Stallo

This is a great threat, but can you also add the TPS for Seal of Vengeance, Judgement of Vengeance and Blessing of Sanctuary?

 

galzohar

I rerolled pally and had the honor to tank an instance, but couldn't get a proper "taunt" macro to work - aka target the mob and have the macro cast righteous defense on its target. That way if I lose aggro all I have to do is hit the macro rather than assisting the mob, casting righteous defense and then targetting the mob again.

(Searching for macro info on google got me pissed off as it lead me to multiple sites that sell books about WoW macros... )

 

• frmorrison

You are right, the macro should be in the OP, since it is important.

This came up in the first google hit, your googlefu is weak:

/cast [help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget,help] Righteous Defense

 

◊ s4dfish

I like to add [target=none] to the end of that macro so that you don't need to change targets to taunt off a party member, just use the macro and use your glowy hand. Thus the macro looks like:

#showtooltip
/cast [help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget,help] Righteous Defense; [target=none] Righteous Defense

 

galzohar

I was trying to come up with a holy/prot spec for end-game that will keep the healing capability of regular healing specs while still maintaining minimal offtanking capability:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I got the idea for it when I read and heard about a lot of protection paladins finding themselves healing more often than tanking, but when they were tanking they were *needed* to tank. Yet nobody likes to respec several times a week especially not during 1 raid, although if you're *really really* hardcore I suppose this kind of spec is totally useless to you as you can just respec per fight.

What you lose from raiding capability as a healer is imp LoH (which is kinda sad but it's the only thing I think is droppable) and the buff flexibility (buff kings only). In 2.3 (and if you specced into it beforehand) you lose some judging capability (especially the new improved judgement of the crusader). For these reasons this spec is losing a lot of viability when you have less than 3 pallies in a regular raid, so let's make it easy and say for now that it's not worth speccing into it if you're not regularly raiding with 3 pallies, as you kinda want minimum 2 paladin healers.

My real question is not the ability to heal with that spec, that's pretty obvious. What I was wondering is what you'll actually be able to tank with that spec. Obviously crush immunity isn't possible so tanking bosses isn't going to happen, and you don't have the stamina/damage reduction for it anyway. I was wondering more about tanking stuff like murlocs on morogrim, elementals on hydross, hunter pet and/or hunter on karathress, adds on astromancer/al'ar, offtanking void reaver etc. I don't have experience in BT/hyjal so I didn't include any fights there but I was wondering if there are fights there where this kind of spec could swap gear and tank those fights.

For tanking this spec obviously lacks damage reduction and HP buffing and maxed threat but it does have the basic armor/defense and imp righteous fury and seal of righteousness which seem to be the majority of your threat, although it's probably still a noticeable threat drop from full prot with holy shield.

For non-raid content: I doubt this spec would have any difficulty MTing regular 5-mans but would it be reasonable for heroic MTing? It seems to me like at least the easier heroics should be doable with it when you can't find a tank.

Is this spec actually going to be of any use in raiding (of any level) or is it completely pointless and one should forget about it and just choose between tanking and healing?
While I don't really know (which is why I made this post, to see people's replies), I would guess it would fair fine for at least 5-man/heroics MTing and kara/gruul/mag offtanking plus possibly a select few fights in SSC/TK, and if that's the case at least it would be good for fresh-70 paladins who want to catch up to the top-end-game.

 

galzohar

I thing I understand the "/cast (...) Defense" but what does the rest of it do and is it needed?

 

Bop

The [target=targetstarget] is basically a /assist without actually switching target the mobs target, the spell you write in after (I.E Righteous Defence) is the spell thats cast on your targets target.

I'm not sure what the rest does exactly, but my macro of < /cast [target=targetstarget] Righteous Defence> works fine when I wish to taunt the mob i'm hitting back to me.

 

Aramul

This can be written shorter as follows:

#showtooltip
/cast [help] [target=targettarget,help] [] Righteous Defense

The conditions are checked seperately, in order, and all reference the same spell. The empty [] casts the spell as normal (as if clicked in spellbook without a macro).

 

Daedelus

A lot of the avoidance for a protection paladin comes later in the tree with Holy Shield and Ardent Defender so losing those if you are hoping to off tank seriously would put a pretty big dent in your mitigation which should be your first and foremost port of call if you are even considering being a tank of any kind.

Your spec is very holy heavy so it probably would be great for threat generation but in some of the heroics where the mobs tend to hit a bit harder (Slavepens and Mechanar spring to mind) you might find your healers getting slightly flustered at times unless you all severely out gear the content.

At present something like:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
would be fine for doing both, of course you lose some efficiency (through extra crit on HL / FoL) and bonus healing due to missing out on the higher tier holy talents but provided your healing gear is up to standard the efficiency should still be adequate for healing in raids and heroics provided you have good control of your healing.

You will lose the 10% stam from WE in 2.3 but if you are just off tanking then that build (and assuming you have decent gear) should be fine without the extra stamina due to the things you will be tanking.

 

Denogran

This spec is a fine holy spec, but you're really going to feel fairly gimped while tanking, unless your tanking gear is _awesome_. You're losing out on significant health (sacred duty, ardent defender), significant threat generation (reckoning, one-hand spec, holy shield), and a lot of avoidance (precision[ret tree], holy shield, shield spec). Depending on your dps/healing, you could be ok, but they'd have to play pretty nicely with you. Without holy shield, you're going to get hit unmitigated a lot, and without sacred duty you're going to have a lot less health available to drop.

It's a good spec if you're guild needs a healer, and then someone who can occasionally take a coupla blows. Although I'd switch out Defensive Aura with Redoubt personally, especially if you have AoE tank aspirations.

 

Drfeelgood

I want to comment really quick on the viability of a holy build as an offtank build. Basically since I hit 70, this (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) has been my Holy build whenever I'm not full protection. I used it for pvp, arena, 5 mans, kara, heroics, and 25 mans and I used it right up to the point that I got put into a predominantly tanking position in our raids. You can very very easily tank every 5 man with this spec. You can tank heroics as well - to prove that paladins can tank I took my gm on a heroic mech run that I tanked as holy while he thought I was protection. Run went smoothly, I was wearing no better than kara gear (and if you check my armory you'll notice I'm still short on armor, I have a blue chest piece still!) I have been the resident paladin tank since we started doing 25 mans and each situation that I've tanked in a 25 man up until about 2 weeks ago, I did as full 41/20 holy prot.

I tank the murlocs during tidewalker in full tanking gear with a holy spec. I tank tons of trash, most notably the trash on the way to and in the room of solarian. Holy Guidance is actually quite helpful, for example, on tidewalker because I use heals to get aggro on all of the murlocs and every extra bit helps. I tanked heroic black morass, mechanar, slave pens, and sethekk and I'm sure I could do more. The caveat is that at the time that I was needed to be tanking heroics for people, I had most of my kara tanking gear already - take that as you will.

If you're going to tank bosses, go full protection (41/12+8) but for healing with some offtanking on the side, I don't think any more than 13-14 points in prot is required, bearing in mind that you need to be prepared and make smart gear choices (keeping 490 def can sometimes be a bitch if you don't have anticipation given how paladins stack stamina).

 

• Chicken

Personally I've tried, but I've noticed I feel more inadequate in any tanking role without Holy Shield, than I feel in a healing role without holy talents past Illumination. Your mileage may vary of course.

Either way, I'll still make some changes to cover tanking in general regardless of whether you're heavy protection or you only have improved righteous fury. One of the additions I've made in that direction is adding Holy Shock to the list of spell damage to threat conversions. I've tried searching for it but couldn't find any data on the spell damage coefficients for Holy Wrath and Avenger's Shield. If someone has those somewhere I'd appreciate it.

I'm still working on more updates right now, I just added some of the "easy" stuff to add first.

Edit:

Added a few more updates. Check the change log for details.

 

Wolftusk

Please excuse my ignorance, but isn't the [Bloodmaw Magus-Blade] that drops from Gruul a decent tanking upgrade in between [Gavel of Unearthed Secrets] and [Fang of the Leviathan]? Or is it just a caster weapon because of the crit?

Edit: Nevermind - i saw the note about them being low on stamina.

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

 

• Chicken

I found the stamina a bit too low myself, but it's still a good addition to the list.

 

Wolftusk

What macro do you guys use to break out of fear by using bubble and than dispelling the bubble?

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

 

Sarkan-ZdC

Anyhow, a few basic macros would help, so here is another one:

Q u o t e:
#showtooltip Divine Shield
/cast Divine Shield
/cancelaura Divine Shield

(You can of course also make a macro that uses DS if you press it and if you hold lets say STRG and press it it will cancel it. Or make another button for the /cancelaura removal. But for your one klick break/dispell this would be the macro).

--------------------------------------------

Request for some Math,

Seal of Vengance vs. Seal of Righteousness. I heard there is a breaking point where Righteousness will be better (due to the very high +Spelldamage on the Judgement) then SoV on TPS.

Can somebody who is really good at math calculate that? SoR is not that hard, but for the ticks/uptime on SoV I'm lost. Also possible to just compare 5 Stacks with SoR. For Bossfights the first 10 Sec are not that important.

Using a 1,6 or 1,8 Sek Weapon (there are no decent slow tanking weapons with 200+ Spelldamage) against a Level 73 Opponent (Assuming about +5% Spell Hit on the Paladins Side. With 3% in a Talent about 2% on Equip is possible). Also let's say about 3-5% Melee hit.

(And yes I think it is strange that the Seal of Blood outperforms SoCommand by about 5-20% (depending on haste) while the Alliance Seal is worse then the SoR with high enough Spell damage. At least that is what I heard..)

 

◊ s4dfish

The first condition casts the spell on your target if it's friendly. The second condition casts the spell on your target's target, if it's friendly (i.e. you're tanking a mob, someone pulls aggro, this taunts it back to you). The last simply gives you a glowy hand so you can then click on a party members frame, I use this part when we get adds or if AoE tanking and a non-target mob changes targets. Much easier than manually changing targets.

 

Fiola

Really simplified version:

5 stack SoV - 100% of your +dmg over 15 seconds, or 6.67% of your +dmg as DPS, 50 base DPS
5 stack JoV - 43% of your +dmg, 600 base damage; judged every 10 seconds, that's 4.3% of +dmg as DPS, 60 base DPS.

TOTAL SoV damage: 11~% of +dmg as DPS, 110 base DPS


1H SoR - 9~% of your +dmg as DPS, 30?? base DPS (I forgot the exact number, but it's around 30)
JoR - 73% of your +dmg, 170~ base damage; judged every 10 seconds, that's 7.3% of +dmg as DPS, 17 base DPS

TOTAL SoR damage: 16.3% of +dmg as DPS, 47 base DPS


SoV has better base damage, SoR has better scaling.



For SoR's scaling to catch up to SoV's base damage, you need
difference in base DPS - 110 - 47 = 63 DPS
divided by
difference in DPS scaling - 16.3% - 11% = 5.3% +dmg/DPS


63 / 5.3% = 1189 +dmg

SoR has better overall damage than SoV when you have more than 1189 +dmg, the point where SoR scaling makes up for SoV's higher base damage


This analysis ignores
- unequal effects of +damage% modifiers (SoV didn't get the effect of 1h spec when I tested it a few PTRs ago, but that was before the 10%->5% damag echange
- the ability to boost SoV's DoT damage via AW+trinkets (like trinketed lifebloom ticks, or the poison stack from scorpid pets)
- the ramp up time of SoV (have to build up 5 stacks to have all of SoV's scaling)
- the tendency of SoV to fall off or get resisted on boss type mobs
- proc rate unreliability on fast weapons (combined with point above, makes it tougher to use on some fights)
- instant damage procs on 5 stack SoV (which are weapon speed dependent...)
- EDIT: The effect of Reckoning on SoR/SoV scaling (favors SoR)
- EDIT: The iSoR talent




[shameless self-plug]
If you want a detailed analysis of SoV, you can look at my old but still somewhat relevant Seal Mechanics thread.

http://elitistjerks.com/f33/t9673-pa...eal_mechanics/
[/shameless self-plug]


EDIT: Formatting, highlights

 

Drfeelgood

I've been using Bloodmaw basically since our second gruul kill, many months ago. It's good for spell damage but like has been said, it's about 15 sta short. I keep my cont blade around for those times that I don't need extra threat but may need the extra stamina, same reason I keep around my crest of the sha'tar after having the NB shield for so long.

Personally, I have divine shield hotkeyed and I have a separate macro for when I want to cancel it. This way, when I know I need to just break something, I hit my hotkey while moving my mouse over the extra /cancelaura Divine Shield macro. This means that I can still spam my DS hotkey without fear of it accidentally cancelling my shield and I can quickly break debuffs while tanking with an extra click.

I have a mage alt and I use the all-in-one that is mentioned above except with the cancelaura first:
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block

Hit once for a block, twice to break things quickly.

 

Ubok

About the macro thing, I'm not sure if it's still necessary, as is used the exact same thing for Intervene, which got changed some time to automatically assist-target should an enemy be targeted.
Should be easy to test though. Just got some mob and use RD, if you get a "target too close" error you´re golden without the macro, if it´s "wrong target" you still need it.

 

Gromweld

An update (from the [Paladin] MT Viability thread, which I am posting here because this new thread is easier to browse):

Illidan is dead. I tanked him the entire time. This was our guild first kill of him, so this was not a case of severely out-gearing the encounter or having the boss on farm already. I'm not sure if this is a "world first" but I can say it was not easy. I think we took a few years off of the lives of our healers during that fight...

However, it became abundantly clear during the final phases of the fight that Warriors are simply better tanks for MT situations like this.
- 6% reduction vs 10% reduction means he hits for ~1k more on average, but top-end damage means he can hit for 9k, 5k, 9k in a matter of 1.5seconds on a protpally where a warrior would only take 8k, 4k, 8k - in split-seconds like that, 3k damage can be the difference of "insta-gib" and "barely making it." This becomes even more apparent during Phase 5 when he Enrages and begins hitting for 11k/8k even faster...
- The 1500hp difference between Warriors and Protpallies makes the above "insta-gib" factor even more likely to occur - if the healers are already not winding up heals and loading you up with full HoTs, you're gonna get splattered.
- The fact that Protpallies have no Last Stand or Shield Wall to help with Enrage or similar abilities means that your healers have to be balls-to-the-wall 100% of the time, and an unlucky streak (which WILL happen) simply will be too much for even successive-9k-heals to overcome.
- Holy Shield sucks for MT purposes as it is now - it is impossible to remain uncrushable reliably with it on boss fights because of the .5-1sec lag-time between it falling off and the cooldown allowing you to put it back on... as opposed to Shield block that has 1sec longer duration than the cooldown.

So either you gotta be really lucky or much more geared than a Warrior at the same level to begin to reach for the upper-echelon MT spots. It's unfortunate, but until we start getting some more "oh shit" buttons and more passive damage mitigation we won't be able to stand toe-to-toe with Warriors - the HP buff in 2.3 helps get near them, but it isn't going to be enough to compensate for the other deficiencies.

Another note:
I hit the buff cap during the fight regularly, and I often found my flasks getting pushed off because of all the HoTs and buffs I received during the fight. I'm not sure if this is a problem specific to Protpallies (since we have Righteous Defense up, another buff in the slot) but I'm fairly sure it caused a wipe once or twice when my max health suddenly dropped due to Fort/MotW and Flask falling off.

 

• Vinsent

Holy Wrath 19.05%
Avenger's Shield (per target) 13.57%

From wowwiki - which while not the more reliable source has the other coefficients right so I'm guessing these are correct as well.

 

Doctah

Random question but does reckoning work with windfury? As in can both hits proc it, MH only, or does the extra attack from reckoning prevent windfury from going off at all.

 

Schnappi

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that Defensive Stance counts as a buff too. So it's not Paladin specific.

 

bellator

Hey Fiola, just to let you know that the coefficient for a 5 stack SoV tick is actually 85% not 100% of spell damage. There is a discussion in the first page of this thread between Theras and myself about it.

I do also believe that SoV is being effected by 1HWS from the numbers i tested.

I have a spreadheets simiar to my ret spreadsheet for paladin TPS. Will try to get it into a publishable form if i get the time.

Two question you might be be able to answer that i've asked in the Ret thread but is more applied to tanking damage is with consecration....

1) When you downrank consecration, the extra damage cause by +spell damage is scaled down. However the extra damage caused by JotC (219*0.95) is not scaled down and is still applied in full to Rank 1 Consecration. Why is this?

2) The extra damage from +spell damage gets effected by dmg modifiers such as sanctity aura, AW etc etc, but the extra damage caused by SotC is not. Again, why is this.

Cheers