Didnt know that. I was merely posting all possible interrupts to spell casting that all classes were privy to, taking Pve into consideration before pvp (where stun isnt, and is a valid form of interrupt).

I was just showing the comparison that if prot-paladins wanted as many interrupts (total, not useable) that other classes had they have to get it from another tree, and it's 31-deep. That's why I put "to a lesser extent" before repentance.

So far though, warriors have the lead with possible spell interrupts, followed by DK's, druids, then us.

In TBC that advantage was extremely high AoE threat. I think that still seems to be the case in WotLK, though the lead we had in TBC is now considerably smaller.

The other main 'advantage' of a paladin in TBC was the ability to remain uncrushable against a large number of incoming hits thanks to Holy Shield. I used quotes there because it never really ended up being an advantage outside of tanking Prince Malchezaar way back when Karazhan was fresh and new. Other dual wielding bosses either cannot crush, or their hits are weak enough that a warrior just shrugs them off. With all bosses now unable to crush, how Holy Shield's charges and reflective damage will stack up against things like Critical Block and the Shield Block changes is debatable.

Ranged threat was an advantage in TBC with Righteous Defense and Avenger's Shield. Heroic Throw seems to have been implemented to slightly counter that, though we still have the edge against multiple mobs. Righteous Defense remains a multi-target taunt in a world where others are single target (outside of Challenging Shout/Roar), but the advantage of getting a mob to aggro you without having to walk over and bash it over the head has been improved upon by Death Grip and marginalised by an in-combat Charge.

In TBC we had the advantage of removing physical debuffs with a quickly cancelled Blessing of Protection, or removing all debuffs using Divine Shield. We still keep that advantage in WotLK - it's even better now that Hand of Protection doesn't overwrite our blessing - but with the change to Divine Protection doing so will lock us out of our panic ability. And now with a three minute Forbearance debuff, may God help us if there's another Fear fight.

Holy Wrath and Exorcism may help to give us an edge in threat for certain encounters if we have the mana to use them, particularly in Naxxramas where damn near everything is undead. The advantage outside of that is precisely zero. Turn Evil may provide some small help for undead or demon adds?

Our threat is all based upon the amount of Holy damage we deal. If our tier sets had been stacked with Holy damage instead of generic spell damage we would have been amazing, but our threat still scaled very well in TBC. Damage or threat multiplier effects (such as Seethe in the Reliquary of Souls encounter) massively increase our threat. In WotLK, the other tanking classes are also getting a more paladin-like system of scaling damage rather than fixed values, potentially lessening our advantage. It does still look like we'll be scaling very well, although this time with Strength more than with Spell Power.

We have the unique ability to use caster consumables, enchants and buffs in order to increase our damage, resource regeneration and threat. Not exactly an historical advantage since the traditional melee buffs were mostly useless for paladins, but it's something which warriors and druids can't do. Destruction Potions, Wizard Oil, Blackened Basilisk, Flask of Blinding Light, Wrath of Air Totem, Totem of Wrath, Mana Stream Totem, Misery, Improved Divine Spirit, the old Power Infusion, Avenging Wrath, Blessing of Wisdom and many others I can't think of are things that we can use and the other tanks can't. In WotLK we've been changed to scale from Attack Power... as well as Spell Power. With most party buffs going raidwide that means we'll get the benefit of both caster and melee buffs, which means a clear advantage over other tanks now that certain buffs don't stack.

We also still bring buffs and debuffs. A lot of them can be duplicated by a Holy or Retribution paladin, but everyone wants at least two out of the three big blessings - Blessing of Wisdom, Blessing of Might and Blessing of Kings. Blessing of Sanctuary is amazing for tanks and could work out extremely useful for fights with a lot of incoming raid damage. Judgements of Wisdom and Light still help to keep blue bars full and the melee alive. Improved Devotion Aura will make healers happy when the Restoration druids are missing. The three Resistance auras are almost mandatory for any fight which uses the corresponding element, with the exception of Shadow if you have a priest. The Hand buffs (Freedom, Protection, Sacrifice and Salvation) provide a good chunk of utility.



That's more than enough strengths to provide an incentive for the raid working around our weaknesses. I can't actually think of many weaknesses that haven't been addressed.

- We have lower health than warriors (and death knights?), but we also have higher stamina scaling.
- We had no spell interrupts, but we now have Hammer of Justice and we still have other classes who can do that for us.
- We still can't break fear effects, but all priests have Fear Ward and we can equip a PvP trinket.
- We're still vulnerable to mana draining effects, but mana burn also deals damage for Spiritual Attunement and the new Blessing of Sanctuary helps us even more. Our small mana pools were actually an advantage for the Soul Scream mana burn in Reliquary of Souls.
- We made poor OTs since we have to be taking damage and getting healed in order to continue generating threat, but we now have Divine Plea and Hand of Sacrifice to assist us.
- We're crippled by silence effects. Yeah. That one doesn't change. Bosses with a silence need to work like other boss effects: all targets except the tank.
- We're unable to taunt a single target, which could end up being an issue. Two paladins tanking the Four Horsemen encounter is the example I keep hearing about, where the the paladin on Boss A taunts Boss B, while the paladin who was on Boss B before tries to taunt Boss A but ends up taunting them both.
- Umm... we're forced to wear unflattering pink armour sets?

I believe that recent testing has revealed that SHOR and HOTR are castable through silence. Seals would still be proccing through auto-attacks, Ret Aura (if used) procs through silence, as does Holy Shield for whatever duration is left between its last cast and the silence's duration.

That realistically only cuts out Judgement, Consecration and Holy Shield (if it was a very long silence and/or you timed the Shield refresh badly). It's not perfect, but we'd still be putting out more than half our TPS even during periods of silence.

Last I heard, ShoR and HotR were considered spells. But if they're physical... well, that changes things. Silence in WotLK will give us a slight limp rather than putting us in a wheelchair.

A poster called PsiVen over on Maintankadin has already done that. Turns out that the top four weapons are all caster weapons.

While this is true, I am of the impression that Blizzard is aware of it and will be/are taking steps to fix it.

Even if they're not, the differences are pretty marginal. The top threat weapon is only a couple hundred TPS ahead of the bottom threat weapon; when you're looking at 3k+ TPS with the DPS coming nowhere near (as is the current case on Beta) that couple hundred TPS is pretty much negligible. I'd rather have another couple points of avoidance over TPS in that case, especially since avoidance is a little harder to stack in Wotlk.

As far as I can tell HotR is currently the only spell we can cast while silenced, though longer duration seals also mitigate the effects. It's still a huge annoyance to be silenced while tanking.

I'm pretty happy with the state of tank weapons. The ones with actual tanking stats are now quite close behind the threat weapons to the point where it might be comparable to a warrior's choice. The effects of threat under the new scaling mechanics are very much up in the air but it's looking like we will have a fair choice for once.

Is there some change to divine shield mechanics / de aggroing that explains our 4 set bonus on the naxx tanking set, or is it some sort of cruel joke?

Nax 10 Set Paladin Tank - Item Set - World of Warcraft

I don't see what's wrong with it.

Consider the +3 seconds to Divine Protection +3 seconds to "Shield Wall" and the Divine Shield one as a bonus they didn't have to give us.

I guess Divine Shield being on there could be intended for Divine Guardian?

All of the tanking classes' T7 4 set bonus is +3 seconds to their Shield Wall abilities. Ours is Divine Protection. Divine Shield is only there for consistency, I wouldn't read too much into it.