Ardent Defender

[Clive]

"When you have less than 35% health, all damage taken is reduced by 30%"

- sounds great. And I really think it is great. Nonetheless a friend of mine (healer) came up with this: "If your hitpoints will fall past the 35% mark and stay there, you'll end up dead anyway.".

Good point, I thought. Basically, when your hitpoints reach a low value, like 35%, a healer will do anything to change that. If he does not, he simply cannot - which means he is already dead, out of mana or fell asleep.

So here's my question: Let's assume I'm pretty well-geared so I won't reach that 35% mark too fast. Do I still need this talent? Do you? Does anyone? Because it seems like everyone does.

[Extremity]

It's called leapfrogging, which is why I don't spec into it in the first place. Was awesome for when I was progressing through heroics/kara/early t5 though. At this point, not so much.

[Stupendous]

[edited]

[Gamingdevil]

Spec it and get tankadin to track how many times it saves you. You'd be amazed.
It's not about "staying" there, it's about mitigating that one hit that would've killed you to give your healers more time to land something.

[Fivelives]

AD saves me at least once per fight. Of course - I outgear the healers in my new guild by quite a wide margin, so YMMV.

[Lowgrus]

Dude I specced out of Ardent Defender and I love it. 0/40/21 is so for the freaking win. I'm never going back except to tank Illidan Flames. and that might be it.
I love this spec. My threat is amazing now. Its rediculous!!!

[Levantine]

Dude I specced out of Ardent Defender and I love it. 0/40/21 is so for the freaking win. I'm never going back except to tank Illidan Flames. and that might be it.
I love this spec. My threat is amazing now. Its rediculous!!!

To be fair, you specced out of Ardent Defender, Blessing of Kings and Spellwarding at the very least, you also gave up either Reckoning threat or Shield Spec mitigation.

It's not as clear cut as ZOMG SANCTITY IS TEH BEST SPECCCC!!!1!1!11one!

[Worldie]

I think i started a trend with my spec nowadays o.o

Anyway, AD has this bad problem of being leapfroggable (hit from 36% to 0% for example). There are some places where AD is simply priceless and works very well (Hyjal, Karazhan, SSC/TK), which is where hits aren't strong enough to leapfrog it.

There are some other places where it's utterly useless due to hits being so strong to bring you from 50% to 0.

It's a quite situational talent... I'd say quite appropriate for t4, t5 and earlier t6 content, but "droppable" in later t6 content.

[Lowgrus]

yeah i specced out of it after I read worldies post. Freaking awsome. and to be honest you might want to check someones armory or try a talent calculator before you even speak or try thinking. I'm not saying its the best spec ever. I'm saying its more threat which is what I need to keep up with t6 annoying locks.

First off I gave up ancipation becuase my gear allows me to. and me getting hit more = mana . But lets just assume I didn't spec into reckoning big deal... 13 percent more damage = better than reckoning...

Also any tankadin who specs out of improved holy shield is an idiot and should go hang themselves. Becuase their inability to think/read makes them completely useless to the world.

[Caelus]

In the best case scenario where you are hit into percfectly 35%, you can imagine the talent as: Increase total health by 10.5%. (0.35 x 0.3)


Whether or not you think that is worth 5 talent points is up to you.

[Aleph]

I finally downloaded Tankadin tonight and used it on my BT run. We cleared through Mother. I was MT on Najentus, OT on Supremus, MT on Bloodboil, MT P3 RoS, and OT on Mother. I gathered all the trash pack pulls. Results?

5298 damage mitigated out of 3.15 million damage done. It prevented 1 death, and I know it was on a trash pull. Hardly seems worth 5 talent points to me, but I'll see how much it helps me on Illidan flame tanking before I decide to respec.

I'm 4 piece T6, Hyjal hammer, Archimond shield, stoic guardian chest, Akama bracers, Bloodboil belt, Najentus boots, and badge cloak and rings.

[Noradin]

I use a addon to track the damage preventet by AD.
When I first used it in Kara and normal Instances an average of 1.8% of all damage recieved was prevented over two or three days.
Today I'm raiding in Sunwell and the average damage prevented is still 1.8%. (1.8% of half a billion to be exact.)

[Snake-Aes]

It's a talent optimized for aoe tanking, but it works awesomely on boss fights with damage that is more spread(say, the flames of azzinoth) even though the damage input is high.
I'm typically at 21k hp fully buffed, that means under 7300 hp i'm taking 30% less damage. Fair enough to absorb a boss hit. Would I still die in case a second unhealed hit lands? Yeah. But if I get the heal up I'll have more hp than if I didn't have AD. Breathing room always helps. AD + Commendation of Kael'thas = "So that's why you linger for so much longer when you're low than the warriors!" (I love my healers... lol).


It's a talent that you won't see working most times, but you'll hate yourself for not having it when it would have saved you.
If it saved you from 1 death on any trickier part of a raid, it's already worth it.

[moduspwnens]

And, of course, it's also worth mentioning that you'll get IMPROVED sanctity aura from a Retribution paladin, and if you don't have one, holy paladins can get to Sanctity Aura without losing near as much as we do.

[Argali]

I feel it's wasted points. Doesn't do enough for the 5 points you have to spend. But then again, it's a must have if you pug heroics.... and don't think it's safe not to have it even if you heroics with guildies only.