Capstone

Shifting Dreadstone is better IMO - 5 more stam for 10 less strength is a worthwhile trade.

 

Tozar

I seem to remember a pair of patches, the first one making Resilience not work inside a raid(3.0), and the second making resilience not work against non-player targets(3.1ish). However, i cannot find any evidence to corroborate this. Were these changes applied to a ptr, and then repealed before they went live?

 

Grigorim

No, they were just rumored by people who didn't pay much attention to what was in blue and what wasn't. There was a recent patch that made resilience reduce damage taken (not just crit damage) which was stated to not work in PvE, but that is it. Resilience still reduces chance to be crit from PvE mobs.

 

Dragoran

Hello everybody,

I have huges instant aggro issues: I sometimes lose aggro the first seconds of a fight.
So, is there an "official" order of abilities for the pull?
I usually use Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous for the first ones and then do the standard abilities rotation.

In such situation, is it better to increase strength or hit?

Is it logical that warrior have a better instant aggro than paladins?

Thanks in advance and sorry for my broken english.

PS: The armory in my profile is the one of my rogue, here is my paladin's one: Armory

EDIT: And sorry for not having posted in the right place =(

 

Qalor

You picked the top two threat moves we have, so you were right in that. I really dislike starting that way, since you have to later correct your rotation to get back in sequence. Typically that will work perfectly well as starting aggro however. In such a situation, where you are most worried about the first few seconds of picking something up, hit for consistency will be your best stat.

 

Haelfdane

I'm assuming you are talking about single target boss fights although you didn't specify. If so, I wouldn't use HoTR and SoR as the very first agro simply because they're not ranged. Your gear shouldn't have any agro issues. You have plenty of hit and expertise. Try spamming HoR at the start to see if you can land a hit for free agro before the mob has a chance to target you, or pull with Excor. Follow those with AS, then drop Cons in the path the mob will take to get to you, then Judge when close enough (Yes, it will be a weaker judgement without a stack yet, but it's ranged and better than doing nothing), and then commence your rotation. We have an amazing number of abilities to front load agro. If you're still having issues, pop AW at the start.

 

Cardano

I actually use Hand of Reckoning on the pull ALOT. There aren't a huge number of situations where you are pulling boss AND need to be immediately concerned with loose adds, so if the pull allows me to blow it for extra threat thats great. It's off the GCD so I use it with whatever other pull move I was starting with ( Shield Toss FTW ) and get 3 secs of dedicated face time with a boss mob as well as over 1k bonus threat because the taunt hits before the shield. Then I get back to 969 starting with Judgement, that gets my judge in just before range is closed to melee[10yd] since almost all bosses are stubbornly immune to the daze effect/silence of shield toss. Judgement isn't my highest threat move, but since ShotR [or HotR] is hitting as the taunt effect expires they are effectively order immaterial as far as threat is concerned and fit both 969 order and range limitations.

Alternatively, if you always play with the OMGICRITMYPYRO mage, save HoR for when the idiot clothie takes aggro and back bossie comes.

If its something like Emalon+4adds that I will be tanking, I can use the Shield toss, taunt=focus to get 4 of the 5 mobs. That leaves me with 1 loose add that I need to make sure I tag before the healers start getting their face ripped off.

Admittedly, this sequence of 969 starting has Holy Shield up a full 1.5 seconds after the mobs have gotten to melee range, so I sit at something like a 30% chance of 1 unblocked hit from the boss to start everything off. I guess that could be a problem theoretically, but if your EH is so low as to not be able to take an unblocked melee hit chances are you are going to get stomped by the NukingBossMove that comes later in the fight.

I also have a nasty habit of calling the pull on vent after I toss the Shield, something like:
" Pulling in 5, 4, 3, 2, [AS+HoR] 1 0 [Judge] "

 

Dragoran

Many thanks for your answers, they will be more than useful
Using HoR seems a very very good idea.

One last thing on the same subject: my guildmates taunt me on the fact that they can't aggro a mob the first seconds if a war is tanking instead of me.
But using Omen, I have more tps than any others tanks after the first minute.

So I guess, is it intented that paladins have less instant aggro than other tanks?

Another point, I use a template with the seal of command to make the tanking on Anub Arak fight easier. Do you think it could be a good thing to use it for the pull instead of vengeance?

Thanks again!

 

Haelfdane

I don't believe any tank has better snap agro than paladins. Some have some extra AoE versatility, like the DK ability to "place" DnD or warrior challenging shout. It's really just a matter of being familiar with what you can and can't do. If we have initial agro and can get a mob into mele, almost nothing is going to pull that off. We also have more tools for grabbing extra adds as they come (DKs are similiarly well equipped with ranged instants). So no, if you are using the right skills at the right times, you should not be at any kind of a snap-agro disadvantage.

I don't see a lot of value to SoC myself because it requires you to be in mele range to strike one of the targets. HoTR gives you the same functionality but also applies the seal. If you use SoV then not only are you striking the target with a very high agro attack, you are applying a stacking DoT for agro building even when you're off-target. With only a couple targets it is extremely quick and easy to full stack both with SoV for prot between HoTR and fast auto attacks.

 

Vandalize

So the new libram stats have been leaked.

* Your Shield of Righteousness ability grants 73 dodge rating for 15 sec. Stacks up to 3 times.

That is a 19 dodge rating increase from libram of Defiance which in my opinion is not impressive at all, not for t10 content.

 

• frmorrison

Also it take some time to get that 19 extra dodge rating and I don't like the stacking mechanic. DKs have the same issue with their tank Sigil.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Vandalize

True, In all honesty It does not seem worth it, looks like all(?) librams are stacking stats.

My god to lose the stacks, getting them up takes longer then stacking vengeance as ret.

 

Jackinthegreen

It would seem both DK's and paladins got shafted on the sigil/libram. Even though these are guaranteed gains, they still have to be stacked over 18 seconds for us, and a random amount of time for Dk's based on avoidance and to a lesser degree amount of RP. I think both sides will just use the 200 dodge we have since it's very easy to use and already has excellent uptime.

And it's not just the librams that have stacking stats.. ALL relics have a stacking mechanic.

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back. Abigail Van Buren

 

• Mex

12 seconds, assuming you open with ShoR at roughly the same time the boss first melees you.

It's a pretty small increase in overall value, but it is an increase nonetheless. It's also guaranteed, compared to defiance's (admittedly minor) RNG nature.

Unless that first 12 seconds is make or break, this new libram should come out ahead.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. ... this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

 

• frmorrison

Note a see a lot of Pallies using either the Ret libram (200 str) or the block value libram (so people don't value avoidance as much as other stats).

If you like avoidance, it is decent 20ish dodge rating (depending on uptime of 245 libram) increase, be happy the Prot one is 3 stacks (compared to five stacks for Ret).

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

• Mex

Well yeah, it won't come out ahead versus str / BV librams, since you can't make a direct comparison between those. My reply was mostly in response to people saying there's no point upgrading from defiance.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. ... this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

 

TheBacon

The new librams may seem underwhelming but they are true to the item levels. 245 -> 264 is 19 item levels and the difference is ~19 dodge depending on uptimes, but on paper it looks like they match up.

 

Tourette1

What´s with Blizzards sudden dodge fetish for protadins? First the 4pc set bonus and now this, didn´t they tell just tell us they thought to high avoidance in tanks was a problem?

It all makes me wonder if Blizzard already has a plan for changing the mecanics of avoidance and thus aren´t worried about giving us bucket loads of it. It´s either that or itemization in Icecrown will be all about sta and armor with little to no avoidance.

 

Ciremo

It might have to do with AD still being a bit OP, this would be their way of hinting that we're not far off from a nerf. After all, every other tank got a solid damage reduction as 4set bonus, while we get dodge.

 

Kayvaun

Personally i currently prefer the BV libram, but the new libram is actually better than it appears at face-value compared to Libram of Defiance.

Defiance's up-time is ~95% giving it an average Dodge/min of 190

if my napkin math is right, the 3.3 Libram has a theoretical dodge/min of 197.1 over the course of the first minute (assuming you lead off with ShoR slightly less if not), but extended out to a typical boss fight ( >5mins) we see an effective gain of ~25 dodge rating (24.62@5mins, it gets theoretically closer to 25 the longer the fight is). I'd say 25 dodge is a pretty decent gain for the next step up 245-->264. So assuming the first 15s aren't a make or break for you, if you are already using the Libram of Defiance the new one will be a substantial avoidance upgrade.

 

Vandalize

It's hard to say that it's a decent gain from 245-264 since it could have been a much larger as for example the ret libram was from ulduar to TotC
from [Furious Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude] to [Libram of Valiance] and we still don't know how large the step is from TotC to Icecrown.

And off topic: IceCrown testing today

 

Jackinthegreen

Base item level for Icecrown is 251, so 19 levels difference

The AP librams are difficult to compare with strength ones because even though Strength has half the itemization costs, each point in Strength is DPS-wise worth more than double the equivalent itemization as AP. From the looks of it, the AP librams are under budget and/or the Strength librams are over.

As far as the tanking librams go though, there is also a discrepancy. [Libram of the Sacred Shield] would have a dodge equivalent of 225 (apologies if I got the itemization equivalency wrong, but I recall them being 1:1 before BV was doubled). If we go by that where the 226 item would have had 225ish dodge, then at 264 we would have in the neighborhood of 260.

The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back. Abigail Van Buren

 

• frmorrison

I don't know the pre-3.2 value for Block value, but the 3.2+ is 13/40 of a point (where dodge costs 1). This was done to help shield using tanks want to use block value.

So the SS libram would be worth 146.25 dodge if it was itemized that way, except it likely lost some itemization points due to the long buff.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Mechanical

How are paladins currently valueing armor on items?

The reason for my question is that I just managed to aquire [Clutch of Fortification] and am having a hard time deciding what my 2nd finger option should be between [Mark of the Relentless] (with +30 stam gem), [Platinum Band of the Aesir] and [Loop of the Twin Val'kyr] (normal version).

According to rating buster here's the breakdown of defensive stats between them (not really worried about threat at the moment)



The Avoidance* value corresponds to avoidance plus expertise valued as 0.8 of dodge for defensive purposes.

 

• frmorrison

I really like Armor and try to use items with bonus armor, so Clutch, Loop (both versions), and the two Onynia rings are my top 5 rings in that order.

I would rate the 3 rings of Loop, then Mark, and finally Platinum.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.