3.1 tankadin spec

Update: I tweaked this spec a little. I’m going with this one now.

I think it’s fair to assume that the major changes to the Paladin talent trees have just about been fully rolled out and what we see on the PTRs is just about what’s going to make it to live. Now seems therefore a good time to start planning out how I’m going to spec when the patch drops and we’re all suddenly 0/0/0.

Here’s the build at Wowhead, 0/53/18.

Before I explain the spec you should know about my tanking situation. My guild runs 25 man raids and in them I am typically the main OT. I need basic survivability, and at the same time I need enough damage output that I can hang around 2nd place on the threat meter. So my choices tend to gravitate towards raid utility.

Now, in the Prot tree I took our bread and butter talents: Divine Strength, Anticipation, Improved Righteous Fury, etc. It’s pretty straightforward.

Special things to take note of are, for one, I skipped Divinity. This is mostly because the talent itself is garbage for Prot. 5% is not that much, and frankly I’m concerned more about whether a heal lands in time than if it’s 5% bigger. And 5% isn’t that much for so many talent points. I’m not even sure this talent is that worthwhile for Healadins, considering the overheal potential.

Moreover, I picked up Divine Sacrifice. I already have 1/2 Divine Guardian in my current build, and I like the idea of adding another 15% of raid damage soaking to my repetoire.

It might seem a silly talent at first, but there are some times when it is a major help to the healers for me to be able to shave 15-30% of the damage off the raid. Examples are when we were first learning the ropes on Loatheb, and more recently with Malygos’ Deep Breaths.

Moving on, you’ll notice I grabbed 2/2 Improved Hammer of Justice, which now synergizes quite well with the expanded Judgements of the Just talent. Basically, I’m going to have an interrupt on a 20 sec cooldown now.

Please note I completely avoided Reckoning. You should too!

Last big note in the Prot tree: I only went 1/2 on Spiritual Attunement. Honestly, between 100% uptime Divine Plea and Blessing of Wisdom, that second point in SA can be better put elsewhere.

Now, this is where the spec gets exciting. Thanks to Blizz somewhat “de-bloating” our tree we have some extra points to play with. I’m planning to use this bounty to dabble further into the Ret tree and increase my OT dps.

Keep in mind I went 1/5 Benediction purely as a stepping stone to further talents. I really had no other choice, and certainly wasn’t putting that point into Improved Judgements (making that 2/2). No sir.

So the big dps talents I’m focusing on in this tree are 3/3 Heart of the Crusader (a +3% crit buff to the raid assuming this focus my target), 3/5 Conviction (an additional +3% crit just for me, and 3/3 Crusade (+3% dmg all around with an extra +3% against certain mob types).

With my Ret talents I’m adding 6% to my crit chance and up to 6% to my overall damage. That is a major tps/dps boost!

I think this is a fairly standard build you’ll be seeing most tankadins rocking come the next patch.

Let me know if you have any suggestions/comments/complaints. I’m always open to making changes.

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!