4.2 Talent Spec & Glyph Guide

Wrathy wrote:I also wanted to discuss the concepts of dual specilization and what we will be using it for in Cata. I have always been a tank who has both specs prot. Originally it was one for main tanking normal instances and one for anub'arak, then it transitioned into Threat vs. survival. And finally, when HM LK came out, it was threat and HM LK spec.

Going into cata, with the glyphs, and the talent choices that we have, it will be more of a necessity for myself, and many paladins to have a spec for single target tanking and one for AoE. Moving talents into Hallowed Ground, replacing glyphs to maximize threat in AoE situations, etc will be necessary for min/maxing.

Unless encounter design is significantly different, I don't anticipate the need to swap out to an AoE spec for raiding. Apart from the odd gimmick fight, I would think AoE would just be for trash.

Wow, you work fast theckhd - less than 24 hours between my requesting advice and you posting this guide. Thank you so much!

At this moment, I am thinking of going for your "default" build but switching the 3 points of divinity into hallowed ground and a third point in reckoning. Hallowed ground may not be worth it, but consecration is such an iconic spell, I really dont want to see it weakened more than need be. I might have to go for divinity if raid survival becomes a big issue but for the early phase of the Cata, I will be mainly soloing and doing 5 mans.

My question is whether 3/3 reckoning is better threat and dps than 3/3 rule of law, as the core still allows me to switch between the two. I know the numbers may change, but what is people's judgement about this at the moment?

Thoughts on cooldowns:

Divine Protection is now our Shield Block. 20% reduction on a 1-minute timer means we'll have it available a lot. Presumably it stacks with other cooldowns, so you could AD+DP every 2 minutes if you wanted to. It may only be 20% reduction, but it's a safe cooldown to hit at the first sign of danger because it'll come back up quickly.

Ardent Defender is still very powerful. The reduction may only be 20%, but the Guardian Spirit proc easily makes up for it. If you've ever heard your healers say "you died with half a second left on my Holy Light," you'll recognize how important that GS proc is. It's the cooldown you pop when you drop into the danger zone. I think that if you're going to skip this, you're not going to be taken serious in progression raiding. If all you're doing is relatively easy stuff (instances, overgeared raids) then you might get away with skipping it.

GAnK is our new BubbleWall. It should be our first choice of cooldown at high health, especially for proactive stuff. Know a Soul Reaper is incoming? Pop GANK.

There's also something to be said for the new health & damage model. When your death is a longer, slower process than getting 2- or 3-shot, damage reduction cooldowns become much more powerful. Even a 20% cooldown is a significant effect, because it's buying your healers a lot more time to heal you. You also have the option of using GANK and DP on cooldown to reduce the mana load on your tank healers, saving AD for the real "oh-shit" situations that might kill you. I think a lot of people are making the mistake of viewing AD in light of the Wrath damage/health model, which is how they're coming to the conclusion that it's weak. It's a lot stronger when 20% reduction buys you a few seconds and 15% of your health is on the order of a boss attack.

Thoughts on "AoE specs":

I don't think it will be necessary to do so. The only AoE talent we don't take as part of the "default" spec is Hallowed Ground. While 20% Cons damage is nice, I don't think it's going to be particularly game breaking. Remember that Cons no longer has 100% uptime, so while it will hit harder, HotR and Holy Wrath (especially with WotL) will be much larger components of our AoE threat.

Will speccing Hallowed Ground make AoE easier? Sure. Will it make the difference between being able to AoE tank and not AoE tank? Almost certainly not, that would require incredibly tight tuning, and I don't see that happening.

That said, for leveling/dungeons I could certainly see taking it over Divinity or Rule of Law.

Thoughts on TPS talents:

I haven't run the numbers yet, we're probably a week or so away from me having anything worth posting on that topic. However, here's my impression based on a few rough guesses:

Reckoning looks like it will be a lot stronger now. For single-target, I expect it to be better than almost any of the "boring TPS increase" talents in the tree. I think Crusade and Wrath of the Lightbringer are going to be good as well, while Rule of Law and the Holy DPS talents will probably bring up the rear.

Again, this is speculation, and my own code might prove me wrong on any of this, but I think those are reasonably good guesses given what we know.

For the Tier 3 point, you can choose Wrath of the Lightbringer or Hallowed Ground from T3 or Guardian's Favor from T2. Most people will ignore GF and make this a choice between increasing their AoE threat with HG or increasing their single-target threat through WotL.

I came here to post a question regarding an AOE-spec, and saw this answer:

Thoughts on "AoE specs":

I don't think it will be necessary to do so. The only AoE talent we don't take as part of the "default" spec is Hallowed Ground. While 20% Cons damage is nice, I don't think it's going to be particularly game breaking. Remember that Cons no longer has 100% uptime, so while it will hit harder, HotR and Holy Wrath (especially with WotL) will be much larger components of our AoE threat.

Will speccing Hallowed Ground make AoE easier? Sure. Will it make the difference between being able to AoE tank and not AoE tank? Almost certainly not, that would require incredibly tight tuning, and I don't see that happening.

That said, for leveling/dungeons I could certainly see taking it over Divinity or Rule of Law.

I think a discussion of this nature is warranted in the "common builds" section - at least a sentence to say you don't think it's necessary, perhaps eventually with a link to the TPS analysis of a tank with and without hallowed ground.

Yeah, I fully intend to address that question, but at the moment I don't have the data to back up any assertions. That's why in several sections of the guide, I've shied away from making definitive statements about TPS talents. It's entirely possible that the numbers will show my intuition about WotL and HG to be wrong.

Once I have numbers to work with I'll be reviewing the guide and editing or adding that sort of thing.