Thursday, November 29, 2007

There's Something About Teso...




Is it his QQ tears of pure liquid malevolence? His masterful up-bidding of hopeful loot whores? His unflinching hatred of Psamtik? Or maybe it's the fact that he is a purple power ranger. Only Zordon knows for sure!

Bulwark of Azzinoth.


Oh man. The king of all tank shields. Our first attempt tonight ended with me getting clipped by an eyebeam I was sure I was clear of. Everyone had a good laugh and we hauled ass back up to the top of Black Temple for another crack at The Betrayer. Second attempt was just about flawless from 100% to 0. Things got a little hairy at around 15% when Draan dipped dangerously low. I like to think the 16k Lay on Hands I hit on him with 0 overheal redeemed my earlier misstep. Apparently Illidan thought so too, as he saw fit to smile on me again.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Quel'Serrar


Picked this up as a nostalgia item a few months back, mostly because I got a kick out of throwing the unfired blade down in front of BT bosses and screaming for the tank to make Naj'entus (or whoever) breath on it. But it needs an enchant! What should I do? Added a poll to the right.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Cloak Enchants


Finally picked up a new cloak, but I'm unsure what to enchant it with. I usually went with Dodge as the agility gives less avoidance and the melee crit is insignificant for Paladins. Ever since this whole "effective health" thing got started, armor has been the direction a lot of tanks are moving.

Generally I prefer the consistency that the armor provides, but at the same time if you dodge just one more swing from a boss because of your enchant, you probably avoided more damage than the 120 armor would have mitigated for the entire fight. I will probably go this route though, but any comments would be appreciated.

Bye ZA hat!

Illidan down tonight after we toyed with him with two P5 wipes. He dropped our second Skull of Guldan and our first Faceplate of the Impenetrable. A best in slot, miles ahead of T6 or anything else available. Thanks Illidan, now people won't make fun of my troll hat!


Edit: They might make fun of how bad T5 shoulders look with it though. ><

Monday, November 26, 2007

I hate AV.

How long before warriors in greens stop taunting Drek'thar off of me? I can't get over it no matter how hard I try. It pisses me off to no end, because it comes across as "here, let a real tank do it"

WTB WSG Weekend. Protection Paladins are a nightmare to kill as flag carriers.

New Helm!

Picked this up in Zul'Aman last night. Battleworn Tuskguard Seems like a nice upgrade over T5 in everything except spell damage. We'll see how it works out.

Also bought Battlemaster's Audacity for 75 Badges of Justice. It stacks with Shadowmoon Insignia which is some impressive burst health. I'll probably only use it for Hyjal trash, but it's definitely something fun to play with if you've got the badges.

A Synopsis of Paladin Tanking

I wrote this awhile back to familiarize my old guild with paladin tanks, since it's something of a foreign concept in 'traditional' raids.

A Synopsis of Paladin Tanking

I figured since protection paladins are just now starting to become raid viable I'd give you guys a better understanding to how I'm different than a warrior so you can adjust when I'm tanking. I figure tanking breaks down into two categories: Mitigation and Threat. I'll detail both here.

First, the most immediately noticable difference is that I use mana instead of rage. This means that I can go full out from 100% to dead on mobs because I don't need to wait for rage. You'll also notice that I have about 5000 mana with buffs. The only way I sustain a mana pool is from the paladin ability Spiritual Attunement. In a nutshell, spiritual attunement takes 10% of the amount I get healed and returns it to me in mana. The key is, I have to be getting healed by someone else. This means two things: 1) Earth Shield and Prayer of Mending don't give me mana when they heal me (not a huge deal) and 2) If things aren't doing damage to me and I'm not getting hit, I'll run out of mana and be useless.

Mitigation: I mitigate damage the same way a warrior does. I can dodge and parry attacks to completely avoid damage as well as blocking a portion of melee damage. I have a few talents that are different from the typical warrior mitigation talents. I'll list them here.

a) Righteous Fury: When active I take 6% less damage from all sources. Also, this talent makes my holy damage cause 90% more threat than normal.

b) Spell Warding: I take 4% less spell damage from all sources, flat out. It's just a talent and it's sort of a filler talent but hey at least it's here.

c) Improved Holy Shield: Increases my block percentage by 35% for the next 8 attacks. Each time I block with this buff up (10 second cooldown) I lose one charge. This is why paladins are ideal at tanking multiple targets, because I don't take crushing blows because shield block is almost always up. Holy Shield also has a reflective damage component which I'll explain further down.

d) Ardent Defender: This talent is what makes me hard to kill. While I don't have shield wall like a warrior does, I have automatic damage reduction whenever I'm low health. When I am at or below 35% health, I automatically take 30% less damage until I'm brought up to above that number. This means when I get hit hard by a boss it's rare that the next hit can kill me. With my current armor mitigation pre-raid buffs a boss that normally hits 0 armor targets for 10000 hits me for 4000. If I'm at or below 35% health, his 10000 damage attack only hits me for 2800 damage.

e) Weapon Expertise: I'll go into greater detail about this below, but this talent also (or perhaps primarily) affords us 10% extra total stamina. After all, tanking isn't about how much damage you don't take, it's how much you can take.

Threat: Where a warrior generates threat by using abilities with threat modifiers within them, my threat comes purely from the Holy Damage I deal. My white damage is nothing to write home about because I'm stuck using 41 dps spell damage weapons to tank with.

a) Reflective Damage: A large portion of our threat comes from reflective damage upon being hit. Holy Shield, Retribution Aura and Blessing of Sanctuary all trigger holy damage when you're hit while buffed with them. This is what enables us to 'AoE tank' so effectively. Consecrate is definitely the most visible in terms of our tanking abilities, but it's usefulness pales in comparison to Holy Shield. Damage done from Holy Shield has an additional threat modifier beyond Righteous Fury of 35%. Without blocks, our threat generation could be described as meager at best.

b) Direct Damage: Consecrate, damage from Seals & Judgement and other niche abilities make up the other half of our threat generation, and it too is also almost entirely holy damage.

Last, a word about demons and undead. There's nothing really special about paladins against undead and demons except that it opens us up to use 2 new threat generating abilities: Holy Wrath and Exorcism. Holy Wrath is a 2 second cast which hits all demons around me for ~1000 holy damage. Obviously I can't cast this while tanking because I'm getting hit, but sometimes I can pull with it. Holy Wrath is on a one minute cooldown. The other ability is exorcism. This is an instant cast ability that does 800-900 holy damage to my target, and it's on a 15 second cooldown. This is why on demon/undead mobs (Karazhan, Magtheridon, Hyjal/BT et al.) a paladin's threat output is exceptional. Having an extra heavy damage ability in our rotation makes for spectacular burst threat generation.