I agree. This is exactly the change that I posted on maintankadin. The reason being that at 6%, I would still grab it for 1 pt in my prot spec for those cases where it would be better than anything else I could give them. It wouldn't be specced for in a 25 man raid, because I imagine you'll have a ret paladin casting it, but for general use I think a 6% version would be a nice option.

Edit: 2.0 weapon speed being better for taking advantage of reckoning is a fallacy due to the proc time vs the swing timer. You'll average just as much damage with a 2.0 speed weapon as with a 2.6 speed weapon. In either case, reckoning is terrible right now due to SoV being that much better than SoR, and probably shouldn't even be considered in a weapon discussion.

Here is just one example: Maintankadin :: View topic - Preliminary threat thoughts

The important part being: Reck -- 1.1% threat boost (white damage only), .37% per talent point, the lowest of any threat talent.

I don't have the exact numbers...but a "nice chunk" is not where it's at. It was less than 1% of damage in that parse, and I think it was hitting for something like 40 holy damage on every swing (it was less than 10% of the white damage from that swing). This will hardly change the numbers on reckoning, and its why it wasn't even factored in.

The "holy damage" applied by SoV fullstacked is usually less than 20 damage, not exactly something you would kill for.

I have a couple questions regarding Prot, both in Live and in WotLK.

1. When in the trash-tank/off-tank role, is there anything better than T6 tanking gear? Given that in a trash-tank role, spell-damage becomes greater in importance than when you're a main-tank, is there anything out there I should be wearing besides T6?

2. In Wrath, with the changes to Lay on Hands and Divine Protection, as well as our 51-pt Prot talent, are we now the equivalent of warriors in single-target tanking, and in the main-tank role? It was my understanding that in Live, they had more emergency buttons than us, and a bit more mitigation.

If Prot Paladins are indeed equal to warriors in single-target tanking in WotLK, then I have an observation that I don't know if anyone else has made: Improved Expose Armor.

A Rogue's Improved Expose Armor provides significantly more dps than a Warriors Sunder Armor. In WotLK, Mutilate looks to be a perfectly viable, maybe even the best, raid spec for a Rogue. If a particular guild has a Paladin MT instead of a Warrior, that Rogue is free to then use Expose Armor and provide a huge increase to the raid's dps.

I use SoV for fights like Magtheridon and Maulgar, where I'm going to be standing there for a long time building aggro before anybody even bothers to hit my target. Typical SoV hit is ~30 damage for me, depending on which gear set I'm wearing at the time. I believe they made it so ridiculously low so as to balance its threat against that of SoR, so that people would actually use both. Obviously, in 3.0 SoV is going to win hands-down, especially with the glyph.

That's a pretty good point about SoV stacking actually. The Reckoning issue is really my main concern from a balance/viability standpoint. Not that we're teetering on the edge of viability and gimping Reckoning will destroy us, but it's annoying to have this disconnect between what our talents want and what the itemization gives us.

I seem to be in the minority on this, so I'm probably just going to have to swallow my reservations and deal with it, and you guys are making good points that it won't matter much as far as end results go. I guess my main objection is just kind of aesthetic or psychological or whatever you want to call it: We have an instant weapon strike as a core tanking ability, and instant strikes favor slow heavy weapons. The developers have said they want tanking to be more fun, and deal more damage, and I agree, and I like that. Well part of that, to me, involves choosing your weapon based on its damage ability and picking something that "fits" the abilities of your class. Picking a slow weapon with high dps stats just feels better in that sense than taking a fast tanking weapon. All of this IMHO, of course.

If they removed or increased the swing-limit on Reckoning I guess I could live with it, though.

Well, GC did say at one point they envisioned DKs pretty much always tanking with a two-hander, because it helps them with parries in both directions -- they get parried a lot less with a 2h, and their own parries generate more damage and threat. And offhand, it's hard for me to see how they would overcome that to make DW tanking viable by comparison. But I really haven't followed DK abilities and trees at all, so there might be a perfect answer to that already that I just don't know about.

As far as the weapon selection thing, yeah, it seems more appealing for the rogue on the surface, but it actually ends up being worse for him. Suppose, as an abstraction, that you have a boss that drops three weapons, a tank weapon, a slow dps weapon, and a fast dps weapon (but only one per kill). Rogues want a slow MH and a fast OH, and tanks want a tank weapon. If you balance drops for equal numbers of rogues and tanks, the "balanced" drop rate is 33% for each of the three weapons.

Now suppose you have the same situation, but tanks don't get their own weapon. Half the tanks want a fast weapon, half want a slow weapon, and they use the same weapons the rogues want. Now the balanced drop rate is 50% for the fast weapon and 50% for the slow weapon.

Now the question: Which situation is better for a rogue who needs a new MH, if the tanks in the raid all have their weapons already? The second, because his chances of seeing the MH drop are better. The fact is that if all classes and specs can be satisfied by fewer total weapons, it's better for everyone because it reduces loot wasted, even though on the surface it looks like this raises all kinds of "loot stealing" issues.

Basically, having separate tank weapons is more "politically" appealing, but I still think my way is ultimately better for everyone.

I think last time I checked the full-stack extra damage amounted to a few percent of AP/SP worth of dps. Not nothing, but not a lot. I really think SoV/SoR twisting will end up being the highest threat in an infinite-mana situation, provided there's room in the rotation to do it. (Which depends on how much haste we can grab, and how many things stay on the GCD.)

Yeah, the interaction of Imp. EA and Sunder is a perfect example of the sort of redundant buffs/debuffs the devs are implementing.

Gear: Well, if you hadn't caught it, T6 in WotLK gets retrofitted with the spellpower removed and converted into strength. Since Consecration scales with AP as well as SP, this doesn't hurt trash tanking much; all you really lose is the scaling of HS with spellpower -- and I'd bet dollars to donuts that HS will be scaling with block value when all is said and done. Also keep in mind that for huge AoE situations, you can still switch to a spellpower weapon.

LoH/DP/survivability/"equal tanking": We'll see how it all shakes out. I believe the intent of the devs is to smooth out a lot of the "hard" distinctions between classes: warriors are getting more AoE threat and a reactive damage-shield ability, we're getting better single-target and OT threat plus an attack-slowing debuff, etc. In the end, I think we'll still be better AoE tanks and warriors will still be better single-target tanks, but the differences will be a lot smaller than they are now.

We also still have a new 11-point Prot talent coming our way, I assume.

EDIT: Beaten to the punch by Cathela.... Sort of.

Don't forget that with SoV fully stacked, we still have the option to juggle it with SoR for an added threat boost. I know that both spell costs have increased substantially, but then again so has our mana gain. The biggest problem appears to be finding a GCD to use to swtich between the two, but some napkin math should be enough to show if it's worthwhile or not. I know on live I do this a ton. Bloodboil comes to mind, as we just killed him last night. SoR during phase 1, then when he fel rages someone switch to SoV. When he goes back to phase 1 judge and switch back to SoR for a double-dipping of seal damage for the duration. After 8 seconds or so I switch back to SoV to (hopefully) refresh the stack and switch back to SoR to start it over again. If threat generation is a primary concern and mana is ample, this tactic should still work in WotLK, and it will actually be easier to do now that SoV has a 100% proc rate.

Bear in mind that tunnel vision in the form of "tanking = SoV" could prove to be a bit harmful, even if it's not as big a deal as it is today. SoV still needs to be stacked to 5 to compete with SoR in most cases, and even with a 2.0s weapon you're looking at around 10 seconds to fill out the stack. Even if the SoV DoT outpaces SoR damage, you still need to make up for the lost damage for those first 10 seconds. On bosses it's a no-brainer to go with SoV, but on trash you might still want SoR handy for burst threat situations.

I really don't understand Reckoning. It's a threat ability, but only for primary threat (no hit, no threat). It's multi swing based, and you can't turn it off, so Parry gibbed is still a concern, especially with a very fast weapon. It's also a proc, which means that even when you want it, you can't count on it.

Maybe I just never really got it, but I used to think I understood it. It gave us the ability to generate significant single target threat - but now we have much better abilities to handle focus threat as well as secondary (aoe) threat. Five points - just seems a bit much.

I always felt that reckoning should have been retooled to a 10% chance on crit to proc double-attack for a few seconds in ret as a dps talent and something new added to prot to compensate.

Personally, I wish if they would remove damage ranges form weapons entirely and just give everything an AP value instead.

Ah, interesting. Scaling with block value would have been more "appropriate" but this works just fine.

I guess part of it just comes from the history of Reckoning.

In its original form (free swing when you get crit) it was mostly something you used with a two-hander in PvP.

In TBC it's become a decent threat buff for tanking, and a decent dps tool to use with a two-hander when you're not tanking.

In WotLK, they've given us so many new ways to deal damage from a sword-and-board setup there's really not much need to even have a two-hander in your bag. And melee swings now account for an even smaller portion of total threat/dps, so its value there is reduced too.

I still think it'll be nice to have, but it's definitely a talent whose usefulness has degraded just due to changing circumstances.

Unless something has changed since the last Beta build I saw, Imp Expose Armor no longer offers any additional benefit over sunders. EA and Sunder both reduce armor by exactly the same amount now, and Imp EA extends EA's duration energy cost but does not increase it's effect.

EDIT: Sorry, they changed this again. The latest iteration of Imp EA reduces energy cost. The point still stands; it doesn't increase the armor reduction effect.

This is a significant change in 3.0, and more or less means that a rogue will never be asked to run EA as long as there is a prot warrior around to keep sunders up instead.