[Wotlk] Maintankadin 101

Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:35 pm

[Wotlk] Maintankadin 101 - Winchester.

Transition from TBC Mechanics to Wotlk Mechanics.

Changes to stats:

All ratings that used to be categorized into melee and spell stats now share the same rating i.e. critical strike rating now gives you melee and spell crit.

Spell damage and healing has been replaced by a new stat called Spellpower. This stat is used on both caster and healing gear.

Spell damage has been removed from all paladin tanking gear and replaced with strength, gear that used to have spell damage now has roughly the same value in strength.
Almost all of the paladin offensive spells now scale with attack power as well as spellpower, coefficients listed in the guide below
Because of this, strength is now our main source for threat not to mention a pretty decent mitigation stat as strength now gives one block value per two strength.

You might notice that your avoidance has dropped a few % in patch 3.0.2.
This is because they have added diminishing returns to dodge, miss and parry. (See Diminishing Returns in the guide for more info.)

No more crushing blows:

Crushing blows have been removed from the game. (Well almost, you can still get crushing blows from mobs 4 levels above you)
You might think that because of this the 102.4% rule goes out the window, but that's not the case.
Now that we will be blocking a hell of a lot more in regular gear than we used to, failing to block/avoid an attack could very well be as bad as getting a crushing blow.
Although this will apply more at 80 than it does now.

Weapon Situation:

Now that we are getting all this attack power from our tanking gear our white hits are going to pack a harder punch.
Not only that but our 51pt talent is a melee cleave that scales indirectly with attack power because it's based on your white hit dps.
This puts caster weapons at a disadvantage because they sacrifice the dps of the weapon for those insane spellpower stats.
By using a normal melee weapon you might notice a slight decrease in damage across the board, but the hammer of the righteous damage makes up for that, and then some.
However, using a caster weapon will still yield better spread out threat when mass aoe tanking as hammer of the righteous only hits 3 targets.

Changes to buffs:

Blizzard has introduced a new type of spell to the paladin class, these spells are called Hands. Blessing of Protection, Salvation, Freedom and Sacrifice have all been renamed to Hand of [insert name].
This was done so that you wouldn't remove a player's normal blessing in the process of buffing them with one of these short ones.
They all work the same as they used to except for Sacrifice and Salvation.
Sacrifice now transfers 30% of the damage taken by the target to the caster, lasts 12 seconds.
Salvation now reduces the targets total threat by 20% over 10sec, 3min cooldown.

Divine Protection is no longer an immunity bubble. It is now like a lesser version of Warrior's shield wall.

New Seal/Judgement System:

Seal of the Crusader has been removed from the game, and its judgement effect has been baked into all of the paladins offensive spells.
Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Blood are now available to both factions.
Seal of Corruption is the horde version of Seal of Vengeance and Seal of the Martyr is the Alliance version of Seal of Blood.

Seals now last for thirty minutes and don’t get spent when you judge, because of this judgement spells now invoke the global cooldown.
The Judgement spell has been replaced by three new spells, judgement of wisdom, light and justice.
Your seals no longer effect what debuff your judgement applies to the target.
Your Judgement spells all share the same damage output, though some seals increase this damage by a x% (See Seals in the guide below).
You can now use whatever seal you want and still judge the target with whatever debuff you want.
For example. no longer will you need to switch to Seal of Wisdom and cast judgement to get the Judgement of Wisdom debuff on your target.
However, your melee hits no longer refresh the judgement effect on the target.

Example:
Let’s say you are fighting a mob and you are using seal of righteousness.
You cast judgement of light, it inflicts the judgement damage and applies the judgement of light debuff.

Winchester

Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:36 pm

Warning:

Choosing gear:

Depends on what type of tank you are, are you built for taking damage, or avoiding it?
Try to find a good balance, you'll eventually find a % avoidance total you feel safe with, then the stamina/armor/block value stacking starts.

Stats:

Armor: The green kind, when the armor value is green it means it has more armor than given by default
You'll see this on the odd cloak or ring. Armor and Stamina work hand in hand to boost your effective health.
Read this to learn more about effective health: http://www.tankspot.com/index.php?pagei ... tiveHealth
Stamina: You’ll need to find a good balance between stamina and avoidance. This could also be considered a semi threat stat if you have the touched by the light talent.
Intellect: Okay, but no need to pursue more of it.
Strength: Overall a very good stat to go for. It’s a threat and mitigation stat. You get 2 attack power per 1 strength as well as 1 block value per 2 strength.
Agility: 1 Agility = 2 armor. It’s also a decent source for dodge and crit.
Spirit: You won’t find any tanking gear with spirit on it.
Crit rating: It’s a decent stat, but nothing you should be stacking, raid buffs will take care of this need mostly.
Hit rating: Nice stat, melee hit caps at 8%, spell hit scales better than melee hit so when you’ve got 9% melee hit you should have about 10% spell hit. You can go further but it’s not necessary.
Expertise rating: This stat reduces the chance of your attacks being dodged and parried. You can get 6 expertise from talents and 10 from a glyph (not rating mind you). So you won’t need that much from gear.
Defense rating: You’ll need to stack enough go get the golden 540 defense that’s required for uncrittable. After that you can shift your focus on other avoidance stats.
Dodge rating: Great stat, but if stacked too much you’ll notice some diminishing returns.
Parry rating: Like dodge but with an added bonus, when you parry your next melee swing will have its attack time reduced by anywhere from 14-50%, so not something to aim for while tanking, but good for 2h. (That's why parry % talents are always in the 2h spec for tanks).
Block rating: Not as important as it was in TBC, now it’s purely used to mitigate as much damage as possible. Stackable till you get 102.4% overall avoidance (miss, dodge, parry, block).
Block Value: Good for mitigation and scales your SoR dmg really well.
Mp5: Heals and all manner of buffs will take care of your mana, this is certainly not needed.
Spell damage: You won’t find tanking gear with this stat anymore. However you can pick up a caster weapon to get some, when aoe tanking this will give you better spread out threat.
Haste: An okay stat, but nothing you should be going for.

Uncrittable.

For raids you will need to get and keep your defense at least 540. Every defense skill increases your chance to dodge/parry/block and chance to be missed by 0.04% as well as reducing your chance to be crit by 0.04%. All mobs the same level as you have a 5% chance to crit you. So once you reach 525 defense you’ll be uncrittable by level 80 mobs, and as I’ll explain later with more detail, you’ll need 540 defense to be uncrittable against a boss. In a nutshell you’re basically just replacing chance to be crit with chance to be missed.

Rating Conversions:

Diminishing returns on avoidance.

First what are Diminishing Returns?
A diminished return is when something gets gradually less effective the more you get of it. Think of it like armor. If you have 0 armor and you then get 1000 armor, you wouldnt get the same % mitigation as you would if you went from 15000 to 16000 armor.

The above picture only shows dodge you get from gear and does not factor in base dodge and talents.

To avoid tanks stacking too much avoidance in Wotlk (no pun intended) Blizzard implemented diminishing returns to dodge and parry.
Diminishing returns (DR) are calculated separately, so it’s better to balance dodge and parry instead of stacking one over the other.
There are not DR on base avoidances and avoidances gained from talents (such as anticipation and deflection), however avoidances gained from buffs that increase agility do suffer from DR.
To calculate DR from dodge and parry you first need to know how much you’re getting before the DR kick in.
For the agility part do note that for 1 % dodge you will need 20 agility at level 60, 25 at level 70 and 52.084 at 80.

Remember to not calculate your base defense and agility into this.
Dodge = ((Defenserating/defenserating for 1 skill at your level)*0.04) + (dodgerating/dodgerating for 1% dodge at your level) + (agility/agility for 1% dodge at your level)
Parry = ((Defenserating/defenserating for 1 skill at your level)*0.04) + (parryrating/parryrating for 1% parry at your level)

So to calculate your real avoidance (after DR), you use this formula:
Dodge w/DR = 1/(0.011347+(0.956/Dodge))
Parry w/DR = 1/(0.021275+(0.956/Parry))

Example:
You’re level 80 and nekkid, you put on some gear. This gear gives you 100 dodge rating, 50 parry rating, 150 defense rating and 75 agility.
Dodge = ((150/4.918)*0.04) + (100/39.348) + (75/52.084) = 5.2% dodge.
Parry = ((150/4.918)*0.04) + (50/49.185) = 2.36% parry

Dodge w/DR = 1/(0.011347+(0.956/5.2)) = 5.123%
Parry w/DR = 1/(0.021275+(0.956/2.36)) = 2.345%

So your Total Dodge would be Dodge w/DR + Base Dodge. (Base dodge = dodge % when naked)
And naturally Total Parry would be Parry w/DR + Base Parry. (Base parry = parry % when naked)

The Attack Table:

Definitions for attacks:
Hit = 100% damage.
Critical Hit = 200% damage.
Blocked = 100% damage - block value. Blocked attacks cannot crit.

Uncrushable.

To get as much use out of your block value as possible, you’ll need to reach what used to be referred to as “Uncrushable”. To do this you’ll need to get 102.4% combined avoidance. If you do this you will either avoid the attack completely or mitigate a big chunk of the attack.

To avoid or block an attack 100% of the time from a level 80 mob you’ll need 100% combined miss, dodge, parry and block i.e. you’ll be Uncrushable by level 80 mobs.
Every level that a mob is above the character, the mob gains 0.2% more chance to avoid a dodge/parry/block from you, and has 0.2% more chance to crit. So against a level 83 mob, i.e. a boss, you’ll need 2.4% more avoidance to be uncrushable by them.

This might be confusing at first, let me explain.

The 100 sided Dice.

When someone tries to attack you the server rolls a d100.
Which is essentially just a /roll 1-100.

A normal attack roll from a level 80 mob is laid out like this:
Miss > Dodge > Parry > Block > Crit > Hit.

Let’s say you have 400 defense and 10% chance to dodge/block/parry, the attack table would then look like this:

miss

dodge

parry

block

crit

hit

He attacks, the server rolls its d100 and it rolls a 23, anything between 15.01-25.00 is a parry, so you parry the attack.

Same scenario as before, except against a boss
Like I mentioned earlier, the avoidances are reduced by 0.2% each and the mobs crit chance is increased by 0.2% per level. A boss is 3 levels higher than you making this -0.6% to each of the avoidances and an increase of 0.6% to his crit chance.

miss

dodge

parry

block

crit

hit

So let’s say a boss attacks you, he rolls a 28, since anything between 23.21-32.60 is a block, which means that attack was blocked.

Now let’s say you have 540 defense i.e. "uncrittable" (and therefore 5.6% more miss) and 15% chance to dodge/block/parry, the attack table would look like this:

miss

dodge

parry

block

hit

See what happened? The boss’s 5.6% crit chance disappeared (Because of the defense)
The chance to be hit decreases because the avoidances are taking priority on the roll.
Let’s put up the same scenario, except you have Holy shield up.

So the attack table would look like this:

miss

dodge

parry

block

hit

See

now you’re only 16.8% away from “Uncrushable” status.

The easiest way to reach “Uncrushable” is via block rating, because block rating is far cheaper than any other avoidance rating.
An avoidance rating is any stat that makes you avoid an attack, basically Miss/Dodge/Parry/Block. However block is only a partial avoidance.
39.348 Dodge Rating = 1% Dodge.
49.185 Parry Rating = 1% Parry.
16.395 Block Rating = 1% Block.
122.96 Defense Rating = 1% Miss/Dodge/Parry/Block/

Let’s take a look at what happens after you do get “uncrushable”.
Again you have 540 Defense, but now you have 21% Dodge/Block/Parry + you have Holy Shield up.

miss

dodge

parry

block

But see what happened there, the roll is only 1-100, but the block goes to 101.2, that means 1.2% block is being wasted.
When this happens, you should start replacing Block with other avoidances.

Picture it like a table, and there is only room for 100 plates on the table.
1% stands for 1 plate, you arrange the plates from left to right.
When you're uncrushable you've basically just pushed the "hit" plates off the table to make room for the avoidance ones, because they have a higher priority.
Just as hit can be removed by block, block can be removed by Parry and so on. However, there isn’t enough of Miss/Dodge/Parry in game to completely remove block of the attack roll.

Abilities:

Blessings & Hands:
Since there is no longer a need to keep threat reducing buffs up on all the dps, the blessing list has gotten a lot shorter.
In raids/groups I just give the target whatever blessing he wants.
As for myself, depending on the encounter I want Kings/Sanctuary>Might>Wisdom.
If I outgear an instance or have mana issues I might use Sanctuary over Kings. If that doesn’t work, cc less or pull more.

Hand of Protection can be used as a secondary taunt if the mob that the player has agroed is melee. Hand of Salvation is a good spell to cast if someone is getting too close on threat. Hand of sacrifice can be used on another tank if he’s getting low on health or if the target he’s tanking is about to use some special ability that increases his damage output.

Pally Power is a great add-on to organize blessings with your raid.
It also tells you if someone is missing a blessing you're signed to cast.

Seal of:
Righteousness
Decent seal, does do respectable dps, but even with it's much better use of reckoning it still lags behind vengeance in terms of dps/tps.
Vengeance/Corruption
This is my seal of choise. Glyph of seal of vengeance makes it an even more obvious choice.
You can stack the SoV dot on multiple targets at a time with HotR.
Only problem might be that you accidentally hit a target that is being crowd controlled.
Blood/the Martyr
It’s indirectly affected by attack power as it scales with white damage.
The self hurting mechanic helps for over geared content.
Wisdom
If you’re desperate for some mana and threat isn’t an issue this one is decent enough to switch too.
Light
If heals are a problem and threat isn’t this will defiantly help. It has surprisingly good hps.
Justice
Has a good chance to stun, however the stuns are affected by diminishing returns.
Can be fun to mess around with, but alot of mobs in raids are immune to it's effects and it doesn't offer any other benefit.

Judgements:
Wisdom
This is the judgement I use most of the time. 2% mana on proc, who can argue with that?
Light
This one scales with the casters attack and spellpower so if there are a bunch of paladins in the raid the one with best stats should casts this.
Justice
Takes care of runners.

Auras
Auras are raid wide so I just go for the one that isn’t being used.
Mostly i use Devotion Aura for the xtra armor and heal benefit from Imp devotion aura,
however if the situation calls for it i'll switch to a resistance aura.

Threat and Scaling.

Now that Blizzard has removed blessing of salvation and tranquil air totem you would think that holding threat would be a lot harder.
What they did instead is they baked in the effect of salvation into all tanks threat stance/buff. For paladins this means not only do we do 90% more threat with holy damage, but we also do 43% threat overall, including melee damage. How’d you come up with that number you ask?
1 base threat / 0.7 (salv threat value) = 1.43.

Without Righteous Fury our threat is simply damage = threat.
Example you hit a mob, you deal 100 physical damage and 150 holy damage from your seal. That is then 100+150dmg = 100+150threat.
And with Righteous fury on this changes to 100 physical damage * 1.43 = 143 threat + 150 holy damage*1.43*1.9= 407.55 threat.

This means that with Righteous Fury tankadins do 143% melee threat and 272% holy threat.

Damage for most classes is Damage = threat.
And Healing is Heals*0.5/mobs engaged = threat for each of those mobs. Example:
Player 1 is involved in combat with 5 mobs. Player 2 heals Player 1 for 1000 health, and has no threat reduction talents. A 1000 heal generates 500 threat, however that 500 threat is split amongst the 5 mobs. Each of the 5 mobs now has 100 threat towards Player 2.

If a power gain (Rage/Mana increase) shows up in the combat log, the effect usually counts as a buff with bonus threat attached to the event. There are no Energy-increasing effects that appear to cause bonus threat. Only Regens that show up in the combat log cause aggro.

Paladins are the only healers with untalented reduced healing threat.
Paladins have Heals*0.5*0.5/mobs engaged
Rest of healers have Heals*0.5*(talents)/mobs engaged.

Here is a list of paladin offensive spells, and how much they scale with spell damage.

AP = Attack Power
SP = Spell Power
WS = Weapon Speed
WD = Weapon Damage

Seal of Righteousness - ((2.2%*WS)*AP)+((4.4%*WS)*SP)
Judgement of Righteousness - (1+(20%* AP)+(32%*SP))
Seal of Command - 45% of Weapon Damage + 23%*SP
Judgement of Command - (24% WD)+(16%*AP)+(25%*SP)
Seal of Vengeance/Corruption - (2.5%*AP)+(1.3%*SP) * stacks
Seal of Vengeance/Corruption(5stack proc damage) – 1.2% * WS * SP
Judgement of Vengeance/Corruption - ((14%*AP)+(22%*SP))*(1+SoV stacks* 0.1)
Seal of Blood/the martyr – 48%*WD
Judgment of Blood/the martyr - (26%*WD)+(11%*AP)+(18%*SP)
Consecration - (4%*AP)+(4%*SP)
Hammer of Wrath - (15%*AP)+(15%*SP)
Exorcism - (15%*AP)+(15%*SP)
Holy Wrath - (7%*AP)+(7%*SP)
Holy Shield (per block) - (9%*SP)+(5.6%*AP)
Avenger's Shield (per target) - (7%*AP)+(7%*SP)
Sacred Shield - 75*SP

Hit and Spell Hit.

Hit rating reduces the chance for a melee attack to miss, and taunts to be resisted.
Spell hit rating reduces the chance for a spell to miss-resist, when a spell miss-resists it fails to land and the target takes no damage.

Most abilities and Spells have a chance to miss/resist. These miss/resist rates scale with the mobs level.
Hit rating scales as such:
Level xx mob: 5.0%
Level xx+1 mob: 5.5%
Level xx+2 mob: 6.0%
Level xx+3 mob: 8.0%
xx=Your level.
This is assuming you have the highest weapon skill possible.

Spell hit rating scales as such:
Level xx mob: 4.0%
Level xx+1 mob: 5.0%
Level xx+2 mob: 6.0%
Level xx+3 mob: 17.0%
xx=Your level.

Here is a list of paladin abilities affect by melee hit:

Melee attacks and therefore seals.
Hammer of the Righteous.
Shield of Righteousness.
Avenger's Shield.
Righteous Defense.

And here is a list of paladin abilities affected by spell hit:

Holy Shield.
Judgements.
Seal of Vengeance 5 stack hit.

Expertise.

Expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged and parried.
A Boss's chance to dodge any attack is thought to be 6.5%
A Boss's chance to parry is currently unknown, but speculated to be around 10-15%
1 Expertise = expertise rating / 3.95 = -0.25% Dodge and Parry.

For a paladin this affects melee attacks and therefore also seals.

The parry bit will help more than you know, when a boss parries your attacks his next attack has it's swing time cut by anywhere between 14-50% depending on where he was in his current swing.
When you die really quickly on a boss and you're thinking "wth how'd he do that" most commonly it's a melee attack that got parried.
This is why your melee dps should always stand behind the boss.

Macro's
This one casts Hand of protection if righteous defense is cooling down.
It only works on party/raid members however I did this so that I wouldn’t accidentally shield myself. I don’t recommend using it in raids because you can end up accidentally HoPing one of the other tanks.

Code: Select all: /castsequence [target=target,raid] reset=8 Righteous Defense, hand of Protection; [target=targettarget,raid] reset=8 Righteous Defense, hand of Protection #showtooltip righteous defense

This one pops Divine Shield when you click it, and dispels it on the 2nd click.
Good for removing fear, bleeds, poisons etc. (I have the same for Blessing of protection)

Code: Select all: #showtooltip Divine Shield /cancelaura Divine Shield /cast Divine Shield

This next one is so you can hold a button down to change what spell you cast.
#showtooltip "Insert Spell/Ability name"
/cast [modifier:alt(this is where you choose what button, currently its alt)] "Insert spell/ability name you want to use when you hold alt down";
"Insert spell/ability you want to use when you don’t hold alt down"

I’ll give you an example:

Code: Select all: #showtooltip /cast [modifier:alt] Blessing of Kings; Greater Blessing of Kings

Threat Generation:

The way tanks keep their target focused on them is to generate more threat than his party/raid members.
Tankadins achieve this by dealing large amounts of holy damage while under the effect of Righteous Fury.

Paladins can generate enough frontload threat with Avenger's shield, Shield of Righteousness/Hammer of the Righteous and a Judgement for the dps to start attacking right away, as long as the mob is within melee range of the paladin.

For a paladin to do as much threat as he can he has to be getting hit as well. Paladin tanks deal a great deal of damage passively from getting hit. Retribution aura along with holy shield make for 1 heavy backfire when the paladin blocks. This is what makes paladins such great multi-target tanks, they generate threat without even having to target the mobs.

Threat Rotation:

To get the most from your abilities you need to get a good rotation, one that doesn’t leave a lot of room waiting for cooldowns etc.
The most common rotation is called the 96969 rotation. The numbers stand for the time the ability cools down in the rotation. For this rotation you’ll need to put 1 point in improved judgement. Consecrate is only an 8 sec cd, but you cant squeeze the rotation any tighter than this.
You choose what order you want to do the rotation.
The 9 sec cooldown abilities are Holy shield, Judgement and Consecrate.
The 6 sec cooldown abilities are Hammer of the righteous and Shield of Righteousness.
Note: At 70 you won't have Shield of Righteousness. You can practice this rotation by exchanging Shield of Righteousness with SoR and SoV every other 6sec cd.
This way you well get both the SoV dot and the extra damage from SoR per hit. (aka. Seal Twisting.)

00.0 - 9 sec One.
01.5 - 6 sec A.
03.0 - 9 sec Two.
04.5 - 6 sec B.
06.0 - 9 sec Three.
07.5 - 6 sec A.
09.0 - 9 sec One.
10.5 - 6 sec B.
12.0 - 9 sec Two.
13.5 - 6 sec A.
15.0 - 9 sec Three.
16.5 - 6 sec B.

After that it starts over again.
This rotation will not waste a single global cooldown. And then you just work in holy wrath, exorcism and avenger’s shield when needed, don’t worry about interrupting the rotation too much.

The Pull:

Before you pull, have your seal of choice ready.
Pull with avenger's shield, break line of sight for them to gather up together if there are casters involved.
CC after the pull, but before they are at the tank i.e. in the consecrate.
When they are almost at you get ready to start your rotation.

General tips:

It's a good idea to key bind "assign skull" so that you can quickly remark skull after the current target dies.
This way the dps can keep up focus fire.

If your taunt is cooling down, or was resisted, and the mob you need to taunt is not a caster, cast hand of protection on his target.

Hammer of justice will interrupt spell cast even though the mob is immune to stun.

Tankadins have great utility if the situation will allow it, the decursive mod is great for cleansing.

Remember to keep your melee targets in front of you, you can’t block and parry from the back.

Don't try to cast a spell while tanking you can’t block or parry while casting.

Avenging Wrath increases your damage done by 20% for 20 sec, this is a great spell to use when you see the dps crawling up the threat meter, or if you want a significantly big head start on threat during the pull.

If a wipe is inevitable, use Devine Intervention to sacrifice yourself, you'll avoid the 10% durability loss, which for a tank is important.
It's best to DI someone with a res, however make sure that the person getting DI is in a good spot,
he wont survive long if you DI him where the boss is standing for example.

Talents, Talents, Talents...(outdated will be fixed soon)
I'll just start with an overview of the protection tree talents.
I Won't bother bringing holy and retri up.

Tier One:

Blessing of Kings
This buff gives 2% to all stats, okay for 1 point, but chances are you’ll have someone with the improved version of this in the raid.

Improved Blessing of Kings
Great improvement to the previous talent. If you can fit it into your build go for it, if not don’t sweat it. Holy paladins tend to go for this.

Divine Strength
Awesome talent, there is a ton of strength on tanking gear. Great for both threat and mitigation. Take it.

Tier Two:

Stoicism
This talent is mainly used for pvp and is not needed for pve. Feel free to skip it.

Guardian’s Favor
Can be useful, but not nearly enough to require speccing into this. Feel free to skip it.

Anticipation
This gives you 5% dodge unaffected by diminishing returns, Take it no questions asked.

Tier Three

Improved Righteous Fury
While under the influence of Righteous fury this gives you 6% mitigation to all damage taken. Get it.

Toughness
It’s 10% increase to armor what’s not to like? Take it.

Tier Four:

Divine Guardian
Sort of like a mini Shield Wall for the entire raid while Divine shield is active. Situational, take it or leave it.

Improved Hammer of Justice
Since Hammer of Justice is now a spell interrupt even if the target is immune to stuns, this is a potentially awesome skill. However, it’s not necessary for a tank to worry about interrupting anything, you have damage dealers to take care of that. Skip it.

Improved Devotion Aura
Not only a nice little patch on your armor, but it also effectively increases all the healing done in a group/raid by 6%. It’s up to your preference, take it or leave it.

Tier Five:

Blessing of Sanctuary
This is a great buff, 3% damage reduction from all sources as well as mana/rage/runic power any time you dodge, block or parry. Other tanks will love you for this, it’s a must have! Not to mention it’s required for your holy shield.

Reckoning
Its usefulness depends on what seal you use, a decent talent to take.
Gradually procs less as your avoidance increases.
Take it or leave it.

Tier Six

Sacred Duty
6% more stamina? Yes please, take it. It also decreases the cooldown of your divine shield, so it works will with Divine Guardian.

One-handed Weapon specialization
This gives you 10% more damage done while wielding a one-handed weapon. You’ll always be holding a one-handed weapon while tanking. Must have!

Tier Seven

Holy Shield
Great passive threat & avoidance ability, a must have.

Ardent Defender
A highly disputed talent, people argue that the 1-2% damage it mitigates just isn’t good enough, what they fail to realize is that it mitigates the 1-2% of the damage that would kill you.

Tier Eight

Combat Expertise
This talent increases your stamina by 6%, chance to crit by 6% and gives you 6 expertise. Too good to ignore, take it.

Redoubt
30% more Block value as well as 10% chance when you get hit by a melee or ranged attack to proc Redoubt, which gives you a 30% increased chance to block attacks for the next 10sec or 5 blocks. Great for both mitigation and Threat.

Tier Nine

Touched by the Light
A freaking awesome talent, 30% of your stamina as spellpower. Too good to pass up.

Avenger's Shield
It’s a great pulling mechanic and allows us to build a lot of threat on 3 targets at once. Too good to skip.

Guarded by the Light
Good talent if you’re having mana problems. It also increases your spell damage mitigation.

Tier Ten

Shield of the Templar
Great threat talent, I highly recommend it.

Judgement of the Just
If you got the points to spare it’s a good mitigation talent. However this debuff can be applied by many other classes, so it’s not super necessary.

Tier Eleven

Hammer of the Righteous
Awesome talent, allows you to pick up a melee weapon and do some damage with it. This ability also hits all three targets with the seal you’re currently using. Great talent, too good to pass up.

Now that Blizzard is implementing dual specs there is no longer a need for hybrid specs. Instead here are a few sample specs for tanking.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZV0xA0ugGoIufzts0x0f - Threat Tanking Build.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZE0tAbuMGsIufdts0b - Mitigation & Divine Sacrifice Build.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZE0tA0uMGsIufdEs - Cheaper Spells Build.

Thanks to:

I wanna thank all the beta testers posting their findings in the Wotlk sub forum.
Sartor for doing the compilation and keeping it updated.
Whitewolf for his diminishing return research.
Lore for his findings on the new threat values and for just being awesome.
PsiVen for his weapons spreadsheet.
And Worldie for his things he do....

Winchester

Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:40 pm

Well I'm at it again, this is a WIP guide for Wotlk.
As you can see it's pretty similar to my previous one for tbc, it's alot of copy paste and rewriting the stuff that needs rewriting.

Things to come:

Fixing the layout.
Level 80 gear list.
Level 80 enchants.
Level 80 Gems.
Glyph list.
Adding hyperlinks to spell & talent names.
Prolly need to add more people to thank, really you guys are great

If you notice any inaccuracies please let me know by posting a comment or sending a pm. Same goes for if i forgot to mention something.
But remember that this is not a patch live to patch 3.0.2 transition thread.
This guide is meant to be used after wotlk release, i just jumped the gun a bit.

æ

Mon Oct 13, 2008 3:07 am

Sexy!

By the way, there must be a good macro to auto-skull your current target that can be integrated into the rotation. Ill look on the wiki as i forget offhand. Its also a nice idea to have the party create assist macros, or, again forget if its possible, macros to auto-target skull. CC macros should auto-target their respective icon ofc.

Alright i created one myself as everyone i asked said it wasnt possible.

/script SetRaidTarget("focus",8 );
/target focus
/focus
/startattack

Issues so far:
1. Error Control
This needs a twin macro to clear the skull icon, or it will force target the skull untill it dies, then will target the closest mob and make it a skull and repeat, thus if you skulled a mob you do not want dead yet one needs an easy and fast way to deskull.
2. Gotta spam it.

Solutions:
1. /clearfocus on a seperate macro allows simple error management.
2. Wait till Blizzard adds targeting for icons in the API. ;(~

Needforcreed

Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:36 am

Could you explain please why strength is now going to be an important tanking stat, where it wasn't in TBC? Is Wrath changing the mechanics of our seals and judgements, such that their damage/threat is more affected by attack power?

And I take it from your explanation of "Uncrushability", that crushing blows will in fact be abolished in Wrath? [Edit: I see you have adjusted your post to address these issues, thanks]

Needforcreed

Mon Oct 13, 2008 9:03 am

[Now redundant]

Ulushnar

Mon Oct 13, 2008 9:28 am

Needforcreed wrote:I can answer my own question:

"Strength now gives shield block value at a rate of one point of block value per two points of strength"

Plus Hammer of the Righteous damage is a multiple of white weapon dps. Which is increased by attack power. Which is increased by strength.

Attack power now also affects Avenger's Shield (as much as spell power does, in fact), and our Judgements; strength (via block value) affects Shield of Righteousness.

Considered changing your name to "needtoread"?

Needforcreed

Mon Oct 13, 2008 9:52 am

No, but "Needtoputacorkinit" has been suggested, unkindly

Culhag

Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:01 am

You should change the reset time in your Righteous Defence macro to 8 seconds.

Worldie

Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:16 am

Reported for sticky

Winchester

Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:31 am

Culhag wrote:You should change the reset time in your Righteous Defence macro to 8 seconds.

nice catch

Worldie wrote:Reported for sticky

Awesome thanks.

econ21

Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:13 pm

Excellent guide, thanks.

With the ratings conversions, it might be good to have both level 70 and level 80 values. Right now we care about the former, but soon(ish), the emphasis will be on the latter. Mentioning how resilience affects uncrittability might also be good.

Winchester

Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:42 pm

econ21 wrote:Excellent guide, thanks.

With the ratings conversions, it might be good to have both level 70 and level 80 values. Right now we care about the former, but soon(ish), the emphasis will be on the latter. Mentioning how resilience affects uncrittability might also be good.

Yeah i'll try to get some 70 content in there for the patch.

Worldie

Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:11 pm

There's a error in the hit part, the 1% miss for magic is gone, you can cap spellhit now at 17%.

Winchester

Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:44 pm

Worldie wrote:There's a error in the hit part, the 1% miss for magic is gone, you can cap spellhit now at 17%.

I use what i can from the previous guide so.
I did the entire rewrite in one sitting so some things slipped through the cracks. Let me know if you see more.