All you need to know about protection paladins, and a little more. A guide!

[MorphexEU]

A little about me.
I started playing with the launch of Wrath of the Lichking and have ever since played. My first character was my paladin. And from the very beginning I found tanking the most interesting role in a group. Levelling as a tank was actually a comfort. Never dying was always a huge factor for me. I learned how many mobs I could pull without stressing myself. And I learned how many mobs I could pull to stress myself, but still manage to survive. Pug'ing 5mans was also a way to learn the tanking role, as you needed to relay on others. So far I've got 4 tanks, one of each class and is working on my 5th.
So my first tip is to level up as a tank, in said tank specc.

Quickly search up what you want in this guide!
To search quickly through the guide, hit "ctrl + f" on your keyboard and use one of the key codes listed below.

Speccs - S1
Glyphs - G2
Paladin and CTC - PC3
Gemming - G4
Reforging - R5
Enchants - E6
Ability usage - AU7
Tank stats - TS8
Mitigation - M9
Diminishing returns - DR10
CTC cap - CC11
Stamina - S12
Offensive Stats - OS13
Hints & tips - HT14
Resources - R15

Protection Paladin in general
Speccs
S1

Protection:

First tier:

• Dvinity - A must. Increases healing done and healing taken, very good.
• Seal of the pure - This talent is for damage increase and often prioritized over Eternal Glory in the first tier. You want Seal of the Pure to shorten the enrage timers. Keep T13 2set bonus in mind, as this talent buffs the 2set effect.
• Eternal Glory - Eternal glory is favoured by many, some my say it's mandatory to have. It's a very good talent if you focus on survival more then anything else.

2nd tier:

• Judgement of the Just - A must. Reduces the enemies attack speed by 20%, which reduce damage more then any avoidance stat.
• Toughness - This talent is rather obvious, as without this you'll end up being the famous paper tank. Armour reduces a lot of damage, so this talent is crucial.
• Improved Hammer of Justice - This talent is rather weak, as there isn't often where Hammer of Justice comes in use. But if you're the only one that have a stun, that'll be rather interesting if you was, then you might consider this talent. For instance on gunship in DS, to stun the sappers.

3rd tier:

• Hallowed ground - This talent provides only a marginal DPS boost. It's not any good, neither is it any bad. So it's a decent talent. Even though, if your main focus is 5mans, then consider this talent.
• Sanctuary - A must. You'll be immune to crits and reduce all damage taken by 10%, you also gain 3% of your mana when you block or dodge a melee attack. Without this talent you can't really enter any dungeon.
  Note; There have been some testing among the warriors, where they believe you can't be crited after reaching the CTC cap. Even though, don't drop this talent.
• Hammer of the Righteous - This talent is crucial in. There is so far no raids where AoE haven't been needed (taking trash into consideration as well here). So spend your talent point in this one.
• Wrath of the Lightbringer - This talent provides a huge damage buff, it also provides survival through the 2set from T13.

4th tier:

• Reckoning - This talent is loved by very many paladins, as it not only provides damage, but it also proccs items more often. Take for instance souldrinker from dragon soul, or the windwalk enchant.
• Shield of the Righteous - This is your, usually, main holy power dump ability. Shield of the Righteous deals a lot of damage, and therefore it causes a lot of burst damage in the start of a pull.
  Tip; Use divine plea just before you pull (requires another talent) to get 3 holy powers, pop avenging wrath. And mock the living shit out of your target.
• Grand Crusader - This talent is a rather decent damage buff, and it also provides you with faster holy power generation.

5h tier:

• Vindication - With this talent your crusader strike and hammer of the righteous will now reduce the physical damage a target deals by 10%. That means this talent alone provides more damage reduction then avoidance stats would.
• Holy Shield - A paladin tank is no paladin tank without this talent. 20% additional damage reduction through block every 30 sec is so absolutely not a bad thing. Blocking 50% of the damage on every block for 10 seconds is actually a significant survival bonus.
• Guarded by the Light - If you focus more on survival, and do not feel entirely comfortable with your healer, then take this talent. Not only does it heal, but with 2 points in it, it will provide you with a absorb shield. Loved by many paladins.
• Divine Guardian - Reducing the damage the whole raid takes by 20% for 6 seconds is awesome. Using this ability on the right time can be the difference between a wipe or a kill sometimes.

6th tier:

• Sacred Duty - Your judgement and avenger's shield now have a 50% chance to make your shield of the righteous to crit. A pure damage buffer.
• Shield of the Templar - Reduces the cool down on Avenging Wrath by 60 sec (damage buffer, and survival with 2set T13 / WoG healing). Also reduces the cool down on Guardian Of Ancient Kings by 2 minutes, making this talent a must. Also giving you three holy powers when you use Divine Plea.

7th tier:

• Ardent defender - Ardent defender can in many ways work like bubbling, as you're not dying from damage while it is up. You can also use it as a damage reduction CD, seeing it provides a 20% damage reduction during it's duration.

Holy

There is not many viable choices for a protection paladin in this tree. But there is one talent that is worth considering, and that is Arbiter of the Light. It's a pure damage increase, but it also is an survival increase if you have the T13 2set bonus.

Retribution

First tier:

• Eye for an eye - On heavy damage fights you might see this talent dealing a lot of damage, making it very good on fights like Warlord Zon'ozz.
• Crusade - This talent increases the damage you deal with crusader strike, and is therefore a good damage buffer and threat buffer.
• Improved Judgement - This talent is a good "pick up on range" talent, in-case taunt + avenger's shield isn't enough.

2nd tier:

• Guardian's Favor - This talent reduces the cool down on hand of protection and hand of freedom. This talent is good if you are going to solo tank madness of deathwing, as you then can use HoP / bubble on every platform for impales.
• Rule of Law - Increases the damage you deal with crusader strike and hammer of the righteous by 15%. It also increases the healing done by your WoG by 15%.
• Pursuit of Justice - If you're not having a run speed boost enchant on your boots, then put talents into this talent. As run speed is actually rather often a huge survival boost / pick up boost.
  For instance if you're kiting shannox to reset stacks.

In the picture above you see some talents highlighted in yellow, some in orange and some in gray.
The yellow ones are the mandatory talents while the orange ones being the optional talents. The few talents highlighted in gray is optionals, but they are really weak and does not often come in use.

Glyphs
G2
In this part i will just mention the recommended glyphs, and not tell you which to take. As glyphs are often personal choices, just as a specc is.

Prime:

• Glyph of Seal of Truth - This glyphes gives you 10 expertise (not rating, but 10 expertise) when you have the seal "Seal of Truth" active. This is the best prime glyph for a protection, DPS wise.
• Glyph of Shield of the Righteous - This glyph is boosting your main holy power dump abilities damage by 10%, and it would be 2nd best prime glyph after Glyph of Seal of Truth.
• Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous - This glyph is very good to have in an AoE situation, seeing it is buffing our main ability in AoE situations. It is buffing both the physical and magical damage portion by 10%.
• Glyph of Judgement - This glyph is buffing the damage you do with judgement by 10%. This also means you're buffing the absorb from T13 2set.
• Glyph of Crusader Strike - This glyph is increasing the chance to critical strike with Crusader Strike by 5%,
• Glyph of Word of Glory -By using this glyph your word of glory will now heal for 10% more.

Major:

• Glyph of Divine Protection - This glyph removes the phsycal damage reduction part, but instead Divine Protection will now reduce all magical damage by 40%. This is making this glyph very valuable, and worth considering on almost all fights.
• Glyph of Holy Wrath - This glyphs adds another Crowd Control portion, by allowing you to stun elementals (in addition to undeads) with holy wrath.
• Glyph of Focused Shield - This glyph removes the AoE part of the ability, but increases the damage you deal with Avenger's Shield by 30%
• Glyph of Ascetic Crusader - Your Crusader Strike now costs 30% less mana.
• Glyph of Long Word - Glyph of Long Word causes your Word of Glory to heal just for 50% of the healing it does when you cast it, but the 50% remaining is given as a HoT over 6 seconds.

Minor:

• Glyph of Truth
• Glyph of Blessing of Kings
• Glyph of Blessing of Might

Paladins and CTC!
PC3
As a paladin it's rather easy to reach the CTC cap, compared to our shield friends, warriors.
The best approach to reach CTC is to stack mastery and have close to equal dodge and parry rating. The dodge and parry rating isn't that import if you can gain more mastery. You will need a total of 102.4% avoidance, that means you will need your dodge % + parry % + block % + 5%(the chance a boss have to miss you), to equal a total of 102.4%.

But, what when I am CTC capped?
Then you aim for as much stamina as possible, while maintaining CTC cap and gaining dodge / parry. The reasons are as following;
The larger health pool, the longer time it takes for a boss to kill you. Taking both melee and magical damage into consideration. Which also allows healers to spend their mana on other people then just the tank.It reduces the mental spike damage you take. With that I mean we are looking at a tanks health pool from a healers PoV. As healers mainly just focus on your % HP, and not on how many thousands HP you got (usually). So if a boss deal magical damage, you won't fall that low down, percentage wise, then you would have if gemmed for avoidance.

HC firelands bosses and dragon soul bosses hits so hard that a tank with low HP will be difficult to heal. Simply because you fall low on your %.

More about CTC later in the post.

Gemming strategy:
G4
Since it's easy for paladins to reach the CTC cap, we can go for socket bonuses. But if you are really close to the CTC cap, you might want to push mastery just a little more to get the cap.

The gems you want to use before CTC capped is;

• Blue - Puissant Dream Emerald / Puissant Elven Peridot (epic gem)
• Yellow - Fractured Amberjewel / Fractured Lightstone (epic gem)
• Red - Fine ember Topaz / Fine Lava Coral (epic gem)

The gems you want to use when you are CTC capped is the same above to maintain the cap, but if you can reach the cap from gear alone then you might want to change gemming strategy.

And here is the gems that you use to just improve your survival further after the CTC cap:

• Blue - Solid Ocean Sapphire / Solid Deepholm Iolite (epic gem)
• Yellow - Puissant Dream Emerald / Puissant Elven Peridot (epic gem)
• Red - Defender's Demonseye / Defender's Shadow Spinel (epic gem)

Reforging Strategy
R5
The reforging strategy is quite simple and quite forward, you want as much mastery out of it as possible. You also want dodge and parry to be as equal as possible (the optimal is to have 200 more dodge rating then parry rating).

So which stat should I prioritize over another? The prio looks like this;

Hit > expertise > dodge / parry

Meaning you want to reforge away from hit, more then you want to reforge away from expertise. And you want to reforge away from expertise more then you want to reforge dodge / parry.
This is the min/maxing reforge strategy, so that you can earlier gem for stamina while you still get more dodge and parry. Overall causing you to have a better survival.

So now a few examples.
An item have these stats;

215 hit rating
200 expertise rating

On this item you want to reforge the hit into mastery.

Now, another item;

200 hit rating
250 mastery rating

On this item you want to reforge the hit into either dodge or parry, which ever that have the lowest ratings.

250 expertise
230 dodge

On this item you want to reforge the expertise into mastery.

Enchants
E6
There is not much to say about enchants, so I am just going to link the best enchants you can get.
Head - Arcanum of the Earthern Ring
Shoulders - Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz
Cloak - Enchant Cloak - Protection
Chest - Enchant Chest - Greater Stamina
Bracers - Enchant Bracer - Superior Dodge
Gloves - Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery
Legs - Drakehide Leg Armor
Boots - Enchant Boots - Mastery
Shield - Enchant Shield - Mastery
Weapon - Enchant Weapon - Windwalk

Paladins and ability usage.
AU7
Seals and Judgements
Seal of truth is our strongest seal for damage output and also for threat generation. It also causes us to get the strongest judgement, which again buffs our damage / threat output. Judging seal of Truth will cause a lot of damage, often equal damage to what Shield of the Righteous cause, and sometimes even more.

Seal of insight is also a viable choice among the seals, but it's healing isn't really worth it. Judging insight will make you heal yourself, and it causes minimum damage. Not a very good seal, nor a very good judgement. But they are still viable.

Holy Power Generators
Crusader strike and Hammer of the Righteous is our two "on cool down" abilities. They are our core abilities as they generate holy power.

But, when am I supposed to use Crusader Strike and when do I use Hammer of the Righteous?
The answer is quite simple, you use Crusader Strike on single target encounters. And you use Hammer of the Righteous on any AoE / cleave encounter, be it from 2 mobs and more.

We also have avenger's shield, which is an ability many paladins can fall in love with. If specced into Grand Crusader, then avenger's shield might become one of the best fillers, as it generates Holy Power when the talent proccs. It's use is once again very situational, as you might for instance want to use judgement or one of the holy power abilities before using Avenger's Shield.

Holy Power Abilities
Shield of the Righteous is our direct damage dealing ability, and causes a lot of burst. Using shield of the righteous on the start of any fight should allow you to keep agroo the rest of the encounter, if said encounter is single target. With that said, it's also only used on single target and close to never in an AoE situation.

Word of Glory is our no-cast-time heal, and is very situational. Some paladins admire this ability, some doesn't even have it on their action bars.

Inquisition is maybe our strongest holy power user, for both AoE and single target. It's holy damage increase might be enough to surpass the damage shield of the righteous does on single target. But it is a no brainer in AoE, you use inquisition in any AoE situation.
Personally I use inquisition, as it's not only a damage buffer, but also an survival buffer if you have T13 2set.

Other Fillers
Consecration is a huge mana dumping ability, it's an AoE ability which deals damage over time if an enemy stands in it. You can specc into Hallowed Ground, and therefore use it more often while it also deal more damage. It's a rather decent AoE spell.

Holy Wrath is an AoE ability which splits it's damage between all targets around the paladin. It deals a small amount of damage, but it stuns undeads. If glyphed it also stuns elementals, a nice CC there.

Hammer of Wrath is only usable when the target is below 20%, and it's a rather heavy damage coming from this ability. I advice any paladin to use this ability over Holy Wrath and Consecration.

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Tank stats
TS8
Avoidance
Avoidance is dodge, parry and miss.
Everyone have dodge and miss, but not everyone got parry.
Strength users are those who have parry, that means plate users.

Miss
Miss is a stat that is not shown on your stat tables, but it is there. The stat miss is always 5% vs a equally leveled mob or player. That means an equal will have a 5% chance to miss you, with all attacks.
Miss can not be increased by stats on gear but night elfs have an extra 2% chance to be missed. Which is good if you want to reach the CTC cap ( more about CTC below).

Dodge
Dodge can be seen on your stat table. Dodge gets increased by dodge rating given from gear or food etc. Dodge is an avoidance stat which increase your chance to dodge an attack, meaning you don't take melee damage at all. You will need 176 dodge rating to gain 1% dodge, before diminishing returns (will come to diminishing returns later).

NOTE: Druids also get dodge from agility, the three other tanks does not.

Parry
Parry is similar to dodge, and is therefore showed on your stat table. After parrying an attack, you will completely avoid the damage. You will need 176 parry rating to gain 1% parry, before diminishing returns (will come to diminishing returns later). Strength also increase your parry rating. Meaning 27% of your strength rating equals into parry rating.

Note: Druids does not gain parry at all, so strength will not increase their chance to parry. Neither will parry rating.


All three stats mentioned above makes you take no damage when they occur. And is therefore called avoidance stats.


Mitigation
M9
Everyone have some sort of mitigation, but not all mitigation is alike.

Mitigation does not make you completely negate damage (exception; absorb), it rather reduce the damage by x or x% amount.

Armour
Armour is a stat everyone have, and is given from gear. The more armour you have, the less physical damage you take. Cloth is given the least amount of armour, while plate gives the most amount.

All tanks have a talent increasing their armour, which puts tanks ahead of DPS'ers or healers on the amount of physical damage reduction just by their amount of armour. Druids and death knights also get additional armour when they are in proper form (bear form for druids) and presence ( death knights).

Armour have a cap at 75% physical damage reduction. If you should reach that cap, which is impossible, you no longer gain anything from armour.

Resistance
Resistance is also a stat that everyone have, and it's job is to reduce magical damage income. There is not many items with resistance stats on them, but you can find elixirs or trinkets which increase your resistance. Resistance is reducing magical damage with %. So that will say if you take 100 nature damage, and your resistance reduce it by 10%, you will take 90 nature damage. If a cast now deal 10 000 nature damage, and your resistance is still reducing by 10%, you will take 9 000 nature damage.

Absorb
Absorbs are not given by stats, but by spells and abilities (or proccs from items). Absorb reduce damage income by x amount, and is therefore more RNG then the two mentioned above. You can fully absorb damage, be it magical or physical ( depends on what kind of absorb shield you get).

Block
Block is a stat that is only worth something for those with shields. Warriors and paladins (in their protection trees) are the only ones that can increase their chance to block. And they do so with mastery. Warriors increase their chance to block by 1.5% per 1 mastery (179.28 mastery rating). While paladins increase their chance to block by 2.25% per 1 mastery (179.28 mastery rating).

Block is reducing physical damage by 30% or 31% if you have gemmed Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond in your meta gem spot. Warriors also have a chance to critical block, and that chance is also increased by their mastery, 1.5% chance per 1 mastery or 179.28 mastery rating.

Critical blocking as a warrior means that the warrior block for either 60% or 62% of the damage, depending if the warrior have the meta gem or not.

Diminishing returns
DR10
Diminishing returns (shortened to DR) is always there, it's a constant affecting your dodge and parry stats. DR's task is to make it impossible to reach unbelievable high amounts of dodge and parry, so it decrease the % you gain per rating the more rating you gain. If you now are confused then just bare with me a little more and you can see it with numbers.

While using numbers I will use fictional numbers, so never refer to these numbers.

Lets say you have 10% dodge and want to increase your chance to dodge by 1%, you'll then need 100 dodge ratings (again, only fictional numbers).

Now, lets say you have 20% dodge and want to increase your chance to dodge by yet another 1%, you'll then need 250 dodge ratings ( yet again, only fictional numbers).

As you see, the more dodge you have the more dodge rating you need per percent.


CTC Cap
CC11
CTC, which is a shortening for Combat Table Coverage, is any player or mobs hit table against a player. The CTC looks something like this;

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Block

As you see, it only covers those four stats. So those four stats is all you need to reach the CTC cap, also referred to unhittable or block capped.

You reach the CTC cap when you have a total of 102.4 miss, dodge, parry and block.
You need 102.4% because of raid bosses being three levels above you. For each level a mob exceeds your level, all of your avoidances are reduced by 0,2% each. As raid bosses are considered to be three levels above you, each stat is reduced by 0,6% - or a total of 2,4% less CTC.

So against a lvl 85 mob / player you'll be CTC capped when reaching 100%.

DK's and druids can not reach the CTC cap because they can never ensure that they will avoid or mitigate an attack.
That is because druids and death knights got their mitigation tied to absorb and not block.

Their absorbs are happening after they do something, for death knights that will mean they have to death strike to gain an absorb shield (which does stack up). A DK's absorb is called blood shield, and a boss might as well hit so hard that the whole shield is gone within one melee swing.

Druids absorb shield is tied to their chance to crit, and after criting it's even a little more RNG, as it got a 50% chance to procc the shield after criting. So blizzard have put RNG within RNG within RNG. The last RNG part is because the absorb shield is tied to the druids mastery and attack power.

Absorb is not on the CTC table as it is not static.

Block on the other hand is static and the chance to block is increased by stats, making paladins and warriors able to reach the CTC cap. Which is desired above everything else for a warrior and paladin tank.

A macro that shows you total CTC in-game:

/run ChatFrame1:AddMessage(format("Unhittable at 102.4%% - you have %.2f%%", GetDodgeChance() + GetBlockChance() + GetParryChance() + 5 + 1/(0.0625 + 0.956/(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)/4.91850*0.04))))

And for night elfs:

/run ChatFrame1:AddMessage(format("Unhittable at 102.4%% - you have %.2f%%", GetDodgeChance() + GetBlockChance() + GetParryChance() + 7 + 1/(0.0625 + 0.956/(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)/4.91850*0.04))))

Stamina
S12
Stamina is a survival stat, and it increase your Health Pool. The more stamina you have, the longer you can survive without heals.That being said, stamina is great but never as good as mastery, dodge and parry. So a tank should never gem stamina, unless (s)he is CTC capped or lack stamina to survive some fights where magical damage is a heavy factor.

Offensive stats
OS13
Offensive stats are stats increasing a players damage output, which again increase a players threat generation. A dps will generate as much threat as damage he deal, while a tank generate threat 5 times to the damage he / she deal. That means when a DPS deal 100 damage, he also generate 100 threat. While a tank dealing 100 damage while generate 500 threat.

Hit
Every percent of hit you gain, reduce your chance to miss on another target. Against a raid boss you will need 8% hit to never miss, while against a player of equal level you only need 5% chance to hit.

Hit is a completely wasted stat for tanks, and should therefore be reforged into dodge, parry or mastery.

Expertise
Expertise reduce the chance another player or mob have to dodge or parry you. The soft-cap on expertise is 26 expertise. When you have 26 expertise a raid boss can no longer dodge you. The hard cap for expertise is at 56 expertise, which removes the chance the boss have to parry your attacks.

Expertise is also not needed for tanks, and should be reforged out of. But, if you want to boost your threat / damage out put, then you rather want expertise than hit.

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Hints & Tips
HT14
This part would of been lovely to get some input on, so we can share our experience with each other and many others.

Raid Boss Encounters

Dragon soul - Normal
Morchok
Is rather straight forward, and it's not many tips to give then to not glyph Divine Protection. And to stand as close as possible, so that no DPS shouldn't take double damage. position isn't really relevant on normal either.
You want to tank swap at roughly 4 stacks, unless you out gear the encounter.

Yor'sahj the Unsleeping
Is also a straight forward on normal, tank swap at 4 stacks so that the debuff doesn't tick too hard. You want to use CD's if your debuffs stack a little too high. Or if the boss gain red / green / blue ooze buff.
And i suggest hand of sacrifice on your OT. Also use divine guardian if you get yellow + red.

I got little something to add to the DS tips section. Yor'Sahj is solotankable (atleast on 10), and glyphed Divine Protection is a godsent in that sense, being able to pop a -40% reduction for basically each time the debuff reaches 5+.

Warlord Zon'ozz
Spam holy shield on cool down. Save Guardian of ancient kings until the boss have many stacks. Use magical damage reduction CD's for psychic scream (divine protection glyphed?). Divine guardian during tentacle disco.

Hagara
Move away from her when she starts "Focused Assault", as she doesn't move during it on normal. And when she moves, she stops casting it. Divine guardian during lightning phase.

Ultraxion
Besides the fading light there is close to nothing for a tank to do, actually there is close to nothing for anyone to do. So keep holy shield on CD (100% uptime ftw). On hour of twilight though, you want to use Divine protection (glyphed) and maybe together with ardent defender. Then on next one you use guardian of ancient kings. Divine Guardian when boss is below 20%.

For fading light, wait till you have 3 sec left of the debuff, then port out. Taunt ultraxion when the other tank gets fading light, not before.

Warmaster
In phase two you want to use cool downs as often as possible, but time your guardian of ancient kings for moments you know you will take a lot of damage. Such a moment can be when you have a lot of armor debuffs, while the other tank still have some from when you taunted. If you have T13 4set, then use Divine guardian on the start of P2 and on the end. If you do not have the 4set, then save it for the end.
Keep hand of sacrifice in mind at all time during this encounter, for boht P1 and P2.

Spine of Deathwing
Divine guardian when you're either about to do a barrel roll or if the big add gets 9 stacks, and still have a lot of HP.

Madness of Deathwing
On this encounter it's really nice to have protection paladin(s), because of our CD's.
You can bubble and use hand of protection when you're about to get impaled (WIN!!11!). So if you want a little a nice rotation on that, then do this; Hand of protection on first platform > bubble 2n platform > guardian of ancient kings on third and hand of protection on fourth. This should also let you bubble in P2 if needed. And it lets you use CD's if you're for instance tanking the generating bloods a little long, or if you feel you need CD's during the normal attacks from the big tentacle.

10man normal Madness is also solotankable, unglyphing DivProt is also worth it's weight in gold, allowing you to go Dream -> AD+DivProt (+SF if dwarf) -> GoAK + DivProt -> AD+DivProt on the platforms, while also being able to bubble the Second Impale + Bolt on the fourth Platform. (Our guild went Green -> Red -> Yellow -> Blue on the platforms so fourth was the only one where we couldn't get neither the corruption nor the bolt down in time) And solotank the adds on p2 with DivProt -> (SF) -> GoAK -> Dream -> AD (.> LoH if cutting close) to survive the tetanus-stacks.
With one tank two healers you should have enough DPS to kill the tentacles on first three platforms in time before the second Impale and kill DW on p2 before second set of adds.

Resources
R15
Addons

• PFCTC - [Player Frame] Combat Table Coverage (PFCTC) adds a new stat to the player frame in the Defense section. The new stat, CTC, shows your current combat table coverage percentage (sum of miss, dodge, parry, and block), and its tooltip will show the remaining chance to be hit by various level mobs.
• Omen - Shows your threat on current target, and also everyone else's threat.
• Tidy Plates - Makes it easier to see which mobs that you got agro on by seeing their nameplates changing colours, getting smaller / bigger.
• Tidy Plates Threat Plates - An addition to tidy plates.

Other Web Sites
Elitist jerks - Paladin Section
Maintankadin

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Elaboration is as always welcome

[BullzRulez]

nice guide, I really can use this since I started to tank on my new main Paladin ^^

But the section "Reforging Strategy" really confused me and I need to read it 4 times before I fully understand what you mean :P

All in all a good guide

++ REP to you sir

Edit:
Did you forget about spell priorities during the fights or did you left it out on purpose?

[Chasey]

Thank you, its clear and concise. I love the guide. I'm not here to blow holes in it or nit pick it but the only thing I would really say to you on the build part is the holy talents you took as a "flat out damage boost" You really can't pick up extra damage from the holy tree. It is something I've been seeing more and more in players and I'm not sure why.

Arbiter gives you about 88 DPS per point with 100% vengeance 8% hit and 26 exp. Its dramatically lower if you don't meet the said numbers.Less than 80DPS if you are at the lover level of ven/hit/exp.
You are better off going into Reckoning (which I always hated until cata came out). At 30% veng 2% hit and 10 exp you are at about 170 DPS per point of Reckoning and if you are at full hit, Veng and 26 EXP you jump to 305 DPS off of that talent. You would be better off, using that extra point to go to Eye for an Eye and PoJ to get to the boss quicker. I've never been truely happy with Hallowed ground and the damage vs mana output it does and generally move points around frm that.

Also the Glyph of CS is much better DPS wise than the Glyph of Judgment (Even with the T13 absorb) CS offers rough 220 DPS while at best the J glyph is 58 to 102 DPS.

Still the guide is very good, we have very little fun stuff outside of our major talents and just FYI while I was raiding, I did a funny lil experiment, I went full damage as much as I could. I didn't go ret gear only 359 ilvl tanking stuff and as much exp and hit as I could afford. My 1st attempt I hit number 90 world wide for DPS output on the twin drakes. Eye for an eye did 12.5% of my damage, just standing there I reflected a ton of damage. Here is my post about it . My second try at this I was 85th and was less than 10 DPS from top 70's.

Never underestimate Eye for an Eye as a talent choice if there is any magic damage component to a fight.

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.c...593313#p593305

[ot4ku-mh]

Another thing.

200 hit rating
225 expertise rating

You stated that with these stats you should reforge the hit into mastery.
Sorry but this is wrong.
Since both, expertise and hit rating are only threat and dmg stats you want to reforge the expertise into mastery since you will gain more mastery.
Also you should mention, that if there is an item with lets say

300 expertise
120 dodge rating

you reforge the expertise in mastery. ^^

[madmessias]

what is this

so many wrong facts.. just for one, hit>expertise.. and glyph of judgement is awful, arbitrer of light is awful,

[MorphexEU]

300 expertise
120 dodge rating

you reforge the expertise in mastery. ^^

Obviously :P

But i take you meant when the avoidance stat is twice the offensive stat, then you actually want to reforge the avoidance stat into mastery.
But again, thats a question between post CTC cap and past CTC cap. It's also a question to min / max after the CTC cap.

---------- Post added 2012-01-02 at 06:15 PM ----------

what is this

so many wrong facts.. just for one, hit>expertise.. and glyph of judgement is awful, arbitrer of light is awful,

You mad bro?

Regardless, i think you read it wrong. Or you're a little off. Thinking off the "hit > expertise" part.

Glyph of judgement is not awefull, neither is it a super good glyph. And about arbiter of light, you really really mad bro? As i said, if there is one talent in the holy tree that you would consider, then it is arbiter of the light.

A little more constructive posts isn't too much to ask for, is it?

[MerinPally]

what is this

so many wrong facts.. just for one, hit>expertise.. and glyph of judgement is awful, arbitrer of light is awful,

THIS... IS... SPARTA


Whilst it needs work, to say "So many wrong facts" is stupid in itself. Expertise > Hit, for one. Glyph of Judgement isn't "Awful" but it is mediocre at best, but its something to consider should you be wanting to buff judgement. It may not be the best option but it's viable. Arbiter of the light is once again, not awful, but still viable.

Improved Hammer of Justice, as a talent, is the pure definition of awful. The above is not.


One thing I would suggest for this guide is a few lines about Souldrinker as we get a few threads on that already and we'll certainly get more as time goes on. The whole thing about 2/2 reckoning, use it use it use it, it's the best thing since sex, make up the avoidance loss in gems etc.

[madmessias]

Obviously :P

But i take you meant when the avoidance stat is twice the offensive stat, then you actually want to reforge the avoidance stat into mastery.
But again, thats a question between post CTC cap and past CTC cap. It's also a question to min / max after the CTC cap.

---------- Post added 2012-01-02 at 06:15 PM ----------







You mad bro?

Regardless, i think you read it wrong. Or you're a little off. Thinking off the "hit > expertise" part.

Glyph of judgement is not awefull, neither is it a super good glyph. And about arbiter of light, you really really mad bro? As i said, if there is one talent in the holy tree that you would consider, then it is arbiter of the light.

A little more constructive posts isn't too much to ask for, is it?

oh ye exp is better, my mistake

thing is, arbitrer of light+glyph of judgement is 25 aps each (absorb per second) and on a fight like Zon'Ozz you would increase your dmg taken by about 0.05%, and that wouldn't really matter now would it, since on fights with though enrages (warmaster, zon'ozz, ultraxion) more damage matters way more then reducing your dmg taken by that little amount (besides, no healer would change their healingspell based on a shield that is 150 bigger or whatever, so it will mostly result in overhealing.

In 10mans, theres nothing wrong with a tank going for expertise/hit, infact that helped us get many of our kills this tier and last tier, what's the point of stacking parry/dodge, rng just goes higher and higher, it's an rng stat, and tankdmg isn't really high on most of the bosses, altho the enrage is tight on many of them so..
Reckoning is a must, atleast 1point. Will reduce your damage taken and increase your dps way more then arbitrer, since it will increase your windwalk proccs.
I don't know how you can call crusade optional either...

And you don't use Hammer of the righteous on two targets.. that would be mighty stupid, unless you need aggro on both.. quick.. but then you should go back to crus strike spam.
Also, Seals of the pure is more dps then arbitrer of light, and it's a small survivability increase aswell, since you get more windwalk proccs.
Some people use landslide instead of windwalk btw, should go into that aswell.
Also your glyphs/talents are really fucked up.. And i don't know why you went 2x into Hallowed Ground but 1 in Reckoning, no clue at all.

Should really go in abit more into the rotation, tanks dmg is really important this tier on many of the bosses, and they should do everything they can to maximise dps (without risking anything ofc)

[Chasey]

Does anyone use wind walk any longer? Lots of debate that once you are CTC covered, its useless. I read that unless you are hit capped, weapon chain is about the best thing going, after that Landslide.

For me I'm not raid tanking at all right now, I like to try to out DPS the DPS in 5 mans so I like the hit from the chain.

[MerinPally]

The hit will be a very minor dps gain, and is better for when you have low vengeance such as in 5mans. In a raid however, this situation rarely arises so the hit isn't all that required. The dodge from windwalk pushes block off the table so that extra 2% dodge or whatever it is, is fantastic. Seeing as people are speccing out of PoJ now, the movement speed is being pushed into use (can't remember if it stacked or not, doubtful though) so that gives it another use. although this one is very minor as it's practically never required.

I have 4% hit and 17 expertise (not intentional at all) and I feel I could drop loads of that with no problem, probably all of it.

[Dragon9870]

IMO a ton of your Optionals are either worthless or near mandatory. Wrath of the Lightbringer DOUBLES the damage of your primary button (crusader strike) and Crusade adds 30% damage to a lot of your abilities.

Eternal Glory and Guarded by the Light are next to worthless with the changes to WoG in 4.1. If they never changed it, they would be OP like they were before.

You also said Imp HoJ is WORTHLESS yet said EG and GbtL are Optional. IMO flip-flop the two if you're actually going to say what you said (or leave them all at optional). Imp HoJ can be situationally helpful, at least moreso than EG and GbtL. Ultraxion Trash (stuns interrupt them) and Sappers on Warmaster are a few that come to mind just for DS.

---------- Post added 2012-01-03 at 02:22 AM ----------

The hit will be a very minor dps gain, and is better for when you have low vengeance such as in 5mans.

Hit and Expertise isn't meant for a DPS gain, it's meant for aggro getting. I'm sure you've had situations where you've thrown your shield (all 3 hits missed), you tried to HoR (again miss) and Judgement (miss) and you get super frustrated that it was out of your control and now your group is dying.

HOWEVER, all they do is fix your initial threat. Once you got threat, 99.9% of the time, you keep it regardless of how much hit/exp you have (except when you either don't know how to play or the other tank is a fucking prick and doesn't know how to balance his threat to be under you)

---------- Post added 2012-01-03 at 02:25 AM ----------

Miss
Miss is a stat that is not shown on your stat tables, but it is there. The stat miss is always 5% vs a equally leveled mob or player.

Last I checked this is false otherwise the mitigation macro is completely wrong. It's just 5% no matter what you're attacking.

Also the part where you said Night Elves have +2% miss is slightly incorrect. It's ONLY against Ranged and Melee attacks. Miss also affects spells last I checked, so technically they just have a +2% chance to be missed by Melee/Ranged, not just straight up +2 miss.

[MerinPally]

I agree with you on WotLbringer, Crusader and Eternal Glory but not about GbtL and Imp HoJ.

The beauty of GbtL is that when you use a spec like mine, you have a choice of 2 points in that or 2 points in eternal glory (HoJ is not an option) and GbtL is the lesser of 2 evils. Although you don't use it all that often, I love my 80-90k WoG crit heals when I'm in a time of need.

With regards to Hammer of Justice - Who specs for trash? And that usage of HoJ is VERY specific and doesn't justify the 2 talent points, in exactly the same way that PoJ doesn't any more. Sure, PoJ is useful for heroic Hagara and imp HoJ may be useful for heroic Blackhorn, but that's it. There is no way you can justify 2 talent points in there for 1 out of 12 fights (counting the 3 difficulties, or 1/8 if you refuse to agree that it could be seen as 2 different things, normal/heroic).

It's completely useless on every other boss, therefore making it far too situational.

EDIT:

Hit and Expertise isn't meant for a DPS gain, it's meant for aggro getting. I'm sure you've had situations where you've thrown your shield (all 3 hits missed), you tried to HoR (again miss) and Judgement (miss) and you get super frustrated that it was out of your control and now your group is dying.

Not in a raid I don't, misdirects rock Please read the next sentance and you'll see I explain that as the situation very rarely (should add "if ever") arises. I've had it in a 5man but I did specify raids as that's what he wasn't sure about.

Last I checked this is false otherwise the mitigation macro is completely wrong. It's just 5% no matter what you're attacking.

I was always under the impression that a bosses chance to miss was 2.6% when it has a skull on its portrait, therefore explaining why its 102.4% that's the magic number rather than plain 100. It is 5% against an equally leveled mob that I'm certain, but above that it decreases. Think about it in the same way you would against a mob - you can go and hit level 1s all day long and I'm certain you won't miss 7% of the time should you have 1% hit

[Andraz]

Very nice guide but also something else instead of the macro:
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...ragePFCTC.html
I have recently downloaded that and it's very nice it shows CTC with your stats like parry and dodge, even shows what % against creatures what levels.

[MorphexEU]

Last I checked this is false otherwise the mitigation macro is completely wrong. It's just 5% no matter what you're attacking.

Also the part where you said Night Elves have +2% miss is slightly incorrect. It's ONLY against Ranged and Melee attacks. Miss also affects spells last I checked, so technically they just have a +2% chance to be missed by Melee/Ranged, not just straight up +2 miss.

Miss is as i stated, as 2.4 (the extra bit to reach the CTC cap) divided on 4 is 0.6. And every avoidance stat is reduced by 0.2% each per mob level. Which puts miss down at 4.4% miss chance against a boss.

And miss being only melee / ranged, assuming you meant physical ranged, I actually don't know. Got any information to back that statement up?

And by looking it up on wowhead (currently at work), it does indeed state ranged and melee. But ranged might as well be spells as it is physical ranged damage.

---------- Post added 2012-01-03 at 08:57 AM ----------

Very nice guide but also something else instead of the macro:
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...ragePFCTC.html
I have recently downloaded that and it's very nice it shows CTC with your stats like parry and dodge, even shows what % against creatures what levels.

Lets add an resource part

[Ibramgaunt]

"ranged" as always been used to point out the ranged physical attacks, not spells when it comes down to "official" stuff, not small talk between players.

Honestly, I don't know about this guide, it seems like you tried hard, but only writing it with your own experience and not looking through the eyes of the community. It is the most apparent in the "spec and glyph" part, but I think you got enough feedback on those and I pretty much have the same issues/ideas/whatever with them.

I think you over value Parry/Dodge a little, you really want your CtC cap to be as much mastery as it can, you can roll with 15% Parry and 15% Dodge, it's just going to make your Holy shield better. Now, I DO recommend to get some P/D but once you are CtC cap, switch your gems from mastery to mastery/stam and change your reforge around to go out of P/D to gain that mastery back, it should give you around 16.5% P/D (depending on gear) and that is more than enough.

That being said, I chose to be expertise cap as my guild is pushing Heroic content and we are sometimes getting first kills in enrage, so extra DPS is always good, especially when you can keep your CtC cap. Hit isn't as good, I decided to go full mastery + ExP cap and balance my Parry and my Dodge around, that gives me from 102.4 CtC to about 107.8 (I know, ewww) depending on the trinkets I am using, but I don't use 2 mastery trinkets very often in this tier so far.

I still have windwalk, but I considered dropping it, I talked to a few others prot pallies in different guilds and it seems to be more and more common, as the Dodge just pushes you over your cap.

I hope it helps, this is only my opinion and what I personally do, but to get a great guide going, you need as many views as possible!

[madmessias]

The hit will be a very minor dps gain, and is better for when you have low vengeance such as in 5mans. In a raid however, this situation rarely arises so the hit isn't all that required. The dodge from windwalk pushes block off the table so that extra 2% dodge or whatever it is, is fantastic. Seeing as people are speccing out of PoJ now, the movement speed is being pushed into use (can't remember if it stacked or not, doubtful though) so that gives it another use. although this one is very minor as it's practically never required.

I have 4% hit and 17 expertise (not intentional at all) and I feel I could drop loads of that with no problem, probably all of it.

Hit isn't a minor dps gain, getting exp/hitcap is just.. wow, so much dps increase, and im fairly sure it's a bigger dps increase with vengeance since all your attacks hits for so much more. There's not really any point in going for parry/dodge/stamina unless your healers are.. meh.. This may sound rude, but once you go beyond Morchok you will find some thougher enrage timers ^^

---------- Post added 2012-01-03 at 02:14 PM ----------

IMO a ton of your Optionals are either worthless or near mandatory. Wrath of the Lightbringer DOUBLES the damage of your primary button (crusader strike) and Crusade adds 30% damage to a lot of your abilities.

Eternal Glory and Guarded by the Light are next to worthless with the changes to WoG in 4.1. If they never changed it, they would be OP like they were before.

You also said Imp HoJ is WORTHLESS yet said EG and GbtL are Optional. IMO flip-flop the two if you're actually going to say what you said (or leave them all at optional). Imp HoJ can be situationally helpful, at least moreso than EG and GbtL. Ultraxion Trash (stuns interrupt them) and Sappers on Warmaster are a few that come to mind just for DS.

---------- Post added 2012-01-03 at 02:22 AM ----------



Hit and Expertise isn't meant for a DPS gain, it's meant for aggro getting. I'm sure you've had situations where you've thrown your shield (all 3 hits missed), you tried to HoR (again miss) and Judgement (miss) and you get super frustrated that it was out of your control and now your group is dying.


[/COLOR]

And yes, hit is meant for a dps gain

[Viglante]

tier 2 ret movement speed should be essencial as any movement fight having 15% faster run isntead of 8%(enchant) and 15 extra mastery is much much better

your options are:
50 mastery on boots + talent
35mastery+movespeed enchant + other talents,

due to almsot all talents that are posible to be taken instead threat tallents most will opt for the take less damg choice of persuit (also the free holypower when boss does raidwide stuns etc ain't bad)

tier 1 ret -> eye for an eye,

there is magic damg in every single dragon soul fight and eye can crit as a tank your gona be the target of more magic than anyone else so this talent seems a no brainer when as a tank you should be in melle range perma of the thing your actively tanking so judge range will help you for 1% of a fight but eye will give you damg for the length of a fight ( and as dragon soul has lots of dps race bits every little counts)

Crusade is really really not optional the benefit it provides far outweights other talents you could potentialy take.

gems : you make no mention of prismatic slots and as a paladin we have either 2(belt/libram) or 4 of these (bsmiths).
i would say -> before ctc 40 mastery gem
when at ctc and when you gain your first few "mastery above cap" these slots should be the fire ones to go to 20 mastery 30 stamina as they break no gem bonus's this way and have a 3rd step of being able to be pure stamina gems in later gear the easiest as well.

consecration is NOT a good aoe spell.

you don't seem to mention that as the boss is 3 levels above you your damg reduction from armour is slightly off and while 75% is the cap the ammount that shows on your stat page is against targets of your level and so bosses will be reduced less the cap is stil 75% you jsut need more armour to cap than agaisnt a target your level.

i didn't see any mention of glyph's in this guide.

also hit is now technically mitigation for us pallies if we have 2pc bonus as judgement can still miss even though it can't be dodged or parried.

the reason the ammount we need is 102.4 is due to those 3 levels the boss has on you.

for every level above you you have a 0.2% less chance to do a few things.
0.2% less miss
0.2% less dodge
0.2% less parry
0.2% less block
0.2% less Resist magic
0.8*3 = 2.4
so 100% ( for a mob your own level
100.8 for a mob your level +1
101.6 for a mob your level +2
102.4 for a mob your level +3/Boss
103.2 for a mob your level +4 (probably only while leveling and also this would make you un-Crushable as mobs 4 above can crush)

tips on bosses -> large predictable damg on ultraxon -> save a 3power wog for after it lands + if your really not worried about damg you can cast a holy radiance faster than he can cast hour of twilight.
on madness bubbling is fine on impale jsut make sure your other tank has it or some melle dps is gona get 1 shot. also first platform you can use dream so it Wasted if you bubble on that one.
also as long as you don't kil red first you will survive an impale with either ad or goak no need to combine cd's,

also on last platform if your taking blue last ( as so no slow on bolt) it's much beter if you have bubble free for the impale which occurs at the same time as the bolt lands as thats a stupidly large ammount of damg you jsut immuned right there.

adons -> tidyplates.

tanks don't need omen due to the 5x buff if you can't hold threat it's cuz your either slacking or have a bad rotation omen won't fix that and the dps should have one if they need it you don't need it yourself there are more important things to worry about that threat.

otherwise some good things said just some annoying iregularities and talent choices are strangely listed due to how many optinals you list compared to how many talent points we have so allmost all will be taken as they are "better than other optionals which measn they are not optional but pritty much mandatory there is only really 1-2 points that are optional and they generaly get put into 1/2 hallowed ground for the mana cost more than the damg or 5/10% more healing from wog's

[Ibramgaunt]

tanks don't need omen due to the 5x buff if you can't hold threat it's cuz your either slacking or have a bad rotation omen won't fix that and the dps should have one if they need it you don't need it yourself there are more important things to worry about that threat.

This is true when you talk about about DPS versus Tank, but I still find it useful when it comes down to both tank threat. When we both want to keep the best possible rotation to maximize tank DPS, it helps to see if the currently offtank is about to pull aggro or not and to ask for/use hand of salvation accordingly. You often keep your vengeance for a while because of a dot or something, which makes both tanks high on threat per second (and in rag P3/P4, you are usually threat cap, so you need to be careful, not SUPER careful, but at least watch out)

[MorphexEU]

@ Viglante

Thanks for long post

gems : you make no mention of prismatic slots and as a paladin we have either 2(belt/libram) or 4 of these (bsmiths).
i would say -> before ctc 40 mastery gem
when at ctc and when you gain your first few "mastery above cap" these slots should be the fire ones to go to 20 mastery 30 stamina as they break no gem bonus's this way and have a 3rd step of being able to be pure stamina gems in later gear the easiest as well.

I did not feel it was a need to talk about prismatic gem spots, as most should be able to figure out how to gem based on what I already told them in the guide.

you don't seem to mention that as the boss is 3 levels above you your damg reduction from armour is slightly off and while 75% is the cap the ammount that shows on your stat page is against targets of your level and so bosses will be reduced less the cap is stil 75% you jsut need more armour to cap than agaisnt a target your level.

That is a good point, but it's also something that is not of a concern. As we're not able to stack armour more then we already do, we do not have items like back in ICC that had bonus armour. Therefore I did not find the need of talking about armour too much a great need. But it most surely can be added.

i didn't see any mention of glyph's in this guide.

It is there

also hit is now technically mitigation for us pallies if we have 2pc bonus as judgement can still miss even though it can't be dodged or parried.

Indeed it is, but I do not see it as a desired yet either way, I am looking at it from a 25man PoV. Many would find it useful to cap in 10man raids. For their survival and the damage output.

the reason the ammount we need is 102.4 is due to those 3 levels the boss has on you.

I did talk about that, a lot actually. But i did not mention resistance, as yet again we do not have resistance as a stat on our gear.

adons -> tidyplates.

Loving that addon :P

About bubbling impale. The main idea about it is to be able to solo tank in 10man. On every first impale you would want to use normal damage reduction CD's, and very often combined with extensional CD's, like hand of sacrifice from another paladin.

Concerning the talents part of the guide, lets say I will just add a few letters more to each of the talents. To give them an in depth description and whether it's worth taking or not.

---

Also seeing the argument above, about hit / expertise being for DPS or target pick up. It's both, but it values more as a pure DPS stat now, simply because of the vengeance change and also the threat buffer. SO the only reason you actually want hit and expertise for now, is to be able to push out more DPS and therefore help on tight enrage times in HC DS content (they're tight).

[Viglante]

nice to see feedback happily accepted as constructive which was it's intent isntead of a flame war it normaly erupts into

the breakdown of the 3 levels was to give more detail to someone else's post in this thread but thought it slightly relevant anyway.

i mulled over my post for a while and you possibly edited in some stuff while i was not updating the page

the prismatic gemslot thing was basicaly more of a "make sure you don't just stick 60 stamina in it when gearing up" which i see many many lfd/r tanks doing

for glyphs you might want to mention the prime crusader strike glyph that reduces it's mana cost as when we are off-tanking we don't get sanctuary mana and can end up oom if we get lots of avengers sheild procs resulting in less judgements as we use the sheilds and strikes more to keep rotation optional for damg ( or the other extreme of 0 procs and running oom through heave consecration useage).

it may also be worth mentioning metagems as for me at least i have been through all 3 tanking metas this expansion using each at different gear levels.

started with 2% armour as block was low
moved to 1% block when made ctc (and had over 65% block)
moved to 2% magic when obtained over 20% dodge and 20% parry when raidbuffs ( before windwalk or other temp procs) due to heavy constant magic damg taken even when off-tanking and upon realisation it's the burst/large predictable magic damg that kills tanks in dragon soul on the fights i am on (ultraxon tank and as pally in 25 i am there for Every hour goak/AD on alternating hours) or elementium bolt landing at same time as impale on 4th platform madness normal. other examples are Genrals life steal shadow cone which indirectly also means we need to do less damg to him as he heals 2% less

also Ibramgaunt brings a fair point about omen but i find myself the standard blizz ui threat display showing your % threat above a mobs head is sufficient when dealing with 2 tanks on competing threat as you just need to know your at 90%~ not that your 50k behind as starting from 90% it leaves you with just a taunt needed to get above and have a high chance of keeping it. especialy as in dragon soul there is enough periodic raid damg to keep vengeance from droping to low.