Paladin Tank 3.1 build suggestions.

[brillopad]

great post Erichilles. I will take the points, and work on my spec, I like the idea of crit over damage.
The main reason for reckoning was always soloing and killing mobs, just pure farming. I used it since lower levels, and I got used to it. I kind of figured it was not worth it, but it was something i always had.
I'm off to get my spec going...

thank you again!

[Gertiploiss]

Divine Gaurdian is kinda useless, so is Touched by the Light. I prefer Seals of the Pure (now that I actually can afford to use points in it)

[Klimpen]

Divine Gaurdian is kinda useless, so is Touched by the Light. I prefer Seals of the Pure (now that I actually can afford to use points in it)

I'd always take Touched by the Light over Seals of the Pure.

There's no comparison in usefulness. TbtL gives me ~900-1000 SP raidbuffed. That's a pretty huge threat gain.

To put in perspective. 900SP gives ~200 extra damage per Judgment and 70 extra damage to SoV. For SotP to give the same numbers, you'd have to be doing 1300 Judgment hits and 500 SoV ticks. Which just arn't realistic at the current gear levels, which it should be noted is what the 900 SP numbers are based upon. Also, TbtL also gives benefit to [nearly] all your other threat spells.

[Erichilles]

I'd always take Touched by the Light over Seals of the Pure.

There's no comparison in usefulness. TbtL gives me ~900-1000 SP raidbuffed. That's a pretty huge threat gain.

To put in perspective. 900SP gives ~200 extra damage per Judgment and 70 extra damage to SoV. For SotP to give the same numbers, you'd have to be doing 1300 Judgment hits and 500 SoV ticks. Which just arn't realistic at the current gear levels, which it should be noted is what the 900 SP numbers are based upon. Also, TbtL also gives benefit to [nearly] all your other threat spells.

Exactly, but more importantly (which i feel should be pointed out), consecration damage is GREATLY affected by spell power. With encounters like razorscale or add tanking on sarth 3d, where you're trying to hold a handful of adds with pretty much consecration alone, it really pays off.

[Akeber]

consecration damage scales very poorly with spell power.

Fixed.

However, Touched by the the light is still a 100% necessary tanking talent and you are gimping yourself by choosing to spend points on SoTP instead.

Divine guardian is VERY powerful, in certain situations, XT-002's tantrum is a great example. Just remember to bubble BEFORE you use divine guardian.

[Brocenblaed]

Reckoning has a 10% proc chance when you have 5/5 points in it. Not bad... but when you consider that it only proc's when the mob gets a clean hit on you (meaning full damage; no dodge/block/parry/miss will proc reckoning, it's when YOU ARE STRUCK) that chance becomes slim to none.

So you know, you are wrong, "Gives you a 10% chance after blocking or being hit by any damaging attack..." As of now I am actually trying this talent since I am usually running 57% (or more) block with Holy Shield up. So far it seems to proc just as often as the "must have" Redoubt and makes a nice combo. I am not a theory guy, so I would love to see someone else try out the talent as I think it might actually be a "must have" and stop people from dismissing me out of hand for trying a talent.

[Erichilles]

doesn't make the talent worthwhile. a few extra auto-attacks won't make a noticable difference in your threat generation, and if you use Vengeance, it won't help at all other than extra white damage (which in the grand scheme of a 10 or 25 man raid, doesn't contribute much if anything DPS-wise) because after 5 stacks you're not doing anything

I think it might actually be a "must have"

What do you gain from getting extra auto-attacks???? why should i go for an extra white swing when i could put 5 points in seals of the pure or to get down to conviction and get crit that affects all my abilities

"Gives you a 10% chance after blocking or being hit by any damaging attack..."

also, i don't know where you got this quote from, but i'm looking at the talent right now on blizzard's talent calculator and it reads

Gives you a 10% chance after being hit by any damaging attack that the next 4 weapon swings within 8 seconds will generate an additional attack

Not saying it doesn't proc on blocks, but the word blocking doesn't appear in there at all. and assuming a fairly geared tank has dodge+parry=40%, that means the proc rate is still down to 6%, and even lower the better gear you have.

[Awani]

Oh, Judging Wisdom isn't necessarily bad, it was SoW that folks were commenting on I believe. The pecking order is generally:
- Ret pally does light
- Prot pally does wisdom
- Holy pally does justice.

I'd have to disagree there, I think that the prot pally should be judging light not wisdom. Even though it's a small amount, healing aggro is still healing aggro, and it's more being generated than by judging wisdom. Aside from the fact that a prot pally has no mana problems, most melee classes benefit more from getting helaed by attacking than by gaining mana.

[Alent]

I'd have to disagree there, I think that the prot pally should be judging light not wisdom. Even though it's a small amount, healing aggro is still healing aggro, and it's more being generated than by judging wisdom. Aside from the fact that a prot pally has no mana problems, most melee classes benefit more from getting helaed by attacking than by gaining mana.

Blizzard "Fixed" JoL so that it generates no threat because prot pallies were pulling 20K TPS while effectively afk.

[Erichilles]

I'd have to disagree there, I think that the prot pally should be judging light not wisdom. Even though it's a small amount, healing aggro is still healing aggro, and it's more being generated than by judging wisdom. Aside from the fact that a prot pally has no mana problems, most melee classes benefit more from getting helaed by attacking than by gaining mana.

Same as Alent said. Raid damage in current content isn't going to just scratch your dpsers, it's going to make a notable dent in their health. Sure light will help your healers a bit, but it really doesn't make that big of a difference. Unless JoL would solo heal somebody to full in a few seconds, a healer would still have to throw a heal on them. In a 25 man raid , if you're unlucky enough to be the only paladin, judge wisdom, if not, you can have a ret pally, or even a holy pally judging light when he can

[Akeber]

The pecking order is generally:
- Ret pally does light
- Prot pally does wisdom
- Holy pally does justice.

If you don't have a ret pally, everyone moves up a tick (i.e. prot judges light). Its not bad if you just judge wisdom rather than light, however, it is wrong if two pally's judge the same thing, or the 'underpowered' pally spec judges the wrong thing.

I mostly agree with headknocker.

Ret's JoL is equallly, if not more, powerful as holy, but will have much better uptime. Prot's lower spellpower makes our JoL far weaker than that of holy or ret.

Before 3.1 I would have also said that holy should judge justice. However, now that the increased range from Enlightened Judgements no longer applies to Judgement of Justice, it may not be practical for the holy pally to get in range to judge justice. If this is the case, the holy can judge light as well.

Prot should judge wisdom, simply due to the fact that we will be keeping it up more than holy would.

[headknocker]

Without this devolving too much into a theory debate by four people that I think actually agree (me/Alent/Akeber/Erchilles), I'll clarify some of my stuff:

>> Blizzard "Fixed" JoL so that it generates no threat because prot pallies were pulling 20K TPS while effectively afk.

I believe that they fixed it so that the threat accrues to the person being healed rather than made it go away completely, but happy to be corrected. Either way, doesn't help the pally tank trying to hold aggro anymore (where we shouldn't have issues to begin with).

My JoL comments were actually based solely on strength of spell/uptime rather than tactical considerations that Akeber mentioned and I agree with. JoL scales to 0.18 SP + 0.18AP and a ret pally will spank a prot pally in that particular equation. Whether my memory of the coefficient is accurate, it is a balanced spell that scales equally well to both and thus will tend to favor ret/prot/holy in that order.

To give 3 quick examples (all totals are unbuffed):
- Sample (Cooperus) ret pally from my guild AP 3406, SP 1021 = 4427
- Alent (since Akeber and I both logged of in ret) AP 2542 SP 702 = 3244
- Seryphx (holy pally) AP 522 SP 2144 = 2666

So for anything that scales equally to SP/AP, you'll get that basic pecking order. JoW doesn't scale that way as its a flat percentage of base mana, but JoL does.

To add one more violent agreement, touched by the light is a substantial TPS/DPS boost for us. The scaling is basically:
1HWS>TbtL>Crusade>Conviction>SotP>Reckoning.

Anyone interested in the theorycraft behind that can check out Theck's definitive post on the subject at: Maintankadin • View topic - Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work)

[alvasalrey]

Personage dude you may be a noob but you gave me the best pointer ever "You see, Guarded by the Light was buffed to ensure a 100% uptime for Divine Plea, which virtually guaratees we'll never run out of mana." i had seen the glyph but i didnt see the buff to the talent awesome tip tyvm