Likewise, alot of the trash is very AOE oriented and although we out gear it, you can basically ignore CC on alot of the pulls and just AOE it down, even when we had a scout call in some adds they can be aoe tanked rather easily.

We also pushed the Fireboss to 35% faster then anticipated and decided to push it and I tanked all the birds off to the side and blew them up, I used LoH and had 32 odd +fire debuffs but it's better then waiting for more hatchers.

I also discovered, which I assume is a bug that was overlooked; But during P3 Zul'jin with the tornadoes even if you don't use any abilities and just melee-refresh a judgement you will be zapped. From memory melee refreshing a seal re-casts it and although it takes no mana you will take a nature hit for your trouble it's more then worth it for this phase for rogues/fury warriors and F.Driuds, though.

I think many of you are being a bit to conservative in your tanking style. My personal choice is to lean more toward threat than you all do. but then our raids usualy run healer lite and dps heavy so maybe thats why I produce so much threat. I go with a 0/40/21 build. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft which shows I do about 17% more holy damage than most do. so if you take the .5tps per spell damage that chicken lists on the first post I get probably closer to .7 per spell damage. Avenger shield is unreliable at best, and spikey. so this allows me to wear more tank gear and have to worry about spell damage less. Though I still sit at 410 spell damage. I have had great sucess doing this and am a MT for my guild.

I think spell miss is better than 4% reduction, and it also fits into my build nicely.

I think reckoning is nessesary.

Argent defender just got debunked by 10% more stam. As I have been tanking since the patch and the healers have only had praises at my health total and havent notice me not having argent defender.

I just added the percision, and am happy with it.

(edit: Screwed up my talent build on the calculator, i fixed it now)

Avenger's Shield is the only ability we have that we can realistically hit cap, along with Righteous Defense.

Ardent Defender is more powerful than ever with higher stamina totals. You're also missing 2 talent points in Sacred Duty which gives more stam per point than Combat Expertise.

This stuff isn't conservative tanking style, it's math. I definitely agree with wanting someone to have Sanctity Aura, but it shouldn't be you.

I agree with him completely. Our prot trees are so bloated now that no pally can get EVERY talent that they want. Pre-2.3, a sanctity aura build seemed to be a bit more viable because our lower HP and somewhat crappy itemization had us leaning towards a high-threat, multi-target niche. With how much HP we got in 2.3 along with better itemization, seeing a pally MT stuff is no longer uncommon. Especially if you are your guild's MT you should be absolutely fine on threat.

Think of it this way: You are tackling content that warriors have tanked traditionally and they more or less have a lower threat output than you. As long as you have +400 spelldamage, tanking everything in T5 content shouldnt be an issue with regards to threat. I've tanked pretty much everything in SSC and TK and some of them hit VERY hard. I have NEVER had an issue with threat however. Maintaining more than 1,000 TPS is not too hard and any DPS that exceeds that is doing at LEAST 1,300 DPS. A good dpser in T5 content seems to average around 1,000 DPS in most fights by what I've experienced. If they manage to exceed a tank doing 1,000 TPS on a tank and spank kind of boss they are just not watching their aggro.


If I were you, I'd recruit a ret pally

Well as I said we have a dps heavy raid, and when I can provide the 1300tps that I am , it allows for more dps over all raid. If a dpser is having to watch his aggro then he is not working toward his full dps potential. We have many dpsers who sit above the 1000dps mark and we are largely in t4 just begining our t5 content. Devo aura is of almost no worth and I would only use it as a secondary aura, and the ret aura should be the 3rd, and only if you dont need resists.

(edit: grammar)

Someone putting out with Salvation be doing 700tps from damage even if they have no other threat modifiers whatsoever, which almost every dps class/spec does. Overall tps might be a little higher from power/buff-gain threat, but there's no reason at all you should need 1300tps sustained at that level of progression.

This was what I came up with. And after all, after the other side dies, it really doesn't matter if I die or not, since I'm not providing that much in the way of damage on the boss to begin with.

Yeah I did this using that handy /cancelaura macro, Which I was also able to use on our second clear on the bear boss. Since he is tauntable and we lost our OT at ~20% popped DI - Taunt - Cancelaura - kill to clear the double bleeds.

We are perhaps the only tanking class capable of pulling this off, there is always SW though, I guess.

Just because I feel like doing some math:
Tank doing 1300 TPS.
Rogue gets 0.7*0.71 = 0.497 threat modifier (0.497 threat per damage). 1300 / 0.497 = 2615 DPS
Enh shaman: 0.7*0.7 = 0.49. 1300/0.49 = 2653 DPS

Even, in the worst case, a non-subtlety moonkin can bust out 1300 / 0.7 = 1857 DPS (and that's not even counting the 30% ranged buffer - if you count that it'd be 2.6k DPS again).

Obviously, here, your sustained TPS is overkill - yes, there's a difference between the DPS someone does when they're wary of the tank's TPS and the DPS they do when they know the tank has it solidly. However, doing twice as much threat as you need to, especially when you're throwing away obvious survivability boosts to do so, strikes me as a bad trade.

Tank role #1: Hold aggro.
Tank role #2: Stay alive.

These calculations are not factoring in Misdirects (More aggro), DPS giving you a few seconds to build aggro etc. It also doesn't factor in aggro drops (Fade, Feint, Feign Death, Invisibility, SoulShatter, Die+Ankh, etc.). When you factor these in, the number that dpsers have to do to pass you up goes way higher than 1300 TPS. Especially if you are your guild's MT godsmacked, you are generating PLENTY enough aggro if you can maintain 1000 TPS. I could maybe see if your guild utilized you for high-threat fights like Void Reaver or Leotheras. It's a completely different story if you're tanking Morogrim who hits like a freaking truck and DPS is off killing murlocs half of the time anyways ;-).

Like I said earlier, recruit a ret pally if your guild is serious about you MTing and invest max talent points into stam/mitigation.

Chain MD from a hunter works out to 25 TPS added.

(Fade is also completely useless as a threat reducer for a shadow priest, just FYI.)

I'd be hard-pressed to believe 1300 sustained TPS even with a 0/40/21 build ... Imp. Seal of the Crusader, Conviction and Sanc Aura are the only direct threat benefits you gain. I'm not even sure which threat abilities we have work off melee crit rate (white damage crit is pretty inconsequan, ISotC can easily be gotten once you get some more gear and can drop a few points out of parry (from a conventional 49/12 build) and Sanc Aura is only a 10% scaling on our holy damage. In short, the ret threat buffs you have mean you'd be sustaining 1100 TPS (or telling fibs) or thereabouts without them. That's still way overkill.

Not sure if it's been mentioned or not, but the [Illidari Runeshield] has been reported as dropping from BT Trash.

You may want to update the first post, w/ this new information.

For reference, first heard of it on wowhead, at this link: Illidari Runeshield - Items - World of Warcraft

The [Darkmoon Card: Vengeance] with it's high stamina and holy damage proc seems like it was made for a Protection Paladin, but in practice would the proc add to threat in a noticeable way, or would it fall into the same trap as Reckoning where it won't proc enough to really matter unless you're in an AOE tanking situation?

It's a 10% chance for 95~115 damage, or 105 damage.


Over time, that averages out to 10.5 damage per hit. With iRF, that's around 20~ threat each time you're hit.


Noticeable? I doubt it. (Making up numbers, I think you'd need a 10~20% increase/decrease to really notice the benefit of a single item; I'm sure you dealing much more than 20 threat on average each time you're hit )


Useful? Really depends on what you're doing, I think.

People tend to seriously overestimate the effect of gearing up on "when-hit" procs. A typical paladin entering Kara might have ~40% full avoidance; a typical T6 paladin will probably have around 50%. That's a ~16% drop in the number of hits you take; is that really going to make such a huge difference?

Anyway, as Fiola said, it's about 10 damage per hit on average, so look at it as a 40% buff to Ret aura that's active even when you're not using Ret aura. It also works on casters, which can be handy when it procs on a caster mob in someplace like Shattered Halls.

And on top of that, it's 51 stamina, so what's not to like?

I wear mine for the +51 stamina, the proc is just icing on the cake.

Point for Point you will get more threat out of each point of spell damage than just about anything else. The only thing that mongoose will do is increase your melee crit rate which is very insignificant with a spell damage weapon (since it has low base damage anyway).

Well you only need enough threat to get to where your dps can go full-out on your tank target. Past that, it's nearly pointless. So if you're at that stage, all the time, without the additional 40 spell damage, then don't worry about it, and go mongoose. If you're not, I'd say that holding threat on your target is more important than an inconsistent proc for avoidance's sake. That's really dependent on your dps, your threat, and your responsibilities though.

I would go for the +40 spell damage, you can make up the avoidance in other pieces.

I'm biased against chance-on-hit effects for tanking, especially for a class/spec that doesn't have instant weapon attacks to boost the proc rate.

I go for spelldamage on every tanking weapon. You may not need it right away, but chances are pretty good you will before you get a weapon upgrade. It's especially nice for resist fights where you have to sacrifice some of your other spelldamage gear. When I AoE tank Hydross adds, my weapon is basically the only spelldamage I've got.

I am not sure if anyone else would find this useful, but i think it would be great if there was a "Worthwhile Upgrades" section covering some of the different instances, faction and badge rewards.

It was not until yesterday that I realized that Zul'Jin drops a great chestpiece.

Just so you know for fun i have been seeing what i can get my peak TPS on a single target can get up to. I broke 2100( about a minute into the fight) tps on a lurker trash sat night. I will try to get a screenie next time.