[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Deleted]

But how many boss-fights are like that? How many boss fights actually have half a dozen adds wailing on the tank the whole time? How many times are you going to be able to go back and find some trash to pull on every boss pull? You can't just keep the last pull alive, the healers need to regen, you need to rez that numpty that died to a cleave on the last trash pack. I really don't see how this would be a viable setup at all. Fine to keep it in the realms of theory, but the last fight I can remember with a constant stream of multiple adds was Tortos. Before then Mel'jarak and perhaps anub'arak 25H (although you had to fully block their attacks because of the stacking buff so avoidance wouldn't work anyway)?


And yes, Dark Animus heroic is a PoS fight. One screw-up and you wipe.

Yeah, of course it is on a "what if" level, something worth keeping a second gear set for.
Not gonna be something you can and/or will do every fight, but it is something to keep in mind and having an extra gear set would not hurt since I figure there will be several possiblities for this in SoO. From what I heard SoO fights got a lot of adds.

However, look at ToT. There are a lot of fights where you can create those opportunities.

Jin-Rokh: ~Meh~ You can pull some of the trash here to the boss and keep them on you but this trash is not really that great.
Horridon: ~Meh~ Some of the mobs dont really do much so you can keep them alive on the tank, there is also the possibility of pulling the snake adds infront of horridon.
Council: ~Okay~ Other than that you have multiple bosses there are a lot of trash that is friendly enough to be pulled to the boss without causing harm
Tortos: ~Insane~ Bats. Bats. Bats.
Megaera: ~Insane~ Shale Stalkers, need I say more
Ji-Kun: Nothing I can think of
Durumu: Nothing I can think of
Primordius: ~Great~ Trash trash trash
Dark Animus: ~Great~ The boss already includes multiple adds
Iron Qon: ~Insane~ You can just pull two or three spider packs to the boss, they tend to die though so your raid needs to be careful with cleaves and shit
Twins: ~Insane~ Pull spiders from Iron Qon and profit
Lei-Shen: ~Great~ I always spawn adds intentionally from the bouncing bolts, those adds really does not do shit and just give tanks GC procs, with this change, just spawn 6-8 adds every transition and keep them on the tank.

The only fight that really inherantly had the AE element in ToT was Tortos and maybe Animus, but with some clever use of trash you can make absolutely insane use of it on atleast half the fights.

So looking at that, I would probably have used a standard gear set for
Jin-Rokh, Horridon, Council, Ji-Kun and Durumu
Maybe abusing avoidance on Jin, Hor and Counc for rankings but not for progress.

For Twins, Iron Qon and Prim I would probably also have used a standard gear set simply because you can pull enough small adds to get constant GC procs even without extra dodge or parry, and the adds hit for shit.

I would probably experiment on the other fights, going full avoidance on atleast Tortos and Megaera with all those adds.
For animus and LS I would probably have experimented between avoidance for GC procs and haste. On LS the adds does not really hit for much so probably haste build, avoidance build would have looked interesting for Animus.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Jin-Rokh: ~Meh~ You can pull some of the trash here to the boss and keep them on you but this trash is not really that great.

Jin'rohk trash randomly stuns people. If somebody gets randomly stunned when running away with the ball of death that will wipe the raid. Not a great idea. Being thrown stuns you and you'll get killed, wiping the raid. And that is if the threat drop doesn't make them run around killing squishies, and thus also wiping the raid.

Horridon: ~Meh~ Some of the mobs dont really do much so you can keep them alive on the tank, there is also the possibility of pulling the snake adds infront of horridon.

Snake trash stacks a poison debuff and dies within seconds. The small mobs that don't do anything randomly fixate on some other player and go hit them instead.

Council: ~Okay~ Other than that you have multiple bosses there are a lot of trash that is friendly enough to be pulled to the boss without causing harm

The trash will be dead within 30 seconds because you are already having to cleave in order to kill the boss.

Tortos: ~Insane~ Bats. Bats. Bats.

I'll give you this one.

Megaera: ~Insane~ Shale Stalkers, need I say more

They only have 5 million life, they'll be dead before the first, maybe the second breath.

Primordius: ~Great~ Trash trash trash

Yeah, trash that kills people when it dies. On a fight with dangerous AoE splash. Yeah...

Dark Animus: ~Great~ The boss already includes multiple adds

The adds at Dark Animus will rape you regardless of whether ShoR is up or not if they link. Each linked add will be hitting you for ~300k. Not viable.

Iron Qon: ~Insane~ You can just pull two or three spider packs to the boss, they tend to die though so your raid needs to be careful with cleaves and shit

On heroic: Will be dead at the very latest when you pull the three dogs + boss together and cleave them. They only have about 3 million life, and will likely be dead within seconds of the boss-fight starting.

Twins: ~Insane~ Pull spiders from Iron Qon and profit

You mean the ones that are already dead because you used them for Iron Qon?

Lei-Shen: ~Great~ I always spawn adds intentionally from the bouncing bolts, those adds really does not do shit and just give tanks GC procs, with this change, just spawn 6-8 adds every transition and keep them on the tank.

Unless they spawn on a different quadrant, in which case they'll kill your clothies before you can get to them.

How do you propose that people pre-pot when you are going straight from trash to boss with no drop of combat?

[Deleted]

You seem the presume that your raid is going to dps the trash that you pull. Okay so to clear things up.

Say you got 3 trash packs, each pack contains 6 mobs, 3 dangerous, 3 harmless ones, you kill the dangerous ones and move on, voila you got 9 harmless mobs on you.

This is how I did most fights when soloing WotLK content, bringing trash with me from boss after boss, only killing the dangerous trash, keeping the harmless ones alive. When I did all the keepers on Hardmode, I had trash on Hodir with me for Thorim, and brought all that trash with me to freya, then had the combined trash of freya+hodir+thorim with me on auriaya (saved her).

Like on the jin'rokh trash, kill the stunners etc, leave the rest alive.
Horridon snake trash: So tell your raid to hold their trigger fingers, nobody is forcing your raid to kill them

Still, I dont think Horridon and Jin trash are the best examples.

Council: Valid, you will cleave so the trash wont be alive for that long, still will give you a dps increase on one pull atleast, nice if you are going for rankings, maybe not for progress.
I mentioned that I would not use trash on Jin, Hor or Council for other reasons than rankings.

Megaera: They live for 4-6 heads for us with our warlock AE abusing them for embers (you should see the warlocks dps increase from it, it is insane).
If you were on progress simply tell your raid not to dps them, it is not that hard. Is your entire raid under gunpoint to kill trash? I dont even use consecration here (simply because there is no need with constant GC procs, got other fillers all the time).

Primordius: Again, why would your raid kill the trash? That is the whole point, keep it alive for vengeance and GC procs.

Dark Animus: Not rly, most strats involve taking 3 adds on heroic animus for tanks. Animus is not the best example still, but for the HC zerg strategy it is very valid if you can sit on vengeance cap + 100% sotr uptime for the entire fight.

Qon: Yeah, they will probably die when the dogs land, but then you had a hell of a benefit of them until that point and they will help you for some time during those dogs aswell.

Twins: If you have Qon on farm you simply dont use the spiders for Qon, then go back and grab them for twins.

Lei-Shen: We stick me solo in a quadrant ( 4-4-1-1 ), I simply spawn as mana as I want when I get my bolts. Not that hard and no harm for the rest of the raid. You should really try it


@Pre-Pot: The raid does not get in combat if you pull the trash, also, Salyin Battle-Banner allows them to pre-pot even if they got into combat.
If for some reason they dont get to pre-pot, the benefit of extra trash on the tanks far outweighs a pre-pot.

[Drummerboy]

How do you propose that people pre-pot when you are going straight from trash to boss with no drop of combat?

It's just one more way to guarantee that the tank does more dps than the dps. Tanks kill bosses. /sarcasm

[Promdates]

Can I rant a bit?
Dark Animus 25H is a stupidly retarded fight. Woops, one person died, you are screwed, gg, go next pull. We have only recently started working on it having killed H Primordius in like 4 pulls (stupidly easy fight), and I'm already hating it with all my passion.
I wish Blizz never ever designs such fights in the future.

We're in the same boat. Got to him one to two weeks ago, decided it was better to just extend and work on him full time so that we could get it down. Our raid night is like "Get boss to 50%... wipe 10 times in 20 seconds. Get boss to 30%, wipe 20 times within 40 seconds"

Terrible fight, can't wait for this to be over.

[Nillo]

Yeah, trash that kills people when it dies. On a fight with dangerous AoE splash. Yeah...

The big blobs aren't all that dangerous and are pretty much unkillable unless focused - although I still wouldn't try it on heroic considering how much damage is already going on.

Unless they spawn on a different quadrant, in which case they'll kill your clothies before you can get to them.

Just let them spawn on the tank sides. But then I'd never let more than 1-2 spawn on heroic anyway.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Unfortunately, a lot of your proposals are unusable in 25 man anyway :/

You have a warlock using spiders as a ember bank. Well, we have three warlocks, and the mobs don't get triple the health, they have a little less than double. You only have 2 or 3 melee dps that have incidental cleave, we have 8 or 9.

Also the heroic 25 strat (and 25 N for that matter) Animus strats do not call for a tank to be tanking more than one small golem at any one time (because they really, really hurt). And the zerg tactic used in 10 man is totally non-viable for 25 man (900 million damage in 2 minutes simply isn't going to happen, that is 400k dps from 19 damage dealers and tanks).

I also don't really see the benefit of running back to Iron Qon trash, pulling the spiders, avoiding any blobs you left up, to have the spiders there at Consorts. Especially as they're all going to die along with the shadow adds you reveal during P1 anyway. That's going to take you at least 3 minutes, and you'd be about 30 seconds into P2 if you had simply pulled the boss.

[Deleted]

Unfortunately, a lot of your proposals are unusable in 25 man anyway :/

That is a completely different matter though. I am speaking strictly from a 10 man pov. I feel for you 25 guilds

- - - Updated - - -

I also don't really see the benefit of running back to Iron Qon trash, pulling the spiders, avoiding any blobs you left up, to have the spiders there at Consorts. Especially as they're all going to die along with the shadow adds you reveal during P1 anyway. That's going to take you at least 3 minutes, and you'd be about 30 seconds into P2 if you had simply pulled the boss.

If you are progressing the boss it is a huge dps increase, especially in a 10 man, for almost no effort. I see no reason for the spiders to die because you are revealing the adds. You can keep the spiders with you the entire fight and it would boost the tanks dps and survivability by a ton.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

That is a completely different matter though. I am speaking strictly from a 10 man pov. I feel for you 25 guilds

- - - Updated - - -



If you are progressing the boss it is a huge dps increase, especially in a 10 man, for almost no effort. I see no reason for the spiders to die because you are revealing the adds. You can keep the spiders with you the entire fight and it would boost the tanks dps and survivability by a ton.

If you are progressing Consorts heroic then you'll only get one attempt with the spiders as they will die when you cleave the adds at the end of P1 (you don't have time to single-target them). And they won't respawn.

[Deleted]

If you are progressing Consorts heroic then you'll only get one attempt with the spiders as they will die when you cleave the adds at the end of P1 (you don't have time to single-target them). And they won't respawn.

There are enough spiders for multiple attempts though, but yes, they are limited. Simply use them when you got your strategy down and it is a huge benefit. If you are using two tanks though you could simply have the spider tank move them away at that time to keep them for the rest of the fight.

[Promdates]

This just shows that 10s need to scumbag trash packs to get high vengeance to do TONS OF DAMAGE, while 25H tanks just do nothing extraordinary. The best part of 25H Animus is being able to use CD's through the first anima ring, take 2 orbs and get 500k+ vengeance.

Also, we actually use the "tanks hold two" strat. We put 2 adds on both of our Massive tanks, and then at some point they link them together to get high vengeance and nuke the hard. I start on Animus and hold one of the small golems until the 3m mark when it gets siphoned. It's just getting past the first 30 seconds that can be the real bitch of the fight hah.

[Drummerboy]

In my 10s we don't need to scumbag trash packs to get kills. We kill bosses just fine even two tanking all fights (despite whether it's said to be needed or not). I'll admit tank dps ranking just isn't that important to me and that may make me a bad tank according to some of you.

[Deleted]

someone's shoulder has cut potato product strewn all over it

[Deleted]

In my 10s we don't need to scumbag trash packs to get kills. We kill bosses just fine even two tanking all fights (despite whether it's said to be needed or not). I'll admit tank dps ranking just isn't that important to me and that may make me a bad tank according to some of you.

We can kill some bosses just fine while unequipping gear or playing with troll talents/glyphs. That does not mean that we could have killed the bosses easier if we had equipped that gear.

Solo tanking a lot of the boss fights is utilizing your raid to its fullest potential. If you gimp yourself and still beat the bosses, good for you. You could probably have beaten them faster however with less wipes.

Rankings are irrelevant for all roles, however tank dps is not. A tank doing 100k more dps is just as important as a dps doing 100k extra dps. If you do not care about your dps at all when you are progressing bosses as a tank, then yes, you are a bad tank. That is a very douchy attitude towards your raid. You are not playing your character at its potential just because you dont care and expecting the rest of the raid to carry you.

I just cant understand people that still carry the attitude that tanks should not care about their dps.

[Drummerboy]

May be we have weak heals compared to your team. I don't know. All I know is sometimes I die to melee strikes with all CD's up after WoG's and LoH already used, not often but happens.

And once a boss is on farm why should I care how it dies anymore. I pulled my weight on progression and that's what mattered. And I'm not saying I don't care about my dps. I'm fairly sure though Blizzard doesn't plan any of these encounters with the thought that "I hope the tanks remember to pull the trash to the boss and no one dps's them down otherwise they will wipe".

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I just cant understand people that still carry the attitude that tanks should not care about their dps.

There is caring about your personal DPS, and then there is going out of your way to increase your personal dps. Maximize your damage output, yes. But, for example, I have never sat down for more vengeance and I would never have recommended doing that to anybody (before it got fixed).

[Deleted]

May be we have weak heals compared to your team. I don't know. All I know is sometimes I die to melee strikes with all CD's up after WoG's and LoH already used, not often but happens.

WOGing is rarely a good idea as tank - perhaps your gearing/"rotation"/cd usage strategy is off /shrug

And once a boss is on farm why should I care how it dies anymore. I pulled my weight on progression and that's what mattered. And I'm not saying I don't care about my dps.

idd - purely up to you and your raid team.

I'm fairly sure though Blizzard doesn't plan any of these encounters with the thought that "I hope the tanks remember to pull the trash to the boss and no one dps's them down otherwise they will wipe".

me too - im positive that that wont be the design intent....

[Drummerboy]

WOGing is rarely a good idea as tank - perhaps your gearing/"rotation"/cd usage strategy is off /shrug

The only time I WoG is when I get below 20% health. It happens from time to time (definitely not a lot), usually when my healer is spreading his love elsewhere. As long as I got 5 HP I'm one CS away from a Shield so whatever.

Unfortunately my team wouldn't be well-suited to single tank fights...........................................................

[pld]

In my 10s we don't need to scumbag trash packs to get kills. We kill bosses just fine even two tanking all fights (despite whether it's said to be needed or not). I'll admit tank dps ranking just isn't that important to me and that may make me a bad tank according to some of you.

Using our guild's latest kill (yesterday):

Solo-tanking Durumu took us 3:15 minutes to kill.
I did 180k dps and my co-tank did 135k dps (in DPS spec). Had we both tanked, those numbers would be reduced by a couple thousand DPS thus making the fight longer.

Seeing how I was never in danger of dying (we solo-healed this...priest wanted to rank lol), I can't see why we wouldn't solo-tank this fight. Why shoot ourselves in the foot for the sake of tradition?

Using another example, I solo-tanked H IQ. This opened up a slot for an extra healer (which gives our raid extra survivability) and also pushed my dps into the 235k range. Considering the rest of our DPS was in the 120-180k range, my DPS effectively added an extra DPS slot for our raid.

Although I enjoy topping meters, I'm more concerned about my raid's survival and our progression. If I can help progression while topping meters, it's a win-win for me. If a tank has the capability to help their raid but chooses not to for some reason, I think THAT is "scumbag" tanking.

[Deleted]

There is caring about your personal DPS, and then there is going out of your way to increase your personal dps. Maximize your damage output, yes. But, for example, I have never sat down for more vengeance and I would never have recommended doing that to anybody (before it got fixed).

That was what I was trying to say with 'Rankings are irrelevant for all roles, however tank dps is not.'

Though they are not always mutually exclusive. For example pulling 1 shale spider to megaera in 10 man almost doubles your dps on megaera at 0 cost. Doing it during progress is something I would most certainly advice.

So yes, going completely out of your way is not something you should do while you are progessing the fight, but sometimes there are some ways that are not "intended" for fights to increase your dps that provide only benefits and almost no cost.

Using /sit is a great example, if done with caution and preparation, it gave you only benefits for no risk. Perfect example Lei-Shen after face soaking decapitate when solo tanking I get 180-220k vengeance in normal LS during progress. When I started using sitting afterwards (100% damgae taken and a shit ton of cds on me, didnt even hurt) I instead got 300k vengeance. That is 100k free vengeance at no cost and that was just in normal.