Prot Pally

Polarside · Post by **Polarside** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:18 pm

Thanks for the info Lealla. I greatly appreciate it.

One more question though concerning judgements. My Pally is still low enough level that things are dead before I can judge 2 seals. I know it says only one judgement can be active, but I'm not clear on something yet. Say I use SoC, basically pull the mob by judging crusader then cast SoR. If I were to judge righteousness while the crusader debuff was still up, would it knock crusader off? I mean, I'm confused here because SoR, when judged, just causes damage. It doesn't add a debuff to the target like crusader. Sorry if I'm being a little irritating pain in the ass.

Lealla · Post by **Lealla** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:36 pm

It's a good question. Judgements that cause direct damage (Command, Righteousness, Vengeance), rather than a debuff, do not remove an existing Judgement. As long as you continue to hit the mob, Crusader will remain up unless you explicitly use a different debuffing Judgement (Wisdom, Light, Justice). Note that the stacking debuff from Seal of Vengeance is not a Judgement and doesn't count against your limit; neither is the stun proc from Seal of Justice.

While your Paladin is leveling up, you won't have access to Seal of Vengeance. So in that circumstance, Seal/Judgement of Righteousness will be your core threat generation abilities. Since you lack a pulling ability until at least level 50 (Avenger's Shield), you will want to consider starting with JoR rather than JotC to frontload threat while tanking.

While soloing, I wouldn't even bother with Crusader, just judge Wisdom to help keep your mana up if you find yourself drinking often. There's really no point in using a full Seal/Judgement rotation on non-elites, as they die too fast to justify the mana.

My favorite Protection trick is to ride through a batch of mobs, aggro all of them, then turtle up with Holy Shield, Consecration, Sanctuary, and Retribution Aura and let them kill themselves on me. Your only limitation is the one you always have when soloing: you may run out of mana. If you start hurting too badly, bubble and bandage. Your heals are horribly inefficient so don't waste mana on them unless you absolutely have to.

Polarside · Post by **Polarside** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 5:15 pm

Cool. Thanks for the clarification. I was kind of figuring it wouldn't, considering you said you're always judging every time you can. Cause if all judgements knocked the previous off, no matter what, I was like, damn thats a complicated rotation and pretty mana intensive. But yeah, my "rotation", if you even want to call it that right now, consist of me casting SoR, basically pullng the mob with JoR and recasting SoR. Once I do that on the first mob, it's just kill that mob, SoR is still up and I pull the next with JoR. I use a macro for Judgement and SoR so I can just clicky click one button. Anyways... Thanks again.

Obanswrath · Post by **Obanswrath** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 10:43 pm

Buddhaswrath tanking- written randomly so info is all over the place

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/chara ... ddhaswrath
the gear i normally have on changes a little but not too much I have mob set, main tank set, and healing set depending on the circumstance
my HP ranges fro m 13600-14300 depending on how i am setting up for the day, mana ranges from 5800 to 7000

FOR ALL-always have holy shield up and ALWAYS use blessing of sanctuary, it will aid in threat gen and lessen your dmg taken

for bosses
pull with avenger's shield
judge wisdom
pop avenging wrath (if solo tanking, if it is a boss that requires two tanks, you have to watch it, I have a tendency to out threat anyone else if i do not watch omen closely)
pop consecrate (everytime it comes up)
use SoV (on bosses i use SoV, mobs SoR is fine)
judge SoV every time it comes up
rinse and repeat

for mobs

pull with avenger's shield, and pray that CC can time things to hit after the shield hits
pull back a bit and consecrate careful to keep CC targets out of range
judge SoR or SoW depending if it is trash or a mob that will be up for a bit
use SoR over and over
consecrate, over and over

there are a few other things here and there but that is the basic gist of my tanking style
for pallies, spl dmg and AoE threat gen is paramount, that is what we do, we take LOTS of dmg so we require more heals than prot wars, but we keep lots of mobs occupied
also pray that people are hitting your target, you can keep aggro on tons of mobs, but only if people are not focused on the wrong target
ZA is one place that prot pallies shine also where you can find out if you are geared

one thing to keep in mind, a prot pally can be in the top 10 of overall damage done in a 25 man raid, and still be on heals for the bosses (i prefer to tank, but hey, I can switch out at the boss with no problem)

gear- keep in mind this is for post kara
check mine out
Ideally try for atleast 6k mana
starting out 12-13k health (shoot for 14)
SPL DMG!!!!! min of 400, I like having 500-600 myself, but i look at 500 as gravy
healing a pally tank is mana intensive so cranking out as much dmg as you can is important to alieviate the pressure on the healers by downing the boss fast
102% avoidance this is with HS, block is #1(shoot for about 25%, the trinket from SH helps) parry is #2 and dodge, eh 3rd, block is how we gen threat, dodge imo throws off healing cycles, and we do not get mana back from heals that do nothing
490 def
attack power means virtually nothing to a prot pally so do not worry about it

eh, that is the important stuff, I will organize this a bit more later so lealla and stask do not have heart attacks about how sloppy this was put together

Stask · Post by **Stask** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 11:27 pm

Obanswrath wrote:eh, that is the important stuff, I will organize this a bit more later so lealla and stask do not have heart attacks about how sloppy this was put together

LOL! No, I don't have heart attacks when I see people's sloppy spelling. I decided to put all that restless energy into correcting everyone's mistakes. Lyz calls me the "grammar nazi" now. She even made me the Guild Bitch one time because of that...

...but that's another story.

Stask · Post by **Stask** » Sun May 25, 2008 7:23 pm

Ok, I'm comparing Buddha's and Virek's prot spec and theyre identical. They mesh mostly with Bren's spec, but Bren has 0/5 in Shield Specialization, 3/5 Anicipation and 5/5 Reckoning while Buddha and Virek have 5/5 in Shield Specialization, 5/5 Anticipation and 0/5 Reckoning. Why is that?

Obanswrath · Post by **Obanswrath** » Sun May 25, 2008 9:02 pm

the talents we chose are better than reckoning (even though i cannot wait to hit 75 so i can have it again) shield specialization is muy importante, but most importantly is reckoning only happens when you get crit i think, i guessi should look stuff up before i give advice but eh, anyway, #1 for starter prot pallies is start to tank the lvl 60 instances and work your way up from there to heroics, to get practice, but for getting gear like doing kara i think that all paladins need to know how to heal, so that imo is really the first step

Arlan · Post by **Arlan** » Sun May 25, 2008 10:02 pm

Actually reckoning was changed a while ago, 5/5 reckoning now gives a 10% chance for an additional attack after being hit by any damaging attack.

Lealla · Post by **Lealla** » Sun May 25, 2008 11:53 pm

Reckoning improves threat generation while Avoidance and Shield Specialization improve mitigation. Although Protection Paladins make the most efficient use of post-cap Defense of any tanking class, you still get slightly better point-for-point value from other stats. For a newly minted Tankadin, you probably don't have enough gear to Defense cap without 5/5 Anticipation, so by all means drop as much there as you can.

Shield Specialization is one of those annoying talents, because while it does improve mitigation, unlike a Warrior it has no effect on threat generation. Buddha runs with 500+ SBV, while Brendore is still sitting around 230. SBV is valuable in inverse proportion to the per-hit damage inflicted by mobs, so while it's great for AoE tanking, it's only so-so for bosses.

Stask, at your level of tanking, I would max Anticipation but leave Shield Specialization alone. For gemming, get to love Enduring Talasites (blue/yellow sockets) and Glowing Nightseyes (red sockets). Once you cap Defense, any further blue sockets should have Solid Star of Elune.

Stask · Post by **Stask** » Mon May 26, 2008 6:52 am

Yeah, had a long talk with Buddha last night and I know now that the first thing I have to do is cap defense at 494 or thereabouts and the OTHER first thing I have to do is make sure my spell damage stays above at least 300.

I got the EJ macro that lets you know your Avoidance; with AS up, im at around 78-80 or so and I know I need to get to 102.2 Avoidance.