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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