Protadin and you; How to become an Ulduar-class tank in no time!

[Asrial]

Yes, another faq! BUT! This one is understandable! Nothing geeky here, seriously. I tried to hit the aspect of the regular player, that is just bored with getting redirected to elitistjerks by god-and-everybody.

Basics:

So, you wanna tank, eh buddy? Well, first you need to know what you wanna do!
There's several kinds of tanks, each for every purpose. Choose what suits you best.

Block tanking:
A tank, which focuses on blocking attacks, rather than avoiding them. Not suitable as a tank versus big-hitters, like Patchwerk. Though, they work as a formidable off-tank, easily capable of handling 10+ adds without breaking the smallest sweat!
Stats needed:
Block value, block rating, armor

Avoidance tanking:
This is kind of the opposite of a block tank. These tanks got a harder time with taking less damage on off-tanking multiple adds, though their high dodge and parry helps them taking little to no damage towards big bosses!
Stats needed:
Parry, dodge

Soak tanking:
This is the kind of tanking, that isn't worth it. It requires you ONLY stack as much stamina (and of course defence) as possible. Work the same way as a main or off-tank, though they need insane healing, hense the little to no population of this kind of tank.
Stats needed:
Armor, stamina

Resistance tanking:
This is too narrow a tanking area for me to cover. MOVING ON.

Threat tanking:
This is what i would like to call the tanks threat-throttle. In the start of the encounters, this tank will pull insane amounts of threat, where the main-tank then can take over your insane threat-pool, making him godly. After the work is done, you can either then control the adds, or help with maintaining threat.
Stats needed:
Expertise, hit and whatever your following job is going to be; off-tanking or main-tanking.

Universal stats:
Stamina, defence (IMPORTANT TO BE UNCRITABLE; 540! 540 and above is good. No crits means no spikey damage. No spikey damage means less stress on healers/dead tanks. )

Talents:

So you've chosen what kind of tanking you wanna try out? Good! Now you need to be properly specced! And before you spec into a 71-tree, lemme give you a cookie-cutter!
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin=000000000000000000000000000500513520310231133331230150100000000000000000000000&gl yph=000000000000&version=10128 (0/51/6)

Now, lemme explain some choices here:
1/2 improved judgement: Trust me, 2/2 is a waste, ill explain that later why.
1/2 Spiritual attunement: You dont need 2/2, you will anyway gain all the mana needed from seal and divine plea.
Maxed Divine sacrifice/guardian: Sometimes, you need to take a bunch of AoE damage. So does your raid. This plus a shield = saved raid.

What NOT to take:
Reckoning: Doesn't create that much threat. Waste of talent points.
Benediction: If you really need mana that much, you aren't tanking enough!
Seal of Command: Not the seal-of-choice, end of story.
Guardians favor/Stoicism: They are just plain bad. PvP only!
Anything healer-appealing: Stay away from, because you are not the healer... OR ARE YOU?! O_o

Recommended:
Pursuit of justice: Improved movement speed is always good. Especially in battles where you actually have to move.
Crusade: Actually, 5% more damage on all attacks is quite a lot of threat. Thats good. 10% on certain races is better. Do take.
Conviction: Crits creates threat. More crits=more threat.
Divinity: Actually got a fair trade in a raid, as more healed means more mana. And of course better survivability.

Glyphs:

Now you created your spec, right! Awesome! Now, you need to find a scribe!
Glyphs are good. Enhances your tanking by MARGINS!
No list of glyphs is truly true (Unless you ask the geeks, which aint the purpose of this guide!), so ill dish up with my personal preferences, which is good:

Major:
Divine plea: MAN-DA-TO-RY! Yes, the 3% reduced damage stacks, and since its active all the time, its awsum.
Hammer of the righteous: Good for off-tanking, as it increases targets hit. Imba for off-tanking!
Judgement: 10% more damage = 10% more threat. Good for main-tanks.
Righteous defence: Not really that good, as your regular hit rating affects the hits of these spells, making it obsolete, UNLESS you avoid hit at all courses... :
Seal of Vengeance: 10 expertise is really good! Less parries and dodges occuring on melee attacks = more threat.

Minor:
Lay on hands: 5 minutes reduced CD = a good emergency button maker.
Sense undead: IMO good on undeads, but thats it. 1% more threat. Yays.
The wise: 50% reduced cost on Seal of Wisdom. Good for getting mana fast and easy.

Enchants:

Wanna perform better? Get enchanted!
This is going to be short.
You are free here! If you need defence to get uncritable, then take defence! If you are already uncritable, then take something that increases agility, as it raises armor and dodge, both good stats. If you are below hitcap (Google it, cant remember it) or soft expertise-cap (26), then take something raising that.
Weapon enchants can be a little bit trickier tho. But i would bet my money on agility and lifeward if you are low on money, and blade ward if you are rich. Cheap enchants on weapons you are soon going to replace is legal.

Skills and tanking:

Now you are dressed to kill!
Okey, to make it simple: The fewer holes in your rotation, the more threat! I'd suggest starting with Hammer of the righteous, then do a seal, then do a shield of righteousness. If you notice, im introducing you to the secret behind sucess; the 696-rotation! It simply means start with that intro i showed you, and then use your brain to configure it. It simply means short cooldown, then long, then short, and so on. Short cooldowns is 7 and below, while long are 8 and above. If you do that, you should be doing max threat.

Next is seal of choice; Seal of Vengeance/Corruption. It simply does more damage, no matter how you put together a reckoning/Seal of Righteousness-combo. Plus the 10 expertise from the glyph is usefull!

Whenever you are offtanking, you can pop a mix of divine shield and divine sacrifice to take 40% of the raid damage, without you losing a single hp.
Divine protection is another cool feature around the paladin; A short-CD shieldwall! Just use it warrior-style, just more often! Good at tricky situations, like maexxna doing soft enrage + web wrap. 50% damage reduc there is a bliss. Also, notice it reduces ALL damage! So if you are main tanking, combine with divine sacrifice for a pretty nifty raid-damage reducer with no impact to your normal damage input!
If you got the instincts right, this can be a blast of a job!

Congratulations!

You just learned how to tank properly without any use of sick, complicated university-style math-glibberishes!

Now, go kill yoggy and make sensei proud.

[Paladoomed]

Hate to be that guy, but pretty much every Ulduar tank stacks as much stam as possible, while maintaining block cap, to increase survivability. Bosses hit very hard, so it's probably best not to leave it to RNG avoidance in order to survive. That would classify them as a "soak tank", which according to your guide is not good.

Edit: You Wowhead build link doesn't seem to be working, unless it's something wrong on my side.

After giving it a good read though, I think that it needs some work. Gives some good information, but quite a lot of misinformation in there as well.

[Nnmana]

So much wrong.

[Asrial]

Well, i've fixed the talent link.
And do tell the failures. It's pretty much what im using when i raid.

[Paladoomed]

Well, the cookie cutter beginning looks pretty good, except Judgements of the Just should be included. Slowing the bosses melee speed is very beneficial. On a talent side note, I wouldn't recommend picking up Divinity, as the added healing almost always equates to more overhealing, which doesn't help.
Anywho, you may also want to elaborate a little bit more on 96969, something like

6: Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness
9: Holy Shield, Consecration, Judgement

Also, I would change the part where you say that stam stacking isn't worth it.

Btw, the hit cap is 8% or 263 rating.

[Nnmana]

Hit cap is 263 rating.
Judgement Glyph doesn't provide a flat 10% TPS increase.
Soak tanks is the way to go.
Crusade provides 3/6%, not 5/10%.
Divinity doesn't really provide you with more mana, and it's a completely negligible talent.

[tremulant]

lol

[Offhand]

A really, really poorly thought out FAQ. Goes over the few sensible bits you gleamed from tankspot and is filled with misinformation and your own (wrong) personal opinions.

You can dislike EJ, that doesn;t stop them from having a well thought out guide to tanking.

[Skiball]

Stack as much stam as possible while maintaining very close to cap nat 102.4%, with as much of that as possible being from pure avoidance. That way you get the block cap yet are still gearing for avoidance for the big bosses. Combines the best aspects of block, avoidance, and soaking.

[dinzeH]

This is quite obviously a poorer version of the FAQ over at maintankadin, which I would recommend to any up and coming pally tanks over this.

You kinda give it away with the "MAN-DA-TORY" divine plea glyph, or saying how 1/2 Imp Judgements is beneficial and that you will "explain later", but somehow you never get around to it.

As for gemming/chanting, stacking stamina is the way to go. Chuck 24 stam into blue sockets, and 8 dodge/defence + 12 stam for red/yellow sockets if the socket bonus is worth getting. If not, 24 stam.

You gleam over an important aspect of pally tanking; the rotation. Paladoomed said it below, but not in what order. My preferred order is Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Judge (wisdom), Shield Slam, Consecrate, then hit whatever has cooled down. To make it even easier-mode, I bind these keys to 1,2,3,4,5, so after taunting the rotation is a cinch. I feel Holy Shield should be used first for mitigation.

The talent spec you linked takes me to the mmo-champ home page btw.

[Kierkegaard]

Did you even play a protadin??? Hell, yes, I created an account to post THIS!

[generalanders]

I would like to expand on a certain sentence to let you know that below 540 defense without some other way to prevent the crit will eventually mean a dead tank.

Also, you may not want to go solely on auto-pilot with the 969 rotation, because there are times when survivability comes before threat and you need to hit righteous shield to proc your libram or hit holy shield for the extra block chance.

This guide does sufficiently cover what a newbie tank needs to know before tanking (have 540 def and a separate set of gear for tanking) so he gets a chance to figure out other tricks for himself.

[monkeyone]

If u are in uludar god help us all

[Deleted]

I worry for your guild's progress if you were the main tank, jesus:|

[Koffie]

to the other posters: He atleast did try it and seems on some points nice. What I would recomend to the OP is just look at the remarks as there is in a few some nice points. I myself am only an offspec tank so I know a thing or two about tanking but not all. For example I know str is a very nice stat for a TPS or a blocking tank. Str gives blockrating and also more TPS with hitting the shield and with talents 1 str will become 1.1 str.
About a blocktank, I would not suggest going that way as mobs and bosses will hit real hard and with upcomming changes to deminish return and increase blockvalue etc lots will change.
For a tank parry is less then dodge (untill patch) as there is you need more parry rating to get up then dodge and deminish return on perry is lower :-[.
About defense, its a nice stat also as it gives dodge, parry, block and miss. I dont know the value of the deminish return on this stat if its high or low.

[Lightstrike]

Looks like he got a lot of guides and pasted them all together tbh..

It does have some good points in it, but these are points that even a naxx tank should know about..

The problem with this guide with regards to ulduar is simple.. it's more of a guide to naxx, hell it even mentions patchwerk as a hard hitter.. he is nothing compared to the likes of thorim or steelbreaker.

Also, block tanks have no place in ulduar at all... it's currently a broken mechanic.. so broken in fact that just buffing it to be acceptable will make it trivialize certain fights.. I can't actually think of a single point that you would want a block tank specifically in ulduar... maybe yogg saron add duty?

Most people stack stam to a sensible point and then work on avoidance.. I have around 33k unbuffed hp depending on what gear im wearing.. and 31% dodge, 20% parry raidbuffed. it puts me over 60% pure avoidance while staying unhittable, easily enough for ulduar.

I think that the advice given was too basic.. people want things spoonfed to them such as BiS gear lists and direct instructions to what gem they should put where..


I think the worst thing about this guide is the timing... everyone is looking to 3.2 now and ulduar is old news, this guide may have been useful to people 3 months ago, but now it seems to be a case of too little too late.

[iktankniet]

although i appreciate the effort, im not making this a sticky. there is a protection FAQ already. making another one is unnessesary

what you can do is post advices or changes for the sticky prot FAQ. things that arent said or not clear to you.

[Evereghalo]

yea,

i would have to agree that this a terrible post for what its tittle is called.

It uses terms that no one else uses which will cause confusion, it does not accuratlely portray what is need for each of the relative methods for tanking.

i.e. For BV tanking, its BV > Str > BR > Avoidance > Armor

For High Threat Tanking Hit > BV > Str > Expertise > Stamina

For Avoidance Tanking Dodge > Agility > Parry > Defense


More or less this is what your message should be

1. IF you are just starting ulduar, and everyone is in naxx 25 and uld 10 gear, you will WANT to stack as much stamina as possible otherwise your unprepared healers might not be ready for the big hits from some bosses when they start rolling out. This is very true if you are sitting below 33k health unbuffed.

2. Know what bosses drop gear, and how your end game gear is going to look, i.e. what you want to stack.

3. Once you start gettiing to 33k to 34k unbuffed then you can start gearing for something other than pure stam. However for some of the the end game bosses that hit like trucks there will be a need for high raw stamina so that you can surivie a few seconds for back to back hits if your healers are not ready. (this is especially true for progression when healers are learning to heal and getting a feel for the fights)

4. Cooldown management will be key, knowing when to use DP is a big part of MTing in the later bosses of ulduar, and getting a feel for when to use BoSalv (Glyphed) if you choose to.

5. As for stats,

Expertise- once you hit 26 and stay at 26 dont worry about it - Platinum Band of Auir is a great choice for this
Hit- Shoot for about 6% anything over and you approach the cap, and you are better served with avoidance
BV- Because it is still in the game, with the libram from General Vez and the 4pc (I recormmend the 4pc untill you get hard mode 25 man i.e. legs of endless void and freya gloves) you should get your BV to around 2200.
BR- If you stack enough avodance, and use Boreal Guard, and Tier 8.5 Shoulders your BR should be fine to stay at the block cap fully raid buffed for 25mans.

[Todyn]

I kind of chuckled when he wrote how avoiding crits means less burst, meaning less stress for your healers.

My friend, getting crit by a boss in ulduar will actually reduce your healer's stress, because you'll be dead

[Nnmana]

Funny how he never cared to reply after he saw his information was wrong :-D