Denogran

Both questions you asked are answered in the very first post. See Post #1, points 3c (Specific Fights) and 4a (Helpful Macros).

 

Foofu

We should really add a section with real math (or simulator or spreadsheet results or something people can fact check, not just napkin math) to the first post about reckoning vs. 1-hand if we're going to preach it as gospel.

Other useful talent related points to add would be how the 4% from spell warding stacks with the 6% from RF, why vindication is worthless, etc...

 

g0dsmacked

i maintain 1200 threat per second when tanking a mob, and can peak at 1700. when i use avenging wrath i can maintain 1600 for 20seconds. with the new patch my threat should not change but i am giving up argent defender for 10% stam, and the expertise.

 

• Chicken

Lots of that is going to come when I (finally) get around to adding a talent section. I'll include the obvious selection of specs as well, but I'll mostly cover talents and their mechanics.

Any contributions in that direction I also welcome; I'm not particularly good at math at any real level, especially when it involves probability.

 

g0dsmacked

depends on your threat generation, i have 410 spell damage and maintain about 1000 tps on aoe targets so warlocks and mages cannot take the threat away from me, generaly i call the aoe about 4-6 seconds worth of concencrations after they get to me. argent defender is great for getting stragglers, and try to get a shadow priest in your group you will need the mana if you are using your spells right, cast heals till they get to you, and remeber having concencrate up is more important than anything else. then shield block, and on aoe mobs i use JOW and SOW cause mana regen in melee actualy causes a good deal of threat.

 

zably

Edit for me being stupid.

 

kalbear

Reckoning can trigger on (at the very least) partial blocks, and i believe it can trigger on full blocks and parries.

 

• Chicken

That's blatant misinformation. Reckoning has a 10% chance to proc whenever you take damage; including damage taken by spells and partial blocks. It can not block on full blocks, misses, dodges, or parries, let's say 55% of your incoming attacks will be partial blocks, and thus Reckoning will still proc and provide a threat boost.

I'm 100% certain it works like this, because I've seen Reckoning proc when tanking things which do not use up Holy Shield... And I've tried out the other side of when it doesn't proc by pulling approximately half Ragefire Chasm in a heavy avoidance setup, meaning that none of the mobs were capable of hitting me at all, and in that situation I had no Reckoning procs.

 

Denogran

Personally, I think the first post is a good place to have condensed information in an easy to understand format, and include the nitty-grity math in posts later in the thread. That way someone just looking for a quick answer could scan the first post, while someone looking for the applicable math could do a search in the thread.

That decision is up to Chicken though, as he's the one doing the main post.

 

Eir

Reckoning and Retribution Aura proc off partial blocks. This is really basic information and trivial to test and yet so many people don't know this.

Probably worth including in the OP.

 

zably

My bad. Forgot to test partial blocks.

 

PandemicXTC

Can someone else confirm this? I was under the impression that mana generation did not generate threat (or at least Vamp Touch doesn't.)

 

Foofu

I don't really care if the math is in the first post or not, but it needs to be somewhere and linked from the first post once the talent section is in place. No one has ever done anything but write down a mildly convincing guess with made up numbers that 1-hand spec is better (in either of the paladin tanking threads).

In the few minutes I've spent with my own WWS parses I did not come to the same cut and dry conclusion. My own parses have a high enough reckoning contribution (Both across the entire dungeon and against single bosses) that it was coming out equal to or ahead of 1-hand spec. It is completely possible I'm just seeing a string of WWS parses with higher than average reckoning uptime or lower than average Consecration/JoR contribution, or that the selection of bosses I see is too small, but I've seen enough WWS parses that don't favor 1-hand spec that I would really like to see a solid post proving I'm just an outlier before we push the 1-hand spec agenda more. A bunch of WWS parses from paladins at all levels of progression would probably be even better, since reckoning's value is so encounter driven.

In the other thread we basically had a little napkin math and ran with it and we've come to accept it as 'the way things are', and I'm not convinced we've come to nearly as definitive of a conclusion as we like to think.

Wrong and wrong on both reckoning and redoubt, as already pointed out by others. Which is exactly why it would be useful to have this stuff in the first post.

 

◊ Oggie

VT generates insane threat, but it's threat credited to the shadowpriest. JoW is 'targetless' so it credits to the gainee and can't properly be processed (JoL works the same). I have no idea about SoW.

 

Rhî

Updated my little project: Tankadin-Threat

 

Fiola

I'm going from memory here, but in the combat log, isn't it -

VT:
"You gain 15 mana from S-Priest's VT"

JoW:
"You gain 74 mana from your Judgement of Wisdom"

JoL:
"Your Seal of Light heals you for 94" (I think the notes say they're changing this next patch)

 

Fuseflower

I am 20 holy / 41 prot right now. We are currently working on Kael. I have found that a prot paladin can be useful in some fights in the eye (al'ar, kael, solarian) and SSC (hydross, tidewalker, karathress).

How useful is a prot paladin for Hyjal/BT? I am asking this because I kinda want to go ret once 2.3 comes about and because I am pretty sure that a paladin cant really do anything special on any of the bosses in BT/Hyjal.

What are your opinions on this? If a guild has to choose between a prot paladin or a ret paladin, what is more useful for Hyjal/BT?

 

• Chicken

For Hyjal Prot Paladins are an excellent addition; you're close to trivializing the trash waves. Hyjal bosses we're alright on too; two of the bosses regularly spawn demon adds, though one of those also does AoE silences a lot which is a pain. On Anetheron it's easier relative to other tanks to grab the infernals, and I'm pretty sure that in serious "Oh damn sleep" situations you can bubble out of it, which is an advantage neither druids nor warriors have. It's quite likely by the by that as long as you have good Prot gear you'll still be a good enough tank on the trash even if you're not specced Prot.

We're less valuable as Prot Paladins specifically compared to other tanks in BT though (That is to say, our unique advantages aren't really anything you'll need to take advantage of in BT; Prot Paladins are still viable for tanking near everything in the instance), but if your guild has enough other tanks a Prot Paladin isn't something they'll miss. BT also features a fair number of more healing intensive fights in which it's harder for your healing paladins to keep up judgements, which makes a Ret Paladin rather nice in there. The only fight in BT in which I can say a Prot Paladin is better than other tanks is on Shade of Akama; however that fight is trivial enough for it not to matter, and some careful planning by your mages or other forms of CC can easily make up for things.

I'd say my personal verdict, if your guild is cool with that and has at least four other tanks, is that you'd be more useful overall as Ret.

 

Lansky

I do not see dropping Anticipation as something that is of high viability ever. The 20 defense skill when you are attempting to put together a resist set is enormous. My resist sets would be much weaker if i had to find more resilience/defense to cram into them. FR especially is already so horribly devoid of defense rating that it is painful.

 

Reynard

Hey all,

First off, thanks to the OP for starting an excellent, and much appreciated thread. I don't have much to add to what's already been said, so instead I'll just offer a couple of small tanking addons. I wrote these some time ago for my own use, but figured I'd upload them to Curse for anyone else who might find them helpful.

TankTotals was written because I wanted a clean, minimal display of the most important "hidden" tanking stats. It basically consists of a transparent window indicating your overall avoidance, mitigation, total block value, and crush immunity status. The main benefits of this addon versus the macros included in the first post are that:

• the values of each change dynamically as new buffs are applied / gear is swapped
• it can be set to show figures appropriate to standard level 70 enemies or Boss mobs - in the latter case, for instance, crush immunity is indicated by a 100% rating rather than 102.4%
• it sums and displays your total block value, including that from gear, strength and talents
• it warns when your crush immunity drops, for instance when Holy Shield fades, by changing the color of the "Crushing" stat from green to red

Here's a screenshot of the TankTotals window:



BoP-B-Gone, as the name implies, automatically removes BoP as well as any buff that either masks (DS, DP) or reduces (BoS, GBoS) your threat. It also allows you to specify a delay before these buffs are removed - so if you're absolutely certain that you can afford to give yourself, say, 1.5 seconds of immunity in a fight, you can. It essentially provides the same function as the Divine Shield macro in the original post, but also means you don't have to worry about removing Salvation or getting BoPed in the middle of a fight. It can also be toggled on or off at any time with /bbg active.

As I said, I hope these can be of use to people - they should work fine for warrior and bear tanks as well. Feel free to make suggestions/requests on the comment threads!

 

galzohar

Those addons sound like a great idea for your full time pally tank, although they'll probably need updating in a few days in 2.3 (or at least so they say...)

 

spitfireNZ

Thanks for starting this thread Chicken, as a raiding Pally tank i have learned a lot.

Q. At the moment i tank with minimal Spell damage, SoB (I'm horde) and a kings defender with mongoose. Next patch ill be ditching reckoning for Combat Expertise which means that i also loose a tone of threat... ( 29% of all my damage comes from auto attacking + Reckoning Procs).

To solve this problem I'm going to switch to a spell damage weapon (Merc Glad or the one from ZA) and SoR, but i have a dilemma... I cant decide between 40 Spell Damage or Mongoose. I know 9/10 paladins use a spell damage weapon with 40 spell damage but, is it really that much better? Do i loose too much threat?

In my eyes Mongoose = 5.2% dodge (kings) and a very minor threat boost and seems to proc constantly with my current (reckoning) build. I also believe in putting mitigation and avoidance before threat generation.

What do you think? Merc Gladiator MH with 40 Spell Damage or Goose?

And by the way, if you haven't guessed already, I'm new to the forums so sorry if this has been answered before :P

 

Left

Thank you for your continued work on this. This is a valuable tool as i try to level up and plan gearing for my paladin.

In response to this, using the default gear in the spreadsheet, a 0-49-12 "Cookie Cutter" spec, and swapping the points back and forth between Reckoning and 1H Spec, I get 912 TPS for Reckoning and 923 TPS for 1H Spec. I was using a mob of type "Unspecified" and an attack type of "Dual Wield". Pretty much everything else was default (healing per second received, ranks of all abilities, etc).

This would theoretically be a "best case scenario" for reckoning given top-end gear (DW, non-undead mob), but 1H spec beats it out slightly in that situation. Oddly, however, if I switch to an "unarmed" or "two-handed" mob attack type, total TPS jumps by about 50 and Reckoning starts to edge out 1H spec ever so slightly. That seems suspect to me; why would Reckoning proc more/be better against that sort of mob attack? And why would threat be so much higher?

This is, of course, a very rough test since I used an arbitrary gear set and the relatively arbitrary default incoming HPS number. But, since we have the spreadsheet tool available, maybe some people could run numbers for their own gear and specs?

EDIT: Following up, it seems that Holy Shield threat as calculated actually DROPS when a dual wielding mob is selected, as does seal threat from seal of righteousness. It looks like the spreadsheet is expecting you to get hit less when fighting a dual wielder, not more (which isn't making sense to me). Unfortunately, I can't verify or find my own thought process error b/c I'm not sure how to show the hidden sheets where all the threat work is calculated. Can anyone else confirm?

 

Prinsesa

While I can't speak for Vampiric Touch, any non-regen energy gains cause threat. This includes mana potions, rage potions, Thistle tea and, more importantly, Spiritual Attunement.

Assuming a single target, SA would contribute threat equal to your (damage taken * 0.5 * 0.1) as you're being healed up.

That's probably because a dual-wielding mob suffers from dual-wielding's higher base miss rate?

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Shalcker

Dualwielding mobs are generally assumed to get +19% miss penalty on melee auto-attacks (same as dualwielding rogues/warriors/shaman). WWS also show dualwielding bosses with increased miss rate. So yes, you'll get less hits from dualwielding mobs, even though there will be more attacks per second. Depending on your gear, that additional miss can outweight extra hits and produce less holy shield procs overall.