0.66% dodge might sound insignificant, but if there were magically a 15 dodge rating enchant we could use instead, that would only add 0.79% dodge. Toss in the 33 armor and the two would be very comparable.

Also, I'm not talking about gear. I'm talking about enchants. Just because agility isn't an overly desirable stat to look for on gear doesn't mean we should rule it out when looking at enchants.

@Snowy: Thanks for pointing out the armor option, I'd completely forgotten about it.

I find that block value is very useful for a protadin, and probably our best source of mitigation against multiple mobs.

For tanking trash in MH (which we have just started to do a week or so ago) I have about 580 block value. Mobs hit for around 1k, so I am reducing the damage I take on a hit by a bit more than half and the damage is coming in quite steadily without bursts. In tier 5 and 6 instances it wouldn't be all that hard to raise this block value to the 700 area or beyond.

I have an avoidance set as well, which has something like 12% more dodge, parry and miss than my aoe set but only about 340 block value and a lot less spell damage since it's made from "random" tank gear rather than T5. When taking a lot of small hits, even this difference in avoidance is made up for by the block value in terms of overall damage incoming. I'm not sure how it would stack up to compare tier 5 and 6 for aoe tanking, since tier 6 is almost entirely dodge/parry rather than block. Apparently, T6 is for tanking heavy hitters and T5 is for Hyjal.

In any case, my block set gives me a lot more threat than the dodge one would, at least until I get t6, so it makes life easier for the dps. The simple fact that I've blocked an attack means I've hit the mob with a couple of hundred damage - and much more than that in threat.

The decision on whether to wear the block or avoidance set is based on how hard I'm likely to be hit. If a mob is hitting me for more than about 2k at a time then block starts to look less attractive I think. That tends to mean that I wear my block set most of the time, since most of the time I'll be tanking a fast hitter or multiple mobs, and other tanks will have the big stuff.

I do think it makes sense to go for an all or nothing approach to block value. After all, we don't get extra threat from it or anything like that. Its only function for us is mitigation. If you are tanking a mob that hits for 8k then you want to 1% more dodge, not 50 block value (or whatever the relative item cost is), so there is no point wasting a single item point on block value. On the other hand you quite often get mobs that hit for less than your block value, and they take damage when you block, so why would you want to dodge or parry?

I've noticed the same thing since last patch.

I did a search for this on the forums but could not find anything! I just happened to get a good shield for my tanking set a day ago. I am uncritable and uncrushable and hit about 22k hp with buffs. The issue i am having is between getting a 18 stamina enchant or a felsteel shield spike. The stamina would add about 227 hp, and the extra threat from felsteel would be nice but it wouldn't count as double threat with righteous fury. I am split right now but leaning towards the spike, any hardcore theorycrafters have an opinion on this?

The big 'gotcha' with +damage as opposed to 2% threat is a fairly significant amount of our threat comes from SA returns, as well as the seal/reseal mechanic, and the calculations I've run myself seem to back them up. 2% threat is a not insignifcant amount while dealing with threat capped DPS (because of the 100/110/130), so I'm pretty happy with my choice.

And now I just remembered my gorefiend gloves are unenchanted. D'oh.

The only thing I can think of that he could possibly mean is that for a Horde Paladin health would be lower compared to what a Tauren Warrior or a Druid would have (Because of the Tauren racial), while for Alliance Paladins there are no serious racial differences in health between any tank race/class combination beyond the base health differences.

I can honestly say in practice that it isn't that big a deal. While 5% health is quite a bit with current health values, having 5% less health doesn't make you all that much weaker, especially considering not all Horde Warriors in the world are Tauren.

More on the subject of enchants, on gloves Threat is basically the best threat enchant you can get. Even if we make a high assumption of the TPS gain from spellpower so it's 15 TPS, you'll be outdoing the threat that gives with a threat enchant as long as you do at least 750 TPS, and I can't remember being at a gear level at which I did less than 800ish TPS on a single target. For AoE tanking the crossover point is when your consecration does ~120 damage per tick. Of course I still have spell power on my gloves, but that's more because I still need to re-enchant them with threat; I originally had them enchanted with spell power as they were my grinding gloves as well.

For survivability, it's basically a case of 11.66 stamina, versus 0.66% dodge and 33 armor, versus 240 armor (Or 264 if it works with Toughness).

I have a little bit of spare time on the commute home every evening, so I'm happy to find something to fill it. What statements about paladin tanking are we lacking quantified and verifiable maths for?

I know of:

SoV yields higher threat than SoR at lower spelldamage (i.e. it would be useful to know the point of inflection)
SoR/JoV/SoV weaving yields higher threat than either SoV/JoV or SoR/JoR *on average*.
Paladins take less parry damage than warriors or druids.

Anything else to add to the list?

While the opportunity cost of using them is much higher than thunder clap, if you must have one, Hurricane, Slow, and top-rank Soothing Kiss are all attack speed debuffs.

Thanks for the correction on Slow.

Hurricane certainly is of limited use in general situations, but for the specific use of quelling a periodic enrage, or easing a phase transition, I think it would be quite useful. Hurricane is actually a greater reduction than Improved Thunderclap, so in an infinite mana situation with zero DPS concerns it's worth using every cooldown anyway.

I didn't see this answered with a quick scan, but apologies if I'm repeating a previous question.

Our old main tank is on extended hiatus, and I'm going prot on raids these days. It's looking possible that I'll tank Illidan this week, and had a couple questions.

I heard once that shear cannot miss, so you need to gear such that you have 102.4 avoidance without factoring in miss rate. Is this correct? And assuming I do get screwed by the lag gap between holy shields, can you divine shield shear off? Thanks.

Threat from mana gains isn't affected by threat modifiers, so the glove enchant doesn't do anything special for threat from SA.

http://elitistjerks.com/526907-post1914.html

VT and Bloodrage have been shown to unquestionable be unmodified by threat modifiers, and there's some testing scattered around that thread on other regen sources. Threat-1.0 doesn't apply modifiers to any power gains and appears to be accurate for paladin threat, so SA is probably not an exception.