Damnathor

I happen to agree with this, kinda odd. Most of the trash never gets loose, at least in my guild, and if it does, it usually goes for an aoe'r who started before we called it, not a healer. Even then, its not hard for a warrior to tab-taunt it back.

 

Tilted

It's a bit different for Alliance, due to SoV's mechanics. When 2.2 hit I tried out a 46/15 spec w/o Reckoning, and losing that 10% chance for extra swings essentially killed my ability to use SoV while tanking. It didn't take long for me to respec back to pick up 5/5 Reckoning since SoV far outperforms SoR at "normal" levels of spell damage found on tanking gear, provided you can keep the stack active. For Horde though, I definitely think you're right.

@Damnathor:

You seem to have a solid grasp of what to pick up in the Prot tree, but if you're going to spend most of your time tanking I'd suggest a 48/13 or 51/10 spec (depending on if your guild wants you to have Imp SotC). Forget Pursuit of Justice, and get your boots enchanted with Boar's Speed instead. The 3% spell avoidance from 3 points in this talent is worse than 2 points for 4% reduced damage taken from Spell Warding.

And yes, picking up Imp. SotC will actually make it harder to hold aggro since your raid's DPS classes will have spikier threat generation. Note that if you're not the active tank, this talent can increase the threat generation of your neighboring warrior or druid tanks. Also, it's not worth getting unless you're going to put all 3 points into it because it will end up competing with JoW for your judgement debuff, which is arguably better than 1-2% extra raid crit. Keep these things in mind if you're looking to pick up this talent.

 

Aett

I can definitely see dropping reckoning for 25 man raids, but I think I'd really miss it for heroics and 10-mans. When I have three-four mobs beating on me it has a fairly substantial uptime and allows me to use a lot less mana while tanking. I can pretty much just keep JoW up and keep up a 5 stack on SoVengeance on two to three mobs. Without reckoning I'd have to spam consecrate, which really gets the CC pissed off at me.

While I haven't tanked any 25-mans, I have seen up through Hyjal and all but RoS/Mother/Illidan in BT and do agree the talent doesn't have much of a place in those instances. But for anything smaller I really like it.

 

Denogran

See, there's your problem. If something is in the range of consecrate, it shouldn't need to be CC'd. And if it's out of the range of consecrate( pesky casters...), then you don't have to worry about breaking it. And if you're worried about mana consumption, then you're really just not taking enough damage.

If you're going to use CC though, have your dps get used to doing it before the mobs get to you. This is incredibly helpful and shouldn't be that hard to do. Have them babysit their sheeps/shackles/seduces if necessary.

 

◊ zeidrich

I am sorry, but SoV killed your ability to use SoV while tanking. There is oh so very many reasons that SoV is a terrible tanking seal. I am sure they are detailed in either this thread, or here: [Paladin] MTanking viability thread .

As well, Seal of Righteousness gets far more use out of reckoning than Seal of Vengeance, as it doubles your output while for SoV it only reduces the chance your stack will fall off.

Seal of Vengeance has on average a 15 second minimum ramp-up time as well as 16% chance to be resisted, and a 46% chance per hit to not even apply a stack with the weapon you are using.

The only thing that SoV really is good for is grinding, before you get much spell damage, as a non-ret-spec paladin.

SoR scales better with spell damage, has no ramp-up time, is more reliable, and allows you to spec out of reckoning if you want to, because you probably will eventually, as with more avoidance, 1h spec starts to give far better returns.

 

galzohar

Since holy paladins only need kings and wisdom, and generally don't raid heal, there isn't really a 3rd useful blessing for them. wether you want salv so that missed shield slam + glancing auto or whatever to be enough to pull it off of you, or light so you pallise can heal eachother better is completely negligible, considering how rare both cases should be. I would generally lean towards giving light though. Running imp RF is usually a given on fights where healing aggro is not an issue, but fights with many aggro resets or and/or add spawns not running RF and running with salv probably makes things slightly easier. For example on morogrim pallies with salv can easily keep the tank up and not pull aggro while the prot pally with no salv and righteous fury does his not-very-strong max ran HL and priests/druids can't really heal much at that point. Leo and hydross transitions also play some kind of a role although no as significant considering the amount of slack and/or bad luck your raid needs to have for no salv to mess up an otherwise-smooth transition.
Again, salv VS light as blessing #3 is quite negligible, although running with salv and RF at the same time is kinda rediculess. If you think you will never pull healing aggro but want more threat than the other healers, run RF and light...

 

vorda

And what if you think you might pull healing agro in the first few seconds in hyjal waves (or any complicated trash pull without a pala tank for that matter) but still want more threat than other healers?

 

Denogran

So you came to drastically different results reading the same threads on the value of SoV. I wish people would stop saying that SoV is so terrible when it's soooooooo drastically better than SoR at lower spell damage values (given the not implausible assumption that you can keep the stack up most of the time). This post sums up the value of SoV nicely I think.

 

Noraj

Assuming a 1.6sec speed weapon (i.e., season one mace), which would provide more threat, all other factors aside: Superior Wizard Oil, or Windfury Totem?

"The question is not how far we are going to take it... the question is, do you possess the constitution to go as far as needed?" - Il Duce

 

Liar

I agree with this. If a healer is going to get healing aggro, it should be Paladins first with their high armor and generally higher health compared to other healers. Especially in Hyjal you really don't want your Paladins to have less threat than a Priest so a stray Abom starts hitting them instead of you. Plate, more health and HoJ (and heck, DS) all offer a Paladin more tools to survive this until a tank is there to pick it up than an AoE scream on immune undead mobs.

 

Usul

This is a great thread and I figured I'd give my input from experiences.

One thing I noticed that I wanted to make mention of is the avoidance macro.

I just wanted to question if the +20 in there is for 5/5 anticipation (it appears it is) and if so be sure to replace that with the amount of defense you actually took via those talents (ex. 3/5 points = 12 rather then 20 defense).

The other thing I wanted to touch base on, which seems to be highly requested, is talent builds. I've gone through several revisions and although none have been "everything" I wanted I have found the current build that I am very happy with. I'll go through the build, why I took certain talents & why I didn't take others as well as some of the other builds that I've had before and how they worked out.

For starters let me give you a quick bit of background since I'm new here. I've been a Prot pally since we were mid way through Karazhan due to a lack of attendance in Warriors & Druids. I've tanked everything in Karazhan, TK & SSC, Hyjal & BT trash and of course all heroics. The Fabled usually runs with 4 pallys total: 2 Holy, 1 prot, 1 Ret, so there are some talents which I simply don't need because they are covered by the other pallys. For best threat generation I prefer using Retribution aura (improved from the 2 peice Tier 4 set bonus), Windfury totem and if you have a Ret paladin try to get him in your group with Sanctity aura.

My current build: 0/46/15

Prot tree: As you can see there are some talents I've avoided here which some may consider highly useful, and while I would probably agree with that there are only 61 talent points to play with so inevitably somethings are going to be left out.

First Tier: Redoubt is a must have. All though it's a proc, it's very beneficial and hits all the time. You shouldnt' pass up a 10% chance to increase your block by 30%. Allot of Holy paladins will get the improved devotion aura when going for kings anyway, so stick them in your group if you feel you really need the armor bonus.

Second Tier: Most would say go for 5/5 Toughness and that's certainly a valid statement. However, I found that the spell & mele hit were much more beneficial to me personally then a bit more armor. 2/2 Guardians favor is honestly just because I could have either gotten this and been able to save someone every 3 minutes instead of 5 (very handy for Bloodboil) and rather then get a measly 4% armor increase I opted for a lower cool down on BOP.

Third Tier: YUM! Kings and 3/3 RF are a MUST. I'd also highly recomend 3/3 shield specialization, as it helps greatly for AE tanking. Anticipation is of course very beneficial, as defense is one of the keys to becoming uncrittable/uncrushable as well as just plain adding more avoidance to your tanking, however at a certain point you'll find your gear will outweigh the need to go a full 5/5 in this. More defense will of course add to your d/p/b which is always a good thing, but IMO once you get past the 500 defense mark (already 10 over the crit/crush mark) it's not worth talent points to add to your defense. Gear will likely cover this with loads of +defense on it already (I'm currently at 509 defense).

Fourth Tier: Skip! "Handy" items at best, but as I mentioned before you only have 61 talents and all these can be left out.

Fifth Tier: 1/1 Sanctuary of course and 4/5 Reckoning (missing 1 point in reckoning isnt' going to affect the proc rate much, use 5 points total to get to the next tier and save the 1 point for something more beneficial). Both help with threat and you need Sanc anyway to get some very necessary talents later in the tree.

Sixth Tier: 2/2 Sacred Duty is a must have, the more stam the better and the Divine Shield benefits are handy. 5/5 weapon specialization is a must have for threat.

Seventh Tier: Again, get everything. 5/5 Ardent defender has saved me (and wipes) on countless occasion where those blows would have killed me. 30% damage reduction is something you shouldn't pass up IMO, even if it is only when you're below 35% HP. 1/1 Holy shield and 2/2 improved is a no-brainer. The more you can block, the better, plus the damage increase helps with threat slightly.

Eighth Tier: Previously I had skipped this tier completely, but with the 2.3 patch Blizzard added a 10% increase to stam which makes this a must have. 5 expertise is a handy bonus that comes with this but really the stam is the primary reason for getting this talent.

Ninth Tier: Of course, avenger's shield. Great for pulling, great for getting multiple mobs attention, awesome for threat.

Ret tree: Here's where I've played around allot figuring out what's best for me & the raid group. With the changes in the 2.3 patch, effectively making Ret pallys viable DPS we recruited for one and thus eliminating the need for me to pick up certain talents that the Ret pally covered.

First Tier: 5/5 Benediction is something I simply can't pass up. Although you get mana back from heals, you'll find that once your avoidance is so high you may be taking very little damage in certain fights, thus not getting much in the way of mana returned. Since you can't feasibly go as deep as tier 6 to get the benefits from the 80% mana return from sanctified judgment, Benediction is the next best thing. Improved might is something our Ret pally takes care of, hopefully you have one to take this talent for you. Otherwise, I'd honestly say too bad for your mele unless you can see a way to skip out on 5 points somewhere else.

Second Tier: 5/5 Parry is a must have, the more the better. Well worth the 5 points as 5% is a HUGE amount to not have to compensate for with gear or gems. 2/2 Improved judgment will help tremendously with threat. You wouldn't think 2 seconds would be that big of a deal, and honestly if you absolutely have to avoid this talent for something else it wouldn't kill you, but a shorter cool down on one of your highest threat actions will keep mobs on you and gain their attention faster. If you don't have a Ret pally in your raid makeup, 3/3 Improved Seal is also very beneficial to your raid group for the obvious boost in crit to all spells and attacks.

Third Tier: If you do have a Ret pally and can spare the 3 points (by not using them in improved Crusader) I'd highly recommend Pursuit of Justice. The run speed boost is nice and will avoid the need for run speed gems or enchants. The best thing about this talent however is the 3% spell avoidance increase. This is one of the newer talents I've played with as Prot and with all the increased resists I'm seeing on incoming spells I'm never not getting this talent.

So there you have it, my personal opinions on my favorite talent build and why I went with the talents I did. As I mentioned I've played with several different versions of builds and in no way is this set in stone or a pally talent bible, it's just the build I've come to find is most beneficial given my role in raids and raid makeup.

Here are some other builds I've had and found to be decent for tier 4 & 5 raiding:

0/46/15 - Similar to my current build though with a few subtle differences including some items you'd pickup if you didn't have a Ret pally in your raid makeup.

0/41/20 - This build was really to have a decent amount of defensive abilities and some Ret talents to help when soloing or when only one tank was needed on any given fight. I wouldn't really recommend this build for someone wanting to tank bosses though, as you'll notice several prot talents aren't maxed out, reducing avoidance and threat.

 

• Chicken

Windfury Totem is for all intents and purposes a 20% increase to your seal threat, and a bit more for white attacks due to the AP boost on the extra swing (Not much, but an additional ~1.3 TPS). The big advantage here lies in the fact that Windfury totem scales with your gear while the other totem options are static bonuses. There's also the factor that if you're in a tank group along with a Warrior Windfury Totem is extremely good for them.

Superior Wizard oil is 42 spell damage, equaling about 21 TPS (Possibly a bit more, I erred to the low side when calculating the approximate TPS per point of spell damage value).

If auto-attack plus seal TPS equals at least 17.5, Windfury Totem is better; in other words, on a single target Windfury Totem is pretty much always going to be superior.

That is of course only on a single target, due to the fact that Consecration scales extremely well with spell damage, Superior Wizard Oil is worth about 9 TPS per target in range, in a heavy AoE situation Superior Wizard Oil is most likely better; also due to the fact that single target aggro is (usually) less of a concern in such situations.

I'd go into comparisons of Superior Wizard Oil along with another totem compared to Windfury Totem, but generally which totem is dropped is really dependent on what the setup of the rest of your group is.

I'll also probably finally get around to doing updates to this thread again soon, we've (finally!) killed Illidan now, due to which I have more free time than I'd usually have.

 

ulath7

What in your estimation should be the minimum stats (buffed) for tanking the adds in this encounter. Obviously un-cribtable+Uncrushable is necessary, and from what I read on the first page no specific resists are needed...

Our guild has beat VR, will be takign on Solarian (BOO no Tankadin used there), but the raid leads are leaning towards a Tankadin for this...

Any comments welcome, and thanks in advance.

 

Mordekhuul

You don't need uncrushable for murloc tanking. They aren't bosses.

 

Mordekhuul

This is correct. Replace +20 with the actual amount you gain from talents. This is explained in the wowwiki entry for Crushing Blow.

The macro assumes that both warriors and paladins have max ranks in their respective +defense talents.

Out of curiosity, I'll add my own question to this though. Why doesn't GetCombatRatingBonus's return value include the extra 20 points from our +defense talent?

 

Tilted

Excellent point, and I feel it's worth noting that Wrath of Air totem wins for paladin threat generation in almost all cases. You're looking at another 101 spell damage (121 with T4 bonus) plus another 42 for the oil. Windfury scales better when just looking at TPS from your seal, but when you take Consecration, Judgements, Holy Shield, etc. into account, Wrath of Air pulls ahead. As soon as you add multiple mobs into the mix, there's simply no competition.

FWIW, on our first few Leo attempts I found myself in the caster group as the MT of the elf phase of the fight. I had an effective 720 spell damage after buffs and JotC, and that was in my survival gear. This was done for the reasons listed above, plus the ability to utterly obliterate my inner demon when it popped. Good times.

 

Ticia

I believe GetCombatRatingBonus only returns the extra amount of whatever stat (in this case defense) that you get from rating on your gear. You'll notice it also doesn't return the 350 base defense that you have for being level 70.

Since Anticipation adds straight defense and not defense rating, it isn't included in the return.

 

Usul

I used a combo of healing & tanking gear for this. Healing gear with Righteous Fury to get agro easily and tanking gear for obvious reasons. What seemed to work well for me was a combo of about 800 +healing and enough stam to still get to about 14k hp buffed. Positioning was also a huge factor, finding a good tanking spot outside the range of possibly getting a watery grave where the murlocs could still "see" you on their way in was key for that fight.

 

Aett

OK, I'm confused.

If SoR gets more use out of reckoning than SoV why would switching to SoR allow you to drop Reckoning whereas SoV wouldn't?

Also, I remember reading somewhere (I thought it was in this thread but I couldn't find it) that while SoR scales better than SoV, SoR doesn't out-damage SoV until somewhere above 900 spelldamage. Just because something scales better doesn't mean it actually is better.

SoV is situational, but when I can use it effectively I love it. With Reckoning + Windfury I've seen a 5-stack go up in as little as four seconds. On mobs where I'm going to be hitting it the entire time I can pop wings on pull, go all out for about 10 seconds, then have enough of a threat lead to temporarily sacrifice some TPS in order to get that 5-stack up.

 

Foofu

Math please to back up your conjecture that 143 spell damage > WF on a single target? I don't think it's so cut and dried that you can just assume it's better and I've never seen math in either thread to support your theory. (In the old thread WoA on it's own was found inferior to WF on single targets.)

 

• Chicken

I'd recommend uncritability in some way, shape or form, and reasonable avoidance (50% or thereabouts, counting blocks for avoidance if they reduce the Murloc melee damage to a negligible amount). When I originally tanked here I had about 13000 health buffed, but this was back when Prot Paladin gear tended to have mana/5 on it and before we had the new Weapon Expertise (Or in other words, expect to have more health if you have the Protection version of tier 4). As I recommended in original post, make sure you have a way of swapping a healing weapon and a spell damage weapon back and forth. These stats may even be slightly over the top; I'm not entirely sure as I've been Prot for my entire Paladin life, and thus already had a good selection of tanking gear by the time we reached Morogrim.

If you have some PvP healing gear it's quite good for Morogrim now. It'll make it easier to get initial aggro, provides some spell damage to make Consecration and Holy Shield more powerful, and also helps towards becoming uncritable, not to mention it has good stam.

Uncritability and 50% avoidance should make it so you take low enough damage for any single healer to outheal easily. We usually had a Resto Druid cover my healing with HoTs, with a Shaman assigned to optimally help out if I dropped low for some reason. This was changed to just a Resto Druid when they changed Lifebloom to stack properly. The Resto Druid also at the same time helped out on getting people topped off again after the Murlocs reached me.

 

Braque

On the first kill my stats as the Paladin AOE tank were:

Defences:
12047 Health
15800 Armour
432 Defence
11.88% dodge / 8.28% parry / 8.28% block
117 resiliance

And:
+790 Healing
+325 Spell dmg

That was "tanking" as Holy spec (with Imp. RF / Blessed Life as my only real toughness/agro talents) using healing agro to pull them onto my consecration.

 

Yenadar

Just a note about this... I HIGHLY recommend getting Figurine of the Colossus (Steamvaults heroic I believe). It is ~3.5% block and when popped, heals you for 120 health every time you successfully block. It will be a staple for me for a long time to come. At ~21% block I was regularly getting 3,000 to 3,200 in healing back per activation of the trinket (which is also additional threat). Since I have climbed to 28% block, I haven't directly looked for the total amount, but i imagine it is a fair amount higher. Just remember, pop this right before Holy Shield to make sure that you get those first 8 (960 healing) 100% of the time. It will still be up when Holy Shield CD ends, so pop Holy Shield again for another 960 healing. In any 3+ trash group, that is guaranteed 1,920 healing, the rest of the kickbacks from normal blocks are just icing on the cake, plus the additional threat off of the healing effect, plus the static +3.5% block.

Granted, if you are getting hit (after block) for more than 120, then it just effectively increases the block value, but unlike the Autoblocker, if you are full blocking, additional effect is not wasted, there is a net gain rather than a constant break-even. Plus Autoblocker popping doesn't generate any threat at all.

It has no internal cooldown, and there is no limit to it that I have found. I have used it on pulling half the SM Cathedral by aggroing the last boss, and healed 15,000 health in 20 seconds from that trinket alone. (Granted, this is extreme, and against stuff 32 levels lower, but an example on it's capacity).

It has no use against individual bosses, so I swap that out for the Scarab of Displacement off of Hydross.

 

Tilted

Let's get some assumptions out of the way. I'll be ignoring 1h Weapon Spec, which actually favors using WoA over WF. The accuracy of the target numbers isn't going to be perfect, and these are simply best guesses from WWS parses.

Target armor: 4000 (almost exactly 25% reduction)
Target attack speed: 2.0s
Target dodge: 5.6%
Target parry: 11.2%

Paladin block rate: 50% (works out to 1 block every 4 seconds on average against 2.0s target swing time)

Paladin weapon DPS: 41.4
Paladin AP: 500 (probably assuming too high, but not going to change much)
Paladin modified DPS = 41.4 + (500 / 14) = 77.1

Paladin +hit: 3% (precision)
Paladin expertise: 5 (CE)
Base hit % = 100% - 9% (standard missrate) - 5.6% (dodge) - 11.2% (parry) = 74.2%

Paladin hit % = 74.2 + 3% (hit) + 2.5% (expertise) = 79.7%
Paladin white DPS = 77.1 * (100% - 25% damage reduction) * 79.7% hitrate = 46.1 DPS*

* Glancing blows reduce this number quite a bit, but I'm not going into the math of that here. Crits are also ignored due to prot pallies typically having very low (< 5%) crit rates.

Windfury's TPS increase works out to essentially be 20% of your white damage plus threat added from SoR. The TPS from SoR can be calculated using the following equation (remember, ignoring 1h weapon spec):

(Paladin_Spelldmg * SoR_DPS_Coefficient + SoR_Base_DPS) * RF_Threat_Modifier * Paladin_Hit%

The coefficient for SoR is WeaponSpeed * 9.2%, which simplifies to 9.2% per second for the DPS coefficient. SoR's base DPS is around 26.1. Using these numbers, we can find how much Windfury adds at given spell damage values.

WF @200 dmg = 20% * (46.1 + (200 * 9.2% + 26.1) * 190% * 79.7%) = 22.70 TPS
WF @400 dmg = 20% * (46.1 + (400 * 9.2% + 26.1) * 190% * 79.7%) = 28.27 TPS
WF @600 dmg = 20% * (46.1 + (600 * 9.2% + 26.1) * 190% * 79.7%) = 33.84 TPS
WF @800 dmg = 20% * (46.1 + (800 * 9.2% + 26.1) * 190% * 79.7%) = 39.41 TPS
WF @1000 dmg = 20% * (46.1 + (1000 * 9.2% + 26.1) * 190% * 79.7%) = 44.99 TPS

For Wrath of Air + Wizard Oil (assuming 143 spell damage added from the combo) the math is simpler since it's a flat amount that gets added to your threat. However, it affects more than just your melee swings.

WoA boost to SoR = (143 * 9.2%) * 190% * 79.7% = 19.92 TPS
WoA boost to JoR = 143 * 42.9% / 10 = 6.13 TPS (assuming one judgement every 10 seconds)
WoA boost to HS = 143 * 5% * (50% (paladin block rate) / 2.0 (target attack speed)) * (190% + 35% (HS innate threat bonus)) = 4.02 TPS
WoA boost to Cons = 143 * 76% / 10 = 10.87 TPS (again, assuming one cast every 10 seconds)
WoA boost to Exorcism = 143 * 42.9% / 15 = 4.09 TPS

Looking at realistic scenarios where you're able to use SoR/JoR/HS/Cons against a single boss target, these four things add up to 40.94 TPS gained from Wrath of Air Totem and Wizard Oil. You need to be packing over 800 spell damage after buffs to match this with Windfury. Even in situations where you cannot use Consecration, this setup adds 30.07 TPS, requiring ~500 spell damage to match it with Windfury.

As soon as you're tanking more than 1 mob, there's no contest, and Wrath of Air leaves everything else in the dust.

 

Merple

Assuming blue healing gear and a shadow priest, can a pure prot paladin heal a non-heroic with a shadow priest?

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