Why have Prot palas not been nerfed?

[matthias9742]

Paladins don't take the most damage out of all the tanks if we are just looking at the bonuses you get from just being a tank. Stamina doesn't reduce damage, and the bonus armor and block from shields combined with the extra 5% from the paladin tank passive ends up being more. Now if you wanna get into TDR I don't know how the numbers would change but I would imagine tanks perform pretty equally. Though I have no idea why you would want to since its not total damage that kills tanks, its spike damage which paladins can reduce on demand more efficiently than every tank but monk (stagger is OP).

[klaps_05]

i think prot is fine except for sacred shield, i always giggle when i get 90k shiels, seems so broken no expert, just seems funny

[kaib]

whoever is argueing that prot paladins aren't overpowered right now should seriously jump off a bridge. and it quite obviously has nothing to do with survivability. lots of tanks in progression guilds start using dps gear also while progressing on half the encounters in T15.
tank survival is NOT the issue at all this tier. all tanks are more then fine in this department. bringing raid cooldowns like dmg reduction and hand of protection and essentially being 75% of a full healer is what's pushing things over the edge.

if you check raid comps for the guilds that seriously care about progression and pushing it (so top 50 or something), you'll see that in T14 every single guild had a disc priest (and in 25 men typically multple) and in T15 MOST of the early 10 men heroic kills in the healing heavy fights were done with a prot paladin and two disc priests. there's several animus heroic logs with 2-3 prot paladins.

now I don't really mind as there's always some class/mechanic better then the others. in every raiding tier it's beneficial to stack something, be it healer X or dps Y or tank Z. that's how the game works and I don't think it's possible to completely balance it.

but honestly, if you argue that prot paladins are fine as it is compared to other tanks, I hope the lobotomy stitches don't show too much.

[Deleted]

Touche, completely forgot about the shields. So the armor between dks and paladins is kinda similar. so it boils down vs the stamina and the damage reduction, which is kinda dead even.

Personally I consider paladins block to be a negliable amount as it is random, it is not something you control (unlike warriors shield block), but hey, if we drop to that level as to account for paladins block you need to account for dodge and parry aswell, which paladins are on the low end of due to preferring dps gear to a far greater extent than the other tanks.
However, I would completely ignore both block, dodge and parry as in actual tanking, they are random, far to random to be relied on. TDR means nothing.

But yeah, DKs are the shittiest tanks at the moment, no argument there, but there survival ability is not that far behind (or equal to) paladins.

---------- Post added 2013-05-07 at 08:49 AM ----------

That's because they made this teirs bosses much more about tank mechanics or positioning than they did about damage intake. Damage intake for a tank in this expansion should NEVER be a worry if:

1) they're properly geared for the content (which isn't exactly new. Relevant gear has always been important)
2) they use AM properly.

Personally I think this is a good thing, and is most likely why paladins seem strong. Since haste works so well for them, people see them doing a bunch of damage and healing (the majority of which is over-healing and self healing, but no one calls DKs op) and for some reason that means they have to be over powered.

Paladins and monks just happened to get the best serving of this, followed by Warriors, then sadly you get the clunky mechanics of death knight (which really hasn't changed since Cata) and druid.

Paladins seem to have just become the scapegoat for people that don't want to adapt to the new playstyle of tanks and want to just keep trying to play like it's cata and wonder why they go splat when they don't hit Shield block. Monks are arguably so much stronger than paladins that it's not even funny, but so few people play them that no one sees them, while EVERYONE plays a paladin.

Only things I can even argue are op on a paladin are Holy avenger (situational) and sacred shield (which why would you ever cry OP? They can put it on the other tank scaling off the PALADINs vengeance. You should be HAPPY that it's strong).

Well, checking world of logs shows that paladins are not doing the highest dps of all tanks, even in the Top100 logs, so do not really see the problem there. If paladins are as people say "cheesing and solo tanking every boss", shouldn't they be far higher than the other tanks? Aswell as mentioned a houndred times over, paladins raid healing is much weaker than say monks, yet nobody is complaining at monks. Monks damage is also higher than paladins, yet nobody is complaining at that, monks survivability is far higher than paladins, yet nobody is complaining at that.

You just have to look at some logs to see that paladins damage in-take is generally spikier than other tanks, due to their on/off nature. "Now im stron, now im not!". While their total damage in-take may be lower than some other tank classes, they take it burstier. I would rather take more damage but less bursty, that is easier for healers.

Paladins self heal is not really much stronger than say DKs. Also, druids are getting very very overlooked in this department aswell. Druids do a nice amount of self healing, but what people forget is
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=135288
which is very hard to track.
It does a non-trivial amount of damage reduction and is one very strong ability that gets overlooked over and over again. And you can't really track how much damage it reduces in comparison to other tank abilities.
One thing that favors paladins/druids/warriors over the dks and monks is that they can actively help the other tanks aswell through sacred shield, safe guard/intervene and tooth and claw.

[britishbubba]

-snipped-

That's my point. Paladins don't even really do the best at anything, and for some reason they're the only tank I ever hear anyone complain about. It's likely because so many people roll paladins for whatever reason, while no one has rolled monks (since at launch of mop they seemed pretty shitty since they relied on gear so much, and no one knew how to play them properly yet), while monks are better in pretty much every sense when compared to paladins.

I've never heard anyone make an arguement for paladins being OP except to say

1) They can BoP off mechanics and make the fight really easy! (forgetting the part that a holy paladin or a ret paladin in the raid allows you to do this regardless of your tank...
2) They raid heal too much! (most of which is overhealing on pretty much any fight that's not garalon. If you want insane raid healing, lol monk ox statue guard that scales off the damage the TANK is taking, not the person that has the shield on them.)
3) They take no damage! (so does any tank that's played properly tbh)

bringing raid cooldowns like dmg reduction and hand of protection

So the same things that holy paladins and rets bring? Warrior's rallying cry is arguably just as good unless we're talking %health mechanics or something.

[Viromand]

whoever is argueing that prot paladins aren't overpowered right now should seriously jump off a bridge. and it quite obviously has nothing to do with survivability. lots of tanks in progression guilds start using dps gear also while progressing on half the encounters in T15.
tank survival is NOT the issue at all this tier. all tanks are more then fine in this department. bringing raid cooldowns like dmg reduction and hand of protection and essentially being 75% of a full healer is what's pushing things over the edge.

if you check raid comps for the guilds that seriously care about progression and pushing it (so top 50 or something), you'll see that in T14 every single guild had a disc priest (and in 25 men typically multple) and in T15 MOST of the early 10 men heroic kills in the healing heavy fights were done with a prot paladin and two disc priests. there's several animus heroic logs with 2-3 prot paladins.

now I don't really mind as there's always some class/mechanic better then the others. in every raiding tier it's beneficial to stack something, be it healer X or dps Y or tank Z. that's how the game works and I don't think it's possible to completely balance it.

but honestly, if you argue that prot paladins are fine as it is compared to other tanks, I hope the lobotomy stitches don't show too much.

You say they are op and one sentences later you put them on par with other tanks in term of survivability. Other tanks do stong dps aswell. Tank survival is not an issue if both tanks are good.
The raidcooldown and hop is provided by any other pala aswell. Darkanimus 2 protapala in 10m was cause it was totaly broken the first weeks, and was fixed can now be tanked by any tank comp in 10m.
paladin is 75% of a healer, he has to absorb and heal himself to make up to the extra dmg he takes. You take more as a pala looking at logs comparing them even proves that. they just heal themselves and have a high scaling absorb.
Dont forget that BH is not a raidheal its a singletargetheal, which heals the lowest target each time you deal dmg. so on fights with stong aoe burst it does almost nothing. Lightshammer is just so strong if you stack, and it has already been said it scales too good with vengeance plus the low cooldown.

They are not OP they are just a bit better overall. Overpowered would be if you need a pala to kill everything. An equal geared pala makes the fight easier yes, but its not a free kill with a pala. And look at top guilds not all have a pala.

[Deleted]

But druids for sure do not need a buff, they are extremely strong right now. Remember me dieng on Ji-Kun normal during the first weeks, *cough* lets say I dced *cough*. Our druid took well over 10 stacks, I believe it was 13 that he took, he cant have had more than 505 ilvl at the time. Thats the thing, druids have (I believe) the strongest passive damage reduction, so they do not really need a strong AM because they are strong passively.

Druids are outright bad/squishy this tier. That their armor allows them take bit less damage from autoattack/regular hits is irrevelant, that kind of damage income difference so small that healers wont even notice bit of damage reduction druids possible have compared to other tanks. What matters is ability to take big special abilities and thats where druid are outright underpowered. Even when active mitigation is running druid dodge is only somewhere around 70+%, so lot of time active mitigation does simply nothing and full unmitigated damage hits tank. Not topped before this big hit? Dead druid. Too many stacks of debuff like Talon Rake and no cd's left? Dead druid. While other tanks in same situation just use their 100% reliable damage reducing active mitigation and easily survive without any problems.

Maybe there is one role where druid tanks are good this tier: offtanking for "proper" tank (means paladin/monk), druid taunting now and then to take some stacks but letting other tank do most of job. As druid can keep putting Tooth&Claw on boss to help main tank, and also druids do decent damage without vengeance afaik.

But then, why bring guardian when monk does everything better and uses same gear.

[Tsuna]

Wait why is this still even going on, hasn't blizz nerfed prot paladins via weakening Glyph of Battle Healer and capping vengeance? And honestly unless you're in a world first candidate guild why even go about comparing tanks. Even at the highest levels of skill you see all tank classes played, perhaps a few more than others (paladins and monks got slightly more popular than the others), but still all tanks are played. DREAM Paragon, the objectively best 10 man guild in the world has a Guardian Druid in spite of the fact that many people seem to be convinced that guardians are walking garbage.

The only thing imbalanced about paladins is definitely the Hand of Protection + Clemency combo, it's simply too strong, and that's not even a prot thing.

[Deleted]

DREAM Paragon, the objectively best 10 man guild in the world has a Guardian Druid in spite of the fact that many people seem to be convinced that guardians are walking garbage.

Maybe because Guardian druids are damn strong tanks?

And no, cappin vengeance was to fix a bug exploit happening at level 80, had nothing to do with current tanking.
Battle healer has not changed really, but battle healer has and never will be as god like as people make it out to be. I skip it for several fights, people really exaggerate how good it is (and how big the nerf was).

[Sevyvia]

Prot Paladins should be nerfed, yes, but they won't be. They're easily the most boring tank to play and the least mobile, and in return for being boring and immobile, whoever is in charge of their design apparently thinks they deserve to be the best.

[Viromand]

Even when active mitigation is running druid dodge is only somewhere around 70+%, so lot of time active mitigation does simply nothing and full unmitigated damage hits tank. Not topped before this big hit? Dead druid. Too many stacks of debuff like Talon Rake and no cd's left? Dead druid. While other tanks in same situation just use their 100% reliable damage reducing active mitigation and easily survive without any problems.

You do know that druids still have other stuff than SD. Not topped before a big hit? how about FR, 200k selfheal why should you use it. Too many stack of a debuff like talon rake and no cds left, you do know that every tank would die there. Talon rake how can you get too many stacks, you should never get more than three maybe 4. if not your tactic is wrong or something is wrong with tanks. And Armor does count on talon rake the only boss that ignores armor is snapping bite from tortos.

What you are saying is the same as i could do with any other tanks let me see. Not topped of before big hit pala dead. Only 2 HP and talon rake comes, dead pala. Oh you can tank 6 stacks of talon rake, and survive with 200k hp but have 12 stacks of infected talon ticking for 320k. dead pala. could use hop to get rid of them but had to use LoH to not die after last talon rake.

Bad tanks or badplay on one class doenst make the other op. you cant just leave out FR, why not use it to get topped of. Its like leaving out SotR or sacred shield from a pala. you cant just ignore parts of a tanks mechanic and say they are bad. Lets ignore the armor part. Doesnt matter that the much higher armor lets you take about 15-20% less dmg as other tank passively, lets just ignore it, cause they dont have strong AM. Druids dodge is too much RNG, so what about sacred shield, you cant control that.

and on the offtank part. a good offtank druid does alot of dmg. I dont think you know how much it really is. its way higher than any other tanks. if you hotw wrath for 45seconds, with bl at the start of a fight. that easily 250-300k dps during that time. plus incarnation after taunting, which is another 200 to 250k dps for 30seconds with a bit of vengeance. Plus the high dps while not having vengeance due to high crit and lmg.

not saying druids are stronger than pala, or even monks. Paladin is a 10 with monk beeing a 9 1/2. the rest 7-9. Most think its like paladins 10, monks 8. rest 2, which is so not true. utility is what makes a tank better or worse these days maybe even dps. but dmg taken all tanks are so close together, some take more but heal more some take less heal less.

[Wombus]

I play a BrM monk and I OT with a Prot Pala (11/12N ToT). I am a better/stronger tank than he is - but that's because he doesn't take a haste/mastery build (I know this is not optimal and while we want him to change hopefully he will see the error of his ways very soon.)

I honestly think part of the issue with Prot Pala strength is the interaction with SoTR and damage abilities that are relevant to tanks, think Talon-rakes and Triple punctures. SotR means that a prot pala takes significantly less damage (consistently) from these abilities than anyone else. On other fights I think they lose some of their strength. However the one thing paladins have that is an issue that none of the other plate tanks have - they get stronger the more DPS stats they have. Warriors and DKs don't gain survivability + DPS from DPS stats. The fact that they gain so much advantage out of haste means that it becomes that they smooth damage very well - have high damage output and high healing output (regardless of whether this is self or raid it's VERY strong). I think you'd see far less 'pala is OP' if haste didn't improve holy power generation - such that if they wanted to go for high damage/heals that'd be fine - but damage smoothing/reduction would be penalised for it.

-DK tanks have the highest healing (or should have) and this is because that is their mitigation strategy - it's reactive.
-Warriors have little to no self healing and should therefore expect to have some of the best active mitigation going - I don't think this is true, but they are probably the lowest sustained damage taken.
-I haven't really had any experience with a decent Druid tank so I won't comment.
-I think Monks are probably a little strong given gear scaling. I think in T16 monks will be the strongest tanks by far. Gear scaling for monks is very significant, they're tough to play when you're just getting into heroics/MSV raiding, but over 510 you get very strong. guard is a strong mini CD esp with vengeance, their self heals are good and stagger is an OP mechanic when your gear gets better (it gets exponentially better in fact at smoothing damage)

I wouldn't not play a monk tank. But if I was raid leading I'd damn well want a Prot Pala as my MT if i could get one - I have no doubt that in this tier particularly they are the best tanks, esp in 10man.

[Prokk]

Prot Paladins will never be nerfed. They are very overpowered in the hands of the right player. A player who knows the ins and outs of its class. Any tank class can be played at such a level that it is overpowered, granted some tank classes don't have the utility that Prot Paladins or Prot Warriors do. All types of tank classes are used in many high end heroic raiding guilds and are used by players who can play them to their maximum potential.

A Prot Warrior or Monk can do just as much dmg as a Prot Paladin. It's all about how you can use vengeance to your advantage. The healing, well, that's just the way SoI works. Swap to SoT and you will see the difference.

[Promdates]

Tank stuff.

This. It's been proven that all of the tank classes are 100% viable. It just depends on how you use their strengths and weaknesses to benefit the raid. Some tanks provide more raid utility than others. You can play a more offensive style tank (Paladin, Warrior, Monk) or a defensive style take (Druid/DK). Either way, if you are a good tank, you can/will extend that skill difference between you and a mediocre/average tank.

10N - Top 100 Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000
10N - All Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000

10H - Top 100 Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000
10H - All Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000

25N - Top 100 Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000
25N - All Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000

25H - Top 100 Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000
25H - All Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000

For Top 100, only on heroic does Prot Paladin beat out Brewmaster Monk. In fact, on All Parses, Prot Paladin doesn't beat Monk/Druid on anything other than 25H.

[NRL1515]

Prot Paladins will never be nerfed. They are very overpowered in the hands of the right player. A player who knows the ins and outs of its class. Any tank class can be played at such a level that it is overpowered, granted some tank classes don't have the utility that Prot Paladins or Prot Warriors do. All types of tank classes are used in many high end heroic raiding guilds and are used by players who can play them to their maximum potential.

You can say that about any tank class. The reason this isnt a 'Why have BrM Monks not been nerfed?' thread is because at this point in the expansion, most of the people who are making progress on their raid teams as a monk are very good players and know their class very well. Pallies (obviously) have been around longer and for the most part people know what to expect from them in terms of being a tank and what they bring to the raid group.

I play a BrM, and our OT is a pally only because I'm so strong with my monk that I can handle extra duties while not taking a shit ton of damage. Granted, our group is only 3/12 right now, but tanking isn't our issue. In fact, there have been some fights where I've flat out carried our entire group just due to my utility and damage output as well as not taking a lot of damage and popping CDs at the right time.

Could Pallies do the same thing? Of course, but I want to reiterate that all of the poorer played monks have either rerolled because it's too confusing to play, or they're just not in current content. Like someone said earlier, the big reason why we haven't seen OP Monk threads is because the visibility of Monk tanks is very low, and the results can be skewed because most of the progressed monks are played by people who know their class.

I think Paladins are fine where they are, but I'm enjoying the shit out of my monk right now before the nerfs come for us. Monks are SUPER strong.

[Promdates]

There are probably more Holy and Ret paladins than there are Prot. While there are a lot of terrible Protection Paladins, there are a decent number of good/great ones who are skewing the audience a bit. Any tank who knows their class, and how to optimize/maximize is going to shine compared to random joe blow who doesn't know to not gear for dodge/parry for paladins.

[Dreyen]

Wait why is this still even going on, hasn't blizz nerfed prot paladins via weakening Glyph of Battle Healer and capping vengeance? And honestly unless you're in a world first candidate guild why even go about comparing tanks. Even at the highest levels of skill you see all tank classes played, perhaps a few more than others (paladins and monks got slightly more popular than the others), but still all tanks are played. DREAM Paragon, the objectively best 10 man guild in the world has a Guardian Druid in spite of the fact that many people seem to be convinced that guardians are walking garbage.

The only thing imbalanced about paladins is definitely the Hand of Protection + Clemency combo, it's simply too strong, and that's not even a prot thing.

Nice quote about paragon having a guardian druid, but i read one of their interviews, the guardian druid was there only to soak up stacks and do dps, whenever he didnt need to soak some stacks tank, the paladin was tanking full-time. They used their druid as a dps machine and for tooth&claw procs.

[Prokk]

Pallies (obviously) have been around longer and for the most part people know what to expect from them in terms of being a tank and what they bring to the raid group.

If this was true, this thread would not have been started.

play a BrM, and our OT is a pally only because I'm so strong with my monk that I can handle extra duties while not taking a shit ton of damage. Granted, our group is only 3/12 right now

#bestmonkUSA right here

[Deleted]

It's not only that paladins are extremely good tanks, it's also their superior utility compared to other tanks.

[Deleted]

This. It's been proven that all of the tank classes are 100% viable. It just depends on how you use their strengths and weaknesses to benefit the raid. Some tanks provide more raid utility than others. You can play a more offensive style tank (Paladin, Warrior, Monk) or a defensive style take (Druid/DK). Either way, if you are a good tank, you can/will extend that skill difference between you and a mediocre/average tank.

10N - Top 100 Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000
10N - All Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000

10H - Top 100 Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000
10H - All Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000

25N - Top 100 Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000
25N - All Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000

25H - Top 100 Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000
25H - All Spec Score: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Spec_Scor...00011111000000

For Top 100, only on heroic does Prot Paladin beat out Brewmaster Monk. In fact, on All Parses, Prot Paladin doesn't beat Monk/Druid on anything other than 25H.

Howeveron if you scroll down you will see why paladins are topping top 100. They are the only class with a full sample size. You see that paladins have 100% sample size while the others only have about 80-90% samplesize which pushes paladins ahead. If the other tanks also had full sample size, they would probably be higher, as I was studying all the dps specs when ToT released and what I noticed from normal mode parses was that specs with non-full sample size got lower dps.

So those heroic top100 is not 100% accurate, the other links are more accurate.