Not if you're looking at time-to-OOM, which is what tends to matter in that kind of situation. There's a net mana loss per minute, and if you have 33% more mana, you'll last 33% longer before your mana runs out.

True, but paladin tanking gear already puts far more itemization value into spelldamage than into intellect (which is as it should be). 10 intellect has the same itemization value as 12 spelldamage, and if you evaluate them on that basis, the spelldamage is a better deal. (And that's pretty much the way it works for gems and enchants.)

But it's different when you're looking at items. Due to the nonlinear scaling of itemization costs, going from zero to 10 intellect on an item costs far less than going from, say, 20 to 32 spelldamage. In terms of bang for the buck, adding a little bit of intellect to gear that does't have any gets you more than adding spelldamage to gear that's already stacked with it.

If you're comparably geared to your dps and they don't suck, then you pretty much do need to constantly dump threat into them. If you're tanking two at once, you can go easy on the second one once the first one dies, but overall you're still losing a decent chunk of mana per pair in phase 2. (And this is of course assuming you eat every explosion so you can get mana back through SA.)

If you take the [Lightbringer Chestguard] as an example, trading away the 22 intellect would get you another 13 spelldamage, bring it from 39 to 52. Would that be better for certain situations? Sure. Would it be better for all situations? I don't think so.

Considering that the typical full-T6 prot paladin will probably only have 6 slots with any intellect at all (the 5 set pieces plus the weapon) I prefer having a modest amount of intellect on the set for the siuations where it really does help.

Don't know if it has been mentioned, but it would be nice if you could add to the "Mount Hyjal and Black Temple"-part of your guide, that the Flames of Azzinoth look like elementals but are considered being demons and you can use Exorcism against them which will help alot with threat.

Hi just curious what other prot paladins use for their tanking rotation. I typically try to conscrate, holy shield, judgement repeat but with a mix of seal of righteousness and seal of vengeance. Basically just trying to build of seal of vengeance to a 5 stack eventually judging it then switching to seal of righteousness for a little, then back to vengeance to refresh it and judge that again. Any thoughts?

I asked the same question a while ago, just from a curiosity perspective (my paladin is freshly 70). The answers seems to be: mixing Seal of Righteousness and Seal of Vengeance is doable, but risky. When it works, it results in better DPS. When it doesn't, it results in SoV dropping and significantly worse DPS. A slightly safer bet is to just go SoV, which at low spell damage levels exceeds the threat of SoR. An even safer bet is to skip SoV entirely and go with SoR, which eliminates the resist/miss string issue which can cause SoV to fall and threat spikiness. SoV is also more prone to bad streaks when you are using a fast weapon. (Or, at least that is the consensus around here. I can't recall if I've seen the math to back that up.)

My general feeling from reading through the thread is that on raid bosses (high resist rates, high miss/dodge/parry) SoV is dangerous to use, while in 5-mans you're probably ok to use it as it will stick much better. Myself, I've only had experience with it in 5-mans, and I have generally concluded that my threat is good enough already to not bother with trying SoV over SoR.

It is more likely that it was given a GCD in the beginning because it was a spell and that "defaulted" it to a GCD, and it simply hasn't been looked at closer since. I would suspect that with WotLK, it will be addressed, as they will have to build another 2 tiers into each tree of each class. I doubt Holy Shield will get over-looked.

I was actually thinking of switching to a slower weapon to build up the stack of sov at the start and then switching to a fast weapon just to refresh, judge sov, and use sor with.
Ederick

I tend to go for socket bonuses when the bonus is useful and there's at least one blue socket in the item. I've found that at my level of gear (around the beginning of T5), having extra "uncrushability points" gives me more options in switching gear around to maximize threat, avoidance, or health as required by the fight. Sometimes an enduring talasite plus a socket bonus is the difference between being able to use a stamina trinket over a defense trinket, for example, which is worth far more than the few points of stamina I'd have on the socketed item with a solid star of elune. At higher levels of gear, I expect this is less of an issue.

Since my primary goal is flexibility in reaching uncrushable while maximizing health, all gems are either enduring talasite, shifting nightseye, or solid star of elune.

Don't sign your posts .

Switching weapons incurs a GCD, which depending on the timing could be potentially annoying. Weaving SoR and SoV is certainly the highest threat you can do, provided that the SoV stack doesn't drop off. And since SoV is a proc per minute refresh (PPM / swings per minute = chance of application per swing - faster weapon means more swings per minutes means less chance per swing), there's no "perfect" time to switch between SoV and SoR to insure a refresh. Your mileage might vary, but if too many stack drop off, then you're removing the entire benefit of SoV over SoR in the first place.

You should be able to work around the GCD from swapping weapons by simply making your seal casts a macro that also swap to the preferred weapon. After all switching weapons only incurs a GCD, being in the GCD doesn't prevent you from switching weapons.

To clarify what chicken just said

If you want to avoid a weapon swap GCD. Swap the weapon during a GCD from another ability, such as seal/consecrate/judgement/etc...

If you swap during another GCD your weapon swap won't cause a GCD.

"time till oom" is meaningless. The fight will last a certain duration regardless of how long you can last, and you want to maximize your threat during that time.

If the fight is 5 minutes for example, wether you go oom in 2.5 minutes or 7 minutes doesn't matter. What matters is the amount of threat you put out, which depends on a lot more than just how fast you go oom. In fact, since starting mana is so insignificant, the amount of mana regened over those 5 minutes is much more significant than the starting mana.

To demonstrate with an example:
Let's say I spend 200 mana/sec, and gain 199 mana/sec. After a certain time T I will go oom. Now I gemmed 5 extra mp5. I will never go oom. My "time till oom" is infinitely longer than before. By your "time till oom" factor you're saying that adding that 5 mp5 will make me infinitely better, while it's not really true - reality is at best it'll add TPS equal to 1 X TPM, which is much much smaller than infinity.

Don't be mislead by "time till oom" calculations. Lasting twice as long is not twice as good. The actual benefit of lasting twice as long depends on other factors (mostly your regen and efficiency), to the point where you can simply ignore the actual "time till oom" and just figure out how much threat you can do with the mana you have available on the given fight.