(Hippogryphs touch the ground now. /joy)

Here it is! Patch 3.3 is upon us. I’m happy to say that the trial I was serving as a juror in ended today (look for a stealth update to the previous post with an epic recounting of the entire thing), so I can devote my full energies to this patch and this post. Hopefully this will give you an idea of what affects us, as tanks, in 3.3.

How we should spec

Well, still 53/18, but with a change. Those three bridge points that could go in Reckoning, Divine Sacrifice/Guardian, or Improved HoJ? Put them in Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian.

Why Divine Guardian?

According to the patchnotes, DG is redesign to now be:

This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.

Key words here are “the effect does not terminate … before [DS's] full duration.” Therefore my friends, please immediately put this macro (from Theck) on your bars:

/cast Divine Sacrifice
/in 0.5 /script CancelUnitBuff(“player”,”Divine Sacrifice”)

We now have a free, new mitigation “raid wall” and we don’t have to take any damage for it! Just activate the macro and Divine Guardian will go up and you’ll remove 20% of raid damage from the raid. Very powerful spell. Definitely a must have.

Divine Sacrifice is generally useless now for Prot because of the party-shuffling requirements. Leave that for Holy and Ret to screw around with. Remember, if you do use it, bubbling will not remove the damage intake portion of the spell.

The Lay on Hands nerf

Lay on Hands: This ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. It will not place Forbearance on others.

This is unfortunate, but not much can be done (it could be much worse). Do as much as you can to avoid LoHing yourself out of habit, because you’ll lock yourself out of bubblewalling.

Taunt diminishing returns nerfed

We’ve revised the system for diminishing returns on Taunt so that creatures do not become immune to Taunt until after 5 Taunts have landed. The duration of the Taunt effect will be reduced by 35% instead of 50% for each taunt landed. In addition, most creatures in the world will not be affected by Taunt diminishing returns at all. Creatures will only have Taunt diminishing returns if they have been specifically flagged for that behavior based on the design of a given encounter.

This is interesting! A nice change that’ll save us from having to deal with possible raid wipes wrought by taunt-happy, glory hogging tanks.

What should I buy first with my Emblems of Frost?

Corroded Skeleton Key. 60 Emblems of Frost. Make it so.

3.3 will bring a pack of new trinkets for use to jam into slots 13 and 14. Like most batches of new items, some are good, some are bad. Let’s take a look at them and assess:

Corpse-Tongue Coin (and Heroic version)

Drops in the 25man Gunship encounter.

I’m sure many are going to look down at avoidance stats in light of Chill of the Throne, though you should not. Even though we lose a huge chunk of dodge while in the Citadel, avoidance is still a worthy stat. Icecrown gear is pretty heavy on armor, and it seems Blizzard is trying to push mitigation on us in lieu of the avoidance we’re sacrificing. Likewise, 5712 (or 6426) is a powerful amount of armor.

Using the 11:1 armor to stamina equivalency (in regards to purely physical fights), the proc is worth 519 stamina when you need it the most (at under 35%). This proc alone makes this trinket awesome for physical damage-dominant fights. Not so much if we’re talking more of a magic damage fight, like Sindragosa.

I would definitely use it… possibly on most fights. Even in a high magic-damage fight, the proc is that intense.

Unidentifiable Organ (and Heroic version)

Drops in the 10man Gunship encounter.

I hate ramp-up effects, and this trinket is no exception. Maxed out the effect is worth 240 stamina, which is great, but two big caveats: (1) it’s possible to go into a lucky avoidance streak and lose your stack (especially with a 60% proc chance, that’s double RNG) and (2) this trinket is nigh-useless for offtanking. Sure, the armor is great, but if you’re not getting hit by melee attacks with enough consistency to guarantee and ever-increasing stack, you’d be better off with the Glyph of Indomitability.

MTing in a melee-heavy encounter is another issue altogether. Then it’s ok, but depending purely on how often the proc is up and how high it gets.

Corroded Skeleton Key

Purchased for 60 Emblems of Frost.

/drool, is all I need to say about this. 228 stamina is amazing and the one-use effect is nice for moment when you’re expecting a big hit. This will definitely be welcomed upgrade to my Heart of Iron. Even better, it’s spectacularly easy to obtain.

A must have for sure.

Le sigh.

We don’t feel there is a need for [a tanking QD.] We aimed to make sure that every class had something to gain from the Quel’Delar series, but that doesn’t mean every spec of every class. Could a tank use the one handed dps version of Quel’Delar? Yes, it may give them more threat. Is this ideal for surviving while tanking? No, but there are other items available for that.

Does there need to be a tanking QD? No. Would it be nice if there was one for our spec when there’s one for just about every other spec? Yes.

For starters, the base Ashen Verdict ring is iLevel 251 which is an encouraging sign of its progression. The exalted version will probably be iLevel 277 if the rings follow the same formula as the Hyjal ones. And I’m very excited it has hit on it. Will be a staple of my gear set for sure.

Actually, overall I really like the itemization of the ICC gear I’ve seen. Some pieces with hit, nice chunks of stam, no accursed expertise.

And can we talk about this trinket? 228 stamina and a pretty nice Use effect to boot! Commence /drooling, friends.

Despite having a totally badass name, this Libram is garbage. Maybe as a purchase later on, but it’s ultimately worth 19 more dodge rating than the Libram of Defiance, so it’d be silly to waste Emblems of Frost on it.

This chest is the only badly itemized piece I’ve seen so far. Totally for the threat set. (Correction! Yours truly is a dope–the bonus armor actually more than makes up for the odd stats, making this a very awesome chest piece.)

Most annoying thing I’ve seen thus far: either Blizzard hasn’t finished designing a tanking Quel’Delar or they don’t intend to include one. I’m leaning toward it being the latter. Sigh.

But, let’s focus on the positive! So far lots of well itemized gear and no deluge of expertise like what we had to suffer on ToC pieces. Hopefully Blizz keeps that pace going as they fill out all the loot tables in Icecrown.

Divine Intervention: This ability now also removes Exhaustion and Sated from the target. In addition, the cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Definitely a good fix to an annoying oversight.

The updated patch notes also just say that LoH gives Forbearance when self-cast but not when cast on others. Looks like they’re skipping the Infusion of Light change and just making LoH baseline able to cast on others with no threat of Forbearance. A welcome change.

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.

• Your Hammer of the Righteous ability deals 20% increased damage.

I’m a very big fan of this bonus. HotR is one the biggest contributors to our total threat in AOE situations (presuming we’re not talking about dealing with 50 whelps here, then obviously Consecrate is king) and any boost to the damage of our cleave will be a nice pad on the threat meters. I especially like the thought of having this as an opener at the beginning of a trash pack, giving dps a higher initial threat window.

• When you activate Divine Plea, you gain 12% dodge for 10 seconds.

There’s a pretty tedious debate roiling the tanking forums over this bonus, with all the Pallies saying it’s pretty “meh” when viewed in comparison to the damage reduction bonuses that the other three tanking classes get, and all the other tanks complaining about how overpowered Ardent Defender is. But then again, that’s the kind of intellectual discourse one can expect out of that hive of scum and whinery.

I’m not surprised that Blizzard didn’t give us a damage reduction bonus, because honestly the furor that would have risen up would have been deafening. All the various aggrieved DKs and Warriors would have whipped out their little calculators and furiously pounded out a myriad of numbers indicating that suddenly Paladins had widened the mystical EH gap (while Druids sat chuckling quietly to themselves in the corner). And so the effigies would be erected once more against us,

So much easier to just give Pallies a so-so avoidance boost (I say so-so because avoidance is still, when reduced to the lowest common denominator, RNG). Less trouble this way.

Don’t get me wrong, 12% dodge is nice, especially with no diminishing returns. But I’d prefer a damage reduction any day of the week. There’s just no comparison between the two kinds of bonuses.

• Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active.
• Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the damage transferred to the paladin is now reduced by 50% before being applied to the paladin. Finally, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases.

This is a lame change. While it may seem like an improvement over the old DivSac (ie, no longer needing to Divine Shield to use it for maximum benefit), it’s a pretty big nerf for all intents and purposes. To get the best version of this spell, Ret and Holy would have to go 17 points deep into the Prot tree, which I sincerely doubt is feasible at this point, so the pool of how many people will be using this will be severely shrunken.

Moreover, it went from a flat 40% raid damage soak to a 20% damage reduction. Again, huge nerf. The only upside is, like I said before, the removal of needing to burden yourself with Forbearance to use the spell, but just about everything else is a downside. Thanks Blizz, for crippling one of our best utilities.

Adgamorix did a great analysis about this change that was a bit more upbeat than my take. I suppose the buff to how damage you can nab from your party is nice, but I’d still prefer a 40% raid damage soak.

(Image ganked from mmo-champ.)

When I first heard of this sword, my initial thought was “Tank legendary!” (I am prone to delusions). Then, reports of a quest to purify it in the Sunwell further piqued my lust. And, then I read the chain of datamined quests.

Somehow you get the hilt, and then a series of quests occur where you learn about the sword and how to reforge it. Materials are gathered, the ghost of either Uther or the Blood elf that wielded the sword at the Sunwell visit you, depending on your faction. You then go to the Sunwell itself and dip the blade into the sacred font, making it pure oncemore.

And then you give it to the Argent Cruade.

Efff. What a tease.

While I wasn’t expecting a Legendary forged through five-mans and old raids (even though it looks like you won’t actually have to raid the Sunwell), some kind of usable item would have been nice. A new Quel’serrar-esque tanking weapon perhaps.

Nope, another toy for Tirion. I hate that guy.