Paladins by nature have one of the highest initial burst threat. I play aggressivly, I gem for hp whenever I can, I enchant for avoidance whenever I can, and I know we have enough tools at our disposal to be able to recover quickly enough. If they aren't tauntable, you still have more tools on your table to help yourself restablish threat/aggro. Don't be worried about our taunts failing, we have Glyph of Righteous Defense.

I play aggressively, even more so since 3.0.8 came out. I can pop wings without fear of needing shield wall before foreberance wears out.

Definitely a neat idea, I was actually thinking of something along the lines of static static agility + agility proc enchant. Much like a newer version of Mongose. I would though, be totally in for something like a static strength + agility proc enchant as well.

Not that I've ever played a DK at an endgame level, but I'm pretty sure there's no way the Fallen Crusader's STR proc is going to add anywhere near enough avoidance via Parry-conversion to even compare with the Swordshattering or Gargoyle forges.

EDIT: The newest version of TankPoints allows you to simulate 100% Holy Shield uptime, so you can make gearing decisions based on the extra 30% block.

To enable this, set the "Shield Block Key Press Delay" under Player Options to 2 or less, to simulate pressing Holy Shield 2 seconds after it comes off cooldown.

Oh, I agree. I don't raid anymore, but going off the early raid/preraid numbers of one of the DKs in my guild, it looks like 700-800 is a good guess for base strength. Thus, the proc would add 210-240 strength, which is 53-60 parry rating. That's only around 1% avoidance; certainly not as good as the others. Even scaling up as gear improves isn't going to help it that much. Seems like it could be a decent threat enchant, however, since it isn't completely devoid of avoidance or mitigation (counting the self-heals as mitigation).

I think I am going to switch my glyphs.

There are very few fights where a 969 is sustainable with you standing in one place to limit us to the same 5 GCDs. Paladins have a LOT of abilities that should be used while tanking (Sacred Shield, Hands of XYZ, Cleanse, Avenging Wrath) that I think that tanks should have their eyes open a little wider than perfecting their rotation. 969 is a great place to start, but it's hard to do other things if you are locked in it.

I am going to switch my Glyph of Judgement to Glyph of Consecration. Judgment has the same DPS/TPS about as consecration (I have the libram but its garbage to use): Wow Web Stats

Consecration is an expensive spell to use, and I think glyphing it would free up some mana, and give you some extra time to use other abilities.

Usually I am putting out double the TPS as the closest DPS on a boss, so I can spare some threat to do this. It would also help tremendously on tanking Sarth blazes/whelps.

Thoughts?

Too often I find that when using Consecration I want to reapply it sooner, not later, because I want to reposition. I often use only 2-3 ticks worth to pick up adds as they run through a strategically placed consecration. In movement fights, I would feel like the Consecration glyph would hurt my utility, as a result.

It's a terrible glyph. When you're tanking a raid boss, if you ever have to say "Man, my mana is really low" you're either not taking enough damage or you're doing something wrong. There's only one fight through all of the current content that I have ANY issues with mana, and it's only in the first minute or so. That fight would be Kel'thuzad.

Sacred Shield can be put on you from the holy paladins, who will receive a better benefit from it with the increased FoL crit proc. It's rare that I have to cast any "Hands of xxx" spells other than potentially Reckoning to pick up a spawn on trash, never anything on bosses. And Avenging Wrath will only delay your rotation by a slight margin, since you can use it and still continue the rotation right away.

As far as putting out "double the tps", that's not unheard of. Being able to pull 8-10k TPS consistently between bosses is pretty much what we should be able to do. It maybe boring, but it's the best rotation that we have currently. If you're having issues tanking whelps/blazes, get a warrior to do it. Between shockwave, thunderclap, isntant refresh on taunt, intervene, charge, cleave, and whatever else they have... they make the better option for a tank to quickly pick up mobs. We just hold them better over the long run.

If it's really dps that you're worried about, then perhaps changing other things would benefit you the most. You seem to be low on the mitigation side of things (taking a little over 1 million damage compared to my 700k on PW on a 3 sec difference fight), while still being able to consistently do 3k+ dps on the same fight. Actually, looking back on it, it seems you were probably offtanking. Either that or you avoided a lot of hits. I would suggest putting you in the MT spot with your feral and a warrior in the OT spot. Or just dropping the warrior OT all together and going with you+feral as the 2 tanks. Just be sure to have the healers keep up the feral at all times.

I believe we had this glyph argument already I think the consensus came out as follows.

No glyph - and the 969 rotation - for optimal personal DPS, if that matters to you.

As threat is only a problem when you're up against a fresh aggro list, the consecration glyph is desirable if you cannot spare the attention to maintain rotations, or if you have some other reason (i.e. I opted for 2/2 improved judgements to maximize Libram of Obstruction uptime, and to hell with the rotation; the glyph was useful then).

Taking it for mana purposes is not considered as wise as using Seal of Wisdom. Get it, wise, Wisdom? *frumple*

In the general case it's just as likely you'll find yourself wishing for a shorter consecration cooldown, especially as your guildies get more and more aggressive with the AoEs and chaining pulls. (the glyph was not so useful then)

It honestly isn't hard to do the rotation. If you have to weave something in, just delay the rotation slightly. I'm more worried about keeping mitigation and threat up and don't the most damage while tanking. Perhaps it can be an issue in Ulduar, but right now there are only a few fights that require you to be super situationally aware. Look at warriors in TBC, they were pretty gcd locked if dong it right, not much different. It's rare that I'll use shield throw while one on one tanking a boss unless there's movement and I can't reliably hit it, or on sarth drakes to pick up random add on x person.

I'm pretty sure the math was gone over through beta on the consecrate glyph, sure it can be found somewhere.

Yeah. Been away from the forum for a week and a half or so. Update coming soon. I'll try to clean up the 3.08 loose ends ASAP.

Holy Shield isn't relevant to a discussion of picking up mobs, and Exo and HW are target-limited.

Aside from that, each of the abilities you list there has a cooldown and uses a GCD, and AS is the only one with significant range to it. If something misses, you're either letting those mobs go, or you're spending the next GCD still picking them up and not getting on to the next thing you need to do.

It's not necessary to hit-cap all the time; as Knightly pointed out a few pages back, in a single-target situation you can get raid buffs and debuffs that'll bring you at least very close to the cap even with just "incidental" +hit on your gear, and missing one slam or whatever in a sustained-threat situation isn't a big deal.

For multi-mob AoE type situations like Sarth+3 though, I really like hit-capping. You shouldn't be in serious danger as long as your healers are alive, and I'd rather trade a tiny bit of my survivability to increase the reliability with which I can get aggro and save other people.

This.

The rotation shouldn't be thought of as something rigid, but more like a default routine to use when you don't need to do anything else specifically. Really, if you're comfortable on threat, the only part of the rotation you have to do is 9xxxxx9xxxxx... to keep Holy Shield up. Technically the HS isn't even required if can take a few unblocked hits without worry. If you have to do something, then do it and worry about the rotation afterwards.

Agreed that the Consecration glyph has way way too many downsides.



Also, just in general (not specifically with reference to the posts I'm quoting) I see a lot of people saying things like "Well, I don't need this in the current content, so what's the point?" And that's true as far as it goes, but there are a lot of things you can play without currently and be able to do everything in the game. Granted with a higher level of difficulty in some cases, and perhaps dependent on the gear/skill of your raidmates, but fundamentally you can do anything in the game right now with substantially non-optimal gear, talents, etc.

So, when we're discussing things like hit-capping, block versus avoidance, and that kind of thing, a lot of the discussion is at least semi-hypothetical and based on speculations and assumptions about the nature of upcoming content. But we don't actually know what the encounters in Ulduar are going to be like. It's possible that hit-capping will be critical; it's possible that hit-capping will be useless.

Anyway, I think a lot of the disagreements we've seen in this thread, and especially in the last few pages, are due to people making different guesses about what's going to be important in future content. Not to say that these things aren't worth discussing, but in a lot of cases there's really no final conclusion to be reached beyond "Well, we'll have to wait and see." Just saying.

Forgive me for nitpicking, but there is no GCD delay on Avenging Wrath anymore. If that is what you meant all along, I apologize.

I know that pressing AW doesn't trigger the GCD anymore, but I did notice the "cooldown cycle" spin around the icon while I was pressing other buttons.

About to land in Dalaran, will test this out promptly on landing.

[edit] Tested this out, clearly while you're spamming buttons you can NOT cast Avenging Wrath. If you are NOT on the Global Cooldown, you can press Avenging Wrath without fear of putting yourself on the GCD. Hence the "delay it slightly to cast it", the slightly being ~.5-1 second which should be the time if you're fast enough to press one button and continue on.

The changes will certainly make some flaws of the prot paladin less severe, like tanking casters and offtanking on bosses (and BGs as a side effect). Nice to see they are still working on things.

PS:

Blizz getting confused about their own naming made me laugh irl ^^

So judging by that, we're looking at getting back 8-10 talent points in the Protection tree. Makes me wonder what we'll end up having to put them in if they have no plans to add more stuff. Will be pretty funny if they don't replace Kings with anything considering they still haven't replaced the old 11 point Kings with anything yet.

The only problem I see with the Guarded by the Light change is that we're already GCD locked in a 969 rotation.

Oh, and I'm really hoping Holy Wrath gets the same treatment as Exorcism.

The way I read it, you put up the DP buff, and ShoR, HS, and AS all keep it from ever falling off--it's a constant 472 mp/5 while attacking or being attacked, without using any GCDs.

And I agree with Holy Wrath--it's incredibly useful for starting trash pulls, and I'll hate to see it move into obscurity as we move into Ulduar.

If that's the case, then that's a good amount of mana regen when our mana returns are not in bad shape as it is. Maybe they are planning on removing BoS and are adding this buff to make up for it?

Looks like I should just take Judgement of Light off my hotbars now? And what about Touched by the light's crit bonus? If we're keeping Divine plea active to heal (which would probably be really cool for helping out in a situation where healing is needed more than dps) we're going to get annhiliated by the 50% healing reduction. And the 50% damage penalty on shield wall? Ick. Ret and holy have gimped 2 nice tanking abilitys...

Also, if we get around 5-8 talent points, we could get the hand of freedom talent for pvp, along with eye for an eye (which makes for a great porcupine spec)... and possibly go deeper into Holy to get illumination for an off healer spec. Not tanking? Toss on full holy crit gear, and keep divine plea active.

Blizzard has shown that they want prot to be PVP viable, but where's the pvp gear? Gear right now doesn't have enough sockets to fill with resilience gems!

Blizzard expressing dislike to SA, is a change that is MUCH appreciated. As a holy paladin in sunwell it was so much of my regen, not getting damaged on twins would be game over..... I would predict a complete SA removal. Although this in turn would warrant a judgements of the wise buff, especially if we have to rely on exorcism in Ulduar. So this leaves BoSanc.... which if we have full time divine plea, makes it feel just like it did Pre-Bc. laughable.

Or they can turn it into 2 talent points for 15/30 (since it doesn't seem to be that overpowered in pvp right now with every other class getting all kinds of stuns/interrupts out the ass), which gives paladin tanks a 10 sec interrupt/stun comparable with warriors.

If they do that, combined with the other changes in prot (longer SoJ stuns, better mana sustainability, long range/long cooldown silence, short range/short cooldown silence) and decent burst high block builds can already output, prot could become quite a decent PvP build... Supposing they finally manage to bring back the arena chess game pardigm over the current damage arms race.

After re-reading it, I agree that this is probably how it is which would make it really damn nice. Along with what they said about Warriors, this change seems to mark the end of Blessing of Sanctuary as we know it which I believe is good for the game. As a buff, I don't really care for BoS, I just don't want to go back to the mana issues we had to put up with in TBC.

Assuming they remove Spiritual Attunement completely (or effectively render it useless) and the mana return aspect of Blessing of Sanctuary, I'm not sure if, mana wise, we will work out better or worse than we are now in a balanced situation. I do know that this will be huge improvement for offtanking when we aren't dodging to get returns.

There goes my fantasy of a 10 second Hammer of Justice

I agree it looks likely that the mana regen part of BoSanc is soon to go, but in a tanking raid situation I think removing both BoSanc and SA would be very bad for a prot paladin. (ofc when not tanking this would be a buff, but in 3.1 when i'm not tanking i'll be hitting my dps spec change button)

If we assume mana raid buffed is 7500, the divine plea buff will go from roughly 31mps to 94mps. A gain of 63mps.

Now if we look at Blessing of Sanctuary alone it returns 150mana per block/dodge/parry. In a raid situation, with holy shield up a prot pala has a roughly (indluding insect swarm) 93% chance to block/dodge/parry an attack which means that on average an enemies melee swing will restore 93% * 150 = 140 mana to the paladin

Thus the intersection between DP gain / BoSanc loss in terms of incoming melee attack speed is about 2.2seconds (140/63). Anything faster than this would mean we lose more from BoSanc than we gain from DP and vica versa. In most tanking situations in a raid this already means we will be at a slight mana loss (though only a small loss). If they took SA out as well we would have a very large deficit to what we have now and could be in mana trouble.

Personally I don't see SA as too bad an issue for prot paladins compared to holy/ret, so why not just make it a deep prot talent (with a slight nerf if felt it's too powerful for pvp)


On a side note, i hope the Shield of Righteousness bug appears again in 3.1....perma silence

They changed silence to have diminishing returns in the last patch or the one before that, don't remember exactly. Otherwise we would get 9 sec worth of silence even without the ShoR bug by chaining ShoR and AS, might be too poweful really :P

Does the silence on ShR sound overpowered to anyone else? It's already a very powerful burst-damage ability -- I can hit 4500 non-crit in blockvalue gear with libram/trinket/wings already and I'm still missing a few blockvalue pieces. Doing that kind of damage, ignoring armor, being parry/dodge immune, and also getting a 50% uptime on a silence effect seems like an awfully powerful single ability.

(Or am I just broadcasting my lack of arena experience by even thinking this would be an issue?)

I mentioned the lack of Prot PvP gear during the beta. It affects Prot warriors every bit as much as it affects us, so I'd think it's something they'd want to address if they're serious about making these specs PvP viable. If they don't give us a prot-specific PvP set, then we can probably do decently well with the Ret PvP gear. A strength-focused set will actually give higher overall dps than one with blockvalue, but it won't have quite the burst potential.

The other issue would be the lack of avoidance on a prot PvP set, since parry/dodge/block/defense aren't particularly good general PvP stats. But if the power-on-avoidance effect of BoSanct is being removed as you guys are speculating, then that wouldn't be an issue anymore.

And thank god they figured out how horrible the BoK situation is.

[E:]
Even with diminishing returns, it would still be:

- 3.0 seconds silenced
- (un-silenced gap if you want)
- 1.5 seconds silenced
- (1.5 seconds or less un-silenced)
- 0.75 seconds silenced

That's still going to be enough to screw up anyone's casting aside from perhaps 1-2 instants in the gaps. And if they don't have a trinket available, you can chain an HoJ onto either end and largely incapacitate them for 10+ seconds continuously.

Again, I'm a PvP noob, so I may be misjudging things, but right now I'd be really really surprised if the ShR silence goes live like this.