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.
Armory Feed
While that looks like a solid spec, I’m skeptical that it will become a build that “most tankadins” will be using. By your own admission, your build is tailored to a specific set of requirements not necessarily shared by most other paladin tanks.
If I had to guess, a default tanking spec might look more like this:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sVZE0tAcofdIIRGoxs
That’s just something I put together in a few minutes. I haven’t put any theorycrafting behind it. But while your build is deliberately suited for somebody who wants to be doing more dps and might be taking less damage, this build may have a better overall balance or accessibility to it.
@Rhidach
24 March 2009 at 11:10 am #
I think it’s fair to say I jumped the gun a bit when I said most tankadins would gravitate towards the 0/58/13, but there are some key points there I think theorycrafting will decide are good ideas. For example, many are pointing to the conclusion that 3/5 Conviction and 3/3 Crusade do more dps/tps than 5/5 Seals of the Pure.
I never considered using Conviction and Crusade over Seals of the Pure to up threat. I will consider it when I go back to 0/0/0. I am too hooked on Pursuit of Justice to not have it now so I will probably be using a mix between the two specs you guys show here.
I am not sold on the usefulness of Divinity yet.
Sorry about the long post in advance. I get carried away sometimes.
I see divinity as a useful utility not for the heals that I’ll be receiving, but in those tight spots where a healer is downed and I need to step in and do some healing. Granted my mana pool is low and if I’m smart, DP will always be up, but if a healer is downed late in a boss fight and I’m the OT (which I usually am in raids), then it would make sense for me to try and heal the MT. This is where I think Divinity would have its most utility. Of course, even if you’re MT you could viably heal yourself and hold aggro, especially if Righteous Fury is up since your healing spells are Holy anyways.
Another utility for Divinity comes with Spiritual Attunement, another talent that we seem to be questioning whether or not we need. Now I know Divine Plea should always be proccing because of that nifty new mechanic where it refreshes with each attack. Now my mana pool is pretty small (5644 mp), and DP restores a quarter of that (roughly 1411 mana) over 15 sec. That means every second I’ll gain about 94 mana. Ideally, I should be doing something every second. I don’t use the 969 rotation (I have the glyph that increases my Consecration duration and CD by 2 seconds letting me work on other things; I might be an idiot doing it bass ackwards but it works for me), but every time my high threat abilities proc, I use them. If I’m using abilities that cost significantly more than 94 mana every second, I’m still going to OoM quite fast. If I’m OoM, I lose threat. SA gives me a burst to my mana pool through the healing I receive, and Divinity only increases this burst. Anyways, I could be wrong and sorry about the long post.
@Rhidach
25 March 2009 at 8:51 pm #
@Dorlomin: No worries on the long post, thanks for your insight!
I don’t think that Divinity will really have any effect at all on mana gained from spiritual attunement for the simple fact that overheals don’t count towards the mana you get from SA.
Say for intance you take a hit for 1000 damage. If you are healed for 1000 hp and you have spirirtual attunement, you’ll recieve 100 mana. If you have divinity you will be healed for 1100 hp, but 100 of that heal will be overheal. You will still only recieve 100 mana, with or without Divinity.