Loladin questions

[Silk]

Hi all,

Got a couple of upcoming paladins (myself and Solemn) and Was hoping for some solid feedback to the following questions:

General

I've noticed the early holy talent seem to really suck. So haven't put any points in holy at all for levelling - going for 0/19/52. Wanted to check this is a good spec and I'm not missing anything obvious (we are breezing through all content, can do 3-man elites but not 5-man).

Are auras raid-wide or group-wide?

Raid - Holy

Need to know core talents, and what sort of gear to go for i.e. primary stats (spell power, mp5 or spirit? etc.)

Also general healing tips, which spells to use and when. Typical healer scenarios (one of us is contemplating trying healer but it's a whole new playstyle so e'd be completely new to it)

Bubbles - which, and when and on whom?
Should I ever dps?

Raid - Tank

Need to know core talents, and what sort of gear to go for i.e. primary stats (Defense, stam? etc.)

I am thinking of being a tank..rarrr. Could use some help getting together some initial bits.. I know we have capable smiths so was wondering if there were any options for lower-than-AH costs (already bought the shield).

Aggro management - which abilities do I use and when (same question for OT and MT)
Bubbles - which, and when?

Raid - Retri

Need to know core talents, and what sort of gear to go for i.e. primary stats (AP, crit?, etc.)
Also is this a viable raid addition for DPS? Do any talents stack such as the 3% haste one?

Bubbles - which, and when and on whom?

PvP

Put simply, what is the "best" spec? I am guessing retri, with some points in prot (pretty much how I'm specced now)?

 

[Skcornnelg]

Raid - Holy

Need to know core talents, and what sort of gear to go for i.e. primary stats (spell power, mp5 or spirit? etc.)

Also general healing tips, which spells to use and when. Typical healer scenarios (one of us is contemplating trying healer but it's a whole new playstyle so e'd be completely new to it)

Bubbles - which, and when and on whom?
Should I ever dps?

Hey,

Just thought I'd share my experience as Holy.

I was Retri up until I hit 80 and I respec'd straight away so I couldnt tell you anything about raiding as Retri or Prot because I havent done so in WotLK.

The stats I look for as Holy are - Int-Spellpower-Crit-Haste-MP5.

These are what I look for you may switch them around but those 5 are best. Spirit is no good for us.
While your getting better gear don't be afraid to take a lower armor piece.

As Holy we get 3 main healing spells, Holy Light, Flash of Light and Holy Shock. We also get Beacon of Light as out top tier talent.

Beacon should always be kept on the tank as any heal you place on another party member will also heal the tank, this is only effective heal. Overhealing wont heal the tank.

Not all Holy Paladin's use the 3 heals we have the same way. Some spam Flash of Light, ensuring the tank will always have full health, others throw in the odd Holy Light and others use Holy Light more than FoL (especially in raids).

There is prob 1, maybe 2 times I would ever dps as holy - Thaddius if im asked and if the tank and dps are taking little damage ill throw in a odd Holy Shock to help out on boss fights.

As far as add-ons go, I use Healbot, Decursive and PallyPower.

Im rubbish at PvP but I would rather PvP as Holy then Retri.

This is my 2 cents, it's what worked/works for me. If you have any other questions (gear, gems, glyphs, etc) dont hesitate to /poke me in game.

A good guide to other questions you have can be found here.

Edit: Here are the major Glyphs I use.

Glyph Of Flash Of Light - Gives your Flash Of Light an additional 5% crit chance.
Glyph of Holy Light - Your Holy Light also heals 5 friendly targets within 8yards for 10% of the amount healed. A must have imo.
Glyph of Seal Of Wisdom - While this seal is active it reduces the cost of all healing spells by 5%.

 

[Tingham]

I only have experience as Holy and Prot at WOTLK, and thats as alliance.

Bone is more of an authority on paladin tanking, but as with any tank, the priority is to get defence capped. The defence cap is 540 defense.

Then, I worked on my avoidance untill I got to the point where the worst case scenario on every hit was that it would be blocked.

Past then, i worked on Stam, Dodge and Parry about equally.

Holy Wise, my experience is the same as Glen, but once youve healed a bit, its easy to work out. One thing I found is that the crafted holy stuff has no Int on it, and therefore can actually gimp you in the short term.

 

[Silk]

Cheers for answers so far.. shame elitistjerks is blocked at work ;_;

Got another question. How much will I be able to tank at current spec (retri 0/19/52)? e.g. non heroic only, or some heroic, or nothing at all?

Do I need to respec to prot asap and start practising 5 mans? Can someone point me to a decent prot spec?

 

[Tingham]

Look on the Armoury for T-bones spec, I would say.

If i was you , id start doing some 5 mans when your in the high 70s, then you should be ready , both gear and experience wise, to tank some heroics at 80.

 

[T-Bone]

You will not be able to tank bosses with that spec in heroic, probably not even on level 80 normals and you will die when trying to tank more than two mobs, which is of course the main thing we do...or at least it used to be...fucking blizzard...

Anyway, as a tank and like Tingham says, your first goal is to get the defence cap. This is 535 for Heroics and 540 for Raids. Don't even try and think of tanking anything before having this or you will fail Luckily a lot of the 80 blues are mainly stamina and defence so getting this shouldn't be too much of a problem. One your there you should be able to do mostly what I can do but positoning is a big issue and I'll give some hintes about that in a second.

After you get your cap you are going to want to work on avoidance. When gemming your gear always go for parry, never dodge. Always go for anytype of avoidance other than dodge where possible. For comparison I am at dodge- 23%, parry - 22%, block 19%. A good tank should have at least 60% avoidance before using Holy Shield or your classes comparative ability. When you start outat 80 get as much with block on it as possible. Block rating is % chance to block and block value is both that damage mitigated when you block and the damage the enemy takes when you block them, SO you will wont them both equally. I believe from rep there is a cape and boots with block, and Im sure one of the heroic drops a neck with block that is BoE, I'll try and help you out further with that later.

Stats wise, primary attributes are really block and parry on armour. Second to that look for dodge. Pieces with armour on it, like rings are useful too but these pieces can commonly be for druids so if they have armour only take them if they have more than just dodge and agi on them. Most of gear has x str and 3/2 x sta on them and this is what you'll be going for. You will also want a little bit of hit/expertise, looking for 6%. Never take Int or Spirit or Agi as a tank. Agi gives a little armour but is worthless really.

For spec and glyphs check me on the armoury. I'm not big headed (I LOL'D) but I have the best of everything. When gemming always go for the parry-stam gem in red, and either straight stam or def stam in blue, depending on how you and the defence cap are getting on and for yellow either straight def or stam-def, again depending on the cap.

For enchants you'll be wanting +10 stats on chest, or def if you need it. Theres not really a good clock enchant for us so defence or armour. Bracers - 40 stam. Hands - armsman. Legs, Stam-Agi patch, Feet - 22 stam.

Ok, so a few tips when tanking when a large group awaits you avengers shield the far left then hammer of the righteous the far right, that should get everyones attention. If you know one is a caster and the rest are melee, run through straight to the caster and turn around as soon as you can this way youve got aggro on all of them and wont get hit in the back. In hard fights ALWAYS keep holy shield up, when it is nearing it's CD get ready to click it again. My rotation (on a boss fight) is to drop concecration and hit the boss with boss Avengers shield and exorcism, then hit holy shield as the boss is coming to me. Then, judge wisdom, use shield of righteous then hammer of the righteous. At this point use holy shield and concecrate together and wait for the others. Basically you have three group of abilities and each group is to be used at the same time. Holy Shield and Concecrate (When glyphed) have the same CD so spam in that order. Then judge, shield, hammer This is your main threat generation with Avengers shield and exorsism for additonal threat every three lots of that.

That's pretty much the basics but you need to be very spacialy aware to be a good tank. In particular always know where your healers are at all times and know what could get them killed that you can prevent and if Zooggy or Elauria are with you always have a macro to use the little bubble on them.

I was gonna stop but I just remembered you asked about bubbles. OK. Divine SHield which is the big one is never to be used while tanking as it wiped threat while active. I say never but if you look up a macro which by clicking it twice activated and deactivates it this can be used to remove deebuffs while only losing aggro for a second. This give you forbearance though so only use it in REAL emergencies. The middle bubble is like shield wall for warriors, half damage not threat wipe. Use it when things enrage, healers get stunned and/or you're taking a lot of damage. I have a trinket with an on use efefct to increase my HP temporarily so I have that macrod to it so I have more survival chance. The mini bubble, you save for when healers are in trouble. Bubbling them with that doesnt wipe threat, but it does drop it a bit and makes them invulnerable to melee attacks for a while. Use this time to get the mob(s) on them onto you. It's also useful to macro this bubble with hand of salvation to reduce their overall threat and ease the process.

this is all, hope it helps. Any more questions/issues just ask

-- The Unbreakable One

 

[Razaak]

In particular always know where your healers are at all times and know what could get them killed that you can prevent and if Zooggy or Elauria are with you always have a macro to use the little bubble on them.

Schlag.

This is all.

 

[Razaak]

On a slightly more constructive note, I have noticed on my DK tank that increasing my Hit Rating and Expertise has really improved my threat generation, missed attacks don't generate threat. I had to sacrifice a bit of avoidance, but I still have a combined 40%+ dodge and parry (DKs can't block).

The melee hit cap without talents is 263 hit rating, 8% chance to hit. I'm not sure if paladins have a talent to increase hit chance; if so, you can reduce that amount by 32.8 hit rating per %.

Expertise is similar, except that rather than increase your chance to hit, it reduces the chance that your attacks will be dodged by the boss. Bosses have a 6.5% base chance to dodge an attack (6% for heroic 82-Elites). Each point of expertise skill reduces that chance by 0.25%, so to cap expertise against dodge, you need 26 expertise skill - I can't remember the conversion factor for rating to skill at 80, so you'll need to look that up; 214 expertise rating sounds about right.

Since WotLK came out, bosses can no longer inflict crushing blows on you if your avoidance is lacking; as stated above, you need 540 defence (535 for heroics) to prevent bosses from inflicting critical strikes on you, any defence above that cap adds to your block, dodge and parry, but you get no further benefit from the crit reduction.

A stat to AVOID is haste. Since it's practically impossible to cap your expertise to the point where a boss can't parry you, adding haste to your itemisation just increases the potential for the boss to inflict extra hits on you via parry haste mechanics.

All the above is inconsequential if you get one- or two-shotted by a hard hitting boss. You need a decent amount of health - aim for 21-22k unbuffed for heroics, and 26k+ for raiding.

 

[Silk]

Cheers - looks like I have a lot to do! lol

 

[Nactall]

Time for Nactall to toss in some advise on da tanking,

Tbone has almost explained everything so I wont tell anything he already done,

This are the parts that are uncovered I can see so far,

Seal I use:
I use the Seal of corrution, this is a new seal that came out with wotlk, this seal puts up a dot every melee hit (up to 5 stacks) this dot gives you a steady treath supply on the mob you hit. Note: the spell hammer of rightious also adds a stack on each mob you hit with it.

Glyphs I use:
Glyph of divine plea, this glyph gives you a 3% damadge reduction when divine plea is active. When you have the talent for divine plea this spell will always be active on you when you keep hitting enemys, likewise the 3% damadge reduction will stay as well.
Glyph of Hammer of rightious, This glyph wil give your Hammer of rightious a 4th target, this glyph will increase your aoe tanking capability. And with raids like Naxx 10/25 Os10/25 you have a lot of mobs you need to control. Also heroics will be giving you a lot of mobs as well and with this glyph 4 mobs instead of 3 wil stick on you like glue
Glyph of Seal of Vengeance/Corruption, this glyph wil give you 10 expertise when you have Seal of Vengeance/Corrution active. This expertise is pure expertise, this way you dont need 26 expertise but 16 expertise from items. This 16 expertise is easy to get from items and there is no need for gemming at all when you have this glyph.

Further on your question about crafted items, I bought every item that can be crafted, but I regret that because the boots you can get from Wyrmcrest accord revered are better and only cost 60 gold and not 800. The helmed is awesome gives you a big ammount of def and you have a meta socket in it. Further more I advise you to get the ring from a jewelcrafter, I still use this ring, it's awesome. The neckless is not something that is worth taking because you can get a better one from 25 heroic badges.

Well this is it for now, when I come up with something you need to know then I will post it here again.

P.S. poke me ingame as well if you have a question then I will also post it in here and we can use this treath as a guide for all the prot paladins.

Cheers,

Robin (Nactall)

 

[Zooggy]

Ahey,

if Zooggy or Elauria are with you always have a macro to use the little bubble on them.

Whirlwind on Thorim phase 2 FTW!

Cheers,
J.

 

[Silk]

What blessing should I use on myself?

Also Nactall, did you mean Seal of Corruption?

 

[Nactall]

Hehe yeah sorry mixed up with the alliance version there seal of corruption indeed ^_^

 

[SgtFury]

A stat to AVOID is haste. Since it's practically impossible to cap your expertise to the point where a boss can't parry you, adding haste to your itemisation just increases the potential for the boss to inflict extra hits on you via parry haste mechanics.

Interesting comment Razaak. For Druids I would say you can't really avoid it since it seems to be on a lot of leather. Although it isn't something i would say go for specifically.

Plus on the Hodir fight I often stand in Starlight to get the haste to improve my threat.

 

[Razaak]

Maybe not such a huge issue for bears, since you don't get extra auto-attacks from your own parries (cos bears can't parry, d'uh!) which can then in turn be parried by the boss.

This is the reason why I prefer to stack dodge as opposed to parry - that, and the fact that dodge rating grants much more dodge chance per point than parry rating does.

 

[Baeleth]

This is the reason why I prefer to stack dodge as opposed to parry - that, and the fact that dodge rating grants much more dodge chance per point than parry rating does.

You're still gonna have to fairly evenly spread the two stats, with diminishing returns on both values, if you overstack one you're actually gaining less avoidance than if you evenly gear for both. It's just a pain in the rectum that Dodge is sooOooooOOoo much more prevalent on rings/neck/cloak/trinket.

 

[Tingham]

As a Bear. Haste is indeed on alot of leather.

A fair amount of a bear's threat comes from auto attacks. (My meters say about 24%).

Stacking haste isnt worth aiming for as a druid, but its not worth avoiding.

 

[Silk]

Tried prot for a while but struggled. I think the fact I have zero defense rating didn't help.. but overall found I was taking more damage because things were taking longer to kill.

Plus my mana was running out ridiculously fast, and with Plea up that wasn't so much a problem but health going instead was.

Maybe it's because I'm playing as part of a pally duo but retri is by far the better option at the minute.. things die, doesn't matter how many mobs we pull, we win. I guess with elites prot would work better but will reserve judgement 'til I see how much of a difference defense rating makes.

 

[SwampFae]

(DKs can't block).

Ofcourse they can! There's a reason why the helm covers most of the DK's face!

 

[Razaak]

Gives a whole new meaning to the term face-tanking...