Showing posts with label The Immovable Object (Tankadin). Show all posts

Last time we took a quick look at some talent build, and touched on the basic skill rotation of a paladin. Today we will take a look at the other items that can be found in our toolbox.

Tanking Seals

Seal of Righteousness – This is your first Tanking seal. It generates good consistent threat at your lower levels. Once you reach level 50, this seal will proc off “Hammer of the Righteous” supplying extra threat on your off-targets.

Seal of Vengeance – This seal is a direct upgrade for Seal of Righteousness. It applies a stacking 15 second DOT to you target. This DOT is also applied to any targets hit by “Hammer of the Righteous” supplying significant extra threat on these mobs. Even in single target situations Seal of Vengeance generates more threat per second then Seal of Righteousness.

Seal of Wisdom – This seal is inferior for tanking, but it has its uses. When engaging a caster boss, Seal of Wisdom can be very useful. Because often time Caster boss’ will refuse or be reluctant to engage you in melee combat, you will quickly find yourself mana starved. Seal of Wisdom is one way to solve that problem. I also tend to use this when I significantly out gear something. For example when running a guildy through a lower level, or non-heroic instance.

Seal of Light – This is also a inferior tanking seal. It is very very rare that I ever use Seal of Light while tanking. The biggest exception is on Patchwerk. I use Seal of Light on that fight in order to help me healers in every way passable. I currently do not threat cap my DPS so this is not a problem for my guild. If you threat cap you DPS you should probably not do this. If you don't know what threat capping is, you should probably not do this. I will explain “Threat Capping” and other tanking jargon in a future post.

Blessings and Buffs

I already talked about buffs in a previous post, but I am going to cover them again in more detail now.

Blessing of Sanctuary – You want this buff up all the time. The mana returned from this Blessing by far our best source of mana regen. If you are the only Paladin in your group/raid, have this Blessing on yourself.

If you have more then 1 Paladin, you want Sanctuary first, then Kings, followed by Might, and finally with 4 or more paladins, Wisdom.

Righteous Fury – This buff is what makes you a tank. It increases your threat generation significantly, allowing you to hold agro on whatever your group is fighting. Without this buff, you are an over armored, underperforming DPS. Learn quickly to keep this buff up at all times. If I go down and get thrown a combat rez by my faithful Tree, the first thing I do is pop Righteous Fury, then taunt. As soon as I have the mobs attention, I begin getting my other buffs back in place.

Auras – Aura’s are pretty obvious. I don't think we need to spend a lot of time on them. Use the one that is most appropriate to what you are fighting, or your personal style. If you have two or more paladins in the group, one (likely the Tankadin) should have Devotion Aura up at all times, while the others rotate their aura as needed.

Sacred Shield – This is a nice mitigation buff. It lasts 30 seconds (1 minute if fully talented) and absorbs quite a bit of damage. I tend to keep this up on large pulls, or on boss’ that hit harder then normal.

Divine Protection – Another mitigation buff. This will reduce all incoming damage by 50% for 12 seconds. When used with Sacred Shield, this can at time reduce incoming damage to almost nothing. This is especially useful during enrage phases of boss fights. This CAN NOT be used within 30 seconds of Avenging Wrath.

Avenging Wrath – This is a fun ability. I like to use it while under the effect of heroism. Some Tankadins use it when they pull for a faster threat lead. I have found that i have enough burst threat that I do not need to. This CAN NOT be used within 30 seconds of Divine Protection or Divine Shield.

Divine Shield – While this can be used to clear debuffs, I do not suggest doing so unless you have a macro that will immediately cancel it. You will temporarily lose all agro while this buff is active. Having it active for more then 2 seconds can cause a group wipe. This is a very dangerous spell to use. I will post the macro I personally use for it later with a better explanation.

Taunts and Interrupts

Hand of Reckoning – I love this spell. It is just so useful. Hand of Reckoning is a 30 yard range single target taunt. This is a true taunt, giving you 3 seconds to re-establish control of the mob.

Righteous Defense – This spell is kind of weird. Its a practical taunt. Effectively this is what it does… Righteous Defense places a Debuff on a player causing them to become un-attackable to up to three mobs for three seconds and raises the paladins threat on those three mobs to be equal to that of the player being debuffed. Hopefully that makes sense.

The worst part about Righteous Defense is that it can be “skipped” or “leapfrogged.” A normal taunt forces the mob to attack you (the taunter) for 3 seconds. Righteous Defense simply makes the targeted player “un-attackable” for three seconds. This means that if circumstances are right, you may press “Righteous Defense” only to watch the mobs peal off for another DPSer or healer who was higher on the threat list. You may not totally understand this until you see it happen, and happen it will.

Hammer of Justice – This is a great spell. On most non-boss mobs it works as a stun allowing for some temporary crowd control. Against boss mobs, and things that are immune to stuns, it works as a spell interrupt, similar to a rouge’s kick.

Avenger’s Shield – This is really an opener, or a ranged pull. I, however, include it here because when talented, it now also silences caster mobs for 3 seconds. This is very nice because it allows you to pull a caster back to the group, without having to break line of sight. It can also be used mid combat to interrupt a heal.

Circumstantial Spells

Holy Wrath – This spell is amazing for one thing and one thing only… Large groups of undead. This spell especially shines in Culling of Stratholme, but can be used all through Naxxramas, and in many other wrath 5-man/heroics. It doesn't really fit into the rotation, but it is worth using anyway when circumstance permits.

Exorcism – This will always crit against undead. Because of that, when fighting undead boss’ I like to mix it into my rotation when it is off cooldown. Basically I replace every 3rd Hammer of the Righteous with Exorcism.

Hammer of Wrath – This has a 6 second cooldown and is useable after the mob drops below 20% health. In boss and single target fights, I replace Hammer of the Righteous with Hammer of Wrath in my rotation (when it becomes available) as it provides slightly better single target damage.

In Close

So there is the toolbox. There are other spells available to us, but the ones listed above and in my previous post will cover all our tanking needs. So get out there and practice. Keep working on your rotation. Remember to keep your buffs up. And try to mix in some of the situational stuff from time to time. Ill see you back here next time.

Light be with You,

~Bloodgarde

I want to talk just a little about Gemming as a Tankadin, or any tank for that matter. Forgive me for changing from my planned “Talents and Skills” post. That is still coming sometime next week.

There are two overall types of tanks in WOW. The Main Tank, and the Off Tank. Now the rules I am about to lay out are not always true, and infact have many excptions. That disclaimer stated, let me describe the two, and how they relate to Gemming.

Main Tanks stack two things above all else; Avoidance/Mitigation and stamina. Before you tell me that is three things let me clarify. The Main tank tries to reduce the damage he takes by the maximum amount possible. This is done by having large sums of avoidance and by mitigating as much as possible through block and armor. Likewise they want to have as many hit points as possible in order to better survive the damage that comes through.

Off Tanks stack a bit of everything. These guys generally are picking up adds, running around protecting healers, all kinds of things. Off Tanks stack stamina, avoidance and mitigation as well, but they also try to maximize threat. They give up some survivability to do that, but it’s necessary for “snap agro.”

So what’s the difference in gemming... Well it comes down to min/maxing.

The main tank will have the best stamina gems on the market in every single socket. The only exception will be a defense or defense/stamina gem in order to keep defense cap.

Off tanks are going to try to match a few useful socket bonus’. They may have any combination of stam, strength, and defense in there gems.

Whats the difference? Well lets look at....

Bolstered Legplates!

Now I am currently (at the time of writing) wearing these. They have 1961 armor, 68 strength, 123 stamina, 81 defense rating, 45 hit rating, a red socket, and a 6 stamina socket bonus. (These drop off Cyanigosa in Heroic Violet Hold by the way).

So the stats we are concerned with...

1 Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina

The Main Tank sees 1 Socket. They put in 1 blue stamina gem to simply maximize their hit points. (Best in game is 24).

The Off Tank sees, 1 Red Socket, + 6 Stamina for matching. They put in a Stamina/Strength gem. This gems gets them 8 Strength, 12 Stamina, and 6 Stamina for the socket bonus. That’s 18 Stamina. While this does not maximize health, it will boost their threat output.

At the end of the day, all other things being equal, the main tank will take just a bit more damage, and the off tank will produce just a bit more threat. If you multiply this across 14 to 16 pieces of gear, some with 2 or more sockets, this difference begins to build. The end result can be a difference of 1500 – 2000 hit points, and 350 - 500 attack power.

Neither of these methods of gearing are wrong. Quite often a main tank will have a threat set, and an off tank will have a stamina set.

There is one more type of gemming that can be done. It is very very rare however. Gemming for Avoidance is unusual but not unheard of. There are times when a highly specialized avoidance set can make an encounter much easier. This is rare however because of the amount of rating needed to make 1% of avoidance. Do to stat budgets, 1 point of stamina, strength of defense is worth significantly more then 1 point of avoidance. This type of gear set should only be built if you already have a stamina and threat set and have encountered a fight where this is needed.

So that’s my take on gemming. There is no wrong way to go about it, however what you do, will help to determine what roll you are best suited for.

Light be with You
~Bloodgarde

So the whole point of this blog is to help up and coming paladins learn the ropes. While I will do the best I can with Holy and Ret, Tanking is my specialty and I will probably spend a lot of time on the subject.

So where to start? Paladin tanking has come such a long way since I started playing. Back in that day being speced anything other then Holy would be met with ridicule. WoW first expansion, The Burning Crusade, changed all that. Paladins became viable tanks, ok (good at higher gear levels) PvE DPS, and continued their tradition of strong healing. It was amazing to watch the paladin evolve over the course of the expansion; suddenly we where in demand, it felt good.

Then Wrath came along. WOW. The class got a complete overhaul to several of its main mechanics. Ret came into its own as a DPS spec, and Prot truly began to feel comfortable. The boots finally fit so-to-speak. So lets take a look at the basics of paladin tanking in the current game world...

Buffs...
There are 4 things you should ALWAYS have on your buff bar as a Tankadin.

(Greater) Blessing of Sanctuary
I use greater because my other buffs all last 30 minutes. It is therefore convenient to use my greater blessing and have everything go out at once. Why do we use this blessing? The mana return in vital to keeping us running. If you are solo, a paladin without mana is a dead paladin. Likewise, in a group without mana you generate zero threat, this can, and probably will, cause a wipe.

Righteous Fury
This is your second most important buff. As a tank your job is to hold the attention of MOBs. This is done by generating more threat then anyone else in the group. Righteous Fury increases your threat from holy damage by 90%. As a Tankadin, almost everything we do causes holy damage in some way.

Your Aura
Your Aura is important. You should always have one up. Which one will depend on your situation. If you find yourself having trouble holding threat, use Retribution Aura. If you are in a magic heavy fight, use the appropriate spell resistance aura. I generally default to Devotion aura if nothing else fits.

Your Seal
This like your aura is somewhat dependant on what you are doing. When tanking I use Seal of Vengeance (Corruption) almost exclusively. The only exception is that in a fight where I am significantly mana starved, I will switch to seal of wisdom after establishing threat. This is a common problem for me in non-heroics as I out gear them.

So these buffs should never go down. They all last 30 minutes, and your aura should never go down. Personally I buff as soon as I log on, and keep myself buffed until I log off. It doesn’t matter what I do in-between.

The thing I see new paladins struggle with the most, and admittedly I had a problem with myself is keeping Righteous Fury up. I can not stress enough how important this is. Without Righteous Fury, you are over armored underperforming DPS. Teach yourself early to rebuff it and rebuff it often. Even when soloing, train yourself to keep this buff up.


Gear Stats...

I will at some point, check/update my starting gear list, and post it here. For now however, let me just run down the stats your looking for...

The Good...
Defense Rating – Cap is 540 Skill. Do NOT confuse Skill with Rating.
Stamina – Once you reach Defense Cap, stack stamina for hit points.
Strength – General comes with Stamina on plate. 2 Strength = 4 Attack Power (Threat) and 1 Block Value (Avoidance/Threat)
Avoidance (Shield Block Rating, Dodge Rating, Parry Rating) – Try to stack Dodge/Parry somewhat evenly. Take Block wherever you find it.
Expertise – Good stat, low on the totem pole. Stack it where you can get it, but not at the expense of anything above.
Block Value – Nice Stat, Stack it if you can. Keep in mind 2 Strength = 1 Block Value

The OK...
Hit – Not supper important, 3-5% is good, more then 8% is wasted.
Agility – OK state, Rare on Plate.

The Bad...
Haste/Crit – Generally come on DPS plate. If you get them fine, don’t go out of your way to stack them.
Intellect – If you get some that’s great, don’t go out of your way to find it. You will be relying on your mana regen to keep going, not your mana pool.
Attack Power – Typically a DPS stat, you should get all you need from Strength. Don’t go out of your way for this.

The Ugly...
Spell Power – Avoid this stat. If a piece of plate has spell power, give it to a holy paladin.
Sprit – Avoid this stat. It does NOTHING for you.
Armor Pen – Avoid this stat. This is a waste of item budget. DPS warriors and PvP rogues are about the only ones that like this stuff.

In short,
Defense (to 540 Skill) > Stamina > Strength > Avoidance > Expertise ~ Block Value

Anything beyond that is Icing. If you find Hit with 2 or 3 of the above stats, take it, you can use a little. If you only find 2 of that list on a piece of gear (Especially Stamina + Strength only) look real close, its probably DPS plate.


So that’s the down and dirty summery. Next time we will look at talents and skills to find out just what is in the Tankadins toolkit. After that we will do a basic sum up and move on to applying all this information to the... “real” world.

For the Light
~Bloodgarde