In these next few posts, I want to be able to go more in-depth in all aspects of paladin tanking. The first post was meant as a generalization.
Strength
This stat is important for many aspects of paladin tanking in Wrath of the Lich King. This stat increases attack power. The spells that paladins have now scale off of attack power as well as spell power. Strength also adds to block value. This is a very important stat for tanking because as you increase your block value, the more damage you mitigate each time you block an enemy attack. Block value also increases the threat generated from Shield of Righteousness, which is by far the highest threat-generating, single-target spell available to the paladin.
Intellect
This stat increases your mana pool just like any other class that uses mana, and also increases your chance to crit with spells. Although the increased chance to crit with spells helps with generating loads of threat, you get more spell crit from getting critical strike rating than you would from intellect. Also, you shouldn't need to worry about how much mana you have. You have many ways of regenerating it during combat. Any more mana let's you cast more spells at a time, but this is still not a stat you should focus on.
Stamina
This is by far the most important primary stat for any tank. The more health you have, the more of a safety net you create for your healer(s) in groups and raids. Also, if you spec into the right talents, this stat is increased by a total of 12%. For example, if you have 1000 stamina, that instead becomes 1120 stamina. This is practically free health for you and everyone else to enjoy.
Agility
This stat increases your critical strike percentage, armor, and dodge rating. The critical strike rating is negligible, and so is the armor and dodge rating gained. The agility:armor ratio is 1:2 currently, but it is not an effective stat to increase based on this alone. Also, it is much easier to raise your dodge percentage by aquiring dodge rating instead of agility as 1 point of agility gives far less dodge percentage than 1 dodge rating.
Spirit
This stat increases your health regeneration rate outside of combat and also mana regeneration while not casting. As a tank, you're always casting, so the mana regeneration component is worthless. As for the health regeneration it only applies out of combat, so there's not much spirit can help with in either case.
Ok, so now I've told you about the primary stats. Now it's time to get to some of the secondary stats. Note, I will only list the stats that, as a tank, you should be looking for.
Defense
This is by far one of the most important stats to raise if you want to have any success at tanking raid bosses, heroics, etc. Raising this stat requires that you get items which have "+ to defense rating" on them. It takes approximately 4.62 defense rating to get 1 Defense. This is important, because you will be needing a LOT of defense rating. The defense cap for tanking paladins is 540 (which is 689 defense rating). This ensures that bosses or mobs in any lvl 80 instance, heroic, or raid can get a critical hit on you. This alone mitigates 1/2 the damage a mob could normally inflict on you had you gathered no defense rating at all. There is an advantage to raising defense past the cap for two reasons: You allow more room to gain other stats while losing some defense rating, and you continue to add to your dodge, parry, and block percentages by a small amount.
Dodge rating
This stat increases the percentage chance in which you dodge an incoming attack. When you dodge an attack, the opponent inflicts 0 damage on you. You mitigate ALL the damage the mob would have inflicted on had the attack landed. This is VERY GOOD in terms of your survivability. Although, your dodge percentage suffers from diminishing returns as a fight goes on. So it is not a good idea to gather up pure dodge rating (and making sure not to gimp your defense to go below the 540 defense cap).
Parry rating
This stat increases the percentage chance you have in parrying an incoming attack. When you parry an attack, the opponent inflicts 0 damage to you. You, like dodging an attack, mitigate ALL the damage the mob would have inflicted had the attack landed. This is VERY GOOD in terms of survivability. Another side-effect of parrying an attack is it has the potential to lower your attack speed for your next auto-attack. If you're using Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Vengeance, this equals more threat because you basically get a free attack on the mob/boss. Of course, like dodge percentage, parry chance suffers from diminishing returns too, and should not be too-heavily focussed on.
Shield block rating
This stat increases the percentage chance you have of blocking an incoming attack while wearing a shield. When you block an attack, you prevent a certain amount of damage to be inflicted on your character. The amount of damage you mitigate this way is determined by your block value. Unlike dodge and parry chance, block chance does NOT suffer from diminishing returns as a fight goes on. A good thing about raising your block rating is allowing your Holy Shield to proc more, giving you more oppurtunities to get threat on an attacking mob.
Shield block value
Every time you block an attack with a shield, you prevent a certain amount of damage to pass through to your character. Your character's block value is the amount of damage you prevent every time you block an attack. By raising your block value, you can further and further recieve less and less damage from an enemy's attack. This is VERY GOOD as it allows your health to dwindle at a less alarming rate when you block an attack. For example, you have 800 block value. The boss can normally deal ~5800 damage on you. When you block, you drop the damage he deals to you down to 5000. Even though this is good, let's assume the boss has an attack speed of less than 2.0 seconds. This doesn't quite look so good now. Now let's assume you have 1800 block value. Now every time you block, you reduce the amount of damage the boss deals to you down to 4000. This allows for a MUCH smoother damage intake for healers to manage.
Expertise rating
This stat is extremely helpful for tanking. The more you have of this stat, the less likely you make it for an enemy mob/boss of dodging or parrying an attack. This helps with two things: generating threat and mitigating damage. Remember, if a mob/boss parries an attack, you basically reset their swing timer, allowing them a free attack on you. With a boss that can easily hit you for 8500+ damage per hit that's not good at all. Plus, you lose out on the threat that you would have gotten had you hit the mob. This is the same case with dodge, except a boss doesn't get a free attack on you when it dodges. Raising expertise, however, isn't an ideal stat to focus on primarily, and should be more of a stat in which you get it when you get it.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Paladins in a Whole New Light
Once again, paladins are by far one of the best tanks World of Warcraft has to offer its population. No more do we have to be slaves to offtanking trash mobs constantly in raids and dreaming about maybe tanking one or two bosses that warriors were clearly best-suited for. Now, we have an even playing field. Our time to shine has come, and thanks to Blizz we can't really disappoint groups and raids with our tanking style anymore. Our single-target threat generation has received a massive boost, as well as our survivability. Let me tell you why.
One of the major changes that Blizzard has done is to change the mechanics of most of the tanking abilities paladin tanks thrive on. First off, Blessing of Sanctuary has increased its usefulness dramatically for raid situations. Before patch 3.0.2, Blessing of Sanctuary was a buff not even a prot pally would use for raiding unless they already had other paladins in the raid covering kings and wisdom buffs. Now, Blessing of Sanctuary not only increases our survivability more than Blessing of Kings, but it also gives us more of an oppurtunity to regenerate mana during a fight than Blessing of Wisdom. Blessing of Sanctuary now gives a 3% damage reduction to incoming damage from all sources, including ranged and spell attacks. Also, when you dodge, block, or parry an attack you gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of your total mana depending on which tanking class you are. If you're tanking multiple mobs (and usually as a paladin tank that's what you're made for) you're dodging, parrying, and blocking a lot. If that isn't enough, paladins also have Divine Plea. This gives back 25% of your mana over 15 seconds, but reduces healing done by your spells by 20%. It's ideal for paladin tanking because you aren't healing yourself ever except for Lay on Hands, and Lay on Hands isn't affected by Divine Plea. Also, Spiritual Attunement is still in play, so you now have 3 ways to efficiently regain mana while tanking (4 if you have another pally with you that uses Wisdom on you).
Paladins have many ways of generating threat now. Most of their spells, believe it or not, scale as much off of attack power as it does with spell power. This is a good thing because you do not see any gear in Wrath of the Lich King expansion that has spellpower or spell hit (at least on plate, anyways). Now instead of having variations of plate tank gear for warriors, death knights, and paladins, they all have the oppurtunity to roll on the same gear. Consecration, Judgement, Exorcism, and Avenger's Shield all scale now off of attack power as well as spell power. Because of this, strength becomes more of an importance now than ever before. Strength also adds to shield block value at a rate of 2 strength/1 block value. This especially helps out with Shield of Righteousness which scales with block value. This ability generates very high threat on a single target, which, paired with Libram of Obstruction (the 15 emblem of heroism relic for tanking paladins) generates huge spikes of it. Also, Seal of Vengeance now procs on almost every hit that connects to an enemy, generating massive amounts of threat-per-second, and even procs when you use Hammer of the Righteous which hits three targets for FOUR TIMES your weapon's dps. Attack power raises the dps of a weapon, so that's all the more reason to get strength as your primary threat tool. With threat tools like these, you can now accumulate threat on a single target as well as any other tank can.
Here is another reason why Paladin tanks have gotten so much better since The Burning Crusade. Survivability. Before patch 3.0.2, Holy Shield lasted for 10 seconds and had a 10 second cooldown. On slow, hard-hitting bosses this was bad because you had the chance during that small window of time of Holy Shield running out and the time of reapplying it for the boss to get a crushing blow on you. Granted, it wasn't very likely that would ever happen, but it's possible. Now, Holy Shield still lasts for 10 seconds and has an 8 second cooldown. 8 seconds! Even though Blizzard took out crushing blows (since now it's mobs four levels higher than you that can do it instead of three) this is really good. Now you can stay protected for more than 10 seconds at a time without worrying. Also, Blizzard gave paladins a really good treat. Divine Protection used to be a spell that made paladins immune to all incoming damage for 10 seconds, but paladins never used it once they got Divine Shield (Rank 2) that had the same effect for 12 seconds. Now, Divine Protection reduces all incoming damage by 50% for 12 seconds. That is a HUGE buff for paladin tanks because they didn't necessarily have many emergency buttons before. It's now much like a Shield Wall for pally tanks who need to activate it, and it's on a 4-minute cooldown. How cool is that!?
Many complaints have arrived that Warriors, Paladins, and Death knight tanks would be rolling on a lot of the same gear, and would therefore have more competition in raids. In a way this is true, but in a way it's not. Death Knights can't use shields, so shield block rating and block value are useless to them. Warriors have Shield Block, so if they get any more shield block rating, more and more would be pushed off the attack table. Therefore, paladins are really the only class that can benefit from shield block rating. Warriors and Death Knights both need stamina, that is true, but paladins need it even more. Stamina does three things for a paladin, whereas it only does one thing for a Death Knight and two things for a Warrior:
One of the major changes that Blizzard has done is to change the mechanics of most of the tanking abilities paladin tanks thrive on. First off, Blessing of Sanctuary has increased its usefulness dramatically for raid situations. Before patch 3.0.2, Blessing of Sanctuary was a buff not even a prot pally would use for raiding unless they already had other paladins in the raid covering kings and wisdom buffs. Now, Blessing of Sanctuary not only increases our survivability more than Blessing of Kings, but it also gives us more of an oppurtunity to regenerate mana during a fight than Blessing of Wisdom. Blessing of Sanctuary now gives a 3% damage reduction to incoming damage from all sources, including ranged and spell attacks. Also, when you dodge, block, or parry an attack you gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of your total mana depending on which tanking class you are. If you're tanking multiple mobs (and usually as a paladin tank that's what you're made for) you're dodging, parrying, and blocking a lot. If that isn't enough, paladins also have Divine Plea. This gives back 25% of your mana over 15 seconds, but reduces healing done by your spells by 20%. It's ideal for paladin tanking because you aren't healing yourself ever except for Lay on Hands, and Lay on Hands isn't affected by Divine Plea. Also, Spiritual Attunement is still in play, so you now have 3 ways to efficiently regain mana while tanking (4 if you have another pally with you that uses Wisdom on you).
Paladins have many ways of generating threat now. Most of their spells, believe it or not, scale as much off of attack power as it does with spell power. This is a good thing because you do not see any gear in Wrath of the Lich King expansion that has spellpower or spell hit (at least on plate, anyways). Now instead of having variations of plate tank gear for warriors, death knights, and paladins, they all have the oppurtunity to roll on the same gear. Consecration, Judgement, Exorcism, and Avenger's Shield all scale now off of attack power as well as spell power. Because of this, strength becomes more of an importance now than ever before. Strength also adds to shield block value at a rate of 2 strength/1 block value. This especially helps out with Shield of Righteousness which scales with block value. This ability generates very high threat on a single target, which, paired with Libram of Obstruction (the 15 emblem of heroism relic for tanking paladins) generates huge spikes of it. Also, Seal of Vengeance now procs on almost every hit that connects to an enemy, generating massive amounts of threat-per-second, and even procs when you use Hammer of the Righteous which hits three targets for FOUR TIMES your weapon's dps. Attack power raises the dps of a weapon, so that's all the more reason to get strength as your primary threat tool. With threat tools like these, you can now accumulate threat on a single target as well as any other tank can.
Here is another reason why Paladin tanks have gotten so much better since The Burning Crusade. Survivability. Before patch 3.0.2, Holy Shield lasted for 10 seconds and had a 10 second cooldown. On slow, hard-hitting bosses this was bad because you had the chance during that small window of time of Holy Shield running out and the time of reapplying it for the boss to get a crushing blow on you. Granted, it wasn't very likely that would ever happen, but it's possible. Now, Holy Shield still lasts for 10 seconds and has an 8 second cooldown. 8 seconds! Even though Blizzard took out crushing blows (since now it's mobs four levels higher than you that can do it instead of three) this is really good. Now you can stay protected for more than 10 seconds at a time without worrying. Also, Blizzard gave paladins a really good treat. Divine Protection used to be a spell that made paladins immune to all incoming damage for 10 seconds, but paladins never used it once they got Divine Shield (Rank 2) that had the same effect for 12 seconds. Now, Divine Protection reduces all incoming damage by 50% for 12 seconds. That is a HUGE buff for paladin tanks because they didn't necessarily have many emergency buttons before. It's now much like a Shield Wall for pally tanks who need to activate it, and it's on a 4-minute cooldown. How cool is that!?
Many complaints have arrived that Warriors, Paladins, and Death knight tanks would be rolling on a lot of the same gear, and would therefore have more competition in raids. In a way this is true, but in a way it's not. Death Knights can't use shields, so shield block rating and block value are useless to them. Warriors have Shield Block, so if they get any more shield block rating, more and more would be pushed off the attack table. Therefore, paladins are really the only class that can benefit from shield block rating. Warriors and Death Knights both need stamina, that is true, but paladins need it even more. Stamina does three things for a paladin, whereas it only does one thing for a Death Knight and two things for a Warrior:
- It increases our survivability by allowing a larger and safer health pool for healers to heal
- It increases the threshold for Ardent Defender to activate
- It increases our spell power by 30% of our stamina
Now, I know that I said earlier that paladins really don't rely all that much on spellpower anymore, but that's because the talent Touched by the Light takes care of it. Plus, many of our spells still scale with spellpower as well as attack power, but two very important spells shy away from attaining spellpower directly: Hammer of the Righteous and Shield of Righteousness. Neither of these spells scale off of attack power, and best of all, they have a 6-second cooldown. Compared to the cooldowns on Consecration (8 seconds, 10 seconds with Glyph of Consecration), Holy Shield (8 seconds), and Judgement (10 seconds, 8 seconds if specced into Improved Judgements), these spells are going to be up far more often than those three spells, therefore generating more and more of your threat as a fight goes on.
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