If no one in your raid has kings currently, I would argue that you're the one doing it wrong. It's arguably the single best buff you can provide a raid.

It sounds to me like you're just biased against kings, as opposed to looking at how good it actually is, and then you want to argue about it. If your main goal is to be the best tank possible, and to emulate a warrior (which it sounds to me like this is your goal) it is ONE talent point for 10% extra stamina.

Just a few posts up, you said "mitigation + HP is what MT's ultimately rely on" but then you call 10% extra stamina a crutch?

Call it what you want, but if no one else in your raid has it, it's the single best talent point you can spend. It's definetly better than blessing yourself with light when you've got a priest healer.

How do these 2 statements get put together? First you claim kings is slightly better than worthless, then you turn around and say stamina is your primary stat. Kings is a LOT of hp, it's at least 1k hp for me. Kings is absolutely the first blessing I want on me.

Actually this is not a weakness, since paladins won't get crushed like warriors or druids will. The weakness lies in the fact that warriors can tclap and demo shout, so if you don't have a dps warrior and/or is unwilling to do it you take a hit there.

After reading through alot of wording indicating "Hear ye, this is the truth" and then just reference to warrior-threads, I fail to see the relevance.
I'm sorry, but the idea of just comparing a pala to a warrior is not the way to go. Sorry to break the bubble you're in but you are NOT a warrior. You will never be a WARRIOR as long as you play a PALADIN. Annoys me that every once in a while people still come out of the woodwork and go off like warr is THE tank-role, all others are just wannabe/half-assed copies. And when it comes from a paladin it's so much worse. If you play a paladin, then by all means learn that class, don't start a character only to try and play a different class with it.

Warriors has adapted that crown since not long ago there was no other tanking-class with all the perks a warrior has.
Now that paladins has more viability to tank every boss endgame, sometimes better, sometimes worse, I think it's time to move on from that notion alltogether.

Threat, stamina, mitigation is what paladins should aim for, order dependant on what level of progress, and what you lack most to do your job properly. If you only aim for stamina you will starve your dps sometime in the progression.

Oh, about the pocketwatch you mentioned in one post, it IS one of the best trinkets when things go bad. All fine if you still want to have Adamantite, just think about that as long as your above what's needed in defense (490 for lv 73/bosses), each point in +defense (2,4 def rating) above is only adding .04% chance to your miss/dodge/block/parry. Not bad, but you're gonna need one hell of a lot more def to make up for the on-use dodge on the Pocket Watch. I'd go as far as saying I regard it's Use-effect as my "Shield Wall".

One last thing though, the revamp on more stamina for us through talents, I would say came from the simple idea that since we have more stats to juggle than warr's/druids Blizz buffed it so we could stop worrying so much about stamina and get other, more important stats to better the paladin class in end-game tanking situations.

Summation, go read about paladins and stop worrying so much about how warr's do it !

RE: Paedur

You get 1% evasion from 19.5 defense rating (this is not including the block) versus 1% evasion from 18.9 dodge rating. The two stats are practically equal for all intents and purposes, meaning the only thing the Pocketwatch has over other trinkets is the use ability. Which, admittedly, is badass.

Considering that Kings scales directly with your gear, which provides more and more of your HP as it improves, I'd recommend taking it at all gear levels, forever. My paladin's uncrushable at 15.9k unbuffed (17.2 with Kings) and I would never, ever consider dropping it. Light is nice, but if there are enough holy paladins to justify it, they can put it up themselves. The small damage reduction from Sanctuary doesn't compare at all to 10% more Stamina and a little avoidance from increased agility, and none of the other blessings really are relevant for serious boss tanking.

25 defense skill is not a 1% avoidance gain, it's a 1% gain in each of miss/dodge/parry.

60 defense rating ~= 25 defense skill = 1% miss + 1% dodge + 1% parry = 3% full avoidance.

Hence, 20 defense rating ~= 0.33% miss + 0.33% dodge + 0.33% parry = 1% full avoidance. Varuk's figure of 19.5 defense rating above is (I assume) the exact number, but I use 20 as a rule of thumb. So in fact it's really not much better than dodge, and 99% of the time you shouldn't worry about the difference between the two; just take whichever you get the higher number of.

Scarab of Displacement is, therefore, 2.1% full avoidance.

Assertion: Kings does not belong in a solid prot paladin build.

I am not biased against kings per se, I'm biased against the prot pally spending a point in a buff that he typically, could spend in a more efficient manner given our inherent inferiority to warriors. In an encounter where there's too few people to guarantee a holy pally in the group it doesnt matter, in a group where the encounters are much more volatile, you will have someone else who has it. Much like prot pally doesnt spend 5 points in improved might, you dont waste a point in Kings as a tank.

Assertion: Stamina stacking is the final goal of a prot paladin, after reaching uncrittable and uncrushable w/ holy shield.

Saying a paladin is not a warrior is self evident. So what? The concept that you fundamentally build a pally tank different than a warrior tank is just wrong. The monster vs tank mechanics dont change based on your class. Yes you have to make some defensive sacrifices to maintain decent threat and are gimped on itemization (what i wouldnt give for a gun slot), but the monster doesnt care. The role of a prot paladin is to tank regardless of the assertions that a warrior is better (in most encounters, with equivalent tiered gear).

Yes you will get crushed from time to time, which is the point...encounters have an element of randomness that either makes them easier or harder, usually the latter. Every prince attack has a chance to flurry, including flurry proc'd attacks. You have only 4 charges on your holy shield up? Axes get on you + flurry = yur prolly gonna get crushed multiple times. There are no guarantees about being uncrushable, you just have better statistical uncrushability over a prolonged fight. The graph linked shows an encounter where there is basically no randomness at all, which tells us a little but doesnt directly translate to any non-heroic (SSC+) encounter. A prot paladin in full righteous is simply going to die against Heroic Quagmirran. The main problem? Stam.

If I'm sounding very argumentative, I apologize. I mean to inspire discussion and counter arguments so that people can decide for themselves.

My build is clearly horrible in that case, as I have both.

The key point to whether or not you take talents that give/improve blessings is that this is really something that depends on your guild. None of the other Paladins in my guild have Improved Might, and I personally don't have Improved Wisdom. It's not unusual for me to be raiding with only one other Paladin present, and typically it's a larger gain to have the (Holy) Paladin use Blessing of Wisdom overwriting it on me with Light while I buff Kings on myself than the other way around. That's also true for buffs on the other healers in general; Improved Wisdom might not seem like much, but spread out over your entire healer team it's a fairly large gain in mana they are capable of spending. The fact that I have Kings allows me to optimize the fact so that people that want Improved Wisdom can get Improved Wisdom in this particular case.

It's a single talent point, and it'll give you a buff that's the best survivability buff for any tank, and for a few specs/classes also their best general buff. For that reason I always say it's worth spending on. If the talent were instead phrased "At the cost of you casting a Blessing, you and everyone in your raid gains a 10% increase to Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intellect and Spirit. Does not stack with other Paladins that have this talent", most people would be all over it I suspect, despite the fact it's the exact same thing.

Edit:

Shorter summary: If your guild is good with you not having Kings, lucky you! A lot of us don't have that luxury.

Assertion: You're wrong.

You seem to be missing a lot, and honestly, you're one of those paladin tanks that gives us a bad name. I'm not sure where to even start. You seem to like the Prince example, so I guess I'll start there. Prince is the best single-target paladin tank target I can think of. His fast attacks in P2 mean that he'll tear through warrior shield block charges, and consistently crush druids. Paladins with enough avoidance(including block here) to hit uncrushable with holy shield will very, very, very rarely get crushed if they're playing correctly. The only situations where you would get crushed there is a hit in the lag time between casts of holy shield, or an incredibly unlucky string of hits that would have left either of the other two types of tanks dead. Also, it's 8 charges on holy shield, unless you're not (and why on earth wouldn't you) speccing that way. ( Also, you're is not spelled yur...).

Second, pally tanks are not just a poor substitute for a warrior tank. If that's your mindset, you better switch to healing or re-roll now and save yourself a lot of trouble. You're assertion that we're all tanking the same mobs, while accurate, is also misleading. I think you'd be hard-pressed to tell druids that they should tank like warriors, even though they're tanking the same mobs... Our strength most certainly lies in multi-mob tanking, something Hyjal will firmly impress upon your warrior and druid tanks. We're fantastic at ranged pickup - something that is painfully obvious on fights like Vashj, Anatheron, Akama, Leo, etc... We have high front-loaded threat capabilities, something that is extremely useful in some fights. We use mana instead of rage, which is great for fights like RoS P3.

Third, stacking stamina always is just stupid. Stacking stamina is good, in moderation. It shouldn't come at the expense of other stats, but rather when you have your stats in good standing, then stack stamina on top (Stats in good standing doesn't just mean uncrushable either, I find that a bit more avoidance than strictly uncrushable calls for serves me a lot better). Avoidance can be super-useful, depending on the fight. I've found myself using Moroes Lucky Pocket watch on fights like Bloodboil, Council and RoS P1 and being very thankful that I held onto it. The on-use effect is near godly, especially with a 2 min cooldown (I've survived an entire rogue phase on the council without a healer thanks to the pocket watch, a healthstone and Hammer of Justice).

Fourth, Kings is a stupidly great buff. You can call anything in the game a crutch if you like, but anything that gives you 10% to all stats really can't be overstated. Imagine an item dropped with the following stats: +100 stamina, +9 spirit +14 strength, +20 int, +9 agility - all of which scale as your gear gets better. How on earth could you justify not picking that up? The only time I don't use kings is when I massively overgear something and need Wisdom to keep my threat up. Otherwise it's hands-down the best buff in the game.

You're certainly not guaranteed to have a holy paladin in a 10-man encounter, but I wouldn't want to be tanking Malchezaar in pre-raid blues and epics without BoK, or even Nalorakk in T4 gear.

The comparison between BoK and Imp BoM is beyond silly. The reason you don't spend points on Imp BoM -- or at the very least, you don't go out of your way to spend points on BoM -- as a prot paladin is because five talent points there gets you ~3tps, assuming you're even using BoM which shouldn't be the case unless your raid is running 5+ paladins. BoK on the other hand is one talent point for a 10% stamina buff -- the best blessing any tank can have.

You're asserting that stacking stamina is the end-all be-all for a prot paladin while simultaneously poo-pooing the most efficient stamina buff we have access to? I don't even know what to say to that.

Friendly tip: Please don't come here looking to pick fights or have vehement debate. Few pages back with SoV is about as heated as it's polite to get on here, and choosing inflamitory language and assertions ('Every protadin build with Kings is bad') is frankly, a little silly. Dial it down a couple notches, and come to this group of people, many of whom have been tanking quite a lot of stuff for quite some time, without trying to spur us into an arguement. Discussion works quite well.

Friendly tip the second: Proofread your posts, well. The one quoted has enough typos and the like to take heat if the baleful eye of the moderators happens across it, especially when you're new. These forums are pretty well policed.

Now, to address context:
Personally I like Kings, although with 4 90% attendence paladins, and myself being second lowest at a bit over 97% I could probably stand to get away without it. There's a lot to be said in simplicity and rapidity of blessing assignments, and Kings is just about good enough to always be the third blessing for every class, and is in almost no case a -pull critical hold failure-. This means that my raid isn't waiting on my smaller mana pool and other jobs with group assignments, marking, setups, pulling, chain pulling and rebuffing on the fly inasmuch that we simply must hold continiously if it's not up there. Therefore, giving it to myself gives me the freedom to be 5-8 seconds late into a pull.

This is primarily laziness, and I may well attempt to work up a build and take over Wis/Might on the primary buffing rotations as those are nowhere near the criticality of Salv.

There's also the many cases where I'll run with a Ret in a 5man, or single tank a speed pulled Kara (though to be frank I'll use Wisdom on that unless the healers catch me) where Kings is just a nice choice to have available. I'll accept for you in your situation you don't find it optimum in a 25 man raid with 2 other paladins at least one of whom can afford the point cost, that works for you. Though personally if it's a choice between that 1 point and the 9 mana/5 from imp Wisdom, I'll take the hit- I'm also addicted to mana potion injectors, bringing somewhere like 90 worth with me on Illidan, of which I used 3- healing in tank gear GO. It's certainly not a horrible point of view to be outlined in the OP, but I think I'd call it more of a minority of cases as it stands.

I also somewhat agree without about stamina and it's place among our holy trinity. I often keep myself at or around crushable via dint of pure effort, having moved most of my shield block rating (which is not an avoidance stat, but a mitigation stat in certain circumstances, or better yet just called an 'uncrushability' stat) off of my gear so I can gain the most in threat and stamina. However, it's foolish to neglect those times when being hit is more deadly, or to neglect the power of shield block value or AC in relations to stamina. For reference, I'm closing in on 18.5k unbuffed but rarely step up in over 17.8k for threat or avoidance reasons, and I'm by no means the best geared paladin on this thread. Stamina is very, very good but to obsess about it exclusively is silly. If you think the best warriors do this, you're even more silly- in reality, most protadins do this much more in my experience, and while warriors assign SBR a nil or negative value (correctly) most protadins will like a dash of it on their gear, whereas warriors prize SBV extremely highly while we just like picking it up if we can.

Blanket statements about how protadins are just worse than warriors are unhelpful at best. I'm not pretending we're the best for every fight, but that's getting dangerously close to the (outdated) mentality that you can single tank an instance with your glorious MT. And in a lot of ways, mechanics do in fact change depending upon who tanks it- I can frontload threat significantly faster, bubble out of threats, juggle in higher threat moves depending on boss attack patterns, or use range taunts to massively rework things. We're certainly closer to warriors than druids are to warriors, but that doesn't mean we're clones of them with a different colored rage bar. I'd also argue that we gave up the 'gimped on itemization' since the Glorious Day of 2.3 (and probably a bit before then) but you can't look at the D3 set and even compare it to now. Most of the original designed for us gear was just -bad- in every sense, and they never went back and redid it.

A last note, on crushing blows, while they may occur for us and there is a nontrivial amount of randomness in every encounter, we're more-or-less guarenteed to have considerably less of them most of the time. That, by itself, is extremely valuable.

Ah, no, misunderstanding on the parry mechanic: If he parries one of your attacks, he gets the parry haste. If you parry one of his, your attack gets hasted. Parry's not bad as avoidance except it's more expensive and shows up more rarely on gear as a whole, in addition to being a lot less additional threat (1 swing of rage/HS > 1 swing of SoR).

Edit:
Oh, and for the record my current gear is (I think?) some bastard child of Holy, while my spec is laughable for anything but what I did (flametank on Illy). So whiel the spec might not change till sat/sunday, the gear will probably regain some sanity later tonight.


Edit2:
Sorry, went on a brain safari halfway through that last sentence on Parry and started talking about TPS from expertise. Ye gods.