My spec:

First off, me: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alleria&n=Stevan

Personally, I'm working on taking anticipation totally out of my spec- first because most serious tanking gear has a huge bloat in defense to begin with, and second "that last bit" can be gemmed in right along with stamina.

Infact, I did just that to take that much out of anticipation and remain uncrushable in my current spec.

This is the spec I'm looking at transitioning into as my gear allows for it. SoCasino taken just because I had 1 point left over:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?0000000000000000000005305133000001525215510523000130000000000000

As it stands, I'm only 5% avoidance ( give or take ) from doing so, and with my next ideal upgrade should be much much closer to this end.

Thoughts/flames/suggestions? WTB.

Thanks in advance for feedback. =D

mmmm

First off, you're throwing "anticipation" and "uncrushable" around together.
Uncrushable is 102.4% dodge + parry + block + miss. Defense does help this passively, but that's not the main purpose of anticipation. Anticipation helps you hit the 490 defense cap for uncritable.

The new badge/ZA gear is SORELY lacking in defense. On purpose, no doubt, because of the massive amount of extra defense on the gear you mentioned.

There's also the factor of other gear sets - spell damage gear, resist gear... which will no doubt drop your defense down a smidge.

The extra 5 points you get make it seem like a nice idea, especially with the bloated prot tree. Buuuut trust me. You do NOT want to drop Anticipation.
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Fwiw, I dropped Reckoning and scaled down to 3/5 Anticipation to get PoJ and 1 point in Spell warding while keeping precision and maxxing out 1h spec. Still sitting comfortably at 491 defense (could get higher with gems, but don't need to).
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Aye, I'm aware that 490 def is uncritable, but every point of actual defense is also a smidge of avoidance- after dropping points down I had to pop 4 rating back into my gear in gems to keep that. Wasn't too painful to do though as I have like 4Kish more HP buffed than what I originally tanked prince with regardless. Plus, with the pants, that'll swing around and give me a bunch of block back- so I can even regem that out for even more stam, though that's a fun fun 60 badges or so away. =(

My main conscern at the moment as far as tanking is ZA. I got a rude awakening when I hit the mounted mob and his little debuff went off. He dropped me faster than if I'd taken off my shield durring prince. I responded to that by power-badgeing up and buying the chest piece for a huge stam/armor upgrade over my previous piece.

Anyway, that's just my thought process here, not trying to sound argumentative, and you're probably right anyway. I'll probably continue this way and check the water- and if it's poor I'll go back and just drop reck till the next expansion. ( even though I really don wanna =( ).

Anyway, thainks for all the feedback.

Grated alot of the gear on the vendor is defense starved, but!

http://www.wowwiki.com/Jungle_Stompers
http://www.wowwiki.com/Pauldrons_of_Stone_Resolve


As far as the resistance stuff, I'm not in a 25 guild- doubt it's gonna come up. And you were right about the 2H bit. I gots me a gorehowl that I like to run around and slap things with. Makes me /lol.

Not taking anticipation will seriously mess you up on any resistance based fights where defense rating becomes a premium.

Anticipation is arguably one of the "most bang for your buck" talent that you have in your entire prot tree. 5 points is:

0.8% crit reduction, parry, dodge, miss, and block.

That's 3.2% Avoidance (2.4% Pure) plus crit reduction.
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i think taking whole 5 points of anticipation is a bit overboard...though i'm trying to do a 4-point anticipation....anyone knows how much defense % does 1 point of anticipation falls into?

Also consider that dropping points in 1H specialization, drops _all_ dmg done, that is white dmg, judgements, ticks from concecration and so on.

Can tell you that I don't miss reckoning, drops points there first IMO.
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