Intermittent Pally threat issues

[Gotankadin]

Hey all,
So this is kinda weird, Some days when I am tanking its like I am an electromagnet for threat. Other days its like im the fat chick at the prom, no love at all. And its not like Im badly geared, I know there is some room for improvement.

Here is my gear.

After doing a bunch of reading around tankspot and maintankadin forums I have gotten the whole 969 rotation thing down. Is RNG messing with me? Most of the time people have a hard time getting aggro off me (10/25 man TOC I will have to stop attacking and not use any abilities) though there are some days (like the other day on Saurfang) where I have had to use HoR and ShoR to get aggro onto me from the other tank. Is there something I should be stacking gemwise? or what?


Thanks!
Gotankadin

[Argorath]

I know exactly where you're coming from lol. On balance, I usually have no trouble with threat or keeping an eye on whats going on. Then again, every now and then I'll run a raid or even a heroic when I can't keep anything on me to save my life. I check through my buffs and watch my rotation carefully but still the problem persists and so it ends up that I just want to get out of the group as quickly as possible.

Your gear is fine and your gemming is fine as well so, in all honesty, you probably just have off days, lol like everyone else.

[Gotankadin]

It really is... Do other tanking classes have this same issue? Normally it's my raid leader telling me to relax a bit on the threat, cause I'm supposed to be the "off tank". then when I get into a H with the DPS all in the 4k gear scores is when I have the problems. I get called "the worst tank evar!" etc. Usually during times like that I'll just accept the deserter buff and go play my healy shaman...

[Hammerfists]

Drop Divinity or Divine Sac/Guardian and pick up Crusade in the ret tree. The threat boost will help you on burst as well as your dps will be thankful for having more dps room without getting their face punched in. Also you need atleast 1 point in Improved Judgements to make our 969 rotation fluid. Having 2 points in Spiritual Attunement and Benediction is wasteful you should have Divine Plea up 99% of the time you are tanking, drop one point from spiritual attunement and atleast 1 from benediction. Never drop glyph of Seal of Vengeance (you should drop hammer for taunt glyph if you are to make that switch in a raid). Why, because hard cap for expertise is 56 expertise (thats when mobs wont dodge your attacks).

Hope that helps let me know what you think or if you have any questions.

[Gotankadin]

[QUOTE=Hammerfists;358293]Drop Divinity or Divine Sac/Guardian and pick up Crusade in the ret tree. The threat boost will help you on burst as well as your dps will be thankful for having more dps room without getting their face punched in. Also you need atleast 1 point in Improved Judgements to make our 969 rotation fluid. Having 2 points in Spiritual Attunement and Benediction is wasteful you should have Divine Plea up 99% of the time you are tanking, drop one point from spiritual attunement and atleast 1 from benediction. Never drop glyph of Seal of Vengeance (you should drop hammer for taunt glyph if you are to make that switch in a raid).
QUOTE]


Im not sure what you mean by the bolded part of the message
Other than that I think I know what you mean by most of the other stuff, and I will post a revised Talent tree when Im not at work( the internet here doesnt have Active X controls enabled, so there is no flash or most of the stuff that makes WOW sites functional.) So please, check back in about 2 hours and let me know what you think then. Im sure ill have a couple more questions about the specs.

[Synapse]

He means that the glyph of SoV is too good in comparison to, say, HotR glyph, which is primarily just for aoe tanking(and not a biggie in comparison). Also, Divine Sac/Divine Guardian is not really nice to drop :x it's a raidwall!

[Hammerfists]

Seal of Vengeance should always be glyphed. Depending on the situation glyph Hammer of Righteous or glyph Righteous Defense.

I noticed you also added glyph of Spiritual Attunement. This is a crutch to your spec there are many better glyphs than this. You should be going pull to pull with divine plea up or using it shortly there if after. Glyph of Judgement doesnt add much threat my Hammer and Shield crit for on average for 5-6K my Judgement on the other hand does 2K. A better glyph is Divine Plea which gives 3% damage reduction when its up and is probably one if not the best glyph you can get.

Divine Sac/Divine Guardian is not really nice to drop :x it's a raidwall!

At the expense of Divine Protection, your choice personal wall or raid baby wall.

[Synapse]

Why at the expense of divine protection? DG doesn't add forbearance nor is excluded by it.

In fact, a common holydin tactic and a common tankadin move is to hit bot dp/ds and dg at the same time!

[Hammerfists]

Divine Sac- 30% party damage goes to Paladin
Divine Guardian- 20% less raid damage

I hope you arent in the mt's party but either way you are stressing your healer if you pop that in a heavy aoe move. Conventional wisdom has it you pop God Bubble first then Divine Sac. Other than that 20% less raid damage, meh raid damage wont kill any raid members unless they stand in fire at the same time and 20% is such a small number it will contribute more to overhealing than saving lives.

[Synapse]

Divine Sac- 30% party damage goes to Paladin
Divine Guardian- 20% less raid damage

I hope you arent in the mt's party but either way you are stressing your healer if you pop that in a heavy aoe move. Conventional wisdom has it you pop God Bubble first then Divine Sac. Other than that 20% less raid damage, meh raid damage wont kill any raid members unless they stand in fire at the same time and 20% is such a small number it will contribute more to overhealing than saving lives.

Which is why I mentioned both divine protection and divine shield. It varies. If you aren't tanking at that time and doesn't need DP, you can do that even as the tank. If you are tanking, but not taking much damage, you can use it to help yourself back in the mana.

And you also get a stronger sacred shield. Between "quasi-useless more healing intake", "quasi-useless raid wall and reduced damage intake" and "quasi-useless extra threat output", i'll stick to the reduced damage intake. If there's a holy paladin, he can either use it on the nonpaladin tank, or you can use yours on the nonpaladin tank.
The raidwall has it's uses even while maintanking. The sacred shield is always useful. The threat boost is only sizable if you're running the SoComm aoe spec.

[Hammerfists]

Im not saying that spending those 3 points there is useless im saying its optional. Holy Paladins Sacred Shield is better than ours since the damage reduction is based off the caster's spell power. Popping that for mana makes me scratch my head, you shouldnt have mana issues in a raid, if you arent the recepient of direct damage from a boss go with minor glyph of the wise (50% less mana cost for seal of wisdom) and pop seal of wisdom during that duration istead mana leaching from your healer.

Once again these points arent as important as say Combat Expertise, if this is your choice theres nothing wrong with it. Theres is no "the" prot spec there are some points left over for flexibility

[Synapse]

Is it really "leeching" from the healer if, overall, the damage to be healed is smaller than what it'd be without the raidwall?
Yes, it's optional, and i'm saying it's the better choice because it has a bunch of uses, covering a much larger span of activity and having a better overall effect than the alternatives.

[Hammerfists]

Only fight i see where this talent excels is Festergut. When i said mana leaching i ment that you will more than likely get overhealed greatly since not only will you take normal aoe damage and ontop of that the people in your party and forget if the mt is in your party thats just uncalled for. There are like i pointed out more wise ways of getting around your mana issue.

20% damage reduction to raid is on par with speccing into Divinity. More overhealing. Really you cant sit here and argue that most fights Divine Sac saved my raid but you can point to some fights where its good. Its optional you cant say every prot paladin must pick this talent up.

[Gotankadin]

Ok that is one thing I have noticed in some of the ICC raids I have been in. One of the reasons I lose all my mana is that I am not getting healed a lot of the time
Which I must say is odd, but they are mainly concentrating on the MT and not so much on the OT, or my repair bill =/

[Hammerfists]

Make sure Judgement of Wisdom is on your target and if you get low put Seal of Wisdom on and just melee swing for a bit, you only need Vengeance/Corruption for optimum threat. DPS isnt your main job so taking damage to keep dps up for Corruption isnt the smartest of choices to make. Dont forget glyph of the Wise reduces cost of Seal of Wisdom by 50% and its a minor. Most Pallies get stuck on this is "the" Seal i go in and come out with it, infact as a tank its better to use Seal of Wisdom when you are dpsing it will still put out decent dps but has the chance of restoring mana which will offset the loss of spiritual attunement mana regen.

[Gotankadin]

Ok this is the build I came up with.

Now I just need to get some feedback and see about the glyphs.


Remove:
Glyph of Spiritual Attunement
Glyph of Judgement

Add:
Glyph of Divine Plea
Glyph of Seal of Vengeance

Right?

[Hammerfists]

Drop 1 point from Spiritual Attunement and 2 points from Pursuit of Justice or Conviction and put them in Touched by Light. This is one of our best threat talents in fact we get out spell power from here. You will probably notice you have almost no spell power without it.

My thoughts are Pursuit of Justice can easily be replaced by Tuskarr's Vitality and keeping the 2% crit will yield more tps. But if movement if moving really fast is your thing stick with pursuit.

Here's my armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-t...forfun&group=2

quick answer to glyphs: yes thats what you should replace

[Gotankadin]

I think i just threw those in to get the points, Now Im home and can look at your internet.

Wow, just looked at that last sentence...

I mean now that I am home, I can look at your armory...

[Thaak]

Why, because hard cap for expertise is 56 expertise (thats when mobs wont dodge your attacks).

Sorry to nitpick, but things like this can rapidly spiral out of control, cause people will say "The people on TankSpot said...".

Dodges are removed at 26 expertise(6.5%), the "soft cap" of expertise. The "hard cap" is to remove parries as well.

[Synapse]

I don't think I ever implied that I used DG to get mana back in raids. Sorry if that's what it sounded like.

Seal of wisdom is not "one of the wiser ways to get mana back up" either. If you have divine plea, 1/2 sa and Sanctuary on, you just won't get low on mana unless you grossly overgear the fight(as in, t10 against ONE enemy in a heroic instance). And if that is the case, you're much more likely going to be able to manage just fine by, say, dropping consecration.



Gotankadin, the setup you have on your armory right now is pretty much as good as it gets, with only a few malleable points being already in optional stuff anyway. I deviate from that by going 2/2 judgment instead o 1/5 benediction, by going 2/2 PoJ instead of 3/5 conviction and by getting 1 ds + 2/2 dg instead of 3/5 reckoning.

Both work, pick your favorite.
If you want a more specialized aoe spec, SoComm + Reckoning is amazing too.