Still looking forward to this... ^_^

If you need anything to make it happen, don't be shy!

Eh, I don't think that holds much water. For reference, our first night on Illidan was the same night as our first Mother kill, and our fourth reset of BT total. The gear that I had available to me to tank flames with is here:

70 Blood Elf Paladin

478 defense with +15 resil to chest and a Flask of Fortification brought me to 5.61% crit reduction. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that anyone OTing in BT (and at Illidan, no less) doesn't have access to some of the gear in that sandbox, no matter how fast your guild cleared through there or how long you've been tanking (I'm a January reroll). There's also 330 spell damage in that kit, which is enough if your DPS is able to watch themselves.

Basically, it's not an impossible task at any rate, and anyone who says it is or discounts the value of crit reduction is either a) not looking at their options hard enough or b) being sort of disrespectful with the time of the other people in your raid. Can you do the encounter with lower values? Sure. Is it worth a wipe from burst damage? Probably not.

Yeah, that's unfortunate, but there's not much you can do aside from hope he gets better or find another flame tank. Druid possible threat gen should be decidedly higher in this situation, especially at a progression level; that said, one of the things that helped us get through P2 faster was to start DPS on whichever side that Illidan isn't going to eye beam first (you can tell from his aerial position), allowing melee much more uptime on a focused target. Obviously, though, if you have one tank struggling with threat gen this may not help much.

Any plans on updating the front page with spec info? Lots of info thrown around in this thread, would be nice to see it gelled, especially as I am in a debate over spec with 2 different raids. (Personal playstyle vs manditory talents)

In one particular question, since there are SO MANY "good" talents to have, is it better to spread the love around (i.e. 3 points in both AD and Anticipation) etc. I have looked at some of your guys' specs, and it seems to be all over the place.

This one is simply too difficult to get a consensus on. The prot tree is just bloated with a bunch of good talents, and the first few tiers of the ret tree are equally useful. For example, for me I simply can't imagine not having 5/5 in Anticipation as it gives me a lot more flexibility with gear. (and really helps for resistance fights) Yet I can see the reasoning for only having 2 or 3 points in there.

I'm looking for a general breakdown of protadin ability usage. e.g. On a boss, my white damage is about 40%, consecrate is 15%, seal of righteousness is 15%, judgement of righteousness is 5%, and misc other stuff for the last bit, while on trash it's <words words words>.

The reason is that we have a new protadin and I just want to know what his ability usage 'should' look like in an ideal world of spherical cows.

That's also the dilemma I've been facing on creating a good talent section. There's a total of 59 good talents for tanking in the Protection tree (Though I'll admit Improved Devotion Aura is arguable in it's usefulness compared to the rest), and an additional 5 to 11 in the Retribution tree (Talents aside of Deflection being open for argument). And of course, the tanking talents in the Retribution tree require you to spend 5 talent points on something that isn't extremely useful for tanking.

There's also some talent combinations that I don't have the time/knowledge to figure out. For example if it's more beneficial to drop one point out of One-Handed Weapon Specialization to take one point in Reckoning so it can at least proc.

There's also a few things which are really more up to your preference. Some of us find the 15% movement speed of Pursuit of Justice extremely valuable while others find it completely unneeded. Some of us like Improved Judgement for the cooldown reduction, while others would argue that due to the 10 second cooldown on Holy Shield you get no real threat benefit from the talent. Some of us wouldn't want to be without the ability to cast Blessing of Kings, others think it's a waste of talent point. Were it not for the fact that you probably want full Ardent Defender, Improved Holy Shield and Combat Expertise, we'd also see a lot of contemplating on whether having a pulling tool like Avenger's Shield beats the (nearly) 10% extra threat of having Sanctity Aura.

I could most likely write a reasonable talent section, but I simply lack the knowledge to cover all the subtleties.

Well, my breakdown looked something like:
That's on Gorefiend (undead fight), using a fair amount of +damage (600ish?), so those numbers probably vary a lot but WWS has gone back to being 'unfriendly' so I can't really look too much deeper.

As for the whole resist set, my FR resist helm is simply a plate green I picked up off the AH, and have never seen the point in investing enough gold to pick up the blue one for more-or-less 5 stamina upgrade (I think, I did the calculations once and then dropped it because it really didn't seem worth it). I struggled pretty hard for uncrittablity and ended up in a suit so barely uncrittable that I actually need the 10 from the flask to put me over.

Also, possibly just a first impression but ye gods do I like 4p T6.

I've been at 4/5 Anticipation for awhile now, even for Flame tanking on Illidan. If I had a 62nd point, that's where it would go, but there's nothing in my current spec I'd drop for it.

EDIT: On a general note, it really is a matter of what gear you have and what you're expected to do in raids. It would be less of an issue if the tree weren't so bloated, but as it is a prot paladin progressing through Kara->Gruul/Mag->T5->T6 can expect to respec a few times in order to be "optimal" for different stages of progression.

I'll preface this by saying that I've never played a Protection Paladin and my only experience with the class at all has been as Retribution up to level 44.

Anyway, this week I will be starting over again on EU servers as a Paladin with the aim of switching to Protection around 58-60 and going full time as it from then on. From having absolutely no idea what is expected of a Protection Paladin and very little idea of the mechanics that make it work, I've now read through all 48 pages of this thread and am more than confident of starting one and holding my own. This is a truly excellent compendium of information and everyone who contributed to it should be proud.

With that out of the way, the one question I have left is what should I do as my trade skills?

I'm pretty set on doing Herbalism as I've always felt it to be a great, stress-free way to make gold. The obvious one that links with that is Alchemy but I was initially reluctant to pick it up even though it's what I know best. However, having read through some of the items in the upcoming 2.4 patch and with some of what I've taken in here, it seems like it would be a viable choice with the addition of [Guardian's Alchemist Stone].

What are peoples opinions on this both short term and long term? I've seen there's a lot of competition for the two trinket slots but reading that Protection Paladins at times will be chugging mana pots, combining it's +40% boost to them with a huge chunk of defense to boot, it seems a really nice overall item. I know Blacksmithing has some good items but I was under the impression they've been superseded by most of the BoJ and ZA items. I don't know if it matters but, in the long term, I have zero intention of switch to Retribution for anything and temporarily would go over to Holy if it was necessary.

If I had to do it again from the start I'd do engineering (currently mining/BS-armor). The helms are pretty well amazing, and that has always been the most difficult spot for me to gear up. Blacksmithing has served me well, but badge stuff is nearly as good. I'm not sure I'd take alchemy for a trinket you'd only be using situationally. Most of the time I'm using 2 stamina trinkets, or 1 stamina and 1 save-my-ass-on-use trinket. It's certainly not a bad trinket, but I'm not sure I'd take up a profession just for it.

Just wondering what everyone thinks about the 2.4 tankadin badge loot. It looks pretty poor to me in comparison to for example the 2.3 badge chest, boots and t5 set pieces.

Ederick