A couple tricks I found while we were working on Sarth+3, and also handy in the arena:

Grid at least can show an aggro indicator (I use a red square in the upper-right corner); in combination with a mouseover Righteous Defense macro, this is a quick way to taunt mobs off a healer or AoE'er. I use a macro like this for all my taunting needs:
By default if I'm targeting an enemy, I'll cast HoR; if I'm targeting a friendly via targeting or mouseover, I'll taunt off them with RD. I can also use RD for my backup taunt by holding down Control.

Aloft can also be set to "glow" around mobs that have aggro on you; it's then a matter of getting the attention of the ones that aren't looking at you.

It's a very minor thing, but ArmorToolTip is a nice little mod for showing the effect your armor has against a level 83 boss rather than the Blizzard default of a level 80 mob.

I'm also a big fan of a ring-based health/mana bar addon such as MetaHud for tanking as it allows me to keep an eye on what's happening to me without diverting my eyes to the top left to check my health. It's not strictly tank-specific, but I find it invaluable while tanking. I'm sure some will see it as a largely aesthetic issue, however.

There's also Tankadin2 for a few announcements (resisted taunts, Avenger's Shield misses) and as a quick reference for such things as whether or not you're unhittable in your current gear. It's a simple addon but it's quite handy for looking at the true nature of your current gear set, especially if you don't use TankPoints.

Finally, while again not exactly tank-specific, is it worth mentioning PallyPower and/or ZOMGBuffs for management of Blessings, Auras, etc?

You may want to add how exactly you can set up aloft to change nameplate colors based on agro. It's something I personally used A LOT on our yogg+0 kill.

IMO, Pallypower is an absolute must-have for a raiding paladin. While its not specifically a tanking addon, it is a pally specific addon (making it different from something like DBM which everyone should have) and is of huge convenience to your raid. Really, showing up to raid seriously and not having it is kind of a big flag that you don't have your act together.

Without wishing to wander too far off-topic, I would like to reaffirm my support for ZOMGBuffs - it does all the things that PallyPower does but also has functionality for Sacred Shield, Hand of Sacrifice and Hand of Freedon as well as being usable by non-Paladin classes and showing a full breakdown of who has what buff currently. Very useful as a raid leader for seeing that someone got missed by Arcane Brilliance or spotting who's not eating buff food or flasking up.

While PallyPower is the known staple for Blessings management, I'd personally like to see both included should Cathela decide to include such addons simply because I find ZOMG to be the superior product. It's also fully compatible with PallyPower, so if half your raid uses one and half the other, it doesn't matter.

I believe Shadowed made an addon for Pally blessings as well (I use his unit frames), but the way I feel about addons is they should do one thing well, rather than lots of things.
ZOMGbuffs most likely uses more memory to track all of those things and it gives information a Pally doesn't need. Sounds useful for a raid leader to see if someone is missing a buff or flask.

I would like to see the avoidance macro (It is listed in the Paladin wowhead forums sticky) listed. It shows how close to 102.4 you are. Also I really like the HoR/RD macro (normally use HoR, but mouseover on friendly units uses RD).

Both sides of the Pallypower coin have been beaten into the ground really. I personally don't use it, and oftentimes I find other paladins in raid being slow to provide buffs because they don't realize it's buff time or something. It might be a server issue for me though, since Twisting Nether seems like it has a lower IQ compared to some other servers.

Regardless of that, MMO Champ had a thread about it that eventually got locked because it was turning into a flamefest.

As with any addon though, making a note about what Pallypower does and its benefits, but not saying it is an "absolute must-have, if you don't have it you can't raid" will probably be the way to go. It's useful, but not being able to do your job unless you have an addon is not good. (I had the "pleasure" of being in a PUG were the priest's HealBot broke and he absolutely couldn't heal, so we kicked him.)

I've raided as a paladin for 4+ years without using PallyPower or any other blessing manager, so I'm the last person who'd be calling it a must-have.

I've added all the macros and most of the addons suggested to the guide. The line between "tanking specific" and "general" is way too fuzzy and I'm not really being terribly consistent about it, but /shrug.

Retribution FCFS helper (clcret) now has support for the Protection 6969 rotation. The addon displays which button you should press next based on a customizable priority list.

I use clcret for when I need to play Retribution and was quite surprised when I engaged a Dwarf for the JC daily and saw it pop up with a rotation for Protection. I swiftly turned it off.

I'm not sure how others play Prot's rotation but I've always enjoyed the fact that for it's global cooldown locked rigidity, it's also very flexible. I know it always ends up the same eventually but I don't always want to do the same thing first. I used to always want to Judge first and follow it up with ShoR so I got the full benefit of LoO but I no longer use that so I'll endeavor to open with ShoR for a huge burst of threat. If I have four mobs running at me, I might want to open with HotR first. Even more and Consecrate.

I mainly use it for my ret offspecc too but i think it's quite handy and should be included here too.
As you pointed out one has to adapt our rotation on the pull but after that it's a steady rotation especially when tanking a tank'n'spank boss. Our rotation is very simple in comparison to the ones a ret has to do but clcret helps anyways.
Additionally one can add 10 aura buttons to display cooldowns or buffs present (like an inbuilt NeedToKnow) which is a very nice addition because you have them directly at your rotation. For my setting it looks like this:

with a Art of War button popping up above AW and I replaced DP with LoH but I think you get the basic idea.

As said before: some like the rotation helper and the additionaly funtionalities (which one can turn off) and some doen't.

The [Charged Crystal Focus] doesn't share a cooldown with healthstones any more?

You can only carry 1 Healthstone, but a stack of Crystal Foci. Also while they share a cooldown with the lock stone you can use as many Foci as you want per fight under the cooldown, unlike pots.

Damn, I forgot about that.
For a while, they did not share a cooldown, but you're right, now they do.
But, as Raistlin said, you can still use more than 1 Foci in a fight, and if you do in fact have a HS, it'll use that first regardless.

I'm currently going for bigger threat with my protpally, on single target, and I'm wondering where to spend last few points.
What I got: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...3,pHr3eO,10314

I'm wondering if Reckoning is really the way to go; my gear makes me Expertise capped, so I'm not worried about parries that much.
Next thing, is that I'm skipping Divinity, 5% is not enough, like 500 in 10000 heal, or 750 in 15k heal.
I'm still using Judgements of the Pure, not sure if this talent affects the dot's and additional dmg SoV is generating.
Not really sure if redoubt is the way to go, it's 30% so I'm getting around ~300-400 SBV, I'm pure Avo, so my Block is around 1400 or 1800 iirc. Still it counts forward threat.
The other way is 5% crit, that would push me to 16.5% crit unbuffed.

One more question, what's better for single target threat: LoObs, or the one that gives SP to Consecration?

And shoudl I start of with Righteousnes untill a few seconds or just run in with SoV?

Redoubt is still strong, not only for mitigation purposes but also for adding damage (and thus threat) to Shield of Righteousness.

Judgements of the Just needs at least one point to allow you to proc SoV/SoCorr from the judgement so you can get better threat Info here.

Spiritual Attunement may not even be needed, but if there's a question whether BoSanc won't get you enough mana then drop a point in.

Reckoning gets worse the more avoidance you have since you have to actually get hit (or with five points, block too). That said, if you want to go 54 in prot like so then you'll have every threat talent in prot.

JotP affects all damage with SoV, including the DoT. The threat differences between it and the possible Ret talents have been discussed a lot and the turning point I believe was in Naxx gear. In Uld and ToC it's generally the Ret talents that win out for threat.

For the Libram, Obstruction is better than Resurgence, but the Valiance libram trumps them both thanks to near-100% uptime on the effective 230 strength. Valiance gets even better in 3.2.2 thanks to Touched by the Light working with Strength instead of stam, meaning that you'll get 138 SP from the libram being up.

In general, stick with SoV. SoR is mainly only useful on trash that'll die quickly.

Threat-wise Valiance is still the best, unless Blizz decides to add a component where the boss feels more threatened because of how often a player avoids or blocks attacks.

As for the exact numbers on Resurgence: .04 of 141 is 5.64 extra damage per second.. Multiply by 8 for the full effect and we're looking at a -very- pitiful 45.12 extra damage per target over the entire Consecration duration.

Endless mana potion is listed in the wrong crafting subsection (jewelcrafting), it's a alchemy craft.

Flask of the north should properly be mentioned aswell, in the same categori, which was added to compensate for alchemy not having a stat bonus like most other professions. Only being able to increase dps stats the falsk was not designed for tanks, but it's still 40 extra str when not useing the 'real' flasks.

Just to clearify; you can use the flask until you get the buff you like, you can't have all 3 buffs at the same time.

[Flask of the North]

Ok, so until I get enough badges, I should stick with Obstruction, if 3.2.2 hit's I should get Sacred Shield, and then possibly Valiance, since it's best for threat. I'm judging that the Dodge one will make me too un-hitable, with around 50% avoidance now.

As for the talent's I'm looking for some numbers to show that JotP is worse threatwise than Conviction+Crusade (ie. Holy vs. Retri).

Skipping the Reckoning, what would be the best in threat generation? I'm thinking this: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...F,pHr3eO,10314

I'm also not sure about the glyphs, Judgment is the obvious one, SoV is the other obvious one (Expertise is much needed I think), Divine Plea is pure Mitigation. Swapping out Divine Plea should increase the Threat, but what should I use then? Avenger Shield? That's not much (2xThreat every 30 seconds, and not always the best choice in 696 rotation), considering it's making me less useful on trash and multi-mob situations. Any other propositions, or should I just stick with the 3 I have now?

If you don't believe us (which is fine to question, but then you should look yourself), just look at the damage done by Seal/Judge of Veng then multiply by 1.25 or 0.8 (depending if you had JotP or not), for other multiply by 1% per talent in convention/Crusade (not perfect, by close enough to show which talent is better).

Judgement is a weak tps glyph, but the best one after SoV. Pure mitigation is good, I consider it mandatory.

View topic - Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work) - Maintankadin

SeanDamnit: Thanks for the link to the analisys. I'm reading it now. One question I'm interested in is: what's the "DUH"?


frmorrison: It's not that I don't belive you, it's just that it was a bit strange for me at begining, but now I get where the numbers come from.