[PheNom]

I have the mace from Hc MgT and shield from exalted reward from Sunwell

The World of Warcraft Armory

[Ballzini]

Ballzini <Dragons> Maiev

This is my guy, I like your suggestion about the Shield but I already spent the 15k honor on this one and I don't really wanna grind that out again for a while. I plan on getting the D3 from Botanica and a new Chest from Mechanar, other than that what do you think??

I MT'd kara last night and we made it all the way to maiden without much trouble, but she smashed our faces in, any ideas for a pally tank on maiden?

[PheNom]

If u can avoid her silence

other than that - shouldnt be that hard

[Ballzini]

I'm trying to figure out how to avoid her silence, cuz she continues casting it the whole time you're fighting her, i'm wondering if it can be done and if so how?

[PheNom]

Nope - you cant avoid it.

But you can help ur healers being not silences, by moving her out to them, then they can heal you again.

But doubt that should be a real problem for you. You just have to wait the silence out and hope noone over aggros her

[uglybbtoo]

Wind up the spell damage she doesn't hit hard its just the "holy fire" debuff that really does damage.

Shield pull, judge righteous and when she silences sit there spamming the keys like a retard like the rest of us. Your threat should be only down like 15-20%.

Really the fight is all about cleansing debuff and making sure the healers are on opposite side of the room so they can both get repentance at same time.

[Ballzini]

thanks i'm gonna try that tomorrow night, i'll let you know how it goes

[uglybbtoo]

On the shields

Sunward Crest - Item - World of Warcraft
Merciless Gladiator's Barrier - Item - World of Warcraft

Difference

855 armour
30 block
7 spell damage
-4 stam

The armour diff is huge if you are at 14K its like 7% diff in your armor or another way its the diff detween 14K and 15K armor go look at the EH calcs on that. It is probably more armor than you have on your cuffs or gloves ... putting it into perspective.

The two shields arent in the same league.

Even running wowhead analysis

Shields - Items - World of Warcraft

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34675 71.44
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=33313 81.31

If you dont want to grind the BG honour stay with your current shield wall.
Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall - Item - World of Warcraft 81.81

As I said there isn't much between the two merciless shields I just favour the spell damage one because I like my threat and I have enough stamina.

[uglybbtoo]

Source: Ballzini Ballzini <Dragons> Maiev This is my guy, I like your suggestion about the Shield but I already spent the 15k honor on this one and I don't really wanna grind that out again for a while. I plan on getting the D3 from Botanica and a new Chest from Mechanar, other than that what do you think?? I MT'd kara last night and we made it all the way to maiden without much trouble, but she smashed our faces in, any ideas for a pally tank on maiden?

This should really be in a gear check thread ...

Plz fix your spec
Maintankadin :: View topic - Popular Tankadin Specs

With your current gemming and chanting you wont be uncrushable when you get libram of repentance which is your first purchase of coarse. You also need a spell damage chant on that weapon.

70 Human Paladin is uncrushable

[Nèmisis]

So.....here is the question that has bothered me for some time. I understand that SoR produces threat faster....and more reliable threat than SoV.....however once a paladin tank's spell hit via the bit of extra stats that many gear choices give him gets you close to cap requirements......would any paladin tank in their right mind still want to use SoR over SoV?

From what i have seen in my own threat production....allthough the Seal of Vengence takes longer and has the risk of not getting procs for long enough for the debuff to wear off the mob or boss, it still seems to increase threat production on said creature by as much as 27% over SoR. The reasoning behind this is that you factor in the larger judgement (every 8 sec with talents).

I used the following formula to support my findings...and this is spec specific.

1. Assuming you are currently specced into imp SoR @my current spell damage(202) you should be seeing 100 holy damage with every strike on your opponent @1.6 sec intervals....this allows 5 applications before judging for 460 holy damage,(assumes specced for reduced judgement CD) the math looks like this.

100*5 + 460 = 960 holy damage over every 8 sec assuming no resists occur.

Now stacking SoV over that same period i had to find the average damage per 8 sec from the DoT by tracing it to a 2 min (120 sec divides evenly by 8 sec allowing the math to match with SoR comparisons) total time, then translating the damage to a per 8 sec number instead of a 3 sec tick timer. This is how that math adds up.

2. Assuming the same spec and spell damage the average damage per 8 sec from the DoT is 435. This is 65 less than the 500 via SoR. However, the judgement that follows is 791 holy damage. This is significantly higher than the 460 judgement from SoR.

435 + 791 = 1226 damage every 8 sec assuming no resists

The difference in damage between the 2 attack rotations should also grow in favor of SoV as your spell damage improves as well. Now im no genious and i am still fairly new to paladin tanking.....but an extra 266 holy damage(or 27.7%) seems to be the better route for tanking bosses.

Additionally from my perspective it also frees up invaluable points into your talent tree to NOT spec into imp SoR.

Am i wrong?

Curious on some thoughts by more experianced paladins.

[Fryswithat]

Your testing a pally with only 200 spell dmg. I'm in only T4~ gear and have 500spell dmg , and SoR scales better with spell dmg than SoV (I think).

[Nèmisis]

So basically this is where the confusion is coming from i guess.
We are assuming that we are fighting single target trash mobs instead of bosses. This is an incorrect assumption based on the whole idea of a "tank". Tanks are designed to take heavy damage from overly powered mobs or actual instance or raid BOSSES. With this in mind the whole idea of what seals to use against what mobs or bosses has to change.
In the mindset of fights with long durations, SoV should have better results no matter what the spell damage you currently have is. Even if we assume that SoR scales better with spell damage(apparently it scales with attack power and strength as well) than SoV does, with current gear available, this doesnt allow SoR to catch up to the potential of damage that SoV gives.
Now looking at it the other way, If we are fighting only smaller health pooled trash mobs or simply farming.....SoR is probably the best seal to use as it does not rely on applications to build threat and you can also judge it immediatly after sealing.

So, my question still stands.

Is SoR better for boss fights or is SoV?

I know my arguement has been in favor of SoV, but i have had better results with it than any attack rotation i have tried thus far. If you have an alternative attack rotation that you use, please list it so i can try it for effectiveness.

BTW after doing the mathematics behind 500 spell damage i still find more spell damage being applied by SoV than by SoR. Again this assumes long fights(90 sec or longer).

[Analasolar]

You have a good point there Nemisis but you must also understand that SOR does threat with every hit where SOV has a chance at threat for every hit. While yes SOV does generate more threat its an unreliable form of threat as it probably wont gen threat as you need it. Now what I have done on some bosses namely curator is I use SOR during his fight phase to build my threat but during his evo phase I switch to SOV for dps and threat. I do see your point, and your math is solid, but if anything I would say use SOR to get your initial threat then switch to SOV that way if you miss a hit of it you have enough threat to not worry. I would also suggest if you don't have it is imp judgement to lower its CD which will help keep your threat up there.

[uglybbtoo]

You also miss the ohh crap factor SOR is instant agro if you have it loaded what boss do you get to just stand there and dps .... none.

They all do stuff time stop, shatter, fear, teleport, knockback, summon adds ... something.

You want to either step up you agro after that or grab the add etc you need a guaranteed agro not a maybee it agros if you can keep it up. I can think of maybee curator as the only boss off the top of my head that I would prefer SOV over SOR because nothing weird is going to happen.

You make the statement "I know my arguement has been in favor of SoV, but i have had better results with it than any attack rotation i have tried thus far. If you have an alternative attack rotation that you use, please list it so i can try it for effectiveness."

What are you testing against a static target?

[Divinestorm]

Hi, I'am looking at this thread all the time, looking for news or anything interesting. And lately I stopped PVE with my tank, waiting for LK release, I stopped at ZA/TK. I would like to know if anyone have a good thread for LK Stats/Build on lvl 80 tanking, i already searched on the other categories and didn't found anything really complete .
Thanks to caien (the author of this great guide and thx for the answers.

[Nèmisis]

Ugglybbtoo, I repect your arguement about the "ohh crap factor" as you put it. However you seem to be misunderstanding the types of fights I am using my comparisons for. I have stated that SoR seems to be much more effective for fights lasting less than 90 seconds(1.5 min). That is not in question. The question that needed answering is about fights lasting longer than 90 seconds, and assuming you are the MAIN TANK, not an off tank. I have seen many guilds that can down curator in less than 2 mins(during the first evocation), and there are actually many fights that a MT will be standing in one spot(IE: Lurker below[SSC], Prince[kara], Archimonde[Hyjal], etc). In truth for MOST MT jobs it is best to keep the tank still or relatively still to help the tank remain focussed on reducing damage intake and threat generation. Nearly EVERY fight in the game, boss or not, will have some movement needed by the tank, that is a fact. I would only agree with your above statement as far as for fights that there is excessive movement in(IE:Alar[TK], High Astromancer Solarian[TK], etc).
As a result of most of the longer fights in the game NOT requiring the tank to have a large amount of movement while tanking, I need to know what the exact paladin attack rotation should be if you are a MT, and, for fights lasting longer than 90 seconds. I know most of this will be moot once WotLK comes out seeing as our builds will need to change dramatically to compensate for incoming new abilities and changes to current abilities, however, an exact attack rotation in the mean time would be very helpful for any up and coming paladin tank.

Currently i use the following attack rotation for trash:

Avenger's Shield, Holy Shield, Judge Seal of the Crusader, Seal of righteousness, Concecrate, Judge SoR and re-apply every 8 sec, Holy Shield, Etc.

This rotation is for trash ONLY under my current build(not with imp SoR) and is usually fast for threat production with limited resists(judgements only) or misses, parries, etc.

Currently i use the following attack rotation for bosses(assumes not an undead or demon boss):

Avenger's Shield, Holy Shield, Judge Seal of the Crusader, Seal of Vengeance, Concecrate, Judge SoV(assumes at least 1 application of the DoT), Holy Shield, Judge and re-apply SoV every 8 seconds

Avenging Wrath can be done at any point during this rotation but is usually done within the first 20 seconds of the boss fight so the CD will come back up once more during the fight for additional threat production.

Does this set of attack rotations seem normal?...
The answers from my guildies and most Ptanks I speak to use the same or a slight variation of this.

Please give me your feedback
Thank you.

[Analasolar]

Well I always use SOR in my rotation, but change to either judge crusader or wisdom if its a long fight or dps race for either full fights or what the boss phase calls for

[uglybbtoo]

I do understand where you are going now off the top off your head name the long BOSS fights you don't have to move and can actually just stand there and fight.

What I am saying is generally because of raid movement requirements and or your movement the sort of rotation you are trying to establish will seldom be used even if it is absolutely optiomal.

If I am in a threat sensitive fight I wear a threat set and amp my spell damage it is a survival fight I amp my avoidance and EH.

So its easier to carry a fairly universal excellent rotation and adjust gearing than worry about the "perfect rotation" that only works on the some bosses that don't you dont move on. For a "new tank" we are trying to simplify down what they have to learn.

You are obviously a very advanced tank so sure go ahead work some better rotations you will find the more advanced tanks also tweak there gear slightly from recommended and there spec ... but that comes with experience it's not for newbie tanks.

[Analasolar]

I see what you are talking about there about where you have to constantly move the boss like in gruul at times if a cave in happens or like the alar fight. Though you need to look at it like this. The SOR spell rotation is the easiest to learn on and a begginging tank wouldn't have nowhere near the gear to tank those high end bosses. And on your statement "What I am saying is generally because of raid movement requirements and or your movement the sort of rotation you are trying to establish will seldom be used even if it is absolutely optiomal." I want to know what fight your talking about that you have to move alot and can't get your rotation going as our rotation is based on our judgements which has a 10 yd range and then we take the mob to the spot to tank and sit there. Tell of this moving boss and I'll check thier tactics out and ask one of our higher instance tanks about it.

[uglybbtoo]

Okay lets go thru them:


Gruul - Silence, shatter cave ins ... continual interruptions
Mag - No movement but demon so exocism


Kara
Attunemen - undead - use exorcism
Maiden - continual silences
Moroes - undead use exorcism - gouge interrupts
Nightbane - undead use exorcism for threat
Curator - doesnt move perfect rotation would work
Ilhoof - demon use excorcism for threat
Aran - untankable
Netherspite - agro guaranteed by red beam
Prince - demon use exorcism for agro


SSC
Lurker - Knock backs and diving to avoid spouts and add phase
Tidewalker - Earthquake .. most likely you will be murloc add tank
Leo - You will be in a threat set hits like a girl move for whirlwinds
Fathom lord - Move him from his fire totems ... most likely you will be on hunter because of adds
Hydross - transitions from nature to frost side of platform adds to pick up
Vashj - Movement and adds

TK
VR - you will be in Threat set
Alar - continual movement to platforms
Solarian - Lots of phase changes and adds
Kael - many phases lots of movements

Hyjal
Rage - Continual movement for D&D, ice tombs
Anetheron - Demon use exorcism

I haven't MT'ed any from there up sorry.

As you can see on very few of the bosses if you are geared right is the exact spell rotation important and infact on alot using excorcism when it is up is far more important.

I am far more concerned about keeping holy shield up usually than worrying about using my judgement at the "perfect time" if I have a threat issue I would simply wind up spell damage.

Not trying to knock your theorycrafting and it may have merits if you can keep SOV on the target but that may be a big ask for some bosses. You are however also leaving out excorcism which is like our threat haxx on many bosses and far more important than SOV or SOR threat.