The point is trading <AD with more threat and therefore less tanking stats on the gear> for <a survivability gear with more EH and avoidance and threat specc> (which is 40/21, not 41/20, btw).
I, personally, take rather better survivability on the gear for all the time than a talent that hopefully will do what it's made for, but doesn't help much if you sum it up.

Spelldamage on gear costs us lots of tanking stats. With 40/21 you can sacrifice much of it without having trouble with threat.

(Making a new post for purposes of topic separation)

What are people interested in seeing in WotLK for prot paladins (both baseline tanking abilities and talents)?

My thoughts:

• Feral druids are getting a fear break at 51 points; prot warriors are getting two AoE threat generators (one base, one talented). The general idea seems to be that the tanking classes should be more freely interchangeable. Accordingly, I'd like to see us get:
  • Some kind of fear break on a reasonable cooldown (<1 minute)
  • Some way to deal better with PvE silence effects. Making Holy Shield physical rather than Holy would be a step in the right direction.
  • Some kind of proactive oh-shit button (that doesn't cause mobs to de-aggro). The rumored idea of a short-term buff to massively increase block value could work here.
• A bit more streamlining of the talent tree. It's incredibly bloated right now. Specifically:
  • Far too many points in the tree, most of them in 5-points talents that could be reduced to 3 or 2. Easy candidates for this are Ardent Defender (could be 3 points), Reckoning (Could be 2-3 points), and One-hand spec (2-3 points at 2% each). Improved Holy Shield really should just be folded into base Holy Shield; I'm mystified as to why this was even a separate talent in the first place.
  • Having both talented blessings in the same tree is bad. There are several ways to solve this; making Kings baseline would probably be the most straightforward. On a similar note, Sanctuary needs changes; right now it's one of the last blessings used in a raid. Adding extra block value to it could be nifty, and would give prot warriors something to enjoy as well.
  • Deflection needs to be more accessible. It belongs in the Ret tree certainly, but prot warriors can get access to it on the first tier of Arms, whereas paladins needs to plow 10 points into Ret just to get this staple taking talent.
• Finally, prot paladins need something useful to do when not tanking. Improving our healing might help a bit, but I don't think it's really the answer; most times it will just mean that the prot paladin will be the first healer benched. The rumored Judgement of Protection (-5% to all damage dealt by the target, I think?) could work here, although of course nobody wants a situation where one spec of one class is required for an optimal raid.
  
• It sure would be fun to get an ability to toss people around. Call it "Grip of Justice" or something like that.

But where are you going to make that sacrifice?
In T4 content a spell damage weapon and a suit of warrior gear is enough without Sanctity.
In T5 most of the best upgrades come with spell damage built in.
In T6 the only situation I can imagine is if you want to wear both the Illidan helm and the Akama legs and not worry about the threat loss from breaking your set bonus.
In Sunwell you'd really have to try to get rid of your set bonus...

It seems to me that the effect of your spec has a far larger impact than changing your gear around, at least until you start putting on caster gear. 0/40/21 in full mitigation is always going to be worse at it with better threat than 0/49/12.


I'd like to see a focus on increasing block value and consolidation of talents as well some sort of fear/silence/burn immune mechanism. Perhaps a 51-point talent that simply gives a passive immunity to silence + mana drain, along with a baseline fear-breaking ability.

Cooldown management is pretty strange at the moment, as Consecration, Holy Shield and Judgement all tend to line up together. As much as I don't want to see Holy Shield get the treatment Shield Block has seen in Alpha, I suspect that's what will happen. In this case we definitely need more variety in tanking spells. Exorcism, Holy Wrath and Avenger's Shield all have potential to be reworked into standard tanking abilities, but a brand new offensive ability would spice things up nicely.

I've been tanking Nalorakk every ZA CD for the past two months. He hasn't once resisted a single RD since I began tanking him; I've come to think that he isn't even capable of resisting taunts.

Also, I used to use the RD macro but haven't once used it since 2.4. And again, no resists.

Three biggest issues of prot paladins:

1. More things to do while tanking. Pressing 3 buttons in 10 seconds is not enough. Two or three more skills with similar cooldown should be added - some TPS, some short-term survivability buffs.
2. Better single target threat. In late BT/Sunwell paladins have by far the worst TPS of 3 tanking classes, even on demons. This may be fixed while fixing #1.
3. Better survivability when there's no warrior to thunderclap for you. Without TC bitch paladins take ~20% more melee damage compared to warriors. This also could be fixed while fixing #1.

Anti-caster abilities will all go to DK I guess... Prot tree streamlining and silence immunity were already mentioned... maybe a second taunt ability to deal with resists, or maybe remove the cooldown from RD, leaving just GCD.

Ive been reading and trying to look up if people and blogs regarding 5/5 reckoning vs 3/3 precision.
Only thing i keep coming across is that precision helps for the taunts.

Im currently 0-49-12: The World of Warcraft Armory

The way i was thinkin the paladin armor build was focusing on avoidance since majority off the bosses i tank are hajal and BT. the idea of having high block rating/value seems more useless when dealing with hard hitting bosses (just my opinion) I stack as much avoidance while keeping my spl dmg 400+.
But im just wondering if having 5/5 recking gonna be usefull when a paladin is rellying on avoidance tanking.

Put more effort into spelling.


Anyway, reckoning is really useful for leveling, but not for avoidance tanking plus it increases your chance to get parried.

Precision makes your Taunt, AS, and Seal/Judge of Righteous hit more often.

Precision > Reckoning for tanking.

I tank the skellies for our guild and the best thing I've found is simply to stand in the middle (we use the middle-north area) and spam consecrate. I toss my shield at the first three that spawn and I try to taunt or exorcism them if I see them loose, but basically there's no way you can gather up that many mobs spawning from long trails all over the place - it's up to your raid to bring the skellies to you. You (or your raid leader) need to hammer it into your healers' heads that they must keep your consecration between themselves and the skellies and must not allow themselves to get gibbed (and they have to call for BoPs if they're going to need them). Use earthbinds, traps, and piercing howl to slow them down and help with the kiting-to-you.

The protadin basically stands still and simply keeps as many skellies in his front arc as possible until they're all gathered, and then spams consecrate a lot while being prepared to strafe to avoid the breaths (don't let them hit you from behind - once you have the whole pack they'll kill you pretty fast if you lose all your avoidance and block). We make AoE wait until after the first breath and threat is a non-issue (as is DPS on the skells - even with just three AoEers they're dead before she lands easily).

I don't have the gear to tank Felmyst herself yet but as soon as I saw the fight it did occur to me that the most efficient way to do the fight would be for one protadin to tank the whole thing. Paladins aren't the best for handling corrosion (it really favours either a huge health pool or cooldowns) but that's a comparatively easy part of the fight (and you can bring an extra healer anyways since you're carrying one less tank). Threat may be a concern - she has a pretty slow swing speed (though the larger "rage" pool will let the paladin gain more out of her heavy damage during corrosion and weak damage outside it, since a warrior or druid quickly rage-caps while she's hittng for 9-11k and then is rage starved when she's hitting for 5ishk). You could also hit her with exorcism as she flies overhead during the breaths - not a lot, but it's more than a druid or warrior could do during the air phase (wouldn't try that until you're comfortable moving the skells around and not getting MCed though... and watch out for the box boss!).

I have to be honest. I find it hard to believe that a paladin could be out TPS on a demon single target.

Between seal of vengeance, exorcism, consecration, avenger's shield, avenging wrath, judgement, holyshield, and sanc! I just.... no... Your paladin is doing something wrong.

Am I the only person who sees Avenger's Shield as a fairly substantial loss of putting 21 points in Ret? While it's not the greatest talent we have, it's certainly useful. Even if 0/48/13 and 0/40/21 can imitate each other through various gearsets, the simple fact is 0/40/21 doesn't get this tool, thus restricting it to a 10 yard range on its attacks (undead/demons being the exception). The added range from AS is a notable benefit and shouldn't be ignored.

As an extreme example, I couldn't imagine trying to do Al'ar without AS. It's also useful for grabbing large trash packs allowing hunters to MD the other tank(s) for picking up initial DPS targets, getting Supremus back into place when he switches from phase 2 to phase 1, getting the initial hit on each Hyjal trash wave, picking up Leo after WW, dumping early threat into a boss so DPS/heals can start sooner without fear of pulling aggro right off the bat... The list goes on. It certainly makes sense to compare the two specs in the most extreme circumstances, but that doesn't change the fact that diversity still comes in handy.

I've got a quick question for all out there, How does Block Value effect a Paladin's threat generation and TPS?

I ask because I am learning the pros/cons of specing out of Recking and Block Value and into Imp Devotion for the 3 points in PoJ (or another talent) for situational boss fights. Block Value effects threat but I am unable to find any topic showing % or addressing this.

Does anyone know how much TPS I lose for the loss of 30% Block Value? Or is it just so small that it won't matter?