Reply With QuoteOutside of meta requirements you should gem stam or dodge+stam as long as you at 540 defense.
Ive only just started to get a tanking set for my paladin, mostly from the new TOC instance with gems what is the best to go with ive been told strength but that sounds like something a dps would do..
any comments
Outside of meta requirements you should gem stam or dodge+stam as long as you at 540 defense.
Last edited by headknocker; 08-21-2009 at 07:00 AM. Reason: can't believe I actually use the word defense and cap in the same sentence
If you aren't higher than me in total damage done or total healing done, all comments will be /ignore'd
ok thanxjust getting bored healing >.<
540 defense for starters.
then Dodge and Stamina. def /stam gems are fine for socket bonuses, as pretty much you can always use more defense, for a while at least. [having over 540 is just fine]
never do anything for strength. ever. if you have threat issues its your talent build.
Ah Darthmullet, you haven't been reading Theck, have ya? Str is not so bad these days. Please be careful posting.Originally Posted by Darthmullet
-Anyways, get to 540 Defense. If you don't have it, don't even bother tanking, keep healing. Seriously. If you have issues getting defense cap, don't forget there are 3 big defense enchants, cloak/chest/shield
-If you have threat issues, work on expertise first (to 26 expertise skill), and then work on hit (to 264). If no issues with threat, stack stamina. Always ensure you meet your meta gem requirements (32 stam+2% armor), and always hit stamina socket bonuses. At your stage, if you need to ask for help, don't socket dodget yet, your probably havent hit expertise cap, gem red slots with expertise or expertise/stam until you hit it.
Get dcap, and gem stam and get a hybrid gem that gives defense / stam or dodge / stam for socket bonuses.
The World of Warcraft Armory is the best tank spec.
The must have glyphs or glyph of SoV and glyph of Divine Please, for the last one i reccommend glyph of AV or judgement.
"The spec" thats a big call and it will depend what he is doing. Sorry I really hate your spec lots of wasted points benediction, divine sacrafice for a start. In raid vindication will be overwritten and of little value. The glyph choices again SOV is the only one I agree is a somewhat must have.
Better discussion on talents is
View topic - 3.2 Specs: Summary of options - Maintankadin
The cooker cutter spec is
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
12 points for you to choose to play with.
Last edited by uglybbtoo; 08-20-2009 at 10:16 PM.
** Remember Warcraft players fail in directions you never thought possible.
None of those talents are a waste at all. Benediction + HoTC makes more threat than SotP studies showed this. Vindication will never be overwritten because what will override it? Also divine sacrifice is no waste by any stretch of the imagination and to say such is ridiculous. For example, when tanking adds on Auriaya once your adds are killed you have nothing to tank for the rest of the fight so a bubble plus DS = 40 percent less raid damage by your raid members for 12 seconds, which helps healers out a huge amount. Another example is when add tanking on Kolo, whenever the adds arent down maybe you should help the raid by reducing there damage taken? So next time, before you criticise a spec, make sure you know what you are talking about. And about the glyphs, that is 3 percent reduced dmg for the entire duration of a fight so lets look at that. Hodir is hitting you for 21-22k on 25 man. So assume he hits you 300 times in the fight, and 100 are dodged/parried and 100 are blocked.
So that means you get hit 200 times, 100 for 19k 100 for 22k
That makes 190k+220k=410k
So 3 percent damage reduction plus the 3 percent from BoS= 6 percent dmg reuct. So 410,000*.06= around 26k damage less, so rather than taking 436k damage you take 410k, that 26k damage doesnt sound like much but will for sure help you in the long run, especially on your healers mana.
So once again please dont criticise my posts if your opinion isnt helping the guy who asked for assistance.
You have given a situational fight "For example, when tanking adds on Auriaya" he is starting out tanking hardly likely to be doing this.
I am not criticising you personally just there is no one spec it depends what he is doing and referred him to a better discussion.
I am not here to epeen just trying to help.
Vindication got changed so unless they changed it again I am not RL so don't manage that crap but last we discussed it from patch notes
* Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout.
The OP states he is starting out and doing TOC as example so such a heavy raid based spec may not work for him. You like you spec and think its great thats fine and if it works for you then great. Personally for my two cents I have 2 prot specs one based on heroics badge farming and one based on progression tanking but according to you I don't know what I am talking about so notworth discussing.
Edit: I should for completeness (and since I dont know anything) reference what my comments are based on and you may go argue your points with theck and the guys who did many hours of testing View topic - Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work) - Maintankadin
Last edited by uglybbtoo; 08-21-2009 at 12:38 AM.
** Remember Warcraft players fail in directions you never thought possible.
Oh wow~ guys! Guys asking for some advice.
Gemming rules at a very basic lvl!
1. if you aren't at 540 GET there!
2. Yellow socket-go with 16/20def or 8/10def&12/15 stam
3. Blue- STAM always stam
4. Red- (lots of options) NEVER gem parry as a general rule. Remember this is basic. Go with 8/10dodge 12/15stam or 8/10 agi 12/15 stam. (if you ever care or get good enough gear to hit the 1.88:1 Dodge vs. parry then gem parry)
Yes str is ok and will get better in 3.2.2. There are a ton of thoughts on build, my advice is do some reading, please. Hit the basic mitigation/avoidance stats then fill in w/what you feel is best. If you don't like that or you don't generate the threat you want change.
As for EXP vs. Hit debate hit is a WAY better stat than EXP for a pally. Yes its good but go for hit if you need a threat stat. With that said STR is still a better threat stat.
Threat stats go as follows~ Str>BV>Hit>Exp.
Hope this helps. Best of luck and enjoy tanking.
Divine Sacrifice is a filler talent, its that or Divinity x3, and divine sac is by far better.
Expertise for pally threat? you gotta be kidding me. I think your a warrior cuz i see you posting in warrior threads a lot, but your armory is down atm so i cant tell, this is a pally thread you know? need threat get yourself some str, str = ap = increases your dmg on pretty much every spell you use.
Expertise should never be socketed, simply because paladins wont have threat problem with the right spec, they dont need to gem for it.
gem Strength? thats less stam and avoidance = less survivability. = bad idea imo
Last edited by Darthmullet; 08-21-2009 at 11:56 AM.
DPS warriors have much better things to do than keep up demo shout for you, and you can't rely on having a pocket prot warrior to demo shout for you all the time.
A tank should strive to be self sufficient when it comes to damage reducing debuffs. For paladins, this means taking Judgments of the Just for the attack speed reduction, and taking Vindication for the AP reduction.
Benediction has no bearing on threat production, it is wasted talent points. I think you're referring to the Sotp VS. conviction/crusade builds, either one can be "best" depending on the mobs you're fighting, as crusade only double dips for certain types of mobs. Also, while there is a threat difference, it is actually quite small.
The chances to SoV made expertice better, but it's still not a stat any paladin should actively stack, much less gem for. Get the SoV Glyph which gives you 10 expertice skill, and get the rest from gear. Hit is still better than expertice for increasing threat, and has the side-benefit of helping taunts not miss.
Glyphs for a fresh pally tank should be SoV, RD, and DP. Drop the RD for something else once you get enough hit from gear.
Just wanted to echo a couple of points so that the direction you should take is clear!
You'd have to work hard to convince me that a protection paladin should not take Vindication. Fully talented demo shout is 1 extra ap reduction to stop it overwriting. Getting this from your DPS warrior requires 5 talent points to be invested and one gcd every 30 seconds. It costs you 2 talent points and is applied passively with pretty much 100% uptime on a fast weapon.
As a new tank, I would look to stamina primarily beyond the defense minimum. Feel free to use hybrid (def/stam for yellow and dodge/stam or agi/stam for red) gems to make socket bonuses.
Don't gem for threat ever... that said, if you absolutely must, str > hit. Don't go near an expertise gem.
Also note that such "1 extra ap reduction" is already 1 more than the mobs have, being useful exclusively to keep it from dropping because of vindication.
On avoidance: Defense rating and Dodge rating are heavily favored over Parry. Rare is the time where parry is more desirable(the other ratings have to be almost twice parry's for it to be better).
Threat: Strength is the best stat overall. Will be even better next patch.
Expertise has a little more value with the new SoV, but it's still low-priority in comparison to other tanks. Both hit and expertise should be sought more because of the precision and control than the higher output.
Personally, I avoid using stam gems on non-blue slots, as strength and defense *are* very desirable stats. That said the stam + (defense/strength) hybrids are good if you want the socket bonus. No socket bonus is genuinely useless.
Too many above have defaulted to NEVER gem parry, that used to be the case, nice to see someone mention there is no longer never gem parry, there is a point it passes dodge.........but for practical purposes its highly unlikely to come up with that combination.
Str isnt a priority to gem for, passively gear should give you enough unless you have huge threat issues.
what is the expertise cap?
There's two - the "soft cap" is the point at which your attacks cannot be dodged and this is the one most people aim for. The soft cap is 26 skill or 214 rating.
The "hard cap" is the point at which no attacks can be parried and this is 56 skill (460 rating), though attaining this with current gear would gimp the rest of your stats too much, generally speaking.
Melee DPS only need aim for the soft cap, as attacks from behind cannot be parried - since you're stuck with a boss' crotch in your face however, any expertise up to the hard cap will be a threat increase, although since many Paladin abilities cannot be parried I would advise against gemming for it and let it simply appear on your gear naturally. Of course always run Glyph of SoV for 10 "free" Expertise skill.
Str adds avoidance, albiet bad but it adds to block and w/3.2.2 coming out str will now scale touched by the light. So in essence gemming str and divinity (extra5%) heals he is losing no survibility and actually ahead of the curve 3.2.2.
Expertise:
DPS plot
Pretty much identical to the Hit graph, expertise loses effectiveness when you hit the soft and hard caps, and damage-increasing stats scale differently above and below those caps.
View topic - Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis (A Jonesy derivative work) - Maintankadin
Taken from Theck's threat lab as of 3.2 its a good read and show expertise is a good threat stat even for a pally but I WOULD NEVER GEM for it.
Bumpage for agreementfor the most part, you can do better than RD even at low hit levels. As for the rest...
I do prefer hit over expertise, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't gem for expertise if I need to (which I do). As I have posted earlier, I had to comment in the HALP forrum on a DK with 395 hit and not a lick of expertise, because it was all naturally in Ulduar level gear from conquest badges and BoE stuff without gemming/enchanting. And again, you skipped over the part that said If you have threat issues. Clearly you can be undercapped and not have threat issues as a few dodged ticks of vengeance or missed HotR are not a big deal. Warriors need to constantly contact mobs in lieu of Holy Damage DoT/Diseases/Bleeds, which is why they jack it up first over hit. Also, expertise is a quasi-defensive stat too, which some people forget.
SoV Glyph is dandy, but having only 10-15 expertise skill doesnt cut it some days. If you were in the 20s with the glyph, that's a different story
In my opinion, considering all aspects of tanking (Survival AND Threat), I value 10 expertise over 10 dodge when my gear is crawling with dodge and does not have any expertise. If my gear had a good deal of expertise, even if it was under cap, then of course, dodge may be better than expertise. To blindly say "Don't gem for expertise" is not a good approach.
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