I’ll be able to hop on tonight to finally play with my new spec, buy dual speccing, and start hunting down the enchant/glyphs I need. I heard from a few people, Logan in the comments on another post among them, that Glyph of Divine Plea is impossible to find right now? If so, grrrr.

I hope Ulduar went well for anyone that managed to get in there.

I’ll report back tomorrow on what, if anything, I accomplish tonight!

All these items are listed below broken down by slot, with Tier 8 separate, and with iLevels indicated. Some slots seem to have no 219 item, so I suspect one of the 226 items for that slot will turn out to be iLevel 219.

I’ll comment about the gear in a future post.

Tier 8

Conquerer’s Aegis Faceguard
Conquerer’s Aegis Breastplate
Conquerer’s Aegis Shoulderguards
Conquerer’s Aegis Handguards
Conquerer’s Aegis Legguards

Valorous Aegis Faceguard
Valorous Aegis Breastplate
Valorous Aegis Shoulderguards
Valorous Aegis Handguards
Valorous Aegis Legguards

Head

Helm of the Faceless (226)

Ironbark Faceguard (219)

Shoulders

Shoulderplates of the Deconstructor (226)

Shoulderguards of the Solemn Watch (219)

Chest

Unbreakable Chestguard (226)

Wrist

Mimiron’s Inferno Couplings (226)

Flamewatch Armguards (219)

Hands

Handguards of Revitalization (239)

Gauntlets of the Royal Watch (226)
Handguards of the Enclave (226)

Waist

Dragonslayer’s Brace (226)
Indestructible Plate Girdle (226)
Shieldwarder Girdle (226)

Stormtempered Girdle (219)

Legs

Legplates of the Endless Void (239)

Gilded Steel Legplates (226)
Saronite Plated Legguards (226)
Wyrmguard Legplates (226)

Boots

Charred Saronite Greaves (226)
Greaves of the Stormwarder (226)
Spiked Deathdealers (226)

Cloak

Titanskin Cloak (239)

Cloak of the Makers (226)

Cloak of the Iron Council (219)

Neck

Bronze Pendant of the Vanir (239)

Necklace of Unerring Mettle (226)
Shard of the Crystal Forest (226)

Mark of the Unyielding (219)

Rings

Platinum Band of the Aesir (226)
Signet of the Earthshaker (226)
The Leviathan’s Coil (226)

Signet of Winter (219)

Trinkets

Heart of Iron (226)
The General’s Heart (226)

Shield

Northern Barrier (226)
The Boreal Guard (226)

Shieldwall of the Breaker (219)

Weapon

Sorthalis, Hammer of the Watchers (239)

Shiver (226)
Titanguard (226)

Legacy of Thunder (219)
Stoneguard (219)

Divine Plea now only reduces the amount healed by your Flash of Light, Holy Light, and Holy Shock spells.

Which is a fix in response to the furor that popped up last week over DP being changed to cut in half the healing we were getting from Judgement of Light, Earth Shield, Lay on Hands, Lifebloom, etc.

That would have been an epic disaster if it made it to live. An open hand to the countenance!

• (2pc) Increases the damage done by your Seals of Vengeance, Corruption, and Righteousness by 10%.
• (4pc) Shield of Righteousness now increases your shield block value by 225 for that attack and for 3 sec afterward.

I think it’s fair to assume that the major changes to the Paladin talent trees have just about been fully rolled out and what we see on the PTRs is just about what’s going to make it to live. Now seems therefore a good time to start planning out how I’m going to spec when the patch drops and we’re all suddenly 0/0/0.

Here’s the build at Wowhead, 0/53/18.

Before I explain the spec you should know about my tanking situation. My guild runs 25 man raids and in them I am typically the main OT. I need basic survivability, and at the same time I need enough damage output that I can hang around 2nd place on the threat meter. So my choices tend to gravitate towards raid utility.

Now, in the Prot tree I took our bread and butter talents: Divine Strength, Anticipation, Improved Righteous Fury, etc. It’s pretty straightforward.

Special things to take note of are, for one, I skipped Divinity. This is mostly because the talent itself is garbage for Prot. 5% is not that much, and frankly I’m concerned more about whether a heal lands in time than if it’s 5% bigger. And 5% isn’t that much for so many talent points. I’m not even sure this talent is that worthwhile for Healadins, considering the overheal potential.

Moreover, I picked up Divine Sacrifice. I already have 1/2 Divine Guardian in my current build, and I like the idea of adding another 15% of raid damage soaking to my repetoire.

It might seem a silly talent at first, but there are some times when it is a major help to the healers for me to be able to shave 15-30% of the damage off the raid. Examples are when we were first learning the ropes on Loatheb, and more recently with Malygos’ Deep Breaths.

Moving on, you’ll notice I grabbed 2/2 Improved Hammer of Justice, which now synergizes quite well with the expanded Judgements of the Just talent. Basically, I’m going to have an interrupt on a 20 sec cooldown now.

Please note I completely avoided Reckoning. You should too!

Last big note in the Prot tree: I only went 1/2 on Spiritual Attunement. Honestly, between 100% uptime Divine Plea and Blessing of Wisdom, that second point in SA can be better put elsewhere.

Now, this is where the spec gets exciting. Thanks to Blizz somewhat “de-bloating” our tree we have some extra points to play with. I’m planning to use this bounty to dabble further into the Ret tree and increase my OT dps.

Keep in mind I went 1/5 Benediction purely as a stepping stone to further talents. I really had no other choice, and certainly wasn’t putting that point into Improved Judgements (making that 2/2). No sir.

So the big dps talents I’m focusing on in this tree are 3/3 Heart of the Crusader (a +3% crit buff to the raid assuming this focus my target), 3/5 Conviction (an additional +3% crit just for me, and 3/3 Crusade (+3% dmg all around with an extra +3% against certain mob types).

With my Ret talents I’m adding 6% to my crit chance and up to 6% to my overall damage. That is a major tps/dps boost!

I think this is a fairly standard build you’ll be seeing most tankadins rocking come the next patch.

Let me know if you have any suggestions/comments/complaints. I’m always open to making changes.

Thanks Blizzard for making such a crappy libram that we get to save the 25 Emblems of Valor. Take that Holy/Ret chumps.

From mmo-champion.com:

Paladin T8 Protection Relic — Increases your block rating by 136 [8.5% -ed.] while Holy Shield is active.

This is an upgrade to Libram of Repentance, I guess, but not much else. Personally I’m already block capped, so all that extra block rating would be pushed right off the table. It’d be a perfect waste of a relic slot.

And you can’t even argue it’d be a good starter item for tankadins, since it costs Emblems of Valor to get in the first place.

Very disappointing.

Check these out (from mmo-champion.com):

This is a serious upgrade to Monarch Crab. Right now I have my crab gemmed with a Solid Sky Sapphire and a Solid Dragon’s Eye, so it’s giving me 138 stamina and has the on-use proc for 300. The Heart is definitely a bump up on both counts.

This is like the Essence of Gossamer without the stamina. It’s nice, but I’d rather have the Heart of Iron. This is definitely a better fit in a trash set, since 205 damage being shaved off won’t be that much help when you’re taking multi-thousand HP hits.

But let’s talk about dodge. Right now I have 305 dodge rating, or 21% dodge. It’s not that much, but I’m already feeling my returns a-diminishing.

With these two trinkets equipped and procced, I’m looking at some serious lost dodge. I’m terrible at math but it looks like around 4% avoidance will just outright disappear.

How much avoidance are we going to see on gear in T9?

In the meantime, onto more important things… Tier 8!

Over at Maintankadin, one of the posters found the helm/shoulders to Paladin Tier 8 in this thread.

Which means… we’re in a dress again…

Here’s the art from the booklet that came with the collector’s edition of WotLK that main suspected would be either the Shammy or the Pally T8:

Eh, it’s kind of cool. But, it’s really hard to tank stuff when you keep stepping on your skirt.

UPDATE: Ah, my panic was premature and thankfully shortlived. Here is the true Pally T8.

Bravo, Katamai at Maintankadin, for digging this up.

So… Robopallies or Pallybots?

• The ability to prove your worth to a capital city of your choosing through our new mounted combat system (still in development)
• New daily quests to construct the great Argent Crusade coliseum for glorious battles to come
• All new rewards – new items, titles, banners, tabards, pets, mounts, and more
• All new achievements
• Many more festivities, and more to come in future content updates!

This sounds… really, really cool. And it’s completely unexpected. Grats to Blizz for pulling one out of left field.

Would it be too much to ask for a new Argent tabard, and perhaps a fancy Argent Proto-drake mount like they seem to have plenty of at the Argent Stand in Icecrown?