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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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