Foofu

A little bittersweet that it will be implemented right as it becomes a virtually useless feature though.
(Assumptions: no crushing blows, no block rating on generic gear, shield block for warriors up to 30s, probably near impossible to fill the hittable anyway.)

 

Nobbynob Littlun

Yeah, aren't they removing crushing blows as a concern in WotLK, which would make deflection not-so-mission-critical? Still really nice of course, but I get the feeling that survival won't depend on the magic number of 102.4%. I get the feeling that the real tank-killers will be predictable boss strikes mitigated by a well-timed Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Guardian, or ScorpidSting+ChimeraShot... that kind of thing.

 

• Theras

I don't imagine it'll be near impossible at all. I know in my current trash tanking set (meaning higher on block value/rating) that I'm wearing right now, I'm maybe a little under 5% off. My Brutallus set pushes hits off the table even without any block rating at all.

Now, whether or not it'll be possible at the very start of the expansion I highly doubt. But end game? Unless something drastic changes, absolutely.

 

kalbear

Deflection isn't critical because it's required to stop crushing blows - it's critical because it's 5% more hard avoidance. That's a lot of itemization that you'd be giving up, even when you consider it's worth 10 points to get.

 

Nobbynob Littlun

I'm not too convinced of that. Right now, in Burning Crusade, 5% hard avoidance is as big a deal as it is because of the crushing blows mechanic, which can easily wipe the tank and the raid soon to follow, and you can bet that I have five points in that talent right now. But that's now. The current discussion is for what's yet to come.

Without crushing blows to worry about, yes 5% parry is really nice, but mission-critical? No, I don't think so. Once survival becomes a matter of execution and not simply whether or not you have the gear, you can just as easily make a case for talents that give greater threat output (which leads to greater dps potential, shorter fights, and fewer chances for people to screw up).

Which is not to say that greater threat is the way to go; some guilds will want it slow and steady, some (mine) will want to strike while the iron is hot. And even with slow and steady, there's nothing yet saying that in WotLK there won't be other talents more likely to save you from a wipe than hard avoidance (spell warding? stoicism? guardians favor? who knows!). We just don't know what kind of crazy stunts to expect from bosses; all we know is that the infamous 102.4% mark will no longer be a concern, which opens up an incredible number of possibilities.

Such as trading avoidance for other stats to the extent that Redoubt is worth its five talent points. Currently, this is so far out of our paradigm that people will likely think me a madman for suggesting it.

 

Anedris

Sunwell warriors and druids are stacking avoidance and neither has to worry about 102.4%. Avoidance is good in Sunwell because avoidance becomes better against duel-wielders (Brutallus) and it becomes better the more of it you have (M'uru, where Sunwell radiance is no longer in effect). The only place where avoidance is about the crushability mark is a paladin tanking Sacrolash - all the rest of Sunwell doesn't crush (well, Entropius might, I guess, I have no idea; would be a non-issue anyways).

 

Prinsesa

Nobbynob raises some good points. I'm actually considering a couple of things:

1. Taking Divine Strength: Lots of STR on tank gear, 2:1 STR to BV conversion rate, Seals and Shield of Righteousness scaling with STR.

2. Taking Improved Blessing of Might: This is probably a worse idea than Divine Strength since it only affects Seal threat. If I wanted that, I could have taken Seals of the Pure, and I'd still be shooting my survivability in the foot by skipping out of Blessing of Kings.

3. Taking Seals of the Pure: It's probably a better threat increase than Imp. BoM, but Imp. BoM provides raid utility.

How many of your are considering taking Improved Devotion Aura? 3% more healing taken just doesn't seem all that great with how short we are on points when I could be running Ret Aura for the threat instead, since unimproved Devo Aura is so lackluster.

Finally, Improved Holy Shield. Now that we only need to cover 8 seconds worth of hits and crushing blows aren't even an issue, is it worth losing the charges and the extra threat?

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Aeverius

Tentatively thinking about this for a general build. I tend to favor avoidance and mitigation over threat when picking talents, although I don't have Spell Warding in there. An interesting thought for threat builds is that Imp RF is now purely a damage reduction talent. It's still a staple for progression tanking, of course, but you can ditch it anytime you like for farm content or particularly soft-hitting bosses where more threat is preferential.

With the additional charges on the base Holy Shield, you can get 8 charges for 8 seconds with only 1 point in Imp HS, which seems like it'd cover most boss fights just fine. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's worth freeing up one or two points that way. I'm reserving judgment on that for now, waiting to see if they change HS up even more.

I'm sold on Divine Strength, though. Synergy and scaling are things I will always jump at, and this talent has both.

Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:

 

Denogran

I gotta say, when I first heard about being able to switch talents on the fly, my thought was to have a healing talent spec and a tanking talent spec. But looking at these talents, and how many valid there are, I'm sorta tempted to have a threat spec and a mitigation spec. I mean it'll depend on the fights in WotLK, and where I'm better used, but if they're anything like Hyjal, it wouldn't be the worst deal. Which'll be a far departure from TBC, where I haven't changed my tanking spec since 2.3 when they added stamina talents.

 

◊ Oggie

Err, say again?

 

nyrangerrob

I'm fairly new to Paladin tanking and am here looking to soak up the knowledge of people like yourself with vastly more experience than I have, however with a Warrior tank the main reason Parry is considered so desirable is because in addition to its avoidance it also promotes threat generation by resetting/reducing the swing timer. Is this not a consideration Paladin tanks have?

I suppose that brings up the question of whether Reckoning is actually that important for Paladin threat generation and if not is that one of the talents we would sacrifice to pickup the new things? My other question is whether the new Imp. Devotion Aura makes it worthwhile (for the +3% healing) to use over Retribution for tanking purposes?

Again, my apologies if these seem like noob questions, however with regards to Tankadins I'm afraid that is what I am.

 

Prinsesa

Parry resetting the swing timer is not a very big deal for Warrior tanks - a lot of their threat comes from their abilities; notably Shield Slam, Devastate and Revenge.

I daresay that the swing reset is a bigger deal for Paladins than Warriors, since our white hits carry SoR procs with them. Even then, it's not a determining factor in threat generation.

No, Reckoning is not that important for Paladin threat generation. In fact, it's one of the most expendable tanking talents, primarily because it scales inversely with gear. Reckoning only procs off damaging hits, so as pure avoidance increases, Reckoning uptime decreases.

That being said, it remains to be seen whether it will still be the case come WOTLK - there just doesn't seem to be a lot of pure avoidance on the tank gear we've seen, although admittedly we haven't really seen a lot.

I wouldn't hold out hope though, because Reckoning only improves Seal damage/threat. If I wanted to increase that, I'd much rather look towards Seals of the Pure, which is a much more consistent talent that affects Judgements as well.

As for Devo Aura vs. Ret Aura, the answer is a complex one:
1. A Ret Pally will definitely run Ret Aura, along with having more SP than a Tankadin in addition to all his Ret Aura-improving talents

2. A Holy Pally MIGHT run Devo Aura if the situation does not call for Conc Aura's pushback resistance, but I doubt that Holy Pallies will have the talent

3. You, as the tank, can decide between survivability (Devo) or threat (Ret), but again, given the Prot tree's bloat, I doubt you'd have the talent.

Keep in mind that #3 is heavily speculative, and would depend greatly on the kind of fights we'll be seeing, the kind of gear we'll be wearing and the kind of strategies we'll be using once we land on Northrend.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

◊ Cathela

It's been announced that WotLK will allow you to maintain two talent specs, and switch between them in some manner. The exact mechanics are not yet known; you may just be able to push a button in your spellbook whenever you feel like it; you may have to talk to your class trainer and it'll have a one-hour cooldown, or whatever.

Most prot paladins drop Reckoning at some point in raid progression in favor of One-Hand Spec or something else. It's extremely useful in certain situations like Brutallus (fast dual-wielding attacks keep Reckoning up most of the time making it better overall threat than One-Hand Spec, and lack of a parry-haste means Reckoning has no downside on that fight) but it's not a preferred part of a general-purpose tanking build.

It's fantastic for soloing though, and I'll definitely be picking it up for WotLK leveling.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Nobbynob Littlun

As for devotion versus retribution aura, I almost always prefer devotion aura even now. Granted, right now I'm more spellpower-oriented than most paladins, but compared to the likes of consecration, retribution aura's threat just isn't that great and is useless to other group members. A chunk of armor is always good, and that new healing bonus will make it that much more clear a winner.

Look at it this way. If every healer could get a talent that increases their healing done by 1/2/3%, just about every healer would spend those three points. Here, one player can spend those three talent points for every healer, so long as their healing targets are within aura range.

Consider also that in the expansion this healing bonus will be applied across the raid without being restricted to your group, and that your raid will probably have a ret pally for his improved ret aura, which gives players +2% damage and +3% haste (I suppose if they want to spend another two points on it, the reactive damage would do 50% more as well). Well, let's just hope all the ret pallies don't switch to death knights!

 

Tilted

Deflection remains one of the best damage avoidance talents in the game. The fact that Deflection helps bump crushing blows off the table is simply a nice side-effect. Avoidance is your main way to prevent damage taken, assuming standard melee mechanics. And it shines as you increase the average number of swings taken per second, so it's amazing for AoE tank situations. Add to that the fact that each point of avoidance is more effective than the last (stacks great with the new Anticipation), and it quickly becomes apparent why Deflection is so powerful.

It's still too early to compare the give and take of Deflection compared to threat boosting talents, simply because tank threat as a whole is receiving a major overhaul. However, I just can't see dropping it from a serious tank spec.

 

jere

I found as I leveled that the reason I took deflection changed as I progressed further in the game.

1. While leveling, I didn't even have deflection because it wasn't "needed". It would have been extra avoidance for sure, but for leveling, that really didn't matter much, even tanking most instances.

2. When I hit 70, deflection was "needed" for tanking because it was needed for uncrushability, which it provided 5% towards.

3. Once I progressed further in raid content, it was no longer needed as much for uncrushability, but things started hitting hard enough to where I "needed" that extra 5% avoidance because it made a tremendous difference in the damage I was taking over time and it helped spread out the situations where I would likely come near death (like it would reduce the chances of taking a large set of damaging attacks in a row).

I suspect #1 and #3 are still going to be true in WotLK. I guess we will find out once we get there though.

 

Redcape

I think some people are underestimating the effect of str on threat. Spelldamage has been thoroughly replaced as the premier threat stat for pallies.

If you take Divine str and use our new Shield and Hammer abilities with SoR strength ends up being roughly 2 threat/sec per point of str. Considering that spelldamage tops out at something like .6 threat/sec with full raidbuffs and debuffs, there really is no reason to look for spelldamage gear. Str is now 3-4 times as good at making threat.

Admittedly if you have low spellpower your consecration won't be terribly strong, but since your str boosts our new 3 target threat move and sta gives us some amount of spellpower baseline I can't imagine that is actually particularly relevant.

Right now the optimal gear for prot pallies in WotLK would look something like

Str
Sta
Def rating
Dodge rating
Block value

I don't know that we will see much/any block value since DKs can't make use of it but it would still be nice, it is fantastic for threat and fine for mitigation, particularly in AOE circumstances.

Str is assumed to be multiplied by 1.15 and 1.1 for these calculations and I am presuming a singe target. I won't attempt to truly accurately model avoidance, crits, resist etc. but I will try to give a fairly rational approximation.

Shield of Righteousness
str*.5(BV conversion)*2(Shield of Righteousness)*1.3(Shield spec)*1.9(RF)*2(Assumed meaning of 'high threat')*1.05(Misery)/6(Shield of Righteousness cooldown)*1.15(Shield of the Templar)
1.26 threat/sec
Hammer of the Righteous
str*2(AP)/14(AP to dps)*2(high threat)*1.9(RF)*1.05(Misery)*2.4(AP normalization)/6(Cooldown on Hammer)
.29 threat/sec

I don't really know the mechanics on these yet as far as resists, crits, etc so I ignored that. They won't be hugely impactful when taken together though.

White damage
str*2(AP)/14(dps conversion)*.75(armor)
.14 threat/sec

I am ignoring crits and miss/parry/dodge here. I am guesstimating that they roughly cancel, but the total amount contributed from white damage makes it hardly relevant.

Seal of Righteousness
str*2(AP)*.05(SoR AP /sec)*1.05(Misery)*.9(miss/parry/dodge)
.12 threat/sec

Judge Righteousness
str*2(AP)*1.05(Misery)/8(Cooldown)*.45(JoR coefficient)
.15 threat/sec

I don't really know how much Judgement will get resisted or crit, so I just ignored both those things. Should balance out, ish. This gets you 1.96 threat/sec/strength. If you have Unleashed Rage you get 2.03 threat/sec/strength. Since I don't know if you get that or not, I am guesstimating 2 threat/sec/strength.

There are lots of other buffs like the Ret aura buff, Ferocious Inspiration, DK buffs I don't know about, etc. 2 is basically the bottom of the barrel, you will likely see noticeably better performance in a raid setting.

Hit rating and Expertise seem like they will be very strong threat stats for us too, but since some of our abilities don't seem to use the attack table Expertise may end up being the warrior/DK stat while hit rating and str are amazing for us. Regardless, we will make good use of any of them that end up itemized to us. At this point I would be very disappointed if I saw spelldamage on any of our gear since it is so inferior, particularly if I try to dps in my tanking gear.

 

Left

The "causes a high amount of threat" may not be a threat multiplier. I think it is more likely to be an additional static amount of threat. (Confer threat values of various "high threat" warrior abilities, listed on WoWWiki. Assuming those values are correct, of course.)

I certainly don't see anything that indicates a 2x multiplier for any ability. Mangle is 1.3x; TClap is 1.75x. Heroic Strike is +196 threat (static); Revenge is +201 threat (static).

Adjusting for that, STR would still add ~1 TPS, though, which for 1-3 targets makes it beat out spell damage quite handily.

 

◊ Cathela

I think the static threat bonuses on these abilities are generally considered a problem, and I believe this is what the devs are trying to rectify with the new emphasis on "scaling threat". So it wouldn't surprise me if the abilities with static threat bonuses were changed to use a multiplier instead.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Prinsesa

Frost Shock and Searing Pain, both stated as causing high amounts of threat, both use 2x multipliers currently.

Sunder Armor's threat is going to scale with AP in WOTLK, same with Shield Bash, etc.

Blizzard's attempts at increasing tank threat point more towards having a multiplier than a straight amount.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Lunkhedd

Except that strength is almost twice as expensive as spell damage in the itemization formula, at least according to wowwiki (1.0 vs. 0.55), so they'd be even if strength were about 1.09 tps per point.

 

Divinefury

My question remains: Where will our mana pool come from in that gear?

 

Left

Can you link the source on this? I was under the impression that in TBC they were approximately equal with spell damage a little bit cheaper. (See, for example, 20 STR food vs. 23 spell damage food.) Is that different in WotLK?

My guess is from Paladin set items. Even most of our spell damage gear right now has little to no intellect on it; only the set items have an appreciable amount.

 

• Chicken

0.55 is spell damage versus a specific family of mobs. The actual spell damage value is 0.86. Which makes strength fairly superior as it'd provide 1.1 TPS for a single point versus the approximately 0.6 TPS of an equal amount of spell damage.

At least, that is true once you have Shield of Righteousness, before that the two are nearly equal.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Strom

I for one will not care about Intellect. Sure its a nice buffer when you front load at the start, but its hardly needed once combat has started. If Blizzard wants us using Warrior and Deathknight tanking gear, then you can rest assured we will be balanced around not needing it.