Hey guys, sorry I didnt read too much of this thread, but I was just wondering what paladin MTs will be like at level 80. Compared to Warriors, DKs, and Bears will there be any noticeable difference? Thanks

Better AOE pickup and threat, one less oh-shit button than warriors and similar mitigation. Much higher single target threat due to JoL depending on fight mechanics.

There is some concern that our T7 itemization is worse than warrior's.

As this is probably of interest to people, I will not be writing an updated version of the Protection Paladin article for Wrath of the Lich King, as I lack the time to do so. You're all free to copy any existing content from the article if anyone is willing to write a new version, though most of it outdated when it comes to Wrath of the Lich King. I would appreciate being given credit if a new version does end up with a significant amount of content re-used from the original article though.

In battlegrounds, in some fairly common situations, sitting and drinking is reasonable if you're careful. node/tower defense, flag defense in wsg etc. There is a reason people whine for tables whenever I play my mage.

I agree though that mana is a huge problem in BG's if you get caught up in a sustained fight. Unlike with many chars, your mana bar will run out before your health bar, and with chaindrinking potions off the table it's going to come up sometimes.

What I'm wondering is this:

While gearing up for WotLK, I know that it's going to be very much like the release of TBC. Most of the gear that I'm getting now is going to be practically useless. But! Since I want to be fairly good in Northrend starting out, I'd like to get some gear at least.

With the new SotR, I've been trying to stay above 490 defense rating, while maximizing stamina and avoidance, and paying special attention to Block Value. Since SotR is based off of that, it SOUNDS like a good idea. I haven't beta tested, and I haven't played on the PTR either. Just wondering what your take is on that.

My other question is that with the new change to level 80, what does that mean for the defense cap, and what should I begin to shoot for while gearing myself up in Northrend?

Just some random questions running through my head thinking about how the expansion is only a couple of days away.

Edit: Corrected what I was talking about with SotR. Originally said Block Rating.

After reading this, I decided to do my part by updating Chicken's original piece to 3.0 standards. Is anyone else interested in getting in on this?

Also, I have a beta question concerning Sacred Shield. From what I've come to understand, it's something we can use if we're riding on zillions of mana for whatever reason as an extra damage-avoiding perk, but not something we want to use as part of our base 96969 rotation. Furthermore, we don't want to use Sacred Shield when we have a Holy Paladin on us, since only one SS can be on a target at a time and it increases the crit chance of FoL by 50% for the caster, thus helping them in their throughput.

So in summary on Sacred Shield's role for a prot paladin:

-'- Nice extra mitigation spell when mana is not an issue
-'- Not part of basic rotation due to mana limitations
-'- Should not be used with a Holy Paladin

Correct?

Block Rating has nothing to do with SotR, you want either block value or strength if your aim is to beef up your SotRs.

Sorry about that. I definitely meant block Value. That was a mistype on my part.

The defence cap, in terms of the actual +defence rating on your gear, is going to go through the roof. I can hit 540 at level 70, and I'm fairly certain that I won't be able to once I'm actually level 80 without replacing gear.

The end result of that? You want high defence pieces. In a lot of cases, you're going to end up dropping avoidance and threat stats in order to pick up defence on mediocre blues, just so you can avoid the crit factor. All of the content is tankable with a crittable tank (at least, in the ten-man versions) but being uncrittable is pretty recommended. Unfortunately, I can't remember the conversion ratio at 80, I just remember being way short of it. (Think going from ~500 defence at 70 to a little over 490 at 80, after gaining 50 base defence and replacing a few pieces with higher-defence blues already.)

Past that, I would focus on getting fairly good avoidance, then on Hit/Expertise, then on strength. Block rating is useful for reaching 102.4% mitigation, especially since the increased focus on strength/block value will increase your block's damage reduction by quite a bit. I would personally focus on strength, rather than on block value, because it scales all of your abilities, which means that it's a significant boost to AOE threat/damage as well as an increase in block mitigation and SoR damage.

What Jebraltar said. Defense is going to be the new uncrushable, insofar as a relatively high goal to achieve that we have to juggle a lot of gear to reach.

If you're going to go into a pre-80 leveling instance, check the level range of the mobs inside to ensure that you're uncrittable. Your crit reduction from Defense (and/or resilience) should be 5%, plus another 0.2% per level of the mob higher than you.

You can walk into the Nexus and Utgarde Keep on release day, since the highest mobs there are 72, and 490 defense at level 70 is enough to cover uncrittability for up to level 73s.

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Once you get to the level cap, you will need to hit 540 Defense Skill (max defense skill at level 80 is 400). This works out to requiring 689 Defense Rating from gear, to be uncrittable by level 83 raid bosses.

It's possible to throw together a set that will do this guaranteed and pre-raid (i.e. without any random drops and without anything past normal dungeons) when I was searching through the quest rewards, craftables and rep items a few months back, if you plan ahead. Wyrmrest Accord reputation is of special note, as the chestplate and boots reward at revered is especially good for a tank set.

It is pretty much impossible to get tanking gear without strength in Wrath. A quick search on Wowhead for gear with defense but no strength returns only a couple of trinkets and three low-level shields. Moreover, there is generally little variation in strength amounts on same ilevel, same slot gear, unless the gear has a 3- or 4-stat spread rather than the normal 5. As such the only meaningful way to focus on strength is through gemming (there are no strength enchants/pseudo-enchants (fur lining etc) currently implemented either).

The take-away lesson is that you get str/sta and to a lesser extent defense as mandatory stats, making the real decision about balancing hit/expertise/dodge/parry/BR and BV.

Regarding your spec, Judgements of the Just is a mandatory tanking talent, we don't need more than 1 point in Improved Judgements, and Seals of the Pure is quite unnecessary unless you find your DPS catching up to you, which is an extremely rare occurrence.

Seal of Corruption is generally accepted as THE tanking Seal. There may be situations where a mob will die so fast that SoCorr won't get a chance to build up threat, but if the mob is dying that fast anyway, then it doesn't matter.

Weapon speed is largely irrelevant. Seal of Corruption's stacks will build up faster with a fast weapon, but then SoCorr's damage caps out at 5 stacks anyway.

Weapon speed does have a few minor effects related to it, obviously due to Hammer of the Righteous if you are using either Seal of Righteousness or Blood a slower weapon will be the best choice. If you're using Seal of Vengeance weapon speed is large inconsequential, though the direct damage procs are slightly higher with a slower weapon, and thus will produce slightly higher threat with a slower weapon over a long period (Due to HotR), the downside is that you're stacking up the DoT at a slower rate, and increasing the damage you get from the direct damage procs does not matter in practice as we're speaking about differences of single digits of damage here. Slower weapons will also cause you to get parried less and gain a relatively larger benefit from parrying yourself, both of these aren't really major factors though. Reckoning is also slightly better with weapons of 2.0 speed or slower.

Faster weapons have an advantage in getting more Judgement procs, which isn't often an issue but can be very nice in a low mana situation. Seal of Wisdom and Seal of Light also both work better with a faster weapon, which can be beneficial in certain specific situations. And as mentioned above, faster weapons stack Seal of Vengeance faster.

In the end though, weapon speed is basically a wash, and you're best off just grabbing the weapon with the best overall tanking stats you can get your hands on.


The hit needed is the same for all non-dual wielding melee and expertise needed is the same as for the other tanking classes, there's a lot of in-depth information already written about it, and no need to really add more to it. I'm sure you'll find plenty of info if do a search for the term "Expertise" within the Warrior tanking thread.

To go into more detail on hit rating as you might be thinking "But don't we have spells too as Paladins?", and while we do have spells, the loss to these from resists is fairly minor. Holy Shield and Consecration are the only two abilities we have that are usable on every single mob type and make use of the spell hit table (Well, the only two completely confirmed ones, Shield of Righteousness may be a third), Righteous Defense as well, but there's a Glyph to help with that. Judgement was changed to work on the Ranged table, so now requires the same hit as most physical abilities. Seal of Vengeace procs are also on the spell hit table, but due to the nature of Seal of Vengeance are fairly inconsequential over a long period. The standard amount of hit is thus going to suit as just fine, and any hit past that is unlikely to provide as much of a threat benefit as another stat would.

It should finally be noted that your choice of weapon type does affect how good expertise is for you, but as expertise was already the best option of the hit increasing stats prior to 3.0, it's even more so now we have Hammer of the Righteous, regardless of your weapon type. Nonetheless, expertise is slightly better when using a "normal" weapon and not a "caster" weapon, as it means a larger part of your threat will come from expertise affected sources when using a "normal" weapon.


Strength is definitely the superior weapon enchant choice for threat. Attack Power scales threat ever so slightly better than spell power does, and once Shield of Righteousness becomes available the extra block value strength provides will make it flat out better than 40 spell power for threat.

The best way to check if you're uncrittable while levelling (because required defense levels _and_ rating conversions will change, _and_ vary based on target level) is to mouse over the "defense" statistic on your character sheet. It should say something along the lines of "reduces chance to be hit and be critically hit by x%". A mob your own level has a flat 5% chance to crit you, so if that little tooltip says 5% or higher, you're in the clear. For every level above you, a mob has another 0.2% chance to crit you (I may be wrong on this, and the exact numbers or formula may change at larger level differences), so if you have 5.2% or more, you're uncrittable by mobs +1 your level. If you have 5.4% or higher, then it's +2 your level. 5.6% is the magic number for mobs +3 levels above you, which is what all raid bosses are counted as for this purpose. Note that mobs +4 levels above you, in addition to having a 5.8% chance to crit you, will also be able to land crushings on you, which means that tanking them will be extra dangerous.

I generally find, especially while levelling, that this way of checking uncrittable makes things much easier, since you're not always guaranteed to have a maxed defense skill, and the char sheet will take that into account. You also don't have to memorise a separate rating requirement for mobs in 3 separate level ranges for every level, etc.

@Navaram. Your spec looks quite good, however as mentioned you definitely need judgements of the just, and don't really need more than 1 point in imp judgements (although it does help solo DPS slightly). Imp HoJ is highly situational, but decent, it's by no means necessary though, as any interrupts on stun-immune mobs will most likely be handled by someone else. SotP is a decent enough talent, it's certainly better than a lot of other options available. The only real alternative to it is pursuit of justice, which can actually be a very decent talent, especially while tanking. Many fights in Naxx make heavy use of movement, including Anub, Thaddius, Heigan, Gluth, Globulus, and many more. In many of these fights, the survival of the raid depends on your ability to move as fast as possible. If you're confident that you're able to do that without PoJ (and it's by no means a requirement, all classes need to be able to do it), then SotP is a decent upgrade in DPS and TPS (although TPS isn't really needed, more DPS never hurts ... well in most cases it doesn't). Kings is also definitely worth taking unless you're 100% sure you'll be raiding with another paladin that has it. It's too valuable in too many ways to too many classes to pass up, and is a completely unique buff. Finally, I don't think reckoning's great. It provides a very minor TPS (again not really needed upgrade) when using SoV/SoC, and just gives the boss more chances at parry gibbing you. That said, I've found it useful for tanking content that I vastly outgear, for example heroics/kara, where I almost always use seal of wisdom while tanking.

For reference, this will be my build for early 10 man Naxx runs with a druid for a tanking partner, and me being the only paladin in the raid (hence heart of the crusader and kings). Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft -- the 1 left over point can go anywhere, possibly the new 11 point talent. For 25 mans I'd probably try to grab divine guardian, to give the MT an extra "panic button" when I'm in an OT or dps/healer role for particular encounters.

This is essentially the approach I took in gearing up my new protadin, however there is a point where you have enough stamina and avoidance and need to make sure you've got strength on your gear for threat/dps. This is especially true when leveling. So most of my gear is actually BC retadin gear, and about half my enchants are str rather than stam/defense, and my red gem slots are purple str/stam gems. Mainly stay uncrittable, keep stam at a level that you're comfortable and let the avoidance be what it is and then see how much strength you can add on.

Once we start getting wrath gear, str will be pretty much a given on all tanking gear.

When leveling it might be worthwhile to stay uncrittable with resilience rather than defense, as it's cheap and abundant on PVP gear. Eventually you'll want to wean yourself off of resilience but from an itemization standpoint, it gives a bit of a cushion. In my case, I can't get away from it anyway (eg, the best shield I could get before wrath, by a rather large margin, was the Merciless Gladiator Shield wall).

Is the 15% str increase really better threat than seals of the pure and/or reckoning? Last time I checked strength gave very little returns when it comes to block value... Did anything change here?

Everything we do is based on attack power to a significant amount (usually half, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less), except I think holy shield and ret aura, which are just spellpower.

Strength = 2xap on everything that AP affects indirectly via speldamage-like coefficients and the rather significant 4xweapon damage spike of holy damage our hammer gives every 6 seconds, plus it adds to block for the new shield attack we get at level 75. Plus protadins get a talent that multiplies their strength, so it is really 2.3xstr=AP. Stacking strength = stacking DPS = stacking threat since most of our DPS comes out as holy damage even if we're generating it with AP.

Strength is the new spellpower for threat.

To actually answer the specific question here: yes, strength was changed to grant block value at 2:1. This is very very old news though, and a simple search should have sufficed.

Depends how much 5 manning you intend to do, as opposed to being out there doing normal stuff. I've found it helpful when trying to solo group quests etc.

Not to mention that there's an inherent weakness to getting BoK on the same pally who will be blessing Sanc on all the tanks- the people it is, in general, most important to have Kings on in the first place. So you have to pick kings or 15% str to make it further anyway, it's a no brainer.

In addition, with the increased modifier on white damage from impRF (by the way, what is the status on that modifier? my search fu is failing, and I was attempting to get good real-world TPS breakdowns in instances as I leveled, but without that it's guesswork), white damage is a highly significant source of threat at the standard AP formula.

Pace what has been said above about SotR and HotR (which scale insanely well with str), Cons, Judgements (all of them) and all seals scale quite nicely with AP/Str now. Str is in my mind (I appologise, I haven't the math to back this up yet but I want some good 80 live numbers, just a first impression from 70) our 2nd highest threat stat, following hit and preceeding expertise. +dam just ain't what it used to be.

Best of luck to everyone on the grind to 80.

Oggie, white attacks while under Righteous Fury currently have a (damage * 1.43) multiplier.

The 1.43 figure in this case is derived from an equivalent threat increase to 'earn back' the loss of Salvation: 1.0 default threat / 0.7 Salvation reduction = 1.43

Compare this to Holy damage while under Righteous Fury, which has a (damage * 1.9 * 1.43) multiplier.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but white attacks are no more valuable now as they where in WoW 2.3, since the multiplier is only enough to make up for the difference of losing Salv, but is proportionally no greater than previously. Aside from the fact that our white attacks are much more powerful, I don't think they're anything special with regards to threat.