issue fixed without a glyph. I understood that glyphs were supposed to be (hopefully) fun ways to customize your character to your playstyle, but it's looking like we're burning our slots just to make our taunt work right. And it seems rather obvious that if all the tank classes need a glyph to reduce the taunt miss rate by 8%, then the spell is on the wrong hit table.

edit:
Taking Oggie's suggestion a bit further:

First, make Righteous Defense function as it does now, but one target instead of three. This gives us the bread-and-butter "grab the mob headed for the healer" taunt on an 8s cd, but it retains a flavor difference from the straight taunt. Solves the "taunt one of the two bosses off the other tank" problem, but not the "taunt one abomination" problem.

Second, give Avenger's Shield a taunt effect for all of its targets. Here's the three target taunt we're used to, but it's direct to the mob, avoiding some of the oddities that the current RD can bring. If you feel that you absolutely must have a direct, single target taunt, then the Avenger's Shield glyph already exists.

The idea of slinging the shield at a mob to taunt sure feels like it would add fun points, and I think that as long as we still have one multi-target taunt there shouldn't be a balance issue with the other tanks.

Another thought about the RD situation:

It's been suggested before that RD be changed to always taunt your current target, and then also taunt up to two enemies assisting that target (LoS/range permitting, of course). That solves the "Gothik problem" but not the "4H problem".

What if we take this a step further and add a Mocking Blow-like wrinkle to it? The primary target gets a 4-second debuff that forces it to attack the paladin and this debuff makes the target untauntable while it lasts. The secondary targets don't get this effect.

That would allow two prot paladins to switch mobs, because the first one to taunt puts the debuff on his (new) target, making that mob taunt-immune and preventing the other paladin from pulling it back when he taunts the other mob.

Well for protadins, stam adds a little to DPS. 30% is spellpower. Also mitigation stats are part of your mana battery,
as BoS requires you to avoid/block damage to get mana back. But yes, the point is generally valid.

Uncrittable.
Enough of a hitpoint buffer
Enough damange in+avoided attacks+direct mana recovery to sustain dps rotation

Then strength
Then other stuff

Uncrittable is really cheap if you do it with resilience, but resilience doesn't give avoidance. If you're just starting out though, the blue rep "scaled plate" pvp items+some resilience gems and the 15 point resilience chest enchant will pretty much get you to uncrittable maybe with a couple "of the champion" greens tossed in.

With respect to BoS vs BoW, I've been leveling from 60-70 post-patch and it really is a matter of how much you gather up and whether the 3% mitigation matters to you. BoW is very good for soloing, as your mana ticks back while you're moving. BoS is better if chainpulling stuff. I found that with BoS+seal light+judge wisdom or light to tune the bars I could do very large pulls. As a general rule BoS+seal wisdom is enough for most situations, judging light or wisdom depending on your bar situation. BoW is a lot better when fighing casters or doing things that have a lot of time between pulls. I didn't spend much time drinking in those 10 levels.

I think you just want to focus on DPS for leveling. The crits aren't very big from most things and your mana burn isn't a lot faster than your mana recovery, and ending the fight faster IS mana efficient. You can also dispense with holy shield from your rotation when only fighting 1-2 enemies. Mitigation does help in the AOE pulls though, that's still a lot more like it used to be where a lot of your damage is passive and being tougher = pulling more = faster killing. So if you've got a threat suit and a tank suit, you'll find uses for both.