Tanks, what 3.2 means to you
Ardent Defender, our new cooldown
Our long national nightmare is now over, we finally have a second cooldown! And a real one at that, not some slap-dash, Mickey Mouse cooldown.
So sum up all the changes to the talent: AD has finally been fixed so that it is no longer leapfroggable (ie, any damage that applies under 35% of your health is mitigated), and it has a new effect that, if you are reduced to 0 hp, you receive an immediate heal to 30% of your max health (assuming you have 3/3 in the talent and 540 defense skill).
Once you receive that heal you get a debuff from preventing that save from occurring again for two minutes. Originally on the PTR that debuff also removed AD’s damage reduction, but that is a bug that has been fixed.
Dodge couldn’t avoid this nerf
Our avoidance is taking a nerf that will reduce our dodge across the board while presumably increasing parry. Overall this will amount to a reduction of our total avoidance. Rather than rehash the numbers, as I’ve done previously, just know the three take-aways on this are: (a) agility/stam gems are now junk for pure avoidance, (b) parry gems are not an immediate red flag for bad tanks, (c) defense is now, oddly, our best avoidance stat. There’s a lot more nuance in this, mind you, thanks to diminishing returns.
Sacred Shield is less awesome, but still great
Not as awful as I originally supposed in my post on Friday. I mistakenly assumed that the Holy Pally hot would only apply if their shield was on you, but any old SS will do. So, despite my earlier ruminations, still get Divine Guardian instead of 2/5 Reckoning. But anyway you slice it, only one Sacred Shield is disappointing.
Sweet, sweet Vindication
This is perhaps my second-most favorite change in 3.2, an attack power debuff to a boss that’s automatically applied. We don’t have to burn rage or gimp our dps/threat to get this up–nope, it comes just from us meleeing. This will be a great mitigation buff to us overall.
You’ll probably want to shift two points from Conviction into this talent, assuming you’re running the 53/18 spec (and you better be! /shakingoffist).
BV is better, but still not better than avoidance
Block value as you know is getting a huge boost. Does this mean you want to start wearing your block set and slapping the Titanium Plating on your shield for tanking Ignis25? Er, no. You’ll still want a heavy EH/avoidance set. Considering most BV pieces also have block rating, you’ll want to continue keeping most of these pieces out of your heavy tanking set, but by all means, use them for trash.
Change is a blessing
Blessing of Sanctuary has been given a +10% stamina modifier (that doesn’t stack with Kings) in order to make it more attractive to Paladins. But is it? Sure, if you can have Kings as well. Kings gives avoidance (through agility) and mitigation (through strength) which between the two makes it the superior blessing for raid situations if you have to choose between the two (which hopefully you won’t). At least now you won’t have to bemoan the loss of Kings’ health while in heroics where the mana return of Sanc is critical.
Exorcism is not for tanking anymore
Exorcism has been retooled to make it a situational move for Ret Paladins. That is, Art of War procs and they fire off an instant-cast Exorcism, and the rest of us shlubs are stuck with a 1.5 second cast time. This change of course makes Exorcism unusable while tanking, because time spent casting is time you can’t avoidance any attacks (and pushback, oh the pushback).
They changed Hand of Reckoning so that it does a lot more damage if the mob is currently not targeting you, which is supposed to make up for losing the Reck/Ex pickup combo for a run away mob. It’s an annoying change overall, but one we can work around.
Expertise isn’t terrible anymore
With the change to Seal of Corruption/Vengeance to do an additional 33% of weapon damage with melee hits after a five stack is up, expertise becomes a valuable stat again. For example, this change makes the SoV glyph the second-best TPS glyph in the game now (and one I’ll happily swap into my spellbook after the patch now that I don’t need said Mickey Mouse cooldown anymore). You’ll probably not want to gem expertise or purposefully gear for it, but don’t shun any gear anymore because it has expertise on it. A junk stat no longer.
Other cool little things
Lastly, two dopey little changes I’m happy about are Auras reapply after your death automatically, and Righteous Fury lost its duration and mana cost.
Armory Feed
@honorshammer
21 July 2009 at 1:10 pm #
“(a) agility/stam gems are now junk, (b) parry gems are not an immediate red flag for bad tanks, (c) defense is now, oddly, our best avoidance stat. ”
Excellent summary of the changes, but I suggest you reconsider this.
Agi/Stam gems, in addition to providing avoidance also give Crit, and Armor. Agi is just as viable as it was before compared to dodge, nothing’s changed there. I’d use agi/stam gems instead of dodge/stam gems.
Here’s a good rule of thumb : (character_sheet_dodge_% – 10) / (character_sheet_parry_% – 10) = 1.88
@Rhidach
21 July 2009 at 1:27 pm #
I think, as always, I was a bit hasty in my assessment, haha. For the various stats you get out of it agi, it is definitely a better rounded gem, but for just avoidance it’s inferior: .135% for agi/stam versus .176% for dodge/stam. (Numbers from blue-quality gems).
I’m going to have to rephrase that paragraph!
humm, glad they fixed the bug on the AD debuff, now I can sleep again.
I’m gonna keep my mickey-mouse cooldown, just because mickey mouse rules, and you don’t, and because I’m not going to turn down any mitigation I can get, even if it asks me to drop a nice chunk of my Threat.
As far as I remember, Exo was never a part of our 969 rotation, and was only used to either pull because my Avenger´s Shield was on Cooldown, and even then, that wasn´t very often… And i Honestly preffer the HoReck doing extra dmg after the taunt effect, than having to use a macro to cast HoReck + Exo (specially since Exo consumes a GCD).
On the avoidance discussion, yea, agi/sta > dodge/sta IF you want the EH benefits and a small although negligible ammount of Threat from crits, otherwise, for pure avoidance go dodge/sta on a Red slot, on a yellow slot grab Def/Sta.
Defense was the best avoidance stat prior to the dodge nerf too. Verenitio wrote up a very good summary back in December.
http://www.tankingtips.com/2008/12/12/how-good-is-defense/
The gist of it was that the gap in avoidance between dodge and defense was miniscule, .04% for every 41 points. By sacrificing that .04%, you gained .33% block, and avoided diminishing returns on dodge. The deeper you got into dedge from gear, the more valuable defense becomes, and with such a small differential between the two, defense overtook dodge in terms of effective avoidance pretty much as soon as you got a full set of Heroic gear. Now that dodge is being nerfed, this gap simply becomes more readily apparent.
Hoo-ray for not having to remember to recast Righteous Fury! There’s nothing worse than not having anything to blame for the wipe other than being an idiot and letting it drop. Come on – I can’t be the only one that’s done that? :)
@Rhidach
22 July 2009 at 9:30 am #
I admit nothing!
@Cassini: Not to mention the fact that we were not exactly the best option for a Brez IF we died since we would have to spend around 5 seconds re buffing with RF, Blessing (Kings or Sanc), AND our Aura, so these changes don’t make me yell : NO! Save the Brez for theother tanks!!! OMG WTF! you DID waste it on me….
AND, 5 seconds of a boss fight with a dead tank is A LOT
Yeah that more or less summed it up the tankadin changes.
As for Sanctuary, instead of complaining about the stamina loss from kings, people will be bemoaning the loss of the other stats that comes with kings as you mentioned …. Makes me wonder if i rather have this change, or keep the old and get another pally to BOK me while i sanc myself without losing out o_O;
So for argent defender, let me get this straight, your saying when the cooldown is used the normal passive mitigation when health is below 35% that didn’t work during timer debuff was actually a bug ? Then this is good news.
But what do you mean about going to 0hp it will bounce back to 30 ? what happens if the boss does 50% do i still bounce back to 30% health for the AD cooldown proc ?
@Moogle: Yup, doesnt matter if the BOSS 1-shots you, you will be “reset” at 30% of your HP. then again, if we get 1 shot we fail….
This is the perfect summation of 3.2. Thank you!
[...] If you aren’t up to speed on the new changes coming, I recommend Rhidach’s excellent write up “Tanks, What 3.2 Means to You.” [...]
How very interesting. I’ve gleaned a *lot* of information from just this post, and realize that I don’t know much at all about paladin tanking.
My paladin just hit 80, and I haven’t even reached def cap yet, so I’m very new to the game. Can anyone recommend a guide to avoid being the paladin tank who stacks parry? (I had no idea until just now it wasn’t a good stat.)
Excellent summary. Props to Honor for linking this post.
So, now that the 3.2 Tankadin changes are sorted out, Honor brought us up-to-date on jems, build issues are being discussed… Is anyone discussing glyphs?