Thinking about Dropping Ardent Defender

Well, for me, it's looking more and more interesting to drop defleciton for reckoning instead if I need the threat.
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Right on Jere, and I think that is going to very also for most people. I'm sure there will be some strong disagreements to this but please understand that everyone has their own beliefs. For me it would have to be pretty overwhelming like 1 saved death a week in a situation where it would have caused a wipe and more specifically on a boss fight. If I die and another tank picks it up and boss goes down or prevents a wipe then I would rather have the additional threat generation or additional utility features.

I also have to take into account, if I could be mitigating more damage and using less healer mana that could be used for raid members. That should weigh in also.

Zuljin: DM 3249 (0,79%) DT 423610, DA 3
On one berserker pat before Malacress: DM 4305 (6,07%) DT 70887 DA 2
Nalorakk: DM 5239 (1,54%) DT 320002, DA 1

That's what I got from Zul'aman at least.

One-shotted Malacress and Zul'jin, so well, I wouldn't have called them progression fights exactly.
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Well, I will say AD did well tonight. It saved me twice when I tanked our guild's first take down on the hex lord malacross. and mitigated around 1.9% of all the damage I took tonight for the whole run. Not too shabby.
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Ew a llaner, I mean /wave.
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In response to the OP.

The bottom line is that you are choosing between a minor boost to threat over something that is a very real survivability boost. I know your tracker is not showing that atm, but give it time.

There are at least four wipes I can think of off the top of my head that AD has prevented recently for me. The first two were against magtheridon oddly enough. One time I went down to 487 health after taking an AD reduced hit, and another time I went down to just over 1000 after taking an AD reduced hit. I had close to 22.5k raid buffed and had ironshield potions/shammy crit heal buff so his hits were weak enough and my health high enough to make the talent useful on that fight.

The difference AD made was between yet another wipe with our avoidance loving, low stam bear tank and my guild at the time's first kill. Same situation with that guild's second kill.

The other two I can think of have been in the last two weeks. The first was when we unexpectedly pulled a murloc pack on the way to tidewalker and I was hovering at 3k-1k health for a good 15 seconds as healers were spamming on me while I tanked the whole pack in my non block value set.

The second was tanking the shaman add on the fathom lord fight and there are numerous times when AD has saved me against that monster of a shammy. Seeing my health at 400ish.. or 700ish after taking one of the cataclysm bolts + windury is always fun indeed.

Each one of these situations my healers were stressed. These were progression or "oh %$^&" moments where things weren't going smoothly. If I didn't find myself pushing things to the limit in heroics, raids, etc I probably wouldn't value this talent as much. Seeing as I tend end up pushing the envelope rather often, I can't recommend tanking without it
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Zeal without wisdom is folly

Hehe nice to see you too

As far as relevent discussion to Ardent Defender goes there have been times where I felt it's skipped too much to be useful but there have also been many times where it's saved my life and that is why I keep it.
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This is an interesting discussion for sure. I recently installed the FuBar addon from these forums and tested it out the last 2 weeks. Our first night in Hyjal it saved me 52 times.....52. As stated before, this is situational for numerous reasons....me grabbing way to many Aboms and healers not having any experience in there.

In BT the other night....its saved me 3. lol. So it truly does depend on what you are doing as to its worth. I am lucky to have a full time ret paladin who rocks our dps meters. We have a melee dps group called the "pain train" He gets top 3 dps'er in the raid everytime. But threat is never really an issue for me. I tend to wear a bit more spell damage in our raids for my niche role.

I would never ever get rid of the talent personally. My role as tank is to survive 1st and foremost and I can not justify any other talents that I could take over that. 5 points is steep for sure....but I am willing to spend it.
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Boomadin on the weekends...pardon the horrendous tanking stats.

I know that AD rockz, but hey: 52 times? Are you kidding?

It's probabely a good idea to bring some additional Free Action Potions with you next time in Hyjal, so you don't have to be scared to death each time you pull an abom too much...
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iuno i kinda like pulling in a heroic realising the healer is afk. Spending half the fight in god zone and living through it.
Potting at 1k hp ftw!
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No I am not kidding lol. I was amazed. It is truly my fault for sure....AW + Holy Wrath is just toooooo tasty to pass up lol. But yeah.....I sure hope this week it is much much much lower then that hehe.
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Boomadin on the weekends...pardon the horrendous tanking stats.

Just as a note, if you are using the addon ArdentFu to measure saves, bear in mind that the Death's Averted is not fully accurate in that it gives a low end value and does not count all the possible life saves due to AD. It does a good job and catches all the direct life saves, which is the majority, but will miss saves due to a combination of hits sometimes. So the number given is on the low end and there are possibly more deaths averted than what it indicates.

I think the same is true for Tankadin, but not totally sure on that.
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