Frequently Argued Questions. AKA: Advanced tanking FAQ.

[knaughty]

Read the new version HERE This is the 3.0 version.

Please keep this thread on-topic.

It's an advanced training FAQ for how to be an end-game MT, and get the most out of this site.

This thread is going to be an "Advance mode" version of my Basic Training FAQ.

Philosophy of the FAQ AKA: Knaughty is biased

This guide is for experienced tanks. If you're a new tank, a re-roll, re-spec or whatever, go read my Basic Training FAQ, and the things that it links to. There will be stuff in here that talks about nuanced examples of edge cases, boss-specific mechanics and debatable talent choices. If you're not already a pretty good tank, it may just be confusing.

This guide will NOT assume you're a Maintankadin Forum Veteran. Something that has come up pretty clearly in a few recent cases is that there is a large base of "assumed knowledge" that the forum trolls here assume Everyone Knows. Some of us (who? me?) are occasionally somewhat rude about pointing that out. A better solution is to have a decent Advanced Mode FAQ.

This guide will probably end up biased. But I will try to avoid it. I'm a progression oriented MT boss-whore in a small, focussed hard-core guild on a low pop server. While I am putting on my "nice person" hat, I'm still a grumpy opinionated curmudgeon underneath.

It won't cover I can tank that ret-spec. Current (3.0) content is easy. Even Sarth+3 is easier than most of 2.4 Sunwell (yes, even the 10-man version). Yes, this means you could spec PvP ret and tank most of 25-man (prob all of it with enough gear/healers). Or other silliness (2-h tanking, SoB tanking, etc). But the FAQ will largely be focussed on progression tanking. This means that skipping mitigation talents to pick up DPS talents will basically be wrong by definition. That said, I will cover why you want the mitigation talents, give some detailed info about them and potential trade-offs, etc.

This FAQ will gratuitously steal from content that is already here. One of the main points is to get new people up to speed quickly. Thus things like, one-post summary of Psiven's TPS thread.

Topics

What I want to cover:

969 rotation. Psiven did a monumental amount of work on the theory-craft behind 969. Even I can't be arsed to look it all up and read every post in the TPS thread. We need a write-up of what 969 is, why you use it, when you don't, and when/how you weave in other abilities (Exorcism, AS, etc, etc).

Glyphs Some detailed analysis of the 4-5 viable tanking glyphs.

Expertise and Hit Where the breakpoints are and how much value these provide (TL;DR: not much)

Gearing Some actual detail on how to gear for various encounters, and general advice on priorities.

How not to go OOM Rework of my "Benediction Sucks" thread hat is slightly less confrontational.

Talents!! There are a pile of debatable talent choices. Starter tanks should just spec 0/58/6+7 (see basic training FAQ). But there are a whole pile of "edge-case" talents I'll cover the pros & cons of.
• Reckoning
• Kings
• Divine Guardian
• Benediction
• Conviction vs SotP.

Provisos

3.0.8 and beyond only I'm not going to cover optimising for ShoR x 2 or deal with missing MassiveStam enchants for weapon/wrist.

Generic gearing I'm not going to tell you how to build a threat set. I will tell you want stats to stack and the relative value of various stats. I'm not going to tell you how to build a block/EH/avoidance set either. It isn't super complex....

No silliness This won't cover ret or holy "tanking" specs for doing silly shit like soloing old content. There's plenty of threads on how to solo Garr already.

Ratings are Fungible

You gear is a collection of many parts, and the sum of those parts needs meet particular breakpoints to be able to easily tank particular things.

This means that sometimes you're better off picking things on the basis of itemisation points. It comes up most frequently with Enchants which aren't balanced. Take the shield slot: you can get +20 defence rating, which is worth 20 item points. Or 18 stamina, which is only worth 12 item points. Even though we really like stamina as tanks, the defence enchant is the better one. It also means that we can swap +defence gems out for +stamina, which gets you a lot more stamina in those gems slots. Same for chest - 22 defence vs 275 health? That's only 22 stam, less than one rare stam gem, where the enchant is substantially more than the equivalent defence gem.

I'm also not very interested in what item is "Best in Slot", because you don't tank 1/17 of a boss with one item. Your gear is a SET - and your other 16 items can and will alter which item provides the best balance to your entire gear-set. You also don't get to go to a vendor at the end of Naxx-25 and say "Can I have the three specific items I was after, that's my share of the loot". You get what drops.

It's also worth remembering you're gearing a guild not your toon.

Please keep this thread on-topic.

It's an advanced training FAQ for how to be an end-game MT, and get the most out of this site.

[knaughty]

With thanks to Psiven for all his work on TPS & 969.

Why we use 969

Paladin tanking moves are all instant-cast, on the GCD, and have cooldowns. Most of our abilities are pure threat moves, Holy Shield is excellent mitigation, we want close to 100% uptime (it also provides decent threat). Judgement is one of our weaker threat moves, but also applies a variety of debuffs on the mob and also procs our tanking Libram (the BV one is the only tanking Libram at the moment).

We have more moves than we can actually use - under most boss-tanking circumstances, every single GCD will be used. The 969 rotation can be mathematically proven to be the best possible TPS rotation - Psiven has done this in his monumental TPS sticky. What follows is a very brief summary of his findings. Credit his, mistakes mine.

Although I talk about "best" and "worst" moves in this section, our worst move (HotR-single-target) still does 75% of the DPS/TPS of our best move (ShoR), so it isn't worth losing half a second to dead time to switch from worst move to best move. Given that a half-second delay in order to go from worst->best isn't viable, ANY tanking rotation with dead-time in it is automatically a non-optimal rotation.

Dead-time = mathematically non-optimal TPS rotation. Any suggestions of "I use a weird rotation and just take a 0.5 second break every so often" cannot be as much TPS as 969.

The GCD is 1.5 seconds, and is checked client side, so Internet lag/ping is a non-issue (within reason). Human reaction time doesn't change the results either.

We have two moves that are on 6 second CDs, which is 4 GCDs - HotR & ShoR. Both moves are very good - ShoR in particular is our best DPS move. HotR is weak single target, but amazing for 2+. So that's half our GCDs gone. So we have half our GCDs left.

We have three moves on 8-10 seconds CDs - roughly 6 GCDs: Consecrate, Judgment & Holy Shield. We want HS to have 100% uptime, but it has 10-sec duration and 8 sec CD, and 9 seconds = 6 GCDs, so we use HS every 6 GCDs.

So we're using some things every 4 GCDs and some every 6 GCDs. Which lines up in 12 GCDs - our rotation is 18 seconds long. Once we get HotR, ShoR & HS in, we end up with just enough GCDs left over to get Consecrate and judgement in every 6 GCDs as well.

The base CD of Judgement is 10 seconds - that's more than 6 GCDs - so we have to talent it to 9 seconds. But we've already shown that dead-time reduces our TPS under all circumstances, so there isn't any point dropping it to 8 seconds, because 8 isn't divisible by 1.5. We have a GCD at 7.5 seconds - but we can't judge then, too early. And we don't want dead-time, so we use something else and now we get to judge at 9 seconds. Thus: 1/2 Imp Judge.

Once Judge is in, we're down to one GCD free every 6 GCDs. We insert Consecrate, with 8 sec CD, and we get to 8/9 uptime - about 89%.

Psiven did a whole pile of analysis trying various different options using 8 second Judge/Consecrate, and there was no solution that provided higher DPS than judging/consecrate on 9 sec CD.

I just did an analysis of 8/10 rotation as well, Page-10, this thread

http://www.ajantis-guild.com/users/knau ... vs_969.gif

8/10 rotation sucks. Do not use it.

How to do 969

OK, so all our GCDs are full in theory, how do you actually execute 969?

Well, we know our cycle is 18 seconds / 12 GCDs long, and that 4 GCD abilities use half and 6 GCD abilities use half. These abilities are referred to by the CD length - 6 seconds and 9 seconds.

We want no dead-time, and we know we're using every single GCD. So what order to use abilities?

If you work it out, you discover that the only way to avoid "GCD collision" (two abilities coming off CD at the same time) is to swap back and forth between the 6 sec and 9 sec abilities. If you start with 6699, you shortly hit a point where either two abilities com off CD at the same time or no abilities are available at all. It's the latter one that stuffs you - you just had a whole GCD of dead time.

So you have to go "969" (or 696). Short-long-short-long. If you do that, you will always have an ability to use every GCD, and will be able to use each ability immediately it comes off GCD.

The exact order doesn't matter - you can tune it to suit your personal preferences or the boss/trash mechanics. Just make sure you start with short-long-short-long and after that you're locked into 969 - just hit each ability as it comes off CD.

You can macro it to two buttons if you want - you have a "short" button and a "long" button, and your tanking rotation becomes 12121212. There are pros and cons - I don't do it, I prefer flexibility of order, and the ability to totally control when I use Consecrate.

Should you weave long CD moves into 969?

I fired up the latest version of Rawr: 2.1.6 and put together the best available set of gear I could build as part of my personal planning. The gear-set is designed for overall balanced tanking, with the emphasis on mitigation/survivability. Threat was secondary. I'll link it sometime, it is pretty similar to everyone else's "best in slot" guides. DMC:Great and Defender's Code for trinkets.

I then ran that through the Rawr models for TPS with full 25-man raid buffs & debuffs.

I used my build, which is the ever-popular 5/60/6 with Kings/DG.

Here are the numbers for threat (per GCD used unless otherwise mentioned)

Health: 37.8k
Armour: 29.1k
Defence: 540
0.61% short of block-capped, almost 2k BV (I think that is average inc DMC:Great & Libram uptime)

Attack power: 5,380
Spell power: 829

Threat per move
ShoR: 8744
Consecrate: 8632
Judge: 6732
HotR: 6600 (per target)
AS: 6132 (no glyph, per target)

SoV: 1016 TPS
White: 662 TPS

Holy Shield is up for mitigation, and TPS is variable. But if something is chewing through the charges, you're over 10k threat per cast.

Exorcism wasn't listed, so I'm working it out myself (math could be wrong). Damage is: [1087 + 0.15 * SPH + 0.15 * AP] = 2018 base. +10% for 1-h spec, +13% for full raid debuffs = 2508 damage = 6816 threat. Doesn't include crit/miss. Given crit is ~21%, TPS will go up a little.

Holy Wrath does about 1,576 base -> 1.7k with 1h-spec, but you can't assume AE packs will be debuffed. Threat = 4.7k per target. And the stun, which parks them on your Consecrate.

What that tells us:

(1) Skip hammer, not judgment, when weaving stuff into 969 on bosses. Judge also procs libram. Skip Judge only when multi-tanking and you want TPS over mitigation.
(2) Don't weave AS unless glyphed for bosses. On trash, save it for next pull, pack will be dead anyway.
(3) You can weave in Exorcism, but you may as well save it for tagging adds instead. The TPS boost is too small to care about for trash.
(4) Holy Wrath is not worth weaving in for threat on single-targets. Feel free to use it for mitigation/control.

TL;DR Unless you have AS glyphed, there's little point weaving stuff into 969.

What About Hammer of Wrath under 20%?

Analysis is on page 13

Short version: Replace Hammer of Cleave with Hammer of Execute until you get Last Laugh, then stop bothering. As they scale differently, exact cutover is gear dependant, but happens at roughly:

Last Laugh with 4700 AP / 1k spell-power, which is "late Tier-7.5 gear".

Hammer of Wrath will pretty much never make sense in Tier-8, once you have a ilevel 226 tanking weapon. In Tier-7, you have to have nearly best gear in game before it is out-scaled.

[knaughty]

Glyphs With thanks to Majiben

Almost Mandatory

Major
Glyph of seal of vengeance 10 expertise skill (!!) is a lot more hits connecting for a tank with a minor mitigation component due the reduction in parries. This Glyph is grossly over-budgeted - a normal major glyph is maybe 1 talent point. This one is more like 5.

Glyph of Righteous Defence Never miss a taunt. Which is:
• Never have the Holy Priest get his face ripped off because your taunt resisted.
• Never wipe because you stuffed up a tank swap.

Minor
Glyph of sense undead - With the large number of undead in T7 this is easily the best minor glyph we have. Remember to turn on Sense Undead!

Recommended:

Major

Glyph of Judgement Increases your damage & threat for no downside.

Minor

Glyph of lay on hands In a desperate situation this will give you or your healer a little more mana to work with. Helped our guild get some of our harder progression kills in 10-man by giving OOM healers a little chunk of mana.


Situational:

Major
Glyph of Exorcism Very good for 10 man KT. Limited use elsewhere. So it's great for one fight in-game.

Glyph of Avenger's Shield Gives you a move worth weaving into your rotation. The TPS gain on boss fights is minor (on par with one extra HotR every thirty seconds). The loss of utility for trash and Heroics is huge however. Apparently nice if you PvP prot-specced.

Meh

Glyph of Spiritual Attunement

If you find yourself to be a permanent off tank this glyph can let you strech your resources a little farther but every tank that sees a boss now and then should know how to manage their resources properly without this glyph. Additionally, it provides no benefit if you already have the mana for a full rotation.

Knaughty says: "Mana Efficiency is for people not tanking enough mobs"

Third Minor Glyph: There's nothing actually useful for tanking. Pick something useful to you

BAD!

Major
Glyph of ConsecrationThis interrupts your optimal rotation, and reduces your TPS. Additionally this makes add pick up on a mobile fight harder as you can't move your aoe threat as often. This would actually be a good glyph if it was one second (and perhaps "minor").

Gems

<data goes here>

Enchants

Rules of thumb:
• Defence is your best enchant until over 540
• Defence is still your best avoidance enchant after 540.
• 540 is hard to maintain.
• Enchant to improve an item's strengths, not cover weaknesses.


Once you have Defence covered:
• Stam/Armour > everything else.

Helm [item]Arcarnum of the Stalwart Protector[/item] Twice as good as anything else.

Shoulders Best Inscription of the Pinnacle you can get from Hodir rep.

Cloak: Mighty Armor (225 armour) is substantially better than Titanweave once you are past the defence minimum

Chest:Greater Defence is your best enchant. Super Health and Powerful Stats are about even in second place.

Wrist: Fur Lining Stam if you're a LW. Otherwise wait for the 40 stam enchant in 3.0.8

Gloves: [item]Glove Reinforcements[/item] is more EH than [item]Heavy Borean Armor Kit[/item]. Armsman for your threat-set gloves, if you have them.

Waist: Extra socket with a stam gem in it.

Legs: 22 agil / 55 stam leg patch.

Feet: 22 stam. Tuskarr's if you want the speed.

Mainhand: Wait for 3.0.8 and get 75 stam.

Shield: 20 Defence is substantially better than 18 stam.

[knaughty]

Threat Options

Expertise & Hit

Seal of Fail... I mean Blood

Maths for SoB

Short answer? SoB is several hundred less TPS less than SoV with best gear available, even if you spec specially into a SoB spec and use best SoB weapon.

[knaughty]

How to not go OOM: 101.

• Put up Sanctuary instead of Kings.
• Stop using CC.
• Pull more.
• Divine Plea. Use it.
• Modulate your TPS. (Skip Consecrate)


If SA+ Sanc aren't returning enough mana, you're not tanking enough. Start tanking more, and taking more damage.

Benediction is not a tanking talent.

Benediction is an utter and complete waste of points. If you're going OOM, you're tanking wrong and need to learn how our mechanics work. See "Situational talents" post for maths.

Spiritual Attunement Numbers

Your healer has roughly 20k mana. You have 6k. When you take damage, he transfers mana from his blue bar to your blue bar. How efficient is this transfer?.

Paladin healing you:
Base mana 4,394

• Holy light at 2k spellpower hits for ~10k.
• Costs the Holy pally 1.3k mana, gives you 1k.
• If the pally crits, the heal hits for 15k and only costs the paladin 517 mana.

• Flash of Light costs 308 mana. 123 mana on a crit.
• FoL heals for 3.3k, 5k on a crit.
• ZOMG! he specs 123 or 308 mana to give you 300-500.

Assuming your holy pally is vaguely competent (or just spams FoL), he can transfer his mana bar to your mana bar at more than 100% efficiency.

(Holy) Priest Healing You:

Base mana 3,863. Total mana ~20k, spellpower 2k.

• Renew: 656 mana. ~6.9k healing.
• Flash Heal: 590 mana. 4k heal. Only 440 mana if it topped you off.
• Greater Heal: 1050 mana. ~9-10k. Only 788 mana if it topped you off

Harder for a holy priest to transfer mana over 100% efficiency, but their mana regen is ridiculous. Think 1,000 Mp5 outside 5-sec, 300 Mp5 inside. And they will be outside the 5 sec rule frequently due to freebie casts.

Tree/shaman healing you

Do I need to belabour the point? More of the same. They can transfer their 18-20k mana pools to your blue rage bar at about 1:1, and regen a hell of a lot faster than you.

Summary: You do not have a 6k mana pool and no regen. You have a 25k mana pool, it's just that your healer is carrying most of it for you. He can refuel you from empty to full in 10-20 seconds depending on class, if you can take enough damage. He can regen the 6k he just transferred from his pool to yours in about 30 seconds of just standing there.

Neat Trick: Get naked. Get clothed. OK, you just lost 10k health, inc 1k mana. Repeat. This is faster than drinking if you healer is full mana and you're OOM. Create a "get naked" button. Outfit mod is your friend.

Sanctuary Numbers

OHNOES! SA only kicks in if you take damage and get healed! What about the rest of the time!

• Pure avoidance at level 80 is about 50%.
• You'll block most of the rest.
• You get about 120-130 mana for every mitigated/avoided hit.

Grab a standard heroic-instance trash pack. 4 mobs, 1 on whom is a caster. Three beating on you for not much.

• Three mobs @ 2 sec swing speed, DPS start on the caster.
• Pack takes ~25 seconds to kill (almost one AS CD).

How much mana?

• Caster gives you none from BoS, only SA.
• Melee are going to swing at you about two-dozen times, half avoided, rest blocked.
• About 20 out of 24 hits are going to proc BoS, giving you 40% of your mana back.
• About half will also do damage and give you some mana via SA.

Practicalities and Pacing.

• It's hard to do more than 2 pulls a minute due to AS CD.
• Thus: Every second pack you get 25% of your mana back via Divine Plea.

Plea + BoS give you back about half a bar total per trash pack.

What can you cast for half a mana bar?
• Avenger's Shield.
• One Consecrate.

IE: You need half a mana bar to pull. Make sure to finish your pulls with half a mana bar so you can pull again.

What does SA have to cover?
• Hammer of the Righteous: 6% base mana; 6 second CD
• ShoR: 6% base; 6 sec
• Judgement: 5%; 9 sec
• Holy Shield: 10%; 9 sec

Mana per second: 3.66% of base mana per second = 161 mana per second.

Thus: Incoming damage needs to be 1,610 DPS and you won't go OOM.

Is this a possible healing rate? Holy paladin casting Flash of Light with ~400ms ping is about 2k HPS. Certainly well over our required 1.6k HPS. A Holy Paladin can do this roughly forever. He never needs to break out a big heal or pop CDs.

Other healers solve the same problem different ways, with the same result. 2k HPS, single target, is ridiculously easy for a level 80 healer to sustain virtually forever.

It's worth noting that at this damage rate, your "Time to live" is roughly 30 seconds. IE: You're dealing with trash packs so goddamn weak that you could tank the entire pack to dead with no heals at all.

So the required damage rate is low enough that you healer can be AFK for the actual combats. Or you can dual-box heal yourself, where you only heal yourself after each pack. If you're actually taking enough damage that the pack can actually kill you if you don't get heals, then you can't go OOM.

This is just bullshit theorycraft!

How about some personal experience then!

My Armory

Short version: Just T-7-25 hat to go for my "Epic!" achievement (every slot with a 25-man epic item).

IE: My gear is close to best available.

• I do not go OOM in Heroics, even easy ones.
• I do not drink more than a couple of times.
• I do not spec or glyph mana efficiency.

It isn't "theory". I easily manage to tank heroics I grossly out-gear without going OOM.

TL;DR! Gimmah tips!

• Put up Sanctuary instead of Kings.
• Stop using CC.
• Pull more.
• Divine Plea. Use it.
• Modulate your TPS. (Skip Consecrate)


Main one is: Consecrate is optional. Skip it unless you really need TPS on over 5 mobs. Learn to tank 4 mobs without Consecrate: AS three, Judge 4th, HammerTime!

Once the first couple of mobs are dead, look at Omen? Do you need to be doing TPS? Or do you have ginormous threat bars with piddly DPS threat eeking along at the bottom? Probably yes! At that point, skip everything except Holy Shield and HotR. Holy Shield costs negative mana - three blocks and you're ahead. Hammer keeps SoV ticking on three targets and is thus stupidly cheap TPS.

[knaughty]

Debatable Talent options

Seals of the Pure vs Conviction

Short version:
• SotP is definitely more TPS, and usually slightly more DPS, and is thus better for tanking. Even if you abuse ShoR x 2, SotP is still a little ahead on TPS, though Conviction might get ahead on DPS depending on your crit rate.
• Conviction is better if you off-heal a lot.
• Conviction requires that you put 4 points of filler in the ret tree.
• Neither talent is particularly good value - both are less than 1% DPS per point.

Long Version

< Dig up the last set of math-craft I did on this issue and post it here >

Ardent Defender

AD isn't very amenable to theory-craft. Too many people assume that it will never go off because they don't notice going below 35% health (or assume they never do because they don't die "much"). The exception is when Bubble-wall is up: AD + Bubblewall + Holy Shield is obviously extremely powerful. Makes you nigh-invulnerable for 12 seconds (you're blocking about 5k effective per hit, then taking two-thirds off the result).

So AD being good tends to be backed up via anecdotes. I'll give you my best one:

I'm in a moderately hard-core guild. We have completed Sarth+3 both 10 & 25-man - 10-man on 4th Jan, 25-man a day or so later. We cleared everything but Sarth-hard-mode by the first week of December. So I'm a "decent" tank and I have a pretty decent healing team (or second Sarth+3 kill was done with 6 healer, two of whom were DPS re-specs in shitty off-spec healing gear).

For our first Sapphiron-25 kill, which I MT'd in crafted + Sunwell gear, AD saved me from dying 4 times, and mitigated over 2% of total damage. And we one-shot it. Without AD, we would have wiped, probably several times, even though the raid was in full Frost resist gear (I had on just the belt, which was better than my Lightbinger belt). We've had another just barely achieved boss-kill where AD saved me 5+ times and mitigated over 5% of damage taken. My guild managed a US 50th or thereabouts Sarth+10 kill, and I still need AD. There are a couple of posters here in even better guilds, they also still take AD. Even the most hard-core tankadin on the board I can think of (Ossuary) has AD. Skip it once you're healers are better than his. Given he's in one of the Top-20 guilds, worldwide... good luck with that.

OK, found what is probably the most advanced tankadin, worldwide: Tzikas. He takes AD, he's in the #2 guild. Ensidia don't have a prot pally I can find.

The harder the content you're doing, or the faster you're pushing progression, the better AD becomes. In the opinion of most of the hardcore tanks who post a lot on this forum, AD is somewhere between "pretty good" and "Excellent".

The best advice I can give is to install the Tankadin add-on, and make sure you're tracking AD saves. It is worth noting that Tankadin underestimates how many times you got saved fairly substantially, as it does not track multiple hits - only the last one. So it doesn't notice a string of small hits that would have killed you.

Winchester said it very well: What people forget is that AD mitigates the 2% of damage that would have killed you.

Reckoning

Short Version: The least bad way to get deep into Protection if you're not taking Kings.

Makes little sense if you are taking Kings - SotP is more DPS/TPS.

Long Version

< dig up some math-craft >

Judgements of the Just

This is the best mitigation talent in the entire prot tree. If you're skipping it for more DPS, just go spec ret and tank with a two-hander.

Sorry, but skipping JotJ is /facepalm.

If you're going to drop a mitigation talent because you're only doing easy stuff, drop AD.

[knaughty]

Professions

TL;NR Drop herbalism. Realise Engineering is for fun/money. Otherwise: Who cares.

Firstly: Professions have been rebalanced since 2.4. Switching profs will no longer get you a progression kill that is otherwise unobtainable. BoP items are far less powerful in general. All crafting professions (bar Engineering) offer roughly similar bonuses.

So, don't switch profs "just because". You're blowing several thousand gold for under 10 bonus stamina by switching, or getting 50-ish if you had completely useless profession like herbalism. In general, most profs just give stamina bonuses.

That said, what are the bonuses each profession gives: (with thanks to Majiben)

Profs that give 50-ish stamina: Blacksmith, JC, Enchanting, Leather-working.

Black smithing: Two additional sockets that can be socketed with 48 stamina, 32 defense, 32 dodge or some combination. It makes activating meta gems easier in some cases. Will scale when epic gems are released.

Enchanting: 48 stamina (or AP, or spell-power)

Jewelcrafting: With rare gems JC can net you 51 raw stamina plus harder to measure socket bonuses and easy meta gems. Additionally has arguably the best stamina trinket in the game. That trinket also scales with epic gems even as the JC only gems decrease in relative value.

Mining: Currently 500 hp but in 3.0.8 will grant 50 stamina.

Leatherworking Wrist Enchants The obvious one is the +90 stamina to wrist. Looks OP until you remember everyone gets a +40 stam wrist enchant in 3.0.8... which means LW is "+50 stam". There are AP/spell-power equivalents for your ret/holy sets.

Profs that you have to think about Alchemy, Inscription, Engineering, Herbalism is crap

Alchemy: Provides 325 hp or 250 hp and 5 defence rating if a flask is used. Provides one of the following: 400 armour, 175 hp, or 22 defence rating; and one of the following: 25 str, 22 agility, 10 stats; if elixirs are used. Also provides a very nice avoidance/stamina trinket.

Inscription: Assuming Exalted with Hodir: Bonus 37 dodge and 5 defence rating on shoulder enchant. Ret/Holy flavours available.

Engineering: Toys & a mote farming tool. Currently crap. NB: I am an engineer. I'm allowed to say it's crap.

Herbalism: Crap.

[knaughty]

Am I geared enough for....

90% of the time, if you're asking this question, the answer is: Yes you have enough gear.

The real question is Does your group have enough skill?

Clearing all content in 3.0 is a matter of co-ordination and skill. There is only one encounter in-game that is a serious tanking gear check, and as a pally, you'll probably never do it: Sarth Duty with +3 drakes.

Sarth+3 is MT'd by a bear with 50k health buffed, or a DK with quite good tanking gear. Nothing else requires really high-end tanking gear. I tanked all content up to and including Malygos-25 without having reached the Superior achievement (IE: I still had level 70 crap on).

Benchmarks

Step 1: Vendor / DE / delete your level 70 crap. There's maybe half-a-dozen pieces in-game that are worth wearing at level 80, and only two outside Sunwell: Shadowmoon Insignia and Commendation of KT. Sunwell tanking plate is pretty crap, but just barely acceptable in a couple of slots if you re-gem it for pure +defence. If you're wearing plate from BT or earlier, you're doing it wrong.

Step 2: Craft enough Tempered Saronite and Daunting hands/legs to get to 535 defence.

You are now ready for heroics Blue gear & 540 defence is enough for Naxx-10.

Step 3: Craft a couple of BoE epics. Titansteel hat/boots/shield (or Engineering goggles). Get to 540 defence. Gem & enchant your gear.

You are now ready for a complete Naxx-25 clear.

Step 4: Once you've cleared Naxx one time, blow all your badges.

You are now ready for Malygos and Sarth+2 (roughly even difficulty).

It is perfectly possible to clear all 25-man content the same week you hit level 80, with nothing but crafted gear. I went close, but weekly reset was badly timed.

Sarth+3 requires that your guild gear up. You will probably not be the choke point - DPS, Heals and the Sarth MT need better gear than you.

[knaughty]

Macros & Scripts

Block Capped AKA Uncrushable

Code: Select all

/script dr=function(x)return 1/(1/16+0.9560/x)end;DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5+dr(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)/122.962)))

Macro a raid Icon
/script SetRaidTargetIcon("target", 1);

1 = Star, 8 = Skull, you can work out the rest. I have my taunts set to mark.

RD friendly mouseover, otherwise Taunt target
#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,help,exists] Righteous Defense; Hand of Judgement


UI mods

• Pallypower
• Tankadin2

[knaughty]

Gear and Buffs

Whenever I've run TPS, DPS or survivability numbers I've used the following gear & buff lists.

These are the "best available" (in my opinion).

It doesn't actually matter if they're really the very best - they're close enough, and what's more important is that I'm being consistent.

Knaughty's Patented best available gear-set ™®©

All fully gemmed and enchanted the way you'd expect me to gem & enchant based on posts above.

Head T 7.5
Neck Malygos-25 quest
Shoulders T 7.5
Back Cloak of the Shadowed Sun with armour enchant.
Chest T 7.5
Wrist Hapless Prey
Hands Disobedient (Noth)
Waist Ablative Chitin
Legs T 7.5
Feet Badge boots
Finger1 BAdge ring
Finger2 Sand-worn
Trinket1 DMC:G Stregth
Trinket2 Defender's Code
MainHand Last Laugh
OffHand Wall of Ugly
Ranged LoO

There's plenty to argue about on an individual slot basis, if you're that way inclined. The point of this set is to build a nicely balanced set. So for starters, it has 4-piece bonus, and I felt the gloves were best thing to slot in.

The second point is to give a "close enough to best available" set to do TPS calculations against. Given I've already run the numbers with this set, I'm not interested in changing it to suit someone else's personal biases. I like my ones

Buff List (all are fully improved via talents)

Strength of Earth Totem
Enhancing Totems
Blessing of Might
Improved Blessing of Might
Unleashed Rage
Sanctified Retribution
Swift Retribution
Commanding Shout
Leader of the Pack
Windfury Totem
Improved Windfury Totem
Totem of Wrath (Spell Power)
Power Word: Fortitude
Improved Power Word: Fortitude
Mark of the Wild
Improved Mark of the Wild
Blessing of Kings
Improved Blessing of Kings
Sunder Armor
Faerie Fire
Heart of the Crusader
Misery
Flask of Stoneblood
Strength Food
Toughness

[majiben]

I can write up the glyph section if you so desire. I'm also working on a proffession guide that may or may not have a place here. Modus wrote up a Talent guide in the talent forum that I don't entirely agree with but is a good starting point.

[Zironic]

About 6969:

The only way I can imagine weaving in AS/HW/Excorsism into that rotation would be by exchanging them with consecrate but wouldn't the benefit for doing that be minimal at best?

I'd argue that unless you're having mana issues you should probably just stick to 6969 unless you need to break it with an emergency button.

[Dorvan]

About 6969:

The only way I can imagine weaving in AS/HW/Excorsism into that rotation would be by exchanging them with consecrate but wouldn't the benefit for doing that be minimal at best?

I'd argue that unless you're having mana issues you should probably just stick to 6969 unless you need to break it with an emergency button.

Yeah, because 969 is airtight (in the sense that HS, Judgement, Cons, ShoR, and HotR account for all of your GCDs), it'd be worthwhile to do some analysis of the substitution options. I've been meaning to, but I only have a few parses to go on, and I've been rather lazy about theorycrafting lately.

[knaughty]

About 6969:

The only way I can imagine weaving in AS/HW/Excorsism into that rotation would be by exchanging them with consecrate but wouldn't the benefit for doing that be minimal at best?

I'd argue that unless you're having mana issues you should probably just stick to 6969 unless you need to break it with an emergency button.

Last time I checked you skipped a HotR to weave in the long CD moves.

The 969 writeup will be written from a "mana is infinite" perspective, but will cover what to do when mana is constrained in a seperate post.

=edit= Dorvan types faster.

[Zironic]

Last time I checked you skipped a HotR to weave in the long CD moves.

The 969 writeup will be written from a "mana is infinite" perspective, but will cover what to do when mana is constrained in a seperate post.

=edit= Dorvan types faster.

From a "mana is infinite" perspective I can see why you'd go with HotR, it's our worst Damage per GCD ability since it's only in the 1500 damage range. Some proper theory craft in this area would be nice.