Paladin tanking specs for MoP

[Kihra]

I suspect i will end up with Speed of Light for teir 1.

Very few fights require tanks to move around all that often and when they do you generally don't want move too fast, for example kiting a mob around whilst melee nuke it.

Speed of Light is good for getting into position fast, such as on the pull or when mobs spawn mid fight.

Just depends on how often you need that burst of speed, if its more than every 45 secs then Long Arm of the Law would be better.

I tried out Speed of Light and really didn't like it. If they halved its duration and halved its CD, it would be much more interesting to me. As it stands now, I don't like the long CD, and I feel like the long duration is overkill.

If you compare to Pursuit of Justice, where you can effectively have a standing 30% run speed for kiting, or with Long Arm of the Law where you can use Judgement to both gap close and to get away, I just don't think it compares. The big problem with it is that 30-45% is "fast enough" for most situations where you need to move more quickly, so Speed of Light really only becomes good for a short-length kite where you can't use a mob to boost your speed. Atramedes comes to mind.

[stevos]

I suspect i will end up with Speed of Light for teir 1.

Very few fights require tanks to move around all that often and when they do you generally don't want move too fast, for example kiting a mob around whilst melee nuke it.

Speed of Light is good for getting into position fast, such as on the pull or when mobs spawn mid fight.

Just depends on how often you need that burst of speed, if its more than every 45 secs then Long Arm of the Law would be better.

I tried out Speed of Light and really didn't like it. If they halved its duration and halved its CD, it would be much more interesting to me. As it stands now, I don't like the long CD, and I feel like the long duration is overkill.

If you compare to Pursuit of Justice, where you can effectively have a standing 30% run speed for kiting, or with Long Arm of the Law where you can use Judgement to both gap close and to get away, I just don't think it compares. The big problem with it is that 30-45% is "fast enough" for most situations where you need to move more quickly, so Speed of Light really only becomes good for a short-length kite where you can't use a mob to boost your speed. Atramedes comes to mind.

Comes back to the question, just how many bosses require the tank to do much in the way of movement. SoL at least lets you get to the boss faster, to start building initial threat.

[daishan]

SoL at least lets you get to the boss faster, to start building initial threat.

You talk nice to your priest and get speed boost feathers for the pull.

Of the MoP bosses I'd say over half need you to regularly (more often than every 45 sec) move out of crap, of those I think some will favour LAotL as you only need a few quick steps and others will benefit more from PoJ as you need to be moving for longer.

I'm really liking those 3 talents as I can see myself using them all on the different encounters.

[KysenMurrin]

GC's latest blue post says that Sacred Shield will stack from different Paladins.

[stevos]

SoL at least lets you get to the boss faster, to start building initial threat.

You talk nice to your priest and get speed boost feathers for the pull.

Of the MoP bosses I'd say over half need you to regularly (more often than every 45 sec) move out of crap, of those I think some will favour LAotL as you only need a few quick steps and others will benefit more from PoJ as you need to be moving for longer.

I'm really liking those 3 talents as I can see myself using them all on the different encounters.

Yeah me 2, i really liked how i had to change glyphs regularly in Cata during progression and this is just an extension of that. Just adds that extra layer of tactical thinking as you progress.

[Treck]

As for the movement tier, I really think they all have their place, all depending on the fight.
As it is in MoP you can respecc on the run after a wipe, so its only really gonna come down to the cost of respeccing, and I immagine it wont really be much different from glyphing.
And since many people reglyph for each fight even during farm, respeccing for each fight during progress will really be what everyone does.
On most fights, I find Speed of Light most usefull, as its a big movementboost when you want one, and few fights want you moving that much all the time, but you really wanna move that one time asap.
Long arm has very few uses imo, but for fights you wanna take that small leap every now and then, theres like 2 MoP encounters where Id use thatone.
Pursuit is overall better than Long arm if you wanna move a lot, but for me its more of a farm thing to keep things easier and more forgiving when you arnt 100% focused, thats why I think ill be using speed of light more during progress, cause you can do the fights without the small movementspeed bonus, but thats very much up to personal preferense.

in the 3rd tier, I find Eternal Flame to be pretty bad compared to Sacred shield, it depends a little bit on the fight, if there is constant aoe damage, EF cancels a portion of that out, but its infuriating to keep "optimised" especially when you cant hit the target 24/7.
SS just seems a lot more relaxed to use, and dont forget then you keep your WoG for burst healing, and selfshielding is very strong even tho its dependant on vengeance, but most of all, its a prevent dmg mechanic, instead of a "back to full health faster" mechanic.

4th tier is really just dependant on if you need to use freedom, sac or protection a little more, its VERY usefull where you want to use them, but few fights you want to, Unbreakable is just overall decent, couple with Holy avenger for fast DP again.
Purity is going to be essential if theres a boss it works on, if not crap obviously.

5th tier, I really find Holy Avenger most usefull, it guarantees 100% uptime on shieldslam buff when you want (aka 55% physical dmg reduction, depending on your mastery ofc) its also pretty great for threat in the beginning of fights as well as stacking bastions faster, they also added 30% more dmg on HP reg abilities, making it even greater for boosting threat.
Santified Wrath giving your 3sec judgement + 20% more healing recieved is pretty decent, but holy avenger can cause a lot of healing with WoG, and a lot of dmg reduction with physical, but that depends on the fight, its also great together with Long arm of the law, giving you 20sec with 45% movementspeed if you want.
Divine purpose I really dont like, you can get another lucky WoG if you want, or chain shieldslam, but its random and thats mainly what I dont like about it, you wanna be able to control your char, not depend on it proccing at the right time.

Last tier is very weird as tank imo.
Holy prism doesnt do much damage or healing at all, decent for snap threat on trash, but generally useless on bosses.
Lights hammer is great for raidhealing, on some fights where it only comes once a min, dmgwise its pretty crap on bosses since few have aoe mechanics, even then its not really worth much anyway.
Execution sentance healing is very weird since you get the big heal far after you used it, making it very important to time perfectly, and even then its going to be more of a lucky shot that it even does real healing rather than overhealing. Using it on bosses is crap since its not snap threat, but its quite a bit of dmg for a GCD
But Imo that tier doesnt really seem to have any "tanking" talent.

PvE standpoint, that what I think atleast.

TL;DR
Use the right specc for the right time.

[Nordix]

I'm going to go with holy prism.20 sec cooldown only and seemingly it fits into our clunky-ish rotation nicely.
I noticed that there are about 2 gaps in our rotation,one of these will be used to refresh sacred shield whenever you can ,the other one to do whatever.
Now I'm thinking about using holyprism instead of holywrath/maybe consec (Because it does single target damage and heals me+the melee passively,like a 2 calorie judgement of light back from wotlk),and using those as fillers for those gaps.Especially holywrath,its wank,consec is still somewhat decent.

[theckhd]

The optimum DPS rotation was already CS>J>AS>L90>Cons>HW. The buffs to the L90 skills shouldn't have much of an effect there, I don't think they'll be strong enough to climb ahead of AS. But with the new Vengeance implementation, it's anyone's guess. At least, until I update the simulations.

[Kihra]

The optimum DPS rotation was already CS>J>AS>L90>Cons>HW.

Did you check CS > AS+ > J > AS? Is that still a small gain?

[Gab]

The optimum DPS rotation was already CS>J>AS>L90>Cons>HW.

Did you check CS > AS+ > J > AS? Is that still a small gain?

Theck did do up some rotations on July 22nd. Not sure if there's anything more recent but it looks like, at 450 ilvl, CS>J>AS was slightly ahead of CS>AS+>J in not only DPS but also for HP generation for both low and capped hit/exp.

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=32803&start=300#p732479

[Fetzie]

How does Execution Sentence work with AP changes during the Dot's uptime? Is it recalculated for each tick and the final burst damage, or is it calculated based on your AP on cast?

[theckhd]

The optimum DPS rotation was already CS>J>AS>L90>Cons>HW.

Did you check CS > AS+ > J > AS? Is that still a small gain?

Yes, I did, and no, it isn't. And it won't ever be in a 4.5s CS system. Remember that in a CS-X-X cycle, you'll always have a free GCD in which to use AS (either CS-J-AS- or CS-AS-J, depending on when J's cooldown is up). Since J can't proc Grand Crusader, there's no fear of losing potential GC procs by prioritizing J>AS.

More explicitly, consider the cases you'd have if you prioritized AS+>J>AS.

CS-X-J would turn into CS-AS-J with either prioritization scheme, so that's moot.

CS-J-X (J>AS) would turn into CS-AS+-J (AS+>J>AS). Both do the same damage, but the latter pushes J (an HP generator) back by a GCD, while the former just pushes AS (a long-cooldown that doesn't generate HP) back by a GCD. We'll always want to prioritize HPG, both for damage and survivability, so there's no benefit to AS+>J. Moreso because pushing AS back by a GCD doesn't always cost us anything thanks to subsequent Grand Crusader procs.

How does Execution Sentence work with AP changes during the Dot's uptime? Is it recalculated for each tick and the final burst damage, or is it calculated based on your AP on cast?

I don't know if anyone's sure, but the default behavior for DoTs is to set those properties at cast time, and update them when the DoT is refreshed. It's a very good bet that ES behaves the same way, and is therefore based on the AP at cast time.

[theckhd]

Theck did do up some rotations on July 22nd. Not sure if there's anything more recent but it looks like, at 450 ilvl, CS>J>AS was slightly ahead of CS>AS+>J in not only DPS but also for HP generation for both low and capped hit/exp.

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=32803&start=300#p732479

I have internal tests that still confirm this behavior, I just haven't posted them yet because things have been in flux so much lately. As I get things more finalized (both in terms of mechanics and code), I'll be posting them.

The more people that help finish the testing requested in the Call to Arms thread, the sooner that will be.

[Xequecal]

And since many people reglyph for each fight even during farm, respeccing for each fight during progress will really be what everyone does.
On most fights, I find Speed of Light most usefull, as its a big movementboost when you want one, and few fights want you moving that much all the time, but you really wanna move that one time asap.

I don't know about you, but I don't have enough hotkeys as it is to bind all the necessary skills, there's no way I can add more actives. Even with Ctrl + 1-5, Shift + 1-5, all the numbers, and the entire left half of the keyboard (Q, E, R, T, Y, F, G, Z, X, C, V, B, N) bound to abilities, you still can't get everything and have to resort to mouse-clicking on some of the less-used stuff. I have no idea where I'm going to bind another half-dozen (Sacred Shield, Holy Avenger, Speed of Light, Blinding Flash, Holy Prism, Symbiosis) actives. This problem alone is going to push me away from stuff like Speed of Light or Hand of Purity even if they are superior.

[Darielle]

There's nothing wrong with mouseclicking infrequent and nonurgent spells, so that shouldn't really be a reason to not take one if it's better.

On a related note, have you considered using Mousewheel binds?