Protection and you! - Page 69

♦ Oggie · 03/05/08, 11:47 AM

Originally Posted by Gunn

The World of Warcraft Armory

That's how I do it.

The better gear I get the more pts I'll be taking out of deflection to redistribute them elsewhere.

I added the 1 pt in reckoning, to test how often it procs. I figured 1 pt is worth 2% chance over a 0% chance.

Hmm. Still can't justify dropping imp JotC because, if -nothing- else, it lets me put up jotc without feeling guilty and god knows my guild won't give me lead threat time (said last night in Hyjal by a recruit: 'Seriously, you guys don't always pull like this, do you?' 'Nah, we're going slow. Might wanna break out those mana pots.'). They're a good bunch and keep me on my toes so that's something.

I'm not sure dropping Deflection's wise either. It's obviously always going to be more than 1%/point physical reduction in all realistic scenarios (relative), and I don't know about you but I skate uncrushability pretty much all the time. I trade in SBR for dodge/parry/defense every chance I get (and/or stamina), and most of my full boss tanking suits are at most .5-1% over uncrushable (in fact, while OTing supremius last night I was .7% under). I can't see a situation where you really want to never have to worry about crushability again, simply because there are better stats to grab. On the downside, I'm stapled to the hip to Tankpoints, but it's not hard to do a quick double check while healers are getting set up to make sure I'm below that 15% on the mouseover.

Oh and ignore the gear currently equipped. I was bored durring a post raid HSH speed clear and played with itemrack, that is -not- a boss tanking set (okay, maybe winterchill but does he count as a boss anymore?).

Still, always good to hear other opinions, and let me know how that Reck thing works out. I've been specced out of it for a while because honestly f parry flurries, but now that they've (actually) deflagged Sharaz it might be worth looking into again, and I'd love to hear even anecdotes of threat increase from such a minimal point investment.

Cathela · 03/05/08, 2:03 PM

Originally Posted by Xequecal

Why do people hate SoV so much? I don't get it. It's simply better than SoR for single-target tanking at any reasonable spell power level. With a stack of 5, the DoT is 50 DPS base with a DPS spellpower coefficient of 0.05733. The extra damage proc is 20 PPM and hits for 7% of your spell power, which adds 0.02333 to the coefficient. That's a total coefficient of 0.08066 vs. SoRs coefficient of 0.092. You would need over 2000 spell power for SoR to overtake SoV. You similarly need 1200 spell power for JoR to overtake JoV.

Assuming 500 spellpower, a 1.8 speed weapon, 10% melee miss/dodge/parry, and 10% resist rate, SoR does 65.25 DPS. The SoV DoT does 78.665 DPS. To lose the stack of 5, you need to not proc the DoT 8 times in a row. The chance of proccing it is (0.6)(0.9)(0.9), or 0.486. The chance of NOT proccing it is therefore 0.514, and the chance of not proccing it 8 consecutive times is 0.514^8, or 0.004872. That's a less than 0.5% chance to lose the stack. On top of the DoT, the instant proc adds 5.67 DPS, for a total of 84.335 DPS. It's MUCH higher than SoR. At the same time, JoV is doing 101.875 DPS, while JoR does 72.375 DPS. These two seals aren't even close, SoV is better even if you assume the 5-stack is only active 80% of the time.

Responding to this and your subsequent posts:

If we take your gear as an example, you should be running at a minimum of 672 spelldamage on any fight where threat is important (JotC+weapon oil). The boss's total melee avoidance chance will be around 18% after factoring in your expertise, hit rating, and precision, and the boss's total spell resist chance will be around 12.5% including your precision and spellhit. Plugging those in gives you a 43.05% chance to proc per swing, which brings your chance to lose a stack up to roughly 1.1% per swing, meaning you'll lose roughly one stack every 3 minutes.

When you lose a stack, it'll take an average of 8/.4305 = ~18 swings to fully stack it up again -- just over half a minute at a 1.8-second swing speed. Assuming you do a uniform ramping upward from zero to one to two to three to four stacks, you'll average two stacks during this half-minute period.

At 661 spelldamage (closest I can get with my gear at the moment, erring on the low side to favor SoV), SoR does 72.0 dps (including the 18% melee avoidance from above) and the SoV tick does 87.7 dps on a 5-stack and 34.0dps on a 2-stack. While the 5-stack is up, the extra proc damage amounts to 13.5dps. For an 8-second judgement cooldown, JoV is 91.2dps on a 5-stack and 63.4dps on a 2-stack; JoR is 74.5dps (factoring in spell resist in both cases)

Total dps is 192.4 for a 5-stack S/JoV and 87.4dps on a 2-stack S/JoV, and 146.5 for S/JoR.

Doing a weighted average where we have a 5-stack 5/6 of the time and a 2-stack 1/6 of the time, SoV averages 174.9dps, which is 28.4 dps higher than SoR. or roughly 54 tps. So yes, on a long-time average, SoV does come out to be somewhat better. The problems are:

(a) It's unreliable. Having higher average threat doesn't mean a lot if you lose two stacks in the first two minutes, and a bad-luck run with SoV hurts much more than a good-luck run with SoV helps.

(b) It takes time to start up. You start each fight with no stack, and per the above it'll take you roughly half a minute to build the first one, during which time your average seal/judgement threat is over 100tps lower than what you'd expect from SoR. Since threat is most crucial at the start of a fight, this hurts.

(c) SoR scales better over the long run, and scales better with spelldamage. So as your gear improves, or if you choose to use spelldamage consumables instead of hp/defense consumables, SoR becomes progressively better -- probably not closing the gap completely, but certainly making it harder to justify SoV's streakiness.

Gunn · 03/05/08, 2:06 PM

well according to WWS
our first full night in Mt.Hyjal with me tanking the waves, and tanking the infernal on the 2nd boss.

With 1 pt in reckoning Talent

1 extra attack through Reckoning 123
out of 997 total melee hits

I don't know if the 997 melee hits includes the 123 reckoning hits, but I'm assuming it does.

Solarscape · 03/05/08, 2:39 PM

So i've finally finished reading through all of that (i have read over the first few pages several times but never the whole thing until today).

So some thoughts of mine.

I dropp spellwarding and 1% damage for imp sotc. I feel that this gives me a fair trade off 3% chance to crit will likely pull around 1% damage (not tested just speculated). I haven't noticed much a difference in my threat but an obvious increase on the dps end of things.

For those who are trying to level there prot pallies i intend to come back and type up a gear list of prekara entry gear to help you out. there are alot of prot pallies running around on my server with .... bad gear to be honest. And when i ask them about it alot of them just don't know where to find better gear for starters (this will in no way apply to anywho who is past kara).

One thing i didn't see to much discussion on was how to balance your tinkets. I like having a sta/threat trinket and an "oh shit" trinket. How do you guys like to setup your trinkets? Do you just stack stam or do you stack threat or avoidance what combinations do you feel are best overall.

70 Blood Elf Paladin my set that i hope to have built before we go to BT
The World of Warcraft Armory ... not sure why its not showing me in a guild or my meta gem (putting the 18sta in there)

zably · 03/05/08, 4:07 PM

Originally Posted by Oxudes

I've heared that some very good prot paladins can solo normal BM - how much of that is true, and how good is "good geared"? I'm wondering what you actually need (I've heared about needing passive 100% migitation) and how much of it you can actually solo - only trash or bosses as well?

I know it might not be the right thread, but I'd appreciate any information on this.

Just a quick answer, maybe others can too. I've personally solo-ed it in BT/MH gear (Mostly offset) but I can't say it was easy, by any means.
The casters especially, cause a ton of problems, mostly because you can't really mitigate their damage, and both the portal "bosses" and the trash that spawn while you kill them have caster versions. You also have a ton of mana problems, since you don't really have any regen other than wisdom/judge of wisdom, and you aren't recieving any heals, which makes consecration really hurt.

The bosses themselves are really easy though, and even starting at 5-10% mana, I could take them down with little trouble. So mostly it's the caster mobs that cause problems.

Skream · 03/05/08, 9:04 PM

Id just like to point out a nice macro (small, but can be useful due to the fact you cant spare a second in the Morogrim fight on your consecrate normally). Since you are Holy Lighting the warlock, when the murlocs come to aggro you, you shouldn't have to waste that time canceling your spell (Holy Light) and then consecrating.

/stopcasting
/cast Consecrate

Simple, useful.

*This macro will not work if you click it more than once to do the Consecrate*

-Skream

Tauftamir · 03/05/08, 10:19 PM

I noticed the Talent section is still under construction and thought that posting up my suggestions would give some of the more experienced Tankadins a chance to criticise my suggestions, and also help with updating the main post

Mitigation:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Most talents there should be self explanatory. One Handed Weapon Specialization could obviously be dropped for Improved Devotion Aura (if you didn't have access to a Holy Paladin), or if you especially wanted to take Stoicism for some reason.

Threat:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Obviously Improved JotC is a preference and not a requirement. Posts here state Reckoning isn't especially fantastic, but it is a threat increase over something like Ardent Defender/Spell Warding/Sacred Duty, hence the inclusion.

These are the two builds I have been using on my Paladin. (For some background, I've been tanking with a Warrior since release and cleared current content with that character, and rolled the Paladin as an alt to experience a different play style in tanking - thus my experience with the Paladin doesn't go beyond Tier 5 Level content).

As I have geared up, obviously threat has become more of an issue in lower Tiered content, and rather than post "what build should I use?", I decided to test some changes for myself and post the ones I thought were most beneficial to the task.
I would love to get some feedback from the more experienced tanks as to what builds you guys are using for these purposes, since my experience tanking on a Paladin isn't as comprehensive as with my Warrior.

Perhaps the conclusions could then be added to the OP if they are worthy.

Prinsesa · 03/05/08, 10:45 PM

This post is saying that Avenger's Shield will no longer chain to CC'd targets, according to the test realm patchnotes, as well as critters no longer being eligible targets for chained spells.

Is it just my browser not updating the patch notes page correctly, or is this claim fake? If true, this could be very big in making us more CC-friendly (in the rare occasions I'll actually have to use it).

Lookit · 03/05/08, 11:09 PM

Originally Posted by Prinsesa

This post is saying that Avenger's Shield will no longer chain to CC'd targets, according to the test realm patchnotes, as well as critters no longer being eligible targets for chained spells.

Is it just my browser not updating the patch notes page correctly, or is this claim fake? If true, this could be very big in making us more CC-friendly (in the rare occasions I'll actually have to use it).

Yep, it's right there in the notes you linked, under the Paladin changes.

Avenger’s Shield: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. I.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

Heroics just got a bit more convenient to tank.

♦ Oggie · 03/06/08, 12:53 AM

Originally Posted by Lookit

Heroics just got a bit more convenient to tank.

Speak for yourself, now I have to individually break all the CC instead of shield autotracking the nearest CCed mob and fixing it.

I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a random CC break, but that it's someone else's AS zoning into your instance to break it.

Abynthe · 03/06/08, 4:49 AM

I did wonder where they went when I missed...

(better add some content, too

A while back there were some fake notes in which we got a whole bunch of arbitrary buffs, including Blessing of Sanctuary becoming less abysmal than at present.

My question to the floor is this: When, if ever, do you use Sanctuary over another blessing?

Prinsesa · 03/06/08, 5:38 AM

Speak for yourself, now I have to individually break all the CC instead of shield autotracking the nearest CCed mob and fixing it.

I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a random CC break, but that it's someone else's AS zoning into your instance to break it.

I believe you can still break a CC with AS if you shoot the AS at a CC'd target directly. In any case, there's always going to be some situation where one behavior is better than another - this is probably the lesser of two evils.

♦ Oggie · 03/06/08, 6:59 AM

Originally Posted by Prinsesa

I believe you can still break a CC with AS if you shoot the AS at a CC'd target directly. In any case, there's always going to be some situation where one behavior is better than another - this is probably the lesser of two evils.

Actually I was fully merely aiming for humor, this is a nice change (and by reports not hitting critters is even more of a bonus, though my guild note may change from 'critterbane'). I just am horribly frustrated that there is still that dagger on PTRs so I'm trying to avoid them as much as possible outside of doing the dailies to learn them. It's annoying enough not to actually give us a quest/badge/tradable tankadin weapon, did they have to perfect itemize one and then make it a dagger for some reason? Least they could do would be to clone it as a sword or something.

Marshmallow · 03/06/08, 7:16 AM

Originally Posted by Abynthe

including Blessing of Sanctuary becoming less abysmal than at present.

My question to the floor is this: When, if ever, do you use Sanctuary over another blessing?

Maybe it's just me but Sanctuary isn't abysmal now, and it's my #2 buff right after kings.

It's extra agro for every block, which you do a ton of anyway.
Plus reduction of every incoming bit of damage by as much as 80 is absurdly underrated, especially for aoe tanking.

Now if you want to talk abysmal, tell me the last time you used blessing of sacrifice effectively, anywhere other than Maiden of Virtue.

vorda · 03/06/08, 7:40 AM

Originally Posted by Marshmallow

Now if you want to talk abysmal, tell me the last time you used blessing of sacrifice effectively, anywhere other than Maiden of Virtue.

PvP. If you really want more PvE examples, it shines if you use a murloc tank on tidewalker as well. Besides that, if you have heavy HoT based healing in your raid, you could ask the druids to throw you some hots (as holy pala) and use it on an AoE tank.

Anyway, its one of our most powerful PvP tools with a small PvE use. Not all abilities should be focused towards PvE.

About Sanct: I use it as primary blessing in some heroics which I greatly out gear and where mana is still less of an issue (SH mainly) and as secondary blessing on every trash where I tank more then a few mobs at the same time and on bosses.

Is the 80 damage pre or post armor reduce? If it works like stoneskin, you can ignore the damage reduce effect. (which I do currently)