Defence vs Stamina

[Morpheussa]

I just wanna know as a pally tank is it worth more to stack stamina and lose defence. My pally's defence rating is almost 570 and my Stamina is 40k plus unbuffed without losing any socket bonusses. some people tell me that i can lose the socket bonusses and rather slot stamina gems in. I'm not 100% sure that's a good idea, but if it's not a major to keep my def at 540 and rest goes to stamina ill do it. Pls gimme some advise!!

[Mert]

As a general rule for TotC, Effective Health is generally seen as more useful than avoidance stats for the simple reason that many of the hardest hits in there have some mechanic or other that means you cannot dodge the attack at all (Gormok's Impale, Dreadscale's Burning Bile, Icehowl's Stun/Knockback, Jaraxxus' Fel Fireball, the orbs on Twin Valks, Anub's Freeze, etc). However, I'm of the school of thought that +10 Defense is still more valuable than skipping a socket bonus to only gain +3 Stam, so I tend to match the more attractive bonuses anyway.

The Armory doesn't appear to be working properly and is only showing me a few bits of your gear so the following suggestions are based on a cache from wow-heroes. Therefore, apologies in advance if you've already addressed some of the things I mention.

Firstly, I would personally go back to +22 Defense on Chest and instead drop Titanweave on Cloak in favour of Mighty Armor. I've also never been a huge fan of Stam on Shield so would probably use Defense there also. From an iLevel point of view it just seems like you're making a poor tradeoff. While this does somewhat contradict what I said in my first paragraph, it will allow you to make some sacrifices in your gemming so that you're only going for the most attractive of the socket bonuses.

As a general rule of thumb, I'll only match socket bonuses of +9 Stam or higher - everything else I ignore in favour of plain +Stam. Where the socket bonus is attractive, I match with Shifting Dreadstone (10 Agi / 15 Stam; purple) in reds and Enduring Eye of Zul (10 Def / 15 Stam; green) in yellows. Agi coverts to Dodge remarkably well for a Paladin and has the benefit of adding some Armor and some threat. If you do decide to go with avoidance stats rather than Agi, your Parry gem is, point for point, less avoidance currently than the Dodge ones - Parry suffers harsher diminishing returns than Dodge right up until (character_sheet_dodge% - 10) / (character_sheet_parry% - 10) > 1.88. For you it's some way off that, so the Parry will come out as less avoidance than Dodge (and possibly even Agi).

So, to answer your question, you can put Stam in every socket but it's sometimes not worth the trade - +9 Stam bonuses or higher you may as well match because you're not missing out on much Stam by doing so. Any other stat, or bonuses of less than 9 Stam you may as well ignore in favour of Stam as current content largely tries to cut avoidance out of the equasion in its most difficult parts.

Hope that helps out a little. Good luck

[Mert]

Oooops, meant to comment on your spec but completely forgot. Your glyphs definitely need some work for starters - your two biggest mitigation glyphs are Seal of Vengeance (10 Expertise Skill increases your threat dramatically and reduces incoming damage from you being parried) and Divine Plea (3% damage reduction when DP is up) and you've taken neither. These two are pretty much mandatory for a Prot Paladin.

You've also taken Glyph of Consecration which is actually just plain bad for you as it messes up your rotation. Paladins use the "969" rotation which alternates spells you can cast every nine seconds (Consecration, Holy Shield, Judgements) with ones you can cast every six (Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous). By extending the cooldown of Consecration to ten seconds via the glyph you're actually giving yourself a threat loss. After SoV and DP, I'd go for either Judgement or Righteous Defense for boss tanking. I'd also drop your Minor Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom for Sense Undead for an extra 1% damage (therefore higher threat) against undead mobs which include Anub'arak and likely all of Icecrown Citadel when released.

As for your spec, you're missing a few fantastic talents from the Ret tree by investing so much in Prot. Drop Stoicism and Guardian's Fervor as they're mainly only useful in PvP situations. Drop to 1/2 Spiritual Attunement as you'll find that mana regen is fine as long as you have Blessing of Sanctuary and Divine Plea up at all times. Pick one of {3/5 Reckoning; 1/1 DS + 2/2 DG; 1/1 DS + 2/2 ImpHoJ}. Finally drop all of the points from Divinity as they'll almost always get lost to overheal - it's not a bad talent but very expensive for very little benefit. This should get you down to 53 points in Prot, leaving you 18 to invest in Ret.

From the Ret tree, you'll have one "spare" point that you can either put in 1/5 Benediction or 2/2 Improved Judgements (you only need 1/2 here to keep the 969 rotation going). Pick 3/3 Heart of the Crusader, 2/2 Vindication (reduces boss Attack Power, meaning you take a lot less damage), 2/2 Persuit of Justice (personal taste, but running faster can help with add pickup etc), 1/5 Conviction (slight extra threat) and 3/3 Crusade (3% additional damage/threat on everything and 6% on Demons, Undead, Humanoids and Beasts - ie. everything that's inside the Coliseum).

Here is a link to an example of a 0/53/18 Spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Hope this helps

[MudNova]

I would say, you dont NEED all those talents in ret if you dont have threat problems, because most of them what they do is; they increase your damage (threat)..

but if you dont have threat problems, then you shouldnt need more threat and get more tanking talents (like Divninity)... I know a lot of times it goes to overhealing, but its better than having more threat when you dont need it. atleast that's what i think...

[Mert]

The thing is, Vindication is definitely a survival talent rather than a threat one and a strong enough one that I'd recommend that anyone take it. In addition, Persuit of Justice exists for utility and can be a great help for progression content where you're not necessarily sure when/if you might have to move the boss or avoid something - it allows you that slight moment more hesitation which I personally find to be invaluable.

If you're going deep enough into Ret to pick up those two talents then I'd say you might as well invest in the tree sufficiently to get the threat talents too. Sure you may not be having major threat issues but for fights like Twin Val'kyr it does certainly come in handy.

[Aggathon]

I'm going to go ahead and provide the "raw stam view" just so you have someone from each side's opinion, and you can draw your own conclusions. I will say though since paladins have a higher natural EHP pool than warriors, at high gear levels they can easily get away with matching stam bonuses with avoidance gems.

But in my opinion in most fights the things that will kill tanks are things that are unavoidable, and thus you must be able to just take them to the face, be it impales, biles, stuns, freezing slash, etc. Therefore it is best to stack EHP (armor and stam) since those are the only things that can guarentee survival. Also for the most part healers can keep someone up through "normal damage" regardless of their avoidance since tanks get plenty from gear right now. A lot of people roll with gear with 2 +9 socket bonuses and 1 +12 socket bonus. Lets say they hit the +12 socket bonus (for meta), if they go for the +9 socket bonuses also they drop 12 stam for 10 defense and 10 dodge.

After buffs and depending on armor levels, that 12 stam is roughly 300EHP that goes towards you surviving a hit that can kill you versus an extremely small percentage of avoidance that doesn't contribute at all to preventing or surviving any of the damage that will be delt to you based on that special unavoidable attack capable of killing a tank.

So... that's my 2cp, however even at almost the exact same gear levels as our pally tank he has well over 4khp than me fully buffed so gemming some socket bonuses to pick up a slight avoidance gain isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I also have about 2.5k more armor than he does, so.... /shrug.

[Synapse]

Divinity is only useful when you're soloing Kara.

For as long as overhealing is considered "normal", divinity can be translated into "You get overhealed 5% more".

[Mert]

After buffs and depending on armor levels, that 12 stam is roughly 300EHP

I'm not sure your math is right here. Unmodified, 12 Stamina is 120 HP, however assuming Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise are maxed (and Kings is applied) this would give:

(120 x 1.145) + 10% = 151.14.

There aren't any other buffs that modify Stamina by a percentage so I don't think I'm missing anything here. Stam doesn't add armor or mitigation beyond simply increasing your health pool, so 12 Stam is worth 151 EHP, not the 300 quoted.

[Martie]

I'm not sure your math is right here. Unmodified, 12 Stamina is 120 HP, however assuming Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise are maxed (and Kings is applied) this would give:

(120 x 1.145) + 10% = 151.14.

There aren't any other buffs that modify Stamina by a percentage so I don't think I'm missing anything here. Stam doesn't add armor or mitigation beyond simply increasing your health pool, so 12 Stam is worth 151 EHP, not the 300 quoted.

EH is health points multiplied by 1/(damage% taken).

So for me, 12 stam would give me that 151 health. Then It'd be multiplied by 1/0.35 for armor damage reduction, and again by about 1/0.86 for my talent/skill damage reduction, so I'd end up with about 500 effective health for that 12 stamina.

[Haur]

EHP is not value of sta on something * buffs * talents, but is also connected to armor. You can look for posts with correct numbers here i will just give you quick example:

You have 10000 hp, and you have enough armor so you mitigate 50% of the hit (low but for sake of numbers), your effective health is 19999 (becouse you can take it and still survive with 1hp left).

When you increase your hp with 1000 hp your effective health goes to 21999.

With higher armor, your effective health goes even more. Of course this only works for melee attacks.

So with some 65% armor mitigation EHP should be some stamina * 2,5-3 like Aggathon said.

[Synapse]

Just be careful not to look at the EH's big numbers and think they're better, sometimes it's easy to forget that while 12 stam is 500 eh, many bosses easily hit well past 60k.

[Aggathon]

EH is health points multiplied by 1/(damage% taken).

So for me, 12 stam would give me that 151 health. Then It'd be multiplied by 1/0.35 for armor damage reduction, and again by about 1/0.86 for my talent/skill damage reduction, so I'd end up with about 500 effective health for that 12 stamina.

Thanks for doing the math for me Martie, I was just kinda doing napkin math in my head.