Protection Paladin Guide

[Deleted]

If you feel I have not answered a question you may have, please ask below and I will add it to my guide as necessary. This will help cut down on the number of "what do I need?" type threads on the forum.

As there are currently no stickies dedicated to Prot Paladins I thought I would put together a guide. This is aimed more at beginner - intermediate tankadins, as there are many threads on maintankadin which explain things in a lot more depth than I will.

Please feel free to give feedback on anything that I might have missed or you think is incorrect. My FAQ is based around questions I see a lot of people asking on the forums.

FAQ

Do I need to get hit/expertise capped?
No. Last expansion, particularly in ICC threat stats were important. However now you are best served focusing on mastery, dodge and parry as your secondary stats.

Basically ignore hit and expertise completely unless you want to nerf your ability to take damage.


But what if my attacks miss, get dodged or parried?
Vengeance essentially covers this for you. You can gain up to 10% of your maximum health as attack power. ie. if you have 150k health you can gain up to 15k attack power.

What stats should I focus on?
Generally speaking: Mastery > Dodge > parry. Mastery is the most effective way to reduce damage per point of rating. Although Dodge and Parry both completely avoid an incoming physical attack they also suffer greatly from diminishing returns from around the point you have mostly 346 item level gear.

What are diminishing returns?
In essence as you start to gain more dodge or parry rating the amount of rating required to gain 1% more dodge or parry chance increases

What about holy shield?
Holy shield is now back to being an ability than needs to be activated manually.
It increases the amount blocked by 20% for 10 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown. To get the most out of the spell use it at points in the fight you are taking high damage.

Macroing it to all abilities will guarantee you use it at points in a fight where you are not taking a lot of damage and also potentially mean it is not available when you really need it.

What is avoidance capped/unhittable/block capped/full combat table coverage?
This is the point at which you are incapable of taking a full physical attack. ie. if you do not dodge or parry you will block and reduce the damage the attack would have done by 40/41%(depending on your meta gem choice)

To get full combat table coverage you need 102.4% combined block, parry and dodge chance(factoring in 5% boss chance to miss) Use the below macro to check if you are

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5))

Do not forget to account for Blessing of Kings/Mark of the Wild, The agility/strength buff from horn of winter/battle shout/strength totem/hunter cat buff. Plus anything else that will be relevant such as a mastery elixir and mastery or dodge food.

Where can I find a gear list?
Vexryn has put together an excellent list of gear that covers from fresh 85 up until heroic raids.
http://vexryn.com/vexryns-tank-gear-list-by-slot


The Basics

In cataclysm Paladins have a new resource called holy power. It functions in a similar way to combo points for a rogue. For Protection Paladins the main two abilities that grant you 1 holy power when they hit are Crusader Strike(CS) and Hammer of the Righteous(HotR)
Avenger's Shield also grants 1 holy power if refreshed by the talent Grand Crusader(more on this later). Also unique to Protection Paladins is an instant stack of 3 holy power granted by using the ability Divine Plea.

Holy power can stack up to 3 points at which time you want to use an ability that consumes holy power. I will explain this in more depth in my abilities section.

Mastery is the new secondary stat in Cataclysm. For tankadins it increases our chance to block by 18% plus 2.25% for every 1 mastery point gained. Holy shield also contributes to our Mastery's effectiveness by granting 10% damage reduction on a successful block. Blocked attacks have their damage reduced by 40% including Holy shield, or 41% if the Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond meta gem is used.

You can only block physical attacks.



Stats

Reforging
Try to keep dodge and parry ratings approximately the same. We now gain parry from buffs that increase strength, but not dodge from the additional agility

Keeping the above in mind you want to always make sure all your items have mastery on them. So if they do not you are looking for the best candidate for reforging to Mastery as follows: Hit/Expertise > Parry > Dodge

Never reforge mastery to another stat. Reforge hit/expertise to mastery if gear has no mastery. Otherwise reforge hit/expertise to dodge/parry or reforge parry/dodge to mastery on pieces that have both - whilst considering their respective ratings.

An excellent way to get a feel for if you are setting your gear up correctly is to use this tool: http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear
The stats are accurately weighted and take into account diminishing returns as they stand on your current gear.

Stamina
Our health pool is still an important factor as a tank, but much less so than it was in WotLK. Not to mention that even DPS gear will now give you as much stamina as a tanking piece will. There is no need to focus on stamina for the majority of tanks(that is all the tanks doing 5 mans, normal raids and also a large chunk of heroic raids)

Strength
Contributes to both attack power and parry. It is featured on all Plate gear that you would consider equipping, plus the majority of rings and cloaks.

Mastery
This is more or less our best secondary stat. Whereas Dodge and Parry suffer from diminishing returns from a low gear level, mastery provides exactly the same benefit per point of mastery rating up until you reach full combat table coverage(CTC)

Dodge
As the name suggests this allows you to dodge attacks. This suffers from diminishing returns and as such you should aim to balance your dodge and parry rating to get the most out of your gear.

Parry
The same as dodge really except you parry attacks.

Expertise
This has been demonstrated to be the best threat stat for us by Theck. Please review his Stat analysis for further information:
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.c...593315#p593315
You should however still prioritise expertise below mastery, dodge and parry.

Hit
Also a good threat stat, if not quite as good as expertise. Some of our attacks cannot be avoided but will still miss. Hit should really sit below mastery, dodge, parry and expertise on your stat priority.

Agility
Provides us with dodge but no longer grants armour. This is generally ignored as a stat, except in the case of a few items which also coincidentally grant mastery rating
Although these are only to be considered in the absence of a suitable +strength item.

I would also advise against taking a +agility piece over someone that uses it as a primary stat, not only will it almost always provide them with more of an upgrade it will also become useless in 4.2 if the planned change to make agility on items no longer grant dodge goes ahead. Although realistically this is for your group to decide

"Dodge: Death Knights, paladins, and warriors no longer receive any bonus to their chance to dodge from Agility. Their base chance to dodge is now a fixed 5%." http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...pdate-May-24th

Haste
Provides a very weak threat boost. Avoid



Abilities

note: this may be the area I don't explain very well.

Our rotation/priority system is somewhat similar to that of WotLK. We now also have holy power as the driving force behind some of our abilities.

Loosely speaking the rotation should be:
Strike > Avenger's Shield(AS) > Strike > Judgement > Strike > 3 holy power ability
or as a priority system:
SotR/Inquisition>HotR/CS>AS>J>Holy Wrath

For Single target situations such as boss fights you should use Shield of the Righteous as your 3 holy power ability, for AOE you want to be using Inquisition. I will explain further below. Never used SotR when you don't have 3 holy power due to the damage trade off you suffer.

The abilities between strikes are considered "fillers" our other two fillers are holy wrath which generates very poor threat as it doesn't scale with attack power. The second filler I did not mention is Consecration, which is considerably weaker and more mana hungry in Cata. I would advise using it unless you have points in hallowed ground, especially if you are still learning to tank as it can cause you to run out of mana if you are not careful.

In the case of strikes your are going to either be using Crusader strike for single target, or Hammer of the Righteous for AOE.

The talent Grand Crusader gives either strike a chance to refresh Avenger's Shield. You also get 2 flashing shield animations in the middle of your screen so it is clear when it has happened. When AS is refreshed by Grand Crusader you should use it as your next filler in place of any other filler for two reasons: It generates 1 holy power if used within 6 seconds of gaining the buff, secondly it has a 50% chance to trigger Sacred Duty. Sacred duty gives you 100% crit chance on your next Shield of the Righteous and is an exceptional threat boost(well single target anyway)

Holy Power abilities

Shield of the Righteous
This is our shield slam ability, it generates a considerable amount of threat and is generally what you want to be spending your holy power on when only tanking one mob. It also interacts with the talent Sacred Duty, which gives your next SotR a guaranteed chance to crit, this is triggered by judgment and avenger's shield.

Inquisition
Increases our holy damage by 30% for 4 seconds per point of holy power. This is far superior to SotR in multiple mob situations as it buffs all of our AOE abilities. You can technically weave Inquisition and SotR single target but it just complicates things when you are learning to tank so I won't go into it in detail. It also only provides a small threat boost so don't worry too much about it

Word of Glory
Instantly heals you for an amount based on the number of stacks of holy power you have. This has a 20 second cooldown so cannot be used every time you reach 3 holy power. WoG no longer generates any threat, it is purely a survival ability. This ability is best used when you are comfortable with how much threat you have and/or you are taking a lot of damage and think you may die.



Seals
As Prot you have two choices as far as seals go:

Judgment of Truth
This is by far our best threat Seal, it applies a stacking dot called censure which stacks up to 5 times. It also grants 10 expertise if you have the prime glyph equipped
or
Seal of Insight
Causes your attacks to restore health, it also scales quite nicely with attack power so as vengeance increases so does the amount this Seal causes your attacks to heal. Insight also restores 4% of your base mana when you use judgment, this is very useful if you find yourself low on mana mid fight



Talents

There is essentially a lot of variations on a theme as far as Prot talent builds go. Firstly it is worth mentioning the bad/situational talents:

First the bad

Eternal Glory
Gives word of glory a 15/30% chance to not consume holy power
Since word of glory now has a 20 second cooldown it means you have to use the second stack of holy power on a threat ability. This makes the talent a weak, unpredictable threat talent. I would not take it for any reason.

Arbiter of Light & Judgements of the pure
These are 1st tier threat talents in the holy tree, but they are poor threat talents. I would strongly advise you take the threat talents in the Retribution tree instead.

Improved Hammer of Justice
Doesn't provide any threat and you can't stun bosses, avoid.

Now the situational/optional

Divine Guardian
"Reduces damage taken by all raid/party members within 30 yards by 20% for seconds."
Although there are a few raid bosses that this ability is really good on, when there is predictable raid damage. I would say if you only do 5 mans that you should strongly consider skipping it.

Reckoning
Gives your blocks a 10/20% chance to grant free attacks on your next 4 autoattacks
Ok first of all this is a nice threat talent for single target situations, however you can consider only putting one point into it especially as your gear gets better and you have more block

Hallowed Ground
This and Pursuit of justice cause the most arguments amongst tankadins
Increases the damage of consecration by 20/40% and decreases its mana cost by 40/80%
This talent isn't bad IF you expect yourself to be tanking large groups of mobs a lot, other than that you have a lot of other options available to you. Personally I have a hallowed ground build for trash and the adds on Maloriak heroic, but keep in mind I do have a dual Prot specc setup

Pursuit of Justice
Increases run speed by 8/15% - Also has a 50/100% chance to grant one holy power when you get knocked down etc. I think this component is more pvp orientated though, Onyxia's tail whip is the only thing I can think of that grants this in instances.
Personally I really like this talent as I think the mobility boost is great. If you aren't a fan you can still get 1/2 the run speed from your boot enchant.

Eye for an Eye
Magic attacks against you have a 20/40% chance of dealing 30% of the damage dealt back to your attacker.
Not really a reliable threat boost but a threat boost nonetheless on any magic damage heavy fight.

Improved Judgement
Increases the range of your judgment by 10/20 yards.
This is a utility talent really, it will rarely benefit you after the initial pull bar a couple of situations.

Guarded by the Light
Increases healing done by word of glory and also causes it to grant the holy power buff.
Up to the individual really, it is definitely weaker now that WoG has a cooldown. The only optional survival talent as far as I see it

Talent builds
There are a lot of variations on a theme here, as I have gone through the talents that aren't considered vital I will show you what my two prot builds look like to give you an idea of your options

Single target:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZGMhcRkdRRuf0G:zosVq

This is a pretty general boss build, it incorporates all of the best threat talents and also takes pursuit of justice. You could put the 2 points in pursuit of justice into improved judgement, or alternately either of the two holy tier 1 threat talents if you really want to.

I have also used the best single target threat glyphs. Divine protection is an excellent 3rd major glyph on high magic damage fights

AOE:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZGMhfRzdRkucbG:ksomqb

This is the setup I use on 5 mans, BoT trash and Maloriak heroic. As I mentioned Hallowed ground is generally not needed, but speccing into it will maximise your AOE threat unquestionably. This time I've taken imp. judgements as it is handy when on pickup duty, I also dropped a point in sacred duty as it provides no benefit on AOE pulls.


Gemming
There is a bit of debate about stacking stamina, generally it is considered a poor choice. It has more of a benefit if you are in a cutting edge guild that is discovering boss mechanics, however if that is the case you probably won't be reading this guide.

Blue
Puissant Dream Emerald - 20 Mastery rating and 30 stamina
If you have Jewelcrafting the pure stamina gems give a decent stat boost in comparison to the other JC only gems

Red
Fine Ember Topaz - 20 Mastery rating and 20 Parry rating

Yellow
Fractured Emberjewel - 40 Mastery rating
Fractured Chimaera's Eye - 67 Mastery rating but JC only. I would aim to put these in your yellow slots, or prismatic if all yellow slots have one.

Some tanks stack 40 mastery gems in every slot, but generally this is not advisable either. Balance is generally the key. I gain 160 stamina and 10 mastery rating from socket bonuses which isn't bad when you consider that I have used the balanced gems listed above.


Enchants
I would advise people to try to complete most if not all the quests in each zone as they will take you into revered, or very close to it with all of the Cata PVE factions. These give you access to both enchants and some decent entry level tanking gear

Note: the best enchant in each slot is shown at the top. Profession only bonuses are listed below the secondary options

Head
Arcanum of the Earthen Ring - 90 stamina and 35 dodge rating. Requires Earthen Ring revered.
Heavy Savage Armour Kit - 44 stamina. Only worth using if you don't have Earthen Ring revered.

Shoulders
Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz - 75 stamina and 25 dodge rating. Requires Therazane Exalted.
Lesser Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz - 45 stamina and 20 dodge rating. Requires Therazane Honoured.
Inscription of the Earth Prince - 195 Stamina and 25 dodge rating. Inscription only
Swiftsteel Inscription - 130 agility and 25 mastery. Inscription only. I would assume this enchant is inferior to earth prince as ask mr robot suggests using Earth prince. Also agility will provide no benefit to Paladins in 4.2

Back
Enchant Cloak - Protection - 250 armour

Chest
Enchant Chest Greater Stamina - 75 stamina
Enchant Chest Peerless Stats - Not as good as 75 stamina, will become even worse in 4.2

Wrists
Enchant Bracer - Dodge - 50 Dodge rating
Draconic Embossment - Stamina - 195 stamina. Leatherworking only
Socket bracer - additional gem socket - Blacksmith only. Can be used in conjunction with other bracer enchants.

Gloves
Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery - 65 mastery rating. May be a little expensive to use on blue gloves.
Enchant Gloves - Mastery - 50 Mastery rating. Similar to the above but considerably cheaper.
Quickflip Deflection Plates - 1500 armour for 12 seconds. 1 minute CD. Engineering only. Can be used with the above.

Waist
Ebonsteel Belt Buckle - Adds a gem socket to belt. A good place to put JC only gems after coloured sockets are filled.

Legs

Drakehide Leg Armour - 145 stamina and 55 dodge rating
Charscale Leg Armour - 145 stamina and 55 agility - *Both of the agility enchants are useless since the removal of dodge from agility*
Twilight Leg Armour - 85 stamina and 45 agility.

Feet
Enchant boots Mastery - 50 Mastery. The best option if you have points in pursuit of justice
Enchant boots - Lavawalker - 35 mastery and 8% run speed. Take this if you don't have pursuit of justice.

Fingers
Enchant ring - Great Stamina - 60 stamina. Requires Enchanting.

Weapon
Enchant weapon - Windwalk - 600 dodge rating and 15% run speed for 10 seconds chance on hit. Movement speed buff stacks with other movement speed increases. Easily the best weapon enchant for Tankadins.
The other options are threat enchants or mending. You can take pretty much what you want here, landslide is the best for threat but costs a similar amount to windwalk so is a moot point.

Shield
Enchant Shield - Mastery - 50 Mastery rating. Replaced the block enchant in 4.1

----------------------------------------------------

It would be nice to see what people think of this guide. It is quite rough around the edges but I welcome any feedback

Any pointers on layout would be great as it isn't one of my strong points.

I am also currently missing an index/anchors and hyperlinks to any of the abilities which I will add when I have more time.

[Malthanis]

I'm gonna sticky this, since we're missing a Prot guide. If anybody has any advice on how to change it, you can post it here or PM bobty with your info.

[Deleted]

Thanks for posting this! I'm just starting to gear my Ret for some tanking action.
I would really like to see the gem/enchant/gear section. Also: I would like to know what stats, %dodge/block/parry, I should aim for.
Another question is: How good will it be to use some of my 359 and 353 dps pieces over 333 or 346 tanking pieces for tanking, if the dps ones have something like mastery and hit/expt on it? (I.e I do have the ret t11 legs)

[MerinPally]

Also: I would like to know what stats, %dodge/block/parry, I should aim for.

Varies on your gear, but you don't want either dodge or parry above 13.5% unbuffed. This is unavoidable in 372s but I'm guessing you won't be in those. You want parry slightly higher than dodge due to how it scales with raid buffs. When you mouse over your % it says "parry rating of XXX increases parry chance by YYY%" - you want your parry rating about 100-200 higher than your dodge rating.

Another question is: How good will it be to use some of my 359 and 353 dps pieces over 333 or 346 tanking pieces for tanking, if the dps ones have something like mastery and hit/expt on it? (I.e I do have the ret t11 legs)

Your goal is for maximum possible avoidance, stamina just comes with the ilvl and is generally less aimed for. Mastery is the god stat, it is always the numero uno. If 2 pieces look similar, wear one and use the follow script (save it to a macro) then repeat for the other one. Whichever comes up with the highest number is the winner, is the basic way to look at it:

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5))

Personally as a 10/12 casual tank using 2 mastery trinkets from Baradins Wardens, I have 145k hp unbuffed, 64% block, 11.5% dodge and 13% parry. Hit and expertise are threat only stats and should never be considered useful unless you have threat issues, so don't take that into account. Up until heroic tier raiding, for tanking, whichever item gets you the highest number in that macro is the safe option (and probably the correct one)

As for gemming and enchanting... Well, I don't want to hijack a thread and parade around as if I'm the smart one so I'll leave that until the post is updated - Til then, just remember mastery > sex, for the purpose of tanking as a paladin.

[Deleted]

I am new here but here is my say: All I have to critiscise is some of your talent suggestions. For me Pursuit of Justic is only really viable in Maloriak and even then it is not that much of an help really. I would suggest putting it in Aribiter of Light, I know it isn't a great talent and is farily poor on inreasing threat but it is still a better than Pursuit as you start to progress, however I can see how it would be better for beginner tanks but should be quickly swapped once you hit your stride. Also I would usually put 2 points on Improved Judgement rather than Eye for an Eye as IJ has its situational advantages and I usually use it as an extra long range ablity if Avengers Shield is on CD.

However both points I have raised are negligible so whatever you pick it won't affect your performance to a great extent, could just improve it in a small way.

Nice guide by the way

Moss

[Deleted]

i think this is a really wonderful guide ive never had a tank before always been a healer, now i have a lvl 82 paladin tank and this guide has been brilliant in helping me understand my class and spec alot more thankyou very much XD

[Deleted]

I am new here but here is my say: All I have to critiscise is some of your talent suggestions. For me Pursuit of Justic is only really viable in Maloriak and even then it is not that much of an help really. I would suggest putting it in Aribiter of Light, I know it isn't a great talent and is farily poor on inreasing threat but it is still a better than Pursuit as you start to progress, however I can see how it would be better for beginner tanks but should be quickly swapped once you hit your stride. Also I would usually put 2 points on Improved Judgement rather than Eye for an Eye as IJ has its situational advantages and I usually use it as an extra long range ablity if Avengers Shield is on CD.

However both points I have raised are negligible so whatever you pick it won't affect your performance to a great extent, could just improve it in a small way.

Nice guide by the way

Moss

Thanks for the feedback . I think it is more of a choice but it is worth bearing in mind the fights where a run speed boost can help:

Blackwing Descent
Omnotron - Moving Arcanotron out of the power generator, Moving away from both the adds if you get targeted and the poison cloud on toxitron. Moving away from the person targeted by flamethrower. Also moving closer to the person with shadow conductor on heroic when possible.
Maloriak - Getting close to the adds quicker if you are on add duty, dodging frost orbs in phase 2 and moving out of the fire if you are tanking the boss in phase 2.
Atramedes - Dodging Sonar Pulse and kiting the flame breath further without getting hit. Also to dodge to Sonar bombs in the air phase.

Bastion of Twilight
Halfus - Moving from fire patches
Twin Dragons - Moving out of Dazzling destruction and moving from where deep breath is going to be cast
Ascendant council - Removing waterlogged, moving out of fire patches when Ignacious jumps back, getting buffs in phase 2 quicker. Moving elementium monstrosity from the ice patches.
Cho'Gal - Moving from void patches(forget the name they tend to spawn on the boss tank during the Adherent phase) Also for getting to the tentacles faster when you are not tanking Cho.

Throne of the four winds
Conclave - Switching platforms, moving anshal from healing circle, moving from ice patches on nezir.
Al'Akir - Moving to the gaps in the whirlwinds, especially when your area of the platform is coated in ice.

It also isn't too bad on Algalon during the fire phases.

I have Improved judgements in my AOE build, the only fight it really helps on is Maloriak. On every other fight it has no benefit once you have pulled and you would prioritise exorcism and avenger's shield over judgement in those situations anyway.

The main issue with Arbiter of the light, judgments of the pure and eternal glory is they are such poor threat talents their benefit is negligible. Whereas utility talents can help quite considerably, you also have to choose either imp judgements or eye for an eye to unlock rule of law. Eye for an eye is a pretty weak threat talent but superior to imp judgements in the majority of situations.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the input and for updating the guide! I will continue to gather some gear and try some tanking in the next few days.

[Deleted]

Yeh I can see your points, I think Pursuit can be helpful but not needed and once experianced enough not to need an extra speed increase you should think about speccing into another talent. I tried out your spec tonight and found it was good for learning new fights and the extra speed boost can give you a very nice advantage in the beginning. However once not needed Aribiter of Light will be better even if the advantage is very slight, but overall I think it is personal preference and very negligible. Also I tried Eye for an Eye instead of Improved Judgement it made pulling a little bit harder but long term effects were much better, was expecially good on P2 Nefarian.

Moss

[Deleted]

The main drawback to eye for an eye that I can see is when tank switching on Chimaeron. There have been a few times where I have reflected the Massacre and pulled back off the other tank. It almost made me switch to Imp Judgements but I haven't had it happen again since I considered it.

As far as PoJ goes there are situations like getting deathgripped into a poison cloud, or when either yourself or another raid member do not react to a situation appropriately. Realistically there are a lot of times when I really don't need the runspeed but I like knowing it is there in case I do

[Deleted]

The main drawback to eye for an eye that I can see is when tank switching on Chimaeron. There have been a few times where I have reflected the Massacre and pulled back off the other tank. It almost made me switch to Imp Judgements but I haven't had it happen again since I considered it.

As far as PoJ goes there are situations like getting deathgripped into a poison cloud, or when either yourself or another raid member do not react to a situation appropriately. Realistically there are a lot of times when I really don't need the runspeed but I like knowing it is there in case I do

The biggest issue with eye for an eye is Electrons shield. When he chain lightnings you.... E4E procs back on him proccing his shield back at you... theres no internal cooldown. It caused a few wipes while we were progressing and i was holy at the time with just 1 point in it.

PoJ, Kiting Ads on Nef hc. Basically mandatory tbh.

[Anakso]

As for Eye for an Eye talent, in my protection spec I've never taken it, always gone for improved judgement, reason for this is because as you said E4E is a minor threat boost, but I much prefer the utility of extra range on judgments for fights like Maloriak (where I'm always on add duty) and Nef (where I'm also on add duty in p3), and essentially it just provides me with an extra ability to hit on the way to a boss, should the boss move or a new boss spawn etc.

EDIT: Also very nice guide, whenever I wanted to talk or read about prot paladins I've always had to go to maintankadin or EJ but nice to know this thead will also be a place to go now, especially since I'm on MMO champion most of the time anyway.

---------- Post added 2011-05-30 at 03:13 AM ----------

As for your single target glyphs just wondering on a source for Glyph of crusader strike? just because from what I've read Glyph of judgement is better (from EJ)

it might be worth adding a glyph discussion in your OP when you get time, as there are some options you can switch out on a fight by fight or preference basis.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the input guys.

Crusader strike is stronger than Judgement. http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.c...593313#p593313

Although it wouldn't hurt to replace SotR on AOE fights with Judgement to make your ranged pickups a bit stronger.

I will add a glyph section soon.

[ekabelly]

is there cap to prot pala mastery?
and how much hit rating do i need? i did ome raids and kept missing, lost aggro for a moment bcus of that.
1350 mastery (15.52)
183 hit rating (1.52%)

[zshikara]

I have an unusual situation: My prot pally was originally an alt and has tailoring and mining (my main has blacksmithing and enchanting). My question is as follows: is swordguard (1000 attack power for 10 seconds to cloak) better than 250 armor to cloak? Or is the threat from it negligable?

[ekabelly]

u dont need that kind of cd. go 250 armor in my opinion

[Deleted]

is there cap to prot pala mastery?
and how much hit rating do i need? i did ome raids and kept missing, lost aggro for a moment bcus of that.
1350 mastery (15.52)
183 hit rating (1.52%)

You shouldn't really need any hit. There odd times when misses and parries/dodges combine to let DPS overtake you on pull but in general vengeance should cover you threat wise.

As far as mastery goes you combine your block, parry and dodge chance(including any raid buffs etc you may normally get) then include the 5% boss chance to miss. You are aiming to hit 102.4% overall and the best way to see if you have is with the following macro

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5))

---------- Post added 2011-06-04 at 01:30 PM ----------

u dont need that kind of cd. go 250 armor in my opinion

Yes Armour is definitely better, you shouldn't choose any threat enchants.

[Superpyro]

Inquisition
Increases our holy damage by 30% for 4 seconds per point of holy power. This is far superior to SotR in multiple mob situations as it buffs all of our AOE abilities. You can technically weave Inquisition and SotR single target but it just complicates things when you are learning to tank so I won't go into it in detail. It also only provides a small threat boost so don't worry too much about it

I feel like an idiot. I started maintanking for my guild this xpac on my pally that I always used to roll as holy. After doing HM Halfus this week and having trouble maintaining aoe threat for the first time on the whelps I was looking around trying to figure out what the eff I was doing wrong. Here I had never even thought of inquisition. Had no idea I was missing such a large aoe threat mechanic.
Thanks for the eye opener. Keep up the good work.

[Deleted]

Thanks Superpyro. Inquisition isn't bad anyway but it really shines in AOE situations where almost all of your damage is holy.

[zshikara]

Yes Armour is definitely better, you shouldn't choose any threat enchants.

Thank you. I went with the 250 armor.