The advice I’m about to give for Paladin tanking is from my own recent experience and the techniques that I feel are working for me. If you are looking for Paladin Tank Gear please visit my blog post on that.

Divine Plea: It’s not just for mana anymore

I’m starting off talking about Divine Plea because I believe effectively using it is an important skill to add to your toolbox for threat generation and survivability.

First take note of the talent Shield of the Templar. With 3 points in this talent every time you use Divine Plea you gain 3 Holy Power.

Threat Generation

Problem: At the start of a boss fight you need to generate threat quickly.

Solution: Right before you pull the boss hit Divine Plea to generate 3 Holy Power and you are able to immediately use Shield of the Righteous giving you a threat burst to get a lead on your DPS.

Survivability

Problem: Currently most players are still trying to gear up since we are only one month into Cataclysm. Therefore our own survivability is low due to lack of gear, and also our Healer’s need help due to low mana pools and low mana regeneration.

Solution: Using Divine Plea every cooldown to generate 3 Holy Power allows you more opportunities to use a full strength Word of Glory and heal yourself, therefore increasing your survivability.

Be a Defensive Driver

Do you remember when you learned to drive a car and the instructor said to “drive defensively”?

Safe Practices for Motor Vehicle Operations defines defensive driving as “driving to save lives, time, and money, in spite of the conditions around you and the actions of others.”

Tanking is not just about how much threat you can generate and how much damage you can do. It’s also about staying defensive in order to save your own life and the lives of people in your group.

Use your defensive cooldowns liberally.

And by liberally I mean all the time.

Word of Glory – Once you’ve established a solid lead in threat, this should be your go to ability and not Shield of the Righteous. Hit this every time you have 3 Holy Power.

Divine Protection – I use it on trash pulls to help even out spike damage I’m taking as well as in boss fights when I see the healer’s mana or my health starting to dip low.

Guardian of Ancient Kings – This is a new ability so don’t forget you have it. Use it like you would Divine Protection and don’t be hesitant to hit them both at the same time if you need to.

Holy Radiance – It puts a small HoT on you and all melee around you. There is no reason you shouldn’t be using this every time it is active.

Ardent Defender – Works like Divine Protection by reducing damage by 20%, however only use this when you see your health getting dangerously low so that you can take advantage of it’s ability to save your life in the event that an attack would have killed you.

Lay on Hands – Once you’ve used Ardent Defender and you find your health getting to that dangerously low level again hit Lay on Hands to get your health back to full.

Hammer of Justice – I love using this during a trash pull on a caster mob. Stunning one mob even for a short time is a useful form of damage mitigation.

Trinkets – Trinkets with a “Use” ability sometimes tend to get left behind and forgotten. I like to Macro my “Use” trinkets to my Crusader Strike so that I can make sure I am using them every time they are available.

Healing Spells – Our healing spells can be a mana drain but sometimes it pays to cast Holy Light or Divine Light on yourself or a party member once in a while. Don’t be afraid to use them.

AoE Tanking: Don’t Go OOM

Running out of mana at the wrong time can be very bad for your health and the health of those around you. To avoid this I try to use Consecrate as little as possible.

It still seems odd to a lot of us who are used to the days of using Consecrate often to not see it on the ground. It’s also odd to the those not familiar with the changes in Paladin tanking who don’t see it on the ground and say ignorant things like, “zomg why don’t you consecrate failtank!!!”

Here is my current process for AoE Tanking:

Avenger’s Shield – I use this first to pull the mobs toward me. Be sure to be using the Glyph of Dazing Shield and not the Glyph of Focused Shield.

Righteous Defense – As the mobs are running toward us I’ll look at my Vuhdo frames to see if anyone is showing that they have Aggro. A lot of times your healer or the person who did a CC pull will have aggro from 1 or more mobs. Cast Righteous Defense on them right away to taunt those mobs.

Holy Wrath – Once the mobs are in range I hit Holy Wrath first. This way I can stun any of them that are able to be stunned.

Hammer of the Righteous – Next I hit this to do more AoE damage to all mobs in range.

After using these opening moves I focus on the target I marked as skull to make sure I have enough aggro built up on it.

Then I start to tab through targets and hit each one once or twice to increase my level of threat on each mob. Also continue to mix in Holy Wrath and Hammer of the Righteous as they become available for AoE damage and threat.

In situations where we have picked up more mobs than I would have liked or a mob is summoning adds, I then use Consecrate to supplement my AoE rotation and threat generation.

My Protection Paladin Spec

My Build: 3/35/3 – This is the current talent spec that I am comfortable using.

Marking Targets and Initiating Ready Checks

These are a couple things that all tanks can do to help their group to be successful. Marking a target to use crowd control on and marking the first and second mobs that you would like your dps to focus fire on is a great way to take some pressure off of you as a tank.

Taking the guess work out of kill order for dps makes it easy for you to maintain threat and keep each dps from pulling aggro on a different mob.

Using /readycheck and even making a macro button for it makes it easy on you for knowing that people are ready for you to pull a boss. Don’t cause unnecessary wipes because someone wasn’t ready and you failed to use a ready check.

Final Thoughts

Those are some of the techniques that I use when I’m tanking in Cataclysm. It might not be perfect and you are free to offer your own tips for the things that you use to be a successful Paladin tank. I’m always open to suggestions and I hope that what I have here will be useful to a lot of people getting started tanking as a Paladin.

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This week we’ll look at a few add-ons for Paladins. Keep in mind that in many cases, add-ons are multi-class, so even if you don’t play a pally, it’s worth your time to check out the links in the segment notes to see if there’s anything for your favorite class.

SpellFlash: Paladin is a module for SpellFlash which will flash your action bar when procs happen, to remind you to cast your special abilities as soon as they are ready.

BuffBroker manages your group and personal auras. This add-on will help match your best buffs for your group, and help keep those buffs active on you and your party.

Movable Holy Power helps you track your holy power, moving (and improving) the graphics.

PallyPowerWarn provides warnings when you are missing blessings, seals, auras, or righteous fury. Combine this with BuffBroker and you should never have to worry about getting the right buffs on again.

Ardent Defender is an add-on designed to help Protection Paladins. It has around ten functions; if you are a prot pally, I’d recommend you check out the full description at Curse.

bitPala is a simple add-on to add three bars so you can easily track Beacon of Light, Judgement of the Pure, and Holy Power.

OptiTaunt informs you and your party or raid if your taunting abilites were resisted. It also announces your use of crucial abilities like Hand of Reckoning, Righteous Defense, Avenger’s Shield, and Divine Protection.

Retribution FCFS helper (clcret) is an addon similar to Lorack’s DK Optimizer; it provides visual cues to recommend the best spell or abilitiy for your Ret Pally to use next.

BOLT – Beacon of Light Timer is another add-on to help you keep up your Beacon of Light and Judgement of the Pure.

And for more Pally add-ons, check out this link.

Music is from YouTube.com and is the Theme from Paladin, performed by Johnny Western,  and the instrumental version by Duane Eddy.

For more information about “Paladin” take a look at TV Acres.

Bumpers provided by Scott Johnson of The Instance and Frogpants Studios.

Download the MP3

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Healbot is now the essential tool for raid healers. It allows up to 60 keyboard-mouse combinations to simplify casting; these combinations can include usable items, such as scrolls, potions, trickets, etc., and existing macros. Healbot can also track aggro, buffs, and debuffs, and perform many other functions, including synchronizing incoming heals with other raid or party healers. Healbot can also be used out of combat with the “SmartCast” option, to rez, decurse, buff, heal, or perform a user-defined action. Even more functions are listed on Healbot’s Web page.

Healbot integrates with both Fubar and Titanpanel; optional plugins for both are included.

You can get Healbot Continued through Wowmatrix, from Wowinterface, or from Curse. The author’s page with forums, news, and tutorials can be found at http://look4me.endoftheinternet.org/healbot/

Music for this episode is provided by FreePlayMusic.com and is entitled “Universe” by Paul Andrews.

Download the MP3

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You can see the posts from other people on the Twisted Nether site.

I haven’t been playing all 5 years. In fact, I started playing around time the An’quiraj was added to the game (Early 2006, or Patch 1.9 for those of you scoring at home).

My main toon has always been my Paladin, so I wanted to concentrate on the best Paladin changes over my time of playing World of Warcraft.

But before I do, I want to talk about what I feel is the absolute best change made to World of Warcraft in the entire time that I’ve been playing, the 10 and 25 man Raid Split.

Before, you would get to certain point in the end game where you found a wall. Here and no further. No new content for you unless you move on up to the ‘Big Leagues’ of 25 man raiding. It put people like myself, who wanted to raid in a precarious situation. Did we stay with our smaller guild or do we abandon our online friends and move on to a 25 man guild. 10 mans removed that barrier. Sure I have to give up access to some nice loot, but I can get gear that is sufficient for raiding 10 mans from earlier 10 mans. I don’t have to have that gear to advance so it’s not a big deal to not be able to get it.

Now I know some people really enjoy 25 mans. They love the synergy of all the classes, and they feel the fights are more epic with more people. Those people are in 25 man raid guilds and having a blast, and that’s great.

Some 25 man raiders tend to look down on the 10 man crowd as ‘ezmode’ and I wish they didn’t. I’ve found that doing 10 mans with 10 man and Emblem gear is a challenge in and of itself, especially Hard Modes. But it’s not like I’m going to change their minds. To be honest, if someone doesn’t have Devolve under their name, I’m really not all that concerned about their opinion of me or my raid team. So Trade Chat Guy can keep on spouting off all he wants.

Now that we’ve talked about the meta game, let’s get down to Paladins.

Tank, Heal, or DPS

In my mind the best Paladin change that has been made in the last 5 years was making all three Paladin trees competitive for end game raiding. While I’m happy for my Ret brothers, I’m most happy about the Tanking changes.

Back in Vanilla, there was only spec for end game Paladins in PVE or PVP, and that was Holy. Then with Burning Crusade, the Developers started opening up Prot and Ret a little bit. Paladin tanks were the masters of AoE Tanking and creative guilds discovered ways to employ a Paladin tank on some gimmick encounters to make them easier. Anyone remember Morogrim Tidewalker, High Astromancer Solarian, and all of Mt. Hyjal’s trash?

We were given tools like Spiritual Atunement, and Avenger’s Shield. Then in Wrath, they embrace true tank equality. Paladins were brought up to date with appropriate cool downs, a working Ardent Defender and a real taunt.

Paladins are now the equal of any tank capable class in the game. Ret is accepted as competitive melee DPS. Holy is still viewed as a great Healer with two different yet effective specs, Critadin and Bubble Boy. Paladins have more choices than ever in pursuing the role they choose, not the one they are pigeon holed into.

Blessing Durations

The original design of the Paladin in a raid enviroment was a pure buffer. Our job was to go around to each player in the 40 man raid and buff them with Wisdom, Kings, Might, etc. Blessing only lasted 5 minutes so just about the time you got through the whole raid, the first people you buffed were about to run out and you’d start the whole process over again. While that design looked ‘on paper’ it didn’t turn out to be much fun. So we got Greater Blessing which hit everyone of a particular class and lasted 15 minutes. Then the durations were further increased to 10 minutes base and 30 minutes for Greater. This freed up Paladins to do their chosen role and not worry about being a buffbot.

Seal/Judgment Changes

The redesign of the Seal and Judgment system vastly improved combat for the Paladin class. It used to be that we only had one Judgment spell and what it did depended on what Seal you had active. Also when you cast Judgment, it would consume your Seal, so Paladins got into a Seal, Judge, Seal rotation. By decoupling the Seal and the Judgment, you could Judge for mana with Judgment of Wisdom and do damage with Seal of Vengeance. That would have been impossible with the old system.

Interactive Combat

Even with a better Seal and Judgment system, there was still plenty of downtime. You spent a lot of time as a Paladin watching your toon waiting for your Judgment cooldown to come back up. So the Developers gave Paladins more buttons to push. Ret got a true strike with Crusader Strike. Prot would eventually get Hammer of the Righteous. Holy and Prot both use Shield of Righteousness. Combat as a Paladin is much more interactive. The days of autoattack and afk until dead are long gone.

Vengeance and Corruption For All

Once upon a time, Paladins had Faction specific spells. Only the Alliance had Vengeance, while the Horde had Blood. Of course, these spells were different and were better for different uses. Vengeance was a fantastic Tanking spell while Blood was a fantastic melee dps spell. So Alliance Rets and Horde Prots were always frustrated by ‘their’ spell being unavailable to them.

So what about you? What do you think were the best changes to Paladins over the first 5 years of WoW?

(I reserve the right to edit and extend this entry if you remind of something really cool that I forgot.)

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With regards to the Light leaving the Forsaken, this can be refuted with the following points.

- Where do Holy and Discipline Forsaken priests get their skills from?  That’s right… the light.  It’s not like all Forsaken priests are shadow priests.

- A’dal has the power to grant protection from the light and the source of power that paladins use (see Lady Liadrin and the Blood Knights)

- Sir Zeliek, a member of The Four Horseman, was a paladin in life and still commands the power of the light in his undeath.  From WoWWiki, “According to Commander Eligor Dawnbringer‘s lecture in Wintergarde Keep, Zeliek is, “so strong in his faith, that even in undeath, the power of the light still heeds his call, smiting his foes in battle.”  Now explain to me why there aren’t some Forsaken paladins out there for me Blizzard.

I’m really hoping someone from Blizzard reads this can can explain to me why Forsaken paladins weren’t added to the new Cataclysm race/class combos.

What are your thoughts?

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If you find this article eerily similar to the Protection Paladin entry on Raider101.com, that would be because I wrote the article at Raider101.

Introduction
Protection paladins are powerful tanks. They excel at every facet of tanking. At the moment, Paladins have very high threat generation. Paladins can tank every boss in the game and fulfill any tanking role. In addition, they bring powerful group buffs like Blessings, Hands and Auras.

Talent Builds

Standard: http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=2&tal=000000000000000000000000000500503500313231133331232150230201200300000000000000∞You This build has 3 ‘flavor’ points in the lower part of the Prot tree. You can put these three points into Reckoning (for threat), Divine Sacrifice/Improved Hammer of Justice (for a shorter cooldown on your stun, and a bit of utility), or Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian (for utility).

Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian is best for Paladins who find themselves primarily in offtanking roles or those who do not run with a Holy Paladin. There is one ‘wasted’ point in the Ret tree, which is currently shown as the second point of Improved Judgement. You need this point to get enough points to go further down the tree. If you are following the 969 rotation (discussed below) to the letter the 2/2 in Improved Judgements is (strictly speaking) sub-optimal as it reduces the CD on Judgements to 8 seconds which is not evenly divisible by the 1.5 second GCD, whereas going 1/2 in Improved Judgements makes the CD 9 seconds which does mesh with the GCD. However, 2/2 Improved Judgment is nice to have in soloing/daily quest situations, so that’s why I put the point there.

There is fierce debate among experienced Protection Paladins over Pursuit of Justice (PoJ). Some feel you can get by okay with just a Tuskar’s Vitality enchant, which gives you some run speed, but less than PoJ. Others swear by PoJ. I’ve recently changed to the pro-PoJ camp, however; if you decide to not take PoJ, put those 2 points into Conviction.

Abilities
Primary Seal: Seal of Vengeance if Alliance; Seal of Corruption if Horde

Primary Judgement: Judgement of Wisdom if you need mana or Judgement of Light if you don’t. Judgements were normalized in Patch 3.2 so they have the same effect regardless of which Paladin judges them. Your key debuff “Judgements of the Just” is its own debuff now and can no longer be removed from the Boss by another Paladin judging the wrong thing.

Primary Aura: Devotion Aura

Keep Righteous Fury and your assigned blessing active at all times. For Progression Tanking, the Blessings you want (in order of preference) are Blessing of Kings, Blessing Sanctuary, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom. For 5 mans, you will want Sanctuary.

Threat Rotation

A Protection Paladin uses a “969″ rotation. She alternates between abilities with an 8-9 second cooldown (Holy Shield, Judgement of Wisdom∞) and abilities with a 6 second cooldown (Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous).

Here is a sample rotation. It looks long, but watch for the “96969″ rhythm:

Seal of Vengeance (Actually prepped before)
Exorcism (to pull) – remember it has a cast time
Avenger’s Shield
Divine Plea
Judge(9)
Shield of Righteousness (6)
Consecrate(9)
Hammer of the Righteous(6)
Holy Shield(9)
Shield of Righteousness (6)
Judge(9)
Hammer of the Righteous(6)
Consecrate(9)
Shield of Righteousness (6)
Holy Shield(9)
Hammer of the Righteous(6)
Judge(9)

Other important abilities:
Hand of Reckoning – Single target taunt
Righteous Defense – Backup taunt, multi-target
Hand of Salvation – Cast this on any DPS who is at 90%+ threat

Key Cooldowns
Divine Protection – Akin to a Warrior’s Shield Wall, it’s your major active Cooldown. Your 4pc T9 lowers it’s cooldown to just 90 seconds.
Ardent Defender – Passive, but a major ‘cooldown’ for Protection Paladins.
Divine Plea – This should be on cooldown at all times.
Lay on Hands – It’s long cooldown means you have to careful when you use it, but the ability to refill your entire life bar will get out of trouble.
Avenging Wrath – Use this when your raid is under the effects of Bloodlust/Heroism or anytime you need a threat boost. Note that using this will prevent you from using Divine Protection for 30 seconds.

Key Stats

Stats are listed in order of importance. All these stats are useful, but look for gear with more stats from the top of the list.

Stamina
Defense Rating – minimum of 540 Defense (689 Defense Rating)
Dodge Rating
Parry Rating
Armor
Strength
Block Value
Hit Rating
Expertise
Attack Power
Block Rating

You must have at least 540 Defense if you want to tank raids. If you have less, bosses can critically hit you for double damage. You will die a horrible death and your raid will wipe. Likewise you must have at least 535 Defense for Heroics. Having more than these minimums is not a problem. On the contrary, Defense is one of the best ways to improve your avoidance (chance for the Boss to miss you).

With Diminishing Returns added to Block Value in Patch 3.2, Block Value will fluctuate in it’s importance as a stat.

• If your raid-buffed BV is <> BV > Hit > Expertise > AP
• If your raid-buffed BV is > 2500 but <> Expertise > AP, with BV rapidly declining in value
• If your raid-buffed BV is > 2950 then Hit > STR > Expertise > AP, and BV is worthless for threat

Recommended Glyphs

Major
Glyph of Divine Plea
Glyph of Righteous Defense
Glyph of Seal of VengeanceOr Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous

Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous will be better if you run mostly Heroics, but Seal of Vengeance is better for Raids. Once you have over 25 Expertise Skill, the value of the Seal of Vengeance glyph goes down slightly.

Minor
Glyph of Sense Undead
Glyph of Lay on Hands
Glyph of Blessign of Kings

Recommended Enchants

Enchants are listed from best and most expensive to least expensive. If you have a crafting profession, you may have access to crafter-only enchants which are better than these recommendations.

Head: Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle or Lesser Inscription of the Pinnacle
Chest: Greater Defense
Cloak: Titanweave
Bracers: Major Stamina
Hands: Armsman
Belt: Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs: Frosthide Leg Armor or Jormungar Leg Armor
Feet: Tuskar’s Vitality or Greater Fortitude
Weapon: Blood Draining for survival, or Accuracy for threat
Shield: Defense

Recommended Gems
Meta: Austere Earthsiege Diamond or Eternal Earthsiege Diamond
Red: Shifting
Yellow: Enduring or Thick Only use Thick if that’s the only way for you to maintain the Defense minimum.
Blue: Solid
Prismatic: SolidIf you are a Jewelcrafter, Solid Dragonseyes should still be placed in Red slots if the bonus is less than 9 stamina.

Recommended Consumables
Flask: Flask of Stoneblood
Food: Dragonfin Fillet

Additional Tips

• Make sure the mobs you are tanking are in front of you. That way you can block and parry their attacks.
• Practice your rotation on Target Dummies until it becomes ingrained. You will have much more to pay attention when progression tanking than just your action bar.

Sources and Other Resources
Maintankadin – Go there, find the Basic Training section and read all the stickies. Then close your browser. Open it up again, go back to Maintankadin, back to the Basic Training section and read all the stickies again. Then go tank something. When you are done, go back and read all the stickies again.

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If you aren’t up to speed on the new changes coming, I recommend Rhidach’s excellent write up “Tanks, What 3.2 Means to You.”

In 3.2, Paladins have to make some difficult choices in our talent spec balancing Threat, Survivability and Utility.

I’m going to do this a little bit like a college major. You have your core, required courses, and your electives.

First I’m going to layout what I feel is the core Tankadin build. These are talents you should have in your build regardless of what situation you find yourself in. You aren’t getting your Tanking diploma from this dwarf without them.

You will note that the core build is impossible without picking up some of the elective talents. We’ll talk about those choices in a bit.

You Gotta Start Somewhere

I don’t consider Divine Strength to be a ‘core’ talent, but you have to pick something at Tier 1 to get higher in the tree and Divine Strength is superior to Divinity. I’m not a fan of Protection Paladins taking Divinity. It’s not the size of the heal that matters most in a life or death situation, but the timing of the heal.

The Core

Core: Anticipation, Toughness, Improved Righteous Fury, Improved Devotion Aura, , Sacred Duty, Holy Shield, 1 Hand Weapon Specialzation (Strongest Threat per point talent), 1/2 Spiritual Attunement, Ardent Defender, Combat Expertise (more for the Stamina than the Expertise), Avenger’s Shield, Guarded By the Light, Touched the By Light (next strongest Threat per point after 1 Hand Weapon Specialization), Shield of the Templar, Judgments of the Just, Hammer of the Righteous, Deflection, 1/2 Improved Judgments, Vindication

Prerequisites: Blessing of Sanctuary

3 fillers

The core build will give you 22 points in Protection. You will need 3 elective points to get to Tier 6. Your choices are Divinity, Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian, Divine Sacrifice/Improved Hammer of Justice, or 3/5 Reckoning.

I covered Divinity above, so let’s get into the other options.

Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian gives you some excellent utility, but the recent bug fix that allows you to only have one Sacred Shield on you really kills it for me. On Live, you can stack your Sacred Shield with your Healers, but you won’t be able to do that in 3.2. However, if you find yourself as an Offtank on fights like XT, Iron Council, Kologarn, etc. Divine Sacrifice is a really nice utility talent that really take some stress off the healing team.

I’ve had the Divine Sacrifice/Improved Hammer of Justice for weeks in Ulduar. Hammer of Justice just won’t cut it as an Interrupt until it’s off the Global Cooldown, and even at 20 seconds, the cooldown is a bit long to be considered a reliable interrupt.

Warriors Shield Bash is on a 12 second cooldown, plus they have Charge/Intercept, Concussion Blow and Shockwave. Mind Freeze for Death Knights is a 10 second Cooldown. Both Shield Bash and Mind Freeze are off the global cooldown. Druids are the only class worse off; Bears only have Bash which is a 1 minute cooldown interrupt.

If there’s a mob to be interrupted and you can’t have a melee dps do it, you should have another tank class on it rather than a Paladin/Druid.

You will most likely see me with Reckoning. It plays very favorably with the new Seal of Vengeance mechanics. I’ve always been a fan of Reckoning all the way back to one shotting Kazzak, and I’m glad to see it make its way back into my build.

More To Fill

The next place in the core build where you have to consider an elective is at 38 points in Protection. Your choices from the 22 point break will still be there, and you have the added choice of Redoubt.

I don’t consider Redoubt a core talent. I pretty much ignore the proc. It’s not something you can count on and it’s completely wasted in Block Cap gear. I know we bang on Block Value, but you have to take that in context. Comparing Block Value on gear versus Avoidance, Avoidance is going to win that one pretty easily. With Redoubt, we aren’t making that comparison. This is essentially ‘free Block Value’. So while I don’t see Redoubt as ‘core’ to the build, it’s my recommendation at the sticking point of 38 points in Protection.

Retribution

You get another sticking point with 6 in Ret. You need another 4 points in Ret to get to Tier 3 for the new Vindication, which I feel is now a Core Tanking Talent. I understand it can be provided by others in the Raid. However, the Tankadin has the least cumbersome way of applying, and I like to be self sufficient. Plus, DPS may be on a different target than you are on.

And because I like to self sufficient, I put points in Heart of the Crusader and put a ‘wasted’ point to fill out Improved Judgment, or Benediction, neither is going to do a while lot for you. You may also want to consider Improved Blessing of Might depending on your raid make up.

The Final Points

You’ve 6 points left over at this point. Your choice is do you want to go for Crusade? Seals of the Pure interacts well with the Seal of Vengeance/Corruption buff. It now beats out Crusade, if you are fighting something that doesn’t get the double bonus from Crusade. If you are fighting Humanoids, Demons, Undead or Elementals, Crusade still wins for threat.

Crusade loses for just about everything in Ulduar save Yogg. It’s all mechanicals and giants. It loses out on the first boss of the Coliseum which is a Beast. It wins for everything else in the Coliseum. Most people tend to think it will win in Ice Crown Citadel because that place should be crawling with Humanoids and Undead.

I tend to advocate specing for the current progression Boss. That means that for the first week of 3.2, I’ll have a Seals of the Pure build, but as soon as the second week comes out, I’ll be on a Crusade Build.

For the Seals of the Pure build, you put 5 points into Seals of the Pure and 1 point wherever you like. For me I will probably put that into Conviction.

For a Crusade build, you either put 3 points into Conviction or 1 Conviction, and 2 into Pursuit of Justice. PoJ is argued on the MainTankadin boards with near religious fervor. I’m not going to get into that here. If you feel PoJ is crucial to your build, you’ll take it.

There you go, all your points spent. Now go enjoy your new cooldown.

HonorsCode guarantee is All Predictions Are Wrong, Or Your Money Back. Since HonorsCode is actually free, if I ever got one right, I’d owe you…well you get the idea.

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I checked around and it didn’t appear anyone had tested it. So I copied over to the Broxigar PVE PTR.

Now I’ve never had Vindication and Hammer of the Righteous in the same build. I took the portal to Ironforge and respeced. I went with a Crusade build, even though some recent developments seem to indicate that Tankadins will not be going that deep into Ret anymore.

Seal of Vengeance/Seals of the Pure

Seal of Vengeance has been changed. When you have a 5 stack up and hit the mob, your seal will do 33% of your weapon damage. On Live it does maybe 10 to 15 points of damage. This may make you want to consider your old Broken Promise again, but after some theorycrafting it still looks like Item Level and DPS will trump speed. Stick with our highest iLevel/DPS weapon.

In the latest build, Seals of the Pure has been buffed. Before it didn’t affect this new seal damage, now it does.

The math geniuses at MainTankadin are still working out the numbers, but early indications are that Seals of the Pure will out threat Crusade. Once we get a little closer to Patch 3.2’s release, I’ll have a post on how I’m going to be specing Honorshammer, but as this latest change demonstrates, there are still being changes made that will affect your build.

Vindication

For the actual Vindication testing, I flew out to Icecrown and pulled two different mobs.

The first time I pulled them with Avenger’s Shield and found that Avenger’s Shield will proc Vindication on each mob it hits.

The combat log shows there’s nearly a full second delay between the hit and the debuff being applied.

The next group I did via the old Paladin body pull and to no surprised, found that regular melee swings also proc Vindication. To no suprise, the debuff is a reduction of 574 AP just like Demo Shout/Demo Roar and Curse of Weakness.
Now with only melee swings, I discovered the application of Vindication is a ‘chance on hit’. It can and will fall off. I hate a key survivability debuff like this being subject to the RNG when it’s cousins Demo Shout/Roar and Curse of Weakness can not fall off until their duration expires.

Finally I tested with Hammer of the Righteous. Here’s the combat log of what happened.

7/24 01:04:22.843 SWING_DAMAGE,0xF5300079A4121D7E,”Hulking Abomination”,0xa48,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,175,0,1,0,0,12,nil,nil,nil
7/24 01:04:23.546 SWING_DAMAGE,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,0xF1300079A90653AC,”Shadow Adept”,0x10a48,438,0,1,0,0,0,nil,nil,nil
7/24 01:04:23.546 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED_DOSE,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,0xF1300079A90653AC,”Shadow Adept”,0x10a48,31803,”Holy Vengeance”,0×2,DEBUFF,3
7/24 01:04:23.734 SPELL_CAST_SUCCESS,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,0xF1300079A90653AC,”Shadow Adept”,0x10a48,53595,”Hammer of the Righteous”,0×2
7/24 01:04:23.734 SPELL_DAMAGE,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,0xF1300079A90653AC,”Shadow Adept”,0x10a48,53595,”Hammer of the Righteous”,0×2,1641,0,2,0,0,0,nil,nil,nil
7/24 01:04:23.937 SPELL_DAMAGE,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,0xF5300079A4121D7E,”Hulking Abomination”,0xa48,53595,”Hammer of the Righteous”,0×2,1640,0,2,0,0,0,nil,nil,nil
7/24 01:04:23.937 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED,0×0000000000000000,nil,0×80000000,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,64568,”Blood Reserve”,0×1,BUFF
7/24 01:04:23.953 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,0xF5300079A4121D7E,”Hulking Abomination”,0xa48,31803,”Holy Vengeance”,0×2,DEBUFF
7/24 01:04:23.953 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED_DOSE,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,0xF1300079A90653AC,”Shadow Adept”,0x10a48,31803,”Holy Vengeance”,0×2,DEBUFF,4
7/24 01:04:24.343 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,0xF1300079A90653AC,”Shadow Adept”,0x10a48,26017,”Vindication”,0×2,DEBUFF
7/24 01:04:24.343 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED,0x010000000005B7DF,”Honorhammer”,0×511,0xF5300079A4121D7E,”Hulking Abomination”,0xa48,26017,”Vindication”,0×2,DEBUFF

Let me translate that for you.

Hulking Abomination swung and hit me for 175
Honorhammer swung and hit Shadow Adept for 438
A third stack of Holy Vengeance went up on Shadow Adept
Honorhammer casts Hammer of the Righteous
Hammer of the Righteous hits both Shadow Adept and Hulking Abomination for 1641
I get a tick of Blood Reserve from Blood Draining
Hulking Abomination gets one stack of Holy Vengeance, proving that I had not hit him with anything else.
Shadow Adept’s stack increases to 4
Both the Shadow Adept and the Hulking Abomination get Vindication applied

Now it could be argued that the Vindication proc actually came from the application of the first stack of the Vengeance DoT on the Hulking Abomination, however, that really doesn’t matter in the final analysis. The Vengeance DoT was put on the Abomination by Hammer of the Righteous, so whether Hammer of the Righteous applied Vindication directly, or did it by applying the DoT, the net effect is you get Vindication on 3 mobs (4 if you Glyph Hammer of the Righteous) in an AoE scenario.

While I was doing this test, there was an Undead Warrior also killing mobs in the area. This is why I always copy over to the PVE PTR server. When I’m testing something I don’t want to have to worry about some Hordie deciding he needs to test some PVP with me.

So here’s the TLDR summary:

Ardent Defender

Since I was already out that way, I decided to test Ardent Defender. I flew up to the battlements and found one of those big 82 Elite Abominations walking around. The problem was it took a long time for him to put me into Ardent Defender range.

Now it’s important to point out that because he hits pretty weakly, about 700 damage per attack, he couldn’t put me into a Leapfrog situation, so the mitigation benefits I got from AD were exactly the same as they would have been on Live. Even knowing that, it was really nice to see AD working in the Combat Log. I really wish the Developers had added that functionality to AD when it was first introduced.

Eventually, he wore me down and I got an AD save. That is pure unmitigated WIN. It looks like you got a Battle Rez, but your buffs and debuffs stay since you didn’t… actually… you know… DIE.

You still get the Ardent Defender debuff after it saves you meaning it won’t save you again for 2 minutes. However, the debuff no longer prevents AD from working. I was seeing AD damage reduction while under the effect of the debuff. What other questions do people have about the PTR changes that they would like to see tested?

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Sacred Shield Rank 1
12% of base mana 40 yd range
Instant cast

Each time the target takes damage they gain a Sacred Shield, absorbing 500 damage and increasing the paladin’s chance to critically hit with Flash of Light by 50% for up to 6 sec. They cannot gain this effect more than once every 6 sec. Lasts 30 sec. This spell cannot be on more than one target at any one time.

We know that Sacred Shield absorbs 500 damage + some additional amount based primarily on your spell power. In my tanking gear and casting Sacred Shield on myself, I’m able to absorb about 900 damage. A Holy Paladin is going to have more spellpower and will be able to absorb more with Sacred Shield. You can increase the amount absorbed with Divine Guardian, which I don’t have in my build at the moment in favor of Improved Hammer of Justice.

So the question is how a Paladin tank should use this tool in his toolkit to better perform his task.

As a Tank, we have two main tasks. Job #1 is to stay alive. Job#2 is to keep the Boss/Mob’s attention on us and not our favorite Mage and Elemental Shaman. Sacred Shield won’t help much with Job#2, but we can employ it for Job#1.

To determine the best way to employ Sacred Shield you need to look at your Raid Composition and your Raid Role.

First issue to address is ‘How many Sacred Shields are available to the Raid?’ You see that little caveat they added at the end? “This spell cannot be on more than one target at any one time.”

From that we know that the number of Paladins we have in the Raid equals the number of Sacred Shields available. Until 3.2 is Live, assume that all your Retribution Paladins are going to be using their Sacred Shields on themselves to minimize the kickback damage they take from Seal of Blood. Once 3.2 goes Live, Raid Leaders may want to consider assigning Retribution Paladins to use their Sacred Shields on Shadow Priests to help mitigate some of their kickback damage.

After you determine how many Sacred Shields you have available to you (that is the number of Holy and Protection Paladins in your raid), you next need to determine who each Paladin is casting their Sacred Shield on. Because a Holy Paladin’s Sacred Shield absorbs more than a Protection Paladin’s would, you want your Holy Paladins to put their Sacred Shield on the raid members who will be taking the most damage, usually your tanks. This synergies well because those Tanks are likely to be people whom the Holy Paladin is charged with Healing anyway.

If you run out of Holy Paladins before you run out of Tanks, the Protection Paladin can put his Sacred Shield on one of the Tanks that will be taking less damage, typically, but not always an offtank. If you have a Holy Paladin to cover each Tank, the Protection Paladin can put his Sacred Shield on a key non-Tank. It may not seem like much damage reduction, but it could mean one of your team survives when he might not have otherwise.

Multiple Sacred Shields do stack so when in doubt, the Protection Paladin can just cast it on himself.

You can increase both the duration and amount absorbed by Sacred Shield by specing into Divine Guardian. Currently Protection Paladins have 3 to 5 ‘flavor points’ that you can put into roughly equivalent talent combinations. One of those options is taking Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian.

Because Sacred Shield is an absorb, it will work on fights like Loatheb, and can be a great help on fights like General Vezzax where mana can be tight.

You may want to forgo Sacred Shield in a 5 man. I need a little damage just to keep my mana pool up.

A good Tank knows every tool at his disposal and will use everything and anything to get the job done. Sacred Shield can be a valuable part of any Tankadins toolkit.

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