Just a small clarification, Imp. Expose Armor now reduces the energy cost of Expose Armor instead of extending the duration.

I think Reckoning is a fun ability.

However, it is too expensive for what small dps/threat it gives, so reduce it to 3 points or add something else to the ability.


Regarding no tanking stats on caster weapons, DKs currently do not have tanking stats on their 2H weapon and DW tanking is a bad idea.

Well, I guess I was just explaining the background, not so much justifying it. (And man, the way our talent trees were in 2005, I didn't see any need to feel guilty about violating the spirit of the talent for PvP. )

I guess the greater dynamic at work here is that the components of our threat generation are changing in relative importance. HotR and SotR are adding a huge chunk of new threat. It's not unreasonable to expect that those two abilities will account for 50% or more of our level 80 threat generation (including the extra seal damage from HotR). So the total value of all the old stuff is being cut in half. Since Reckoning only affects autoattack and seal damage, both of which are in that "old stuff" category, it's becoming a lot less important in WotLK simply because the things it affects are becoming less important.

And as I pointed out earlier, in TBC Reckoning can be very nice when you're using a two-hander, but in WotLK there's no longer any reason why a prot paladin would ever want to use a two-hander (that I can think of, anyway) so that benefit is gone too.

It does have other uses: SoW and SoL can leverage it nicely, and this actually improves in WotLK because those seals are stronger. Overall though, it's still losing quite a bit of its power. History is passing it by, you might say.

You bring up a good point. I was thinking the issue was that you can't really avoid taking it in an MT build, as small as the increase would be it would still be better than any other option (when not speccing kings). However, the introduction of the new 11pt talent should solve that issue.

Actually, we're not, at least, not in terms of the actual amount mitigated. I don't want to sound like I think the sky is falling, but we've lost our health advantage and any mitigation advantage we once had through blocking. I'd really like to see some Naxx parses and compare warrior to paladin mitigation in actual settings. I would suspect there would be a significant difference.

I always liked reckoning. It's kinda fun, and the effect makes sense with the name given. It's highly useful in some scenarios, not so useful in others. You can easily spec with or without it.

What do you guys think of a 39/24/08 build in cases where you don't need the stamina boost of deeper prot? Instant cast Holy Lights are hawt.

Ehum, what exactly would be the point of that build?
You just took random talents without a specifical aim. That's just a mix of DPS, healing and tanking talents.

Sure, the average amount blocked comes out more or less equal. But the paladin still mitigates far more reliably.

Just consider the "middle-ground" case of 50% m+d+p. During the 10 seconds Shield Block is up, the warrior is blocking every blow that lands, with a very high block value, which is fantastic mitigation. But once it expires, he's stuck at his base block rate (15% block, or 30% of all landed blows) and his normal block value (crit-blocks aside) for 30 seconds until SB finishes. Basically 25% of the time he's a brick wall, 75% of the time he's rather normal.

A paladin in the same gear has a permanent block rate of 40% (barring HS charge exhaustion and assuming no WotLK analog for the Libram of Repentance), meaning he's consistently blocking 80% of all incoming blows all the time. When Redoubt procs, that number goes up to 100%; overall you're looking at between 85% and 90% of all incoming blows all the time blocked by the paladin.

Now there's other factors to balance like the whole RF-vs-DS thing and all. But in terms of stabilizing the incoming damage against unpredicted spikes and such, the paladin's blocking is helping the healer far more than the warrior's blocking is. And the analysis above assumes the warrior is spamming Shield Block as often as he can, in which case he's forfeiting his biggest advantage in blocking, which is his ability to burst his blocking when needed. If he's actually using it appropriately, his overall blocking will be even less.

And interestingly enough, the very page you linked to also linked to this post.

Updated figures ( Maintankadin :: View topic - (Build 8926) WotLK TPS Weapons Spreadsheet )

The changes have significantly altered the relative threat of abilities. Here's where I stand right now in Beta with standard buffs (Kings, Might, Fort, Mark). Early Naxx gear.

Ability: TPS
ShoR: 1314
SoV: 526
Cons: 448 (280 Glyphed)
JoV: 326 (359 Glyphed)
HS: 261
HotR: 208
White: 160

Adding Glyph of Judgement and 1HWS, total TPS is 3600 with a full rotation, 3313 without HS (-8%), 2820 without HS+Cons (-22%). So with these numbers I would say the new Divine Plea will be able to keep us competitive at OT threat, however it's due for another tuning pass as DPS clearly are not approaching 4k TPS.

I'm still quite shocked at the level of tanking DPS. Tanks currently generate stupid amounts of damage, more than most part of the DPS.
With the numbers posted above, that's more than 2k DPS done by the tank.

By the way, nobody posted about it, and I honestly didn't know till I just logged onto beta to mess around some, but the new Divine Plea is a 1 minute cooldown for 25% of mana pool. It's prot pally bloodrage!

I was not happy when it was a 5 min cooldown- that's too long to be useful while running 5mans as a system for quickly regaining enough mana, or during an avoidance streak, or while OTing, but (and I assume everyone else who's talking about it knew this) at 1 minute it's highly attractive.