Tanks, what you need to know about 3.2.2

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.

5 Comments to “Tanks, what you need to know about 3.2.2”

  1. Yoggie 22 September 2009 at 9:13 am #

    Hi! I love your Blog! :)

    I have a question for you about what you worte here:
    “We’re going to lose about 100 spell power from the change to Touched by the Light”

    I thought we were getting buffed here? Here’s some patch notes:
    •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.

    Thanks for all your great blogs! I read your site almost everyday!

    • Rhidach
      @Rhidach
       22 September 2009 at 9:44 am #

      Thanks Yoggie :)

      In my case, I have 3259 stamina in my normal tanking set. With the old TbtL that’s 977 spell power prior to 3.2.2. Tonight when I log on I’m going to have 1333 strength, and as a result 800 spell power. I have a lot of 245 gear and stack a lot of stamina, so I’m going to be particularly hard hit, but for most tanks it should average out to around 100 or so spell power lost.

  2. Falowin 22 September 2009 at 1:05 pm #

    Fan Of Knives has lost 30%???? I feel like killing someone…except now I will have to kill them very slowly and one at a time since, yet again, the rogue is stuck AOE’less.

  3. Logan 22 September 2009 at 10:57 pm #

    God, for the first time in a LONG time i have struggled to keep aggro… tonight a fire mage was pulling almost 8k dps on kora 25 and the #2 and 3 were locks, the 3 of them were riding my TPS, and was kinda scary

  4. Demogar 23 September 2009 at 12:46 pm #

    Welcome to my world ladies…

    Wait you still have better threat than me… So I guess I take that back :)