A guide to paladin tanking-Glyphs and Spec

[Kháelor]

Hi everyone, Im just going to make this guide to help young paladin tanks out there who are a bit unsure about how to spec or glyph to make better there playstyle.

Before you criticise my work on this guide please know that this is the conclusions based off of numerous paladins after extensive research and study over threat and damage taken. This current spec and and glyph make up IS the best in-game threat producer, and damage reducer combo in game right now.

First off I would like to start off with talents.

This armory link is the best build for threat and taking less damage:
The World of Warcraft Armory


Ok, to start off, many people ask why not seals of the pure? Studies show that the crit gained from conviction + heart of the crusader (8 percent crit in all) causes more threat than seal of the pure. If you think about it, it makes sense, an 8 percent chance to cause double damage to all attacks sounds much better than a 15 percent damage bonus to one attack.

Also, a common question is why not divinity? It helps my healers keep me up better! Studies also showed, that speccing into vindication causes you to need much less healing, thus making you need to be healed less and for not as high amounts=reduced damage taken>improved healing taken. You think that bosses have like 12k AP but really most bosses only have around 4-5k AP which equals about a 10-15 percent damage bonus reduction. It helps a bunch!

Alot of people dont like divine sacrifice either, but once you begin raiding more, you will find that once your specific tanking roll is over with, it helps your raid a bunch to toss a divine sacrifice up + a bubble= much less reduced damage for your raid for 12 seconds. A good example of a time to use this is when tanking Auriaya, if you are picking up the cats, once all the cats are dead you could use this to help your healers out on healing the raid during a sonic screech or other ability. It can basically be used any time that you have finished your specific tanking role for a particular boss fight.

Lastly, some people ask why only one point in improved judgement? This is because the best paladin threat rotation known as the 969 rotation hinges on judgement being a 9 second cooldown. (I will make a guide on rotations if this guide is popular)

Alright, now to do glyphs. There are two must have glyphs, the first glyph that is a must have is Glyph of Divine Please, -3% damage doesnt sound like much, but if you think about it, that 3 percent plus sanctuary plus talent reductions plus armor starts adding up and you get some major damage reduction, every bit helps. The second must have is glyph of seal of vegence. The 10 expertise granted by this glyph is just amazing, it helps your threat a huge amount, and you will find your self keeping aggro much easier with this glyph. For the third and final glyph you can really choose out of three options, Glyph of AS or judgement is great for threat, but if you are lacking a bit on hit rating glyph of righteous defense can be helpful.

The two minor glyphs you need are glyph of lay on hands for more heals on yourself in tight situations and glyph of sense undead for additional threat.

Thanks for reading this guide, and if this is popular I may make one or two more guides (if i did one would be on good stats to use, and the other would be on rotation.)

Once again thanks and I hope this helped.

Khaelor.

[Goldmonger]

Seems mostly like solid information with the exception of the talent build. If you're going to claim that this is the highest threat generating build then might I suggest taking at least one point out of Spiritual Attunement (5% really is enough, and I never run out of mana) and putting it towards Crusade which will increase your damage output. Not my actual build has only 1 pointin conviction (1% + crit) but it has +3% from Crusader and improved movement, less disarm from persuit of justice.

I cant say HOW effective the Persuit of Justice really is (although it's extremly useful), but I can definitly tell you that more damage versus more mana coming in from heals is more threat.

[Irat]

Hi Khaelor,

Gold Monger is right about the talent spec, take a look at some of Thecks work over at Maintankadin and he best threat spec against Undead, Demon or Humanoid is crusade. With the changes to SoV, SotP comes in first against mobs that arnt those types.

Also it might be worth including Glyph of HoSalv in your guide, although situations it is another cooldown is not something to disregard.

[Chasey]

Hi Khaelor,

Gold Monger is right about the talent spec, take a look at some of Thecks work over at Maintankadin and he best threat spec against Undead, Demon or Humanoid is crusade. With the changes to SoV, SotP comes in first against mobs that arnt those types.

Also it might be worth including Glyph of HoSalv in your guide, although situations it is another cooldown is not something to disregard.

As long as you go 5/5 in SotP and 5/5 in reckoning. Its not often in a utility build we only fight bosses that aren't 1 of the 3 for a long time. Also remember Tankadins do 200% damage w/a crit for physical and 150% for most spells. That is why the Crusade and Conviction build cause such threat.

I had a long discussion w/the tanking officer in our guild about SotP and not being as much threat as a conv/crusade build. His answer was...I don't want to take useless talents like PoJ and a few others in Ret. I will show him this write up, thanks for doing it.
But there are a ton of people still stuck in how they want to do thier build and I doubt we will ever change.

As for the OP, nice write up but may I make a suggestion. Make the write up as a FAQ (ie...
Q: I'm thinking of spec'n into SotP, is this the biggest threat build?
A: Then give you answer. )
To me the way you did it sounds like a "they" say type thing.

[Mert]

I believe Theck's MATLAB analysis of threat found SotP+Reckoning to be marginally higher TPS against "no-DUH" mobs (anything other than Demons, Undead, Humanoids or Beasts) but lower against "DUH" mobs. Since just about all of Crusaders' Coliseum is DUH, 3/3 Crusade is the higher threat build, as it is in most of Naxxramas and likely will be in Icecrown. However, if your guild is entirely focused solely on Ulduar, you will see a marginal threat increase in going into SotP.

I would argue, however, that Persuit of Justice and Vindication still make 0/53/18 the more attractive build even if you were doing Ulduar, but in a discussion purely about TPS, SotP can win out in certain circumstances.

[Irat]

His answer was...I don't want to take useless talents like PoJ and a few others in Ret.

PoJ isn’t a good example to use. Its to much of a personal taste talent and is by no means necessary to get deeper. I’m not sure what other useless talents he is referring too because everything else you would take in Ret are threat talents (apart from 1 spare point).

Skip it if you want an put the points into Vindication. If you can tell me with a straight face that Vindication is useless I will be impressed.

[uglybbtoo]

It's a good build but we have all been through it before its situational there is nothing wrong but there are probably 5 or 6 builds with 1-3 points shifted that would claim the same. Kháelor posted this before and my comment remains unchanged and it's not a personal attack but it's a big claim to say "this is the build".

I think most of Kháelor information is sound I do however have problem with this statement "Before you criticise my work on this guide please know that this is the conclusions based off of numerous paladins after extensive research and study over threat and damage taken. This current spec and and glyph make up IS the best in-game threat producer, and damage reducer combo in game right now."

Ok so can we see the extensive research results? Theck's work is out there for all to test and verify or disagree. Lore, Worldie did you guys consult on this? If you really did testing post the results for us to evaluate is all we are asking.

So my suggestion is why don't you pull it back to stuff that isn't in dispute with options on where to put the extra points pro's and con's you obviously know your stuff.

Irat, I can say with a straight face vindication is useless in a raid which you a reliable warrior to put up demo shout. That debuff is up before you judge on the target and affects all mobs within range so it is better by a long way. You can argue about being self sufficient etc and thats fine but the same arguements are being used to dismiss POJ etc.

Good discussion guys probably tune it a bit and send it to FAQ.

[Irat]

Irat, I can say with a straight face vindication is useless in a raid which you a reliable warrior to put up demo shout. That debuff is up before you judge on the target and affects all mobs within range so it is better by a long way. You can argue about being self sufficient etc and thats fine but the same arguements are being used to dismiss POJ etc.

Don’t know if I’m reading it differently but no one has said that POJ has anything to do with being self sufficient. My point was that Chasey’s tank leader shouldn’t have used POJ as his example because it isn’t a measurable talent and is personal choice. He would have been better off using Vindication.

Beside self sufficiency is not the only argument for Vindication any Pally Ret or Prot sacrifice less in both Talents and GCDs to keep Demo up. Granted its not Multi target and isn’t 100% uptime but its pretty damn close I think the worst uptime I have had on a boss fight is 99%.

[uglybbtoo]

KK understand your point now.

But yeah same self sufficient thing back the other way from the warriors they aren't going to leave it out of there builds unless it's at raid leaders instruction because they wont assume there is a pally in the raid to provide it.

I don't have vindication on my heroic build either because I am not worried about damage which is trivial I want max dps/tps. So I can say raid or not raid I dont want or like the talent but it's personal I can see some peeps may like it. Hmm if I was running 10 mans alot maybee I would.

[Irat]

Yeah very true,
Though in our 10 mans im always tanking beside the same warrior who has dropped demo from one of his specs and i dont have it Vinidcation in one of mine.

[uglybbtoo]

My other sort of side question is the 3pts in divine sacrafice and divine guardian alot of us run them in divinity they are sort of fillers and I have the view I might as well make myself easier to heal rather than absorbing raid damage on demand.

Other than the one ulduar fight that has mentioned can anyone who is spec'ed into it shed some light how often do you use it and how useful it is?

[Irat]

I use it basically any time I’m not being targeted. Once I got used to using it I started using it a lot, e.g. for Ulduar: XT, Razor Scale, IC (during phase3), Kolo, Thorim, Mim (Phase 2), Yoggi.

For a lot of them its not game changing but I figure any relief i can give the healers is a good thing. I'm just really not sold on Divinity to tell you the truth.

[uglybbtoo]

Yeah I agree I am not sold on divinity but you have to put the points somewhere to open the upper talents up.

How significant is the damage you absorb in those situations? I guess what I am getting at is we are always seeking to reduce healer numbers to sneak a dps in to make the kills faster and in some of those not tanking situations I wouldn't neccessarily have a healer covering me.

[Irat]

It is defiantly not something you want to blow without another cool down. In fact its a really bad idea to blow it until you have something else up. On Tantrum if I blow it before I have DS up I go from 42k hp to about 4 or 5k in that GCD alone.