Tilted:

I've always been curious as to the reason for using the shield first.

Surely if you pop nightmare seed for the first pyro, take it on the chin and use shield for the second, your healers have more time to top you back to full?

Probably doesn't make a world of difference, but the usual sequence always stuck me as a little odd.

On the subject of resilience, it's helpful to keep in mind now that it also reduces the damage from DoT's. So while you aren't going to want to run out and start tanking in 350 resilience gear, it gives a little peace of mind that if you use a piece or two of arena gear to fill in some slots where you just haven't had any luck with drops, the resilience isn't completely wasted itemization.

I'm just starting to tank Kara and this made me feel a little better about grinding out the honor for the S1 shield and saving my badges for 2.3/2.4 loot.

Part of using the shield first is that the "eventual" tactic for dealing with the Pyroblasts is to only eat one of them, and the other two get interrupted. Aside from that, healers tend to have a heart attack when the tank drops from ~22k down to ~1k, and I get topped off rather quickly. Plus, my wife is priest class lead so I make damn sure healers are pre-casting before the spike happens.

Regarding DS, my guess is that he would in fact continue to fire the 2nd Pyro at me, but it's the 3rd I'm concerned with. It seems like he'd target #2 threat for the Pyro, as well as run to them if I don't get DS canceled in time (or worse, STAY on #2 if I don't have enough of a lead in threat). I don't have any reason to suspect that he'll act differently from any other mob, but this isn't the kind of fight that leads to experiments in behavior.

BTW, the +25% spell damage debuff from the dagger makes for some awesome threat generation. I was concerned with my ability to keep up with DPS, but the scaling is almost perfect. That's one advantage paladins can enjoy on this fight that warriors do not -- they'll only get the +25% to damage, but the inherent threat from things like Devastate, Shield Slam, Revenge, etc doesn't scale.

Searched this thread but looking for a definitive answer: is Akama still "bugged" to the point that there's no particular reason to prefer tanking defenders with a protadin vs. any other tank? I realize it's Akama and either way it doesn't really matter, just curiosity on my part. We just BT attuned a protadin last week after seeing most of the Sunwell fights and I'm still getting a feel for where he's viable and where he's just better off healing.

I've been unwilling to try out whether the Ashtongue Defenders are still buggy with Paladin aggro, but I'd like to add that a good Protadin is still extremely handy for handling the Ashtongue Spiritbinders, Elementalists and Rogues within the encounter. No need to bother with any form of crowd control, just start dpsing right from the get go.

Yeah, I'm a bit hesitant to try it because I think my head would explode if we wiped on Akama. I ask because we generally don't even bother tanking the sides anymore, warriors just put on DPS gear and hit things, and I was curious if we could put our protadin in the middle and let the prot warrs DPS on the sides.

Tried it last week, still bugged.

Tried it wensday, still comically bugged.

To clarify:
I tanked one side, solo (as usual), other side was 2 tanked, one warr in the middle picking up all Defenders. After 3 or so waves we finish on my side, I notice the warrior's handling quite....a few. Taunt off him, pick up 3 and tank them...to have them completely ignore me after about 10 seconds and run right back to him.


Honestly, these guys feel like they're insulting my spec on a personal level.

Just a tip I picked up from the Healadin thread I am passing along.

For those times you are not needed for tanking or healing, boost your usefulness by getting [Nightfall]

Put a counterweight on it for a speed boost, put up Seal of Crusader, and it will be swinging aat 2.47 speed without any other additional effects. Average 24.5% up-time on it's debuff with this swing speed, which does work for level 73 bosses. Non-phase 2 Illidian I have this swinging away at him, and average 6-7 procs in phase 1. No internal cooldown, I have seen it refresh itself. The first time I used it, it was on Illidian, and I got 3 different tells (ele shammy, mage, and lock) praising it, they REALLY noticed the boost during the proc.

I now have it swinging during single-pull trash, several different bosses, and it has helped greatly. An incredibly minor drop in personal DPS at worst, for a fairly large gain in raid damage. Well worth it.

Jeeze, I leave for like a week, and the forum gets trolled.

Anyway, to (slightly) resurrect the former argument - kings is amazing. Getting Kings is your build is rather silly assuming you bring 1-2 holy paladins like most guilds do.

To answer questions about block value, I find it a nice tack-on to items, but to go for it is worthless as a paladin. Focus on stamina/mit/spell damage - standard paladin necessities.

Yes, defenders are still bugged. /sigh.

Tanking Kael'thas - how is a warrior not doing it? Anyway, popping bubble is a great idea. Wait until the pyro is about to go out, and then bubble. He'll switch targets likely, but if you can't get the shield down before he manages to channel up another one, there are other problems.

For paladin posts constantly asking about gear, you should refer to the first post. I'm tempted to write up a strict upgrade to upgrade post for chicken to copy up there. Suffice to say, heroic badge gear is generally the best you'll find until (Arguable) bt/hyjal, and equivalent to much of t5.

For all the arguments about wearing warrior gear - do it. You don't need every single piece of your gear to have spell damage built in to it, especially since we can't be cool like warriors and be uncrushable in greens.

To all protadins, I want to remind you that each of us plays different rolls. I have no interested in MT'ing Kael'thas, but some of you do. Others are holy 80% of the time, and only prot for Hyjal trash. If you have questions about items, strategies, talent builds, anything, remember to mention the roll you are talking about. Gearing for trash/offtanking bosses is very much different than gearing for MT'ing Naj'entus.

I'll try to troll more often so I can join in fun arguments like "Is kings good for tanking classes?"

In terms of solo tanking kara, Free action potions prevent the ice tomb, those and and high dps gets me though the ushers with no issues.

Block value is also underrated for burst prevention.

Against physical attacks, block value can be treated as a direct substitute for stamina (assuming uncrushability of course). You just need to know how many physical attacks it'll take to kill you.

If a mob can kill you in 3 physical attacks without healing, then 10 block value subtracts 30 total points from those blows; hence, 10 block value is worth 3 stamina.

If the mob can 4-shot you, 10 block value is worth 4 stamina. Et cetera.

(Technically you have to factor in talents and buffs, but the multipliers come out almost the same -- 1.28 for stamina, 1.30 for block value -- so you can just as easily compare the raw stats on the items.)

One common gear choice where this difference shows up is the comparison between [Bracers of the Green Fortress] and [Vambraces of Courage]. Ignoring the gem slot on the Vambraces, the comparison is 6 stamina vs 33 block value -- meaning that the Vambraces give better burst protection against anything that isn't one-shotting you. That's without even considering the extra armor on the Vambraces. Put a yellow +8 defense gem into the gem slot and the two items have practically identical avoidance values as well.

EDIT: Along this same line of thought, it just occurred to me that a block-value gem in either red or yellow (and then an appropriate purple/green hybrid gem with block value/stam) would be really handy and would make some set bonuses worth getting.

--

On a lighter note, apparently tanking Kara as a prot paladin is now "teh hardcorez".

Hey guys. As a long-time tankadin, I have found this thread invaluable in tweaking my character. I have a quick question, and wondered if anyone had crunched numbers. I am currently Prot/Ret 47/14 and what I am wondering is this: Especially with the revamp of gear in 2.4 I am curious of gear choice.

When I am DPSing as a tankadin (when we are on bosses that need only one tank, or Aran, etc) I am currently using +SP dmg and SoR all the time. Would I be better served to switch to SoCommand and switch to Ret style gear for these fights? It seems like the sp dmg is less and less available on plate and since I may have to impromptu tank in that fight I need to stay plated, but I want to do as much DPS as possible (oh to be a feral druid).

FYI, I am not questioning when I am tanking. Obviously spell is better, but since I am pretty much only able to do dmg with seal/justice and mele swings when I am dpsing, it made me wonder.

Any number crunches/help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

-Er

Honestly I'm kinda curious about that too. One thing I've figured out on Illidan is that even with 7% spellhit, SoV < SoR when he can't even Parry, further cementing my demented hatred for the spell, but it'd be nice to have better numbers. Normally I swap out to healing gear instead of attempting to DPS but it's possible I can fit in SoC somewhere in my build.

Yeah, back before BC there was a decent amount of what I used to call "generic paladin gear", which mostly had str/int/sta/spelldamage/mp5. The old Judgement set was the best example of this (one reason I absolutely loved it, in addition to the fact that it looked seriously badass), but a lot of the random paladin drops in Naxx followed this rule as well, as did the old PvP sets and some of the later pre-BC itemization (the tier 0.5 Soulforge set for example).

There was a lot of this stuff in BC leveling gear too, but it's gone away over time and they're actually backfixing a lot of this stuff (my beloved [Hammer of the Naaru] loses its spelldamage next patch). I assume the reason they aren't making any more of this gear is (a) with the healing->spelldamage conversion, Holy paladins don't need spelldamage plate to grind anymore, and (b) Ret mechanics and gear are being moved away from spelldamage towards pure dps-warrior stats.

Which I find kinda sad, because when I was leveling in BC it was a hell of a lot of fun to wear a high-spelldamage set with a two-hander and absolutely destroy a mob when Reckoning procced. I guess I'll have to use healing plate if I want to do that in WotLK.

Anyway, if you can get some Ret gear that would be DE'd otherwise, I say give SoC a shot and see how it works.

One change on the PTR I had not noticed being mentioned: apparently Righteous Defense works with implied targeting as well as base targeting. in other words, the base spell works just like the macros do. It does not work with all situations (if you can't buff it, you can't do it) but it appears to work otherwise just the same as the macro.

It's a good change yes; I'm actually surprised that wasn't changed sooner after the Warrior's Intercept ability got the same kind of logic (Since it basically has the same issue). With 2.4 also giving us the ability to taunt mobs off of NPCs that takes away a fair bit of the annoyance factor Righteous Defense has at times.

Apologies if this has been discussed; I ran a search and did not find anything.

Has anyone had trouble using RD to taunt a mob that has just broken out of mind control? I ran heroic Mech last night and our only CC was a shadow priest using MC. On the waves before the final boss, the priest would MC an astromage while we AOE'd the rest of the mobs. Once the MC broke and the astromage started heading for the priest, I would use RD, and the little taunt animation would appear over the mob's head, I would not get a resisted or immune message, but the mob would still be on the priest, without the priest continuing to do anything that would generate threat. Does mind control have a unique threat component that makes it unaffected by taunts?

As an aside, in retrospect it would have been preferable to just AOE down each wave with no CC, which is what I'll do next time.

On another note on the tankadin DPS line of thinking, with the +5% dmg from one handed, would it be worth it to keep 1handed when DPSing if I am using SoCommand? I know the traditional thought is slow weapon, but should I just go with a slow one-hand, or will the DPS loss be so significant that the 5% isn't worth it.

Also, I would love to know what you tanks do to DPS. Numbers are my friend, even if I suck at making them myself.

Thanks again.

Even with 1-h spec, a high-dps two-hander will still give you more damage than a caster-style one-hander, regardless of your seal.

SoR does ~20% more damage with a two-hander than with a one-hander. That, combined with the higher white damage more than compensates for the loss of +spelldamage.

SoC gives more damage per proc with slower weapons, and the number of procs per minute is the same regardless of weapon speed, so slower weapons are better, and two-handers are much slower than one-handers.

SoB does damage based on white damage, so obviously favors a two-hander.

SoV might be an exception. A weapon slower than 3.0 will always proc SoV on hit, so a two-hander will proc more reliably and suffer from fewer stack losses. I'm not sure if that compensates for the spelldamage loss or not, however.

And if for some bizarre reason you're dps'ing with SotC, then white damage is all that matters and a two-hander is better.

I'd say the [Nightfall] suggestion above is probably the best way to contribute to raid dps; unfortunately you have to have some pre-BC mats sitting around to make one.

MC's weird.

In short, here's the deal, as near I've been able to tell (and I spent about 2 hours testing this):
MC acts like a Taunt, matching aggro. Then it has a 'ramping' aggro effect, over the next 6 seconds, ticking every 2, for about 1.5k threat -per tick-. A taunt right out of MC will NEVER work regardless of class unless you can sustain while not being attacked at -minimum- a 750TPS nonspiking rate. As pallies, we suck at this, ferals can do it and warriors can get lucky.

TL: DR- Don't taunt when MC breaks. HoJ or BoP as required, and taunt after about 8 seconds, your threat will match properly.

I don't know how many tankadins here have successfully tanked Kael but I've done it several times now.

Our guild has killed Kael three times.

On the first kill, we had 2 prot warrs and a prot pally (Me).

On the second kill, we had 2 prot warrs and me but the prot warr that was tanking kael DC'd. I said to hell with it and tanked Kael. We killed him that attempt. I'm the raid leader and my theorycrafting showed it was possible so we gave it a shot and down he went.

I tanked him on the third kill as well and we two-shotted him, so it was a very clean kill all things considered.


I think that the key is that our guild was ALWAYS able to interrupt the second pyro. We were usually able to interrupt the first pyro as well due to CoD timing by our locks. Even if you don't interrupt the second pyro, have a priest Power Word: Shield you. As long as you can hit 22 - 23k raid buffed, you should be fine just eating the pyro. I never had to use a single nightmare seed or fire prot potion on Kael. I've used them, but they just ended up getting wasted. Make sure that you have points in the spell damage reduction talent of course!

Do you have more than 22k HP buffed? If you do, just make sure a priest is assigned to PW : S you and you should be fine on the second pyro. Wear max stam gear because your threat won't be a problem in P4 and P5.

Also, do you run with only 2 tanks or do you use 3? As I mentioned, we only used 2 and it worked very well with having more DPS in.

The ONLY problem that we sometimes had was aggro on the weapons as I was tanking ALL of them except for the axe. To remedy this, I put a shaman in my group during that phase and made sure to cycle casting judgement of righteousness on the weapons... And blew AW of course.


As for the consecration on the adds: It was a problem for us as well. I just yelled at the hunters to hit the add harder although this did cause our first wipe on the third kael kill. It happened on our third kael kill on the kill attempt as well. I just told the melee to get out of melee range and ranged to nuke the bird. 5-10 seconds later, it was an egg and I had been thrown across the room (But lived). Make sure to remind your hunters to click off salv and pick up that bird ASAP. We had two hunters do it (One per side, whichever grabbed it first kited it).