Leapfrogging Ardent Defender

Ok, but remember:
This sheet is built up with an best-case-scenario for AD.
Worst case is a hit taking you so low on HP, that the next breeze will kill you. With or without AD

If the bleed-effect or the chainlightning will kill you....there is something other going wrong.
I've very very rarely been killed from periodically damage, in case this would happen, my gear or my healers gear is to week. (or simply pulled to much )
Dangerous are, you will agree with me, damage spikes (hit-series from bosses or meele-hit + special in a short period of time) with no (possible?) heal between.
If you take much dmg from different sources, wouldn't you count this all together as one big hit?

There is no difference between -30%(or not ) from one 20K hit or -30% form 4 x 5K hits/effects/specials/other sources/what ever.

Again, three talentpoints which wouldn't work 99% of the time you are raiding and perhaps (=> leapfrogging) safe my life one times, in weeks, in only a very special situation.... -> for me to expensive. Five points was VERY expensive and three points are still too much. With one point I'll take AD without thinking about it.

You don't rely on proccs as a tank (redoubt, mongoose for example) in my eyes, with the actual mechanic, AD is a procc which could occure...or not.

The good times of AD (hyjal-trash-waves) are left behind, at the moment no serious reason for me to max out AD.
Wait did a say trash-waves? Of course you have to deal a lot of time with trash, but trash shoudn't be the criteria you have to equip/gem/enchant/skill for. We are talking of maintainking, didn't we?
...let's see what criterias Ulduar will bring up. Maybe I but AD in my dual-spec....maybe.

CU
Cavalorn

P.S.
I agree with people, who spend there points in AD, because this is the only talent with a defensive function left... but definitly AD is not a musthave for everyone, that's the point I couldn't accept

It's a must have by virtue of the fact that there's nothing better to take, and it can save your life, even if only in rare scenarios. If you're sacrificing it for some more threat or something like Divinity you're doing it wrong.

The only musthave I'm still missing is, THE situation a tankpaladin without AD will NOT survive. Could you help me out of this misery?

Wasting skillpoints for a chance to compensate playererrors? Therefore you got some other oh-shit-buttons which works instantly and reliable.
In such a situation I prefer +x% of healing for every single HoT which is ticking on me and keeping my ass away from the ground.

I already pointed out several times when things other than massive boss melee attacks will kill you. If you're too ignorant to accept the fact that there are times other than healer error where you might die then nothing at all is going to save you.

Ask yourself, are there ever times when you're taking damage in increments of less than 35% of your max HP? How about less than 20%? Of course there are. It might not be every boss fight and it might not be every source of damage, but they exist. If an OT dies on a fight and you're forced to taunt a few adds off of a healer, they're not going to be hitting you incredibly hard, but the boss is hitting you hard and probably taking you below 35% health on occasion. And it's inaccurate to say that if the killing blow is from an add or a DoT that it's the healer's fault, especially if you refuse to spec into something that could've saved you in that situation.

The MT rarely dies in ideal scenarios, it's when a healer dies or has to heal up a DPS who stood in fire, or when your they have to move to avoid a lava wall and are unable to heal for 1-2 seconds. These situations are everywhere. You can't simply say "tanks die to big boss hits, AD doesn't mitigate big boss hits very well, therefore AD is bad". Well you can say that, but it's not true.

It's pretty obviously to me and a lot of other tankadins that AD is a "must have" talent given our current talent trees and the lack of any alternative. Go ahead and disagree, I'm just curious as to what you'll be picking up instead.

I agree, even though the idea did occur to me after reading several comments by some paladin tanks at the wow forums and how AD felt worthless to 'em because they could tank MT without it - the truth is, even if its a situational talent, better with than without it.

Ahhh AD. such an interesting talent.

With my latest spec i decided to go 2/3 into AD.
Why?

Well i still get 20% damage reduction, which is nice... and that 1 spare point was pretty much essential to fill out my 0/53/18 spec.
I couldnt think of any other talent in the prot tree to take 1 point out of to put into ret - so i could get 3/3 in Crusade.

Current spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZV0tAbuMGRIufdxsohbc

Couldnt remove a single point from the first 5 ranks of the prot tree - as i wouldnt be able to get deeper without taking something dumb like reckoning. And the rest of the deep prot tree is too useful to skip.
I considered 1/2 in SA - but that would make 5mans too oomish.

I considered 1/2 in SA - but that would make 5mans too oomish.

For Warriors and Protadins everywhere the 'x' key is bound to life tap. Feel free to use it in 5 mans to get mana and to wake your healer up.

masterpoobaa wrote:Ahhh AD. such an interesting talent.

With my latest spec i decided to go 2/3 into AD.
Why?

Well i still get 20% damage reduction, which is nice... and that 1 spare point was pretty much essential to fill out my 0/53/18 spec.
I couldnt think of any other talent in the prot tree to take 1 point out of to put into ret - so i could get 3/3 in Crusade.

Current spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZV0tAbuMGRIufdxsohbc

Couldnt remove a single point from the first 5 ranks of the prot tree - as i wouldnt be able to get deeper without taking something dumb like reckoning. And the rest of the deep prot tree is too useful to skip.
I considered 1/2 in SA - but that would make 5mans too oomish.

You seriously sacrifice a point in AD for SA?

I could maybe understand that if you never raided ever, but from what I've experienced perma plea + bosanc + 1/2 SA is more mana regen than we had pre 3.1... and the only time mana was an issue in heroics was on boss fights whose melee attacks hit for less than my BV. More SA isn't really going to help if you don't take any damage.

Just so there's no confusion, I don't think AD is a fantabulous talent. I just think it's light-years more helpful than a 2nd point in SA, or points in Divinity.

To my mind, there are just 5 fillpoints in the prottree. In an TPS optimized 0/53/18 spec, you can choose between 5 divinity, or 2 divinity 3 AD or 0 divinity 3 AD 2 improved hammer of justice etc. .
There are pros and cons at each of these choices, but none of them seems to be SO convincing that it is the one and only. It's purely a matter of taste.

Klaudandus wrote:I agree, even though the idea did occur to me after reading several comments by some paladin tanks at the wow forums and how AD felt worthless to 'em because they could tank MT without it - the truth is, even if its a situational talent, better with than without it.

Yes, that's it (and I think I've written this in nearly every post somewhere). It is a big difference to say: you could, or better you should take AD in count when you are spending your skillpoints, but not saying you have to take AD!

With my other posts I just tried to force some of you to think about the (realy bad) mechanic of AD in it's current functionality, of course a little bit provocative

@Jasari: It took nearly 27 years of time, that someone call me ignorant, but ok, if you feel so, I have to accept.
Nevertheless every example you have given above, is an situation where some other things went wrong earlier. Maybe AD let survive you this special situation, but I think the number of trys you will finish sucessfully after such an problem (dead MT-Healer, dead Off-Tank, DDs without accurate movement) are very very low. With or without AD

@golgolor: /signed
It seems to be hard to bring the discussion above in the direction of personal flavour. The old-established meaning about AD is hard to challenge (I hope ,I've chosen the right words, not easy to translate expressions^^)

Again:
AD is still the one and only talent in prot-tree which give you a very small extra-amount of mitigation, respectively the only place for filler-points with a defensiv character.
...but 3 Skill-Points for a few bad boss-attempts, where in a very special situation, AD could perhaps be your lifeguard - to expensive. One point will fit well

I don't think AD is that "bad", but I think AD is not strictly necessary for raiding-progress as a tanking paladin....and I think WotN is the talent with the right functionality, a functionality AD never had.

CU
Cavalorn

P.S.
I specced 2 points in imp. HoJ, 20sec stun/interrupt sounds pretty good, how good? Ulduar will show...
Dualspecc is still free for building up an extra AoE-Tank/Trash-Tank talent-build, of course for this type, with 3 points AD
something like this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin ... rsion=9767

Nevertheless every example you have given above, is an situation where some other things went wrong earlier. Maybe AD let survive you this special situation, but I think the number of trys you will finish sucessfully after such an problem (dead MT-Healer, dead Off-Tank, DDs without accurate movement) are very very low. With or without AD

Well maybe it's just the guilds I've been in, but very few of my progression kills on hard bosses - Vashj, Kael, Archimonde, etc have had everything go right.

On my guilds first Vashj kill, one of our healers died in the first 12 seconds.

On our 2nd Kael kill, our MT died at about 10%, and after Kael one-shot a few DPS, our OT was able to get aggro and we got the kill.

On our first Kalecgos kill, our MT died at like 3% and we were able to finish him off before we wiped.

Hell, even on some easier fights like Leo, we had half our DPS die on our progression kill and got him down a couple seconds after he enraged.

Obviously we're not going to agree on whether or not AD in mandatory, and it might just be that we have slightly different definitions of mandatory (I consider it mandatory in the context of the trees as a whole, not for tanking in general). But I think dismissing it as only helping when you're going to wipe anyway is not accurate, especially considering how sloppy a lot of progression kills tend to be. Naxx is probably the exception to the rule as I can't think of any progression kills in there that were sloppy, besides probably 3 manning Heigen from 80% because people fail at dancing.

Whether you want to call it "mandatory" or not, there is nothing even remotely as useful you could pick up for those talent points.

To be fair, Divinity is remotely useful. Just not anything like as good.

Panzerdin wrote:To be fair, Divinity is remotely useful. Just not anything like as good.

Hence why I said remotely *as* useful

Rather depends how remote you like your remotes