[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[paulleedot]

Just link him to this thread. He should trust to voice of other paladin tanks higher than his own instinct.

Most of my guildees are RL friends who knew/raided with each other since high school (Classic), so I don't think it'll actually be a huge issue, haha.
So are warriors and DKs the only ones who use the avoidance plate?

For those of you who have a Ret OS, do you just use the tanking gear for both specs? I would imagine the stat itemization is pretty good, but not perfect? I'm currently gemming and reforging with the following priority: Hit > Expertise > Mastery > Haste. I know that Haste > Mastery is also a consideration, but as someone who is still learning the class, will I see a significant dip in survivability if I go with that priority?

[Firefly33]

Most of my guildees are RL friends who knew/raided with each other since high school (Classic), so I don't think it'll actually be a huge issue, haha.
So are warriors and DKs the only ones who use the avoidance plate?

For those of you who have a Ret OS, do you just use the tanking gear for both specs? I would imagine the stat itemization is pretty good, but not perfect? I'm currently gemming and reforging with the following priority: Hit > Expertise > Mastery > Haste. I know that Haste > Mastery is also a consideration, but as someone who is still learning the class, will I see a significant dip in survivability if I go with that priority?

Warriors and DKs are the only ones that really "use" avoidance. But for them it is still secondary. DKS and Warriors would gladly take mastery over avoidance any day.
Also most of them also cap hit and expertise.

Paladins only use avoidance plate if it is significantly higher item level than your other options.

Yes, you can use same gear in ret and prot. It is not optimal but not bad either.
Most important thing is to get 2 helmets, one with dps meta and one with tank meta.

[Wezyr]

I know that Haste > Mastery is also a consideration, but as someone who is still learning the class, will I see a significant dip in survivability if I go with that priority?

You should see a significant boost to your dps, but your survivability will not drop that much. However, if you are new to tanking you may stick with mastery over haste paradigm, simply because its safer way to go for someone less experienced, especially if you cant time SotR properly with boss swings/special attacks.

As for avoidance plate vs dps (ret) plate. When on same ilvl I always choose dps plate and use it for tanking, simply because haste/mastery is better for my way of tanking. That being said, I will still use avoidance plate (and reforge to haste/mastery) when it has much higher ilvl that my current piece of gear.

And if your warrior needs hard mathematical proof that in most cases prot paladins prefer dps plate, I suggest sending him to Theck's maintankadin matlab topic or sacredduty blog or even elitist jerks paladin section.

[Rivin]

For those of you who have a Ret OS, do you just use the tanking gear for both specs? I would imagine the stat itemization is pretty good, but not perfect?

You can use the same set for both, but it's going to be suboptimal for one of them. Ret's stat priorities are very similar to Prot's (hit to 7.5% > expertise to 7.5% > haste > mastery > crit), so it won't be a huge loss, but Ret and Prot use different meta gems, some different enchants, and most obviously Ret needs half as much expertise as Prot so all of that extra expertise will be wasted.

[rawhammer]

/shameless epeen

Yay back raiding finally with guild transfered server! Slow start for me this tier but rocking those rankings again :P (6th on council 10 man )

[Firefly33]

/shameless epeen

Yay back raiding finally with guild transfered server! Slow start for me this tier but rocking those rankings again :P (6th on council 10 man )

/also gonna shameless epeen got rank 1, 2, 2, 3 + some other in the 10-20 area. Who needs expertise cap? Who needs strength gear? Rocking that 11 expertise and intellect gear!

Though really, what are you using for tactic on Council? I can only get like rank 300 on that, though we are ping ponging the frost king so dont get any vengeance from him... thats probably why... I get absolutely horrible rankings on both council and meagara, no idea what im donig wrong there or if it is just our tactic.

[rawhammer]

/also gonna shameless epeen got rank 1, 2, 2, 3 + some other in the 10-20 area. Who needs expertise cap? Who needs strength gear? Rocking that 11 expertise and intellect gear!

Though really, what are you using for tactic on Council? I can only get like rank 300 on that, though we are ping ponging the frost king so dont get any vengeance from him... thats probably why... I get absolutely horrible rankings on both council and meagara, no idea what im donig wrong there or if it is just our tactic.

1 tank 2 heals

[Firefly33]

Well, that explains it. I want to do that too My guild won't let me!

[rawhammer]

Well, that explains it. I want to do that too My guild won't let me!

Well honestly tell them to man up! if your raid has a pally tank then dropping the spare tank nd healer just makes sense. did a few pulls on tortos using 1 tank and 2 heals seemed v doable too. 30% on first pull then ran out of time. Will be dead on Sunday. Do wish we had a pally or disc priest healer though for shields :/.

Bring on the hydra.

[Firefly33]

Yeah, we used 1 tank and 2 heals on Tortos. I only had 494 ilvl the first time I did so was kinda a bitch, but easy now.

Hydra is a complete joke after this weeks nerfs.

[rawhammer]

Quick question: does hop/bubble remove talon rake debuffs? Wondering about solo tanking this one if poss.

[Firefly33]

No. It does not. We found 3 reliable ways to solo tanking Ji-Kun.


1. Having 2 dpsers capable of taunting of and taking a stack of talon rake.
2. Abusing ghost iron dragonling/certain pets to take a talon rake after a down draft then have 1 dpsers take the next rake.
3. Burning the boss. Only clearing 1 nest with 4 dpsers to give them the buff, then full burn to dead.

But it is a lot easier and safer to duo tank it.

[Fiskaron]

Hello fellow Tankadins,

I am quite new to the tank role, but we decided to let me as a pala tank this tear just because paladins are so much better than most of the other tanks in a 10m scenario.
Although I am new to the role I think I am doing fine most of the time. But you know there is always something you are missing so I would be very pleased if you could check my latest logs and armory if I am missing something, doing completely wrong or in which fields I need to improve as a tankadin.

I feel like my Sacred Shield uptime is really shit although I am casting it more than 80 times a fight. I am using it on other members if I am not tanking but is this a good idea?
I think you are going to say that I have way to much health, therefore I should look at my sockets, but I have a felleing that my heals have a hard time keeping the raid and especially keeping the DK tank alive so I thought it would be good to relieve them a bit. That's also the reason I am using the Lao-Chins trinket.

Here is my armory link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...karon/advanced
And here are our logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/254550/

Hope you can have a quick look at my character

[Monolith of Mazes]

Using sacred shield on other raid members is fine, it just takes a few seconds for the first absorb to come up so its not really a quick save kind of spell. I'll often use it on my co-tank. Obviously, the more vengeance you have when you cast it, the better it will do.

I like lao-chins just because it's an on use trinket as opposed to the numerous random proc ones. The philosophy for prot tanking is controlling incoming damage, so on use fits in with that very nicely. I'll change trinkets fight to fight but my standard progression setup is lao chins and jade warlord.

Having high health is a-okay as long as you back it up with intelligent use of cooldowns and Shield of the Righteous. If you read sacredduty.net at all, Theck has a good post/rant about stamina here.

Thecks other blog posts are also pretty useful. You don't need to understand the math, just look for the conclusions ans some of the reasoning behind them.

As for sacred shield, its good to track that one just to keep it up. I use tellmewhen. Theck has a good post about sacred shields usefulness, or one that mentions it anyway. It scales linearly with haste. The more haste you have, the more often you get bubbles. At high vengeance, these bubbles can absorb a very hefty amount of damage. It's like a free block that can also reduce magic.

EDIT: Weapon enchant

I see you are using colossus. I would recommend changing that to dancing steel or river's song. It will always be a small absorb while bosses will only get stronger.

For example, your lei shen kill. Colossus procced 69 (giggity) times. 69*7.5k= 517k. That's about a 2% damage reduction
(total dmg + colossus absorbs) / total dmg =~ 1.02

I think the other two end up giving you more dmg reduction, but I don;t have anthing to back that up with.

[Firefly33]

Never go for River Song.

Dancing Steel / Windsong / Colossus / (Weapon Chain)

[Monolith of Mazes]

Never go for River Song.

Dancing Steel / Windsong / Colossus / (Weapon Chain)

I ran some rough numbers for total damage reduction (TDR) for River's Song and Dancing Steel. I used Fiskaron's raid buffed stats on Theck's paladin spreadsheet. I used damage taken data from Fiskaron's 2nd Lei Shen Kill.

TLDR: river's song avoids .772% of melee attacks, but thats only considering a single stack of the buff. Realistically, it's a little higher. I aint no stats wiz. Dancing Steel avoids .7875% of melee attacks, and gives you an attack power boost. Both of these are lower in TDR than the 2% from colossus for Lei Shen.

The messy napkin math version:

Avoided attacks = n_attacks (average_buff_uptime_%) (buff_avoidance_%)

I looked at my own logs to get a rough idea of Dancing Steel and River's Song uptimes. I did not calculate them. I saw uptimes as high as 50%+ or as low as 30%.
Rough avg DS uptime: 45% RS Uptime: 40% (including single and double stacks)

Applying the buff numbers of 1650 str and 1650 (single stack) dodge to Fiskaron, avoidance gains are
DS: 1.75% parry
RS: 1.93% dodge (single) and 3.74% dodge (double)

DS Avoided Attacks = 100(.45)(.0175) = .7857
RS Avoided Attacks = 100(.40)(.0193) = .772

For the instance of lei shen kill #2, colossus reduces damage taken by a greater amount than either of the epic enchants. There is also a good chance of wasting uptime on the epic enchants in a fight like lei shen, whereas a colossus absorb will probably be used before it falls off.

I would, personally, still not use colossus. I'd rather have a chance to avoid a large melee swing and save my healers some spike panic than to shave a hair (an amount unnoticeable to any healer) off of a lot of various sources. In this case, my recommendation would be Dancing Steel.

[MerinPally]

I would, personally, still not use colossus. I'd rather have a chance to avoid a large melee swing and save my healers some spike panic than to shave a hair (an amount unnoticeable to any healer) off of a lot of various sources. In this case, my recommendation would be Dancing Steel.

But that's exactly what you're doing by introducing more parry/dodge. If you had none then healers can cast at a set rate knowing you're going to take X damage every Y seconds, and that is good - it's why we go for haste/mastery, for smoothing - not because they're the best at reducing damage. By plugging some of that back in, you're upping the chance for the healers to think "wait wut". Also, with the parry one you could not get a single parry the whole way through a proc. You know with colossus that because it's small, you're going to use every last point of absorb for each proc you get. That's also good.

[Monolith of Mazes]

Sure, but we don't have 0 dodge or 0 parry or 0 block. Damage intake will fluctuate. Colossus saves you damage taken in a smoother way, but I'm not sure that it will affect how healers heal. They cant tell the difference between facesmash or facesmash-minus-7500. I can take hit-7500, hit-7500, hit-7500 or hit, hit, dodge/parry. That's of course really oversimplifying things.

Mathy terms: LIMIT (hit-> inf) hit-7500 = hit. May as well not even have colossus on once we start getting smacked hard.

So let me pose a question then: would you rather tank with NO enchant or tank with an avoidance one. Tanking with no enchant WOULD be less spikey than tanking with an avoidance one.

In the end, for any lurking protadins reading this, as long as we use SotR effectively, we could probably tank with fiery weapon and still live

[promdate]

While you might get the proc up when not active tanking, the strength benefit will still be of some use for a dps increase. With the number of people going around discussing how to maximise dps while tanking (and not active tanking), Dancing Steel gives the biggest benefit towards that as well.

[MerinPally]

Please continue with the mathy terms because it makes me think about my degree (I should really be doing that) and also it scares away people who... well... aren't me. And a select few. Brings some variation into the posts

.................... For the millionth time, follow the rotation as posted on the front page. If you're not GCD capped minus maybe 1 every 30seconds you're doing it wrong. Don't wait. Just hit buttons in the order we've written out. No, not like that. Yes, that's better. Oh look, now you don't die.