warriors and paladins, question

[Minnerva]

question: I have about the health, defense, avoidance as a warrior. i seem to be taking more damage than the warrior. I heard some were that paladins might be more spiky in life going up and down than warriors, is this true?

[Anorian]

Tbh it should be the opposite, we block more overall due to holy shield and every big hit gets reduced by AD. And if shit hits the fan, love that expression, AD resses you and saves your life.

[Baelik]

I think this is more of an experience issue than class. Timing cooldowns is one way of making your health less spiky when the hits start pouring in. As pointed out Ardent Defender is pretty solid as an automatic "OH Shi!" cooldown.

I have compared the damage intake between me and a similarly geared warrior tank in my 25 mans. Damage intake is pretty much the same. Only thing I've noticed is that if I make the right gearing choices for encounters I am less squishy than him. Correctly juggling between Armor, Avoidance and Stamina sets is an important step in being less squishy.

[hoho]

question: I have about the health, defense, avoidance as a warrior. i seem to be taking more damage than the warrior

Are you talking about raids or 5-mans? I wouldn't be surprised if 4pt9 warrior takes (significantly) less damage in 5-mans due to being able to use shield block on every other pull. In raids warriors should be more spiky unless he uses lots of cooldowns while paladin doesn't.

[lythac]

Check armor values, if its the warrior I am thinking of she has about 2k more armor.

You don't seem to have JotJ or Vindication in your spec, if you count Vind as a 15% reduction then you're taking 1.4 times the amount of damage you should be, 1.7 if you take it as a 30% reduction.

If this is for 10 mans and both tanks aren't on the same target then yes you are taking more damage.

[Minnerva]

it would be raid standards, and by hits i mean, healer heals the warrior tank and heals the paladin tank. healer then states that paladin is tanking more damage. that the paladin's life is taking a dive like a spike from the same hits the warrior is taking less drops in life. had not thought about holy shield. it has become a bit problematic to keep up so i forget to use it. would using holy shield result in lowering in damage taken?

[Iselian]

It would, marginally, but you shouldn't have problems keeping it up. You follow the 96969 rotation, neh?

I'd look into armor, perhaps Divine Plea uptime or using Sacred Shield on yourself (assuming a healadin is not already) should help as well. But yes, Holy Shield will help.

[Karander]

Pick up Vindication and Judgements of the Just, if you dont have them, glyph of divine plea, and keep DP up during the fight (use it right before the pull ) and most importantly, learn about the 6969 rotation ( which should make your holy shield uptime be near 100%). If you need any help on these, check out the stickies on the basic training.

using the proper rotation ( and assuming you are not in ICC ) you should be at least blocking every hit . Check these things out and in no time you will be taking as little damage as you can. Best of luck !

[Kelaan]

had not thought about holy shield. it has become a bit problematic to keep up so i forget to use it. would using holy shield result in lowering in damage taken?

I am not religious about keeping it up, but generally, yes: blocking nearly every hit means each one should hit about 2k less per hit. (My ICC gear has right about 2k block value.)

That's a 6%-10% damage reduction on most hits; if you're taking a 30k hit, it's a 6% damage reduction. If you're not blocking hits from bosses, you're taking an amount of extra damage that is noticeable: it's like not having Improved Righteous Fury. If you're not blocking every hit (or nearly every hit), you're not playing your class to its strengths.

edit:
Also, others are spot-on about the value of Vindication + Judgements of the Just. It guarantees that whatever you are attacking will attack you less often and less hard.

[Baelik]

With the Chill of the Throne it won't be possible to block every hit unless you have enough avoidance to cover the lost 20% dodge. towards block cap. Holy Shield is nice little reduction in damage but its very unlikely that not keeping it up is making you that much more squishy. I only get 1.6k BV out of my gear. You should, however, be able to keep Holy Shield up in your 969 rotation as any reduction in damage is always welcome

Would be easier if we could compare the two characters to see the difference. There are a lot of factors involved that could make you take more damage than a warrior or any other tank. Talents, Gear, Knowledge & Skill are broad classifications of key elements that matter.

[Kelaan]

Good point -- I'd forgotten about lost block-cappage. Still, say we only have 40% avoidance now, instead of 60 -- Holy Shield still covers half of the incoming hits. That's nontrivial. Keep it up if you're worried about survival or "squishiness".

[Wrathy]

Maybe I am missing something, but what would be the reasoning behind not keeping it up. Is there a viable opportunity in your rotation to use instead? I dont see one. Just because your HS doesn't guarantee 100% block chance, doesn't mean that it is not a very important part of your rotation.

A very important piece of information that you neglected to provide us is the situation. Where are you receiving this feedback, ICC, ToTC, Naxx? It makes a difference what kind of hit you are taking and what source of damage it is.

It would also help if we could understand the disparities in gear between your warrior and you. Base line talents, if you are spec'ed and glyphed properly, you shouldnt take any more damage than your warrior counter part.

[jere]

The only reason I could think of for not keeping up holy shield is he/she isn't doing the 96969 and is maybe doing a FCFS rotation. Some of those do end up being higher threat at the cost of both JotJ and HS uptime (mostly HS uptime). Still, there really is not reason not to use the 96969 rotation, especially since he/she is having survivability problems. The threat from the 96969 rotation is still phenominal.