How to Tankadin

[Smitts]

Tankadin's Guide to L33tness

I. Introduction

Why am I making this guide?
Just wanting to help out my fellow, old and new, tankadins.

Helpful Links
I'm going to list the main websites that help me with tanking, Ill probably be adding quite a bit more as time goes by.
Maintankadin :: Index
elitistjerks.com

Acronyms
There are a lot of acronyms in WoW, and it can be quite confusing for a first time player, I'm not going to list every last one in the game, but Ill list the most common ones for paladins.

• BoW: Blessing of Wisdom
• BoM: Blessing of Might
• BoK: Blessing of Kings
• DI: Divine Intervention
• Bubble / DP: Divine Protection
• AW: Avenging Wrath
• CD: Cooldown
• FoL: Flash of Light
• HL: Holy Light
• HPS: Healing per Second
• DPS: Damage per Second
• TPS: Threat per Second
• ICD: Internal Cooldown
• JoL: Judgement of Light
• JoW: Judgement of Wisdom
• HoR: Hammer of Righteousness
• SP: Spell Power
• AP: Attack Power
• SP: Sacred Shield
• AD: Ardent Defender
• AS: Avenger's Shield
• BV: Block Value
• HoJ: Hammer of Justice
• MT: Main Tank
• OT: Off-Tank

II. Stats

Stamina
This gives you more health, basically, the more of this you have, the more breathing room you give your healers, try to find a balance between this and avoidance. 100 stamina = 1000 health, with BoK it adds up to 1160 health.

Intellect
Not very useful for prot paladins since you'll be getting most of your mana from Spiritaul Attunement.

Strength
An excellent stat to go for, this boosts your threat and mitigation. 1 strength gives 2 attack power and .5 block value.

Spirit
Useless stat for tanks.

Hit rating
Great stat, this is gonna help you by giving you a steady source of threat, also makes sure your taunts / AS don't miss.

Agility
Decent stat to get, you get 2 armor for 1 agility, also gives you a little avoidance.

Expertise
Reduces your chance to be dodged or parried, you'll get most of this from talents, so you won't need to stack much.

Defense rating
This is the stat that most tanks talk about, you need 540 of this to be uncrittable, also boosts your overall damage mitigation, after you hit the cap ( 540 ) you can focus on avoidance more.

Dodge
Very nice stat, but has diminishing returns.

Parry
Exactly like dodge, except that when after you parry your attack speed is increased.

Block rating
Excellent stat, helps you mitigate damage (getting hit for less), stackable until 102.4% overall avoidance.

Block value
Very nice for mitigation, but you wont need to stack this since you'll getting most of it from strength.

Rating Conversions (Level 80)
Block rating: 16.395 / 1%
Defense rating: 4.918 / 1 skill
Dodge rating: 39. 348 / 1%
Expertise: 8.2 / 1 skill
Hit rating (melee): 32.78 / 1%
Hit rating (spell): 26.232 / 1%
Parry rating: 49.185 / 1%
Resilience: 81.974 / 1%

III. Abilities

Seals
Righteousness: Does damage every white hit, but heavily reliant on your hit chance. It increases damage of judgement by 25%, gets the most of your reckoning and slightly higher dps then vengeance / corruption.

Seal of Vengeance / Corruption: <3 this seal, this is my most used seal. Basically puts a dot on the target that stacks to 5, and only need to hit every 15 seconds to refresh it, not only that it stacks to other targets with Hammer of Righteousness. Increases damage by 10-50% depending on how many stacks of it are up.

Judgements
Wisdom
This gives you 2% mana per swing, everyone in the raid with mana bars will be thanking you, including your character.

Light
Decent judgement, but scales with attack power and spellpower, so the paladin with the best stats should cast this.

Justice
Minor CC.

Rest of the Spells
Hand of Reckoning
This is the new taunt that blizzard has added in, long gone are the days of taunting form 10 yards away! Nothing special about this, exactly the same as the warrior version.

Righteous Fury
Basically gives you a lot more threat, you need to keep this up constantly.

Holy Shield
Increases your block chance by 30%, also does damage whenever you block

Avenger's Shield
This is used mostly as a pulling move, but is also great in your threat rotation, especially when you have the glyph for it.

Shield of Righteousness
This is the paladins version of shield slam, does damage equal to your block value plus 400.

Consecration
Its the paladins AoE, great for holding aggro on a lot of mobs, and can be used on bosses too.

IV. Gear
Meta Gems

Effulgent Skyflare Diamond

• 32 Stamina
• 2% Spell Damage Reduction

This is my meta gem of choice, but you can choose between this and the 2% armor increase.

Austere Earthsiege Diamond

• 32 Stamina
• 2% Increased Armor Value

2% more armor is extremlely helpful, and most of the comments are saying that this is better then the effulgent.

Librams

Libram of Obstruction

• Equip: Your Judgement ability also increases your shield block value by 352 for 5 sec.

Block value = More damage mitigation and increased threat from Shield of Righteousness, who doesn't love that?

Libram of Resurgence

• Equip: Increases the spell power of your Consecration spell by 141.

This adds a WHOLE 5.64 damage per tick, absolute joke compared to the former.

V. Glyphs

Majors
Glyph of Avenger's Shield

Increases your avenger's shield damage by 100% but hits 2 less targets. I'd say this is a must-have glyph, amazing for single target bosses ( almost every single one of them ).

Glyph of Righteous Defense
Increases chance for righteous defense to succeed by 8%, Must-have.

Glyph of Seal of Vengeance

Increases expertise by 10 while seal of vengeance is active, if you use SoV mostly (me) get this.

Minors
There is barely any minor glyphs that are really useful for tankadins, so basically pick and choose, the only one I can recommend is.

Glyph of Sense Undead
Increases damage done to undead by 1% when sense undead is on. This is pretty useful in naxxramas.

VI. Talents
I'm not going to tell you which spec is the best, since there are a lot of viable specs, but I am going to tell you the must-haves.

♫ = Crucial to Have
◙ = Avoid Completely

◙ Blessing of Kings: For now we're going to skip this, since 5 points could be better spent.
♫ Divine Strength: Increases strength by 15%, who doesn't love that?

◙ Stoicism: Reduces stun time by 30%, PvP Talent.
◙ Guardians Favor: Big no-no, no protection paladin should be using hand of protection while tanking.
♫ Anticipation: Whats that? Free avoidance? Yes, please.

♫ Improved Righteous Fury: Reduces damage by 6% while righteous fury is up, any damage mitigation is good damage mitigation in my books.
♫ Toughness: While to the "reduces duration of all movement slowing effects" is useless in pve, the 10% is great.

◙ Divine Guardian: This can be used for off-tanks, but Id rather spent my points elsewhere.
♫ Improved Hammer of Justice 2/3: Mostly used as a space filler, but can be handy.
♫ Improved Devotion Aura: Increases healing done to me by 6% and armor given by devotion aura is increased by 50%.

Everything down from here in protection tree max out.

♫ Seals of the Pure: Since you should be using vengeance or righteousness, this helps a lot.

♫ Deflection: More avoidance? Yes, please, again.

♫ Improved Judgement: 1/2

VII. Updates
I'll be regularly updating this post, so please tell any suggestions to make this guide better.

Also, this is my first time typing something this long, so excuse my bad format. :wave:

[Doctorfunk_15]

Pretty nice.

[berek]

nice guide.

[Talint]

Shooooot. Nice organization. I like the layout of the guide and the content delivers. I'll be sure to save this. I'll give you rep as soon as I can.

[DDDevilz]

I find a LOT of errors in this guide.

First 100 stamina = 1500 health is just flat wrong. Without talents, 100 stamina is 1000 HP. With talents, it is somewhere near 1160 HP. With kings...yeahhh still not near 1500 HP.

Second 1 strength gives .5 block value, not 1.

Third about Holy Shield... "Try to use this whenever redoubt is up". That is just wrong. With the standard 69696 rotation, Holy Shield will always be up, unless it expends its 10 charges.

Fourth the Efflugent diamond is in fact weaker than the 2% armor meta. There is a LOT more physical damage taken, on average, making this meta situational at best.

"Everything down from here in protection tree max out." No no no. Reckoning is a very big waste of 5 points if you plan on doing any serious tanking. Yes, it is good in certain situations, but in a raiding environment it has little use at all.

Seals of the Pure is a terrible waste of points. Look at the WWS of any decent prot paladin and do the calculations to see exactly how much putting 5 into this talent would improve your damage. You'd be surprised, it is a very small number.

And at the moment, expertise is a lot worse than hit if you are looking for a threat increasing stat. Expertise reduces your chance to be parried and dodge by an enemy (you knew this). Only 2 sources of your threat are affected by these two mechanics: your white melee hits (and seal procs), and Hammer of the Righteous. Shield of Righteousness cannot be dodged blocked or parried.

[Babbaa]

I'm agree'ing with DDDevilz on his notes.

However, I do find this guide usefull, though I already knew this. :')

[azeticx]

Expertise -> Hit

[Smitts]

I find a LOT of errors in this guide.

First 100 stamina = 1500 health is just flat wrong. Without talents, 100 stamina is 1000 HP. With talents, it is somewhere near 1160 HP. With kings...yeahhh still not near 1500 HP.

Second 1 strength gives .5 block value, not 1.

Third about Holy Shield... "Try to use this whenever redoubt is up". That is just wrong. With the standard 69696 rotation, Holy Shield will always be up, unless it expends its 10 charges.

Fourth the Efflugent diamond is in fact weaker than the 2% armor meta. There is a LOT more physical damage taken, on average, making this meta situational at best.

"Everything down from here in protection tree max out." No no no. Reckoning is a very big waste of 5 points if you plan on doing any serious tanking. Yes, it is good in certain situations, but in a raiding environment it has little use at all.

Seals of the Pure is a terrible waste of points. Look at the WWS of any decent prot paladin and do the calculations to see exactly how much putting 5 into this talent would improve your damage. You'd be surprised, it is a very small number.

And at the moment, expertise is a lot worse than hit if you are looking for a threat increasing stat. Expertise reduces your chance to be parried and dodge by an enemy (you knew this). Only 2 sources of your threat are affected by these two mechanics: your white melee hits (and seal procs), and Hammer of the Righteous. Shield of Righteousness cannot be dodged blocked or parried.

Okay, sorry for the mistakes, Ill be sure to correct them, thank you.

Also, on the comment on not getting reckoning, can you tell me ANYWHERE on any tree where these points can be better spent? Other then improved buffs and heart of the crusader ( ret paladins are sure to get this ).

I never said expertise is better then hit, but I'll put what you said in the original post.

[samuray]

Nice for beginner paladins! +Rep man would love if you made one for Resto shamans

[bisbolo]

Nice guide, I hope you keep that up.
If you will also explain the 6/9/6/9/6 rotation you will get my cookies.
Anyway, 2x rep to DDDevilz =)

[DDDevilz]

Okay, sorry for the mistakes, Ill be sure to correct them, thank you.

Also, on the comment on not getting reckoning, can you tell me ANYWHERE on any tree where these points can be better spent? Other then improved buffs and heart of the crusader ( ret paladins are sure to get this ).

I never said expertise is better then hit, but I'll put what you said in the original post.

I generally go with a talent build like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It covers everything you need from prot, and goes into ret for pursuit of justice (an amazing talent). You may not think kings and other improved blessings (or heart of the crusader) are worthwhile points for a protection paladin, but I beg to differ. You will more than likely come across situations where a paladin with kings is not available, or your raid does not have a ret paladin.

If you solo much more than you group, I could see where Reckoning would be better than kings, but if you are constantly grouping, you will more than likely need kings at one point.

Also to further clarify the 69696 rotation:

You have two 6 second cooldown abilities: Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness

You have three 9 second cooldown abilities: Consecrate, Holy Shield, Judgement
Yes, Consecrate and Holy Shield are in fact 8 and 10 second cooldowns respectively, however they offset eachother and make an average of 8.

Basically what you want to do is use a 6 second ability, then a 9, then a 6, then a 9, and just repeat that pattern. For instance:

Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement, Shield of Righteousness, Consecrate, Hammer of the Righteous, Holy Shield, Shield of Righteousness, so on and so forth.


Also, I did not mean to come across as a dick or anything. Overall this is a pretty decent guide, and I applaude your effort.

[GordonGekko]

Does anybody have good hints or reading sources for the rotations? That would help me a lot. Especially for a low level. I'm a 43 prot-pala at the moment

Thx
G

[Couwae]

__________