Better Late Than Never Friday, 1/22

Better Late Than Never Friday is a random monthly feature where I pull a bunch of search terms from Google Analytics that landed folks here and try to answer questions that may not be directly answered at this site, as gleaned from their keywords used.

righteous defense taunt small ooze

The Small Ooze is taunt immune, so unfortunately that won’t work. The only way to get rid of them is to merge one into a Big Ooze.

best libram tankadin

Eternal Tower is, technically, the best for survivability (although the ramp-up time is annoying and can cause issues). It’s a marginal upgrade over Defiance, however, and not worth getting until you run out of better things to spend Emblems of Frost on. Just farm Triumph badges and get the 245 dodge libram. Contrawise, Valiance is the best threat libram right now.

how to use righteous defense

Back in my day to use Righteous Defense you had to target the person being attacked, and if you wanted to directly taunt the attacking mob you’d have to use a /targettarget macro. Thankfully, Righteous Defense was changed a while back. It’ll work the same if you use it on the mob or the mob’s target.

armour penetration for tankadins

Bad stat for us, don’t even think about it! The same reasons that make ArP bad for Ret Pallies bad for us–our threat derives primarily from Holy damage, which pierces armor as is. It’s for this reason I always cursed the tanking gloves off of Ignis that had ArP on them.

does the hp5 on purified onyxia blood talisman work in combat

Yes. But you shouldn’t use it unless you’re soloing old content, or something equally frivolous. hp5 is not a tanking stat.

festergut amp magic

Bad idea, amplify magic will make the various raid damage attacks do even more damage. The only fight amp magic is good for is Saurfang, because every attack in that fight is classified as physical damage.

20 defense vs titanium plating

Neither, go with the BC-era +18 stamina enchant if you have the defense to spare. Otherwise get the +defense enchant.

22 agility titanweave dodge

Agility if you have enough defense, Titanweave otherwise.

3.3 divine sacrifice worth it?

Absolutely! Assuming you get Divine Guardian as well, it’s like a free 20% damage reduction cooldown for us that benefits the raid as well. DS/DG is a mandatory talent for raiding.

blacksmithing vs engineering tankadin

I’m partial to engineering, myself, for the cool toys and the armor glove enchant/agility cloak enchant. However, you’d probably be better off if min/maxing just to go with the straight +60 stamina of blacksmithing.

seal of righteousness vs seal of vengeance

Seal of Vengeance is still our best single-target threat seal. Seal of Righteousness has it’s uses though, particularly on Rotface if you’re kiting the Big Ooze. You can’t melee it, and because SoR’s judgement offers the most damage in that situation, it’s the best choice.

hp5 is not a tanking stat

There’s a DK tank in my guild who I reference from time to time. He’s a nice guy, a good player, means well. But, sometimes he has a–oh what’s a nice way to put this–really stupid idea of how tanking works. His latest delusion is that the Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman is a good progression tanking trinket. It’s not.

When it comes to tanking you and I (and him) have two specific jobs: one is to hold threat on the mobs, and the other is to stay alive. To maximize the former we talent for threat, we swap in hit gear, etc. To maximize the latter we stack and enchant stamina to have the highest survivability possible. In this regard, the trinket is a total flop.

As I’ve mourned in the past, EH is king these days. And the reason why is EH is the best metric to determine time to live (TTL), that is, how long you can survive without a heal. When standing up versus a raid boss with silenced healers, what do you think is going to help you survive more: 2000 hp from a trinket, or a tick of 101 hp? The answer is obvious.

We should scorn hp5 for the same reasons we don’t talent into Divinity, it’s just useless overhealing. That tick of 101 hp is not going to save your life unless by some statistical miracle you take a hit that would have been a gib if not for that lucky proc. It’s a one in a million shot. Instead you’re often going to see those magic ticks swept under the ever-rising flood of heals being poured your way.

The only time this trinket should be used is if you’re not yet uncrittable and need the defense, or if you’re farming some vanilla instance and can’t be arsed to self-heal. Otherwise, leave it at home and equipped a stamina trinket.