Prot pally disagreement

[Blasphemey]

I've been researching my paladin exstensively trying to better him like any good player out there is always trying to keep up on the new and every website I goto has the same information saying to gem full mastery gems unless it's +15 - +20 of a stat then gem for the colors but honestly I don't agree with that In my guild we have a full mastery paladin going by that rule and they are very squishy I know this from a heal pov and by what the other healers say in healing pov and using that information I gemmed my paladin for stam + dodge parry or mastery because yes mastery is our top stat at the moment and my dodge and parry are pretty even like this but to gem for a stat that only reduces 30% of incoming damage solely and having 175k health with raid buffs is like saying " Okay boss I'm ready to die " this is considering gear of the 375-380 Ilvl in 380Ilvl tank gear (Mostly from hots of course) gemmed the way I am I have no threat issues 208k - 210k health full raid buffed 10m for ds and am told either of the two " I'm a good tank or a dream to heal " different strokes for different folks though I suppose and I'm not saying I'm the best out there because I know I'm not and don't claim to be and if I come off arrogant I appologize thats not my intent but if you want to look up my character for comparison or to point and laugh w/e it doesn't matter but I'm on Winterhoof USA server name is Blasphemy my B is alt code 0223 and my E is alt code 0233 I'm a Taruen Pally if you see something in my gear that you think needs changing by all means I'm okay with suggestions as I started out I'm always trying to better my pally but do provide just cause for the change there are 2 gems I believe in my gear that are the +40 mastery gems but those are prismatic slots as I said before I have no threat gen issues or surv issues I use my Mini cd's regularly and save my bigger cd's for larger damage um but ya if you agree with me post you do and reasons as to why if not post you don't and reasons as to why this is an open topic and unless your being a blatant ass chances are I will consider posted information and respond





Cheers

[announced]

holy text block of crap...

well first of all your a tauren pally but nobodys perfect.. anyway most pallys go with parry/mastery cause stams pretty much useless for pallys.. the only time its remotely useful is on madness if u need to fill the impale requirement or if u are already ctc capped.. even then id rather get str than stam as i believe the str is slightly higher than the attack power gained from vengeance.

[dawawe]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...%A9my/advanced

I would switch the parry/stam to parry/mastery gems.
Your parry is about 400 rating over your dodge you want to get that evened out, Yes, I see u have a dodge proc trinket, but i always believe static avoidance > potential avoidance. My rough math puts you at about 85% Ctc which i thought was a little low for your ilvl. I'm at about 92% ctc at 384 and well over 110% with the same mastery trinket you're using.

That said, i would also start filling your yellow sockets with mastery/stam instead of pure mastery. My gemming at my ilvl is yellow = puissant, blue = solid, red = fine.

Last, I know you didn't ask about your spec, but go ahead and take a point of ouf sacred duty and hallow ground for reckoning.

Edit:
Change your meta to the block on too little as it may be don't reforge expertise.

[Blasphemey]

okay you're saying stam is pretty much useless huh? I don't see how though because I would rather have a tank that can take 2 hits then one that gets one shotted for example because of low health so to be a tank I still think stam is important otherwise you might as well be a dps that calls himself a tank by throwing on a shield and changing spec but as stated in the "Text block of crap" It works for me and my guild and my set of healers and even against those that gem "Proper" the mastery gems and such I outlive them by far I don't use stam for anything more then a larger health pool to take an extra hit to keep going without procs I have 91% table coverage with procs which is almost 100% up time I cap avoid and I chose a Tauren because A.) I like I think the cows are cool but hey thats me and B.) The little racials they do have are more suiting then the others for tanking atleast to me....Am I alone in my thoughts here? o.O but still this is a open subject for discussion

[dawawe]

okay you're saying stam is pretty much useless huh? I don't see how though because I would rather have a tank that can take 2 hits then one that gets one shotted for example because of low health so to be a tank I still think stam is important otherwise you might as well be a dps that calls himself a tank by throwing on a shield and changing spec but as stated in the "Text block of crap" It works for me and my guild and my set of healers and even against those that gem "Proper" the mastery gems and such I outlive them by far I don't use stam for anything more then a larger health pool to take an extra hit to keep going without procs I have 91% table coverage with procs which is almost 100% up time I cap avoid and I chose a Tauren because A.) I like I think the cows are cool but hey thats me and B.) The little racials they do have are more suiting then the others for tanking atleast to me....Am I alone in my thoughts here? o.O but still this is a open subject for discussion

I also skipped this question. lols.

Gemming pure mastery is stupid unless you're a Death Knight

I also liked the idea of Tauren paladins. but then i made one and wasn't man pretty so i stuck with my Belf.

[Blasphemey]

Okay I see what you're saying and thank the suggestions and will take them under consideration my 387 it gives me is because of pvp gear in the bank my equipped is 380 I have a macro someone gave me that figures out the ctc and it pegs me at 91% I chose the meta as per Elitistjerks suggestion but if the block will mit more damage I'm up for trying it this is the kind of conversation I was hoping for (If anyone would like that macro lemme know and I'll post it)

---------- Post added 2012-02-01 at 12:11 AM ----------

rofl yeah they take some getting used to for sure

[UnderworldSoup]

anyway most pallys go with parry/mastery cause stams pretty much useless for pallys...

Almost every Protection Paladin that plays on a competitive level (that I have personally seen, not saying ALL) are shifting or have shifted to an entirely stamina build since there are many attacks in Dragon Soul which are flat amounts of damage. Hour of Twilight [Ultraxion], Twilight Barrage [Blackhorn, resistance lowers but the damage is still high], Impale [Madness]. It also becomes very useful on Spine of Deathwing due to the stacking health debuff, giving you more of a buffer.

Stamina is, without a doubt, the way to go when you're CTC capped -- unless you have another motive like ranking on World of Logs.

Essentially:
- Find out if you're block capped/CTC capped. If not, gem heavy mastery to fill the gap.
- Are you above CTC with buffs (food, raid buffs, elixirs, etc)? Start shifting to hybrid gems like Puissant.
- Are you above CTC with raid buffs and hybrid gems? Start changing the hybrid to pure stamina.

[Deleted]

It's exactly like UnderworldSoup said. Get CTC capped and then go for full stamina while keeping yourself capped.

Going for something like strength as a tank is completely useless, since it doesn't help anything with your survival and your dps should not matter in a fight or your dds are doing something wrong. Even IF you're aiming for damage as a tank for any reason, you would rather get hit and expertise hardcapped and go for stamina.

And don't tell me that it's so hard to cap CTC that you can't get a large health pool. It was already possible to cap CTC and get 175k raidbuffed in T11 content. It just depends on which pieces you pic. For example, the strength trinket you are using is one of the worst to get as a paladin since you don't want mastery procs, you want always be capped and any mastery that pushes you above 102.4% is completely useless. Let alone the strength on it which only provides a bit of parry. Better get the mastery trinket for points and use it with a second mastery trinket like spidersilkspindle to cap CTC and then go for stamina.

My gear is a bit above yours right now, but I don't have a single heroic piece yet and I'm at 230k raidbuffed while being CTC capped. So it's totally possible to reach ~200k in 380-384 while being capped if you pic the right pieces.

[Deleted]

mastery till 102.4
when 102.4 switch any excess into dodge/parry through gem switching
-> swap 40 mastery gems into 20 mastery 30 stamina
swap 20 mas 30 stam gems for 20 dodge 30 sta
swap 20 dodge 30 sta gems into pure stamina

thats the way to gem imo but at all times (except possibly madness and ultraxon) as long as you keep the 102.4 you will be ok.
if that pally is stacking amstery it should be mastery AND stamina basically skiping the "dodge" stage of the gems as a larger mastery ammount allows for a large ammount of pure stamina gems while stil reaching 102.4

[announced]

Almost every Protection Paladin that plays on a competitive level (that I have personally seen, not saying ALL) are shifting or have shifted to an entirely stamina build since there are many attacks in Dragon Soul which are flat amounts of damage. Hour of Twilight [Ultraxion], Twilight Barrage [Blackhorn, resistance lowers but the damage is still high], Impale [Madness]. It also becomes very useful on Spine of Deathwing due to the stacking health debuff, giving you more of a buffer.

Stamina is, without a doubt, the way to go when you're CTC capped -- unless you have another motive like ranking on World of Logs.

Essentially:
- Find out if you're block capped/CTC capped. If not, gem heavy mastery to fill the gap.
- Are you above CTC with buffs (food, raid buffs, elixirs, etc)? Start shifting to hybrid gems like Puissant.
- Are you above CTC with raid buffs and hybrid gems? Start changing the hybrid to pure stamina.

exactly what i was saying.. your gear alone in 397s should provide u with enough ctc and a few gems to reach 102.4% then and only once ur capped u want to start shifting some mastery/parry gems to mastery/stam... the OP is like 378 or 380 ilvl and not ctc capped.. therefore he shouldnt stack stam because its really not useful unless u are capped... while some fights in DS are magic, heavy magic attacks are always followed by melee ones .

[Jinivus]

mastery till 102.4
when 102.4 switch any excess into dodge/parry through gem switching
-> swap 40 mastery gems into 20 mastery 30 stamina
swap 20 mas 30 stam gems for 20 dodge 30 sta
swap 20 dodge 30 sta gems into pure stamina

thats the way to gem imo but at all times (except possibly madness and ultraxon) as long as you keep the 102.4 you will be ok.
if that pally is stacking amstery it should be mastery AND stamina basically skiping the "dodge" stage of the gems as a larger mastery ammount allows for a large ammount of pure stamina gems while stil reaching 102.4

Never gem dodge, ctc cap then stam out the ass.
My own personal question to mix things up; gem more mastery or use the elixir combo(vs 450 stam flask)?

[JulienPDX]

can i be a noob and ask where you acquire your ctc percentage? i'm a warrior not a pally; but I belive our stats (prot) tend to be similar

[Deleted]

Going for something like strength as a tank is completely useless, since it doesn't help anything with your survival and your dps should not matter in a fight or your dds are doing something wrong. Even IF you're aiming for damage as a tank for any reason, you would rather get hit and expertise hardcapped and go for stamina.

even if minimal, strenght still gives to warriors, dk's and paladins Parry, so IT does help with survival. And it does help the dps, making a fight shorter helping on survival. That was farfetched i know but it still does help.

To Blashphemy, when checking if your ctc capped go with full raidbuffs, kings horn of winter (or the look alikes) flask / elixirs, unless using the stamina version and buff food. The strenght modifiers are the reason you should put dodge non buffed a bit ahead of parry, as that way you wil leven it out.

[energumeno]

can i be a noob and ask where you acquire your ctc percentage? i'm a warrior not a pally; but I belive our stats (prot) tend to be similar

ctc= dodge+parry+block+5 (comes from the change of a boss miss attacks)

[Deleted]

even if minimal, strenght still gives to warriors, dk's and paladins Parry, so IT does help with survival. And it does help the dps, making a fight shorter helping on survival. That was farfetched i know but it still does help.

I already said in my post that strength also gives a bit parry, but it's still far behind stamina in survival and damage in the current content.

[Deleted]

Hello sir, my name is paragraph. Nice to meet you. Seriously, do you hate our eyes or something so you gotta type like that? Anyways, on to your topic.

If you wanna gem for stam+mast or mast+parry in your blue and red slots then that's fine, if you're wanting to avoid mastery gemming altogether and go for parry+stam then you're doing it wrong. I don't care what you think you've seen as a healer, that could easily be a matter of the "squishy" tank simply not using cooldowns properly or just being bad in a fight. The strength of mastery over parry/dodge is very simple, it makes the damage intake more predictable. Mastery is always more desirable than parry/dodge because it does the same thing but with less RNG involved and less spikes of the tanks' health.

Now stamina on the other hand could be considered better than mastery at certain points. You do need a certain amount of health to be healable through large magic damage spikes and so forth. Around ~200k fully raid buffed is plenty for that, that's usually achieved by a trinket though.

[Jinivus]

Armor

Hmm I used Prismatic on most fights in FL/T11 when I used the elixirs, And I've heard about all the magic damage in 4.3 all too much.