I'd focus on your primary role first, which sounds like healer. I'm not sure where you are progression wise, but if you're going to be asked to Flame tank on Illi, I might suggest switch to the tanking ring, as the defense rating there is pretty clutch.

On another note, what are yall doing about the new Deathfrost enchant? It's obviously pretty tempting to have a T-clap substitute for those times when I'm trying to live and don't have a pocket warrior (Kalecgos demon phase comes to mind), but my gut feeling is that Mongoose is still a better overall survival enchant. Too bad too, T-clap is one of those reasons I'm not allowed to tank on Brutallus.

I'm going to put it on my mitigation weapon (the tanking mace off of Lurker) for the poor-man's-Tclap effect. There might be a level of spelldamage where it's worth using Deathfrost over +40 spelldamage on your main threat weapon, but if there is I don't think I'm there yet.

All of the above assuming it affects raid bosses, of course. (I haven't kept up on the research.)

What Arikah said; you presumably have a warrior of some kind in the raid, don't you? With the 20% anti-dodge and dual-wielding, Brutallus is one of those "Holy Shield heaven" bosses, on top of also being a demon. Forcing an arms warrior to stay in battle stance instead of zerk will hurt his dps a bit, but not enough to be worth using a lesser-geared tank if you have a well-geared prot paladin.

My guild's only somewhat comfortable with paladins tanking and FAR more comfortable with warriors. Me trying to tell our dps warrior to keep T-clap up would be like telling the earth to spin the other way - not going to happen.

And to a degree, I don't blame them. A warrior takes less damage, keeps up thunderclap and similar to better single target threat than I do. They have shield wall and last stand, both useful for progression bosses. Why would they take a similar geared prot paladin? It sucks in that I've killed Archi once( my guild was desperate that night for _any_ sort of healer), I'm next to useless on Naj(Luckily not difficult, but he's only ever dropped the boots once, on the first kill, that I was sat for), I'm not in for Brut - but that's still sorta the state of the class at the moment.

The thing that really annoys me is the variance. My guild hates doing RoS, Hyjal or Council without me, and even Kalecgos is easier. I've been in for every single Illidan fight, and all but about 4 Hyjal runs. But this means that I'm often actively riding the pine, a part-timer that's not allowed to go do something else for the evening.

Our guild runs with close to 5 well-geared tanks at the moment, a warrior MT, a feral, 2 other warriors and myself. It's not that they're bringing in a lesser-geared tank, it's just that given the choice between 3 well geared tanks of all types, the preferred 2 are a warrior and a druid.


Back on topic, I certainly wouldn't be putting deathfrost on my Hyjal Mace, my spell damage has stayed a bit too static recently and I'm actually a little concerned for my threat in my "normal" tanking set. It's not bad yet, but give the warlocks a couple of upgrades and it will be. I would stick it on my [Cleaver of the Unforgiving]. The question is, would the few times I'm not paired with thunderclap mitigate enough damage to be worth it for all the times I am paired. I'm pretty sure the answer is no, and I'm going to stick with Mongoose, but I did want to ping the rest of the protadin community and get their thoughts.

I was personally contemplating putting Deathfrost on my old [Merciless Gladiator's Gavel], but I'd also forgotten entirely I still had one of those Cleavers from Zul'jin collecting dust in my bank. I guess it's cheap enough for me to just put it on both though, so I have more choice depending on the situation.

Unfortunately I can't weigh in on results on how often it procs as I've yet to hear of anyone in the Horde on my server getting the enchant. There's probably some people with it, I just have yet to find out who. I'm definitely curious on how it'll interact with the somewhat unique mechanics Paladins are cursed/blessed with.

I guess my take on it is that most of the situations where I'm using my non-threat tanking weapon are cases where I'm tanking on an island and don't get any debuffs beyond what I can provide myself, so Deathfrost is a better choice there. Individual mileage may vary, obviously.

Regarding your response to my response to you, basically what Tilted said above. I was just commenting that Tclap shouldn't be a showstopper if there is a noticeable difference in tank gearing.

Yeah, I was sort of trying to do a worst-case comparison. A good dps warrior can stance dance with minimal rage loss so Tclap would hurt dps even less.

That's the issue. Usually DPS wars don't have imp TC because they aren't called upon to use it -- they do have points in Imp DS and can apply that. Making an Arms warrior do it just makes it more difficult if they spec for it.

I'm in an interesting position to where I more or less "raid lead" our alt/non-main raiding force team into Sunwell. I've already planned out the tanking assignments and I won't be tanking on Brutallus at all, respeccing Ret instead. I just feel more comfortable on every level with a warrior+druid doing it. It's not that a paladin can't do it, they certainly can and I know I can, but I'd much rather have the warrior do it. It'll be better. I've tanked RoS (including p2) the last few weeks but it still would be better on all fronts if a warrior was doing it. Warriors to me are still the king of MT'ing so if one is available I want them doing it. Having said that if your best tank (and player) is a pally tank and your warrior is just mediocre then of course it makes just as much sense to be having the paladin tank instead.

Right but there's a difference between first kills and farming. Also a difference between "optimizing" and going with what you got. I'm not saying that I couldn't tank Brut, and most likely even do it successfully. But try telling my guild (after 3 1% wipes this last week), that they should bring me and have the dps warrior keep up t-clap at the expense of some personal dps. It's just not going to happen.

I can't see Brut ending up being as bad as Archimonde, and I have no doubt I'll be tanking him once we have a coupla kills under our belts. I'm not even annoyed at my guild having me sit, I'd rather they kill him quicker so I get to play with Felmyst than me making a stink about getting in.

I am annoyed at Blizzard constantly changing the number of required tanks and required types from one boss to the next. I mean tanking is one of the more challenging things to do in a raid (imho), and requires consistent and aware players. But these are the players most often having to sit? Look at Black Temple. When first starting, you need 3 tanks for the trash to Najentus, and then only 1 for the boss. Nothing more uplifting than clearing trash so other people get to fight the boss( and get your tanking boots the only time they ever drop...). Then it's back to two tanks for Supremus, and a required 3 for Akama and Bloodboil. Drop that back down to 1 tank for Gorefiend, and then only 2 tanks for RoS (a warrior and pally - plus about 10 rogues...). Mother is back to 3 tanks of any sort, and council requires 3 tanks, with at least one, and preferably two, being warriors. Finally you round out Illidan with 3 tanks, at least one of which should be a warrior or an overgeared paladin.

I mean part of it is obviously the importance of the tanks in any role. A well-geared and played tank makes the encounter go smoother for everyone, and no other player in the raid has that ability to single-handedly make an encounter easier (plenty can make it more difficult by dying..).

Personally, I think that paladins need to get some bonuses to their off-healing, and/or remove _all_ the differences between warriors and paladins tanking, for WotLK. Druids do well because they're so versatile. They throw on some dps gear, are put in the melee group, and are valued contributers even when their primary focus is tanking. I.e. the marginal difference between a dps-focused feral and a tank-focused feral is small enough where you keep the player versus the gear/spec. With prot paladins, it's _far_ better to switch the prot pally out with a holy pally for any boss where the prot paladin isn't needed to tank.

I don't know, maybe these are just my own observations, I am the only pally tank I know on my server at least (there are others, I just don't talk to them). I'm certainly getting frustrated with being the niche tank that's really helpful for very specific encounters, no worse for others and frankly just sub-optimal for most. I mean my guild has 4 prot warriors( 3 well geared, with 2 of those showing up consistently) and 1 prot paladin, because having 2 prot warriors(or ferals, but we have trouble recruiting them) is often beneficial to a fight, whereas having 2 prot paladins basically never is. Anyway, sorry for the rant, just something that has been bothering me lately while riding pine for Brutallus.

At least for *most* of the fights where you don't have to tank, you can do an acceptable job off-healing while keeping a judgement up, or doing a specific job. (i.e. dispels at Teron)

I'm not inclined to call us a niche tank either, because we're the best tank for trash as well. Guess what? The majority of the time outside of true progression raiding, you're killing trash. Shaving 15-30 minutes off a BT clear with a prot pally and eschewing CC is very valuable to me. It also engages the raid and keeps things moving along, preventing boredom and the like. It's hard to quantify things like that, but there's definitely additional benefits.

Ya, but on any first kills, your job is to stay in for trash, then bail for a real healer. Wheeeeee. I mean it's fine for when stuff's on farm, but it gets old when you're not in for a lot of first kills because your strength is trash.

I don't mind being strong at trash, I liked Hyjal for that reason - it linked the bosses to the trash. I'd never have been in for the first Kaz'rogal kill otherwise. Maybe make something where you can't substitute in? I dunno, just my guild struggles enough with new bosses, they don't want to drag along an undergeared healer to them as well. It's not that I _can't_ be there for most every boss, it's just that it makes life harder on my guild if I am there for a lot of them.

Agreed, and I think rather than constraining encounter design be requiring that every encounter call for the same number of tanks, they need to improve the non-tanking abilities of warriors and paladins.

The problem with improving our healing as a solution is that fights that require fewer tanks almost never require more healers -- at best they take the same number of healers, and often fewer. For example, Kalecgos is typically 3 tanks and 8-9 healers, while most guilds do Brutallus with 2 tanks and 7 healers. So, even if prot paladin healing were better, your guild still wouldn't have a reason to keep you in the raid after killing Kalecgos, since they're already benching two real healers at that point anyway.

Ferals are kept in raids as non-tanks because a catform feral is still a useful thing to have around. Our problem is that we have nothing really analogous.



Edit to respond to:

What do you not CC now that you used to? (Or, perhaps a simpler way to phrase the same query: What do you still CC in a BT clear?)

I just realized reading your post that we still CC exactly the same things in BT that we've always CC'd from the beginning, so now I'm curious as to how little CC it's possible to get away with.

What are the advantages warriors have over paladins?

- They have last stand and shield wall
- They take 4% less physical damage and 6% less magic damage

Single-target TPS should be similar as long as the mob is either undead or demon or duel wields. Two mobs in Sunwell do both (Brutallus and Sacrolash) which should push paladin TPS above an equivalently geared warrior's. Both paladins and warriors wear the same gear, both benefit from defense and parry equally, and both have the same stamina scaling (actually paladins are very marginally ahead in that). Warriors will get expertise instead of our spell damage, but they generate more than twice as many parry-able attacks compared to us anyways, so neither class is particularly more vulnerable to parry-gibs.

On the paladin side:

- We have ardent defender
- We block every hit, even against duel-wielders, and are uncrushable

It seems to me that the differences really aren't that big, and it mostly comes down to old habits (well, we've always used a warrior; or, we've given the warrior first pick at each new drop, so he's better geared). Unless you need a fear break, spell reflect, or there is a specific ability that should be shield walled (Kalecgos' enrage, for example), it seems like the difference comes down to last stand and shield wall against ardent defender (assuming threat is about the same between them and the gap between imp. RF + spell warding and imp. def stance is made up by holy shield). Last stand and shield wall are better, but in most encounters they aren't game breaking. (And against duel-wielders the combination of uncrushability and AD may be superior.)

And of course, balanced against the superiority of those cooldowns is the simple and obvious fact that paladins are unquestionably superior whenever more than one (or more than a dozen) mobs need to be tanked.

As an example of convention reigning over logic, the most efficient way to tank Felmyst would be with a single, well-geared protadin. There's no real reason to have seperate tanks for Felmyst and for the skellies, except that most guilds do not have a well-geared protadin to tank the dragon.

(Have I missed anything major in comparing the two?)

Now, we expect the crushing blow mechanic to go out the window in Wrath, so we'll lose that edge, but only Blizzard knows what we'll be getting on the way to 80 (seal of last stand? Judgement of demoralizing thunderclap?).

On the subject of being useful when not tanking, I certainly agree that it is more useful to be able to DPS than to heal (raid can always use more DPS, but doesn't need more than a necessary minimum amount of healing).