Engineering is the profession of kings, and I am overjoyed that it continues to be a great source of tools for tanks in the next expansion. When I first picked up Engineering (well, for the second time, having dropped it previously before Wrath) I was mainly lured back by the armor tinker, and eventually tinkers gaining stats made my decision worth it in the long run. I went from crackpot to visionary. As for Cataclysm, in addition to being able to carry over the parachute and rocket boots from 80 (although more in a sec about the latter), we can upgrade the armor tinker, and add another damage reduction toy to the pile–with a shocking twist.

Something old

Mind-Amplification Disk — Unfortunately this is turning into a belt enchant in Cataclysm, so the brief renaissance it enjoyed after 4.0.1 (when it stacked with the tanking arcanum and both gave a stamina bonus) will soon be over.

Flexweave Underlay — The agility from this cloak used to be pretty incredible before every one jumped on the armor train in ICC. The stats are gone, but the parachute remains. Enjoy it in Cata.

Nitro Boosts — Well, the good news is these are still in Cataclysm, but the bad news is they possibly fail more often and share a cooldown with the Grounded Plasma Shield. However, my understanding is that they cannot fail inside a raid zone, so that first downside is moot. The latter though will require forethought. Considering these are the closest thing I have to a gap closer, I am anxious about their application in a raid setting.

Something new

Reinforced Bio-Optic Killshades — A “free” helm that potentially will last us most of T11, outside of tier sets and heroic-level gear. Very exciting to have a useful pair of goggles that won’t be replaced quickly, like the previous goggles were by Naxx25 gear.

Grounded Plasma Shield — Potentially our most promising new toy, and yet has some caveats with it. For one, (like mentioned) it shares a cooldown with the rocket boots. Moreover, the backfire from this tinker can be dangerous. One backfire I’ve seen mentioned is the device leaks Goblin Rocket Fuel on you, causing self-damage (yikes), and the other is that there’s a chance you’ll have a Plasma Misfire! which will then… attack all enemies within 40 yards and taunt them. I suppose that’s better than the original downside of the item, which was you had no avoidance while the effect was active. We’ll just have to see this in action, either way.

Quickflip Deflection Plates — No downside to this device, thankfully. Probably the best way to use it (since it has such a short cooldown) is to macro it to Crusader Strike/HotR and roll it off-cooldown to reduce damage taken over time and save healer mana. Like a secondary, less-potent Divine Protection.

Something to blow mats on for fun

Loot-a-Rang — Theoretically never have to bend over to loot an enemy again.

Goblin Barbecue — Now we provide the Fish Feasts!

And two pets, a rabbit and a fel reaver.

Plus tons of other things I don’t have the time to list. There’s something for everyone, but most importantly, some really awesome stuff for us.

The Seal of Truth tooltip changed in a recent beta build. It appeared to be heavily nerfed – about 25% less damage – which sparked some worry in our community. Not like we are a volatile, passionate bunch or anything.

Good news, everyone:

The most recent Seal of Truth change was just a tooltip correction. The numbers did not go down.

We did nerf Censure and raise Exorcism in a previous build, but that should not be new information.

Source: Ghostcrawler, yesterday in this hilarious thread.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief.

This was initially announced yesterday when they “clarified” blocking in Cataclysm and announced some tweaks to Holy Shield and our mastery. Then, a whole new raft of changes hit the fan. Here’s everything, plus commentary:

Holy Shield will be changed to increase block value by 10% (40% total) instead of increasing block chance by 15%. Since this will cause Mastery to become more valuable, the amount of block granted by Mastery will be reduced to 2.25% block chance per point of Mastery, down from 3%.

Paladin tanks are not intended to go cap block as fast as they can. It’s fine if you want to do that, but we don’t treat it as “the new defense cap” and we don’t balance paladins assuming they have a 100% block chance. That is something the community identified as being not only possible, but likely, and one of the reasons we changed the way block works for paladins.

So we’re looking at a total loss of at least 21% block from what we have now. 15% from Holy Shield no longer provided block chance, and 6% from the free 8 Mastery skill you get for training the stat. That is a huge, huge loss. And I’m sure will make it fairly impossible to block cap until the last tier or the one before it, looking at ilevels.

Which, honestly, is not a bad thing. Sure, having a constantly up 30% damage reduction is fantastic, but that’s not something we want to be balanced around by default. It’ll result in harder hitting bosses and will force a move away from the stated goal of a tank being able to take a lot more hits before death.

Sounds to me, honestly, like they’re retooling tank damage across the board as Cata draws closer. Reports from the beta are that tank damage was ridiculous, comparable to the 2-hits-and-you’re-dead Wrath philosophy, so they’re nerfing tank damage reduction and reducing damage in tandem.

Guardian of Ancient Kings — Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown still 2 minutes (talented). Duration still 12 seconds.

Probably part and parcel with the reduction of boss damage. You don’t need as much damage reduction if the boss isn’t hitting for as much. Of course, hold onto your salt until we see the content ourselves and can judge accordingly.

I’m sure you’ve seen forum threads where the old timers will get all nostalgic and wonder aloud, “Remember when blessings were 5 minutes long?” or “Remember when you had to reapply your seal after every judgement?” And then they told you to get off their lawn and that your jeans were worn too low.

Today is another one of those few moments in WoW-time when things irrevocably change. For good or ill. And we as players change along with them.

Before I logged on Sunday night, I wistfully cast Blessing of Sanctuary on myself one last time. While I’ll miss that spell, it’ll be much better in it’s new passive form.

Likewise the entire blessings system as a whole. Not having to listen to Falowin the rogue constantly berate the raid with “I need MIGHT” is worth the new system’s weight in gold.

Those are some convenient changes, but what about some less convenient ones? Consider the removal of the cherished Bubblehearth by way of the duration of Divine Shield being changed to 8 seconds. I can’t even remember the last time I Bubblehearthed, but it was always nice to know it was an option if the odds suddenly turned against me in a imminently deadly way and I needed a quick, cowardly exit.

Or what about Divine Intervention? I’m going to have start paying repair bills again for most wipes. The humanity of it all!

Those are just a few of the things I’m sure I’ll be musing about down the road to a pack of fresh-faced tankadins. As for you all, what are you going to miss most about the pre-4.0.1 world?

New patch drops today. Be sure to have that downloader running and your addons updated!

I did a second pass of my Everything You Need to Know About 4.0.1 post and updated the rotation, specs, and glyphs section with new information that has come out since I first posted that. Should be up to date for tonight, but please let me know if I missed anything.

Saturday night I hopped onto the beta to screw around with Reforging and see if I could expect to block cap myself come 4.0.1. As many of you know, block capping means stacking enough block chance that ordinary hits are pushed off the combat table, which can pay huge dividends in damage reduction in certain situations. In Wrath, block capping was especially desirable for Heroic Anub in ToGC, allowing you to cheese the damage from the adds.

In Cataclysm, block capping is going to be amazing, if only because it’s going to be like having a cooldown up for every physical hit. With a successful block now reducing any physical hit by 30%, you want to be block capped. (Of course, that also means there’s a cap on our Mastery, because any further dodge/parry once block capped pushes block chance off the combat table, but that’s an issue for another day.)

So the goal is 102.4% total avoidance+base miss chance+block. How feasible in that in my gear set at 80?

Here’s where I was in terms of avoidance and mitigation when standing in front of the Reforger NPC.

46.42% avoidance + 5% base miss + 21% block (5% base + 16% for learning Mastery) = 72.42% avoidance and block. 29.98% short.

I then proceeded to reforge every feasible piece to mastery. Dodge converted over if there was more dodge on the piece, parry otherwise, and equipped the Heroic CTC and reforged that to mastery as well. I attempted to keep dodge and parry at least even, but I had so much more dodge rating that diminishing returns made it so I got a lot more mastery from dodge.

I then dodged over to a dummy, buffed, and put up Holy Shield. This is what I had:

At 42.03% dodge+parry I lost a total of 4.39% avoidance and gained 24.35% block chance from Mastery.

So, with the 42.03% avoidance + 5% base miss + 60.35% block chance, I was at 107.53% avoidance+block. 5.13% over block cap.

Not too shabby.

I’m actually at the point where I should reduce how much Mastery I have, because that 5.13% overage is just wasted block chance. To mitigate this I can swap the Heroic CTC for a stamina trinket, and then dial back some of the Mastery.

Actually, I’m really liking the extra control reforging gives us over our gear and stats. To be able to shuffle around secondary stats like this is pretty cool.

Anyway, once I hit 81 the ratings conversions will shoot through the roof and block capping will disappear until at least the first raid tier (at least according to the calculations done by Zarko in this thread) but I’m excited at being able to taste such amazing damage reduction potential for the next two months.

Here’s your chance to stay ahead of the market before demand makes prices skyrocket. Assuming 4.0.1 drops this week, all your glyphs are going to change and it’s ideal to stay on top of that shift.

Compiled below is a list of glyphs on Live and what they’ll be turning into with the patch. (I’ve adopted this list from the original created by El’s Anglin’. All credit for the research goes to them!)

• Glyph of Avenger’s Shield (-> Glyph of Focused Shield)
• Glyph of Avenging Wrath (-> Glyph of the Ascetic Crusader)
• Glyph of Flash of Light (-> Glyph of Word of Glory)
• Glyph of Seal of Righteousness (-> Glyph of Dazing Shield)
• Glyph of Seal of Vengeance (-> Glyph of Seal of Truth)
• Glyph of Sense Undead (-> Glyph of Truth)
• Glyph of Shield of Righteousness (-> Glyph of Shield of the Righteous)
• Glyph of Spiritual Attunement (-> Glyph of Divine Protection)

Glyphs not changing from spell to the other, but you still want to pick up, are:

• Glyph of Consecration
• Glyph of Crusader Strike
• Glyph of Hammer of Wrath
• Glyph of Holy Wrath
• Glyph of Judgement
• Glyph of Lay on Hands
• Glyph of Salvation
• Glyph of Turn Evil

I suppose you could go whole-hog and buy all the current Paladin glyphs. Nonetheless, everything above are things that will probably be directly or situationally useful for us at some point, I suspect. Like the boy scounts say: semper paratus. Go stock up!

Before you read this, please note a huge disclaimer: this is not final. This rotation has been posted in the last 30 or so pages of this thread in Maintankadin as a result of Theck’s first jaunts into theorycrafting the 4.0 rules set, but it’s not yet authoritative in that so much can change. If 4.0.1 drops Tuesday like rumored, and we have the 3 second Crusader Strike, and nothing else changes, this is valid.

Ifs aside, this rotation has been dubbed 939–as opposed to the 3X I was bandying about, thus marking the third time this blog has lost a naming crusade (Zeal, Ana’s desire to call it HoPo, and now 3X)–and is ridiculously simplistic. Here’s how it goes:

Pull with AS > CS > J > CS > HW > CS > ShoR > CS > J > CS > AS > CS > Shor > CS > J > CS > HW > CS > ShoR > CS > AS > CS > J > CS > ShoR > etc.

(Be careful not to judge when running in, second cast should be Crusade Strike, lest you throw the whole rotation off.)

Basically, CS every other ability, and in the “9s” slots weave in Judgements,  ShoR as Holy Power allows, and alternate Holy Wrath and Avenger’s Shield. There is no room for Consecrate, and Grand Crusader is only a dps gain when used to replace a Holy Wrath cast. If you hit AS when the proc lights up, you will suffer a big dps loss by pushing the whole rotation back.

Edit: Like Meloree suggests in the comments, if ShoR misses you want to hit it again on your next GCD. You don’t lose any Holy Power from a dodged/parried/missed ShoR.

939 is, as currently theorycrafted, currently the maximum threat possible to put out on a single target.

As for AOE, just Hammer of the Righteous on cooldown, and spam Consecrate and Holy Wrath away from CC. Use any other attacks when available. Grand Crusader is still useful for AOE. We don’t have Inquisition until 81, so spend Holy Power on ShoRs.

Again, just to reiterate: not final. I recommend keeping some grains of salt handy, just in case.

I do not think I could have fit more equivocation into this post if I tried. And believe me, I did.

I quickly mentioned this on Twitter, but it merits a quick post. Delicious theorycrafts inc.

Theck, Bringer of Numbers and Pounding Headaches, did his first pass through our talents to gauge the relative worth of each in terms of damage (and thus threat). I’m not going to copy-paste his findings, but to summarize:

• Our top three must-have threat talents are Wrath of the Lightbringer > Reckoning > Crusade.
• His sim placed Reckoning at second with around 50 dps per point. However, his sim was run on a 264/277 gear set without anything reforged for Mastery. Therefore with additional Mastery/block Reckoning will get much more beastly.
• Grand Crusader is really weak right now. To the point where there’s murmurs of not even speccing into it. That’s with current numbers though, things can obviously change.

Read the whole post to get the straight dope. A lot of these numbers aren’t yet final, so don’t them as gospel, but they’re heading in the direction we’re going.

Crusader Strike – 3 sec cooldown. Hammer of the Righteous – 3 sec cooldown. Cooldown shared for both. [source]

For the worse or for the better? Depends on your point of view. Personally, I agree with the sentiment I saw on the tanking forums–it seems they’ve gone from one extreme to the other.

In a world of 4.5 second Crusader Strikes, we were looking at GCD gaps a-plenty. Around 6 a minute. With a 3 second CS, we’re now looking at being GCD locked, with every other keystroke being Crusader Strike or Hammer of the Righteous. How is this an improvement? We’ve substituted one evil for another.

The rotation’s pet name is currently moving through committee, but personally I favor “3X”. I know it sounds like some model of automaton–and, poetically, oh how that fits–but it refers more to the fact that the rotation boils down to: CS > J > CS > HW > CS > ShoR > CS > J > CS > etc.

I appreciate the fact that we’ll be much less ability starved, so to speak, and I commend the devs for working to correct that, but there has to be a better way. 969 was a mindless rotation that was powered purely by muscle memory. A rotation with GCD gaps required knowledge of what abilities to use when to excel, and I reveled in that. 3X I suppose is kind of a halfling in the sense that the 3 will always be obvious, but the X requires enough forethought that if you don’t use the best choice possible at that moment, you’re hurting yourself in the long run. I can appreciate that, I suppose.

There’s also the question if you actually want to hit CS on cooldown, or if sometimes something else will take a higher priority. Then again, with ShoR doing the damage it does, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t want 3HP ASAP.

A part of me is excited we’re going to have no empty GCDs, and another part of me rues the fact that there wasn’t a more elegant way about this. I still feel like a simpler solution was throwing one more single target ability in the mix, an instant Exorcism or something, to fill those gaps in a less shoe-horned way. Or, like Theck advocated, making Judgement generate HP, and thus pushing up the availability of ShoR. I think that would be a much, much better solution.

And of course there’s the dev’s concern that Inquisition will now be up during ShoR, and the implications thereof. I’m deferring (once again) to Theck on this, who doesn’t think it will be a big deal.

I don’t believe that Inq will ever be worth casting on single targets. Even in the old 4.5-second CS model, it didn’t break even. The 3-second model will have a larger physical/holy damage ratio, making Inq even less likely to succeed. The real problem is that even though you’re adding 30% damage to ShoR, you’re not making up the 70% that you’re losing by not casting ShoR, because your only holy damage sources are J and AS (and seal damage).

Ultimately, I think 3X is a step backward. There were more elegant solutions and Blizz took the easy way out to calm the concerns about GCD gaps. I don’t think this solution is viable in the long term, and I guarantee–if it doesn’t mutate again before launch–we’ll be seeing another redesign of the Prot rotation in the near future.

Lastly, there was some unequivocally good news. The first is that HotR is getting buffed to scale with attack power (and thus Vengeance).

We realized that the AE portion of Hammer of the Righteous didn’t scale with Vengeance. While it’s true that Prot paladins gain some spell power, they get it from Strength, not the attack power provided by Vengeance. We changed Hammer to scale with attack power, which should mean it hits harder with Vengeance. That will provide some of the damage boost you are looking for.

The other is that HoJ will be going off the GCD for us, finally giving us a real interrupt. A long cooldown one, but a real one.

While we still think an off the GCD interrupt isn’t an essential tool for a tank, we also don’t think it’s going to break anything for paladins to have one either. Our eventual solution is to let Vindication’s ability to let HoJ interrupt also take HoJ off of the global cooldown. That change will require new tech, so it’s not something you’re likely to see anytime soon, but you can know that it’s in our long term plans. Again, we don’t think the interrupt issue is a critical problem that must be solved today. The rotation one in the previous paragraph is a bigger deal.

I guess it’s better than nothing, eh?

Now… while we’re giving away toys you don’t think are necessary… how about that gap closer?