Thanks for all the tips, guys. Let me address this: Yes, I apologize for seeming so mopey. I had enough people I respected telling me "Pally tanks are worthless in t5 content and beyond" that I bought it, and it sapped my enthusiasm. To quote our MT: "I will give every one of our DPS warriors a full set of prot gear before throwing any to a pally." I held these assumptions up until very recently starting to armory various high-end pallies and finding them quite decked in t6-level prot gear, and now I'm kind of bummed that I gave up when I hit the t5 wall. But to be clear, I've been highly motivated by this thread to make it happen. I very much do. I can't think of a role I've ever enjoyed more in a PvE environment. Time to get back on the horse, and by the horse I mean honor/badge grind. Not true actually. Ret will proc off blocked hits, making it my aura of choice for any fight where threat is a bigger danger than spike damage.

[EDIT] Beaten to the punch by multiple sources. Yay posting at work!

I think this will be a great meta gem for pallies, especially once you start to get a nice high block value.

Question I'm wondering on it is it 10% off the top, or 10% onto your base block value.

Shield specialization gives 30%
So say your natural block value is 300 (which is reasonable for SSC/TK) would give you 390bv with talents.

So is this extra 10% making it 10% more than the 390, or the 300?

300*(.3+.1) = 120bv total
390*.1 = 129bv total

So in this example it's an extra 30 or 39 block value.

Especially for fast hitting mobs, blocking an extra 30 damage per swing will add up pretty quick, and with health pools around 22k+ with buffs for an SSC/TK gear level this might be the spot to shave off a few hit points for survival.

A mob only has to live something like 8 seconds before the threat from JotC catches up due to Holy Shield, Consecration, SoR, and eventually another JoR, and like I said earlier, if you need snap aggro on the mob, judge JoR first. If the mob's at 30% health before you can do a second judgement, quite obviously you wouldn't put up JotC. But in a large majority of circumstances, JotC is useful. Being a second tank, I would always put up JotC because it just gives such a significant threat bonus.

I can put out 1100 or so TPS on trash, and DPS still has to somewhat limit themselves to avoid pulling aggro on occasion. But even so, this question was not about me, it was about the fellow who was having a hard time holding aggro.

If you lost aggro to the warrior due to bloodrage you're doing it wrong. As I said, you can make a macro that immediately seals righteousness. Melee hits with the seal is going to get you aggro. Sealing gives you some threat. If you need more than that, then yes, judge righteousness first. Hell, the warrior has to hit it to get any appreciable threat, so should you. But like I said, if you have to absolutely guarantee you get aggro off the bat, judge righteousness and pray that you don't get a resist. (JotC can not be resisted, JoR has a 13% chance with precision)

Consecration can almost always be used. You're the tank, so 99% of the time, you control where the mob is positioned. Move it away from the CC, and then consecrate. You're not going to generate much threat at all if you're just using SoR/JoR/Holy Shield without even judging crusader.

I see by your gear that you're mostly in ten man and tier 4 content. So maybe that's where we have a disconnect. Scaling gear up you get very marginal gains in terms of spell damage for the prot paladin, while DPS potential of your DPS classes skyrocket. When I started to notice that my threat wasn't pulling it's weight, the first, and most effective change I made was to start using JotC again. Now someone at a different level than myself is having an issue with threat, and so I'm just giving the same advice I used myself.

Use consecration even if there is CC in the pull, do it by moving the pull out of consecration range of the target.
JotC gives increased TPS at a decreased initial burst threat value. This is typically fine because most classes have some amount of ramp-up time as they build rage/CP/debuffs/sunder etc. If you need to secure initial threat, you can still judge righteousness first, but JotC gives great longer term benefit.

Noob question:

Using the gear spreadsheet that is referenced somewhere in this post, I tried to see what would happen if I start replacing some of my gems with +12STA ones. I juggled it around and got a good mix... then I remembered that the spreadsheet also takes buffs into consideration to get to the final result.

So, I go to the buff page and take out kings, MOTW, Mastery Elixir... and lo and behold I drop a few % in avoidance and become crushable.

Should I rely on buffs to be uncrushable or just rely on the gear?

If you need the buffs just rely on the buffs. If you aren't relying on the buffs to be uncrushable, you're relying on them to get more health to survive, so it comes down to the same thing. Either way you're using buffs.

In my opinion it is fine to rely on buffs as long as you are sure you are getting them. My pally alt always runs with a druid every Kara run (usually 2 or 3 of them), so I factor Kings + Mark into my uncrushable calculation.

Alternatively, if you are worried about it, grab yourself an alternate trinket for more avoidance, check your avoidance prior to every boss fight using the macro in the first post of the thread, and adjust your trinket prior to the fight if you have to make it up. Also, realize that for dual-wielding bosses you can afford to drop some avoidance, as their miss rates are higher.

You should always have Kings (self-buff) and the elixir/flask/etc buffs, so definitely count those. Otherwise, like others have said, don't worry about it. Make your gear the best possible and you'll be ready for with-buffs or just slightly less ready for without buffs. Unlikely that anyplace where you wouldn't expect every buff it'll be the make or break difference.

Hi there, this is my first time posting here since I'm mainly ret in raids (you'll find me on the EJ ret forum a lot ) and only occasionally go prot or holy these days.

Still, I've managed to tank all trash in Hyjal, MT the first 3 bosses in Hyjal and some random bosses/trash in BT, including Sharhraz/Council rogue/Illidan flame adds/MT Illidan amongst others and until now my usual theory has been "if it doesn't kill me and I can keep aggro, I'm doing fine" (besides all the basic crit/crush immunity etc) vs ret theory where it's about point by point damage improvement.

However recently I'd like to nail down some things I'm not too sure of and optimize as much as I can, this is where this thread comes in. Anyway, I digress, just to explain my background for the relevant info.

I think I'm well versed about the mitigation/avoidance stuff (had a warrior alt pre-TBC which tanked up to 10 bosses in Naxx), my questions are mainly all about maximising threat further.

1. SoR vs SoV:

I know SoV can have some debuff upkeep issues (which are minimized by the new extra long duration last patch), but simply put: Over a 10 min fight where you can keep SoV stacks up (no phases where you can't hit the boss like illidan), which provides more threat? SoR or SoV? And at which spelldamage level is SoR/SoV better?

Unbuffed, I'm currently at 528 spelldamage with 2% threat on gloves (my armory profile should show my tanking gear atm).

I usually start off with SoR to gain some good aggro, before I start stacking SoV and then switch to that, other times I just stick to SoR all fight, I'd like to know which is better (at 528 spelldamage unbuffed), especially since they improved SoV now (with holy damage when fully stacked from the seal hits).



2. 1h spec vs Reckoning:

This is my usual prot spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

While this is a pretty solid spec, I've been considering getting 1h spec over reckoning.

What's the general agreed on norm here? Which causes more threat when tanking a boss with no adds? Does reckoning proc when you parry? Or only block/hit?

I also have 4 piece T6 bonus (+10% damage/threat from consecration) so that should tilt things slightly more in favor of 1h spec.

What do people advise? Or is there a spec that makes sense which has both without losing too much other stuff? (Dropping Ardent Defender maybe? Not sure)


Also connected to the first question: Reckoning promotes SoR?



3. Windfury vs Wrath of Air (101 spelldamage) totem:

Normally I ask for Wrath of Air, but have been considering Windfury as an alternative. Anyone done research on this? Do the extra procs + seal procs outweigh the added threat from WoA totem or is it not worth it?

Considering prot paladins don't have as many synergies as prot warriors to increase threat (feral druid/battle shout is worthless to us), is there any other party synergies that can be recommended besides Shaman/Ret pala? (SP misery in raid, but not in party)



P.S.: Hope you excuse if this has been settled before, I've tried to skim through most of this thread for conclusive answers but only made it through the first 15 pages or so.

Not to sound like a jerk, but who cares if you get a significant threat bonus on the target that DPS isn't focusing on? All you need to do is outpace the healers, which SoR alone should do. By the time the first target dies you should have a commanding threat lead and it really doesn't matter much what you do. Seems to me JoW would be better to put up after you have an ample threat lead on the healers (2nd judgement, basically). That way your DPS can get a little mana back when they switch to your target.

What is "doing it right" then, assuming some other tank body pulls or shoots a target to initiate a pull? If your answer is judge->reseal->melee, then I'll refer you to my earlier post about how that's failed for me. If I taunt, I end up with 3 on me in a hurry, with the other tanks in a bind because of HS threat on me (not to mention giving the healers a heart attack). If I use AS, it's even worse. I can judge JotC which doesn't cause any initial threat and then have a chance at my first attack seeing a miss/dodge/parry, or worse it might change directions before I even get a swing in. Or I can juse JoR and virtually guarantee a mob locked onto me the moment it's within 10 yards of me. We're talking trash here, too, which is almost always level of 72 or lower, with a 3% chance at a resist on JoR (1.4% for me, given the spellhit on my mace) or less. That's a lot lower chance than that first melee swing failing to connect.

I also use AW liberally. That 3 min cooldown comes back pretty darn quick.

I can see where it looks like I'm doing T4 stuff from my gear, but my guild is one of the many 5/6 SSC 3/4 TK guilds at this point (ZA fully cleared), with me filling some sort of tank role on every boss in those zones. My DKP was screwy for a few months because my mage was my main that I accumulated a ton of DKP on, and that didn't get squared away until recently even though I've been tanking this stuff a good 5 months now. In fact, the main reason I care so much about alpha threat is because of my mage and nuking behind tanks that couldn't quickly snap aggro onto themselves. I use a different gearset for trash with ~550 spell damage and the Al'ar trinket, which might be why I'm having success with this.

I really don't want to sound like I'm bashing SotC, as it is an exceptional tool for sustained threat generation. But at least for me, it rarely ever sees the light of day unless I'm tanking something that will live longer than 20 seconds and is #1 target for DPS.

SoV outperforms SoR at spelldamage amounts under 1000 unless you are hit and expertise-capped. If you can interleave, it does even better.

1hws does slightly better than reckoning on a single target given around 50% avoidance. We are not talking a whole lot, one way or another. The main reasons to not take reckoning over 1hws is the increased parry chances and lack of consistency on a single target. However, a lot of end-game tanks are taking it.

Reckoning only procs on hits that cause damage. Parries do not trigger reckoning. Reckoning actually promotes SoV slightly, as it's more likely you'll keep a 5-stack on and can interleave SoR a bit more readily.

From all I've seen, WoA wins hands down.

Battle shout isn't worthless to us, it's just not that useful. Commanding shout is great though. SPriests are very good synergy in general. The big keys are ret pallies and shamen.

I think the actual question here is:
Is the +10% added to the 30% to equal a +40% increase? {[Base] x (1 + 0.3 + 0.1)}
Or is the +10% multiplied into the total? {[Base] x 1.3 x 1.1}

It doesn't matter if it is {[Base] x 1.3 x 1.1} or {[Base] x 1.1 x 1.3}, the result is the same. I am inclined to believe that this will be the case, but verification from someone on the PTR would be great.