Eir

On a typical Hyjal trash clear, the DMF card proc makes up about 1% of my total damage and threat. So the Stamina is great when you're single target tanking and the proc is good for AoE tanking. No complaints from me!

 

Yenadar

I keep seeing people posting in here as if they only have 1 set of gear for pally tanking. More than any other tank, we need a wide selection of gear swaps to fully realize our tanking role in instances. As my guild's only pally tank for Hyjal and Black Temple, I shift gear sets slightly nearly every trash pull, and drastically EVER boss fight. Each shift is to maximize my effectiveness as 1/25th of the raid for the fight at hand, which is the foundation of every single player in that raid. To that end, as always, gear selection should be based on more than just 1 fight type. I probably carry way more than I should in gear, but I believe that no protection pally should limit themselves to 1 set, or even 2 sets. I carry gear swaps to handle trash avoidance, trash AoE, boss avoidance, boss off-healing, boss 'dps' (when I am not needed as a tank or a healer), plus whatever resist sets I need for that nights raiding.

Every protection pally should choose items based on which gear set that item will go with, and then use that set for the fight at hand.

The above post is has it right with this card, and the Vengance card is a permanent part of my AoE trashing tanking set, but is not present in my boss tanking set, my healing set, or my resist sets. It creates the most noticable difference in Hyjal, in waves with Necromancers or Banshees, in that I can hold aggro from Banshees or Necromancers for well over half the duration of the wave, even though they are at range and in the AoE pit where I am. I can work the camera, and see the fairly frequent popping of the trinket on these ranged attackers, enough that by the time melee or single target casters get to them, I still hold aggro fairly well until 30% or so. Yes, I can build threat faster on targets through other spells or attacks, but if my attention is being held by 50-60% of the trash wave that is directly on me, any threat I can build at all on the ranged to keep them off the healers is critical.

No, I do not use this trinket on boss fights, since those go to much more avoidance, reducing the frequency of procing, and it would only proc on a target I am already generating massive threat against, and isn't present in any fight where I am not expected to be the focus of damage.

Note: I have been noticing a few bugs with this, in that it procs off of ANYTHING, and sometimes the logic of how it reflects the damage is less than ideal. The most glaring example of this was in heroic Bot a few days ago. One of pulls just before the 3rd boss, I got that Curse of Doom like effect (not the name of the effect, can't recall it at the moment). We cleared the pull and were drinking when the debuff ended, dealt me shadow damage, and it apparently string matched to find out who dealt me damage. The trinket proc'ed on the left channeler in front of the boss, who we hadn't pulled yet. This pulled the group obviously, which was quite surprising to my party members who hadn't see the vengance proc damage floating above his head.

 

Denogran

Agreed full-heartedly, but I found the multiple tanking sets difficult to actually obtain till well through SSC/TK. I haven't found the need to have quite as many sets as you do, I tend to have a high-threat set, a high-mitigation/avoidance set, and my healing and "dps" sets. Sometimes I'll switch my weapon out to a [Mallet of the Tides] if the threat requirement is super low.



What do you use on boss fights instead? I really find the proc to be a fantastic little bonus on top of a really nice stamina piece personally. I haven't really found a better pair of trinkets than the [Spyglass of the Hidden Fleet] and [Darkmoon Card: Vengeance], especially considering how easy it is to get them ( the [Darkmoon Card: Vengeance] is basically a crafted item, and [Spyglass of the Hidden Fleet] drops off SSC trash).

 

kalbear

The [Goblin Rocket Launcher] is an excellent trinket too - free damage, high stamina, and you can get it fairly early. It's probably not as useful generically as the Spyglass but you get it a lot earlier and is very useful for single pulls.

 

Ragnor

I'm guessing he uses an oh sh*t trinket like the one from Moroes or Hydross for extra avoidance on bosses at dicey moments? Shouldn't be needed with quality healers though, at least one of your trinkets would be 51stm at all times surely?

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Mokoto

Is this sustained or a spike, because I can break out high numbers but over the course of the fight I usually settle into about 500-700 TPS.

My Blog: Nerf This...

 

g0dsmacked

i can sustain 1300 in full raid buffs. 2100 was a spike. but it was at about 1 minutes into the fight, not just opening attacks.

[http://www.hellfire-empire.net/wow/w...&server=Elune]


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Oxudes

How important is AD actually? It's not many times I get knocked down below 35% (that should be somwhere around 6500 when fully buffed for me) for it to kick in (if I go that low on hp, my hp falls to about 3-4k usually, at which point AD wont save me either).

 

Eir

So Eyonix is leveling a Prot Paladin. Part of me thinks this is not good for raiding Prot Paladins because he's going to level to 70, do well in 5-mans, and then figure we might even be overpowered as tanks.

 

◊ zeidrich

I would say very important. Even if you're only going into AD range at 3-4k hp:

a) You can (and likely will) still take some heals before your next hit. A flash of light that puts you up to 5k hit points for instance before the next hit.
b) Not all bosses hit for upwards of the 4200-5700 damage to kill you when you fall to ~3-4k

(Najentus average is ~3900, EoS hits very weak, Akama adds (if they ever get re-enabled) hit weak, Infernals on Anatheron hit less than that. Doomguards on Azgalor deal less than that. Murlocs on Tidewalker hit weakly. Sharkiss + Pet each hit less than that. Hydross adds hit less than that. Lurker adds hit less than that. Leotheras hits for less than that. Vashj hits for less than that, as do her adds. Phoenixes on Al'ar. Trash in Hyjal waves. Etc.)

c) Most bosses that do hit that hard have a somewhat slow attack speed. This means unless your healers are sleeping on the job, you'll get at least a couple of small heals between hits. Also consider, at your gear level I place you in early t5 content. Most bosses already aren't hitting hard enough to blow through your AD. At 18750 HP, AD would kick in at ~6500 hit points. Assume you're taking a boss that hits for ~6500.

Without AD you would have to be at 35% health to survive the hit. With AD you could surive it as long as you have 4550 HP, meaning you could survive that hit anywhere from 24.2% upwards. Even some hits that could potentially leapfrog AD can turn into saves. For instance, assume a 7000 point hit. 4900-6500 would be survived. 6500-7000 would be death. 7000+ would be a survive. 26-35% and 37.3% upwards would be survivable.

You can't often take 2 back to back hits without heals on a boss that hits for upwards of 7000 damage anyways. If a boss is hitting that hard, you're going to be spammed. If you manage to actually get down to 3-4k (that would be approximately 2 hits without heals) and then take another hit without getting a heal, you've got serious problems that aren't related to your talent tree.

d) Many bosses have periodic and secondary abilities that bring you low that AD can help with. (Whirlwind on Leo, Inner Demon, Bat dung on Vashj, pouding on VR, flame patch on al'ar. Phoenix dot on Kael'thas. Infernal DoT on Anatheron. Doomfire DoT on Archimonde. Environmental DoTs on Supremus. EoA dot.) Many of these things are things you can avoid, (Like doomfire, flame patch or volcano on supremus) Most shouldn't kill you outright (Whirlwind, Flame Patch etc) But occasionally an unfortunate series of events puts you at low health when you get hit with one of these things. Or a volcano spawns directly under you, or something like that. AD will give you a bit of slack to turn what might have been a death into a near miss.

AD is by far one of the few talents in the prot tree I could not get by without.

 

kalbear

There is a great addon that tracks ardent defender saves and damage prevented. It's something of an eye-opener. At least for me I had no real inkling of how much damage prevented and how many times it saved me from dying when I would have otherwise. It's a huge buff for paladins, and only improves as you have more HP. Good scaling talents that save you from wiping! Good times.

 

Denogran

Do you have a link or name of said add-on? I'd love to track that kinda stuff.

As for AD, well personally I think it's yet another, albeit not as apparent, stamina boost. And I'll take as many of those as I can. I also find that it has great utility outside raiding as well, especially when grinding a lot of mobs, and in 5-mans where the healing might be less consistent.

 

kalbear

Sorry; here is the link to the FuBar version. I like that one the best. There exists a non-FuBar version which is simple but not all that great by comparison.

Like I said, it's kinda shocking how much it saves me. Really, it only has to save me one time in an instance to be worthwhile.

 

jsilverdia

Is there any hard and fast rule about how much block equals a certain amount of armor in relation to effective health? Like 200 armor equals 40 block value, or something like that. I'm a bit unsure which rings i should be using. I have the top tier Kara ring, the 2nd tier eternity ring, and the 7th ring of tirisfalen.

I am using the eternity and the 7th, but I'm wondering if the 391 armor on the great protector ring is worth more than the 24 block value and 24 block rating on the 7th. Thoughts? If not not on the ring choice, then the general question of armor vs. block value for effective health.

 

Hythloday

As the author of the non-Fubar version, I was really shocked by how much AD actually kicks in. On "plain sailing" trash mobs and bosses, it's never active (as you'd expect), but with dicier pulls and progression bosses when the healing pattern isn't quite down, it generally adds up to about 2-3% mitigation and relatively often totally averts death 2 or 3 times a try.

 

Sharlos

Ardent Defender has saved my life many times, but considering the many talent points in the tree, I don't think it would be unreasonable to shrink it to three talent points.

 

Denogran

Check out the protection warrior thread: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t18771-protection_warrior/

It's got a really good section on rings that's pretty much entirely applicable to us. Actually a ton of good info in that thread if you keep the differences between us and warriors in the back of your mind whilst reading it.

 

Gunn

*please delete*

 

Mneme

Just wondering, does Spell Warding affect elemental melee damage? i.e. Hydross, Flames of Azzinoth.

 

jasura

AD has saved my life so many times it's not even funny. Fully buffed with Moroes' trinket on instead of my other stam trinket, I have almost 21k HP. (20.5k to be exact but that was before I got Kazzak's gloves that give me another 10 stam.).

Assuming 21k HP buffed, AD kicks in at 7,350 HP for me. 30% of that is 2205 HP. Assuming that AD doesn't get leapfrogged, that means that you would effectively have 9,555 HP from 35 to 0%. Sure it can be leapfrogged but how often do pallies tank something that hits for that much? Now compare to us tanking something like Murlocs or the hunter add on karathress and you can see that this is a great ability!

I mean who doesn't want a free 2k or so HP?

 

jasura

I think it does. Anybody know for sure?

 

Prinsesa

I'm 40~ points shy of hitting 360 enchanting, and I'm pretty sure I can make it if I can convince myself to blow the gold on mats, so I'd like to ask my fellow Enchanter Paladins: What do you put on your rings?

My first instinct was spellpower, but I'm always open to other suggestions.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

◊ Cathela

After tanking Naj'entus tonight I don't think I'll ever give up AD. The 8500 frost damage you take when his shield is pierced sent me into AD territory almost every time, and I would stay there for a few seconds til the healers could catch up.

You could test this by having a Ret paladin with 350 unarmed skill attack you with SoC up with no weapon equipped. Compare the SoC proc damage to the damage range on his character sheet.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Wolftusk

Quick question about Tidewalker...

The guild has me positioned for the fight near the water graves but far away enough from tidewalker that i do not get graved myself. The rest of the casters are further up the ramp between myself and tidewalker. I had a bit of a hard time grabbing agro from the murlocs from just spamming holy light (it did not help that i ususally could only get 2-3 heals off).

I was just wondering if it would be a reasonable strategy to move up the ramp immediately after watery grave is cast so that i can grab the murlocs with consecration/holy light and then move back down to my original spot by the graves so when the cooldown of the watery graves is up i can be far away from it enough that i do not get hit by it.

If the kids were united, they would never be divided.
Blood Elf Protection Paladin.

 

Denogran

You're still leaving yourself open for a grave then, and a potential wipe. Personally, I always tank the murlocs on his ass, and just deal with the graves (Divine Shield cancel macro, warrior and druid AoE taunts). But if you're going to go the super-safe route, I'd suggest having a holy pally run down and spam holy lights on some convenient warlocks to get them to you, as opposed to running all over the place. Also, who are they aggroing on to? Druids and shammies really need to lay off of healing until you get the murlocs, and priests need to be on the ball with their fades.

But really, it sounds like more of an issue with your healers than with you. 2-3 holy lights with Righteous Fury up should be enough to snag all the murlocs to you, if the other healers are only healing the MT as much as they need to (and splitting the responsibility).

One last thing that could help is the switch weapon macro listed in the first post. Basically, switch to your healing weapon and shield before the murlocs pop, and it should significantly improve the amount you're healing for, and thus your threat. Just remember to switch back before the murlocs get to you .