Low geared Paladin tanking ToT 10N

[Tehterokkar]

So I recently switched up from my Blood DK to Prot Pala for tanking my guild's alt runs(Raid CD, raid healing, solo-tank possibilities) and the first run I did(7/12, went to DK for rest), I was taking a considerable amount of damage, getting some unexpected 1 shots, first time tanking ToT on Pala where I actually have to pay attention, but I did survive solo tanking Horridon and Bat tanking on Tortos with my shitty gear and no stamina trinkets.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ement/advanced (Yes, lucky me with 1st kill and Horridon trinket :P)

Unfortunately, no logs are kept from alt raids, as people just don't really care that much, but I do my best to time ShotR with big boss abilities(Horridon Puncture, Tortos Snap etc.). Also SS is up all the time, I rather delay Judge/CS than have 1 sec of SS down.

So, in terms of survivability, what would be the best way to go? I am currently stacking haste with Hit and Hard-Exp cap as do pretty much all Paladins in 10m at least. However, should I drop Haste to the first soft cap(SS extra tick, was around 5.6k haste?) and go for Mastery after that or instead use Stamina gems to boost my health a little?

Thanks

Ps. not sure if worth mentioning, I tank with either a Warrior or Monk and healers are Holy Priest + Resto Druid and we 2 heal everything.

[Deleted]

just keep it as it is, never go mastery, go stamina rather than mastery, but haste provides nice dps (which is needed in 10man, moreso than in 25m)

[Deleted]

There are no "real" soft caps for haste as your SS should not drop which makes all soft caps irrelevant.

As for survivability there is no easy answer, it depends on the fight. Some fights favor haste, some mastery, some stamina. There is not 1 single answer.

Generally speaking for survivability I found mastery>haste>stamina, but I still prioritise haste>>>>>>mastery>stamina, since survivaiblity is not really an issue, you want the extra dps from haste.

You should have no problem tanking 12/12 with your gear. I only had 15k more HP than you when I first solo tanked Tortos in normal. That is the only time that I used 1 stamina trinket + stamina flask (usually 2 haste trinekts + haste elixir and armor elixir.
Of course solo tanked the other bosses as well there (Council, Durumu, Qon, Twins, Lei-Shen) but Tortos was the "hardest" one in the terms of gear check. It was the only one I actually felt like if I messed up I would die quite fast. Once you got gear Tortos becomes very easy but when you are in 500~ ilvl it is not.

So with your gear you should be able to really tank anything in there.

My tip to you would be to stack hit>haste>expertise>mastery>stamina>crit keeping one stamina trinket in your bags if there is a fight where you feel you need the extra health.
Also, just work on timing your SotRs well and mashing your buttons faster. The most common "fault" protadins do that ask for help is that they are not mashing their rotation fast enough, which leads to lower HPS through fewer SoI procs and fewer HoPo which leads to lower SotR uptime.
It sounds silly but without seeing logs, the biggest improvement you can do is probably mashing your buttons faster. It is more important mashing them faster than mashing them correctly imo. As long as you hit your SotR correctly of course.

[Tehterokkar]

I do mash buttons fast enough, my main is a Hunter after all so button smashing is nothing new or hard. I do currently have the heroic dungeon Stamina trinket, I will have to see if I can adjust my reforgings so that I can leave Horridon trinket un-reforged.

Also the fights I was getting wrecked up were Durumu and Ji-kun.

[Deleted]

Ji-Kun in normal deals almost non-existant damage unless you are soaking more pools than you can handle or you dont time SotR with the talon rakes. Just make sure you dont soak pools while tanking and you should be fine.

Same goes for durumu pretty much, SotR on every hard stare, reset stacks at 6-7 if you are solo tanking and chain CDs in the light spectrum phase.

What I would do with your gear:


Enchant shoulders
Dodge -> Haste on glove reforge
Remove trinket reforge
Replace all gems in chest and legs to 320 haste gems
Dodge -> haste on belt reforge

Personally I value crit over mastery, so I would have done mastery->haste on your shoulders but you should probably do crit->haste as you are still undergeared.

Your current trinket reforges looks kinda funny.

Trinket 1: 586 haste -> 586 expertise
Trinket 2: 586 expertise -> 586 haste

[Tehterokkar]

Ji-Kun in normal deals almost non-existant damage unless you are soaking more pools than you can handle or you dont time SotR with the talon rakes. Just make sure you dont soak pools while tanking and you should be fine.

Same goes for durumu pretty much, SotR on every hard stare, reset stacks at 6-7 if you are solo tanking and chain CDs in the light spectrum phase.

What I would do with your gear:


Enchant shoulders
Dodge -> Haste on glove reforge
Remove trinket reforge
Replace all gems in chest and legs to 320 haste gems
Dodge -> haste on belt reforge

Personally I value crit over mastery, so I would have done mastery->haste on your shoulders but you should probably do crit->haste as you are still undergeared.

Your current trinket reforges looks kinda funny.

Trinket 1: 586 haste -> 586 expertise
Trinket 2: 586 expertise -> 586 haste

Talon Rake without SotR is what happened :P, I died on Durumu right on pull because I didn't have a SotR ready for the first one, too used to being on DK just pulling and doing the 2 DS right off the bat that I can.

Chest gems were from when I was even lower geared and couldn't quite reach Exp hard cap without a few gems, so naturally I can start removing them as I get more gear and more stats to work with.

The Trinkets do indeed look funny , I use Reforgelite and sometimes I just cba actually watching the fuck it is doing(On my Shaman, it used to Reforge Spirit -> Hit ). Also I think I had enchanted my shoulders, but the enchant must still be in my bags I guess.

[Nairobi]

You're worrying far too much about hitting tha 15% expertise. Drop some of that down to ~10-11% and you'll be fine still and can pick up some additional haste. There is no tick-breakpoints that matter for haste; SS DOES gain an extra tick at 10/30/50%, but between those values, it still scales linearly. Literally, just pile it on.

Don't worry about using subpar gems to get shitty socket bonuses (like the 120 parry in chest, lol); better off to just put in straight haste. I only went for bonuses of STA/STR, but since ~530ish just went straight haste instead. STR is nice, but it's a bit of a drop in the ocean when you're swimming in Veng.

Enchant bracers (mastery, IMO) and shoulders (dodge/stam, IMO).

Fix some silly reforges (trinkets, lol). Aim for Hit > Haste > Exp (7.5%+) > Mast > everything else at your gear level.

Nothing should ever 1-shot you unless you failed at ShotR coverage. We can't determine that without logs, but I'd wager that's what happened. Our AM is a LOT more "active" and timing-based than Monks or even BDK (which you came from). It's easy, at first, to mis-time it either too early (remember, boss mod timers usually show cooldowns, not actual cast times) or too late, leaving you quite squishy.

Again, logs are a big thing, but you should also consider having the priest go Disc, since Holy is pretty much awful at everything except maybe HC Tortos in 10m. Not having a disc (or worse, having a priest who is NOT a disc) is making your life in 10m MUCH harder.

- - - Updated - - -

JiKun is one of those that can kill you even if you play well, if you're not watching. ShotR covering a TR is great, but you can die to the DOT stack afterwards if you're low/not topped going in, or have a high stack. I recommend HoPur for that fight (works on debuff AND pools!), and a disc priest HoPur is a huge part of our survival when undergeared on a few fights, like JiKun, Primo and Qon. For everything else, UbS is superior (unless you count Clemency for specific strats on HC Council).

[Deleted]

JiKun is one of those that can kill you even if you play well, if you're not watching. ShotR covering a TR is great, but you can die to the DOT stack afterwards if you're low/not topped going in, or have a high stack. I recommend HoPur for that fight (works on debuff AND pools!), and a disc priest HoPur is a huge part of our survival when undergeared on a few fights, like JiKun, Primo and Qon. For everything else, UbS is superior (unless you count Clemency for specific strats on HC Council).

I dont really think you can die on Ji-Kun normal from the DoT, it barely tickles (unless you take more than 2 stacks of talon rake).

[Tarazet]

As it turns out, I successfully tanked Ji'kun, Durumu and Primordius on my low geared Paladin in an alt run as well, this week. The difference is that our opinion of 'low geared' is a little different; my equipped ilvl was 478 at the time. My current sword, hands, belt, and both trinkets were all acquired after that kill. I had blue items in all those slots on Sunday (plus the Darkmoon stam trinket, which I will swap back in again this weekend). Dark Animus trash was no problem either. We tried Dark Animus himself, but our other tank was having problems surviving the mini-golems, so I switched to my geared Druid just to take the stress off of the group.

Our logger switched back to his main after this wipe and forgot to continue logging, but you can see in my character sheet that we did get the kills (though we subbed out some toons that were doing bad DPS).

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...owell/advanced
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-bf...?s=3654&e=4077

At this level of gear, the main concern is obviously living through things like Talon Rake and Serious Wound. That's why I stacked the hell out of Stamina and hard-capped Hit/Exp before adding any Haste at all. My DPS was terrible, of course, but the healers had very little trouble with me. I took less damage than my Druid did last week on our Dududu farm kill, and did about the same amount of self-healing - even with nearly a full 50 ilvl difference in gear.

Besides Sacred Shield, of course (and be sure to refresh it with high Vengeance, whenever a GCD is available), the thing that helped me the most was taking Holy Avenger. Since my damage is equally bad with or without it, I just save it for when I'm most vulnerable and can benefit from chaining multiple SotR buffs together. It's really fantastic when it comes to healer-pressure moments. If I think I could be at imminent risk of death, I use Ardent Defender as first priority, and Lay on Hands/Divine Shield only if that's on cooldown.

[Nairobi]

I dont really think you can die on Ji-Kun normal from the DoT, it barely tickles (unless you take more than 2 stacks of talon rake).

I've seen it happen to good/decent players when you have a shit-storm of timing. TR #2 comes in when you're ~75-95% topped, takes you to ~30-40%; you've got 5-10 stacks of the debuff ticking pretty quick. Next melee can be threatening/fatal if your healers don't top you, which is a possibility due to flying and/or pools. Speaking of pools, I've also seen a gib (on our monk) from a TR+DOT followed by a pool spawn (since they tick before visible).

Gotta factor in that people have different reaction times, meaning that what is not problematic to one healer/tank is potentially fatal to another. 7-8 stacks of the DOT is not inconsequential, and with our low avoidance, it's not uncommon either.

[trystero]

As it turns out, I successfully tanked Ji'kun, Durumu and Primordius on my low geared Paladin in an alt run as well, this week. The difference is that our opinion of 'low geared' is a little different; my equipped ilvl was 478 at the time. My current sword, hands, belt, and both trinkets were all acquired after that kill. I had blue items in all those slots on Sunday (plus the Darkmoon stam trinket, which I will swap back in again this weekend). Dark Animus trash was no problem either. We tried Dark Animus himself, but our other tank was having problems surviving the mini-golems, so I switched to my geared Druid just to take the stress off of the group.

Our logger switched back to his main after this wipe and forgot to continue logging, but you can see in my character sheet that we did get the kills (though we subbed out some toons that were doing bad DPS).

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...owell/advanced
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-bf...?s=3654&e=4077

At this level of gear, the main concern is obviously living through things like Talon Rake and Serious Wound. That's why I stacked the hell out of Stamina and hard-capped Hit/Exp before adding any Haste at all. My DPS was terrible, of course, but the healers had very little trouble with me. I took less damage than my Druid did last week on our Dududu farm kill, and did about the same amount of self-healing - even with nearly a full 50 ilvl difference in gear.

Besides Sacred Shield, of course (and be sure to refresh it with high Vengeance, whenever a GCD is available), the thing that helped me the most was taking Holy Avenger. Since my damage is equally bad with or without it, I just save it for when I'm most vulnerable and can benefit from chaining multiple SotR buffs together. It's really fantastic when it comes to healer-pressure moments. If I think I could be at imminent risk of death, I use Ardent Defender as first priority, and Lay on Hands/Divine Shield only if that's on cooldown.

I wouldn't call him undergeared either, lol. Last week I tanked on my Guardian alt (488 at the time) 25m. Now that was fun.