What bothers me is you don't explain yourself. You say "Look, this has less int, but more stamina and spell damage, and since intellect is useless, I therefor conclude that intellect is useless"

Each of those items were designed for different purposes. T5 was designed with Hyjal tanking in mind. Thus it is stacked with block value, block rating, and very little avoidance.

The heroic chest was designed with 10 man main tanking in mind. Thus it was loaded up with avoidance, spell damage, and not intellect, because you're going to be constantly taking damage in a MT role.

Int has a role to play. Because you don't see it in your day-to-day play doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There is limited situations where I use it to it's full extent, but I do need it from time to time.

Those times are:
Trash healing in tank gear in case mobs get loose.
Offtanking or building secondary threat on certain trash or target swapping bosses.
Offhealing on fights where I'm in tank gear, such as Kael Thas during gravity lapse. Mother Sharaz as a Saber Lash tank. Maybe supremus when I'm hateful tank.

Note that being a MT on any fight, or directly tanking a mob does not show up on that list.

Did I?

Look at that chart again. For 100 int, you only need the equivalent of about 25-30 SD depending on how long the fight lasts for SD to be as good as int in overall threat generation for an offtank. That's using your numbers. Based on that, the chest of the stoic guardian is better than T4 or T5 for offtanking - at least by itself. If you factor in the T4 bonus that's better for offtanking, but the stoic guardian is better overall. The stoic guardian provides more pure avoidance, more stamina, and more spelldamage; it is better in general cases for MTing and it allows you to put out more threat in OT situations. Where it is not as good is in tanking adds, but that's mostly because of block value/rating; it has nothing to do with the int.

I also understood that the stoic guardian was actually designed for tanking in Hyjal/BT and was the bridge between T5 and T6 as you need more avoidance going forward. T5 is certainly good for tanking the waves of undead, but it's not particularly good for any of the boss encounters. Of course if you're not actually tanking those, it doesn't matter.

My point about the comparison in items is that pound for pound intellect is not nearly as useful a stat as spelldamage is, even in specific situations like you described. Is it completely useless? No; in some small cases it can be convenient or even decent. Then again, so is strength, but no one would ever say that strength was a stat that tankadins need.

I guess I'm alone in honestly having mana issues fairly often. I could make it easier on myself by using a lower threat rotation, but to be honest the idea of lower threat rotation makes my skin crawl- I'll take the hit and chain pot as fights require it. I also don't MT all that much so that's doubtless part of it, but it's fairly rare that I ever feel I have 'enough' aggro, and there's almost always something I can do to dump into more threat (you'd be shocked how often you can sneak in AS tosses). I have my threat suit (which is my VR suit really) and use that off and on on trash (once I know it), but mostly I just lump it and chug mana pots like they're going out of style. If it's an aoe pull I can usually sneak on a JoW, which helps.

I'd also like to...well, 5th or so, the comment about AS being used on the birds on Alar. I have my Conc aura up for phase 1, and that usually lets me get a shield off fairly reliably (we tank all the adds through till phase 2). I also wear a ranged hitcapped set and have not (yet) seen any misses or taunt resists- obviously that's a pretty big deal, and suprisingly easy to get (badge gloves, def/hit ring from H Tombs, neck from SV, trinket from Romeo/H BF, it's easier than it sounds). I wear a variation on the suit for Vashj and I've got to say the assurance that my stuff will hit is worth tons in peace of mind. Failing that, makr up the bird as it's coming down the stairs and have your melee watching, ready with a stun so you can pick it back up.

This comes back as a topic on every single class with mana. The time you can last until oom is almost a meaningless number for comparing to see what is actually better. Since after you're oom your mana regen is far from 0, the guy who lasted 10% longer than you actually did FAR LESS than 10% more threat than you. If a big enough portion of the mana comes from regen, and the guy that lasted longer did so purely because of his bigger starting mana pool, the difference in actual threat generated over the fight will be very small. If you do the theorycraft for "paladin A did 10k threat during the fight with the mana he had, while paladin B did 12k threat" you'll get a lot more useful numbers than if you say "paladin A lasted 10% longer than paladin B". Lasting longer hardly means anything, since you also need to calculate how much threat the short-lasting paladin was generating while oom, might as well just figure out how much each was able to do with his mana and not even bother claculating the meaningless value of "who lasted longer".

Calculating how much threat each could generate will give you far more useful numbers for comparing what's actually better.

On a side note, on 5-mans unless you're consistently going oom in the midst of the pull, int is the most useless stat ever. While higher mana pool allows more pulls without drinking, you also drink longer. If you add up the total time drinking you will spend less time drinking with more spell dmg than with more int, however you may obviously spend more actual drinks. Doing more threat/mana reduces time spent drinking back that mana. Having a bigger pool just means it takes both longer to drain it and longer to refill it, totalling in zero downtime reduction. Many forget that the number of drinks you spend has little to do with your actual downtime.

Just a thought for the main post:

It might be useful for people leveling prot pallies to have a link to this post from the old Paladin MT Viability thread, because it gives a pre-Kara gear set which can be used to get uncrushable. I had to do a bit of searching to find it again, and other people might not know it exists.

I respectfully disagree, because I'd rather stop the group less to drink. When we do have to stop, then nobody cares if it takes 30 seconds to get to full, and other classes probably need to drink some by then. But if I have to stop every 3 pulls, it will vaugely annoy people. Having 1-2k extra mana means I might go several more pulls, since it's not "Oh that's just a few extra consecrates" -- it's an extra buffer of mana that is slowly drained depending on how much I cast and how much SA returns. To give a better example -- I'd rather do all the groups up to Nethekurse in Heroic SH in a row without having to stop to drink until we get to the door, rather than stop twice for drinking. Swapping in gear like [Figurine - Living Ruby Serpent], [Boots of the Righteous Path] and so on.

Additionally, if anyone has to drink it's the DPS casters for a few ticks, and meanwhile I've already started on the next pull with the healer/melee. This does two things -- the pull is already locked down, and I've gotten a fair bit of mana back either via JoW or SA, since I'll actually have some time to take damage. My healer is the least taxed out of everyone. A slightly bigger mana pool helps me here, because there's more to fill and I won't start a next pull if I'm below 1.5k mana.

This is just my experience from the heroics I like to run. Psychologically it just feels better for most people if you only have to stop a few times to drink, rather than repeatedly, even if it's shorter drinks. With approrpiate spell selection, I might have to stop once from Blood Guard Porung to Warbringer Om'rogg, stop before engaging him, stop after engaging him, and then stop before Kargath. On a side note, I view my healers mana bar as a mana potion for myself. If I'm finding myself mana starved, I'll make sure I position myself that I have my back to a few mobs in a pull once everything has been locked down, allowing myself to get hit a few more times to get mana back. Typically my healer is never really that stressed to begin with.

I agree here, to a point. I've never found it a problem to drink for a few ticks while marking the next pull (Although with AoE threat it doesn't matter much, I do mark at least 2 targets in any pull 3+). Assuming you have mage biscuits, you end up with 1k regen in the 5 sec it take to mark and pull.

But, I've never really had anyone complain about my drinking. They are usually happy that aggro is generally locked down.


Although last night I did have a warrior in a rush to Attumen (we were trying to beat our record time), and a hunter that MD pulled the rest of the ballroom to me while I was looting Moroes (he thought I was taking too long). Fun times.

I guess this depends on how you run stuff then, because I almost never mark anything -- outside of a skull for first target. CC is mostly taboo in any instance I run. No, seriously, I have to tell people "please don't CC, CC is for wimps." For SH I don't even mark anything since I assume the groups I run with know to kill the Legionnaire first, and even if they don't so what. :P

Not at all, Bosses that like to look constantly at other classes to cast something or channel, I will run out of mana on if i refuse to pot. Rage is an example, not only does my threat get hurt becuase he doesn't really like to eat Holy shield up, but unless I diliberately take a few ticks of death and decay my output simply outstrips my intake in terms of mana. This is the same when tanking adds on Azgalor (especially if I'm killed by the summoning and have to go at it again starting at 50% mana with minimal buffs). I've all but run dry on Teron and Najentus also after extended avoidance streaks, but this is the same with warriors too, although I don't have to sacrifice my un-crushability for 'rage' to gen threat as Holy shield in and of itself is a beutiful thing.

Let's just say that the value of dodge is a bit argued about then. It certainly isn't 'not a big deal' against higher-end content.

I do agree - T5 is probably slightly better than Stoic Guardian for OTing. Slightly. T4 loses in both cases though unless you need it for the set bonus. Add that T5 has a higher ilvl, and it makes you really want that int spent elsewhere.

And are we really talking about how good heroic badge rewards and T5 are for doing 5-mans? Yeah, int is more convenient for doing that content repeatedly; it makes the runs go more smoothly. But I don't think that gearing for 5-mans should be the reason to itemize the raid tier gear in a certain way, nor is it a good justification for spending ilvl points on int. If you're wearing T4/T5 gear to do heroics, chances are you've maximized other things anyway and aren't wanting as much defense, avoidance, or even stamina in favor of spelldamage, block rating and block value. Would you really want that to be the itemization pattern? Int can be useful in that situation, but I'd rather go grab a couple trinkets or random rings than want it on the raid gear.

I also drink as I mark and set up the next pull; seems like a good time to do it in general. And marking is somewhat essential as I tend to have to run pugs.

I did explain myself, but I'll do it again. 8 SD is better than 30 int because you do more overall threat for longer fights (and if they're that short it likely doesn't matter), it's better in the MT case, and it does more burst damage combined with AW. I didn't put that directly into the calculations shown but I mentioned it; basically, each spelldamage point is worth .65 TPS for the first 20 seconds, then .5 TPS afterwards. That wasn't what was used in the base calculations, (.5 was it) but you can see that it will improve at a higher rate. Not hugely, true, but it does mean the chart looks like this:

seconds SD required to be equivalent to 100 int
60 213.6363636
120 111.9047619
180 75.80645161
240 57.31707317
300 46.07843137
360 38.52459016
420 33.09859155
480 29.01234568
540 25.82417582
600 23.26732673


A fight needs to be 7-8 minutes long for stoic guardian to outperform T4. Alternately, if the fight is less than 100 seconds, Stoic will always outperform T4.

I still don't see that as entirely true, especially since the stoic guardian gives you more HP. Is more HP worth more than block value? Is it worth more when you factor in dodge as well? There are quite a few high-end tanks liking the avoidance as well. Too much avoidance is a bad thing, but you can't go with 40% avoidance into Hyjal/BT content and expect to do well as MT. I know of very few paladin MTs that go in with a very high block value set into T6 content.

No, it's slightly better. T4 is slightly worse than the stoic guardian, which is slightly worse than T5. We are not talking about a significant difference here; 450 mana allows an extra 3 seconds of the threat cycle listed above at 800 TPS, or 2400 threat. 3 SD allows an extra 1.5-1.6 TPS for the lifetime of the fight, or about 800-900 total threat depending on the length of the fight (in that example I used an 8 minute fight) 1500 threat over the life of a battle is not a lot; you'd gain more threat by unequipping and re-equipping your sword and shield and getting SA. For an 8 minute fight we're talking a difference of 3 TPS. We are at best talking marginal differences. If you want bigger differences, you have to maximize your mana-starved damage. To do that, I would imagine you'd have to equip a warrior tanking weapon, use seal of blood if it's available, and rely more heavily on melee damage. Or as I said above, downrank more aggressively, but I've still not seen a source on the downranking coefficients on SoR/JoR.

Finally, I'm sorry for the derail on this; this is way too trivial of a point to be making about something in this thread, and is not particularly useful for protection builds to know one way or another. I apologize and will refrain from making further comments on this subject in the future.