CM advice

[falagar112]

Hey all!

After having completed all challenge modes gold on my dk tank, I am looking to do it on my paladin. We run a group of 5 friends that cycle around alts so we all get it done on all our alts too. Specific group setup isn't set in stone, we have many alts so we can play around on classes if needed.

I have done all challenge modes as protection last xpac, and would like to prot them this round too, it's the role i am most comfortable playing, so holy or ret is out of the question. On top of that my friends have alot of alts, but no tank alts, so I'm forced to prot either way.

Some quick research (hard to find inbetween all the "spec holy or ret and find a dk" replies) - correct me if I am mistaken;
bonus armor/strength>crit>mastery=versa, since it's all about the dps, right?

I was considering running 2 prot specs and switching around inbetween bosses and trash, is this viable? I never had to worry about this on my dk, but we had hunter alt switching so there shouldn't be much time lost?

This way I can run a lights hammer+HA/sera setup with final wrath+alabaster glyph and switch to a execution sentence+HA/Sera, harsh words setup for the bossfights, does this make sense? I am most worried about our dps output, doing quite alot on DK and being alts and whatnot, our times aren't the greatest

The thing that worries me most is not having army/mass grip at my disposal, i am breaking my head thinking how to deal with certain pulls without these, UBRS first room and everbloom mage trash comes to mind, hell even iron docks. How do you guys deal with these kind of pulls?

Any help and input is appreciated, there's not many prot paladins around that completed them playing prot, and most say to play different spec which is out of the question unfortunatly

[Deleted]

UBRS you can LoS everything into 1 room, mages you can mount up, pull all of them and LoS at the tower. When it comes to stats, i'm pretty sure haste is very high up there now with the massive buffs to it.

[Deleted]

Scabbard and Alchemy trinket for Prot. You could swap out the alch trinket for EAE if you have it (and don't have alchemy). Gear crit > mastery > haste. BA above all of course.

Taken from this thread: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...M-Gold-Gearing

I was considering running 2 prot specs and switching around inbetween bosses and trash, is this viable? I never had to worry about this on my dk, but we had hunter alt switching so there shouldn't be much time lost?

you can no longer change talents/specs inside CM's so no that wouldn't work

[DrMcNinja]

Scabberd is definitely a must have. During mass AoE the DPS gain from that is insane

[Deleted]

you can no longer change talents/specs inside CM's so no that wouldn't work

You can no longer change talents, true. But you can change specs whilst in a challengemode. Pretty common for Frost Mages to have a spec for singletarget with IN+MI+PC and an AoE spec with FB+IF+PC to be able to do max aoe throughout the dungeon and switch to singletarget spec for the last boss.

With my paladin I ran two spec,s one AoE and one singletarget. It is definitely something to consider and might help you out abit if you're only going for gold(swapping specs isn't really viable when pushing for times).

[Reaper235]

We Just Ran Through with "normal" Raidgear and Made Gold...

More Important than Just Gear is the Teamplay and good Tactics.

[sexybeast]

We Just Ran Through with "normal" Raidgear and Made Gold...

More Important than Just Gear is the Teamplay and good Tactics.

Gear score doesn't matter as its scaled down to 630. In fact an argument could be made for using pure 630 gear from dungeon drops as you can pretty much choose the stats on it (ofc that means a metric f ton of HC dungeon running)

[Deleted]

For Iron Docks and UBRS: Holy Avenger - Seraphim - Armour Pot - Trinkets give you just as much, if not more survivability then Army of the Dead. Youll get at least 15-secs of unkillable, and then another 30seconds of Shield of the Rightous uptime. You can also Divine Protection at any point you like (I normally do it after Seraphim drops) or GoaK/AD and roll back into Seraphim. If things are not dead after this then it is another problem entirely. LoS in one room for UBRS and Iron Docks you might not want to blow everything at once unless you are pulling all three unique mobs at once. You should be bursting +150k with all the mobs and CD's running at once. Always run Seal of Insight for CM's as you need the survivablity

The mages are a slight pain cause casters but you can attempt to LoS them or cycle-interrupt them with Avenger Shield. When I did it we thinned them out previously by pulling three-four mages into the spider cave with us so we didnt have to deal with all the mages at once when we did get there.

One other group you might struggle with is the three packs at the start of Auchindoun. Spam the same CD's as above, but I didnt pull all three packs at once, just two, and have the guy that heals targeted so you spam all your Avenger Shield silences at him. Have your dps interrurpt the guy that mind controls so he comes to you

I didn't bother changing glyphs and talents between trash and bosses and just rolled aoe spec the entire time. When I did it I had a BA>Crit>Mastery spec but Seraphim also had 1k stats aswell. Everbloom is by far the CM with the hardest timer for a prot paladin as the lack of grips on the botani and mages before the first/third boss is devastating to your timer

[falagar112]

Thanks so much for your answers everyone!

For Iron Docks and UBRS: Holy Avenger - Seraphim - Armour Pot - Trinkets give you just as much, if not more survivability then Army of the Dead. Youll get at least 15-secs of unkillable, and then another 30seconds of Shield of the Rightous uptime. You can also Divine Protection at any point you like (I normally do it after Seraphim drops) or GoaK/AD and roll back into Seraphim. If things are not dead after this then it is another problem entirely. LoS in one room for UBRS and Iron Docks you might not want to blow everything at once unless you are pulling all three unique mobs at once. You should be bursting +150k with all the mobs and CD's running at once. Always run Seal of Insight for CM's as you need the survivablity

The mages are a slight pain cause casters but you can attempt to LoS them or cycle-interrupt them with Avenger Shield. When I did it we thinned them out previously by pulling three-four mages into the spider cave with us so we didnt have to deal with all the mages at once when we did get there.

One other group you might struggle with is the three packs at the start of Auchindoun. Spam the same CD's as above, but I didnt pull all three packs at once, just two, and have the guy that heals targeted so you spam all your Avenger Shield silences at him. Have your dps interrurpt the guy that mind controls so he comes to you

I didn't bother changing glyphs and talents between trash and bosses and just rolled aoe spec the entire time. When I did it I had a BA>Crit>Mastery spec but Seraphim also had 1k stats aswell. Everbloom is by far the CM with the hardest timer for a prot paladin as the lack of grips on the botani and mages before the first/third boss is devastating to your timer

And this is exactly what i was looking for, much love
Auchindoun should be okay, we didn't have a priest in the run on my DK so we didn't pull the pack with the cleric as his spam shields lost us to much dps.
Everbloom we pulled some mages along with spiderboss too, I'll figure out a decent LoS spot if needed!
Did you run harsh words glyph at all for more ST dps?

[Piwielle]

With recents up to haste, pretty sure you'll want crit/haste more than crit/mastery.
Glyphs wise, I'd stick with alabaster since it'll proc so much more on aoe, glyphed DP to help with not dying, and as last one I felt the Consecrator glyph was the most useful. I suppose final wrath would be decent, but having that consecration following you around is quite helpful.

[Deleted]

Thanks so much for your answers everyone!



And this is exactly what i was looking for, much love
Auchindoun should be okay, we didn't have a priest in the run on my DK so we didn't pull the pack with the cleric as his spam shields lost us to much dps.
Everbloom we pulled some mages along with spiderboss too, I'll figure out a decent LoS spot if needed!
Did you run harsh words glyph at all for more ST dps?

Nawh I didnt run Harsh Words but you are more than welcome to do so if you want to. Only glyph you really want is Divine Protection, the rest can be whatever you like.

The most dangerous part is when you are pooling holypower for Seraphim, just ask for externals from someone else unless you are absolutely sure you dont need one. Be aware of spamming your avenger shield on the mage boss in Everbloom. Accidently interrupting her early and pushing her to arcane is horrendously bad and you'll have to do all the annoying pulls again when she owns your face with Arcane Explosion. Cycle interrupt on her and her Spore Image to keep the damage low for your healer. As I said before Everbloom is the most challenging, the rest have their "hard" pulls but nothing that is too stressful.

With poisons/diseases its normally not worth wasting a GCD cleansing yourself if its going to restack to max within ~3 seconds. This only really applies to Everbloom and SMBG but keep it in mind.

For Glyphs I think I had Final Wrath, Alabaster Shield and Divine Protection. Alabaster has been nerfed since and Final Wrath didnt really do a whole bunch so you could swap one of them out for Harsh Words possibly but I always found I was soft enough as it was when I spent all my Holy Power on SOTR.

[Mormolyce]

I haven't leveled my Paladin yet - is haste still the go-to stat for Prot CM tanking?

The thing that worries me most is not having army/mass grip at my disposal, i am breaking my head thinking how to deal with certain pulls without these, UBRS first room and everbloom mage trash comes to mind, hell even iron docks. How do you guys deal with these kind of pulls?

In MoP I used to kite around the border of my Light's Hammer, or toss my shield and straight up run if a pull was too scary :P

Lot easier on my DK and Monk. But not as bad as my prot Warrior, dear lord I thought I'd never get MSV done.

[Saiyoran]

you can no longer change talents/specs inside CM's so no that wouldn't work

You can change specs, just not talents. Running a double spec is great for almost every class.

[Reaper235]

What i want to say is that Unless your Going for Realm Top Times the Stats on your gear doesnt really matter...

[falagar112]

Nawh I didnt run Harsh Words but you are more than welcome to do so if you want to. Only glyph you really want is Divine Protection, the rest can be whatever you like.

The most dangerous part is when you are pooling holypower for Seraphim, just ask for externals from someone else unless you are absolutely sure you dont need one. Be aware of spamming your avenger shield on the mage boss in Everbloom. Accidently interrupting her early and pushing her to arcane is horrendously bad and you'll have to do all the annoying pulls again when she owns your face with Arcane Explosion. Cycle interrupt on her and her Spore Image to keep the damage low for your healer. As I said before Everbloom is the most challenging, the rest have their "hard" pulls but nothing that is too stressful.

With poisons/diseases its normally not worth wasting a GCD cleansing yourself if its going to restack to max within ~3 seconds. This only really applies to Everbloom and SMBG but keep it in mind.

For Glyphs I think I had Final Wrath, Alabaster Shield and Divine Protection. Alabaster has been nerfed since and Final Wrath didnt really do a whole bunch so you could swap one of them out for Harsh Words possibly but I always found I was soft enough as it was when I spent all my Holy Power on SOTR.

The amount of times we wiped on that mage boss until we found out that ele shamans earthquake actually knocks her down and interrupts it, don't even mention it
I wasn't so much considering using harsh words on all the trash pulls, i think that would be pretty suicidal - but it was just something I was considering to help out on ST boss damage. When i ran them on my DK (and DK ST being pretty bad) it was bosses that took us the most time, while we made up time on trash. Considering we're all running on alts this time around, I am considering anything that helps in the dps department.

Last thing I was wondering, before I'll just run them to give it a try;
Auchindoun, 3rd boss room, the 3 packs with 2 imps and a felguard each. How do you pull these as a paladin? This is probably the most obvious mass grip spot on my DK ever, run to middle, grip, aoe stun, go nuts. But getting those 3 packs together on paladin sounds very tricky - is there a LoS spot in this room or do you kill them seperatly and make up time somewhere else?

Again, thanks for all replies, everything is very welcomed

[Deleted]

The amount of times we wiped on that mage boss until we found out that ele shamans earthquake actually knocks her down and interrupts it, don't even mention it
I wasn't so much considering using harsh words on all the trash pulls, i think that would be pretty suicidal - but it was just something I was considering to help out on ST boss damage. When i ran them on my DK (and DK ST being pretty bad) it was bosses that took us the most time, while we made up time on trash. Considering we're all running on alts this time around, I am considering anything that helps in the dps department.

Last thing I was wondering, before I'll just run them to give it a try;
Auchindoun, 3rd boss room, the 3 packs with 2 imps and a felguard each. How do you pull these as a paladin? This is probably the most obvious mass grip spot on my DK ever, run to middle, grip, aoe stun, go nuts. But getting those 3 packs together on paladin sounds very tricky - is there a LoS spot in this room or do you kill them seperatly and make up time somewhere else?

Again, thanks for all replies, everything is very welcomed

Not really, pull them slower and take the hit to your timer. Between Avenger Shield and Holy Wrath (which conveniently aoe stuns all undead and demons ) you'll be able to keep at least four imps, if not all of them, interrupted/stunned on your own so you don't need to go too slow, especially if you have intelligent party members who didn't suck at interrupting as much as mine did. Also you will have Fist of Justice to use too which you might be able to use twice before the pull finishes. So you alone will have:
15 Sec Interrupt (Rebuke)
~10 Sec Range Silence/Interrupt /w Reset Mechanic (Avenger Shield)
30 Sec Range 6 Sec Duration Stun (Fist of Justice, try and get this one off before you start DR'ing them all with Holy Wrath)
~10 Sec AoE Stun (Holy Wrath, also stuns the felguards)

I think pulled the next pack once one imp from the previous pack died, resulting in three Felguards on varying HP and one-two imps left over.