I haven't really spotted a pattern in the bug, I do know it's been broken ever since 2.3; probably linked to the Retribution changes (Specifically the part where Fanaticism's threat reduction doesn't count if you have Righteous Fury active).

I do know I can't specifically remember it ever happening to me, but due to the fact that I always forget about Righteous Fury I frequently find myself not re-buffing it until after it's run out for a while. It could be it's related to actually refreshing the ability.

Yeah, I've had some REALLY embarrassing runs recently where I would lose aggro for no apparent reason. Several to the point of the others calling the instance bugged and calling the run.

Since I found the initial comments about this, I re-cast RF as the last buff when there are total buffs flying around, and against before every boss or critical pull I know I have to hold aggro. RF rarely gets below 25 minutes remaining, but I would prefer to regularly cast it than have aggro issues. So far this appears to keep the issue from re-occuring.

I have posted about it in my guild forums, and a few people have been chiming in with comments, mainly about wondering where it 'breaks', since sometimes the loss of aggro was immediate, sometimes it took 30-45 seconds. Looking back, I think the biggest difference (in the fights where 'wierd aggro' happened) in the duration was the fights where I had nearly every source of threat generation vs just one or two. A few sources would be almost immediate loss, where I would hold it longer when I was generating more threat from HS, spiritual attunement, 3 or 4 damage shield buffs, etc...

The problem may also be related to fixing the previous mana cost issue with RF, though I don't really know how.

I'm not really willing to risk losing aggro any more to test out some of these theories, but please, if you all have noticed similar issues, post about them. Any information at all might help to pinpoint the problem.

One working theory over at Maintankadin is as follows:

This bug is related to the double mana bug. It was proven that there is actually a hidden occurrence of Righteous Fury being cast at the same time via purge. The bug is that sometimes you will recieve the actual Improved RF buff, while other times your threat is being modified by the hidden buff, which is not affected by talents, and thus generating only 60% extra aggro instead of 90% extra aggro.

Omen/KTM read that you have selected the talents, and therefore assume IRF is being applied properly. This leads to losing aggro even though being reported as on top of the threat meter.

I have had this occur to me a few times. Everyone in the raid saw I was on top of the threat meter, but it was pulled off by another melee anyway.

This is a fairly dated post, but it wasn't ever addressed as far as I can see. I too would like to come up with a good set of point values for various stats such that I can use Pawn or Lootzor to compare various pieces of gear quickly and easily. I don't have a single, unified valuation, but what I did come up with are two different valuations: one that compares the contribution of an item toward uncrushability and the other that compares the contribution of an item in terms of time to live vs. melee attacks.

The first evaluation is easy. All I had to do was take the avoidance values from the first post and normalize for 1 pt. = 1 def. rating. I came up with...

Agility = 0.660
Defense Rating = 1.000
Dodge Rating = 0.794
Parry Rating = 0.670
Block Rating = 1.899

(Basically, it's the same as Remraf did, only normalized to a different number.) This evaluation will compare the contribution of two items towards uncrushability, which is useful if you are trying to maintain 102.4% avoidance and tweak other stats.

The second evaluation is more complicated, because time to live depends on (a) incoming damage, (b) armor, (c) health, and (d) block value. (I did a "worst case" evaluation, so I don't factor in avoidance at all. I also didn't count agility's minor contribution to armor, although I probably should have added it in.)

I wrote a calculator to determine the relative values of 1 armor, 1 stamina, and 1 block value with respect to time to live. If you have Google Docs, you can see the shared version here:
Tanking Stat Weights

The calculator takes a base point and calculates the values of these various stats about the base point, taking into account talents. If you put in your current stats as a base, as well as a (very basic) damage profile for a boss you expect to face, you can get Pawn values for these three stats (arbitrarily normalized for 1 STA = 2 pts.).

I played around with some numbers, and (as expected) the general trends are:
* As incoming hit sizes decreases, the value of Block Value increases
* For very small hits sizes (ie AOE tanking), Block Value far outweighs the other two stats
* As Block Value increases it feeds itself, become still more valuable
* Armor and Stamina exhibit diminishing returns (they become less valuable in relation to other stats as you get more of them)

I don't have a good way to put my two comparison evaluations together, or to add in threat values, but this could be a start in the right direction anyway.

Trinkets aren't really different from any other gem/gear slot: You do what you have to do to get to uncrushable, and then go for whatever else you want (stamina, usually.)

You should really try grabbing a wide assortment of different trinkets. I'd recommend double stamina trinkets if you're uncrushable without needing your trinket slots but your health is still under the ~18-19k buffed, after that point I'd recommend swapping in an avoidance trinket with a clickable effect that'll help you stay alive in an emergency.

Beyond that basic advice it's also worth looking at what trinkets provide you in different situations, for example if you're tanking all the adds at Hydross using two avoidance trinkets with clickable avoidance effects is likely to be better than stamina trinkets, since the temporary buffs from the trinkets will be up for most of the time you're tanking. The same would count for Morogrim's Murlocs if you have trouble surviving them (As opposed to having trouble not running completely out of mana despite spamming mana potions like you'll have after a certain level of gear).

In BT Gurtogg and RoS are also great fights for clickable avoidance trinkets. Resist fights in which you need to stay uncrittable are, on the other hand, fights which are perfect for using +defense trinkets on. There's even some fights in which having a trinket you can click for extra spell damage (and threat) is really good.

I personally keep a selection of ~6 different trinkets on me at all times for different situations. For AoE tanking I typically use an avoidance trinket combined with a threat trinket, for general tanking content I use a stamina trinket and an avoidance trinket, for fights where there's short periods of tanking followed by periods of standing around doing nothing much I use double avoidance trinkets, etc.

Does anyone have any experience and/or advice tanking the Flames of Azzinoth during Illidan P2?

I'm normally healing during the fight, but due to circumstances of a missing FR tank, I will probably have to take over doing this tonight.

My biggest question is what to spec, with the assumption that I'll be speccing specifically for this fight. Being unable to block elemental attacks, is there any reason at all to even pick up holy shield? Would it be more worthwhile to spec partially into holy, throw on a healing weapon/shield after P2 and spot heal, or just spec fully for survivability/threat?

Basically something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft vs. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Also, I logged out in what I'll presumably be tanking in here, and after purchasing all the badge FR gear, I have enough badges left to get either [Libram of Divine Purpose] or [Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx] but not both. I'm not sure which would be the better upgrade, the Libram would replace the pretty much worthless [Libram of Repentance], while the bracers would replace the sub-optimal [Vambraces of Courage]. I should be uncrittable and at max resist either way, once specced correctly and flasked.

So I just wanted to ask all the big boss tankadins out there what Talent spread they feel works best for them. We've had some time to test out the last batch of changes and i'm looking for any opinions on what is of the utmost importance for a Prot Paladin that is frequently tanking bosses. I'm also looking for advice on the current state of gem selection.

Personally i've chosen a balanced approach to my gems, and put points towards the goal of a highly mobile tank.

What do you guys think is the best way to maximize for this role?

For gems I'd just recommend Stamina all over the place for the most part. The only exception generally being +stamina socket bonuses which you can pick up with just a single non-Stamina gem. The reasoning for this is mostly that you get a lot more bang for your back from Stamina gems because you got roughly 1.5 times of any other stat's worth; not to mention that with all our talents added together we have a very high stamina multiplier; Combat Expertise, Sacred Duty and Blessing of Kings together add up to a 28% increase to your Stamina, which really increases the amount of stam you get per gem to easily beat what you'd get from anything else. That is all assuming you don't need the gems for uncritability or uncrushability; if you do need gems for that I'd recommend using Enduring and Shifting gems.

As for talent spec, there's a few possible specs people tend to go for. I've personally gone for Pursuit of Justice over Spell Warding, but that's more of a personal convenience thing. For survivability Spell Warding is better, and if I'm honest, for raiding in general Spell Warding is better, you can get half the increased movement speed by using Boar's Speed on your boots. You can also argue Improved Blessing of Might versus Benediction, I've personally gone for Improved Blessing of Might as the situations in which I find myself low on mana really wouldn't be helped much by lowering my Seal/Judgement cost by 15%, as well as the fact that I'm the only Paladin in my guild who has Improved Blessing of Might. Alternatively you could drop the same talents that you can use to pick up Pursuit of Justice to pick up Improved Seal of the Crusader instead, however ISotC's effect is really just limited to making Judgement of the Crusader less "selfish" to use; crits aren't all that important for our threat, and it could also be argued that if you're the maintank that using a Judgement to maximize your threat is far from selfish in the first place.

I also prefer One-Handed Weapon Specialization over Reckoning due to it's reliability (As well as the fact that's it's better for AoE aggro; though Reckoning is very good if you're in a situation with a lot of stuff hitting you where you also need to keep aggro on one particular mob), though I've never run the numbers on which of the two is factually better. Obviously you can go for a higher threat spec by dropping an avoidance talent in favor of Reckoning, Anticipation would be the most likely choice for dropping in favor of Reckoning since it's the lowest avoidance boost of your talents, though dropping Deflection instead would be better in case you tank a lot of resist fights.

As it's easier to just link builds, here's a few examples of the builds I'm talking about.
Basic maximum survivability build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Variation on the above with Pursuit of Justice: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (Note that this build doesn't have Kings, which is in my opinion suboptimal for 10-mans; I've personally dropped a single point from One-Handed Weapon Specialization instead)
High threat/survivability build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

There's a few less common specs as well, which are better suited if you're not a Maintankadin.
Really high threat build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Prot/Holy: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (This spec becomes less good if you pick up a good amount of high mana/5 healing gear; if I need to heal I barely notice not having Illumination any more because I've geared around not having it)

Edit: Reading this post makes me wonder why I have so much trouble actually writing a proper talent section for the first post. I guess I'll modify the above a bit to fit in the first post better tomorrow.

I tank flames every week. My spec is suboptimal at the moment as I fat fingered my talents when I specced back from Ret after doing karazhan and didn't get spell warding.

I don't really have a lot of advice, if you cap FR, and become crit immune, and high enough health, then all you need to worry about is threat. Now, I wouldn't recommend speccing particularly for this fight unless you specifically have to. (IE: The only reason you're speccing prot at all is to tank flames) in which case, I don't know, you might even be fine to do it as a holy spec with iRF.

Really flame tanking is 3 things. 1: Gearing up, and you're there. 2: Learning positioning/Boundaries, and how to get out of the way of eye beam, and 3: Learning exactly how far to move to avoid blaze damage before it starts ticking. My FR gear is a set picked up one afternoon after my raid leader sent me a tell asking if I could tank flames. It's a combination of crafted pieces, gemmed with resilience and stamina and normal gear, some pvp gear, and badge boots. It looks much poorer than yours probably.

I don't die, unless I screw up and stand in stacked blazes, or eat eye beam. Threat is lower than normal, so I'm the second one killed. Judge crusader etc. But assuming DPS can watch their own threat, you can tank it for a very long time even if threat is low.

I would get the bracers of the two, just because it's probably something that will help your gear set past this encounter. This encounter is completely about execution, and as long as you can execute it correctly, and have capped FR and can't be crit, you will be fine. If you can't execute it correctly, no gear can help you.

I've been considering the same build. I think it was off-tanking hex-lord as 0/48/13 that made me really consider it, as once all four adds are down there is literally nothing useful to do for a paladin off-tank but heal. I tanked the adds in mostly healing gear, but after adds are down I was pretty useless with all of the spell push-back the spirit bolt ability churns out.