We've been killing hydross for EXACTLY 3 months now (First kill was 8/13/07) and our add tanks never use resist gear. We just have 5 tanks for that fight. The two hydross tanks have maxed out FrR and NR but our add tanks have 0 resistance gear on. We just go in with our normal tanking gear. This strategy has worked brilliantly for us and we never have any problems with it.

We put all 5 tanks into one group. When the phase change happens, everyone picks up their designated elemental and drags them together. We have our deep holy priests SPAM Circle of Healing on the tank group and give them a shadow priest. What ends up happening is that DPS opens up with AOE as soon as the adds are in the middle and we nuke them down FAST. We have never hit enrage or come even remotely close. This also requires 6-7 healers MAX because AOE healing (Especially COH) is just so efficient here!

I don't see why any guild would put their members through the completely unnecessary step of gathering up resist gear for the add tanks in this fight. The hydross tanks need maxed out resists but add tanks can go with 0 if you got enough tanks to pick up 1 add per tank. Bringing in more tanks doesnt slow DPS down because the AOE can just push a lot harder and they end up having more time to DPS hydross himself.

Like most everyone else I want to start this off by thanking Chicken for such a wonderful post. Other than the WOW Pally forums I have pretty much figured everything out on my own as I have gone. Im not the type to sit and crunch numbers so I have learned quite a few things by reading this thread. I do however still have a few questions.

Before I ask though, let me give you some info on where I stand so you can more easily answer my questions. Im in a medium sized guild I would say. We can easily run weekly 10 mans but cant really manage to get enough on at one time to do a 25 man. Im about half epiced out mostly out of Kara. I am the guilds off tank, though I may start MT Kara since our MT needs nothing new out of there. My weapon, unfortunatly, is still the Continuum Blade, oh how I hate it. We will be starting ZA tommorrow.

Okay, on to questions. Ive read through this whole forum but its a lot to process so if I repeat a question already answered please forgive me.

1. Which blessing is more important for tanking? I have always gone with Sanc but the other pally in the guild with Kings went ret and no longer has Kings, so which is more important? Kings or Sanc?

2. I have always used Ret aura, but after reading the discussion I think that im better off with Ret in 5 mans and maybe trash pulls in Kara, and Devo for bosses? How would having a pally with Sanctity Aura in the party affect this? At all?

3. Which food to you generally go with? Stamina or Spell damage? I have always gome stamina but saw mention of spell damage food somewhere and wanted to check.

4. With 2.3 here has there been a definate decision on reckoning or one handed weapon specialization? Personally, im thinking of leaning towards reckoning, just because with a ret pally in the group im going to be keeping something other than sotc on the mob, like light. And more swings means more help.

5. Ive seen a lot of talk about Imp Seal of the Crusader vs Imp Judgement, and Spell Warding vs PoJ. Ive even seen talk on here of taking anticipation out in favor of PoJ or Imp SotC. My question is... What if you took out Precision? If you took 3 from there and dropped it into PoJ you get the benefit of both it and Spell Warding. To me this sounds like the best option, but like I said, I dont crunch numbers. Is precision more important than anticipation or PoJ?

Basically, this is where i stand...

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Where should I put my last three points? Im thinking PoJ, but could be wrong. Maybe Precision is just that important. Thoughts?

Thanks in advance for any answers and comments.

Percision. +3% to both melee and spell hit is amazing value for 3 talent points.

I agree. My question though is; Is it more amazing for a tank than 3% chance for a spell to miss, and +15% runspeed?

The runspeed looks neat (I'm going to try it tonight in TK) but -3% chance to be hit by spells is not going to help terribly much as a tank. Magic damage tends to be more burst-oriented, so you and your healers will have to be ready for it anyway whether you have a 3% less chance to take it or not.

I've got both in my current build (had to go 4/5 anticipation and skip reckoning to make it work) but forced to choose I'd go with Precision.

Regarding your other questions:

Kings > Sanctuary in 95%+ of tanking situations. Part of the problem is that the damage reduction from Sanct is applied before armor, so if you have, say, 50% DR from armor then Sanct is only saving you 40 points per swing. In most situations, the danger of getting bursted to death is greater than the danger of your healers running out of mana, so Kings is preferred for the extra stamina.

Food is situational. If you need the extra threat and survivability isn't an issue, spelldamage food. If the opposite, stam food.

Ret vs. Devo is again a situational decision, threat vs mitigation. Obviously having a Ret paladin in group is going to do a lot for threat, so it's less likely you'd need Ret aura in that case.

My personal view on this kind of thing is that burst survivability trumps most other considerations. A guaranteed 4% knocked off of all spell damage taken is better than a 3% chance to resist everything.

Yes, especially since it will now be affecting taunts. I haven't really found anywhere where I really wished I could run a whole lot faster while in the act of tanking mobs. Sure, it'd be nice, but I don't think that'll dramatically improve your actual tanking performance. 3% chance for a spell to miss is nice, but meh. Just seems too streaky of a mechanic to be throwing points into, especially when we're hard pressed to find spare talent points to start with.

As for you other questions:
1) Kings, kings, kings and more kings. Sanctuary is nice to have when you're rocking 4+ pallies. But the damage reduction is done pre-mitigation, which means it's really only useful for when you're really struggling with threat. Even then, I'd still go with kings.
2) I like ret, but devo is prolly a better option. Again, depends on your threat generation. If you add a ret-pally to your group, go with Devo and Sanctity. If you don't have one in your party, go with what feels better. The two keys to tanking are to keep the mobs on you, and don't die. And you really only want to do the first to just past the point of where you're beating your dps on threat. Anything after that is basically wasted mitigation that could save you from an unlucky string of hits.
3) I go with stamina, but again that depends on where your threat generation is at. If you're having trouble holding onto mobs, spell damage food is a pretty easy boost of theat, at a slight loss of hp (330ish if you're using crawdads).
4) Hasn't been any good math on this. I'll be going with 1-hand, because that helps when I'm forced to off-tank on stuff that's not hitting me constantly (VR, Gruul, etc). But I'll certainly miss 2-hander reckoning procs while farming.

With the relase of Patch 2.3, I've done some minor changes. Please be aware that it only works with microsoft excel:

RapidShare: 1-Click Webhosting

Any feedback is very welcome.

It seems to me that this line of thinking argues for the 3% chance to resist, rather than the 4% knock off. If burst is the problem, then what is 40 points taken off of that 10k hit? Its practically nothing. However a 3% chance to resist a burst spell of 10k is definatly better in my thought.

Mathmatically if you get hit 100 times for 4k damage then you are going to take less damage with spell warding than PoJ... but its going to be at 40 points a hit. PoJ is going to save you on the burst. That's why im leaning towards PoJ if I had to pick one.

This is precisely backwards. To make it through bursts, you need to reduce the threat that a max burst poses (by reducing the damage it does or increasing your ability to soak it) rather than decreasing the chances that a max burst will happen.

Eventually, you're going to eat a burst; you need to be able to survive that when it happens, so you're better off having those 100 4k bursts being 100 3.8K bursts than having them be 97 4K bursts.

I think it really depends on the fight. If you can count on statistical certainty and a large number of spells hitting you, spell warding is better. If you can't count on that (for example: when being hit 10 or less times), it's far better to take no damage some of the time than less damage overall.

I was curious about the overall stamina boost from switching enchants, but it's trivial; +3 stam. Really, I think a dedicated paladin tank that is dealing with spellcasters a lot is going to want both. If you can't have both, I'm not sure that 2 points in improved PoJ is worth it other than making things feel better overall for speed.

I decided to go 0/47/14 for now. I dropped Reckoning and Spell Warding completely. 4% is small enough where I felt comfortable enough making that decision. I also went to 1/2 Improved Judgement. Those extra 8 points went as follows: 5/5 Combat Expertise and 3/3 Improved Seal of the Crusader. Since I doubt I'll be in any place where there's a ret pally, I can provide the extra bonus myself. If I was raiding with a reliable ret pally, I'd probably put the 2 back into Spell Warding and maybe 1 point into Pursuit of Justice.