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.

One of my aspirations in TBC was to have enough threat that I could get away with tanking using a Sun Eater enchanted with Mongoose. Unfortunately, that day didn’t come until 3.0 when my trusted Merciless Gladiator’s Gavel was retired. But the dream lived on!

Last night in heroic ToC-10 (hopefully the last time we run that as current content), I scored the heroic Ardent Guard. Such an awesome weapon. As for enchanting it, I am terribly bored with the thought of Blood Draining on yet another weapon, so I decided to take a different route: finally giving Mongoose some time in the sun.

I’ve done a bit of poking around on weapon enchants, and what really piqued my interest was this threat sim run by Theck which shows Mongoose as being our second best (practical) threat enchant, only trailing Accuracy by a tiny margin. Combined with the armor and dodge granted by the proc, it seems worthy of a trial.

Update: Some actual numbers would be nice, eh?

• It’s been calculated that thanks to the change in how SoV is handled, Mongoose’s proc time has jumped to 52% since 3.2 (why it’s good all of a sudden)
• This means that the enchant is worth ~62 “constant” agility (120 agility x .52 = 62.4)
• That’s a “constant” 124 armor and 1.04% dodge and 1.19% crit
• In reality, when it procs, you get 240 armor and 2% dodge and 2.3% crit

Not too shabby!

I probably won’t get a decent test of it until Icecrown on Tuesday (crossing fingers) so I’ll let you all know how it goes.

While threat should be the last worry on a tankadin’s mind, there are still some who struggle with it because they are either undergeared/underperforming or are dealing with hyper-performing dps who are then chafing under a threat cap. Because we as Paladins have the ability to give one of (if not the highest) threat caps, it is our responsibility to be prepared to dish out as much tps as possible.

Here are five tips on how to bring the pain:

1. Use a proper rotation

969 is the best way to optimize threat while maximizing uptime of Judgements of the Just and other debuffs we provide. To summarize briefly, we have three main “9″ attacks, Holy Shield, Judgement, and Consecration; and two main “6″ attacks, Hammer of the Righteous, and Shield of Righteousness. Weave your 6s with your 9s, such as:

0.0 Holy Shield
1.5 ShoR
3.0 Consecration
4.5 HotR
6.0 Judgement
7.5 ShoR
9.0 Holy Shield
10.5 HotR
12.0 Consecration
13.5 ShoR
15.0 Judgement

Et cetera, et cetera.You can weave in Avenger’s Shield or Hammer of Wrath for any 9 as cooldowns allow.

Sidenote: while off-tanking, never use exorcism (aside from an initial pull). The threat you’d gain from the burst (even on an undead target) is less than the threat of the melee swings and SoV proc if you just stuck to auto-attacking.

2. Change your glyphs

According to Theck’s analysis of threat contributions from glyphs, the best threat glyph is Avenger’s Shield. Although, it really isn’t. Against a single target, sure, but you’re sacrificing 100% tps on two other targets for 200% on only one. Ignore this one.

Realistically, the best threat glyph is Seal of Vengeance by a wide margin. Even over the expertise soft cap, you’ll get more threat from Glyph of Vengeance than from Glyph of Judgement. Once over the expertise hard cap, you can drop it though. Moreover, Judgement is, of course, the second-best threat glyph. Glyph of HotR is nice, but it’s far too situational–and in a raid like ToC where the only time you’ll get any use out of it is Faction Champions, it’s a waste of a glyph slot.

Glyphs still not worth your time are Consecration (its only use is mana-conservation, which isn’t an issue), Exorcism (see above), and Holy Wrath.

TLDR: One of your glyph slots is going to be Divine Plea; make the other two SoV and Judgement.

3. Spec into (the right) Ret tree talents

There is some confusion right now by folks who were overly excited by the change to SoV which made Seals of the Pure viable (ahem). As such, there’s an awful lot of folks running around with a 5/x/x build right now. That’s all well and good if you’re still plugging away at Ulduar, but if you’re spending any time in ToC, you should be specced into Crusade.

According to the inimitable Theck, the absolute best, possible combinations of threat talents in the game right now include 3/3 Crusade. You’re shooting yourself in the foot if you ignore this gem of a talent.

4. Get hit-capped

For Paladin tanks, hit is simply one of our best threat stats. Thanks to the new BV-ShoR cap, there are steep diminishing returns (followed by a cliff-face cuttoff) to the threat value of BV once you hit a certain value. This also makes Strength take a nasty hit as well, because of the contributions it gives to BV.

(Obligatory relevant Theck link.)

Specifically, before you hit 2400 BV, the ranking of threat stats is Strength, Block Value, and then Hit. Once you pass that, Hit becomes our #2, and once you have about 3000 BV, Hit becomes #1. Of course, Hit itself has a cap (263 rating) and is basically crap after that point, so be wary of that. When evaluating your gear for threat, do it in terms of how much BV you currently have.

Hit is certainly worth capping if possible, as there is great value in the consistent flow of tps such that Hit provides. It’s not hard to do either; with just my T9 legs, the T2.232 helm, the Saronite Swordbreakers, and two other excellent pieces I have 233 hit rating. And my survivability has not suffered a lick.

That said, never gem or enchant for Hit (or threat in general), but do mix and match pieces so you get the most worth out of each stat.

5. Wear threat trinks and gear

Twist! There are some fights (specifically on farm content) where you’re not going to be as concerned with stacking EH. In this case it is perfectly acceptable to swap in some BV pieces or Strength/threat trinks to push the upper limits of your tps potential.

When we’re doing farm content, I tend to swap in a iLevel 226 BV neck and belt, the heroic Sunreaver Defender’s Pauldrons, and equip Darkmoon Card: Greatness (STR) and Lavanthor’s Talisman. That pushes my threat capabilities up a lot, to the point where I can do not just amazing tps, but also the dps of a (bad) fresh 80. Not too shabby.

Please share in the comments any tips you have for boosting your tps, especially in progression content where you don’t have the luxury of using a blue trinket. Let me know if I missed anything obvious.

Wow, I haven’t done one of these in a long, long time. To be honest, this is just filler to cap off the week. On Monday I’ll have what I hope will be a very informative post on tanking strategies for heroic ToC 10, so that will be something of substance to look forward to. As always, I’d appreciate any additions or corrections to any answers I give in the comments!

breastplate of the white knight gems

Let me list them in order: Solid Majestic Zircon, Solid Majestic Zircon, and Solid Majestic Zircon. Ignore the bonus, you’ll lose too much stamina trying to get it.

vindication, paladin, worth it?

Absolutely! Vindication is hands-down a mitigation talent and a must-have for any serious paladin tank. I’m a big fan of self-reliance, and I don’t trust any raider to keep up a debuff I can do myself.

does vindication work on raid bosses post 3.2.2

Yes.

mark of the relentless or the leviathan’s coil

I would choose the Coil for when you’re dealing with more physical damage (the armor) and the Mark when dealing with more magic heavy fights (more stamina).

shadow strike timer burrower

Every 30 seconds the adds will both pick the farthest player from them and target them for a shadow strike. Interrupt all the burrowers to prevent a one-shot of the target.

0/58/18 paladin spec

When I first saw this query my thought was, “how the hell did this person add up 76 talent points?” Then I realized that they were talking about Cataclysm when we’ll all be level 85. If I had those five extra points now, I would probably put them in Seals of the Pure for a nice threat boost. I think that’d work out to more tps than 3/3 Sanctity of Battle and another 2 points in Conviction. I can’t see anything mitigation-wise that would be a better fit for them.

2% magic reduction meta

Very, very situational. I can count on one hand how many fights that might help in, if at all. Not worth it except as a very narrow gimmick.

245 tank libram of valiance up time

According to the log I did the other day to test Quel’Serrar, 98.3%.

3.2.2 pally tanking with spell power weapon

No, no, a thousand times no. You’d get more threat out of a dps one-hander with a high dps number than a spellpower weapon. Spellpower is dead, get with the times.

anub’arak solo tank adds interrupts

I do this for 10-H and 25-N. It’s totally doable. Having a lot of block value helps significantly.

best prot pally weapon enchant 3.2.2

I’m partial to Blood Draining for the survivability aspect. If you’re hurting for threat, I would recommend Accuracy.

can a paladin interrupt hammer of justice coliseum twin

Yes, assuming the shield is down. Holy Wrath is a better choice for this, though. (Damage and interrupt in one!)

do prot paladins need alot of hit rating 3.2

I am a vocal proponent of hit rating. I strive to always run as melee hit capped (though I don’t gem or enchant for it). There is nothing better than hit to ensure a steady, consistent stream of amazing tps.

fresh 80 tankadin what libram should i get?

Libram of the Sacred Shield! You can easily nab it after 4-5 heroics.

So apparently 3.2.2 is dropping today according to mmo-champ. While it might make sense to spend the first night of this raid reset mourning the AD nerf, we tankadins are made of stronger stuff. Grab your boot straps and make the best of this down-tuning. Here’s what you need to know about the changes to our class in this patch.

1. Our threat nerf will work out to around a 5% tps loss

We’re going to lose about 100 spell power from the change to Touched by the Light and receive 10% less bonus threat from Holy damage thanks to the Righteous Fury change. This seems drastic, but smarter folks than I have calculated that out to “only” a 5-6% loss in tps. Not the end of the world. Might not even be noticeable.

To compensate be sure to get more hit so your threat is more consistent. Get expertise soft-capped too. And if you find your threat cratering, considering the Accuracy enchant for your weapon. (Don’t go overboard and gem for strength, though.)

2. Seal of Command is still not for tanking

I know the new aoe aspect looks tempting, but this is really a buff for Ret in trash–it’s not meant for us. You’re going to do more threat with SoV/C up and HotRing stacks on to a swath of mobs than hitting individual guys for a pittance and chaining two extra holy strikes on your single weapon swings. Avoid the temptation to go spec into SoComm.

3. Judgement Helm is awesome and you want it

Srsly. It’s freaking T2 and it has hit. I honestly don’t know which is better.

Oh. Right. The T2 part.

4. No more libram swapping

I don’t think many people did this anyway, but just in case, we can’t libram swap anymore. If you unequip a libram you lose its effect.

5. <35% is going to hurt a lot more

Ardent Defender received an annoying nerf that will make the sub-35% hp zone a little more dangerous for us. The change overall is about a 9% effective health loss, unfortunately. It doesn’t gimp us (the change was actually justifiable in terms of how powerful AD was) but it does mean that we’re not as “invincible” as we once were.

Well, I’m fresh out of ideas, and frankly the idea of doing two BLTNFs in a row bores me to tears. So, I decided to do a post on everyone’s favorite, excruciatingly mundane topic: patch notes. Contain yourselves, please.

Blizz updated their test realm patch notes, which you can see on mmo-champ and elsewhere. The official site too, I suppose, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.

Nice fix to an annoying bug.

Hammer of the Righteous: The damage from this ability is now considered physical instead of Holy. The threat generated by the ability has been increased such that it will continue to do approximately the same threat it did when it was Holy damage.

This will hopefully help us with our one source of snap aggro on multiple targets. I for sure wasn’t relishing the prospect of having diminished threat in the snap category, so this is a nice mitigation to an annoying nerf.

Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category.

This really doesn’t affect us. I think only the most intense of the min-maxers were actually bothering to libram swap. The swing timer reset was too much of a hassle, and the threat bonus was marginal, all things considered. I wonder if this change means other classes were relic swapping as well, or if Blizzard’s trying to be ahead of the curve.

Speaking of librams, I’ve been seriously considering picking up the Libram of Valiance for my threat set. And, by threat set, I mean in heroics I tend to swap out my stam trinks and Libram of Defiance for Lavanthor’s Talisman, the STR Darkmoon Card: Greatness, and Libram of Obstruction.

Supposedly, according to numbers I’ve seen elsewhere, the 200 STR of LoV has a 90% uptime, so is worth a constant 180 STR, which then threat wise works out to an equivalent of 540 BV. Not straight conversion, mind you. Threat conversion. So, even with the change to Libram of the Sacred Shield in 3.2.2 to ~450 BV, the LoV will still work out to be better.

And that’s before the mind-shattering additional spell power you get from strength. Just try to wrap your head around that! … Uh, yeah.

All around we’re looking at a 5-6% threat nerf. Not great, but could be worse.

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?

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.

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.

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.