Hello all,
I am a paladin tank, recently started to tank ICC10 and ICC25. I also do 5man heroic almost every day. I have 2 questions that trouble me, perhaps someone can help me:
1. I currently have 2 points in Spiritual Attunement. I know that most tankadins put there only one point, but I seem to run OOM quickly in 5man heroics. It happens to me a lot that Divine Plea is on CD when I start a fight. This is since sometimes it takes more than 15 seconds to reach the next group of mobs.
So, unless running with a disc priest, healing is good enough for my mana regen even if Divine Plea is inactive for few seconds - due to the extra point in SA.
Am I doing something wrong? how do other tankadins get along with 1 point in SA?
2. During raids, when should I use Divine Sacrifice? Usually the other tank is in my group, so it looks odd to me to divert damage from him to me. On the other hand, I want to take advantage of Divine Guradian.
Thanks in advance!
1. Tankadins usually just chain pull mobs. To get the next pack quicker move the pack your tanking towards the next pack while DPS are burning them down.
2. I use Divine Sacrifice whenever theres high raid damage, but i cancel it straight away just for the divine guardian effect so i dont take extra damage. The Sacrifice part isnt utilized as much since it only effects the party while the Guardian effects the whole raid.
It depends - The viability of 1 point in SA for the most part confined to a raid setting where the spec needs to be optimized for prolonged boss tanking and the Cooldown of Divine Plea is not an issue.Originally Posted by Animor
For 5 man heroics, having two points in SA helps a little, but you are almost always gonna be mana starved at some point. Violet Hold in particular is nasty, as Divine Plea will tick off between every potal.
There are a few instances where Divine Sacrifice can be helpfull, and that is mechanics where the whole raid takes some unavoidable damage (Think Deconstructor's Tympanic Tantrum). Divine Sacrifice helps here, because it it shifts pressure from the raid healers to the tank healers, which may be better able to cope with the damage - after all, it is easier to heal one target than five.
There are also other places where you would want to transfer some damage from the other tank to you (Think mechanics like Mimiron's Plasma Blast - That stuff can still incinerate a full ICC geared tank in a matter of seconds). However, for such cases Hand of Sacrifice is usually a better choice.
Finally, most tankadins do not take Divine Guradian for the improvements it brings to Divine Sacrifice, but for the improvements it brings to Sacred Shield. Unless you have a holy paladin assigned to you who can give you this buff, you should always put it on yourself when you tank. It really does shave off a non-trivial amount of damage in the long run.
Last edited by Ajire; 05-24-2010 at 07:33 AM. Reason: A few typos
"You pull it, you tank it" -Ajire
Armory: Ajire@Scarshield Legion.EU
Run Recount (it's been a while since I used it - does it have a section for measuring mana gained?) or Skada and look at the breakdown of your mana returns after a heroic. The majority of your mana should be coming from Blessing of Sanctuary and Divine Plea rather than Spiritual Attunement. In terms of saving mana, Consecration is a huge mana hog and shouldn't be necessary to hold aggro on trash packs - tab around, spec into SoC for heroic trash, etc. Saving Consecration for times when you have large amounts of mana incoming from BoSanc will save you a ton of mana.
Thank you for your replies!
I do use Sacred Shield, to ease the healers work and give me some more EH.
I thought of loosing 1 Spiritual Attunement point in favor of SoC (or maybe Vindication). However, I have too many benefits of running with SoV:
1. Seals of the Pure, in which I invested 5 points.
2. Glyph of SoV
So, if I take Soc insead of 1 SA point, I loose 3 things: mana regen, +15% dmg, +10 expertise.
Does it worth it?
This is my armory, btw:
Armory
(I am going to move 3 points from Benediction to Heart of the Crusader).
This is the cookie cutter build, with the third major glyph slot being Judgement, Avenger's Shield or Righteous Defense.
Seals of the Pure builds are about even with Crusade builds on non-Demon, Undead and Humanoid mobs (handily abbreviated "DUH") but in ICC the Crusade build pulls ahead. Vindication is an excellent use of talent points.
Picking up SoC doesn't mean you have to use it all of the time; it's for trash and multiple add pick-up. SoV is still your single target seal.
Thank you again for your help!
1. Why do you have 2 points in Improve Judgement, while 696 rotation requires only 1 point?
2. In 5man HC, do you use mainly SoC, unless a boss fight? Should I use SoC for the 3 adds in Lady Deathwhisper (ICC) phase 1 for example?
3. Should I use Avenging Wrath as tank and risk the 30 seconds with no Ardent Defender or Lay On Hands?
The simplest reason is merely: where else would you put the point? You need 10 points in the first two tiers to get further down the Ret tree; 1/5 Benediction is useless, going halfway into Imp BoM is also a bit silly (either spec into or don't). The other is that it's useful to have one second off a ranged attack for fights in which you're not doing 969, such as LDW or VDW when you're picking up adds. Better to spend one point on a very marginal utility increase than waste it in Benediction or half of Imp BoM.
Yep, exactly right. SoC for heroic trash and LDW phase 1. SoV for any single target stuff.2. In 5man HC, do you use mainly SoC, unless a boss fight? Should I use SoC for the 3 adds in Lady Deathwhisper (ICC) phase 1 for example?
I'm sure you mean Divine Protection rather than Ardent Defender3. Should I use Avenging Wrath as tank and risk the 30 seconds with no Ardent Defender or Lay On Hands?But yes - as long as you know there isn't heavy tank damage coming up in the next 30 seconds, you can use Avenging Wrath. It can be useful for increasing initial threat by popping it as soon as SoV reaches its 5 stack - again, only if you know there isn't some boss mechanic that's going to require you using DP in the next 30 seconds. Use your own judgement, really.
Yeah, the solutions to the mana issue in heroics really do amount to "pull more, pull fast" and "don't conc". In a pinch you can always use Seal of Wisdom until you regain your mana (which is surprisingly quickly if you also miss consecration from your rotation). If you know mana is going to be a concern in an instance such as Violet hold, you can also consider not opening with Avenger's Shield - a ShoR into a single mob or HotR into a group is usually more than enough to get all the threat you need for that particular pull. Running heroics while playing the "don't let DP drop off" game adds an extra challenge to keep you occupied as well - especially with some of the more sparsely-populated areas where you need to make strategic use of Critters etc to keep it up
As noted above, the "cookie cutter" build with 1/2 Spiritual Attunement is optimised for raid bosses which hit hard enough that a single point is more than sufficient to keep you topped up - this is especially true in ICC where Chill of the Throne begins to tip the balance away from BoSanc and into SA's favour for mana return. Likewise, a 3/3 Crusade build will yield more threat in ICC and TotC than a 5/5 SotP build due to the mob types involved, again as noted above. Before the changes to Vindication and SoComm, many tanks would take 3/5 Conviction to reach the Crusade tier but both talents are now great options - SoComm is fantastic for trash and for anything that dies quicker than you can get five SoV stacks on it. It's especially good for those pesky Rot Worms that spawn out of the Patchwerks on the VDW fight.
Also worth remembering - the amount of Expertise needed to soft/hardcap against level 81/82 mobs is reduced significantly from the caps against a skull-level boss so using SoComm (and foregoing your Glyph bonus) isn't as big of a deal as it is during a boss fight.
Thank you very much for your educating responses.
I re-specced as you've advised, and I will try to implement your other advices on 5man hcs.
Thanks!
Lumines,
why do you think Benediction is useless? Considering that almost all tankadin spells are instants you save 10% from almost all spells you cast on one fight, which helps you a lot in mana starvation. If u put 5 in deflection and 5 in benediction, you hit the 10 and can gfo down in the tree without putting the extra point in improved judgments.
Is that you think that the 5 points on benediction are too much for 10% mana reduction (doesn't meet Return on Investment
Cheers
Benediction is useless because you never go OOM as a paladin tank. It has its heyday when vezax hardmode was all the rage, when you could have serious mana problems, but nowadays mana is not a problem. the standard retribution talents are 5% parry, imp judgement, heart of the crusader, vindication, SoC/Conviction 1 point, persuit of justice and 3 points in crusade.Lumines,
why do you think Benediction is useless? Considering that almost all tankadin spells are instants you save 10% from almost all spells you cast on one fight, which helps you a lot in mana starvation. If u put 5 in deflection and 5 in benediction, you hit the 10 and can gfo down in the tree without putting the extra point in improved judgments.
Is that you think that the 5 points on benediction are too much for 10% mana reduction (doesn't meet Return on Investment
Cheers
Pretty much what Pyrea said. You simply don't run out of mana in a raid, and if you run out of mana in heroics, it's due to easily fixable issues (namely: Blessing of Sanctuary, keep Divine Plea rolling, don't use /castsequence macros but instead use your abilities intelligently, and don't use Consecration when you don't need to).
For that reason it also has the worst possible return on investment: it's basically useless and deprives you of talent points which are of much more use elsewhere. There are more good talents to pick up than you have points for, and I can't imagine anywhere you'd pull 4 or 5 points from to max out Benediction which wouldn't be much, much better spent elsewhere.
Also unless you can guarantee there'll always be a Muti Rogue, Retri Paladin or an Ele Shammy then you're doing your raid a huge injustice by putting points into Benediction instead of Heart of the Crusader. Sure if your raid comp is static and contains the debuff from elsewhere then it's not as necessary but given the redundancy of Benediction for almost any raiding environment, I personally still choose to put points in HotC.
If your raidcomp is static across both 10 and 25-mans and you do have one of the 3% Crit debuff talents in there then another option might be to pick up Improved Blessing of Might if you don't have a Retri Paladin or DPS Warrior available (even if you do have a Warrior, taking ImpBoM means he could use Commanding or something to help out the tanks).
So yeah, Benediction may occasionally give you a very small benefit but there's so much rDPS/utility in the earlier Ret tiers that it's hard to justify taking that in anything but the very strictest and most static raid groups.
Additional advice not already posted.
If BoSanc, judging wisdom, reducing consecrate and chain pulling mobs still doesn't help try taking MORE damage. This includes
-Stop using Sacred Shield. Damage absorbed means damage not healed which means mana not gained. Also, tell disc priests not to shield you, it is very common for a disc shield to not pop during heroics, so you miss Rapture.
-Pop Divine Sacrifice in Heroics, to suck damage to you.
-Go ahead, Stand in that fire/acid/shadow void/etc.! You normally get yelled for doing that, here's your chance! Pretty sure that if you overgear content to the point where you are mana starved, your healer should not be struggling.
-In the case of VH, I swear the makers had pallies in mind when it came to add spawns. When Portal Guardians spawn, just before they die, a second regular mob pops out of the portal. If people aren't aoe-ing or cleaving, that mob can be "saved", and kited with auto attacks to the next portal, keeping up Divine Plea. Or if you have a hunter, use aspect of the pack to get to the next portal and munch on some strudels. At 5-6k Mana Pool, an 18000 drink fills you fast, and even if you don't get topped off, its enough to let you work through things.
-A piece of advice I got from warriors here when I was battling rage starvation as a prot warrior: Sit down. Or turn your back to mobs. It drops all your defenses, and causes you to take extra damage.
-Swap out some defense gear for ret gear. Makes you go through the instance faster and reduces your avoidance. If it drops your stamina, remember people tank heroics with 20-25k HPs.
Now then, to Lumines, the spec you linked is NOT cookie cutter. You may have your opinions on a spec, and you are entitled to them, but please don't pass it off as cookie cutter. The OP is absolutely correct, putting 2 points in Imp Judgements is the most criminal waste of points for a prot paladin. While putting 1 point in Benediction has pretty small benefits, it still beats zero benefits from 2 points in imp judgements. And to Pyrea, who says paladins don't go OOM, perhaps you should actually read the thread, he says he is going OOM, and Benediction helps out in heroics. To be honest, I'd rather take 1/2 Imp Might on the off chance I am forced to Might people than 2 points in Imp Judgements. I can't stress enough how bad an idea it is, and has been discussed six ways to sunday both here and other sites like maintankadin.
SoC is situational. I put my points in Conviction. Speccing for trash is a bad idea, spec for bosses, and the extra crit is worth it.
Solid builds are as follows:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZV0tA...dtsMobc:pGZmcV if you want 22 stam on your boots or
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZV0tA...dtsMh0c:pGZmcV if you can live with tuskarrs on your boots.
That's really what it all boils down to. Extra major is either righteous defense if you are below hit cap, or imp judgements/HotR.
Now for Divine Sacrifice ...
-Heroics, pop it for additional damage, or when you have a lowbie healer struggling (especially new holy paladins)
-In Raids, You basically have to know fights. Pop it before a whiteout on torravon in VoA. Pop it during a bonestorm if people aren't moving from the flames fast eough, or during festergut when they are taking shadow damage. The list is endless, but the point is, use it religiously. Don't worry abput taking damage from your Tank Buddy, because if you pop DS, you should also pop Divine Protection as well. That means you are only getting 70% of the damage from the OT, and that is further cut in half (down to 35%) from DP.
2/2 imp judgement is a total waste of talent points if you only ever do your 969 rotation, never need to break it to pick up an add or two. Tell me you have never had to pick an add up, that you have never needed to break your rotation for whatever reason.Now then, to Lumines, the spec you linked is NOT cookie cutter. You may have your opinions on a spec, and you are entitled to them, but please don't pass it off as cookie cutter. The OP is absolutely correct, putting 2 points in Imp Judgements is the most criminal waste of points for a prot paladin. While putting 1 point in Benediction has pretty small benefits, it still beats zero benefits from 2 points in imp judgements. And to Pyrea, who says paladins don't go OOM, perhaps you should actually read the thread, he says he is going OOM, and Benediction helps out in heroics. To be honest, I'd rather take 1/2 Imp Might on the off chance I am forced to Might people than 2 points in Imp Judgements. I can't stress enough how bad an idea it is, and has been discussed six ways to sunday both here and other sites like maintankadin.
1/2 imp might IS a total waste of points, any dps warrior or retri pala will have the full 687 AP buff talented. In content when the 100 or so AP might matter, you will have this covered.
Earlier this evening I was tanking adds at deathwhisper25 heroic. I have 2/2 judgement specced. I used judgement EVERY SINGLE TIME it came off cooldown, because when tanking a group of two or more mobs, a mix of casters and melee, you need flexibility. 2/2 Imp.J. gives you more flexibility than the 50 AP granted by 1/1 Imp.Might or the 2% mana cost reduction from 1/5 benediction. Dropping consecrate from the rotation every now and again when it is smart to will conserve more mana than the 2% manacost ever would.
Going OOM in a 5 man is not something you can fix with a respecc, unless your specc really sucks, as in you don't have the divine plea renewal or BoSanc. Going OOM in any situation stems from not playing "right". Playing right is something that changes every fight, even during a fight. what works well now might not be so great 2 minutes down the corridor. This is something you learn from experience, we can tell you to keep stuff hitting you, to drop consecrate if need be or to make sure DP is always active, but exactly how you go about this is something everybody finds out for themselves.
On the rare occasions that I actually run heroics on my tank, I've been known to take off my pants, and sometimes my breastplate and/or boots, so that I actually take enough damage to gain some mana through SA.
Even then, I have to drink quite often.
Keep in mind, my wife was healing me on her druid. She said she prefers it this way, so that she doesn't fall asleep during the runs. YMMV depending on your healer.
I know your question was more in regards to talents. Sorry if my post strays a bit from your expectations.
I'm very well aware of the discussion around 2/2 Imp Judgements on maintankadin, thanks. Since you're using it as your appeal to authority, I'm sure you must have noticed that every time someone posts your argument, the rebuttal is always more or less what I posted above - that 2/2 Imp Judgements won't break your 969, but it does reduce the cooldown on a valuable ranged pick-up ability, which is situationally useful in any situation in which you are not simply 969ing your way through a static boss encounter. I'm loathe to appeal to authority myself, but if you would check the specs being used by the prominent posters at maintankadin - including the person who wrote the Talent guide in Advanced Training, and the other authors of stickied guides - you will note that they are, in fact, specced into 2/2 Imp Judgements.
Quoting from the 3.3 Talent Spec & Glyph Guide:
Bolded emphasis mine. I emphasise it because I posted in that thread when the guide was being drafted:Improved Judgements - At least one point in this talent is mandatory to maintain our 969 rotation. Note that 2/2 Improved Judgements, while not part of the core, also won't break your rotation.
Which was met with the response:The nit-pickiest of all nit-picks, but perhaps consider rewording "Improved Judgements - One point in this talent is mandatory to maintain our 969 rotation." to something akin to "At least one point in this talent...". I know the difference between 1/2 and 2/2 is gone into later on, but given how often the misconception that 2/2 Imp Judgements is A Bad Idea comes up, it couldn't hurt to be as clear as possible the first time it's mentioned.
So if you're going to contradict someone's "opinion" with a fairly strong appeal to authority, I'd urge you to properly check your facts first.Good idea, I'll make explicit mention of it in that section.
Thanks.
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