BoScant is before armor, and its every hit.

Just an stupid example:

So mob hits for 100, 50% dr from armor.
no BoSant = 50 damage each hit.
BoScant = 100 - 82(I think its 83, I forget now) =18 *50% = 9 damage each hit.

I only started tanking as a Paladin ~2-3 weeks ago, and it's been a major shift for me. As my guild progressed in to hyjal/bt, there were many comments about wanting a paladin tank. i've read through many of the posts on the forums, to guide my spec, to guide my gear and such, and first of all want to say a huge 'thank you' to those who put their time and effort in to these posts, as they have made me not look like a complete noob as I switch from single-macro-pressing-BM-hunter to wow-i-have-to-pay-attention-to-stuff-tank.

As you can see from my profile, I have some pretty random gear right now. I am not a MT - our raid and guild leader is a warrior tank, and he's absolutely amazing at it. I'm here for fights with offtanks needed, hyjal trash, judgements on bosses while off-healing...that kind of thing. So I focused mainly on hitting defense cap, getting a good amount of stamina, and then going balls-out on spell damage so that I can hold aggro quicker.

But there has been something that has been bugging me. Currently, my aoe-tank trinkets are [Darkmoon Card: Vengeance] and [Tome of Fiery Redemption]. One has a large amount of stamina, a frequently-proccing holy damage trinket and the other a frequent high-damage boost to my consecrations.

So, here are my questions.

1: I have browsed wowhead for better "aoe" tanking trinkets and really havn't found any than the ones I already have. Does anyone suggest a different trinket of this type to replace mine?

2: I am currently having problems with big-hits by abominations from hyjal trash and certain naga/orcs from BT trash. Is this a problem due to main gear, or should I switch out my Tome for a more conventional tanking trinket. If I do this, which one would you suggest?

3: Specs have been bothering me. These three specs in particular have been bouncing forth in my mind - What do you think?

First
Improved might - buffs melee/hunter dps. Ret aura, increases my threat gen (I have the ability to go 2/5 t5 if I choose to with this spec)

Second
From what I understand, the "standard" tanking spec for this type of thing.

Third
Improved Seal of the Crusader (3% raid crit, more holy damage for me). Ret aura, increased threat gen (2/5 t5). Con is that if I have 3% raid crit up, casters lose JoW.

Sorry for the lengthy post...as I learn more about my new class and do different things with it, I'll be glad to share my knowledge as well

Right, although your numbers make it seem relevant . Take a 10,000 hit with 60% mitigation.
No Blessing of Sanctuary = 4,000 damage/hit.
Blessing of Sanctuary = 10,000 - 80 = 9,920 * 40% = 3968.

So you gain all of 32 damage reduction in this case. Whoop-de-do. Which means there needs to be 4 paladins+ in the raid before I get that/give it to the warriors.

Note though, that it works against all sources, which makes it fully effective against magic attacks (I would think, I have no proof for this). Plus, 40-odd holy damage added to blocks never hurt a prot pally

Those two trinkets are already a very good choice. The only Item which i can think of which may replace the Tome might be Battlemaster's Audacity - WoWHead to have your own "Mini-Last-Stand" and constant + bonus damage instead of a proc.

I doubt it's because of your trinket i rather think that you got stunned from the abominations and so you couldnt avoid any damage. Free Action Potions help here.


Hard to give a good advice because it depends partly on your raid make up. You have constantly a Retribution Paladin? Then dont bother with Improved SotC. Your specs in general all traded One handed Weapon Specialization for Reckoning. Its quite a difference as shown in this Thread but One Handed is at least for AE Tanking Superior (since it affects everything: Judgements, Consecrates, Exorcism, Holy Wrath etc). Else most of the Talents (Spell warding i.e.) are just Personal Preference.

Wow, I feel like a complete and total newb as I actually *read* the one-handed spec wording. I always read it similiar to the warrior 2-handed spec, IE increasing damage done with the weapon. Time to go throw down 50g for a respec. And no, we don't bring ret paladins. General raid makeup is as follows

Group 1: 2-3 Warrior tanks, druid tank, druid healer, paladin if only 2 tanks
Group 2: rogue/rogue/rogue/fury warrior/enhancment shaman
Group 3: mage/mage/mage/warlock/ele shaman
Group 4: healer/healer/healer/healer/shadowpriest
Group 5: Random DPS/healers (usually something like holydin/warlock/warlock/hunter/hunter - I know it sucks, but talk to the raid leader not me)

3% crit is being begged for by our melee dps and mages, but warlocks/spriests/hunters still want Judgement of Wisdom.



While trash tanking, Blessing of Sanctuary is quite useful.

Ghouls during Kaz'rogal trash hit for about 2200 before armor reduction, so 2200 * 40% = 880 . 2200-80 = 2120 * 40% = 848. So, 32 damage less each hit with 6 mobs on me stacks up. In addition, the block damage (~42-43 with my spell damage) is affected by Righteous fury, and I'm not sure about other tanks, but I block a lot. It equates to, according to Recount, ~3.8% of my damage in an average wave of mobs. Nothing to laugh about.

I'd suggest to add general situational gearing tips and what to consider.

Groups of tanking tasks:
- Hardhitter
- Fasthitter
- Group tanking
- tauntable Mobs
- casters
- weak hitting single targets

The points to keep in mind:
- Block rating vs. avoidance (esp. looking at threat since avoidance is inversely propotional to our threat)
- the value of block rating (concerning EH)
- The need of avoidance, which is strongly depending on your EH in relation to the mob's attack speed and base damage
- the value of meleehit


Concerning SoV: I'm working on maths for the seal and one thing is for sure: without spellhit the variety of possible TPS patterns becomes too wide (spellresistchance comes up multiple times). You need to have a slow weapon and as much spellhit as possible for this seal. If you have these, it is far superior to SoR until very high amounts of spelldmg.

With DC:Vengeance + Moroes' Pocketwatch you can tank all content except RoS P2, even Illidan's enrage (yes, I did this).

Right, not saying it's not. But you have to be bringing at least 4 pallies before it'll be useful. Light and Kings are obviously heaps more important than Sanct. And the likelihood is you'll have a holy pally with imp wisdom that will want to be rockin' that. So unless you're comfortable constantly buffing 10 minute buffs, and having some semi-complicated scheme like you bless Kings on the pallies and 10-min sanct on yourself, and a imp-wis pally blessing wisdom on the pallies and 10-min kings on you. Perfectly doable, but not worth doing if Kings ever falls off( other pally forgets/dies/off healing someone else).

Erm..one Holy has imp. wisdom, one has imp kings and I simply buff salv on pallies. The forth paladin will most likely just buff BoL on everyone. At warriors, I buff sanc + 10min salv on the furies.

I think for general benefit imp sotc is best if you don't already have it in your raid. 3% raidwide crit is a huge boost on bosses. Other paladins can keep up JoW.

Very few tanks I know go with improved ret aura. It just isn't active enough and doesn't do enough to warrant the points, especially compared with improved judgment, improved sotc, 1hws, reckoning, etc.

Salvation? On paladins? This is because of a ret pally, or for the healers? If it's for the healers, then I'd really take another look at that. (Paladin without Salv does .25 threat/heal. Priest/Druid/Shammy with salv does .35 threat/heal. So your paladins have to be healing 1.4 times what your other healers are healing in order to get even on the threat. Which in my raids is still far below that of the tanks and dps). If it's for the ret pally, he should keep 10-minute salvs active on himself, as it will only benefit him out of all the pallies, and he can give everyone else a more useful buff( unless you have 6 pallies in the raid, in which case everyone gets pretty much everything ).

If you have paladins healing you, you should always have Blessing of Light up.
1 pally (you): Kings
2 pallies( you + healer): Kings and Light(Have holy pally keep wisdom up on himself)
2 pallies( you + ret ): Kings + Sanct/Might/Wis(depending on if ret has kings)
3 pallies( you + 2 healers): Kings, Light and Wisdom(Sanct if you use the semi-complicated scheme discussed in my previous post)
3 pallies( you + ret + holy): Kings, Light and Wisdom(Sanct...). Have ret pally bless light and take care of his own salvation.
4+ pallies: Yay buffs!

ps. There is no imp kings?

Just out of curiosity, where do those threat numbers come from? I thought that base healing threat was universal across the board, split among all mobs as (healing done)/2. Is that not the case? And if not, then does using Righteous Fury remove that threat reduction?

I'm talking base threat here, as in, before modified by talents (such as Priest talent Silent Resolve) or buffs (such as Salv).

Did a search in this thread and it yielded no results so I'll ask:

Does Earthen Elixir stack with Blessing of Sanctuary (for a total of -100 damage) or does Sanctuary's damage reduction "overwrite" the elixir's (just -80 from BoSanc)?

I'd test it but I'm theory-crafting from work.

Most healers generate .5 threat per 1 pt healed. Paladins are actually at .25 threat per point. The .35 was .7(salv) applied to the base .5.

I don't have any hard data to support this, but to the best of my knowledge it's been an accepted fact that paladins gain half as much threat/heal than normal. See: MT and murloc thread which shows others at least with the same belief.

As for Righteous Fury, it doesn't quite even it out. Imp RF gives a .9 increase to threat caused by holy spells, so you sit around .475 threat/heal.

@Damnathor - You can choose to use ret aura (and 2/5 T5) without speccing into improved ret aura. The only time I specced imp ret aura was when I did a farming weekend. Also, I have never seen a paladin tank use might on themselves...or even have it at all until the 5th blessing. You get much more mileage our of kings/sanc/wisdom/light.

Also, the recent consensus has been that reckoning is a farming talent and not a raid tanking talent. Personally, I put two points into it so that it can proc on aoe pulls/farming but lessens my chance of getting parry gibbed (as with a full 10%).

As for which trinkets to use on Hyjal trash...well you linked some great ones. Just keep this is mind: A dead tank generates no threat. So there is little point in overemphasizing threat if it puts you at death risk.

Whoops imp Kings

Anyway, I'm aware of the theory "paladin does half of the healing aggro", but safety is something you can't buy and Sanctuary is'nt something to be preferred just because of some points of damage less IF they recieve damage. Blessing of Light can be provided by a 10-minute blessing and the holies will dare to heal themselves (or even each other) so that it does not make much sense to me. Not more than Salv.

The Might isn't for me It's for Rogues/enh shamans/fury warriors/hunters.

One should note that Improved Seal of the Crusader will not increase your threat/damage by a lot, since only our Judgements (and Exorcism) can crit in a general tanking situation and the increased Holy damage effect of Imp. JOTC is now part of the baseline spell as of 2.3

Note that the [Tome of Fiery Redemption] has a 45 second internal cooldown, which waters down just how much spell power you're getting from it. As was suggested by Namoya, [Battlemaster's Audacity] might a good idea. Actually, any of the spell power oriented caster trinkets can work, although the Audacity has the advantage of being grindable and having a tanking-related clicky effect.

The Hyjal Abominations have a nasty stun, which can make tanking ugly since it turns off all your avoidance. As far as "traditional" tanking trinkets are concerned, something with lots of STA would help, since that's the only thing that would increase your time to live while stunned.

Besides that, [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] is great for high-risk situations where you're not being stunned.

It will help your raid not being pissed that you're not throwing up something with more useful, which will in turn help your threat. Hehe. Otherwise, there's no reason not to throw up something like JoW.

In fact you can say that Imp SOC makes it harder to out-threat your DPS, since the 3% crit surely benefits them a lot more than it benefits you.

Our holy palas ALL have -and use- imp RF. We just salv ourselves and other healers, making us not pull healing agro on some of those nasty hyjal trash waves (not as quick anyway) but still making loose adds run to us instead of a clothie. On bosses we swap to light (if we'r not too lazy..).

Not to mention how nice imp RF is with all the AoE damage flying around of course.

(sorry for the derail)

So your holy paladins run Imp. RF and salv? You're basically sucking up a blessing slot just for a 6% damage reduction, and you still have higher threat than you'd have if you had neither RF nor salv up. (70% x 190% = 133%.)

And what AoE damage is there on the Hyjal trash waves that would threaten a healer?