Damocles’ nerf hammer danglin’ over our heads

Ironically, I had in the can a post I was going to write called “Are we going to get nerfed?” and here’s our answer: yes, but slightly. And not where you’d expect.

The 3.2.2 patch notes came down this morning with the following pertinent pieces:

• Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
• Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
• Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.
• Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack.

This is an all around threat nerf (obviously), though curiously they haven’t tackled Ardent Defender… er, yet. They might be content to leave it as is due to “class population balance” concerns, but who knows?

In case you’re maybe thinking, as I did originally, they tuned down RF to make up for a spell power gain from the new TbtL, that’s not the case. With the old TbtL I have 904 spell power. If the new one was in effect today, I’d have 800. 100 spell power isn’t a lot of threat lost in the great scheme of things, but a 10% threat modifier is, alas.

Even with these changes I suspect we’ll still be the best threat tanks, but less so than before.

The Seal of Command change is kind of exciting, and I wonder if they’re intending to turn it into the tanking seal with the AOE damage? Or if it’s to give Ret an option on trash?

Lastly, mmo-champion is busy ripping all the items from the patch files. They already have some new pets up as well as some of the loot from Onyxia. The Priest T2 helm for example is listed, and looks pretty nice (it’s iLevel 232, which makes me think the 10/25 versions will drop gear with item budgets similar to Coliseum non-heroic modes). The only concern is it kept resistance stats, which is … sad. Might mean we won’t be seeing a new Judgement Crown that’s viable for tanking. Wait and see, I guess.

There’s only one thing I was for 3.2.2mas: an iLevel 245 Quel’Serrar. My dream may yet some true.

Speccing next patch just got murky

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.

3.2 scattershot thoughts

Divine Guardian as a talent is kind of crap now with the nerf to Sacred Shield (only one per target). May be useful if no Holy Pallies are in the raid, but we always have at least one. Because it won’t do much for me for mitigation anymore, I think those two points are going to go somewhere else.

But where? Well, I need to bridge down to the sixth level talents with those two points, so they have to go somewhere in that first half of the tree. Call me crazy, but I might put them in Reckoning.

According to Jasari over at Maintankadin, Reckoning has received a 47% buff of tps per point thanks to the SoV change (assuming a four stack is up). While the tps per point gain isn’t exactly consistent, 2 points in there will net me an additional 66 tps.

Why not Improved Hammer of Justice? I’d rather take a threat increase (no matter how minor) over 20 seconds off an interrupt that is bound to the GCD.

I’m very disappointed about BV threat cap. Gone are the days of my 10-11k ShoR crits, at least for now.

The change to Judgements of Just (can’t be overwritten by a non-JoJ judgement) is pretty awesome however.

Vindication is pretty awesome, and a mitigation talent at that, so it’ll be must have. The points for it though will most likely be leeched over from Conviction (which has a lower tps per point value than Crusade).

Feasible spec come 3.2 would be this, I suppose.

Spec possibilities in next patch

All the patch news yesterday lead to the inevitable conclusion that some pretty big changes are happening to Paladin tanking when 3.2 drops. Finally we’ll have a second high-mitigation cooldown to help us roll with the new big-hits style of tanking. I am personally ecstatic at the redesign of Ardent Defender and can’t wait for the first time pink angels descend from the heavens to restore me to 30% health because the healers panicked and switched to raid healing during a flame jet, letting Ignis crush me under his iron boot.

I’m getting carried away though! The changes announced yesterday have some weighty implications on how we spec. Specifically these changes are:

• Seal of Vengeance/Corruption will also do 33% of weapon damage when a full five-stack of the dot is up. This would theoretically make Seals of the Pure a better talent for threat generation than it currently is. Could also be paired with Reckoning for additional threat.
• Improved LoH will now provide a 20% damage reduction effect, rather than +50% armor value, making it a more useful cooldown.

Right now the default spec I see for tankadins is something around 0/53/18, which is a high threat output spec, but this might change. Here are two possible specs we might see becoming viable in 3.2:

Lay on Hands Spec (12/53/6)

Yes, I know, the irony is delicious. I’m not super enamored with this spec just yet, though. One of my big concerns with it is having to dump 5 talent points into increasing our Intellect to reach Improved Lay on Hands. Total waste of talent points considering what a non-issue mana is for us. There’s also the question of whether it makes sense to trade the threat and utility of 6% crit, 3-6% extra damage, and a run speed increase for an 11 minute cooldown.

Vindication Spec (0/53/18)

This spec takes two points out of Conviction and puts it in Vindication for the attack power debuff. Right now I think this looks like a better deal. It’s a little less tps but adds survivability thanks to the Demo Shout effect. And you don’t have to waste talent points on ineffectual talents. And you can benefit from the target effect more than once every 11 minutes.

Ultimately all this hullaballoo is just speculation (har har har). I think a lot will change depending on how much tps the new Seal of Vengeance generates and whether it makes Seals of the Pure or Reckoning viable (it probably won’t). I’m finding myself inclined to agree with the speculation Theck laid out in this thread at Maintankadin:

As the trees stand now, people desiring Vindication will have to go at least 10 points into Ret, unlocking Conviction. If Crusade is still considerably better than SotP (and it will be), it’s likely that 1 Conviction + 3 Crusade will out-threat 5/5 SotP, and give you the added utility of Vindication and SotP.

That’s probably where we’ll stand when the dust settles.

WTB another day off

Ah vacation, how I love you. I loathe when you end, but we have fun times while we can.

Speaking of fun times, yesterday myself and Gulliveig (my IRL buddy and guildie who I do not talk about enough on this blog) hosted two guildies from out of state, Ildara and Cendra, who came over to Boston to see us. It was great times, but I think the whole day is a remarkable testament to WoW as a social tool.

I met Ildara and Cendra randomly while listed in the LFG tool for Heroic Steam Vaults way back during TBC. I’ve “known” them for two good years now, and I say known in quote marks because there was the awkward moment yesterday when hands were shaken, hugs exchanged, and “good to meet you”s dispensed.

And yet, it was all sorts of surreal considering aside from never standing within 600 miles of each other, we basically knew each other as well as we could of had they been my next door neighbors and playing WoW.

I think in the end that will be WoW’s legacy for me–not the phat purps I accumulated, or the raid bosses felled, but the friendships I made in the game.

But I digress.

As you may have noticed around Thursday last week I finally caught up to the rest of the WoW-playing public and achieved Champion status with my last faction, which gave me my much-desired Crusader title.

So heroic.

Of course, now I’m out more than 50g a day in dailies, but them’s the breaks.

In a Naxx25 gear run on Thursday night (as I mentioned in my last post) for the lulz I decided to go afk halfway during the Loatheb fight. Mechanics of the fight being what they are, not to mention how insane my threat is, it was pretty easy to just walk away at 50% and go grab a drink or something.

I warned everyone in advance too, and I don’t think anyone believed me. But then at 50% I said in vent “afk guys, I’ll be back in a few” and got a few “wait, WHAT?!”s in reply. Of course, at such a threat lead, it wasn’t hard holding aggro with auto-attacks and Blood Corruption, haha.

Oh, and I saw a fun glitch: a dragon riding a horse. Didn’t know they could do that.

Awesome graph: tps/dps gains per talent point

Check out the amazing graph in this thread (first one as you scroll down). It breaks down six threat talents by the gain in tps and dps that a point would provide.

According to the graph, in order, the best talents for increasing tps/dps are One Handed Weapon Specialization > Touched by the Light > Crusade > Conviction > Seals of the Pure > Reckoning.

Against undead mobs Crusade and TbtL switch spots.

This solidifies my decision to spec 3/5 Conviction and 3/3 Crusade.

3.1 tankadin spec

Update: I tweaked this spec a little. I’m going with this one now.

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.

Better Late Than Never Friday 3/20/09

It occurred to me writing this that each week it would get successively harder to write this bit, considering that each week I’m inevitably covering some topic that people come here looking for. Eventually I’m going to run out of stuff to not write about! … if that makes any sense. Anyhoo:

41 stamina gem or 27 defence rating

I would go with the +stam gems, just because that’s such an obscene amount of stamina that it’s hard to pass up. Plus, most of your defense needs are met from your gear and you should only have to gem minimally for it to hit the uncrit cap.

completely re-gemming a paladin for threat

Don’t! All your threat should come from three places: (1) your weapon’s dps, (2) your block value, (3) your stamina via Touched by the Light. No need to gem to boost any of them.

how many hits does it take to level from 399 to 400?

I haven’t been able to find an authoritative source on how weapon skill leveling works. In my experience, it seems like fighting a mob that’s many levels higher than your current weapon skill equivalency makes it level faster.

For example, while grinding those lvl 79 Captive Vrykuls, I went from 101 to around 350 with 1 hit per weapon skill, but once I passed 350 it started taking more than one hit per skill point.

Probably because I was approaching the equivalent skill level to that mob’s own level. Basically, because 400 is the last skill point, and you’re usually fighting lvl 80-83 mobs, it’s going to take some time.

tankadin mobs behind you crit defense 540

Once you hit the crit cap it doesn’t matter where a mob hits you–you won’t be crit. If you’re sitting down, however, it’s an automatic crit. The only time when facing a mob matters is with blocking and parrying. You can’t block or parry anything hitting you from behind, but you can dodge the blows.

what are the biggest stamina gems u can get

The +41 stamina gems (Solid Dragon’s Eyes) from Jewelcrafting. Non-professionally, it’s the +24 stamina gems. However, coming soon in patch 3.1 is the Solid Stormjewel (+30 stamina), which can be a reward from the new fishing dailies.

what should my hit rating be as a protection paladin

Probably somewhere between 4-5%. Don’t gem for it, let it come to you.

wie spot der tankadin

Ich verstehe nicht, was dieses bedeutet.

Better Late Than Never Friday, 3/13/09

When writing this post I accidentally typed the title out as “Best in Slot” Friday… which is a nice Freudian slip of what I keep intending to write a post about. Anyways, this is the second Better Late Than Never Friday, a periodic piece in which I pull search keywords that brought people here from Google Analytics and answer the questions behind those keywords that they probably didn’t find during their visit.

best in slot paladin protection, best in slot prot paladin, best in slot paladin tankadin, best in slot tankadin, prot paladin best in slot list, prot paladins best in slot gear

I’m working on it!

best stat threat tankadin

A tankadin’s best threat stat is strength, hands down. Not only do you get attack power from it (for all abilities), but you double-dip and grab block value as well for mitigation and Shield of Righteousness! A distant second is hit rating, which affects almost all our attacks. Expertise is not a good threat stat–it just doesn’t affect enough abilities to matter.

crit cap for paladins

I’m assuming this means the cap where you can’t be crit anymore. The answer is 5.6% crit reduction, which is around 540 defense. Always double check on your character sheet, because you could have 540 defense but 5.59% crit reduction!

gem strength tankadin

Don’t gem strength for your Paladin. For my sake. :(

good dodge% for a tankadin

Diminishing returns makes this somewhat of a dodgy issue (har har har) but I did some digging and found this chart. According to it, diminishing returns starts around 200 rating and promptly begins to nose-dive around 350 or so. I’m currently sporting 305 rating/21%, so diminishing returns around starting to make themselves known. Honestly though, dodge is the best avoidance stat, so as long as you’re not sacrificing stamina to pile it on, then keep on piling.

hit rating tankadin

Honestly, hit rating is not that important for tankadins. Most of our attacks would require 8% hit rating to be capped, but that would require a lot of sacrificed health and avoidance to achieve. I’m personally sitting at 5% melee hit rating, and I don’t intend to improve it anymore.

how much hit and expertise does a paladin tank need?

Refer to this post for expertise. For hit, by the numbers, a tankadin needs 9% hit rating to cap out most of our attacks (judgements, ShoR, HotR, Avenger’s Shield, etc.) which is 296 rating. For spells (ie, Righteous Defense and Hand of Reckoning) we need 17% hit, or 446 rating.

But again, a Paladin really doesn’t need more than 4-5% hit rating. And the glyph makes sure than one of our taunts cannot miss.

tankadin titanium plating or defense

To answer the question in a round-about way, my ideal situation is to have Hero’s Surrender with Enchant Shield – Defense for boss fights and Wall of Terror with the Titanium Plating for trash.

righteous dresses

And how!