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So, I found a fun little site where I pretty much played around with different items. I'm interested to see what the more experienced protadins think about the following (sunwell-itemized) setup:

chardev.org - A World of Warcraft character planner v.2.beta

The only thing that is annoying me is my chestpiece, which I am seriously considering swapping the defense/sta gems with pure sta, so I gain 12 sta(talented/not buffed) and lose .2%dodge/parry.

Also, 4 stats or 12 spell damage on the rings (with this set, not usually). Faceguard of the Impenetrable vs Lightbringer faceguard? Stamina trinket instead of Battlemasters? Band of the Abyssal Lord instead of Seventh ring?

Several other items have "alternates" that you can click over to see what I thought could replace it or be a relative equivalent in that slot. For those too lazy to look, current (UNBUFFED) stats are:

16377 hp (1318 stamina)
6363 mana
533 defense
32.7 dodge
18.82 parry
20.04 block (50.04 with holy shield OR redoubt)
317 block value (I know, weak, 62% of the time it will actually be 503 BV)
651 spell damage
4.34 spell hit (almost useless, but it's there)
5.85 melee hit
18683 armor - 63.89% reduction(19888 armor with imp devo{65.32%}, 20683 armor with bulwark proc{66.21%}, 21888 armor with both{67.46%})

Thanks for the insight. I'm at 22.2k HP fully buffed, though the "legendary" shield drops me so I'm just barely above 22k. Surviving the individual hits wasn't that big a concern since I was willing to piss away consumables while learning the fight, and they worked fine.

We currently use 2 prot warriors, myself, and a feral. I can see where switching out a tank for another DPS would help, or even use a DPS warrior to hold an add in place, but we've been farming SSC and TK so long our raid's DPS is through the roof. The biggest thing getting in our way right now has been attendance of a few key players. Gotta love it.

We actually switched some tanking assignments a bit so we can afford a prot warrior chasing Thaladred around in phase 3, which means we now have a warrior tanking Kael as well. This got us into phase 5, so we'll probably stick with that til we get our first kill. It's good to see how others have done it, though.

I am sooooo passing this note on to our warlock crew.

Any reason you're not using the Illidan head? I also would only use that Battlemaster in fights where I really need the TPS, else I'd stick to a Pocketwatch.

I'd also ignore the glove socket bonus, that setup has plenty of dodge and actually rather little sta.
Cloak will get 12 defense instead of 12 dodge in 2.4 (discussion about this was some pages back).

+12 damage on rings has also been pretty much a given for me. Why do you prefer 4 stats?

Rings I would swap depending on what you're tanking.

edit: I'm not commenting on possible better item choices in 2.4, only thing I've given more than a glance is the new badges ring (which is lovely).

4stats because already have 651 spell damage, and as you noted, was rather low (comparatively) on stamina.

The helm was actually the wrong helm. Meant to put in [Helm of Uther's Resolve] with 15 stamina/same meta gem. The site isn't perfect for updating these things. Check the link now.

Changing battlemaster to moroes' trinket isn't a bad idea, then swap enchants on rings to 12 damage.

The website doesn't have 12 defense enchant on it yet.

Check the updated version now.

Where do you get "[Helm of Uther's Resolve] "

Yrma - NPCs - WOWDB

Turnin from some holy helm I suppose.

Hello, I was reading around and read that eye for an eye can proc PvE.

I have read that it will proc from resilience, regardless of the mob actually being able to land a crit with a spell.

This then is a question about the elementals in P2 Illidan. Can EfE proc as a result of their magic-based melee damage?

I'm pretty much entirely certain no one has ever tried that out Sartorial. Anyway, I doubt anyone would be using more than ~30 resilience, which would give Eye for an Eye a a 0.75% chance to proc on each hit you take, which means you get extra threat worth 0.24% of the damage you take. That would mean that if the incoming DPS on average from a flame is 1000, you'd be generating an extra 2.4 threat per second.

Even if you were to gear up specifically for it (Which I wouldn't recommend since Resilience gear is going to kill your avoidance), and you'd have 5% crit reduction from resilience, that's still only threat equal to 1.5% of the damage you take, which is 15 TPS when taking 1000 DPS.

Long story short, even if it works, the effect is negligible.

Edit:

Speaking as someone who usually has 60% avoidance when raid buffed, the mana issues and threat issues aren't notable yet at this amount, at least in Tier 6 25-mans. I do have severe mana (and thus threat) issues in Karazhan, my mana slowly runs out in Zul'aman (Though not to an extent that it hurts my threat, it's a slow drain I compensate with mana potions), and it also slowly runs out on a few of the bosses in Serpentshrine Cavern and The Eye.

Having said all that, I've been slowly swapping around gear pieces into getting more Block Value, since like the theorycrafted Sunwell set Damnathor posted my Block Value is actually quite low.

Your point about using resilience to hit uncrittability brings up another question I've had for a while - I need to put together a fire resist suit for tanking a Flame on Illidan - how have other protection paladins gotten geared up for that responsibility in this fight? Are most shooting for simply uncrittable or are there folks out there that have a gear set that allows for uncrushable as well? It seems that while uncrittable is not terribly hard, uncrushable is another matter entirely.

I have never built a fire resist suit for this character, so I can take pretty much any approach, but I have a bit of time to put the suit together.

Thanks for your input!

Neither Illidan nor the Flames can crush.

It's also not even possible to block elemental damage. Your focus after hitting the FR cap should be stamina, avoidance, and enough spell damage to hold the flame if yours is the first target.

I logged last night in my FR suit to do some theory crafting. Its all very easy to get stuff. Please dont mind the gems, they'll be STA soon.

You can't even block the attacks from the Flames of Azzinoth, so you'd have a hard time pushing off Crushing Blows even if they could crush.

As others have said, crushing blows are a non-factor on the flames.

For FR I used all four epic FR badge pieces (gloves, chest, legs, boots), [Flamebane Bracers] and [Flamebane Helm], with a FR patch on the gloves and the FR glyph on the helm. That comes to 296 FR unbuffed, which with an aura will conveniently put me exactly one point over the cap.

After that I was just barely able to hit uncrittability by using [Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall] and [Merciless Gladiator's Gavel], filling out the rest of the gear slots with standard tanking gear, and socketing the blue helm and bracers with epic +def/+stam gems. ([Scarab of Displacement] was huge here.)

Ya I had to switch out holy shield on my hotbar so I wouldn't unconsciously cast it every time it was on cooldown. Don't forget that exorcism works on the flames though, so switch keybindings for exorcism and holy shield and you should be ok.

One thing that can help getting to uncrittable on the flames are elixir of Ironskin (30 resil).

Is there some sort of Paladin Tanking Spreadsheet like the warrior one? Couldn't find one searching and unfortunately the warrior one is soo awesome for warriors it becomes beyond my understanding to make the necessary changes.
Noone ever bothered doing relative stat values in my guild since all protection loot was awarded as offspec anyway.
Trying to fix that for sunwell but I don't want to reinvent the wheel...

I'm working on Rawr.Tankadin right now, but unfortunately I've been running on too little sleep lately, so I haven't been making the progress I'd like. I can just about guarantee I won't have anything for you guys before 2.4 hits next week, but hopefully it won't be long after.

Regarding Flame Tanking:

Honestly, I have ignored crit/crush on the flames. I use Flamebane helm + enchant, 4pc Badge set, and use a Chromatic Flask + aura to top me at exactly 365 FR. My defense sits at 441, and I don't have any resilience. That being said, I have never looked to see if I am getting critically hit or crushed, but I have looked at damage intake, and I am taking 50-60% less total damage than our other flame tank, and 20-30% less damage per hit from the flames, for the same period of time tanking. The other flame tank is a druid with a fair amount of resilience and sitting just above 365 FR.

Most of the difference is simply that I have way more practice tanking-in-motion, and can keep threat up on my flame and dance around with him around the ground flames without much difficulty, where the other tank has only ever tanked serious stuff in 1 place, so is new to constant movement, and takes more from the ground fires.

To date, in around 9 hours of attempts and our first kill, I have only died 3 times to something other than a mis-called eyebeam or a wipe in progress from the other tank dying. All 3 times were due to no direct heals on me for too long. 6 seconds, 8 seconds, and 14 seconds.

I don't think that focusing on uncrit/uncrush for the flames is that critical at all. Movement and control of the flame will serve you far better and allow for stacking +sta to survive dry periods on the heals.

Wouldn't it follow that if you did hit uncritable( the flames can't crush, so don't need to worry about that ), that you would take even less damage? I mean it's great that you're taking less damage than the other tank you're with, but it's certainly not because your worse gear somehow helps you out( as you indeed note ). Also, were you to gear for the dry periods of healing, wouldn't it not make more sense to come a bit short of the FR cap and use a fort flask instead?

Personally, I'd advocate trying to take as little damage as possible, and am uncrittible/max FR as a result. There are times where a bad eyebeam means you might have to hang out in a flame patch or two (sometimes with the blue flames as well), and I find that mitigating as much of that damage as possible is really helpful to my healers.

After I saw that I was thinking the click effect might be useful for getting Gurtogg off of your ass when you over-aggro. But it looks like the use effect is only a static -900 threat, so I doubt it would be worthwhile.

*response deleted*

I apologize for attempting to provide some insight for another potential option for those that might find it valuable. I would love to clarify any of my statements to those that ridiculed them. However I will not clutter this excellent thread with an arguement I don't particularly care about winning. Please PM me if you would like to discuss further.