Pally Weapon...

[Straten]

Ok ppl. im not sure what to expect with the new tank style as a pally, i use glady gavel now for threat gen. but in WotLK the new talent ability relies on weapon damage which as we all know spell weapons suck at... what style weapon will be the new tankadin weapon to use??
will a warrior tank weapon be the key or will it still be better off just using a new stronger mage style weapon?
and yes i understand stam adds to our spell damage now but again the stronger the weapon the more damage from the coeff you get out of the skill but it wont help the white hits where the mage weapon will help the white hits (seal active)

sometimes i hate change...

[Straten]

im just wondering if it will be better to get a weapon with spell damage or one slow with high damage and attack power. any help from a tester would be helpfull or just someone that can number crunch the threat differences

[psychosis - Earthern Ring]

this is really simple to be honest

paladin tanks no longer need to look for gear with +spl dmg on it
as attack power now also gives some +spl dmg.

thats the beauty of this patch for tankadins we can stack more stam

so a warrior wep will be just fine

[friggo]

guess you mean stamina now also gives spellpower

Touched by the Light Rank 3
Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 30% of your Stamina and increases the amount healed by your critical heals by 30%.

tho almost if not all our spells scale with both attackpower and spellpower, which leads to str being the new aggro stat for us since it gives you both ap and blovk value

[PalliesThrowStuff]

The answer is: You will need two weapons. If you're tanking so many mobs that you need Consecration, a spell damage weapon is best. For anything less, a melee weapon will be best. Personally, I'm glad that at least some itemization will still require thinking. Gearing up was already trivialized enough by the the nerf to crushing blows.

Well, you might not be realizing that 30% of Stamina converting into Spell Damage makes Spell Damage cheaper on the item budget, you'd get more spell damage by stacking stamina gear with this talent than you would without the talent and stacking spell damage gear.

I'm not sure we'll need the spell damage weapon once we pick up either 30% of stamina to spell power or Hammer of the Righteous, and certainly not after both.

[Varaben]

Most of the tank gear Ive seen (if not all) has strength, stamina, defense, +dodge/parry/block. This is the type of gear you will want. Since consecrate benefits from attack power and spell power (so attack power and stamina), I would always use a slow melee weapon. I dont think pallies will need to boost their spell damage with a caster weapon to be able to AoE tank.

[b37x]

im just wondering if it will be better to get a weapon with spell damage or one slow with high damage and attack power. any help from a tester would be helpfull or just someone that can number crunch the threat differences

Both.
1-3 Targets => AP weapon
4+ Targets => Spell damage

[Kaylus]

Both.
1-3 Targets => AP weapon
4+ Targets => Spell damage

Actually your not 100% correct here. SP weapons vs melee weapons of the same speed and ilvl show that we still do more TPS with the SP weapon if you use consecration w/ SoR. You can choose not to believe me but i did the math. Link below.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=13849.0

Without Consecration though, melee weapon would win only if you are using SoC/V.

[parody]

I think a lot of people are forgetting some of the things blizzard have said about spec changes. Blizz said they are going to make it possible for someone in ret gear take up healing and such without having to farm a whole new set. I see this as a way to help a ret paladin respec into prot without having to get that awesome prot weapon. It instantly gives him a way to do his job. Instead of running around with 3 sets of gear for holy/ret/prot you might need a set with spellpower and a set with strength, mix the 2 for the tanking set as needed. Thats how I see the new spec trees in regards to which weapon is the best. They've given us the chance to choose depending our current gear will benefit the most from. I think its a win-win situation.

[Vorpal]

OK well i think we have lost the picture here a bit. My opinion is the same as Warcraft's there is no way the new talent can solely replace the SP weapon adding that we won't be getting any SP at all from our armour at the expansion. On the other hand we have the new talent attack as well which is a bit tricky. You see yes our attacks, threat, scale with both AP and SP but plz don't tell me that there any Paladin here who while tanking has more AP than SP or can find a way to increase it on top of SP, strength is useless compared to pure block value which will be our most important aggro stat after we get the new shield attack spell, Shield of righteousness.

Since the new attack hits up to 3 targets then we should be using it with a warrior tanking weapon only when we are tanking less than 3 or 3 opponents. On Any other situation we should use the SP weapon cause yes we need both.

Personaly since i am used to conscrating i will keep my SP weapon all the time and just get a slower weapon to make a macro, something like

/equip x (The slow Warrior weapon)
/cast Hammer of Righteousness
/equip y ( The SP weapon)

Please reply

[Syzycks]

Alright... I registered to ask this question, actually. So I guess things just worked out :P

----------------------------------
The Burning Crusade 3.0
Atm, I have exactly 1200 stamina, and 429 spellpower.
With [touched by the light] I will be pushing 829 spellpower, unbuffed.
Is that a little overkill for paladin tanking in The Burning Crusade? I believe so!

Can I stand to lose some spellpower at the moment for a slower, harder hitting one-handed weapon?
Also appears to be the case.
Using just my own numbers, (Of course it will be different for everyone) if I replace my spellpower weapon for a melee-oriented one-hander,
I will fall to 604 spell damage, assuming the melee weapon is enchanted with +40 spell damage.
Now, again, paladin tanks are succesfully main tanking Black Temple -> Sunwell bosses with around this amount of spell damage.
I think the answer for 3.0 (New content patch) is simple.
Switch to the melee weapon.

------------------------------
Wrath of the Lich King

Here's where things kind of get hazy.
I understand that there will be virtually no more "Pally Tanking" gear. (e.g. stamina / defense / avoidance / spellpower)
And if I can push 1200 stamina unbuffed at level 70, I will assume that stamina levels of 1600 are in reach.
This amount of stamina would produce 533 spellpower.

Using the arena one-handed sword as an example, [Hammer of the Righteous] will be hitting for a base of 270-406.
Assuming that the ability scales with spellpower, and or attack power, this could be hitting for, I don't know, my estimate would be 500-800 holy damage.
On a 6 second cooldown, that, to me, seems to be a reasonable amount of TPS! (Assuming 1 holy damage = 1 threat. I don't remember that formula.)
Along with [Shield of the Righteous] in the rotation, I think a slow, hard hitting weapon would do just fine.
Perhaps we have some more variety, and both options are completely viable.

Of course, you have to take what I say with a grain of salt.
These are mainly hypothesized numbers.


Thoughts??
I do not believe there are any correct answers, because only time will tell which path leads to tanking Arthas.

[Rafy]

ok now after you all said your stupid toughts, go to wowhead,
and you will find a weapon with 1.6-1.8 speed and 490 spell power, and a weapon with 2.6 speed and 310+ spellpower.
Now guess what that means for the second weapon >

[Vorpal]

LOL whats the weapon's name?

[Rafy]

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=41384

and what do you know ! TADA !
sexy eh ? sorry was wrong. it's slow with a 490 spell power on it lol.
the 310 spell power version was a blue item


EDIT:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=37112
this is the lower lvl version

[Rafy]

now tell me why the hell do u need attack power ?

[Vorpal]

Um...? What do you mean by that?

[Rafy]

what do u mean ? you guys all giving your 2 cents about attack power stacking for tanking. I really don't know why would you need AP. There is not even 1 talent saying anything about AP.
And a paladin using a warrior weapon, is the dumbest thing I ever heard in my damn life man.
Just think with your little head: I have 506 spell power now. in WOTLK I will have 400-450 spell power from my stamina. And you all say that pallys won't need spell damage gear. You guys are dumb or just making yourself look pretty stupid ?
A mage or lock with an insane set of spell power in WOTLK will pull aggro from you in like 1 shot. In WOTLK you will need about 900+ spell power unbuffed if u wanna tank, otherwise go and cry in the corner.

[Vorpal]

I know i agree with ya go look my first post.

The thing about AP is that now all our spell denefit from both AP and SP just so you know i don't mean we will need AP lol:S

[Rafy]

I didn't said that YOU talked about AP. I just saw everyone is like "OMG WE NEED AP"
no... it's "OMG THOSE PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS"
You will just need your usual spell power. Only thing that's changed, is you will now stack stamina for MORE spell power, and since you need block value for the new talent, you can get pure block value or some strenght... Nothing else. Why is it so complicated ?

[Sartuk]

what do u mean ? you guys all giving your 2 cents about attack power stacking for tanking. I really don't know why would you need AP. There is not even 1 talent saying anything about AP.
And a paladin using a warrior weapon, is the dumbest thing I ever heard in my damn life man.
Just think with your little head: I have 506 spell power now. in WOTLK I will have 400-450 spell power from my stamina. And you all say that pallys won't need spell damage gear. You guys are dumb or just making yourself look pretty stupid ?
A mage or lock with an insane set of spell power in WOTLK will pull aggro from you in like 1 shot. In WOTLK you will need about 900+ spell power unbuffed if u wanna tank, otherwise go and cry in the corner.

You're obviously slightly behind in the times, Rafy.

With the exception of Holy Shield, almost every Paladin tanking ability now scales up in damage not only from Spell Power, but from Attack Power too (HotR scales with weapon damage, and our Shield Slam goes from Block Value, which is affected by Strength, which is going to be our main way of getting AP...so even those work somewhat.)

Blizzard has also said they want to consolidate gear so that as many classes as possible can use a single item that drops. With this change, the change to Block Value (it now only takes 2 str to add 1 block value, where currently it takes...uhhh...20-something, I think?), and the fact that Pally abilities now scale with AP, you're going to see most all Pally gear have +str/+sta/+def on it. And if you check any of the items that have been found in Wrath, well, that's exactly how most items have their points spread out (some will have a spattering of dodge, parry, or straight block value here and there.)

That said, yes, in true AoE situations, you'll probably want to fall back on a straight up spell damage weapon for pure threat (Trying to find anything close to the threat equivalent of 490 spell damage on a weapon in the form of str/AP for AoE situations is going to be nearly impossible at this point.) But when HotR is a viable tool (Bosses, 1-3 trash mobs, maybe even 4 or so trash mobs), you're definitely going to be wanting to be using a slow, hard hitting tanking weapon. Something around ~2.6 speed is pretty much considered ideal, and there's a *lot* of 1h'ers with that exact speed out there.

For what it's worth, I'd keep any spell damage weapons you have now for the introduction of Wrath, though. From what I've heard, you're certainly not gimping yourself in terms of tanking by using the S2 spell power mace up until you're in your mid-70's. 75 (when you get your shield slam-ish ability) seems to be about the "breaking point", where you'll really need to grab a slow 1h'er.

Edit: Holy god, multiple walls of text and a long, long post. Sorry, hope you don't mind reading through the entire thing!