When to go for socket bonuses

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).

Shifting v Regal Twilight Opal

With the addition of the Shifting Twilight Opal in 3.1, we should take a look now at whether this will be a better choice for your red sockets than the Regal Twilight Opal. (Sorry if my numbers aren’t exact to 3 decimal places, I rounded up to keep the math clean).

Regal Twilight Opal (with Kings)

8 dodge rating

• .2% dodge

13.2 stamina

• 150 hit points
• 4.4 spell power

Shifting Twilight Opal (with Kings)

8.8 agility

• .17% dodge
• 17.6 armor [.111% physical damage reduction]
• .17% melee crit [affects everything but taunts]

13.2 stamina

• 150 hit points
• 4.4 spell power

So, switching between the two, you gain 17.6 armor and .17% melee crit, but lose .03% dodge. Not a bad trade, and the avoidance losses are probably so minuscule as to make up for the damage reduction and threat gains.

Better late than never Friday 4/10/09

Aha, so Better Late Than Never Friday has returned, if only because I sat on three weeks worth of search terms. Again, I question the longevity of this column, but like the saying goes: post, quaff, and be productive, because tomorrow you’ll run out of easy material to make weekly columns out of. So true.

paladin stamina spellpower conversion

The talent Touched by the Light converts 30% of your stamina into spellpower with three ranks. The best way to determine how much spellpower you’re getting is to either check your character sheet or take your stamina number and multiply it by .30. The result you get is your spellpower.

tankadin reckoning or conviction

Conviction will point for point give you more tps than Reckoning. Check out this post for more.

seal of righteousness better than seal of corruption

No, SoC (or V, if you swing the light that way) is our best threat seal while tanking. Even glyphed, SoR is inferior.

paladin wow rhyme bubble hearth

If my memory serves me correctly it’s something like:

I’m a little pally short and stout
This is my hammer, that’s my free mount
When I get in trouble watch me shout
Pop me bubble and hearth right out

how much hp does +24 stam give to paladins

Assuming you have both stamina increasing talents you should be getting a 14% increase to health over the normal stam > hp conversion rate, use this formula: hp = (stam*10) * 1.14. Works out to 274hp.

does conqueror tokens drop in naxx

Yes, just in my experience very rarely. RNG > all.

+16 dodge gem

Thankfully the design for the Subtle Scarlet Ruby will be added into the game in patch 3.1. I can’t find if it’ll be sold by the vendor for tokens, or if it’s a world drop. My money however is on it being a drop, like all the patterns that were added in the last patch.

Metagemming your tankadin

As I’m sure some have noticed, there was a major glaring omission in my previous guide on pally tank gems: meta gems. Metas are perhaps the most important gem you will socket, because in addition to a nice stat boost, you get a little bonus to an ancillary tanking stat.

Here are your options:

• Austere Earthsiege Diamond: +32 stamina (365hp) and +2% more armor
• Effulgent Skyflare Diamond: +32 stamina and 2% spell damage reduction
• Eternal Earthsiege Diamond: +21 defense rating and +5% block value

The only clear non-choice here is the Effulgent gem. It’s really more of a situational gem, and would be best fit in a secondary tanking helm you’d keep aside for resist or heavy magic damage fights (I’m thinking Sarth or Malygos mainly). Don’t use this gem for everyday tanking.

Now, where I am personally torn is between the Austere and Eternal gem. Since I first picked up the Arcane Shielded Helm in Heroic Nexus I’ve had an Eternal gem in my helm. Now, I’m beginning to question this. Let’s look at the math and figure out what’d be more beneficial.

Right now I have a base, straight-from-items, non-talented 20823 armor, for 57.8%. With the Austere gem I’d bump up to 21239 armor, for 58.2% damage reduction. A gain of .4% damage reduction.

Not a huge number, but let’s say a boss hits me for 25k (physical damage). As is, with the base armor numbers I have now, I’m only going to take 10550 damage. With the gem socketed in my helm I’ll take 10450. So 100 damage reduced from that hit.

Let’s look at block value now: according to Warcrafter I have somewhere on the order of 1222 block value (this is before the metagem and the bonuses from the Libram and Lavanthor’s Talisman). The Eternal gem gives me a bonus 5% block value on top of that number, for an additional 62 block value.

This means that every hit I take that I block I shave an extra 62 damage off the top. Which, of course, is where the rub is: I have to block the hit to see a damage reduction. Armor reduces damage if you’re stunned or fail to block, and even when you do block. The Eternal gem only works when you block a hit and all the factors line up to give you that DR bonus.

There are other benefits to the Eternal gem, of course. The 21 defense makes it easier to hit the defense minimum aside from other gem sockets. And on top of that, 21 defense works out to a nice bit of avoidance: .84% chance to block, parry, dodge, miss.

You’ll have to do the math to figure out which is best for you, but personally I think I’ll get more damage reduction benefit from the Austere gem. And I have enough avoidance elsewhere that I can comfortably replace that with the effective health, instead.

All this math aside, there’s nothing wrong with keeping a second helm with the Eternal gem for trash tanking or sweet ShoR crits.

I’ll be regemming when I get home tonight.

Better Late Than Never Friday 3/20/09

It occurred to me writing this that each week it would get successively harder to write this bit, considering that each week I’m inevitably covering some topic that people come here looking for. Eventually I’m going to run out of stuff to not write about! … if that makes any sense. Anyhoo:

41 stamina gem or 27 defence rating

I would go with the +stam gems, just because that’s such an obscene amount of stamina that it’s hard to pass up. Plus, most of your defense needs are met from your gear and you should only have to gem minimally for it to hit the uncrit cap.

completely re-gemming a paladin for threat

Don’t! All your threat should come from three places: (1) your weapon’s dps, (2) your block value, (3) your stamina via Touched by the Light. No need to gem to boost any of them.

how many hits does it take to level from 399 to 400?

I haven’t been able to find an authoritative source on how weapon skill leveling works. In my experience, it seems like fighting a mob that’s many levels higher than your current weapon skill equivalency makes it level faster.

For example, while grinding those lvl 79 Captive Vrykuls, I went from 101 to around 350 with 1 hit per weapon skill, but once I passed 350 it started taking more than one hit per skill point.

Probably because I was approaching the equivalent skill level to that mob’s own level. Basically, because 400 is the last skill point, and you’re usually fighting lvl 80-83 mobs, it’s going to take some time.

tankadin mobs behind you crit defense 540

Once you hit the crit cap it doesn’t matter where a mob hits you–you won’t be crit. If you’re sitting down, however, it’s an automatic crit. The only time when facing a mob matters is with blocking and parrying. You can’t block or parry anything hitting you from behind, but you can dodge the blows.

what are the biggest stamina gems u can get

The +41 stamina gems (Solid Dragon’s Eyes) from Jewelcrafting. Non-professionally, it’s the +24 stamina gems. However, coming soon in patch 3.1 is the Solid Stormjewel (+30 stamina), which can be a reward from the new fishing dailies.

what should my hit rating be as a protection paladin

Probably somewhere between 4-5%. Don’t gem for it, let it come to you.

wie spot der tankadin

Ich verstehe nicht, was dieses bedeutet.

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!

Gemming your tankadin

Gemming can be a powerful tool for any Paladin tank that knows how to do it correctly. You can with the right choices add hundreds of healthpoints, a percents of avoidance, or make it that much easier to hit the crit cap. Or, you can go where no tankadin has boldly gone before and stack so much spellpower that nothing (you hear me doubters? nothing!) is getting out of that Consecration.

Er, just kidding on that last count. Don’t stack spellpower.

The purpose of this guide is to provide an overview of every option we have for gemming our phat purps (well, not every option, I’m skipping green quality gems, and purple quality gems are not yet implemented). I’ll break it down by slot color and recommend which gems you should use and why, as well as provide overall advice on the quality of your shinies options. [...]