3.2 Frequently Argued Questions. AKA: Advanced tanking FAQ.

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 "Advanced 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.

Provisos

3.1 and beyond only I'm not going to cover historical stuff. Go look up the 3.0 versions if you're interested.

Generic gearing I'm not going to do "best in slot" gear-sets, other than perhaps one "prog-tanking" set based on BiS tanking gear from 3.0. I will tell you want stats to stack and the relative value of various stats. 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.

Index

Knaughty's Basic FAQ Short sharp shock to get you started.

This thread: http://tinyurl.com/mt-t202

Sub-topics

The guts of this FAQ are a series of one-post summaries of various tanking topics. I'm not claiming this is all my own work - in a lot of cases there will be links to the detail elsewhere, by other people. Anyway... here's the topic list:

Talents - How to spec tanking, and some analysis of the "debatable" talents.
Glyphs - We actually have decisions to make in 3.1! ZOMG!
Rotation AKA 969 - The basics - what buttons to press and WHY
Optimising TPS - If you're looking for more DPS/TPS - how to get it without dying.
Macros & Scripts - stuff to make you look good to your raid, or help you work out shit without a calculator.
Mana Management - was a non-issue in 3.0, but 3.1 brings some new options.
Professions - tanking implications are minor, but I'll cover them.
Gear & buffs - Knaughty & Levie's What not to wear!† † May not include content by Levantine
Gems and Enchants - Gear checks by tier.
User Interface - You're a tank. You need good intel on WTF is going on.
Reserved -
Fin! -

Talent options

Ulduar & 3.1 brings major changes to the talent options for Paladins. The Holy tree was always slim - about 51-53 points got you all your PvE healing & utility talents, this remains the case in 3.1. This lightweight design has now been extended to both Retribution and Protection - both trees are "complete" with ~53 points invested.

In Protection, this was achieved via the deletion of Kings (now baseline) and the conversion of most of the very deep prot talents from 5/5 to 3/3, without reducing their overall effectiveness. Basically, 53 points gets you what you had to spend 60 points on before. Similar changes were made to the Ret tree - instead of needing 61 in ret to complete their PvE setup, it is more like 53.

The changes to Ret/Holy do impact how to build your tank tree.

Throughout this section of the guide I'm indebted to PsiVen's original TPS work, but I'm currently using Theck's MATLAB thread for TPS comparisons.

Cookie cutter build design

Step 1: Don't die

We're a tank. Our primary job is to live. Thus, you take all primary mitigation talents. Then, you take the basic TPS and rotation talents required to be able to tank (eg: 1/2 Imp Judge so you can do 969).

Basic tanking talents

Unpossible talent build, of course. We need to put 3 more talent points into Tier 1-5

Justifications so far:

• 1/2 Spiritual Atunement?
See post 8 on how not to go OOM. Short version is that 2/2 is radical overkill, based on current theory-craft of mana use vs return. Certainly for boss fights, 1/2 is plenty, trash you just need to be careful with maintaining high DP uptime and low use of Consecrate.

• 3/3 One Hand Specialisation
We also take 1HS, as it is our best TPS talent by roughly double, and we have to take something to reach the bottom half of the tree - all sensible tanking specs will have 1HS.

• 3/3 Touched by the Light Second best TPS talent after 1HS. Nothing to collect that gives more DPS/TPS. Also has a little utility when soloing in ret gear and you have to heal yourself.

• 3/3 Ardent Defender
AD was already decent when it was 5 points. At 3 points it's actually very good value - ~2% mitigation for 3 points looks bad until you remember it is kicking in on damage that would otherwise kill you. There's an "AD ROX" rant at the end of this post.

Step 2: Fill to 53 points in Prot

We need to put 3 points in Tiers 1-5 somewhere. What are our options?

Good Choices

• Divine Sacrifice Nerfed in absorption terms quite badly from infinite to 150% of health. But buffed in that the CD was unlinked from bubble, so you can pop it more flexibly (so long as you can live...)

I was a fan of the 3.0 version, and used it pretty much every Sapphiron & Malygos kill, even when I was tanking those bosses. I'll probably take the 3.1 version as well. Worst case, you can steal some damage from the other tanks during trash to regen some mana, best case it's a handy raid-wide CD during an AE phase, or an external CD for Sarth3D Mark2.

• Divine Guardian Well... it's OK. Tiny buff to DS. Tiny buff to Sacred Shield amount (Holy Paladin version still better, even unimproved). Big buff to SS duration, so at least you're only wasting GCDs once a minute instead of twice.

• Imp HoJ Base CD is a minute. We take that down to 20 sec due to JotJ in Tier-10. So if you get Imp Hoj, you have a 20 sec CD stun. Still too slow for NukingBossWhoNeedsToBeInteruptedOrHeNukesYourFaceOff, but pretty nice for trash, and hand for covering boss interrupts if your rogue stood in FIARITBURNZ!

"Meh" (at best) Choices

• Divinity This talent is bad for Holy, let alone Prot. If you're over-healed (the norm), it has zero impact. Skip it. We already have a +6% healing received aura that the other tanks don't need, adding in another 5% isn't going to help.

• Reckoning WoW 2.4 rang and wants it's SoR tanking talent back. It is our worst TPS talent option. The only thing it has going for it is that it is right there. However, as we'll see later, we end up being able to pick up some much better TPS talents, which puts our TPS well beyond what's required to hold aggro. Skip it and grab some utility.

Bad Choices

• Stoicism / Guardian's Favour I'm ignoring these right off the bat. Next to nothing in PvE will dispel, and you don't much care if your stuff is dispelled anyway. Very few things stun. Buffing your Hand spells is also pretty useless for PvE. These two talents are for PvP.

Step 3: A dozen points left... now what?

OK, you've stuck you 3 points in the start of prot in your choice. You have the 5% parry and 1/2 Imp Judge for 969. Where do you put your last 12 points?

Choices:
• There's no full-time mitigation talents.
• The only accessible "tanking CD" talent is Improved Lay On Hands.
• Compelling utility talents are thin on the ground.
• There are DPS/TPS talents in Ret, or SotP in Holy.

What to do?

First: Consider what Holy and Ret are doing.

• Holy: Still have a pretty much bog-standard cookie-cutter build. Their biggest "choice" in 3.0 was "Do I take Kings?[i]". That's gone. In addition, their "[i]Do I bother with judge?" choice got easier, as it got buffed quite a bit. Thus, basically every PvE Holy paladin ends up as a minor variant on 50+3/0/18 Last 3 points go in some mix of Imp Concentration Aura and Imp BoWis, I suppose. Picking up Imp LoH means they can't max both Concentration and BoW, which is a tiny problem.

Thus: Holy paladins will be judging wisdom from 30 yards, which will put up HotC 3%, and they have Imp LoH.

• Ret: Basic Ret spec with all PvE DPS is 0/5/53. They have 3/3 HotC. 13 points left, not much to spend them on. 13 points in Holy for some off-healing and Aura Mastery / Imp LoH is one option, second is 0/18/53 = I-tank-trash-specced-ret-spec seems like an option. Sword+Board, tanking libram, DPSTank a caster or something, then pull your 2H back out once your target is dead.

Thus: Ret paladins will be judging light, which will put up HotC 3%, and they can have Imp LoH if they want.


Second: Rank TPS Options: Crusade > Conviction ~= SotP

Any build with Crusade is the highest possible damage build (thanks Theck). SotP and Conviction are basically equal. SotP starts out better, but Conviction scales a little better as its a % multiplier (just a bad one). Cross-over point is pretty much "Full 25-man Naxx or Ulduar-10 epics". So if you farmed Naxx-25, Conviction is already even with SotP, and will pull ahead once you start wearing Ulduar-25 gear. In a 10-man guild, Conviction wins once you have a lot of Ulduar-10 gear. Additionally, you have the points to reach Crusade now, without gimping survivability.

So basically: Conviction + Crusade (maybe with a side-order of PoJ) vs SotP + Imp LoH.

It is worth noting that Imp LoH is a powerful CD - over 20% physical mitigation. 11 min CD is painful, but vs big hits, it is almost as good as Shield Wall.

If you have a reliable Holy Paladin with Imp LoH (or a Ret who swings that way) the choice vanishes. Spec Crusade.

If you want the CD? Spec 12/53/6 - Imp LoH is good.

Step 4: Ret filler in Tier 1 & 2

Bad choices are all bad. Pursuit of Justice is lovely, but is in Tier-3, competing with Conviction. Take it if you like running fast more that hurting things.

• HotC is covered by Ret and Holy. OK if every other Paladin is judging something else, I suppose.
• 2/2 Imp Judge is OK for trash, doesn't help for bosses. Still, it's a useful point, and we're having trouble finding any.
• Imp Might is OK as well: Ret may skip it to be able to get PoJ + Aura Mastery + Imp LoH. Holy probably has it.
• Benediction is still "nigh" useless... but a tiny bit of useful is still something.

Look, just grab 2/2 Imp Judge, and stick the last 3 points any damn place, it doesn't matter.

Ardent Defender Rant

This rant dates to early 3.0, but is still applicable any time you're tanking hard stuff.

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, or Tankadin2 data. I'll give you my best anecdote:

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 (our second Sarth+3 [25] kill was done with only 6 healers, two of whom were DPS re-specs in shitty off-spec healing gear).

For our first Sapphiron-25 kill, which I MT'd in blues + 2 crafted epics + 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 when tanking progression. 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 for progression, 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" (at 5 points cost)

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 always 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

Glyphs With thanks to Majiben

Mandatory

Major
Glyph of Divine Plea Looks "Meh" - 3% mitigation while DP is up? Except it synergises with GbtL, which means it is up 100% of the time vs a boss, and most of the time vs trash as well. And yes, it does stack with BoSanc, etc. Grats, our first "mandatory" glyph.

Almost Mandatory

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. Anyway, it's our best TPS glyph by a large margin, while simultaneously providing a tiny bit of mitigation via reduction of parry-haste.

Recommended:

Major Pick one, doesn't matter which, all three are OK.

Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous Four-target cleave. What's not to like?

Theck did a detailed analysis of glyph TPS <Need the new one.>

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

Glyph of Exorcism Nice for the pull (AS, then Exo). You can also slot in an Exo every second Judgement once you have a lot of hit rating and JotJ is unlikely to fall off. This is more TPS than glyphed Judgement, but more complex. You should be subbing Exorcism in every 18 seconds, regardless of glyphs. If you do this, Exo Glyph is much better than Judge glyph Citations later.

Minor

Glyph of lay on hands Hey, 5 mins off the CD is nice. That's almost once per boss.

Situational:

Major

Glyph of Salvation 20% off damage taken, 10 sec duration, 2 min CD. Powerful CD with a serious downside. If the situation suits it, this could be a rather OP glyph. EG: Tanking Steelbreaker as last to kill. You have huge time to build a threat lead, then have a goddamn mountain fall on you and probably need to chain CDs, same as Sarth+3. Thus: Situational

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.

Glyph of Righteous Defence This was awesome until we all switched to using a real, single-target taunt. Now? Meh.
WAS: Never miss with RD. Which was:
• 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 was awesome. Remember to turn on Sense Undead! Looks crap in Tier-8, but what else you going to take?

Meh

Glyph of Spiritual Attunement

Majiben wrote: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" This glyph is lucky I don't move it to "Bad"

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").

Glyph of SoR Was almost decent when it was 30%. Back to 10%, and sucks. All other TPS glyphs beat this one, yes, even if you spec into Reckoning.

Tanking Rotation, AKA 969 With thanks to Psiven & Theck for all their 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.

This has been confirmed (again) in compelling and accurate detail by Theck. Go read his sticky.

How to do 969

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

Short Version: Watch this YouTube Vid

Long version follows...

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?

ZOMG... need to find all the references in the MATLAB thread

Optimising TPS

Rotation Substitution / Glyphs

Read Theck's thread, or at least this post if you want the details.

Note that due to scaling and spec changes, in 3.1, the old rule of thumb "Substitution isn't worth the bother" is no longer the case.

Failing that, here's the gist:

• Substituting Exorcism for every second Judgement is a TPS gain, regardless of Glyphs.
• If you're doing Exorcism substitution, Exo glyph is very good.
• AS is even better than Exo, even unglyphed.

Thus: If you have someone else to keep a slow on the boss, in you "Judge slot" you actually sub in AS & Exo. You will get collisions, just use Judge as little as possible, and preference the spell you have glyphed.

AS Glyph is our highest TPS glyph, but lots of people don't like it due to loss of 3-target pull. After that:

SoV > Exo > Judge

Seal of Blood

Update soon: Short version: SoB is back to Seal of Fail. Use SoV.

Theck's SoB Analysis

Unlike Tier-7, there are situations in which SoB is noticeably more TPS than SoV. In addition, the kickback damage of SoB has been reduced by nerfing the Judgement damage (30% kickback) and boosting the Seal (10% kickback). Theck goes into a metric ass-ton of detail, but here are the simple rules of thumb:

Don't use SoB if you're specced SotP
SoV is more DPS/TPS regardless of anything else if you're specced for Imp. LoH.

Don't use SoB unless you're wearing hit/expertise gear
SoB requires you to hit twice: Once with the melee attack, then again with the Seal. This means hit/expertise is twice as effective for SoB. The crossover point is 4.3% hit+expertise. (3.3% if you have a goat-person-thing in the raid). If you have less +hit than that, stick with SoV.

Thus: SoB is more TPS when
• You're wearing hit/expertise gear
• You're specced at least 3 points into Conviction/Crusade (ideally 5+)

You need both for it to be particularly effective.

When you are using SoB, your Judgement sucks, as Judging blood was nerfed to the ground to limit Ret burst in PvP. So if you have SoB up, you should always be substituting something else for Judge - Exorcism covers every second judgement, AS every 4th (assuming you aren't saving it for the next trash pull).

SoB does have one other significant advantage for very short fights: Instant TPS. You don't need to stack it up to 5 to get the full effect.

So, if you're sub-specced ret, put together a hit/expertise heavy set and use it for you trash clears, while using SoB. Your "main tanking" set probably has less expertise, and you don;t want kick-back damage when you're tanking a boss. So stack mitigation, EH & avoidance, ignore hit/expertise, and seal SoV

Expertise & Hit

Read Theck's thread, or at least this post if you want the details.

Short version:
On bosses, when using SoV: Hit is our best TPS stat after Strength, Expertise is a little behind Block Value but scales better.

On trash, when using SoB: Hit & Expertise beat Strength then Block Value, AP/Crit/Agi are roughly even a long way behind.

Thus: Put together a tanking set that stacks Hit, Expertise, & Block, and use that set as your TPS set (and also as your trash set).

You want hit/block for trash because the fights are so short and the hits so light. Missing a pair of opening moves can kill a careless DPS or healer on trash, where on bosses people can wait a few secs, and the hunter MDs will save the healers.

TPS Value of stats while using Vengeance
<newpic goes here>

TPS Value of stats while using Blood

Macros & Scripts

Max Camera distance
/console cameradistancemaxfactor 50


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 things. NB Marks are a toggle - hit em again to remove.

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

How to not go OOM: 102. Updated for 3.1, lots of theory, bugger all practice.

Still a work in progress. Don't kill me if this isn't finished.

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


If Divine Plea + BoSanc + 1/2 Spiritual Attunement aren't returning enough mana, you're not tanking enough. Start tanking more mobs, and thus taking more damage & avoiding more attacks.

3.1 changes

• Healer mana regen nerfed.
• SA is now a talent, we take 1/2
• Protection get to refresh Divine Plea by hitting things.

Mana Expenditure

• Hammer of the Righteous: 6% base mana; 6 second CD
• ShoR: 6% base; 6 sec
• Judgement: 5%; 9 sec
• Holy Shield: 10%; 9 sec
• Consecrate: 22%; 9 sec

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

Full rotation: 6.11% = 268 mana per second

Divine Plea Numbers

Full buffed, you have about 7.5k mana. Divine Plea returns 25% of your mana over 15 seconds, that's about 125 mana per second.

Sanctuary Numbers

• 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.
• Assume the 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 over the life of the pack.
• About half will also do damage and give you some mana via SA (see below)

BoSanc is giving you something like

Spiritual Attunement Numbers Assumes 1/2 SA

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 500 mana
• 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 spends 123 or 308 mana to give you 150-250.

Assuming your holy pally is vaguely competent (or just spams FoL), he can transfer his mana bar to your mana bar at almost 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 very strong.

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 almost 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 45 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.

Practicalities and Pacing.

• It's hard to do more than 2 pulls a minute due to AS CD.
• Thus: Every second pack you get to activate Divine Plea, if you let it fall off.

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.

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.

Professions

Short Version:
• Drop herbalism, skinning & tailoring
• Engineering gives armour which only works vs physical damage.
• Mining only gives stamina, no Holy/Ret options.

Otherwise: Pick anything.

Long Version:

Firstly: Professions have been rebalanced since 2.4. Switching profs will no longer get you a progression kill that is otherwise unobtainable (Hello LW drums @ Brute). BoP items are far less powerful in general. All crafting professions 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 (Engineering gives armour, Inscription gives avoidance).

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

If you have no professions at all, JC has always been the best profession, but usually by only a tiny margin. It's also good for making money due to ease of using AH for gems.

Profs that give roughly 50 stamina
Blacksmith, JC, Enchanting, Leather-working and Mining all give about 50 stam. JC gives a little more since it activates set bonuses, mining has no holy/ret option. Overall, they're largely equivalent.

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. Even better in 3.1 because our tanking tier-8 set has one blue socket, two yellow, and four goddamn red sockets, while every socket bonus is +stamina. Three prismatic gems net you 27 stam in bonuses, for a total of 78 stamina.

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, but usually you'd just stuff stamina gems in the extra sockets. Will scale when epic gems are released.

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

Leatherworking Wrist Enchants The obvious one is the +90 stamina to wrist. There are AP/spell-power equivalents for your Ret/holy sets.

Mining: 50 stamina. Downside: No Ret/Holy option, unlike all the others above. Unlike most trades, dirt cheap to level (basically free). However, there's no escaping the grind - you can't just "buy mats" - go mine shit. Much faster in 3.0.9 than previously.

Profs that you have to think about
Alchemy, Inscription, Engineering have interesting options. Engineering was crap, but the new 800 armour enchant is actually decent. If you lived with Engineering in 3.0, it is lot closer in 3.1.

Herbalism, Skinning & Tailoring are all crap.

Alchemy: Provides 750 hp if a flask is used. If using Elixirs, pick one of each row:
• 400 armour, 375 hp, or 22 defence rating;
• 25 str, 22 agility, 10 stats
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. Gives Avoidance, instead of EH. In "Ratings are fungible" terms, is ahead of +50 stam. Anyway, nothing wrong with it, and a great money spinner in 3.0 and briefly in 3.1 as everyone adds a second set of glyphs.

Engineering: Toys & a mote farming tool. Glove enchant is competitive I was surprised, but the 800 armour enchant is actually pretty decent. Sucks vs magic damage, but wins vs physical damage a lot of the time. Ret/Holy option is a crapton of haste - 340 rating (~10%) for 10 secs every minute.

Herbalism: Crap.

Tailoring: Crap.

Skinning: Crap.

Gear and Buffs

Obsolete due to Theck's work

I'll turn this post into a "how and why to gear with what" post. One day.

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

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 for Tier-7

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.

Benchmarks for Tier-8

Ulduar-10 drops gear of comparable quality to Naxx-25. This means there's little point doing Ulduar-10 if you have full Naxx-25 gear, unless you do hard-modes.

The following is educated guesses based on minimal feedback from the PTR, and official design goals, as inficated by GC and other blue posts

• Ulduar-10 is designed for people in ilevel-200 epics (Herioc & Naxx-10 epics).
• Ulduar-10 hard-modes will be doable in ilevel-213 gear (Ulduar-10/Naxx-25 level gear) - you will not need to farm 25-man to do 10-man-hard-modes (no Sarth3D equivalent?)

Ulduar-25 is designed to require 25-man gear to clear.
Ulduar-25 hard-modes are designed to require you to farm the zone before you can do them easily.

Completing 10-man hard-modes in Ulduar will provide both training and gear that may be useful for the 25-man hard modes.

User Interface

There's an important distinction to make when discussing a tanking UI that's often conflated: Tanking UI & Raid Leading UI.

Tanks are not always raid leaders, though it is pretty common. While there are some things that are common across both types of UI, some things are different.

I'll cover both lists of requirements. You'll need to decide for yourself how much of the "leader" info is applicable to your role in your guild.

Tanking UI requirements



Leading UI requirements

Read this: http://www.stratfu.com/strats/RaidleaderAddons

Excellent guide. My UI has pretty much the same set of info on it (using different mods), basically via convergent evolution (I finished my UI before finding this guide).



Things I need to classify and explain...

• Omen
• Ora2
• Pallypower
• Tankadin2
• Raid frames
• MT frames
• Marking mod

Gems

Meta:
• Austere Earthsiege Diamond Easy to activate, highest EH vs magic or big slow hits.
• Eternal Earthsiege Diamond Avoidance, very good EH vs small hits, threat. Slightly harder to activate.

Austere in your MT hat, Eternal in your TPS/BV/Trash hat.

Blue:
• Stam gem I mean.. do I have to say it?

Red:
Use these purple gems:
• Regal Twillight Opal EH & avoidance. Probably your best MT gem. 3 JC tokens.
• Sovereign Twilight Opal EH + TPS & a little BV. Drop

Or use these orange gems:
• Champion's Monarch Topaz Avoidance, TPS, tiny bit of BV. Best gem for your TPS set. Drop
• Stalwart Monarch Topaz Avoidance, lots of it. MT set option. Drop

The three of the above marked "drop" are rare wold-drop patterns, and are thus sometimes hard to find. Your fallbacks are: Regal Twillight Opal which is sold for 3 JC tokens, or Glimmering Monarch Topaz which is 4 gold when Exalted with Wyrmrest Accord.

Yellow:
• Enduring Forest Emerald Yellow slots are rare. This gem is awesome, BTW, so never slot a blue gem in a yellow slot, use this one.

Enchants

Rules of thumb:
• Ratings are fungible!: Pick the enchant with the most "item points" spent on tanking stats.
• Defence is your best enchant until over 540
• Defence is still your best avoidance enchant after 540, until block-capped.
• 540 is hard to maintain.
• Enchant to improve an item's strengths, not cover weaknesses.
• Your profession option is almost always better than the base enchant (or stacks)

This simplifies to "enchant defence > all, then stamina if possible". Armour enchants, where they exist, are also very, very good.

Best enchant by slot

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 competitive with Titanweave once you are past the defence minimum. Some people like 22 Agility, I haven't run the numbers but have an irrational dislike for Agi enchants.

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

Wrist: 40 stam enchant

Gloves: Glove Reinforcements is more EH than Heavy Borean Armor Kit (but doesn't work vs magic). Armsman for your threat-set gloves, if you have them.

Waist: Extra socket. Probably with a stamina gem in it, but look at the strengths of the piece and consider your options.

Legs: 22 agil / 55 stam leg patch.

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

Mainhand:
Avoidance:
Enchant Weapon - Blade Ward New in 3.1. The proc is less than 4% parry due to diminishing returns. Proc rate, internal CD and source of enchant are all unknown.
Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Agility Some crit and dodge, and a little armour. I'm not a fan, but if someone posts the conversions, I'll stick them here.

EH (sort of)
Enchant Weapon - Blood Draining New in 3.1. The source of enchant is unknown. Proc rate is 50%, stacks to 5, heal goes off when you drop under 35%. 5-stack will take about 10 seconds to reach, and heals for 1.8k - 2.2k, unknown if there is any scaling.

TPS Options:
• Best TPS enchant is Enchant Weapon - Accuracy once you're in full Naxx-25 or Ulduar-10 tanking epics, but it is Expensive! so wait for a good weapon.

• Potency is next best, but is very hard to find being a somewhat rare world-drop TBC enchant, so just use Titanium Weapon chain in the meanwhile, as it quite decent TPS as well.

Shield: 20 Defence is substantially better than 18 stam by ilevel. 40 Block Value if you have a "Threat set" shield.

Reserved

Coz last time I ran out of reserved posts

Fin!

Last time I ran out of reserved posts. So this time I'm taking the whole front page.

Officially open to suggestions

Anything you think should be changed this time round?