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.

I did one pass with wow-tal.com this morning and came up with this selection of talents. A complete waste of time, though, because our tree is obviously a work in progress. Everything is subject to change. Yet, there are still some trends you can see through the fog of war.

1. A radically different Consecration

Consecration on the beta server right now lasts for 15 seconds and has no cooldown. You drop it in one place, then can move and drop it in another immediately. Old one disappears, new one comes up. Then, the talent Hallowed Ground increases the duration by 15 seconds and damage by 15% for 1 point, and 30 seconds/30% for 2. A 45 second Consecrate.

Basically, the ability shifts to almost like a harmful aura than an actually ability in a rotation. I think this is a good change for sure, especially once you consider point #3 of this post. It’s shifting to more of a “fire and forget” ability. Moreover, even if the 45 second duration doesn’t stay, it’s obvious what the new path they want Consecration to take is.

2. Clickable Ardent Defender

This was probably one of the biggest complaints masochistic Paladins like yours truly leveled at Ardent Defender in the past, that it was automatic. At the beginning of Ulduar, we begged Blizzard for a second cooldown and instead we got the grotesque god-mode that has hung over our class ever since.

As of this latest build, Ardent Defender is now an on-click ability. Finally, some reactivity. Nonetheless, I sincerely doubt this is anywhere near the final version of this ability. Especially since 35%-0% seems too small a window to have for AD, you’re either going to misuse it or miss using it.

I’m still heartened that we’re being trusted with activating our own cooldowns now.

3. Many more buttons to push

Holy Shock, Crusader Strike, Exorcism. Those are three new single target abilities we’ll be juggling next xpac. Well, probably not Holy Shock.

The talent Improved Exorcism returns to us our precious instant Exorcism, though it’ll be a tad late if Hand of Reckoning retains its damage component. And Improved Crusader Strike… removes the cooldown entirely. Um. I can’t imagine this’ll will persist through later builds, unless it’ll be a lingering stupid trap for Paladins that think spamming a physical damage ability is a good idea for threat.

The biggest downside of all these buttons is a severe case of GCD-lockage, which will hamper us with attempting to throw out helpful abilities like a Hand of Freedom, a BoP, a self-Holy Shock in a pinch, whatever.

I would advise against obsessing too much about the tree and spending more than necessary (like I did) trying to finesse a spec with Righteous Vengeance (this will be must have, mark my words) and other major Prot talents. Next build may see a radical shift in talent placements and cost that will change the picture completely. Save your energy for then!

Bonus: What the hell is happening to Holy Shield?

We are going to turn both Holy Shield and Shield Block into short cooldowns. A short cooldown is an ability that you don’t save for an absolute emergency (like Shield Wall) but we also don’t want it to be on such a short cooldown that it feels maintenance-y. It’s a tricky number to get right, but something in the 30 sec to 1 min zone feels about right. Then you might use Holy Shield one GCD instead of SoR or you can choose to save it until the next big boss attack.

Sigh.

Bored, I decided to ogle the armory profile for Lazeil, the prot paladin who tanked Paragon’s Heroic Lich King-25 kill. I wanted to see what this person was doing to succeed in such an environment. One thing that stood out was Laziel’s second spec, a 13/52/6 protection setup.

The major upside of this spec seems to be how much survival it affords–Divinity for extra heals (a boon in this, the age of trickle-down deaths), Improved Lay on Hands for an extra cooldown (probably more useful to back up an offtank thanks to Forbearance), and Aura Mastery to boost Devo Aura to give 2410 armor (basically like popping 2/3 of an Indestructible Potion every 2 minutes) or boost the resistances of Fire/Shadow/Frost Aura. On top of this, Glyph of Salvation is worth a Forbearance-free 20% damage reduction cooldown, with obvious downsides.

LoH-related sidenote: While researching this post I found this comment by Lazeil on the EU WoW forums concerning Lay on Hands, saying he doesn’t consider LoH a cooldown, because:

[I]t can’t be used beforehand when you know something is going to happen and it suffers from gcd so it can’t be used quickly if something unexpected happened. It even has a drawback. There are very few situations where I would use LoH instead of Divine Protection.

And, furthermore, “[t]here are very few situations where I would use LoH instead of Divine Protection. I use LoH mostly to save others for example from Infest on Lich King Heroic.”

Nevertheless, the downside of such a spec seems to be mostly in regards to threat. Only 1/5 Divine Strength, no Crusade, no Touched by the Light. Lazeil must live and die by Misdirects and ToTs.

Would I recommend this for normal raiding? Absolutely not. It seems entirely situational, good only for heroic 25mans, and only for specific fights therein. Just keeping threat alone probably requires a lot of external help.

Still, nonetheless, it’s interesting to see how those at the cutting edge are speccing their character, even if it’s for certain fights or situations.

So a couple of months ago, when SoComm was first changed to its current Holy Cleavin’ incarnation in 3.2, I recommended against speccing into it. Well, the situation has changed somewhat and so has my position on SoComm.

Now, what changed was Shield of Righteousness (as mentioned earlier this week) had a mechanic tweak which made it parriable/dodgeable. Not only did this make expertise a very worthy threat stat under softcap, but it also had the side effect of making ShoR able to proc SoComm’s cleave proc. This suddenly makes SoComm viable for trash pulls (provided trash doesn’t survive more than 30 seconds) if you’re looking for a threat boost in that arena, or the joy of many yellow numbers.

Does this make SoComm mandatory? No. Does it make it useful and fun? Oh yes.

The cleave effect of Command will now proc from three of our attacks (please correct me, readers, if I missed one/others): ShoR, white melee attacks, and Judgements. However, Judgements will only proc the cleave (and this is also true for the additional proc of Seal of Vengeance) if you are specced into Judgements of the Just. Don’t ask why. Just keep that in mind for later in this post.

But how to pick up SoComm?

Well, you’ve got two options: one being just swap the lone point from Conviction into Seal of Command. The main downside to this is a single-target threat loss, and if you have Seal of Vengeance (which you likely do), you’re looking at a “wasted” glyph slot when SoV isn’t active.

The other way to get SoComm–and hell, the crazier way–is to make a separate spec for trash/heroics.

Wrathy inspired me with his epic tales of pulling crazy dps numbers in heroics with his specialized Heroic Anub’arak spec, the crux of which was Seal of Command. I, sick of ret and never using that offspec, followed Wrathy’s lead … though I find now I need to make a few tweaks to it since I’m using it on heroics trash and not Nerubian Burrowers.

The results otherwise were pretty impressive–I easily did most overall damage done in a UK run, and that was with frequent mana issues. Not the best metric, admittedly, but there is definitely potential here.

Putting a few tweaks in the new trash spec I’m going to adopt tonight, I placed a point in Spiritual Attunement, one in Judgements of the Just (so judging will proc the seal), leaving 3 in Reckoning, and skipping Vindication to put 3 overall in Conviction. Considering this is, as I said, a spec for heroics and trash (where survivability is not an issue), I’d rather max threat talents.

As for glyphs, I’m going to go with Holy Wrath, Hammer of the Righteous, and Judgement. Again, for threat maximizing. I won’t be using SoV in this trash spec

So overall, like I said, SoComm is not mandatory. It will not help you generate more threat on a boss or live longer. Rather it is for putting out some obscene numbers in heroics, farm content, or large packs of trash in raids (though there is something to be said for the cleave’s snap aggro potential).

I wish I had a screenshot of a cloud of yellow numbers to illustrate my point. Nonetheless, with all the heroics running we’ll be doing into the foreseeable future, SoComm has the bonus of making slogging through a heroic dungeon fun again.

Ok, so the macros I’ve posted previously do work but they have the inconvenient requirement of being activated twice to remove Divine Sacrifice. With this new macro from Theck at Maintankadin (which I am shamelessly reproducing in this space) you can apply and remove Divine Sacrifice in one button push.

/cast Divine Sacrifice
/in 0.5 /script CancelUnitBuff(“player”,”Divine Sacrifice”)

The “/in 0.5″ depends on your personal latency. As Theck says, .5 should cover most folks, but if you’re lagging really hard you might want to up that number.

I’ll go back and edit previous macro mentions to have the optimal wording now.

This post is long overdue, but I wanted to take some time to explain my current spec and specifically some choices I did or did not make.

Here is the spec in all its glory: 0/53/18.

Crusade > SotP

One of the bigger choices I made when talenting was speccing into Ret for Crusade rather than Seals of the Pure. Why did I do this? Well, primarily because the Crusade talent may seem like less threat on paper this is only when considering it at the 3% level. When facing Undead/Humanoid/Elemental/Demon mobs, the damage bonus jumps to 6% and that is when Crusade really begins to shine.

I wrote extensively about the two talents when SotP was first changed for the better.

Now, Northrend is still crawling with Scourge (Undead) and Humanoids, and because the Coliseum is, excepting Icehowl and the two Jormungar, packed to the brim with UHED bosses, it makes sense to choose Crusade over SotP. You’re going to get more mileage out of the former talent.

2/2 Imp Judgements

Like Randall in Clerks 2, I’m taking back 2/2 Imp Judgements. If anyone calls you on dropping a second point in this talent, all you need to know is this: any tank worth their salt has the discipline to maintain 969 even if a cooldown is up one second earlier. If you’re using Judgement when it isn’t Judgement’s turn, you’re not doing a proper rotation. Additionally, an 8 second Judgement is much more convenient for trash when a steady rotation is impossible, so it makes sense not to artificially restrict yourself to a 9 second Judgement.

Where else would that point go? Benediction? Meh. 1/1 Improved Blessing of Might? Nah. Topping off Imp Judgements is the logical choice.

Talents you still want to avoid

Stoicism, Guardian’s Favor, and Improved Hammer of Justice are really more pvp-flavored and have no place in a strictly pve spec. There are some merits to the latter talent, but I’d rather focus on my own job in a raid than a rogue’s.

Divinity is still bad. 5% heals sounds great, but the ROI is not worth the 5 talents points.

Likewise, Reckoning has some synergy with SotP, but in lieu of an SotP spec, it’s not worth getting. The tps return per talent point isn’t worth depriving yourself a mitigation talent like Divine Guardian.

In which I backtrack

Now, one caveat: we all have the two-point “fluff” bridge to carry us past the lower-tree talents to Blessing of Sanctuary and beyond. I spent my two bridge points on Divine Guardian. If you raid with nothing but Holy Paladins out the wazoo, DG is not an ideal talent, assuming they have it as well and they’re slapping an improved Sacred Shield on you and the other tanks.

I am unfortunately not so lucky, the Holy Pallies in my guild being addicted to Ret tree crit still. Alas, DG is for me. If you are so lucky, however, it is not a terrible idea to spend those bridge points on Improved Hammer of Justice for a 40 second cooldown, or Reckoning for a 60 tps gain. You do after all have to spend those points somewhere in that early portion of the Prot tree.

Now I turn the floor to you all. How are you speccing this patch?

Oh, things used to be so simple. 53/18 was our max threat spec and you could get every utility talent you wanted along the way. Now, how complicated it all seems.

Blizz changed Seals of the Pure so that 15% damage modifier also applies to the 33% weapon damage bonus you get with a five stack up. This change means (as calculated by the amazing Theck) that 5/5 SotP is worth as much threat as the 3/5 Conviction + 3/3 Crusade (major caveat on this below) pairing that most of us are running around with today.

To summarize Theck’s findings, this brave new world of threat looks like this against non-Undead/Humanoid/Demon/Elemental mobs:

• 5/5 SotP == 3/5 Conviction + 3/3 Crusade
• 4/5 SotP is ~70 less TPS than the 3/5 + 3/3 pairing above
• 5/5 SotP + 3/5 Reckoning > 3/5 Conviction + 3/3 Crusade (by ~80 tps)
• 5/5 SotP + 3/5 Reckoning > 5/5 Conviction + 3/3 Crusade (by ~10 tps)

Ultimately, there are several specs that cascade from this change:

4/53/15 – This spec takes most of the mitigation utility talents plus the delightfulness of PoJ. It’s less threat than the standard 3.1 spec, but not by much.

5/54/12 — This trades PoJ and DG for the final point in SotP and 3/5 Reckoning. This spec is worth ~170 more tps, but you’re trading off 15% run speed and a buffed Sacred Shield for that extra oomph.

0/53/18 — I know everything written thus far implies you can ignore Crusade, but the problem with that is this: if you’re fighting any of the mob types that Crusade does 6% damage to, then this spec is worth about ~140 more tps than 5/5 SotP, but when you’re not getting 6%, this spec is ~100 tps less than 5/5 SotP.

Considering you’re going to encounter more humanoids/undead in 5mans and outside of instances (along with most of the encounters in the Coliseum falling into the 6% category), overall you’ll probably get more threat with the third spec.

If in Ulduar you’re threat goes down a little (and for sure, in the great scheme of things, if you’re doing 8000 tps, 100 tps isn’t that big of a loss) it probably won’t be the worst thing in the world, because you’ll end up with more threat in the Coliseum with Crusade than otherwise.

For anyone who follows my Twitter, you’d have seen this morning that I pronounced Crusade was dead. As I’m sure you all know by now, I tend to stack haste rating IRL, and that was probably a case of me greatly exaggerating Crusade’s demise.

Ultimately though the one absolute you can walk away with from this post from is this: you want Divine Guardian and you want Vindication. Survivability is always a higher priority than 100-200 additional tps.

I’ve been noticing a lot of hits coming my way from people searching for talent builds for their prot pallies. I’ve already laid out how I’m going to spec in this blog, and in fact you can see my build here.

I figured it’d be best to point out for our new tanking brethren in a quick and dirteh fashion which talents you should grab, which you shouldn’t grab as much, and which you should avoid completely.

As an aside, I should point out, I tend to favor a threat-heavy build. Others might lean towards one that dips into the Holy tree. Honorshammer has a great build like this. If you want to see some big numbers, or be the kind of OT that nips at the heels of the MT, I recommend my spec.

Go only 1/2 into Spiritual Attunement. Between Divine Plea and Blessing of Sanctuary, only one point in SA will be enough to keep you rolling in mana.

Avoid Divinity. Reasonable voices may differ on this, but personally I think this talent is woefully underwhelming. 5% +heals isn’t as good as it sounds, and more often than not you’ll find that extra percentage will end up being overheal.

Stoicism is a pvp talent. Sure, it sounds useful, but you’re really only going to encounter stuns and dispells in pvp. It’s a waste of points in pve.

Get Divine Sacrifice/Guardian if you’re an offtank. If you’re MT, you won’t be popping these enough to justify the 3 talent points.

Reckoning is weak. It’s our weakest threat generating talent by far. You’ll be better served putting those points into the Ret tree where the real threat gen talents roam.

Seals of the Pure is also weak. 5/5 SotP is as much threat as 5/5 Conviction, and points in Conviction allows us to get Crusade for even more threat. Skip SotP, get Conviction.

Only go 1/2 Improved Judgements. I don’t want to get into a whole spiel about it, but our best threat rotation is 969 (more info here). Having a 10 second or 8 second Judgement throws off the rotation. One point is all you need!

Crusade is good, very good. Even when you’re not fighting humanoids/undead/etc. Crusade is a huge threat boost. You want this talent, trust me.

If you have any speccing questions, feel free to ask them in the comment to this post or email me at rhidach [at] gmail [dot] com. I don’t mind answering emails.

Happy tanking!

I’ve seen a really dopey idea being discussed in certian quarters regarding how to spec when 3.1 drops. We only have one real “oh shite” cooldown to use, the argument goes, so the solution suggested is to create a new one with the Improved Lay on Hands talent. The spec to make such a “cooldown” is this.

This is a bad spec, don’t do it.

Here’s why: as a tank you have two primary jobs. One is to stay alive as long as possible, and the other is to generate enough threat to keep the mob on you. Just out of curiosity, how does spending valuable talent points on increasing your heals by 12% help either of those?

The ultimate goal with this silly idea is to turn Lay on Hands into an 11 minute (with the new glyph) +50% armor value boost.

But, as always, the devil in the details, and the details bear out that Imp LoH isn’t as great as it seems.

To use myself as an example, I have 23391 armor, which provides 60.6% damage reduction. Physical damage reduction. Keep that in mind, the word physical here is key.

If I popped Imp LoH I would boost my armor to 35086, and my damage reduction would jump to 69.7%. A gain of 9.1% damage reduction. And even if you had more armor, damage reduction from armor is capped at 75%.

Once again though, this is all physical damage reduction. Say what you want about Pallies, we are not hurting in the physical damage reduction department. What’s primarily keeping us from being ideal Sarth 3d tanks is magical damage, which we are just about defenseless against.

All this spec does is saddle us with unnecessary talents for a weak “cooldown” that doesn’t even help where we hurt the most.

I want a new cooldown as much as the next guy. Gimping ourselves is not the way to do it.

I’m willing to give the new Divine Guardian a chance. I think I’ll be speccing this way when 3.1 drops.