Don’t gem Shifting Dreadstones anymore

Something not mentioned specifically in patch notes–but very important in case anyone missed the very hidden memo on this–agility doesn’t give armor anymore. One major by product is that (along with agility enchants no longer providing EH) Shifting Dreadstones are now an inferior gemming choice.

What made them so great before 4.0.1 was that agility was a triple-dip stat for us: dodge, armor, and crit/threat all in one tidy little package. While agility gems only provided 83% as much avoidance as the actual-dodge alternative, that 17% gap was easily made up (and then some) with the armor and threat. Now, obviously, the threat alone doesn’t make it as worth it.

As such, I definitely recommend you swap out that Shifting Dreadstones for Defender’s Dreadstones if you’re looking for more avoidance (and survivability), since parry is our only avoidance choice for purple gems.

Contrawise, if you’re looking for extra threat–and, it can be argued, survivability on Sindragosa–you can gem Guardian’s Dreadstones for expertise.

Personally I’m going to gem Guardian’s Dreadstones because that 60 parry rating I’ll be gaining will primarily go into the starving, gaping maw we call diminishing returns. At 85 it’s another story, but for now I’m opting for the expertise.

Shoring up expertise

This is what happens when I don’t look at Maintankadin for a few days–and thanks to Honors for alerting me to this–an unannounced change in 3.3 was discovered that apparently ShoR is now on the melee table. This means that an enemy can now parry or dodge Shield of Righteousness. Which in turn makes expertise a much, much more attractive stat for us. But how attractive, you ask?

Under soft cap, expertise is now our best threat stat.

In addition to previous findings that expertise was “about 80% as good as dodge” for damage avoidance, now more than ever, being soft capped in expertise is mandatory.

Thankfully, we gain 6 expertise from talents and 10 from the SoV glyph, so we only need 81 rating to soft cap, a relatively easy goal.

Other side effects of the ShoR change: that’s another melee attack that will be proc’ing Mongoose or similar enchants.

Nonetheless! Tankadins, act accordingly.

Hit, expertise, and your third glyph slot

A major concern that is wracking the tanking world right now is the utter dearth of hit rating on 25man raid gear. Prior to the few upgrades I yanked out of the Coliseum this week I was sitting at full hit cap, 263. Now, thanks to said upgrades and swapping in the SoV glyph I find myself already soft capped for expertise (great) but now only at 175 hit (boo).

This problem is only going to get worse as I continue to get gear from Col25. If I were to deck myself completely out in those items, I’d be sitting at 214 expertise. That’s 26 skill, the soft cap.

Once the soft cap of expertise is reached, additional points of expertise come with a tps benefit reduced by half.

As such, I’m contemplating how much longer I’m going to delay before I ditch the SoV glyph… er, again. And, likewise, what I’m going to replace it with.

Because of the loss of hit that will be going hand in hand with this rise in expertise, the Glyph of Righteous Defense is a natural choice. What concerns me most about losing hit isn’t so much the tps loss, but the threat to the healers’ well-being if a taunt misses (which it’ll have a much higher chance to do).

I could swap in the Judgement glyph, but Judgement is such a miniscule part of my tps that the glyph wouldn’t have enough of an effect to be worthwhile. I’m definitely open to suggestions for replacements.

Better Late Than Never Friday 6/26

Holy cow has it been a while since I’ve done one of these. Every time I put it off I hope that expanding my date range on keywords in Google Analytics will yield better searches. This time I was sort of right, but oh boy was it a pain reading 933 keywords to pluck out these eight.

can steel breakers fusion punch be dodged?

No, unfortunately not. It’s going to hit, and it’s going to hurt. Make sure to cleanse that dot off asap!

do pallies use divine sacrifice

They better. DS is an amazing skill that can do wonders for raid survival in tough spots with lots of AOE damage. I (as I’ve written about before) use it all the time in raids, and it’s been a tremendous boon to our healers and their stress levels. In my tank-biased opinion, every raiding Paladin should have this in their build, regardless of spec.

gaelic word for righteous

Fíréanta. Cool word!

how to grind defense skill wow

Let stuff hit you, haha. When I hit 80 I needed to grind out the last 5 skill points so I could start heroics so I ran a normal instance and by the time I walked out I was at 400/400 defense skill. Just make sure it’s level 80 mobs hitting you, you’ll gain the skill much faster than if you aoe farmed Stratholme.

shield of righteousness expertise

ShoR does not depend on expertise because it can’t be parried. It can miss though, so hit rating will affect it.

righteousness can remain a tanking seal typo

Yeah, I’m not quite sure what Blizzard meant when they said that. I’m hoping what they meant was “Seal of Righteousness is primarily used to tank” not “tanks primarily use Seal of Righteousness for tanking”. I suspect they just worded it poorly.

shiver vs titanguard paladin

Shiver is better for survivability because you can put a stamina gem in there. Would be better for threat too actually if you gemmed strength (which you shouldn’t!). I’d go with Shiver. Side note: I envy and loathe anyone with this dilemma.

any tanks wear archaedes

If there are tanks running around with an extra 50 defense or so in their gear and can afford to wear these pants, then more power to them. Unless they’re Paladins, because these pants have expertise in spades, which is ultimately a junk stat for us (in comparison to other tank stats, that is).

Better Late Than Never Friday, 3/13/09

When writing this post I accidentally typed the title out as “Best in Slot” Friday… which is a nice Freudian slip of what I keep intending to write a post about. Anyways, this is the second Better Late Than Never Friday, a periodic piece in which I pull search keywords that brought people here from Google Analytics and answer the questions behind those keywords that they probably didn’t find during their visit.

best in slot paladin protection, best in slot prot paladin, best in slot paladin tankadin, best in slot tankadin, prot paladin best in slot list, prot paladins best in slot gear

I’m working on it!

best stat threat tankadin

A tankadin’s best threat stat is strength, hands down. Not only do you get attack power from it (for all abilities), but you double-dip and grab block value as well for mitigation and Shield of Righteousness! A distant second is hit rating, which affects almost all our attacks. Expertise is not a good threat stat–it just doesn’t affect enough abilities to matter.

crit cap for paladins

I’m assuming this means the cap where you can’t be crit anymore. The answer is 5.6% crit reduction, which is around 540 defense. Always double check on your character sheet, because you could have 540 defense but 5.59% crit reduction!

gem strength tankadin

Don’t gem strength for your Paladin. For my sake. :(

good dodge% for a tankadin

Diminishing returns makes this somewhat of a dodgy issue (har har har) but I did some digging and found this chart. According to it, diminishing returns starts around 200 rating and promptly begins to nose-dive around 350 or so. I’m currently sporting 305 rating/21%, so diminishing returns around starting to make themselves known. Honestly though, dodge is the best avoidance stat, so as long as you’re not sacrificing stamina to pile it on, then keep on piling.

hit rating tankadin

Honestly, hit rating is not that important for tankadins. Most of our attacks would require 8% hit rating to be capped, but that would require a lot of sacrificed health and avoidance to achieve. I’m personally sitting at 5% melee hit rating, and I don’t intend to improve it anymore.

how much hit and expertise does a paladin tank need?

Refer to this post for expertise. For hit, by the numbers, a tankadin needs 9% hit rating to cap out most of our attacks (judgements, ShoR, HotR, Avenger’s Shield, etc.) which is 296 rating. For spells (ie, Righteous Defense and Hand of Reckoning) we need 17% hit, or 446 rating.

But again, a Paladin really doesn’t need more than 4-5% hit rating. And the glyph makes sure than one of our taunts cannot miss.

tankadin titanium plating or defense

To answer the question in a round-about way, my ideal situation is to have Hero’s Surrender with Enchant Shield – Defense for boss fights and Wall of Terror with the Titanium Plating for trash.

righteous dresses

And how!

Expertise and you

Paladins are lucky in that, due to our threat generally being generated via spells, we don’t have to worry much about expertise. Moreover, because of Holy Shield, and the fact that we can easily (well, compared to other tanks) because block-capped, the threat of parrygibs is nonexistent.

When it comes to expertise, a Paladin if talented and glyphed correctly will have baseline 16 expertise skill. 6 skill comes from the Combat Expertise 3/3 talent, and 10 comes from the Glyph of Seal of Vengeance. That 16 skills works out to 4% reduction to your attacks being dodged or parried. A boss has a baseline 6.5% chance to dodge attacks, and a baseline 16% chance to parry attacks. So, to start, Paladins are sitting pretty.

But what are the expertise caps for Paladins, you say?

To prevent a boss from dodging attacks, you need 26 skill, or 214 expertise rating. Due to the 16 skill we already have, we really only need an additional 10 skill, or 83 rating.

To prevent a boss from parrying (which again we don’t need to worry about–seriously, don’t work towards this number), you need 64 skill, or 525 rating. With baseline you only need an additional 48 skill, or 394 rating.

A personal beef of mine is seeing Paladins go out of their way to take gear with expertise on it. 83 is very easy to come by and can be picked up here and there on our tier pieces or items that are already considered excellent for us. There’s no need to dip into the other tanking classes’ sandboxes and take toys better suited for them.

Lastly, for the love of pete, don’t gem for expertise. Ever.