My stupid question answered in #BlizzChat

With the announced removal of defense in Cataclysm, my worry was what they would make us plate tanks compete with dps for our gear the same way tank druids have to compete with Cats and Rogues. So, I chucked out my stupid question to @Warcraft’s Twitter-based devchat.

The dev’s kindly answered it, too!

So the answer is, still separated plate tank gear. I am assuaged.

Anywhere you can go, I can get there faster

This post is dedicated to Falowin and his 310% mount.

Everyone knows Crusader Aura increases your speed by 20%, but what most don’t realize is the 20% boost is multiplicative rather than additive. That is, rather than taking the 20% boost and just slapping it on top of your mount speed, you multiply it in to the total movement speed number.

For example, a 280% mount makes you go 380% faster than normal run speed. Multiply the total movement speed by 1.20 (for the 20% bonus from Crusader) and you get the total movement speed with the aura up: 456%.

Contrawise, Falowin on his pretty pink 310% mount will only be going at 410% speed. If I was flying on said pretty pink mount (while wearing full t5, natch), I’d be moving at 492%.

Now imagine a pally with Aura Mastery on a 310% mount–they’d be going at 574% speed!

… I need to get me a Rusted Proto.

5 ways to boost your threat

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.

Paladin t10 revealed

I’m not going to ninja mmo-champ’s picture, but nonetheless, it’s kinda badass. I’m a fan. Especially of the whole “knight” vibe to it.

I’m hoping that pink part of the helmet isn’t textured correctly yet. Looks out of place.

Gets my thumbs up.

Edit/Update: I’m hoping this is the color/version that gets used in the end.

There’s a version floating around with a dress. I hope Blizz isn’t serious.

Critting the uncrittable

On Saturday I did a quick Heroic ToC-5 with some guildees (I need badges for BOA stuff…) and during the Eadric fight I noticed something I haven’t seen in a long time on my pally: a big red number pop up. A crit. What the hell? Granted, it was only for 9k damage, but that was a bit shocking.

My immediate worry was I still had some Ret gear on from running around and doing the Loremaster grind. I popped open my character sheet and noticed a calm, reassuring defense number that was well about 540. I wasn’t sitting, either, so what could it have been? I knew that some bosses in game had spells giving them higher than normal crit chances (aka, greater than 5.6%), but I wasn’t aware that Eadric was one of them.

When perusing the tanking forums for my daily dose of bile-inducement I spotted this great thread which was compiling just such a list. And, of course, Eadric was on the list thanks to his Vengeance ability. I recommend checking out the initial post in full, but I wanted to share a few of these little cheaters for general awareness.

• The Argent Lightwielder mob in ToC-5 has an Unbalancing Strike that acts a little like the similarly named attack that Thorim uses in Ulduar.
• It is suspected that San’layn bosses (such Prince Keleseth in UK) passively have higher than normal crit chances. This may be an issue in Icecrown Citadel where we will be facing off against the Queen of the San’layn.
• One last thing to double-check: if you’re at 540 defense but get crit, hover your mouse over the defense number and see if your uncrittability number is at 5.6% or higher. There is a rounding error where you can be at 540 defense but only 5.59% uncrit, which would still allow you to be critically struck.

My quest log is empty

It really wasn’t that bad. Eastern Kingdoms was a breeze thanks to Quel’thalas. I thought Kalimdor was going to consist of scrounging for drops that started quests, but at the 650ish mark I realized I still had Razor Hill and Zoram’gar Outpost to go.

Hrm… now what to do…

This guy is my hero

I saw this guy in a thread he posted on the Tanking Forums, an honest-to-goodness Shaman Tank. And, by Shaman Tank, I mean a guy that tanks content he outgears and works around silly setbacks like not having a taunt, or threat-capping a raid, through sheer force of will.

I admire the gumption that it must take to pull off such a stunt. He’s obviously really good at his class and has an amazing imagination to conceive and execute this. Not to mention his powers of persuasion to get 24 other people to go along with it.

And can we talk about the 25man raid that let this guy win a Juggernaut’s Vitality?

It’s a shame that Catalcysm (with its 6% uncrit talents) will basically dictate which classes will be allowed tank. Players like this fellow should be encouraged to push the boundaries of his class, as long as others are willing to go along with him.

One thing he does have going for him, though, is the ridiculously OP regeneration racial. And there’s NOTHING we can do about it.

Night of blood and glory: a raid recap

So as you might have guess from my post late Thursday night, we finally (finally!) killed Anub’arak on heroic 10man mode. Hallelujah.

The night itself started in a way you knew we were clearly meant from great things. The first wipe of the night happened on Beasts, the worms specifically, because we lost a few too many dps to silly crap and would never have beat the enrage timer.

49.

We went back in and had a clean run through Gormok, the worms also went smoothly, and then lost a dps to an acid cloud. We kept going though–only one dps down, couldn’t hurt us that much, right?

Get through worms, Icehowl comes out. We’re plugging along, dodging charges and getting our licks in. Getting a little too close for comfort to the enrage timer. 30 seconds left before we all go splat and Icehowl goes for a massive crash. He leaps back to the middle, faces Cendra and charges. I get the hell out of dodge, but Cen doesn’t make it. He gets one shot, Icehowl gets all red and inflammatory and immediately goes after Demo.

I don’t know why but I through myself on the sword, taunting Icehowl, bubblewalling and popping trinks and doing my best to live through the enrage. He of course squashes me, but by the time he gets back to Demo the soft enrage dissipates. 11% left, easy mode. Two dps and yours truly are dead, though, so it’s going to be close considering how close the enrage is looming. Of course, at like 2% left he hard enrages, and leaps back to the middle to massive crash. We lucked out! We just need to dodge the charge and we can finish him off with ease.

He then slammed into the ground and killed everyone except for Demogar. Shit.

Icehowl charges the only one left, Demo, and slams into the wall, stunned. 41k hp left. Make or break time. Demo plugs away with what little damage a tank can muster and just as Icehowl stands up to crush Demogar under his blood-spattered fists, he falls over dead.

I wish I had a screenshot. Obviously that means none of this happened.

We all run back in, buff up, and start Jaraxxus. This fight goes well until we lose a dps to Legion Flames and another melee getting zapped by an undispelled Nether Power, and then a portal spits out two Mistresses of Pain. I manually wipe the attempt with a DI. Obviously, it wasn’t going to go well.

48.

Another attempt on Jaraxxus which did not go much better. Lost a melee dps to a Legion Flame, barely got a portal down. It looked like we weren’t going to make it but somehow by the skin of our teeth we pulled out a kill. It was really sloppy, but a kill is a kill.

Once the loot is distributed we pulled down the champs to mark them up. And oh boy did the comp we were facing look like it was going to hurt. There was a Ret Pally, Holy Priest, Resto Shaman, Warlock, Rogue, and Boomkin. The order I delineated was priest > ret > rogue > shammy > lock > boomkin.

So we pulled and while we were focusing down the priest, the paladin snuck in the back and one-shot all the clothies. Game over.

47.

Ok, new kill order: ret > priest > rogue > shammy > lock > boomkin.

We barely manage to kill the ret pally, but by then we’d lost a lot more folks to the other dpsers.

46.

Bah, another wipe. It’s obvious now that our damage wasn’t being done fast enough.

45.

DPS needs to die first: ret > rogue > lock > priest > shammy > boomkin.

Switched it up a little. I stayed as prot and did my best to lock down the shaman (but mostly focused on cutting down his totems). Demo went Arms and helped bring down the focused target. This time the Ret blew up almost instantly, then the rogue, the lock, etc. The shaman was getting heals off, but he couldn’t save his buddies.

I think the valuable lesson here is on heroic mode to ignore the healers in terms of kill order and just have them be hassled so you can focus on bringing down the heaviest hitters.

So champs went down and then we knocked out the Twins in short order as well. No wipes on that boss, which was a nice change of pace, haha.

After Twins we made a quick roster shift and one of the healers stepped out to let another dps come in since we like to two-heal Anub.

Once down in the cavern below, we get buffed up, everyone got pumped, and then we ran screaming into the fray hoping to shatter Anub’s confidence and make him flee the battlefield. Alas, he stood his ground.

We pushed it to phase 3 in short order (Anub was at like 55% when he first burrowed) and things were going somewhat swimmingly, but we got overwhelmed and wiped at 8%.

44.

Suddenly it dawned on us: holy hell, we can do this.

Formed up again and started the next attempt. Another quick push to phase 3, those we only got it to 13% this time. No matter, it was obvious we could do this.

43.

Alright this was going to be THE attempt, dammit. Pull out all the stops, just get it down.

DPS was amazing, getting Anub to 50% when he burrowed for the first time. Scarabs were decimated quickly, spikes were kited expertly. It was like a ballet of pain.

Once phase 3 hit, we all kicked it into high gear. The adds that were up were ‘sploded and dps turned their wrath on Anub himself. We got him down to about 3-4% when Demo bit it and I taunted Anub only to die in about two hits from trying tank a new set of adds and the big guy all at the same time. People started shouting in vent encouragement to the dps still up–2%!! 1%!! .5!!

And then that disgusting creature reared up and keeled over dead. It was done. Anub was dead.

Everyone cheered with a passion I haven’t heard since the first time our ragtag 25man raid killed Kel’Thuzad for the first time. What an amazing feeling. No tanking stuff dropped unfortunately, but it’s ok, Anub was dead.

I sat there in my chair, grinning like an idiot, for about 20 minutes.

(Side note: I know I said I was going to do a strategy guide, but I don’t feel right writing it until I have some nice screenshots and diagrams to go with it. It will happen this week. Probably Thursday since we’re doing heroic 10man on Wednesday this week. Many apologies for being a tease.)

Better Late Than Never Friday, 10/16

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.

The only good bug is a dead bug!