I wouldn't worry too much. In the announcement, GC mentioned they were looking at paladins and half expected them to be worse off than warriors in mitigation currently in Beta. I am sure they will continue to try to fix things.

Also, maybe I am just being silly, but I would be more than happy to lose the AoE title. It has brought us nothing but trouble (well that and raid spots on some bosses). If warriors are just as good at AoE tanking (or better), then I am happy with that. I just want us to be at least on par with them and the other tanks in the single target department, which I have confidence the devs plan on doing.

Warriors TC will only be of benefit if there is a high risk of tanks dying. As long as the healers can keep an AoE tank up then having higher threat is a bonus as the DPS can then open up that bit sooner and clear out the trash. There is usually a timer on alot of AoE fights (admittedly its often not a harsh one) and so higher threat may be needed.

This change hopefully will just mean that on some aoe packs a paladin is the best tank and on some a warrior is. That way we will hopefully get the same sort of parity on bosses.

I think there's a somewhat major miscommunication going on here: The argument for giving paladins an Armed to the Teeth/Bladed Armor talent really is not about Ret vs DK vs War. It's about Plate vs Mail vs Leather.

Call me crazy, but I'd actually love to "want" to wear the plate gear that's out there because it's the best there is for my plate wearing character, rather than pick up plate items begrudgingly while fully knowing that leather/mail will give better performance. Not only has it never made sense, I'm sure I don't need to quote what kind of mess this creates regarding loot distribution and what not.

Even if they nerfed Divine Str from 15% to 10% again, and gave us those 5% back through some sort of Armored to the Teeth talent so that it works out pretty much the same (talent would be rolled in with something in order not to lose talent points), I'd consider it a win. I'm not asking for a buff, I'm asking for something that makes plate more desirable.

Whoever designed Armed to the Teeth/Bladed Armor came up with an excellent idea, I'm just confused why it hasn't been applied to all plate classes, it makes no sense not to.

Perfect example is Sunwell at the moment: I'm wearing pretty much the best plate items that currently exist (with the exception of the helmet), however I can still gain ~70 DPS by switching a few pieces to leather (leather helm, pants, chest). For the uninformed: 70 DPS upgrade is quiet a bit at that gear level. It's significantly more than you would gain from going Torch of the Damned -> Apolyon.


I actually think this is a pretty cool idea, however some might argue that it could somewhat diminish the status of full prot paladins. Holy Shield is one of the major mitigation tools I lack when I tank as ret, having it would put me that much closer.

Alternatively, I'd suggest Avenger's Shield. It still requires a shield to use so Ret can't abuse it for DPS, however for tanking it would be a very nice addition considering Ret is the only spec in the game without a ranged pull. For Holy it could be an added DPS tool.

Obviously in place of Holy Shield/Avenger's Shield something would be put in the Prot Tree. A low cooldown single target taunt or something more imaginative.


Those would be perfect spots to roll in an "Armed to the Teeth/Bladed Armor" effect.

Check Scotthew's post in this thread: Maintankadin :: View topic - (Build 8982) WotLK TPS Weapons Spreadsheet.

He maintains a level 70 TPS spreadsheet for weapons (and the original post links a level 80 sheet PsiVen maintains). It has been vetted well by myself and others, and shows physical DPS weapons doing quite well, even at 70. In fact, Hammer of Judgement is pretty weak compared to even easily obtainable weapons like the [Merciless Gladiator's Slicer]

Incidentally, it even underperforms compared to [The Brutalizer], which I happily picked up for free (off-spec loot rules) the other night =)

EDIT-I had typed Spellblade instead of Slicer, for some reason.

I find this solution to the AoE tank superiority good. Frankly I am glad to see more versatility in the tanking classes and have no concerns with the Warrior doing AoE tanking due encounters usually requiring multiple tanks. On the OT front Protection Paladins can offer multiple advantages as an OT even with the mitigation loss they currently share with the warrior. Let us not kid ourselves here on trash, paladins have never had a problem with it (save for spell casters), it has always been our MT abilities that have hurt our class in the eyes of others. Until blizzard gives us either significantly higher mitigation then a warrior or comparable avoidance we will always be seen as ineffective boss tanks and it will color the communities views on our ability to tank. Personally I think mitigation (Block/Armor/Health) should be the means by which we are comparable tanks; with warriors being a very balanced tank, Druids being high EH with high dodge, and DK's being very high avoidance with lots of tricks. IF we don't start to see Paladin and warrior's effective health virtually equal to one another, I'm afraid we are going to have a hard time finding spots in anything but 25 man raids.

On AoE Tanking I see warriors being much better at mitigation on 4+ targets over us but our dps on said mobs being slightly higher as warrior avoidance is less blocks for their Damage shield. As others have said unless the incoming damage is higher then the tank and healers can handle more Dps from the tank is going to lead to faster pulls. With HotR and JotJ I don't really see a great deal of difference in mitigation between the two of us; since lower dmg output on mobs should be better covered by our superior block value. I'm not really sure where a Druid's Swipe will sit on overall dps vs Paladin but it could be they overtake us as the fastest dps available for AoE. I haven't played DK so I really can't say how their mechanics match up to ours but with the lowest health they are the most likely to have the potential for some bad luck on avoidence to keep them as the last resort for AoE.

I'd like to see it as a real talent, if they're going to do it, then just to roll it up into something else like a selfless buffer. If they do, hopefully it'll be low enough that protection can get it. I don't think it's fair to assume that it's only a ret talent. Also, just for the record, if it were crit based instead of strength based it would a) balance better against the agi/crit items that are the really the whole point of it and b) be useful to another spec for very little change in concept.

I hear what your saying I'm just not sure you can do it without Blizzard crippling something else to get Ret there. I mean cutting 5% from Divine Str kills our Prot Paladin who is using the scaling for his block. How does blizzard move around the % dmg modifiers so Ret don't lose overall dps and don't force you out of the 5 points in BoKs with added talent points? Paladin seems to be a bit of a straw man these days because of how much talents drive the class into a role more then augment what the class can do for a role (save for Holy). If a talent is going to show up it should be somewhere in ret and more then likely it would have encompass a % damage talent and how will they justify that to a Warrior/DK if it is considerably higher? I dunno I just look at ret right now and see how good it is, and worry that if they play with it to much they are liable to hurt the class more then help it.

As for the Sunwell example, 70 dps is big but raid dps is bigger and up till 3.0 overall dps is far more important to weather your going to succeed or fail in Sunwell. As such isn't it better to get a net upgrade to raid dps over personal? I'm not opposed to seeing raid dps increase even after seeing Cursed Vision of Sargeras drop 4 times. Would it be nice to see Plate give more of an incentive to be worn? Sure, but I'm much more concerned about how you get there with the current talent point budget Ret has.

Strength giving 2 AP screws plate item budgeting up. Leather and Mail often have agility AND raw attack power. Putting raw attack power on plate doesn't seem to make sense, so they don't do it, and as such plate only has 4 stats, where leather/mail normally has 5 and gets more "points" out of an item of the same iLevel.

If they change how stacking of stats effect budgeting, plate would be fixed. Or I suppose they could just add a 5th stat to plate.

Example: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=43994

Edit: Looks like some physical mail is actually getting 6 stats now, they really just need to change how stat stacking is frowned upon by the budgeting formula.

If they do over do it, though, we're going to go back to Prot/Ret being the only "real" raid tank spec. Which, as far as i know, is what Prot paladins wanted to get away from. (10 points required in Ret, etc etc)

While Armed to the Teeth is a cool talent, it should never have to come down to this. We should really, like you said, want to wear plate gear. The issue with this is that plate gear is so poorly itemized most of the time that there's no interest in wearing it when there are clearly better pieces of mail or leather gear.

I look at a lot of the gear that drops in naxx, and there's just one mammoth glaring issue on each piece:

FAR TOO MUCH STAMINA.

I mean really, i don't plan to be tanking in these pieces of gear, why the hell do i want to have 150 stamina on my chest piece? There's no need for it, especially when you could cut that amount of stam in half, and add some actually useful stats onto it. Granted stamina helps with survivability, but its gotten to the point where it's just completely overkill. I look back at the top tier gear in BC for lolret, and it's mostly leather/mail gear. That should NEVER happen.

The fact that the best shoulders in the game for a paladin are feral druid tanking shoulders (right?) or even the rogue shoulders from Twins, is just pathetic. Granted with the changes to ArP going into the shitter in 3.0.2, it wont be the same, but the point is that it should never have gotten to that point.

Off topic a bit, but any word on the changes that are going into place to reitemize the ret gear since it won't have intel on it come 3.0.2? I'd like to see the tier 6 gear pick up hit in some places in place of the intel and mp5 that it has on it. I'd rather not have to break my back just to get hit capped again. Any thoughts?

For whatever reason they seem intent on not doing that. Problem comes from the fact that for mail and leather they itemize stuff with both agility and ap. Look at any physical DPS item not aimed at the plate classes they all have 5 stat bonuses (stam, agi, ap, crit/hit/haste pick two) whereas plate items only has 4 (stam, str, crit/hit/haste pick two). This has been in place since BC came out. Which is why plate is destined to lose the itemization war. If they did the same with plate and itemized it with both strength and ap nobody would ever look at leather. Reason this is coming up only recently is that people are at endgame - before people would look at the next tier plate and it's obviously better this tier leather by virtue of sheer ilvl advantage. But now everything is very tight as Avitus said it, this is pure math at this point. And as ilvls rise the advantage of having 5 things to spread the expenditure as opposed to 4 grows more apparent.

Armored to the teeth talent is dumb why don't they fix these itemization issues in the first place. After all it's not like rogues and shamans can wear plate, shouldn't be that hard.

edit: I got beated.

Defense cap is easily hittable, i can almost keep myself uncrittable as ret in my prot gear. It just takes making sure you don't have too many pieces that lack defense, such as the badge ring/za ring etc. Trinkets like the [Shadowmoon Insignia] really do help in making sure you're capped.

Armed to the Teeth does sound like a nice talent for us.. But i'm concerned that it will overbalance Ret/Prot.

Given that we have ~10k armor at 70, if they gave us 5% AC -> AP ( -> SP), that would be 500 more AP, and 150 more SP.

That's a masive jump in AP/SP for 1 talent point (if it was prot 11), and still pretty huge if it was 5. (100AP/talent point).
Comparitively, it would take over 1600STR for Divine Str to give us 100AP/point.

I don't know how much unbuffed Str you have, but mines no-where near 1600.

Thorgred, they're eliminating the Def from talents because it's similar to talented threat like the old Defiance: It becomes mandatory for any tank to take. By forcing everyone to be uncrittable without relying on talents, then you're all set for tanking regardless of what spec you're in, as far as basic requirements go.

Of course, talented Def is different from talented threat in that you can gear around it, but having to maintain a 470 Def set vs. a 490 Def set is really cumbersome, and any glaring lack of Def itemization can simply be fixed item-side.

DK/Warrs are not getting anything near a 5% AC -> AP conversion. Currently the AC -> AP/Str talents for them are as such:

- Warrior: 6 AP per 340 armor (maxed I think)
- DK: 5 Str per 400 armor (maxed)

They get ~175 AP and 250 AP respectively @ 70. That is the range of what we can expect IMO if Blizzard does something similar for Paladins.

That 500AP talent would be a bit OP (though I wouldn't turn it down ).

I'm not sure if you're worried about tanking in 3.0 raids pre-Wrath, if that is the case you can mostly ignore my post.

I for one am not worried about remaining at 5.6% crit reduce, since leveling instances are only 2 levels above, you need 5.4% crit reduce to remove crit from the table for leveling instance tanking (if you actually are the "proper" level when you run each one) and quest / drop / crafted upgrades with plenty of defense are available as you go.

I can see remaining uncrittable almost the whole way to 80 without much issue, I've already got my drop / craft list worked out.

Ret is NOT being re-itemized again, they were when all their scaling when to AP from SP awhile ago.

-DK: 1 Str per 400 armor, PER TALENT POINT (5 points = 5 Str per 400 armor)

-Warrior gets 2 AP per 340 Armor, PER TALENT POINT (3 points = 6 AP per 340 armor)

Heh.. So much for my memory.. (If only wow-related links weren't blocked at work)

Makes much more sense if it's not %tile based, but rather fixed-number based.

I have some thoughts about retadins desire for leather gear in wotlk, and I think it isn't as dire as many people are making it out to be. These are standard(ish) item budget allocations at this point:

Plate

93 sta
61 str
50 x
50 x

Leather

75 sta
100 AP
50 Agil
50 x
50 x

The x's are of course either armor pen, haste, hit, or crit rating. People are claiming that 61 str is hugely inferior to 100 AP and 50 Agility, but I don't think it is as clear as that. Consider the following weights for stats as determined by my Ret dps spreadsheet ->here<-

SoB - Current top dps seal given 2/5 SotP or less

Str 125
Agil 62
AP 50

SoR - Current top dps seal given 3/5 SotP or better

Str 143
Agil 50
AP 56

Now lets weight them:

SoB plate - 7625
SoB leather - 8100

SoR plate - 8723
SoR leather - 8100

If you are using SoR (or SoV, they end up pretty similar) then plate is going to be flat out better. If you are using SoB or SoC though the leather is going to be better. There are certainly other considerations of course, because ArPen is garbage for a retadin now due to most of our damage ignoring armor, so if either piece has substantial ArPen itemized it will almost certainly be the big loser since haste, hit and crit rating are all reasonable stats (though all are laughably inferior to str with any seal).

I would agree that this is an unfortunate state of affairs. They have succeeded in making str the best stat, so in theory that should push plate to the forefront. The issue is of course twofold:

1. Too much stamina on plate.

2. 1 too few stats on plate.

So if paladins best dps seal ends up being SoR or SoV then it seems plate will be our best choice, which is great. What do other solutions accomplish? Lets say first that we give equal stamina on plate and leather and just jack up the str to compensate. This changes our sta value to 75 on plate, and str goes to 71. Our weighted values become:

SoB plate - 8875
SoB leather - 8100

SoR plate - 9973
SoR leather - 8100

This certainly solves the problem. Just making sta the same and giving really large str scores on plate is enough to make it the most desirable gear for us generally speaking. If instead we change standard plate itemization to

75 sta
50 str
50 agil
50 x
50 x

SoB plate - 9350
SoB leather - 8100

SoR plate - 9650
SoR leather - 8100

So equalizing stamina would solve the problem on its own, but a proper 5 stat spread does the job even better. Of course a talent that gives some kind of dps boost from armor value could accomplish the same end, but it isn't at all necessary given the way paladins work right now. Adjusting the item value allocation can cover the gap easily in a couple different ways. I personally feel like the item budget allocation is a better way to go about this because it helps warriors and DKs at the same time in the same way.

I was comparign a spell dmg weapon that only had 9 less stamina at the same level of 213. It had no int. I do not advocaate wearing int items.
HOW does 1 WEAPON DPS equal 2.1 TPS. OUR WHITE DMG IS straight 1 to1 threat,not affected by righteus fury!
The most STR i canfind on a tanking weapon is 29 STR - Broken Promise seemsl ike best "tanking weapon" at 80 inthe database. That is nowhere near the spell dmg of 416 considering the coefficients of SoR , even SoV ,judgements,holy shield.
Please show me the math that11 STR provides enough threat to surpass 460 spell dmg weapon. I showed you all the math considering Shield of righteous based on STR................and seals based on AP. Hammer of rightoues is only proportional to base "dmg per second" of weapon not the resulting white dmg per second with ap.

You're missing my point though here. Protection has nothing to do with this argument. This is (as previously said) for the one and only reason of making Plate gear the top gear for Ret.

Prot doesn't have that problem, they won't go for leather/mail anyway. This is not about "buffs" or "balance" but gear desirability, you can reduce another talent in effectiveness so we come out the same.

You might argue that this means paladins who wear leather are getting a nerf and you'd be almost right if it wasn't for the fact that we'd get balanced around wearing plate gear if such a conversion talent existed, rather than the current state where abusing leather gear only means we'll get balanced around that (and lose on both fronts).

I'll break it down, maybe you know all this (though you wouldn't be asking that question if you do), maybe you don't:

The way itemization works in wow is that each item has a hidden item level. For example, BT/MH items are somewhat around 141 - 151 ilvl, Sunwell items are 154 - 164 ilvl.

Every stat you have on an item costs a bit of that itemlevel, however (and this is where it gets interesting) the more you have of one stat on an item, the less it's worth.

For example: 7 agi has about the same itemlevel cost as 5 agi and 4 int combined and not 5 agi and 2 int as you'd expect (just compare some "of agility" and "of the falcon" greens or whatnot).

As levk pointed out, this is usually not so much a problem at low item levels, however the higher you go, the more you lose by stacking the same stats rather than splitting them.

Leather usually has the same amount of stats +1 due to having agi, crit rating and AP vs. our crit rating and strength.

Though we have talents to boost the worth of Strength (as well as kings), in the long run, the splitting of stats allowing you to have much more on an item simply catches up and overtakes items with less stats, regardless of STR multipliers.


We have several alternatives:

-Itemize plate with Agi, Crit and AP: This would be somewhat of a mess, you'd have to scrape most STR talents or change those talents to AP. You'd pretty much have to deal with a never ending ripple effect of changes to match everything.

-Change the way stacking and splitting itemstats costs: Again, you'd be changing the core mechanics of how this game is built. Changing this means having to rebalance every single class, item and ability in the game.

-Add "Armed to the Teeth" talent: A perfect solution that works for two other classes, why should we be any different?


Roll Armed to the Teeth into one of the more lackluster higher tier Ret talents.

This never was a discussion about "personal gain" and "raid gain", that's for the individual and the raid guild to decide. However eliminating the reason for such conflicts as has been done for Warriors and DKs through those talents would be a perfect solution. No?

While it's true the stam issue is yet another handicap for plate, I'd say this is more of a specific case of current Wotlk starter itemization. As a general case in endgame (say Sunwell), leather tends to have similar stam values as plate.

The real handicap remains the loss of item worth due to not splitting into as many stats. This is something that is not going to go away unless (as explained above) we change the core mechanics of how the game works (the hard way) or just add an extra benefit source through armor (the easy way) as they've done for the two other plate classes.


Regarding your gear question: There will be no change to old Ret gear, it still has int (at least this is the case currently on beta). This means pre-sunwell T6 just went from bad to worse when wow 3.0 launches.
Note: Prot gear has all spelldamage and int removed and converted into Strength due to having completely changed mechanics.


I think the important thing to bring across is: This doesn't have to be a buff or a nerf, simply an incentive to wear plate. Whatever we gain, can be pulled away from some other talent.

Another solution to the ret itemization issue might be to just increase the AP benefit that paladins (and warriors and death knights) get from strength. It doesn't have to be a lot; just enough to counter the DPS increase that wearing leather would have brought. Of course, this could lead to scaling issues, but that could be solved by carefully itemizing strength on DPS plate.