No, but you can calculate how many you do block.

If you're AoE tanking a sufficiently large number of mobs, the time limit on Redoubt becomes irrelevant, because the five charges get used up before the ten seconds expire. So the chance of having Redoubt up on any given attack is the chance that Redoubt procced on at least one of the last five blows that landed, which is 1 - (0.9)^5 = 40.9%.

So Redoubt is up roughly 40% of the time in a high-target tanking situation. Therefore your average block chance is approximately:

0.4*(block chance with redoubt) + 0.6*(block chance without redoubt)

That's ignoring the effect of Holy Shield, which will slightly increase the overall block rate.

EDIT: Just realized this is only accurate if your total avoidance with Redoubt up is 100% or greater, since it assumes any hit on you will use a Redoubt charge. The math needed to calculate Redoubt's uptime if this is not the case would be substantially more complicated (I think).

A simple question that doesn't impact anything: is redoubt only useful when tanking multiple mobs because then the numbers of attack you receive > the charges of holy shield? From what I see, unless you get hit for more charges of holy shield you have, redoubt is not doing anything at all since any hit received that is not a block is either a parry,dodge or miss once you attain uncrushability. Is this true?

Yes. I think that has been covered in this thread already, but in any case what you state is correct. Because Redoubt is a proc, you can't count on it for uncrushability. Therefore, it only really comes into play in AOE tanking situations. Rarely, if ever, does a boss have enough hits in 10 seconds to remove all your Holy Shield charges.

Please do not take that as advocation of not taking redoubt though, if only because shield spec is so good. Block values may not seem to be that impressive, but they're making significant changes in incoming mitigation. 500 off a 10k hit doesn't seem that great, but that's equivilant to putting on Shadow Embrace from a warlock. In addition, there actually aren't a lot of bosses that hit individually at the 10k level (supremius, Gruul are the only ones who come to mind), and obviously the smaller they hit the more valuable block value is going to be. 30% is highly significant.

Typically, the difference between non shield spec and shield spec is not 500, it's about 150 at higher levels. And that's not a huge number. At lower levels BV is going to be even less and it is going to be less valuable overall.

Shield spec is worth it for various reasons, but lets not exaggerate how good it is.

I don't think he stated that the difference between having the talent and not was a difference of 500, I think he was using the number 500 to illustrate that even though it only knocks off perhaps 5% from a 10K hit it is still quite useful for mitigation after armor.

I am a big proponent of Block Value.

I appologise for being unclear. At my gear point (some T5, some T4, hyjal honored ring) Shield Spec is about 120 block value for me, and I have no illusions that it will realistically scale up to 500 for 3 points. I was merely attempting to emphasize how strong shield block is in general, and failed to draw from that that the points in shield spec are quite good because it is a very well scaling benefit to a stat that a lot of newer tanks tend to overlook.

Honestly, I really wish they would untie Redoubt from SS, because while it is helpful tanking on Hyjal trash waves I find the mobs don't hit all that hard unless the abombs get the stun, at which point it's useless. On the flip side, because they do stun quite often Redoubt is up considerably more than the 40% figure above (if you ignore the stunned time) and because of the HS procs....but honestly if I go in with over 500 block value the ghouls alone run me oom in no time flat because of the weak hits they toss my way. I'm not really sure blocking more of nonspikey easy to heal damage is a good thing. Imp Devo's ~450 more AC is somewhat appealing, though I freely admit I'm an AC/stam whore.

Then again, with all the issues with prot speccing a paladin in the first place, this has got to be pretty damn far down on the list.

Edit:
For clarity's sake, lemme specify that I was referring to the bloated tree design, not the concepts.

Yeah, I was all psyched up to go in and try out my epic'd out block/block-value set on the Hyjal trash, but after getting gibbed by Abom's a few times I realized it was better to just stick with the standard max-armor/hp set. Kinda disappointing.

Free Action Potions: Like sex, only they cost less.

You will learn to adore those.

I forgot my Free Action Potions tonight and almost got splattered on Rage trash. Being the catch-all tank isn't so hot when your two abomination tanks are on the same connection.

edit for actual content/ideas: [Stratholme Holy Water] - scales with spelldamage (~1100 hits with 900 spelldamage, so probably ~800 hits with 400 damage), is aoe, and does holy damage. Am I wrong or is that essentially 1.5k free threat on every (undead) mob within 10 yards?

Eh, I just live through it with my post-2.3 ridiculous health pool. Haven't had a problem dying on those packs since I stopped wearing the block suit.

Oh, interesting. Instant cast too, apparently?

On a similar note, I have a bunch of [Blessed Wizard Oil] saved up from the scourge invasion a couple years ago. Shame they never re-ran that event.

I'm considering picking up the [Item not found!] to replace my 45 stam trinket.

I finally picked up [Shield of Impenetrable Darkness], to push me to 500 block value. I was considering getting the blocker as well (want to replace my last blue item as well). With the stam trinket, I sit at 45% avoidance, 15k hp, 17.4k AC unbuffed (not prot spec atm, or I'd link armory). With Blocker, I'd lose ~560 hp for ~76 block, and the on use effect. Over the course of a fight, blocker obviously reduces more damage, but doesn't have the 'one shot' protection of an additional ~1200 effective HP.

I know this is typically seen as a warrior item, but it looks somewhat appealing to me. Also, I'd like to replace the BV lost when replacing [Panzar'Thar Breastplate] w/ [Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian].

A lot of paladin tanks use the Gnomeragan as part of their BV set. It's not a use all the time trinket, but it's definitely quite good for a fair chunk of encounters out there.

I was wondering last night during a particularly quick Heroic Slave Pens, where we had two Shaman and therefore lots of Bloodlust, increasing your attack speed via Bloodlust or even haste have an effect on SoR damage since it is based on weapon speed.

So lets say you have a 2.6 speed weapon like the Gavel of Unearthed Secrets, and I have enough haste to go to 2.0, does the game reduce the SoR damage based on the speed or is the SoR damage based on the initial 2.6 speed?

I originally posted this on maintankadin but crossposting here, in case someone here can answer this...

My reason for the question is more or less theory craft on the possibility of using slower weapons for the SoR damage if it stays the same as the base and then using haste rating to speed up the individual swings for more overall threat damage.

What haste rating items have good tanking stats aswell maybe? Getting a decent amount of haste rating would require you to swap items with non tank ones, at which point you could just as well swap those items with pieces with more +dmg for a greater effect. (unless I didnt take a close enough look at the new 2.3 items)

You'd need a pretty ridiculously high spell damage amount to justify grabbing haste rating over adding more spell damage. Remember that things like Consecration, Holy Shield, Judgement, and even Exorcism all benefit from spell damage but not from haste rating. Besides, we already have too many stats to balance as is, why look for another?

As far as I've seen, SoR damage per hit stays the same under haste effects.


But I have a question about your idea - what does it matter what speed weapon you have?

When hasted by 30%, you swing 30% more often, effectively gaining 130% weapon DPS. If you swing 30% more often, you'd gain 30% more SoR DPS.

So you'd get the same % benefit to SoR DPS regardless of what weapon speed you use.

@Mokoto - SoR is based on the base weapon speed.

Haste (via bloodlust or any other effect) will increase the damage done by the same percentage no matter how fast you are swinging. I guess my point is, you will hit as hard whether your 2.6 speed weapon is swinging at 2.6 or 2.0, and since autoattack can be faster than gcd, haste will not benefit a 2.6 speed weapon any more than a 1.8 speed weapon.

Reckoning, however, can benefit from a slower weapon under the effects of haste, as haste does not reduce the duration of the reckoning buff. So, the point you should be examining is how reckoning+haste interact, and not SoR+Haste.

So we are certain that SoR holy damage scales with hasted speed? Therefore in reality Paladins get very minimal benefit, tanking paladins with SoR at least, from the haste increase because the damage is still the same dps just a smidge faster. I guess I will have to test this idea this weekend.

Thats not what they said. SoR is calculated on base weapon speed, so hitting faster then that is a dps increase. What they said was that your actual weapon speed is irrelivant because an xx% speed increase is the same dps increase for wathever weapon speed you are using.

I've been going over the thread again, and there were some things brought up earlier that never truly got answered.

Reckoning vs. 1h Spec

I know this was a topic of debate earlier on now that the Protection tree is more bloated than ever, and the only math I really saw on the subject just says they're close enough not to matter. But having gone from a spec without Reckoning when 2.3 hit back to a spec that has it now, I can safely say I don't ever want to tank without it again. With Reckoning I can safely use SoV (sorry horde) to achieve its higher "on paper" threat generation compared to SoR without worry of losing the 5-stack. Reckoning is also amazing on AoE pulls for Seal/Judgement of Wisdom or even Light if survivability is a concern.

The only cases I can see 1h Spec being a clear winner on are offtank situations where you're not constantly being attacked (Gruul, VR, etc.). And even then you're still getting hit often enough to still get an occasional Reckoning proc, so it's not a total waste.

Ultimately, the math would need to come down to looking at the number of damaging attacks that hit you over a period of time to figure out the typical number of Reckoning procs to look at. The ugliness comes in figuring out all the different scenarios and taking into account the number of mobs hitting you at once.

Value of Improved Judgement

In looking over various websites and armory profiles, I see a lot of inconsistencies in regards to this talent. The OP mentioned utilizing Improved Judgement while the GCD is active to get more total judges in over the course of a fight. Personally, I don't like this idea at all because it means you're going to have white swings hit your target without an active seal to benefit from (essentially diminishing or even eliminating the benefit of more frequent Judgements). I've run for awhile now w/o Improved Judgement and just treat HS/Judge/Consecration as all being part of my 10-second cycle, and I haven't missed it once. If anyone has a good reason to pull 2 points out of Prot for this talent, I'd love to hear it.



Lastly, for Chicken... If you're still reading, I'd love to see a breakdown of what to do in ZA as a prot pally, much like you've done for the other zones. I have yet to see Zul'Jin myself, but the rest of the zone almost seems as it was custom built for pally tanks (mostly because that's where I hear the most "nerf pally" comments from our warriors, all in good fun ). Trash to Eagle, Dragonhawk, and Lynx is basically trivialized by bringing a prot pally. Hex Lord is definitely made easier with a pally to handle 2-3 adds at once, and I'd hate to think of how to drop Dragonhawk without one of us in the mix.

Dragonhawk is definitely harder without a prot pally... but lynx?

As for imp judgement, while I don't know if it's actually worth the points, it definitely will increase your TPS if used properly. Generally if you judge during a GCD but reseal before the next white attack, you will not lose any seal attacks. So if you're not during GCD when judgement comes off cooldown - judge and reseal. If resealing's GCD would collide with a more important ability, wait for next swing and then judge - and reseal when you can again. The slower your weapon the more you gain from improved judgement. Don't expect to judge every 8s on the clock, though, but you'll definitely be judging more often with 8s CD on judgement than with 10s CD.