[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Nairobi]

I'm a mount-whore (although, very unlucky one as I broke 200 mounts on wednesday only) so I burn 2 coins weekly on Horridon and Ji-Kun anyway. I also had HC TF parry/exp shoulders drop from coin when I was hunting for 1-hander on bonus rolls. That said, I've yet to see any decent 2hander from bonus rolls. We had exactly one drop of Heroic Greatsword of Frozen Hells and ofc I lost the roll on it to a warrior. Most of our melee dps got their weapons from bonus rolls too. Two of them got HC TF Bo-ris, and our DK tank hates them with passion, since he's stuck with TF Axe from LS.

Fucking 25m.

I should start coining those bosses too, but I'm trying to game loot protection for Animus, since I STILL need that chest. I'm at 192 mounts IIRC, and would like the JiKun bird (had one drop once), but not wild about the Direhorn.

I was so pissed when I burned a coin on animus first week we killed him, "LOOT!", only to recieve the pet. "Wtf is this shit, I cant equip it on my head or chest."

I would be LIVID. Holy shit. It's a running joke in the raid that I just rage after DA all the way to Qon. The amount of pissed I'd be at that point would be legendary.

Ummm not quite. I have a 489 and a 530. Considering replacing 489 with 535 despite the fact it's not a haste piece, and despite the fact that if I'm very very lucky I could get a 502 haste piece from LFR but I'm not banking on it.

And you sure? I would've thought (assuming they're all the same ilvl, so doing some real raiding as opposed to what I'm doing unfortunately) it'd be Valor ring + Primordius because the valor ring upgraded looks superior to the Durumu ring, assuming the hit isn't required?

His "BIS pre RaDen" is referring to real raiding. For you, the 530 VP and 535 Durumu are good. Still not BIS, as that would be Primo/VP, but that would require raiding, so....yeah. TL;DR - ilvl trumps stats when you're talking about 2-3+ tiers of difference

I dont know if im just being bad but i find that holding aggro on trash pulls is difficult without the vengeance. I am using a 502 weapon so it aint that bad. But i dont want to switch from seal of insight just for that or should i ?

1) It's trash.
2) If your co-tank is a Monk, just go AFK
3) We have shit DPS without V, so taunt things to get hit, else see steps 1 and 2
4) Weapon dps matters about 0 in terms of our damage. It affects only CS and melee, which is a moderate amount of ST damage, but very inconsequential on trash
5) Never use anything but SOI

[Riemu2k3]

I dont know if im just being bad but i find that holding aggro on trash pulls is difficult without the vengeance. I am using a 502 weapon so it aint that bad. But i dont want to switch from seal of insight just for that or should i ?

Where do you have problems? Holding threat against another tank? Or against DPS?

I usually have no problem holding aggro against DPS. It only gets hairy when there are 6+ mobs or sth like that and your AS doesnt hit them all. You need to taunt those that break out. Thats completetly normal. At least it is if you have 545+ geared DPS that actually care to do their job during trash and that is dealing as much as damage as they can.

If you have aggro problems against other tanks, especially monks, I would advice to just stop caring. Seriously. I have stopped bothering since I cant keep aggro against our monk. Its just not possible. Even with Vengeance.

EDIT: HAHA @ Nairobi. Feel your pain :-)

[Nairobi]

Seriously. I run in on Qon and gather them all up. TROLOLOLOLKEGSMASHSCKBOF....Sigh, brb getting a beer.

I just started making him respec in the hallway so I can actually have fun.

@Space - The valor ring is 522 though, and Merin only LFR's so he'd be stuck with a 502Primo (decent) and 502Durumu(meh) for one socket. No bueno. Better off with the 522 and a 502 Primo, or in his case, this 535 that he can/did buy.

[MerinPally]

Valor ring has no socket

Thank you, I did notice But assuming you're using haste gems all over and then some reforging, you get more haste out of the VP ring than the reforged Durumu with a haste gem in it. If they were the same ilvl then it's simple but they aren't. There's a 30 point gap

[Promdates]

Thank you, I did notice But assuming you're using haste gems all over and then some reforging, you get more haste out of the VP ring than the reforged Durumu with a haste gem in it. If they were the same ilvl then it's simple but they aren't. There's a 30 point gap

If I had the opportunity, I'd replace the MSV LFR haste trinket with the 522 VP trinket, replace the 489 with the 535, and keep running daily h.scenarios hoping to replace the 489/496 items with 516's. Sometimes I honestly wonder if people over-value haste by just ignoring other stats (I know for a fact the majority of you 100% ignore dodge/parry, even though it does have some beneficial use... even more so next patch). In general though, the VP+Primo rings are BiS for you at the LFR level.

"Real raiding" aside, you can't look at items individually in a vacuum. You have to take your other items into consideration and how it will affect reforges and gems. Yes "item x" may have more individual haste than "item y", but "item y" may end up giving you more overall haste because it lets you change reforges around.

[pld]

Seriously. I run in on Qon and gather them all up. TROLOLOLOLKEGSMASHSCKBOF....Sigh, brb getting a beer.

I just started making him respec in the hallway so I can actually have fun.

@Space - The valor ring is 522 though, and Merin only LFR's so he'd be stuck with a 502Primo (decent) and 502Durumu(meh) for one socket. No bueno. Better off with the 522 and a 502 Primo, or in his case, this 535 that he can/did buy.

That's why you BoP the Monk as soon as he rolls into the mobs and starts throwing beers around.
I won the Ji-Kun mount a few weeks ago and it's pretty awesome. Mount itself is kinda small and not very flashy, but I still <3 it.

Joined a new guild and my new co-tank will be a BrM. Excited for more afk opportunities. AFK Tortos.

[MerinPally]

snip

Working on all of this, problem is getting any of it to drop. And I'm aware of the whole item vacuum thing don't worry, I used to do real raiding When it comes to designating the very pinnacle though it's a lot easier, and in this ring case it's rather simple in that I needed to be certain my sleep deprived brain wasn't miscalculating. Dodge and parry gear doesn't scare me, it's still our greatest damage reduction stat and the damage I take is most definitely not spiky (hence I even brought up the ring). My dps seems ok as well so that'd be the other thought.

[Promdates]

AFK Tortos.

Someone has to tank the boss while he's kiting bats :P

[Nairobi]

Someone has to tank the boss while he's kiting bats :P

Do you guys still kite in 25?

Our monk got lazy and just said fuck it, and stacks on me with bats. Obv 10 != 25, so just curious there.

And, about your point earlier, I think you're right in that people get on a 1-track mind about ERMAGERD HASTE!!1 to the detriment of their character. Obviously, everyones personal inflection point for where subpar high ilvl trumps proper itemized low lvl gear is different, but I think that too many people can grasp on to the ideas and theory designated for the top 1-5% of us, which may actually hamper them.

Case in point: GCD usage as discussed in the other threads. Even the best of us here can't reach maximal GCD counts, which is where haste earns a lot of its keep. I'm NOT saying to stack avoidance, far from it as anyone who knows me knows I preach about proper gearing. BUT. As I have also said many times, going into SoO, after reaching haste cap, picking up avoidance will NOT be an offense punishable by death/mockery. GC changes notwithstanding, it's a very viable stat in 25m H especially.

[nightfalls]

Do you guys still kite in 25?

We do even though there is absolutely zero necessity to do so anymore, given that we could just tank the bats. While in the past we kited to avoid having to kill them, now the bats just die regardless from scumbag dps alone (hello gear upgrades).

But I do think our kiter has fun doing it plus the fight is typically a one-shot now anyway even with things going wrong, so I haven't brought it up in guild. Too loudly, anyway.

[Promdates]

Do you guys still kite in 25?

Our monk got lazy and just said fuck it, and stacks on me with bats. Obv 10 != 25, so just curious there.

Honestly... no. We did the kite strat for a while, until one day our backup monk died while kiting and then I had a bunch of bats on me with the boss. I managed to stay alive for a while, so we just decided to go with the nuke the bats strat. It also didn't help that our dps would scumbag bat damage to inflate their overall damage when I was kiting.

I did try to kill bats on my monk once, but since Tortos has 0 drops for BrM spec, I just stayed safe and tanked bats on the paladin. Bats would die faster on the monk, but knowing some of our raiders, it's just safer to paladin it up.

[Kortane]

And, about your point earlier, I think you're right in that people get on a 1-track mind about ERMAGERD HASTE!!1 to the detriment of their character.

Don't tell the other paladins, but I'm going to get the tank legendary cloak before the DPS one.

Shh!

[MerinPally]

Don't tell the other paladins, but I'm going to get the tank legendary cloak before the DPS one.

Shh!

That might not be a bad idea and may save you a lot of money. Same with the meta gem. I can't remember exactly what the changes were but I believe Blizzard is trying to make it so we use the tank one? Can't remember how though.

[Nairobi]

That might not be a bad idea and may save you a lot of money. Same with the meta gem. I can't remember exactly what the changes were but I believe Blizzard is trying to make it so we use the tank one? Can't remember how though.

Nope.

They're just (attempting to) make the tank meta less shitty by buffing its proc rate.

Tank cape got an itemization improvement, but the proc is still underwhelming (much more so now with the CD increased by 100%) compared to the proper itemized DPS cloak with it's AP scaling proc.

[Kortane]

That might not be a bad idea and may save you a lot of money. Same with the meta gem. I can't remember exactly what the changes were but I believe Blizzard is trying to make it so we use the tank one? Can't remember how though.

For the tank meta gem, they're removing its proc rate scaling with haste and increasing the proc chance by 50%. Still, a random proc to take less damage isn't always going to be useful. I'll keep it in my bags though, just in case! They're not changing the way the DPS meta works for tanks afaik, so it'll still be great for doing more damage.

[MerinPally]

Ah well in that case, forget it Whilst it might not always be useful, if the proc was high enough it would compensate but if they aren't doing enough to it then *Shrug*

[Promdates]

Ah well in that case, forget it Whilst it might not always be useful, if the proc was high enough it would compensate but if they aren't doing enough to it then *Shrug*

I will personally be switching to the tanking cloak and the tanking metagem. I might even do it for my monk, since it's going to be another cooldown to use every 2 minutes, and the meta is being changed to 20% flat damage reduction instead of just physical. Fortitude The proc is also "roughly 2.57 ppm" or roughly 38.55 seconds out of 60 or 64.25% uptime (according to the tooltip for the gem)

On a "progression" level, there's no reason to look at it and say "I don't care about surviving, I want to do the most damage possible!" To which I say, re-roll a dps class. Your #1 thing to do as a tank is to survive, if you choose to go the dps route instead, you give up that survivability. Not everyone will go into T16 at a 11/13H or 13/13H level, I'm sure there's a lot of people who are going in at 3/13 or maybe at best 8/13. There will probably even be people going in at 11/12 normal progression level, these are the types of people that will really need the tank cloak/meta, because it will help them survive that much longer and to be able to make up for their mistakes.

We're not perfect, we do make mistakes. If you can tell me you've never made a mistake on a progression boss kill that caused you to die, then perhaps you can continue using the dps cloak/meta. The bosses hit hard, there are lots of abilities that will destroy you, do not under estimate the next tier and gear for damage over survival. ToT was somewhat of a joke for tank damage, don't expect them to make the same mistake again.

[MerinPally]

Well, I won that ring off the BMAH. The heroic durumu. Had a little bidding war with a warrior up to 30k and it all looked good, then this guy came in and raised to 55k in 1 move, was very annoyed. However, 57k, whilst it'll take me a while to earn back, im still on 200k so I'm hardly running out of money. What will I use this ring for? Who knows. Who cares really, the money was just sitting around. May as well have nice things

[Deleted]

Well, I won that ring off the BMAH. The heroic durumu. Had a little bidding war with a warrior up to 30k and it all looked good, then this guy came in and raised to 55k in 1 move, was very annoyed. However, 57k, whilst it'll take me a while to earn back, im still on 200k so I'm hardly running out of money. What will I use this ring for? Who knows. Who cares really, the money was just sitting around. May as well have nice things

I spent 25k on that heroic healing mace for my resto druid alt back in ICC. Used it for like what, 4 pugs? Probably worst purchase I ever done.

[Aceshigh]

I will personally be switching to the tanking cloak and the tanking metagem. I might even do it for my monk, since it's going to be another cooldown to use every 2 minutes, and the meta is being changed to 20% flat damage reduction instead of just physical. Fortitude The proc is also "roughly 2.57 ppm" or roughly 38.55 seconds out of 60 or 64.25% uptime (according to the tooltip for the gem)

On a "progression" level, there's no reason to look at it and say "I don't care about surviving, I want to do the most damage possible!" To which I say, re-roll a dps class. Your #1 thing to do as a tank is to survive, if you choose to go the dps route instead, you give up that survivability. Not everyone will go into T16 at a 11/13H or 13/13H level, I'm sure there's a lot of people who are going in at 3/13 or maybe at best 8/13. There will probably even be people going in at 11/12 normal progression level, these are the types of people that will really need the tank cloak/meta, because it will help them survive that much longer and to be able to make up for their mistakes.

We're not perfect, we do make mistakes. If you can tell me you've never made a mistake on a progression boss kill that caused you to die, then perhaps you can continue using the dps cloak/meta. The bosses hit hard, there are lots of abilities that will destroy you, do not under estimate the next tier and gear for damage over survival. ToT was somewhat of a joke for tank damage, don't expect them to make the same mistake again.

I'm with you on this. Will have both on hand, but primarily going to run tank cloak/meta. It would be like my healers using dps trinkets on progression instead of healing ones cause "they never go OOM" or they "don't need the extra healing from a trinket". The attempt we lose it due to a OOM healer in the last 5% would make me pretty angry as I'm sure tank deaths at 5% which could have been prevented if I wasn't concerned with "being good and not needing the extra cd in favor of more dps". Just feels like the smarter default on progression.