SeanDamnit

I agree with this - Titanguard would be great, but is just uninteresting. It would limit Blizzard's ability to create more interesting tanking enchants in the future.

As for 63 spell power and similar enchants - who's to say that Blizzard is happy with these being in the game? Blizzard could be saying that the fact that they added +spell power to weapons forced them to continue to scale it up and limited their ability to create more interesting caster enchants - and maybe this is exactly what they're trying to avoid with Titanguard.

However, tanks don't currently have a real weapon enchant, so for that I'm dissapointed Titanguard isn't coming, and I'd imagine that Blizzard isn't close to releasing some alternative. It's sad that 20 str is the best enchant for a Pally Tank. As others have mentioned, I'd be glad to see a proc-based enchant that adds armor, or something that applies a dot or something when you parry.

Card carrying member of the Inapropriately in Love with Hilary Duff Society.

"Yeah, well, if we could all get what we want I would be eating dinner out of Hilary Duff's skull right now" - Salabesh

 

• frmorrison

Titanguard was removed because GC and some very informed tanks asked for it to be removed.

Blizzard likes people to make choices like Berserking (~135 ap over time) at cost of some armor or a consistent 110 ap or a tank to get either hit rating or agility.

 

Yelp

I'm at 1876 unbuffed--a recent WWS tells me I'm around 24% block mitigation in Naxx25, but that was before I got the BV shield. Not terribly happy with the low hp in this set, but it's worked well so far, and our bear tanks when a health sponge is needed.

I don't entirely agree with this. I usually run w/ a holy pally that has kings; I don't, but I have imp might. I just can't see the difference between reg & imp BoW being worth 5 talent points. Right now I find a lot more value for 3 of those points in imp HoJ, which I tend to use in place of a taunt when dps peels a trash mob off. This may change when Hand of Reckoning is available, though.

Unrelated: Has anyone done any math on the threat value of glove enchants? +hit seems attractive from a perspective of making various spells more reliable, but I'm wondering how much overall threat it might cost me vs. the 2% chant (in a theoretical world where our threat isn't broken).

 

Knaughty

Morning gents.

I maintain a couple of equivalent threads over on Maintankadin, found this one very recently, and thought I'd come and weigh in

Apologies in advance if I'm breaking unwritten forum etiquette, first time poster as a prot pally (used to lurk on my warlock an expansion or two ago). Hopefully the links back to Maintankadin aren't considered "poor form".

While I am a "Glass Joe" noob over here, I have a couple of thousand posts over on Maintankadin, and have tanked everything in both TBC (well.. M'uru and KJ were 3.0 kills) and everything in Wrath including Sarth+3 both 10 & 25.

I'd start by saying I think this is a very good guide and agree with 90% of it. That said, most of what follows is where I disagree

My versions of this guide are over on MT, but there's not much in either of those that would be a revelation to anyone following this thread, read or ignore at your leisure. I would suggest that the Maintankadion forum itself is a very good resource for prot-pallies, and should be on your reading list.
• Maintankadin :: Basic Training :: Knaughty's Frequently Answered Questions
• Maintankadin :: Advanced Training :: Knaughty's Frequently Argued Questions

I hate SoB for tanking. The second most important thing as a tank is to avoid damage... SoB does damage to you. I've never used it for tanking, can't think of a circumstance where I would.

All that said, if you have 5/5 Conviction, SoB is almost as much TPS as SoV. If you're using Broken Promise (or other 2.5 speed tanking/DPS weapon) and have both Windfury Totem and Bloodlust, it is probably slightly more TPS than SoV (I'm trying to work it out exactly, having trouble with the maths due to completely different scaling. Sue me). So the threat is "OK". But SoV will have more TPS under 90% of circumstances and not hurt you. If you want to be an Emodin and cut yourself, spec Ret.

The mana return is miniscule. If you're looking for a seal to get you some mana in a Heroic, Seal Wisdom. It's an order of magnitude more mana than what you get from SoB splashback Spiritual Attunement.

So I agree you shouldn't use it... but my reasons are different
The text for the quote paragraph appears to be wrong in the OP - what I think is the correct version is below:

... will reduce the damage taken by a little less than 1%. <...> That is, if you're blocking 20% or more of the incoming physical damage, you'll get more damage reduction out of the 5% block-value bonus than out of the 2% Armour.

The 1% thing is pedantry on my part, but the last phrase seems to be backwards.

I've been running the Austere, but for 25-man content they're roughly equal. As a data-point, last Naxx-25 clear, bosses only I blocked 19.6% of physical damage over the night. Loatheb-25 I'm at 67%... (I should put a block set together and see if I can take 0). This was in a non-BV stacking set while wearing the Armour meta. Gear is high-end - full ilevel 213 or better. Same gear in 10-man content I get higher numbers - 35% at Patchwerk-10, for example.

If you can - get both gems in two hats and switch.

Talents

Pretty much in 100% agreement with Cathela, but I do have some comments on some of the talents. I could quote the OP, but I'll pretend you're reading the post instead.

If a talent is missing, I have nothing to add

Protection

Divine Guardian: I'd rate this quite high. I'm a boss-whoring tank who never heals and is almost always MT instead of OT. I still have and really like this talent. I have it for only three encounters, but it is very powerful for those three (and they're hard - well, hard for 3.0, anyway):
• Sapphiron Air phase: You're not tanking, there's a lot of raid damage floating around. I've saved a wipe when we've had multiple healers ice-blocked (or even just one healer in 10-man).
• Malygos vortex & Phase 2: Again, you're not tanking (other than Lords for a bit at start of P2). Fairly powerful, I have saved people who stuffed up running into bubbles (or just taken a load off the healers when breath occurs).
• Sarth+3: Hand of Sac + Bubble w. DG = huge CD for Sarth MT. Just make sure someone else is carrying the adds for you for a few seconds while you do this.

Reckoning: Largely agree with OP, but you have to take something to get deep into prot. Choices are Kings or 3/5 Reckoning. I prefer Kings, but Reck is "least bad" other option. NB: If you do take Reck, stop at 3/5. The talent itself has diminishing returns. If you're after a threat/DPS talent, not a good choice - SotP is better.

Ardent Defender: Opinions differ on the value of this, but I consider is close to mandatory for a serious tanking build. We're a moderately advanced guild (Sarth+3 done, both 10 & 25, 50th-ish on the 10-man kill, US, second Oceanic). My healers are thus pretty decent. For progression raids, AD was saving at least half a dozen wipes a night. For our first Sarth-25 kill (which we one-shot) it saved me from dying 4 times, and provided over 2% mitigation. Most people who do long-term parsing see 1-2% total mitigation from AD, which sounds bad, until you remember that it mitigates the 1-2% of damage that would otherwise kill you. Get the "Tankadin" addon, turn on death-save tracking, watch and be enlightened.

Judgements of the Just: Strongly agree this is a talent to take. Plenty of occasions where you'll be on your own. And a warrior loses more than a pally putting it up.

Retribution

Benediction: OP says: Not required, but very nice to have.
Strongly disagree. Did a whole pile of theory-craft and personal anecdotes explaining why it is crap back on Maintankadin. Short version:
• The mana saved is pathetically small. Instead of going OOM in 30 seconds you go OOM in 33 seconds. In a full TPS rotation from full mana, 5/5 Benediction nets you half a Consecrate or HotR+ShoR.
• If you're tanking correctly, you'll never go OOM in current content anyway. I'm in full 25-man gear, 0/5 Benediction, don't go OOM even in heroics and don't drink either.

Long versions back on Maintankadin:
• MT :: Advanced FAQ
• MT :: Talents :: How to not go OOM: 101. AKA: Benediction sucks

Improved Judgement: One point is must-have. Second point only useful for trash tanking. NB: Sarth+3 adds count as Trash...

PoJ: See "Build Comments" below. Short version? Too deep in ret. If it was Tier-2, decent.

Build comments

I'd disagree with the relatively common theme in this thread that says "Everyone specs 0/50+/12+". Most common tanking build by about a factor of four is 5/60/6 - I also tend to think it's the best build for most tanking, especially if you want a "Generic build" that's good for everything. Basic reason is that points past 6 in Ret are bad value. Either you have a ret pally and they're redundant, or you don't have one and you should have Kings.

Kings
• PvE Ret should have this, as they lose nothing to pick it up.
• Holy shouldn't - they lose 3% crit.
• So... should Prot?

Either you have a Ret Paladin or you don't. If you don't have a ret paladin, spec Kings and let Holy have their 3% crit.

If you do have a ret paladin, you don't need Kings, but HotC & Imp Might are a waste of points, Benediction sucks, and 2nd point in Imp Judge is pretty weak. Only reason to go past 6 in Ret is PoJ. You're paying 6 talent points for 8% movement speed and 7 stamina. Or 6 talents points for 15% speed. Unless you have a DK with Unholy Aura... in which case you're paying 6 talent points for nothing.

You have to take something to get deep in Prot, Reckoning is your best choice outside Kings, and Reck is pretty weak.

Kings is also useful in 10-man and even heroic content. Thus: There's not much point speccing past 6 in Ret, and you probably want Kings as well. That puts you at 0/58/6 or thereabouts. While SotP is weak, it is the best TPS option out of SotP/Conviction/Reckoning, and you have all mitigation and utility talents when you're 60 into Prot. Thus: 5/60/6, basically by default.

Main exception would be if you have two prot paladins and no ret pally. One Pot specs 5/60/6, second prot specs 0/58/13 and gets 3/3 HotC and 2/2 Imp Might (and 2/2 PoJ since you're there).

Threat

Conviction VS Seals of the Pure Large amounts of analysis of this one over on Maintankadin. Neither are required, both are bad value (less than 1% TPS per point) but if you have the spare points and want a TPS/DPS talent, SotP is always superior. Maths is in Psiven's MT :: WotLK TPS Spreadsheet if you don't want to take my word for it

Gearing for threat

Stolen from Maintankadin :: Psiven's TPS sticky

Single Target TPS Weighting Os OP noted, SBV is more front-loaded. What this amounts to? It isn't worth capping Hit/Expertise for threat (it may be for other reasons). And if there's spell-damage on any of your gear, you're doing it wrong.

Stat	Weighting
STR	100.0%
SBV	60.5%
AP	59.8%
HIT	37.6%
EXP	36.2%
CRIT	26.9%
SP	24.5%
AGI	23.7%
STA	11.2%
HASTE	5.9%

 

Knaughty

I wouldn't mind a proc if there was a static component as well. DMC:Great (Str) for example, is a nice TPS trinket. Proc rate is so high that it will be up a few seconds after the pull for a little burst threat up front, and the static boost isn't bad.

I'm happy with Titanguard being removed, but do wish we had some better tanking enchants. When a TBC enchant (Potency) is your best TPS enchant... something's wrong.
Yes, I do.
Or if optimising for long-term damage (or TPS) over mitigation. Constant boosts are (IMO) always superior when thinking about mitigation.
It has, several times, over on Maintankadin. Conviction is very nearly the same DPS, as it applies to a couple more abilities and the white damage boost is non-negligible. However it is strictly inferior for TPS, for the same reason. Same DPS, lower TPS = worse.

Conviction wins if you off-heal a lot.
If you have a personal debuff-bot that will always be available when you need it, especially if they're a prot pally, feel free. Seems unlikely for most, though I know a few people in this situation.
90% of the time I end up buffing the entire raid with BoSanc anyway. We usually have four paladins in-raid, sometimes five. Prot (me) 1-2 Ret, 1-2 Holy.

I still take Kings > Reck (mostly for 5/10 content).

 

• promdates

The arguments about why we should get Titanguard are pointless. According to the stat weights, (spell power =1, stamins = 0.67), we would only get 42.24 stamina from the "best" stamina enchant. That's on par with the best spell power enchant. Even at 42 stam, it would be THE enchant for tanks through all of the content, quite possibly even through the next expansion. This is why people asked to not get the enchant put into the game.

You still have other options, AP, Titanium Chain, Potency, Mongoose, etc.

"On a scale of one to mein kampf, how many racists does it take to make a guild look terrible?"

[03:28] L_J: it's "olololo hero class"

[01:09:39] <DeeNogger> Any of the resident grammer nazis on right now?

 

Kellee

Perhaps ardent defender as an example is wrong as it procs within "controllable" conditions. As for static+proc enchants considering blizzards track record with enchants I don't like our chances.

I just did some pen/paper maths on conviction from my offtanks patchwerk attempt at being a main tank
SotP would equate to being an extra 30000 Damage overall.
ShotR equates with conviction to being an extra 40000 damage alone, not including extra damage from all our other abilities.


Perhaps I am missing something in my maths o.O?

Although here I am running around as 0/53/18 (3/3 Crusade) as the main tank.

*edit - Ugh Facepalm, thats the extra crit damage total, not the conviction. its what i get for doing maths after an all nighter. I shall do the maths tonight when I have had some sleep*

 

Knaughty

I just ran my last set of numbers from a PW kill through a spreadsheet. I'm 5/60/6, doing 969 rotation, no ShoR-bug-abuse.

SotP: 11,359 damage (what it actually gave me), 31k threat.

Convition: 11,851 damage (what Conviction would give, on average) 27k threat.

No idea how you're getting numbers so high - I only did 474k damage on the kill, and I think I blew Wings for fun (Prot warrior said he could catch me).

Anyway, same DPS, lower TPS, more talent points (since Conviction is 3rd tier and 2nd tier of ret is weak for Prot).

Maybe you were doing ShoR x 2? Conviction wins under that circumstance, especially if you go judge/shor/shor as your "rotation". Still doesn't explain how the seal numbers are so high. Judge/Seal damage is only 87k total for me. I'm doing 2.7k DPS, so I'm not slacking...

Actor	Total	%	Hits	Avg	Crit%	Max	Missed%	Mitigated%
Shield of Righteousness	94529	20%	18	3603	17%	8905	8.30%	3.70%
Swing (Physical)	93410	20%	98	577	21%	1568	11.70%	0.70%
Holy Shield	62674	13%	67	935	.	.	15.20%	4.20%
Hammer of the Righteous	60842	13%	11	2982	25%	5860	20.00%	1.70%
Blood Corruption	53168	11%	.	.	.	.	18.80%	3.70%
Consecration	46658	10%	.	.	.	.	1.80%	4.40%
Judgement of Corruption	32472	7%	14	2020	7%	4188	.	3.80%
Retribution Aura	22768	5%	78	291	.	.	2.50%
Hammer of Wrath	2438	1%	1	2438	.	.	.	8.70%
Exorcism	2210	1%	1	2210	.	.	.
Avenger's Shield	2009	0%	1	2009	.	.	.
Seal of Corruption	1449	0%	93	11	16%	22	10.90%	3.70%

Swing & Holy Shield numbers are higher than a normal boss due to Bloodlust uptime (~23%) and his Swing rate. I'm using Last Laugh, so this really is as high as "Swing" will ever get, and that helps Conviction some in the comparison, a more normal boss will drop Conviction to just under SotP for DPS.

 

Kellee

>.< Ignore my maths for now as i am EXTREMELY tired and on the fly maths with paper is BAD. REALLY BAD. ESPECIALLY BAD!!!!

To be honest now im confused as to how your scoring such low numbers. Trav is usually offtank due to threat issues (our mages manage to pull off him regularly) and him being pretty bad but I allowed him to tank a patchwerk last week as maintank. He did a total of just under 600,000 damage without wings.



I on the other hand judged and shield slammed every 15 seconds and was threat capped the entire fight.



How long are you fights?

 

Knaughty

2m 40s to about 3 mins for Patchwerk. Lower end if DPS aren't stupid. Took 3m 05 two weeks ago after three melee DPS (both ret pallies) killed themselves on the pull by being retards.

 

Kellee

Now there are numbers problems, our dps is so-so. Just hitting the 3 minute mark would be a really good night for us. In any case i shall do maths for my current gear set tonight and perhaps get some sleep now ;_;

 

path411

A semi irrelevant question to the current discussion but, I was wondering how you often handle your rotation while bloodlusted. I generally try to eye when I have an extra gcd, but I'm always afraid of clipping my cycle. Is the main concerns having no time on gcd while maintaining Holy Shield? (Just rotate in Hammer of Wrath/exorcism if everything is on cooldown) Or do you normally notice a set point where you can easily throw in something extra?

 

Knaughty

I'm playing with 300 ms ping (Oceanic). Even though GCD check is client side, I've never noticed having a spare GCD under lust, though I probably go a lot closer to actually executing 969 in the minimum time.

If you can reliably squeeze in extras, some napkin-math says that you want to execute 69696X96969 - IE: do you standard 969 rotation and squeeze in long CD moves wherever you have a spare GCD.

In 3.0.3, I often use "bloodlust" as a trigger for popping wings (unless there's some reason to avoid Forbearance). Come 3.0.8 and the unlinking of the CDs, I would almost always use Wings with lust (and more or less on CD as well).

 

Elistan

I'm curious as to why SoM/SoB is not as effective for tanking. The damage you take won't really matter with the heals you are getting. Has anyone done the math for stacking SoV and then switch to martyr? I'm just curious that's all. What makes SoV/SoC the best to use? When I have noticed the math suggests that difference is not that much.

 

Knaughty

Difference is not much if you're using Broken Promise, the only slow tanking weapon worth mentioning.

If you use a fast tanking weapon, SoB loses by a noticeable margin on TPS.

So you're doing less TPS and taking more damage. Why?

Seal Twisting is a net loss in TPS - you lose two GCDs in nine switching back and forth. GCD loss costs you more than you can from the SoB procs.

Maths is back on Maintankadin, if you're desperate for details. Unsure if it's here as well.

 

vorda

Your math is off, if stamina costs less, wouldn't it seem logical to get more stamina from the same stat points?

The stamina enchant for the same item value as 63 spellpower would be ~94 stamina.

edit: to Knaughty:
You're undervaluating PoJ and HoTC though. I don't always raid with a ret pala (I know, it sucks) so putting up the debuff is worth a considerable amount of TPS already. Added with the heaven that PoJ is on pretty much everything, I don't see myself ever speccing less than 13 in ret.

And a minor point, splitting up posts in quotes to reply is frowned upon on this forum. Just a warning before you get an infraction for it.

 

Kellee

I think at the moment our threat is so ridiculous and our survivability is unbeatable (or that the mobs hit for very little) that being able to take talents such as PoJ, HotC is without a doubt acceptable, hell you only need 53 points in the tree for the defensive talents and your still going to be miles ahead of people on the tps meters. In essence we have *hopefully* until ulduar content is here to find some unique workable specs. Id like to do the maths on whether crusade would be worth the talents and would something like this Talent Calculator would provide us with the exact same survivability and superior tps (provided you have a debuffbot). Experimentation is flavor in all things.

 

• promdates

According to the original post, 1 spell power = 0.86 point, 1 stamina = 0.67 points. Yeah, my math was off. I read it as 1sp=1p, which it isn't. So since it's 0.86, that's 63/0.86=73.25*.67, which is 49.08. About 50 stamina then. Yeah, what was I thinking.

Either way, I'll just continue to use what I need at the time instead of worrying about getting more stamina.

"On a scale of one to mein kampf, how many racists does it take to make a guild look terrible?"

[03:28] L_J: it's "olololo hero class"

[01:09:39] <DeeNogger> Any of the resident grammer nazis on right now?

 

Goru

Quick noob question regarding the Hit table presented in Cathela's work - there is no 5% base miss for bosses, right? I mean all you have on the Hit table are your chance to be missed/not get critically hit and your chances to dodge, block or parry and of course the occasional debuffs on the boss reducing his chance to hit, right?

 

vorda

Still off, its 63*0.86=54.18/.67 = ~80 stamina.
Or in words:
SpellpowerEnchant * ItemPointsForSpellPower = ItemPointsEnchant
ItemPointsEnchant / ItemPointsForStamina = StaminaEnchant

edit: for clarification, in my previous post I assumed SP to have a value of 1, stamina to have a value of 0.67. In this post I used the values provided.

 

Ivriniel

When talking about Seals to use while Tanking, keep the Glyph of Seal of Vengeance in mind, 10expertise is alot.

 

Ivriniel

During all the talk about Tank enchants this seems to have gone lost:
From GC at US Tanking Forums

Now personally, I didn't like what they did with Sanctuary for 3.0 (and Kings for that matter).
It's a very powerfull buff, but at the same time it makes Blessings as such a mess. I also want to be taken to a raid for my abilities as a tank, not for a buff.
So for the future, would it make sense to simply get rid of Sanctuary as a Blessing?

I can see something like this work:
- Remove Sanctuary
- Change Improved Righteous Fury to "While Righteous Fury is active, all damage taken is reduced by 3/6/9%. In addition, when you block, parry, or dodge a melee attack you have a 33/66/100% chance to gain 2% of maximum mana."
- Make Kings baseline or put it back as 11point talent
- Add a new fancy 21 point talent for protection (at this point I'd really like something similar to AntiMagicShell/SpellReflect, given the heavy spelldamage bosses)
- Give DKs/Warriors/Druids more talents similar to Warrior's Shield Specialization based on their needs

Alternative keep RF at 6% and add the 3% damage reduction part to Improved Devotion Aura. (Why is Aura Mastery not baseline yet?!)

I know some people are afraid that they only get their raid spot because of Sanctuary I don't think that's true however, we are competitive with other tanks, just not when there's to much magic damage involved. (A possible change to Holy Shield to mitigate Spelldamage could help there.)

All in all just wondering what people expect in regards to that Blue Post, because I agree with GC that BoSanctuary in it's current state is bad gameplay wise.

 

chapi456

Another issue of BoSanctuary is that it doesn't provide us mana against Casters (in PVP or PVE).

Perhaps, if they add absorb(for disc. priest healers) and resist (for magic fights with resistance set), would it be better ?

I would love Holy Shield to be able to 'block' magic damage (another way to solve this issue)

 

Hoffski

Some sort of magic mitigation would be amazing. My gear is pretty decent but I still get slaughtered in places like heroic Old Kingdom where a large majority of the trash does pure magic damage that I have no way to mitigate. Those trash pulls before the 2nd boss with 3-4 casters that just spam 6-7k frostbolts and silence the healer are brutal for me. Some sort of talent that lets us "block" spells and reduce the damage of them by block value would be awesome.

 

Nobbynob Littlun

I too was wondering about bosses' base chance to miss. I'd assume that mobs including them would have a base 5% chance to miss with an added .2% chance to hit per level-above-target. Some sort of confirmation would be nice, and relevant to the defense/shieldblock rating sections of the guide.

I'm not clear on why BoSanctuary needs a nerf. Sometimes I use it, sometimes I don't. Granted, I'm often the only one around in my raids to cast BoKings... and the winner between those two when tanking changes encounter to encounter. I suppose the problem is that many guilds consider not having both Kings and Sanc on the tank unacceptable, or something? A bit weird, when I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to tank with both.

I can't imagine what they'd do to it. Ramp up the buff and shorten its duration, make it a Hand of Sanctuary? Bah! Idle speculation.