Cookie Cutter??

With the 3.1 talent build pretty much 99.9999999% confirmed for the patch.... which unfortunately has been delayed (won't be applied to servers next wednesday as originally planned now... maybe the week after) has there been a generally agreed cookie cutter talent build?

I have been 58/13 since hitting level 80
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000001450053500310251533312321502301002000000000000000000

I havent had any problem holding aggro and my average dps has floated between 1400 and 1900 depending on buffs and what/where I am tanking so I have never really found any need to spec to the 5/56/9 build that seems to be favourable...

I have found too many Holy and Retri paladins without Blessings of Kings and many many Death Knights without Unholy Aura to increase speed so I have always needed to keep my own BoK and PoJ.... this has been the main reason for my sticking with 53/13. I've also found that being in a raid or group with maybe 2 or 3 other paladins that they don't seem to run aura's to compliment my own. There are a lot of other non tank paladins out there who seem to raid/group fight the same way as they would doing when soloing... frustrating to say the least.

My main question is now... IS there a cookie cutter raid tank build that everyone has more or less agreed that works well.
I would like to keep PoJ as I find it extremely useful but if it needs to go to enable a better build then it needs to go.
I've checked out the wowhead 3.1 talent builder and got this so far...

59/12 build
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sZE0tAMuMGsIufdts00b

Is there anything that desperately needs changing or is that build solid enough to enable me to tank as efficiently as I have previously?

Just to add a couple of points to my post above.

I know a lot of the tanks who use this forum are very serious about gearing up and the actual graphs/mechanics of tanking and a lot of examples of these are with T7.5 gear or with items from 25mans.

Unfortunately being part of a small guild with limited time my equipment is restricted to a few lucky drops and assorted crafted/boss loot from heroics.

I do intend gearing up as much as I can but I am finding it difficult as my only way of doing this is with PUG's... which as you can imagine doesnt always go as planned.

The spec I have created in the above post is for my current equipment... not for future equipment.

Here's your base:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sZV0tAbuMusIufdxo

If you prefer, you can spec into Imp. HoJ instead of DG. That's probably more of a 10-man spec though.

Like you, I prefer PoJ. You can either go with HotC or Imp. BoM and the rest into Benediction. After PoJ, you have 6 points to work with. You can go with increased threat via conviction/crusade, increased healing received via divinity, increased mana regen via SA, or any combination of them.

I plan on speccing for increased threat at first, going 3/5 conviction and 3/3 crusade. If it ends up I don't need it, I'll move those points into Divinity and SA.

I'm going to do this:

http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sVZE0tAbuMGsIufdxo

As far as I'm concerned, not taking Divinity, Divine Sacrifice, and Divine Guardian would make a spec sub-optimal for a tanking build. There is no reason currently for me to go 18 points in ret for crusade. I just don't need the threat. Add in that the 4 points on tier 2 are a complete waste, and that the threat from SotP is similar to the threat from Conviction. I think the utility and extra healing from Prot are worth the minimal threat loss. If I have threat problems (haha, if I do the rest of the tanks are screwed) I can spec crusade, but until then I'll be going for max survivability/utility.

Edit: And there is one point left that is going...somewhere...

Divinity is not even close to a useful tanking talent.

I wouldn't give it THAT hard of a rap. Is it a great talent? No, but I'll probably pick it up. I don't think it's quite as "useless" as everyone makes it out to be.

And I thought I being gentle

I removed the "semi" from before useful.

Divinity seems useful to me. 5% additional healing is like 5% damage reduction as far as the amount of healing needed goes.

Spectrum wrote:Divinity seems useful to me. 5% additional healing is like 5% damage reduction as far as the amount of healing needed goes.

But healers aren't able to use a spell that heals for 5% less. They're still using max rank Gheal, HL, etc.

But the debate has been had before. Divinity is worse than mitigation, but better than nothing.

Jasari wrote:

Spectrum wrote:Divinity seems useful to me. 5% additional healing is like 5% damage reduction as far as the amount of healing needed goes.

But healers aren't able to use a spell that heals for 5% less. They're still using max rank Gheal, HL, etc.

But the debate has been had before. Divinity is worse than mitigation, but better than nothing.

This is exactly why I will be taking it. Until I need threat, there is no reason not to take even the marginal survivability Divinity provides.

I'm thinking I'll go with http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sZV0tAbuMusIufdts0hbc since threat from DPS is going to increase quite a bit while it seems ours won't scale at the same pace

Brokenone wrote:This is exactly why I will be taking it. Until I need threat, there is no reason not to take even the marginal survivability Divinity provides.

Indeed.

Rather than kick off YADT (yet another Divinity thread), I'd point you to mconeone's post. That *is* the base spec (with the caveat that the points in DS/DG can be spent however you want in early Prot). As long as you have the base pretty much anything goes, but the strongest options are probably:

0/53/18 (Crusade Spec, threat-oriented with PoJ option)
12/53/6 (Imp LoH Spec, for an additional proactive cooldown option)
5/60/6 (takes both 5/5 Div and DS/DG)

I can't be bothered to make links for each of those builds, but if you need clarification please ask.

moduspwnens wrote:

Brokenone wrote:This is exactly why I will be taking it. Until I need threat, there is no reason not to take even the marginal survivability Divinity provides.

Indeed.

Except that Crusade is not just threat, it's dps as well. There's a decent argument to be made that crusade is better for your survival than divinity. Hell there's a stronger argument to be made that Aura mastery in place of TbtL is a better trade.

The chances of divinity saving a wipe are astronomical.

Divinity CAN save your life... Will it? Who knows. Probably not very often.

That doesn't mean it's a worthless talent, it just provides the worst kind of benefit. Why? Because you have to be healed THEN take another hit that would have killed you, had the heal been 1-5% smaller (and only if it wasn't over-healing in the first place, which a lot of healing in the current content [because of the current heal-style] is).