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.
Ulduar is chock full of brand-new lewt, just ripe for the taking. I wanted to take a look at everything we have to look forward to getting our greedy little mitts on in one condensed list, so I put together this compendium.
