How much Spell DMG is enough?

but the good hunters know how to feign death which drops there threat back to zero for them to start again

And then it comes back around again... our top DPS is a BM hunter who gets pissed about having to stand around autoshooting in the event of a resisted feign. Usually I can throw her a salv mid-fight if things go bad, and it'll tide her over.

(I agree salv is debatable for hunters, though).
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Sweeney: 70 Paladin, Runetotem

As has already been mentioned, the right answer varies =)

Realistically, +200 is sufficient T4/heroic content. If someone pulls aggro it is because they are overnuking. In 90% of the cases, when someone pulls aggro, it is their fault (at least, that has been my experience).

T5+ content, really depends on how "talented" your dps is. I used to do heroics with this T6 elemental shaman - personally I thought he was a terrible player, just nuking like crazy, and his thinking was that it was solely my responsibility to hold aggro. =) And, at that time I had around 300 spell damage.

By now, since I do not main tank in my guild, but mostly offtank, trash, etc..I have the luxury of stacking spell damage, so I have around +550 for heroics/raids (unless I MT something) unbuffed. Depending if I am lucky enough to get a shaman in a group, raid buffed, I can push 8-900.

Needless to say, my stamina takes a hit, but I still have ample amount. =)

To answer your question, in general...+200 is the minimum - imho - for a level 70 paladin tank (and it is in the low end).

+300 for T4 content...

+500 for T5+ content.

We are in T5 content and I run with about 425 spell dmg unbuffed in my boss tanking gear and never have threat issues.

I had around 300-375 for most of our T4 content and never had issues either.

I have been in kara on my rogue with a diff pally tank who only had about 200 spell dmg...and he did ok, but would have been well served with 25)+ for Kara (easily attainable with a S1 mace or the new heroic MrT Mace).
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I've been dealing with this issue too.

It seems that paladin threat is really, really low compared to warriors at my level (t6). I seem to plane off a lot of times around 600-700 tps and there seems to be nothing I can do about it. I tank with just under 540 spell damage.

I don't know... if your raid's dps is in nearly full t6, and everybody's doing 1500-2500+ dps, how on earth are you supposed to compete with that? Are you just supposed to say, "Hey I know our warriors can do tons of threat and maintain/control it, but please throttle your dps for me because I'm going to be doing like 800 tps" ??? That seems lame and unfair. But it seems to me that, even in the best gear in the world (I have nearly full hyjal/bt gear including the 4-piece bonus of t6) in order to maintain boss tanking survivability stats, you have to really gimp your threat to a distant third place behind warriors and druids.

Am I missing something or is this dreadfully accurate?

700 tps is awefully low for 540 spell damage. I have no problem doing 1000+tps with that much spell damage on bosses. At the moment the warrior MT and I have pretty comparable tps except on some trash when I cant consecrate do to cc, of course.
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The set I use puts me at about 20k HP fully buffed.
Trinkets I use are the autoblocker and Figurine of the Colosuss
Prehealing doesn't tend to be a problem, and if it looks iffy I pop both trinkets (900+ BV and 120+ heal back from every block). The 2 min cooldowns means they are pretty much back up for every wave.

If I keep the same gear but swap flasks and food I'll be at 530 dmg and down ~850HP, which is what I'm going to try out next week.
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My AOE Block set puts me at 650 BV and 501 SD. With that I sit at 19100 HP standard raid buff. If I Flask, (not until after the 3rd boss) I will also go with stam food. I rarely have to eat spell food anymore, in my MT set I sit at 510 and about 19.3k health, and 585 BV.

But I have up my dodge to sit at 20% unbuffed. So I sit at 21/16/20 for mitigation unbuffed.

In the end its your raid dps that matters most for you. My dps knows that AOE targets I pick up they count to 5 and go. Single, wait for 1st judgment. Single no AS, wait for first conc and judge. Single, no Conc no AS, wait for 2nd judgment.(I will pull with first one).

For all booses its when wings PoP.
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Evil does not fight fair, so nor do I

For he who dares !

I MT'd Kara with +161 spell damage with no problems.

It depends on your DPS. If you're in a typical Kara guild, with people in half blues/half t4, +161 should be fine.

If you're in a t5+ guild, you'll need to ramp it up.
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