I originally intended to do the next part in my “Characteristics of a great tank” saga, but then last night I forgot to run over to Elwynn to take some screenshots, and dammit that article is crap without accompanying pictures. So no part two this week, unfortunately.

For newcomers to this blog, BLTNF is when I pull search terms that brought people here from my Google Analytics and answer what they were originally looking for.

vindication 3.2 work on raid bosses now?

Yes, and it’s glorious. While warriors and other classes need to expend a global cooldown to apply their attack power debuff, ours happens automatically. Vindication is a serious mitigation talent and any tank worth their salt should take it.

how to get the new paladin mount in 3.2

Buy it from the Crusader’s Quartermaster in the Crusader tent at the tourney. It costs 100 Champion’s Seals.

shard of the crystal forest good for tankadin?

It’s not terrible, but the neck off of Kologarn-10 or the Malygos-25 neck quest are both better. Especially the latter with a Solid Majestic Zircon socketed.

what do protection paladins gem

I need to update my classic flowchart, but you can basically follow this: Use Endurings until crit capped, then gem Solids. The only time you are not gemming a Solid Majestic Zircon is if you want the socket bonus, which you should only go for if the bonus is +9 or +12 stamina. Ignore all other bonuses. Also, you’ll need one red gem for your meta (assuming you’re using Austere) which you can get from socketing a Shifting Dreadstone.

“greater inscription of the gladiator” defense cap

The Glad inscription gives you .18% crit reduction, so you need 5.42% from defense. I just wrote a lot of fractions in front of me to figure out how much defense skill that is, but I ran out of stickies and have no answers to show for it. I think it’s somewhere around 538 or so. Just refer to your character sheet to make sure your crit reductions add up to 5.6% or more.

Also (sorry, as a tank on the intertubes I am legally obligated to say this) there’s no such thing as a “defense cap”. Defense minimum!

how much defense = dodge

41 defense is 1% avoidance, or .33% dodge, parry, and miss. 123 defense rating is 1% dodge, parry, and miss (so, 3% avoidance).

2 bindings of the windseeker one clear

If this is true, I hate you. With all this Door Boss nonsense I’ve severely fallen behind in my Bindings farming. It’s kind of stressful thinking it’s going to be impossible to get Thunderfury once Cataclysm hits, so I have a very limited window (less than a year possibly) to farm these pieces. With a theoretical 52 tries remaining, each week lost to Door Boss’s cold, icy reticence is one week too far.

3.2 is hit rating important for protection paladin

Not so important you should gem or enchants for it, but it is definitely nice to have. Hit means more (consistent) threat and more successful taunts.

3.2 seal of righteousness tanking seal?

No. Maybe for quick-dying trash, but if you have enough time to apply a 5-stack of SoV, you should be using it.

are socket bonuses that good?

Depends on the socket bonus. +block rating, +hit, +expertise, +dodge, etc., are all bust. Only +9 or +12 stamina are worth going for, because if you’re gemming an Enduring or Shifting, you’re invariably losing 15 stamina. However, if the bonus reduces that then 3 or 6 stamina is a good trade for 10 agility or 10 defense rating.

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).

Looks like they’re aiming to have the BV bonus apply to the shield slam that triggers it.

The way we want 4piece t8 for Prot paladins to work is that the Shield of Righteousness also benefits from that extra SBV. We can try to make the tooltip a little cleaner.

The OP in this thread it right though, we’re still getting screwed compared to how awesome the Warrior 4pc bonus is.

Since the patch came out Tuesday, there’s been some questioning of Seal of Righteousness since the glyph for that ability was changed to offer a 10% damage buff. Would it be possible that glyphed SoR would be better than Seal of Vengeance/Corruption for tps generation?

The fine minds at Maintankadin did some number crunching, and as far as I can gather from this thread, it seems like the jury is still out on this. The two abilities come very close together in tps, yet with SoV/C still prevailing.

However, if one was expertise/hit capped, then with a high dps weapon (like Broken Promise) and frequent use of Hammer of the Righteous, SoR would come out on top. With Reckoning talented into this would give SoR more tps generation capabilities as well.

They haven’t settled this definitively, however. I’m looking forward to see what they come up with for the final numbers. It’d be nice to have some leeway in which seal to choose while tanking.