Better Late Than Never Friday 5/22

Aha, so the prodigal feature returns. Actually, truth be told, I forgot to upload a bunch of screenshots last night, so you all will just have to wait to hear epic tales of how I afk’d while tanking Loatheb or other somesuch nonsense. Now now, be brave. I know you’re all troopers. We are tankadins after all. Chin up.

Patronizing goofiness aside, BLTNF is a stupid feature where I put up some random Google searches that brought people to this site and attempt to answer them, or at least elaborate more than the post that brought them here in the first place did.

armor pen tankadin

Armor penetration is terrible for Paladin tanks. Most of our damage is Holy, which bypasses armor by default. ArP only benefits one thing: auto-attack. As such, avoid this stat at all costs, and yes, pass on Gauntlets of the Iron Furnace.

best blue/purple gem paladin tank

Best blue gem is Solid Sky Sapphire. Best purple is Regal Twilight Opal (although there’s something to be said for Shifting Twilight Opal).

best cloak enchant for lvl 80 pally tank

If you’re not crit capped, go with Titanweave. I just picked up Cloak of the Makers, and I was sitting at 552 defense, so I decided to be a little bold and put Greater Agility on it. Basically, Titanweave is .39% avoidance (dodge/parry/miss) and .13% block chance, whereas Greater Agility is .42% avoidance, 44 Armor, and .42% crit. Considering I don’t need the extra defense, the loss of block, gain of avoidance, and gain of armor/crit is a good trade.

best profession combo tankadin

Jewelcrafting + Blacksmithing. Expensive, but when epic gems are out you’ll get the most stamina any profession can give.

bug freya heal herself after adds are down

She’ll continue to heal herself until all adds are killed and her stacks are reduced to 0. Also kill that tree that pops up for time to time, as that’ll heal her if it “ripens”.

cleanse failing fusion punch

I have never heard of cleanse missing. Two possibilities I can imagine: you used it during a GCD so it never applied or you used it prematurely before the dot was on and there was nothing to cleanse.

dodge vs parry gems for tankadins

Dodge. Parry point-for-point gives less avoidance than Dodge. More on that here.

does mob level effect weapon leveling?

Honestly, I can’t find any proof of this, but I think it does. I think you have a much better chance of levelling skill against a mob that you would get experience from (or theoretically would, if not level capped). Just spend a night in Naxx or Uld and if you enter at 399, by the time you leave you should hit 400.

improved blessing of might vs conviction 3.1 prot build

Conviction is much better for tanks. Hopefully there’s a ret pally in your run and 9 times out of 10 they’ll have Imp BoM in their build.

shoulderguards of the solemn watch or t7.5 shoulders

T7.5. More avoidance and gem slots are for teh win.

why don’t paladins stack parry?

See the dodge vs parry question above.

why is my tankadin oom?

I hope that “m” stands for mayonnaise. A paladin tank should never run out of mana as long as you have at least 1 point in Spiritual Attunement, and make sure to keep Divine Plea up as much as possible. Blessing of Sanctuary isn’t as critical as it was before 3.1, but it definitely still helps (especially if you way overgear an instance).

Blood Draining won’t kill you, but it still sucks

As anyone who frequents Maintankadin would know, Theck is an inimitable mathematical genius who usually plies his trade at crunching numbers to better our understanding of our class. In this post he applies his numerical accumen to Enchant Weapon – Blood Draining, which some Paladins questioned would (due to its mechanics) have the nasty tendency of killing us.

Basically, because BD procs at the same point that Ardent Defender would kick into effect, it could feasibly push you over the AD threshold, back into that scary territory where extra 30% damage reduction does not roam… and allow a boss to leapfrog AD and finish you off. Not good.

Well Theck ran a detailed analysis of Blood Draining and posted his results in this thread. In essence, BD on average is not more likely to get you killed, but it’s also not on average going to save you.

QED:

Despite the fact that blood draining won’t reduce your survivability, it also doesn’t do anything to increase it for very large boss hits. Unfortunately, very large boss hits are often what kills a tank, making this an expensive enchant that works best in the cases we don’t need it, and worst in the cases we do.

I haven’t had a chance to try out Blade Warding yet, but at least I know to avoid this enchant now.

Update: As Honorshammer points out in the comments below and on his blog, Theck amended his data to simulate raid healing and BD comes out much better. I think I’m still not a fan, but it’s definitely not as bad seeming as it first was.

Laughing best, and how best to enchant said laughing

So like I mentioned in my previous post, I picked up the best-in-slot tanking weapon, Last Laugh, last night. The situation in which I picked it up was a little tense (something I’ll go into further detail with in my next raid recap post), but what I really wanted to focus on was the little crisis this axe inflicted upon me: how to enchant it.

Right now it is tankadin gospel (see: Letter of St. Uther to the Demon Hunter Supplicants 10:2-4) that you put Enchant Weapon – Potency on your tanking weapon, dammit. No other enchants need apply.

And, generally, rightfully so! The +20 strength from Potency works out to 23 strength and 15 block value, with the right talents, which is gravy for shield slams and damage reduction. Far and away it is an excellent choice.

But this… this is Last Laugh! I ripped this axe myself from the icy claws of the Archlich himself, the Lord of the Dread Citadel Naxxramas! Surely, there was a, er, more recent enchant that would better fit this god amongst T7 tank weapons.

I’ve had my eye on Enchant Weapon – Accuracy for some time now. To say the mats make it a bit cost-prohibitive would be an understatement (6 abyss crystals among others, natch). But does the math justify such an exorbitant enchantment?

I did some research and I found in a thread at Maintankadin an amazing breakdown of TPS mechanics. The jewel in this thread was this particular table that I was searching for: numbers crunched showing the DPS/TPS difference between Potency and Accuracy. In short, Potency is 21.6 DPS and 55.9 TPS, and Accuracy is 25 DPS and 65 TPS.

The main caveat is Accuracy is only more threat as long as you are not soft hit capped, as the soft cap affects most of our attacks: auto-attack, shield of righteousness, hammer of the righteous, avenger’s shield, judgements, and hammer of wrath. Once you hit that soft cap then Potency is better for threat generation. Considering how little hit a tank should be stacking, that should never be an issue.

So, yes, for the moment, Accuracy is the superior tankadin enchant. A bit of a luxury, but superior nonetheless.