I think it's nice for threat, but Eye of Magtheridon and Tome of Fiery Redemption (or whatever al'ar drops) are better for it.

I don't see 1750 HP for 15 seconds being incredibly useful compared to straight +stamina trinkets or damage reduction trinkets (adamantine figurine) but it could save your butt on... say Lynx boss transitions in ZA or a bad bubble in Magtheridon.

Wow. You are dumb. No offense.

Say you're going through 1,800 Mana per minute after SA mana gain, in-combat MP5 from wisdom etc... So every two minutes you burn through 3,600 Mana.

Assume tankadin A has 7,000 Mana. Assume Tankadin B has 5,500 Mana. Assume that you are using large mana pots that restore 1,800 - 3,000 Mana on a two minute cooldown, making for 2,400 mana average per mana pot.

After 80 seconds, both tanks will have lost 2,400 mana and will Pot. They are both up to full mana.
120 seconds later, they will pot again. Tank A has 5,800 mana. Tank B has 4,300 mana.
120 seconds later, Mana Pot. Tank A has 4,600 Mana, Tank B has 3,100 mana.
103 seconds later, Tank B goes OOM. This happens exactly 423 seconds into the fight.
17 seconds later, Mana Pot. Tank A has 3,400 mana.
113 seconds later, Tank A goes OOM. This happens exactly 553 seconds into the fight.


In this example, Tank A lasted for approximately 130.73% as long as Tank B, with 127.27% more mana. Depending on how quickly you gain mana and how quickly you lose mana, you may get a bigger or smaller gain from having more mana but the point remains that the more mana you have, the longer you last, even with Mana pot chugging. I can't think of a single boss that I tank that hits me hard enough that I don't have to worry about mana potting so this is important.

This example is NOT factoring in that if Tank A has more mana and the tanks have gear of equivalent item level, Tank A will probably have less mitigation/avoidance than Tank B and as such will take more damage. This means more healing and more mana regen through SA. This is a side effect that is hard to measure but makes a big difference in realistic scenarios.

Almost all OT fights where taunt isn't allowed have some sort of incoming damage to the tanks to help recoup mana/rage starvation so this is important. On Gruul, you have hurtful strike or whatever it's called. On VR, you have pounding. On al'ar, you can taunt so threat while OTing isn't important. On Leo, you're taking damage half of the time and the other half you can white hit to build rage (Druid/warr) or judge wisdom and swing away if you're a pally. Vashj is tauntable. Did I miss any fights where tank swapping is sometimes necessary pre BT/Hyjal?

My experience is only up to SSC/TK so I am not sure about BT/Hyjal bosses. I know that Gurtogg requires some tank swapping but also know that OT's will have stacks of his dot on them for a lot of the time. Either way, my point remains that more mana does make you go OOM slower. It won't prevent it but let's take a look at our example... What if the fights lasts 423 seconds long? The extra mana is completely useless. If it lasts 553 seconds? It can be the difference between a kill and a wipe because the tank went OOM and lost aggro.

What it comes down to is this:

"Pallies cast spells to generate aggro. Spells require mana. Mana comes from intellect. No mana = no aggro. No aggro = you've become a 100 dps paladin with a lot of HP."


Otherwise, I agree with most of your points Kalbear. Intellect isn't something that you go out of your way to get or socket/enchant your gear to get. Every fight is situational. If you're taking enough damage that the mana regen is greater than your mana output... Hell yes, a larger mana pool is useless. I just haven't found this to be the case on nearly every mob I've ever tanked and find myself going OOM in combat sometimes with my mana pot on CD.

It's not that simple; it's a system with inflow and outflow. When OT'ing, you're spending mana on SoR/JoR, consecration, and AS. You're also gaining mana from BoW, healing from any incidental damage you take (e.g., VR pounding), chugging mana pots, possibly JoW, and possibly other sources like a shadow priest or totem.

From these, you can figure out the net rate at which you're gaining or (more likely) losing mana. If you're spending a net 1000 mana per minute offtanking, then 1000 more mana means you can keep up your full threat cycle one minute longer, which may very well be the difference between getting Voidreaver's aggro back and not. It certainly has for me on more than one occasion.

This doesn't apply strictly to offtanking situations either. For me, tanking Al'ar adds is usually a negative net mana-flow proposition, even when chug pots and eat all the explosions, etc. By the end of the fight I'm often low on mana or out of mana, so that's a place where having a bit more intellect helps as well.

Intellect-free gear is great when you're MT'ing something that's hitting fast and hard, but it's problematic in a lot of other situations.

No. Mana comes from incoming damage.

Intellect is just about as relevant a stat for us as it is for shadow priests, whose mana comes from outgoing damage.

If you want more mana, figure out a way to take more damage without creating more lethal spikes.

This thread makes me sad due to the lack of numbers and facts, and the huge amount of conjecture and pure ranting.

Offtanking: My offtanking threat rotation is 8 seconds. This particular setup is using no damage consumables.

JoR averages 808 damage
Consecration is 207 damage per second or 1656 damage per cycle
SoR does 180 damage per 1.8 seconds or 800 damage per cycle
Melee does 98 damage average or 435 damage per cycle.

With precision and no hit rating you have 6% chance to miss. With weapon Expertise you have ~3.5% chance to be dodged/parried. So we will take 10% off the melee swings.

With precision and no spell hit rating you have 14% chance to miss, so we will take that off of JoR.

JoR = 808*.86 = 695
Con = 1656 = 1656
SoR = 800*.9 = 720
Melee = 435*.9 = 392

Calculating threat:

JoR = 695*1.9 = 1321
Cons = 1656*.9 = 3146
SoR = 720*1.9 = 1368
Melee = 392

Total = 6227 / 8 = 778.37 TPS

Consider Avenging Wrath: 20 seconds with 3 minute cooldown.

Under Avenging Wrath you're doing 778.37*1.3 = 1011 TPS.

Mana Use:
SoR = 260 * .85 = 221
JoR = 145 * .85 = 123
Cons = 660

[top] 1004 * 5/8

625 mp5

Standing mp5 = 0
Super Manas mp5 = 100
Mana Drain = 525 mp5 or 105 mana/sec

Mana Pool Unbuffed: 6535

Time to OOM: 62 seconds

OOM TPS:
Judge every 17.2 seconds.
SoR = 1368 T/8s
JoR = 1321 * 8/17.2 = 614 T/8s
Melee = 392

[top] 2374 /8

296 TPS

OOM Mana consumption:
(221 + 123) / 17.2 = 20mana/sec = 100 mp5


So from just these numbers you can see that you can burst 1100 TPS for 20 seconds. You can settle down and maintain 770 TPS for another 45 seconds after that. Once you are OOM you are pushed down to 300 TPS. This does not count any mana gains from Spiritual Attunement. This does not count intellect buffs. This assumes you never get attacked. This also does not consider windfury or any other buffs you might have on you, this also does not count reckoning. This also does not count judgement of wisdom. This also includes melee parry chance which wont happen if you attack from behind.

Assume a fight like void reaver. Now pretend it's worst case scenario where you screw up early or your other tanks have a huge avoidance streak and you NEVER get aggo. (not going to happen realistically). Thus you only take pounding damage.

Over a 5:50 kill, I took 104,000 damage from pounding. That would be an additional 10,400 mana. Assuming the pounding is equally distributed that is 10400 / 350 * 5 = 149 mana/5 seconds.

Plug that into our Time to OOM calculations.

625 - 100 - 149 = 376 mana/5 = 75.2

Now assume you have kings (+26 int = 390 mana) unimproved Wild (+14 int = 210 mana) Brilliance (+40 int = 600 mana) = 1200 more mana.

= 7735 mana.

Gives you 102 seconds.

On a fight like Void Reaver, without being targetted once, you can maintain a full threat rotation for 1:42. This would mean using a maximum of one potion. Your OT threat would range from 770 to 1100 TPS. As soon as you pull hate these calcs mean nothing because SA will probably fill your mana bar for that period of time and your TPS will go way up because you can include holy shield.

A druid or a warrior could not maintain a max threat cycle for that long in those circumstances. They would run through rage far too quickly.


Anecdotally: The only times I've had problems off tanking is if I screw up. If I misplace my consecrate early in the fight and it's not hitting them, or I screw up some other way and end up way down the rung. I have built secondary threat on Moroes, Void Reaver, Gurtogg, Essence of Desire, pretty much any Backup-Tank fight, except for Gruul, because at the time we were doing him we had 2 prot warriors for karazhan.

This was all on learning attempts as well, this is not a matter of me doing after we are on farm status.

The only time I've ever doubted my ability as an OT was on Moroes, early in karazhan, when I was geared up almost entirely in warrior gear. Even then the only changes I needed to make were wizard oil, blackened basilisks, and more aggressive potting.

If you are having real trouble, either you are not being aggressive enough in your threat rotation, and thus not pulling aggro, or else you need more spell damage or intellect.

Intellect is somewhat important because it cheaply increases your maximum time to OOM. In terms of item budget, 3 int is roughly 1mp5. That means that if you're only lasting a minute and a half before you're OOM anyways, the 3 int gives you 45 mana, the 1 mp5 gives you 18 mana. Considering in a backup-tank situation, your initial burst is the most important because this is what gives you aggro, and once you have it, SA carries you. But that said I wouldn't go out of my way for it, but it is something you lose for gearing in warrior gear instead of paladin gear.

The only place this theory may not hold is Gruul. I have never tried OTing him, though I know paladins who have had successes. Maybe for that encounter we do struggle. But there are other encounters where we make up for it.

In short, my paladin can generate OT threat fine assuming I occasionally get attacked. Nearly 800 average sustained TPS is fine for an OT for all content that I have done. (Now 5/5 7/9)

Intellect limits the maximum amount of threat you can do before you start taking damage.

Mana is rarely a concern when you are actively tanking.

Be realistic. I would never tell you to put on [Pendant of the Violet Eye]. But I challenge you to show me a piece of real top end paladin tank armor that has intellect on it but does not have spell damage.

Intellect is paired with spell damage. Dropping spell damage typically drops intellect.

My point was against wearing warrior gear. It was not the relative value of spell damage versus intellect. Intellect is not useless. Spell damage is more important, but most of your tank gear is going to have both on it. Unless you pick warrior tank gear where you get neither.

Edit: I also wanted to clarify that I do not think that intellect is better than spell damage. I would never drop damage for int. But like something like parry rating, while it might not be as good as another stat, it doesn't mean it has no value at all.

True - but my point was that intellect isn't necessary on armor and is for the most part wasted (I originally responded to the notion that paladins 'need' intellect, which I see occasionally here and on the official forums). You can see this in the newer itemization; some of the badge rewards are ignoring it completely, as are a few of the drops in BT that aren't the actual tier sets.

I guess I'll sum up. When MTing it's important to safely take as much damage as you can in order to maximize mana throughput. Intellect doesn't help with that - effective health does. When OTing it's important to maximize your damage output. Int helps with that, but doesn't help as much as other stats do - and spelldamage is the more important stat here. (and point of fact, if you go OOM you may be better off going with SoB and a big tanking sword instead)

Honestly, if you go totally OOM OTing I think your best bet may be to repeatedly remove and reequip your weapon and shield so that you can get healed.

In my case, I'm punting 96 stamina or ~1200ish HP every time I do that. Getting healed up from that is gonna get you 120 mana and 60 threat from SA; if you time it well with your weapon swings, it costs you minimal threat to do this.

Now, I'm not claiming that int is totally irrelevant. Obviously you'd rather have more than less. But it certainly isn't worth seeking out.

One place where int *is* especially interesting is in situations such as VR where you will sometimes have aggro and sometimes not have aggro. When you lose aggro after having it, you'll normally be full mana or close to it, so you're getting multiple cracks at a full mana pool and a boss you don't have aggro on. So in that situation, having another 1k mana max pool is likely to give you an additional 2k or 3k mana over the course of the fight.

Actually, I'm saying that it's better to stack spelldamage when OTing than it is to stack intellect, because it doesn't matter when the threat is dealt - it just matters what your overall threat is. Downranking doesn't factor into that at all. Extending your time until OOM isn't important since you could just put out more threat early. Heck, one could argue that the best way to maximize your threat is to maximize your damage when AW is up, and that happens when you maximize spelldamage.

To my knowledge no one's done all that much actual testing on the coefficients of downranking damaging spells; if they have (especially for seals) I'd love to see it.

As to comparing pally gear with/without, here's a good one: [Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian] vs [Justicar Chestguard] vs [Crystalforge Chestguard]. The stoic guardian has the most damage/healing, better stamina and better avoidance; what it doesn't have is int. Is 30 int worth 8 SD? For longer fights, yep. That doesn't mean you should get rid of the set bonus for T4, but it might be worth it for T5, especially given how good the chestpiece is in general (and how bad the 2-piece set bonus is for T5)

Anyway - long story short, paladins don't need intellect.