"The Guardian"
"Boy, do you see that man there? The warrior with the tabard of a white dawn upon black."
"Yes Father, who is he?"
"There walks a good man."
"He doesn't have the shining magical armour of the knights from the city, Father."
"That he doesn't, but after all the wonders, evils, triumphs, and defeats I have seen in my time, one thing I have learned above all.
I will tell you my lesson, and I want you to keep it in your heart and remember it."
The boy turned to his father and laid down the small wooden sword with which he had been joining the golden-armoured knights of the city in battle against goblins of his imagination.
"The bards do not record the songs of easy victories. The names of those who did what was easy do not ring through every hall and hovel.
For all their magical clothing and strutting about, the shining knights you spoke of do not look so grand as the weary shield-bearer, returning not from his conquests of worshiping admirers in the square before the bank, but from the desperate fight, hard won and costing dear, bowed by the humble grey steel which guards his life.
I tell you boy, and remember this well, when you face the darkness and return, your shield will be battered and rent, not gleaming and praised by fools. Judge a man by the trials of his shield, not the empty reaping of his sword.
That man there is a man who upheld his truths against all odds. That man there was tested by standing his ground even against a swarm seeking to deny him. That man there deserves glory. not for the strikes with which he slew or the deeds which he did, but for the shield with which he denied the working of ill.
We are not all strong, we men. We are not all skilled with blade or bow, not all brave or able to stand alone when all seems lost. Not all are true to friend and ally or can remain true when friends are few and assailed.
Yet, for all our weaknesses, each of us, mankind always has had one strength. If a man can find it in himself to simply stand up and bid "HALT!" to evil, others will be enboldened to stand beside him. Each time the laughing horde surges towards him and his conviction denies it, mankind is bought a chance.
When conflict rises, and all is chaos of surging voices and hateful blows and doubt and fear and lofted banners, if men can stand for what they believe in, truth will always prevail. The battles that are worth fighting, and the ones on which everything depends, are those that are uncertain, with all voices crying for you to flee.
Boy, when you sit and watch the people pass in the streets below, watch for men such as that one. Men who know that a shield held firm is not for the protection of himself, but for the protection of the man beside him. The glorious cannot turn the tide but for the rock of the true and steady which halts it's advance.
Look to the shield Son, for no shield held in courage ever returned from battle undented. No man who stands for his truths will never find need to fight.
I know not where that warrior goes as he passes through our great gates, and even I could not always find the courage to stand at his side in times of darkness, but I know this; he is a good man. And a good man is more rare and more valuable than any golden hero with prancing steed and flawless shield."
The boy looked out again across the crowd, as the warrior slowly made his way through the great oak portal of Stormwind.
The light of the day was fading, and the twin gates began to serenely swing closed behind him.
The boy did not notice his father, his one remaining eye bright with memories, gazing at a torn and faded flap of cloth in a weary pile behind the door, slightly ajar, leading off the balcony back into their small home.
An old and wrinkled piece of cloth. Black, with white dawn rampant.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Tankadin Talent Rundown
Hello Tankadin's out there. Tonight I'm going to post about Paladin Talents as they pertain to Tanking. Yes, I'm adding my two cents onto a large pile of pairs of pennies. Oh yea, everyone and their brother has thrown out a million "cookie-cutter" builds. People who listen to those people because those people are the purported experts on the class. They've done a lot and are experienced. It's accepted that they know what they are talking about.
I'm going to do something different. I'm not going to link you a build at all.
That's right. I'm not going to tell you what you should spec. I'm going to lay out what is and is not necessary, why it is and is not necessary. Fortunately, you will still have quite a few points left to spend after getting what is necessary. From there I'll go over what is helpful and why and let you make the decision on what you want from there.
The Core talents which are necessary for tanking in any scope are as follows:
Protection
Divine Strength: 15% Strength is immensely helpful. We get a lot of synergy out of Strength and 15% more strength is a big boon. Though our white auto-attack damage doesn't matter much, our white damage is what Hammer of the Righteous scales with, which is one of our primary threat generators. Not only that, but we get 1 Block Value for every 2 Strength we have. Divine Strength is an excellent place to start your journey down the Protection tree.
Anticipation, Toughness, and Imp Righteous Fury: 5% more Avoidance, 10% more armor from items, and 6% less damage taken off the top. Nothing flashy and not much to say about these really. It's pretty simple, they reduce the damage you take, which is the core part of our job as a tank. The less damage we take, the easier it is for everyone. These are pretty core bread and butter talents that should be taken at first opportunity.
Improved Devotion Aura: More armor for you means you take less damage. Note that the healing bonus affects all your aura's not just Devotion. So if you need to switch to a resistance aura for a spell damage-heavy fight, You won't be missing out on that extra healing. Though the 6% healing bonus doesn't stack with the Restro Druid's Tree-Aura, it is still a very nice boost in any situation.
Blessing of Sanctuary: This is your only blessing. If you have any one blessing on you at any time, This is it. It provides a flat 3% bonus to your damage reduction and is one of our primary source for mana regeneration while tanking.
Sacred Duty: 8% more Stamina is that much more HP you have to survive heavy hitting bosses and sudden burst. Absolutely core talent, take it as soon as you can. The HP difference is very noticeable.
One-Handed Weapon Specialization: 10% damage is 10% more threat. This is perhaps the strongest passive threat talents we have. That's 10% more damage on anything... consecrate, Judegment, Seals, Shield of the Righteous, Everything.
Spiritual Attunement: All the major theoretical tankadin's out there have done the math. Attack by Attack mathematical analysis of an average boss fight. If you're get as much healing as you are taking, have Blessing of Sanctuary up, and have constant Divine Plea...one of two points spent in SA will provide you with enough mana to keep up your 96969 rotation. It also nicely boosts you up to the next tier in the talent tree.
Holy Shield: Holy shield is what the better geared paladin's use to gain what is called being "Block Capped". Being Block Capped means that every incoming attack that is not outright avoided through misses, dodge and parry will be blocked. That is a rather lofty goal, that you shouldn't consider shooting for until you are well into Naxx-level Gear. Holy shield is still a core talent to take. The damage isn't great, but the mitigation you gain is superb.
Ardent Defender: Thanks to the recent changes in Patch 3.2, Ardent Defender is now even more necessary than it was before. The talent does two things. First it knocks off 30% of the damage you take while under 35% HP, which is great because it is mitigating the "Danger Zone" HP that would otherwise kill you. Which is great and earned AD a spot on the necessity list pre Patch 3.2. Now, AD is absolutely necessary in a "you're insane if you don't take this" way. Now, it has a constant Guardian Spirit effect. Meaning that once every two minutes, a hit that WOULD have killed you, will instead be absorbed and bring you to 30% HP instead. It gives you a nice little Ardent Defender Debuff which counts down the 2 minutes. Which is crazy because. while GS brings you to 40% HP, It has a 3 minute cooldown and a 10 second duration. The priest has to cast it on you within 10 seconds of the killing blow for it to work, or its a 3-minute cooldown down the tubes. Yours is ALWAYS up and will be ready again in 2 minutes.
Redoubt: Part mitigation talent, part situational talent. The 30% block value is essential to your mitigation , and is well worth the talents spent to get it. The 10% chance to increase your block chance by 30% is next to useless on boss and single-target fights, though in AoE situations where all of your Holy Shield charges would be used before the cooldown was up Redoubt Charges would be there to supplement your defenses then. Despite this, Redoubt is still a critical talent in the Protection Tree.
Combat Expertise: Another +x% Stamina talent. Which alone makes it worth the talent points and a critical part of any tank's build. However as icing on the cake, it increases your chance to crit on all attacks and spells by 6%, which is a nice boost to your TPS. It also increases your Expertise by 6. Expertise is very useful to every tank except us. The only thing that we do, that Expertise affects, is Hammer of the Righteous and Auto-Attacks. HotR produces great threat and all, but there are better ways to improve it's TPS. The vast majority of our threat-producing abilities cannot be parried or dodged anyway. Despite the Expertise, the talent is still an excellent place to spend points.
Touched by the Light: Great talent. Absolutely wonderful. Provides scaling on all your abilities from two ends. You are already going to have a respectable amount of Attack Power from Strength, and a massive amount of Stamina because you're a tank and tanks have lots of Stamina. Now, 30% of your stamina is also Spellpower. Which boosts the damage on nearly all your abilities, and provides extra healing in-between fights while solo-ing. If you're into that sort of thing that is... Either way, large and powerful boost to your scaling with stat boosts. Power Word: Fortidude is now an offensive buff!
AVENGER'S SHIELD!!!: <3
Guarded by the Light: Awesome Talent. GBTL gives you a needed boost to your spell damage tanking, you're not quite a DK when it comes to tanking spellcasters, but who cares, You're smart enough to use a shield =D. Combined with all your 3% damage taken reductions, you're looking at a significant chunk of spelldamage reduced. Not to mention the capability of un-ending Divine Plea. Don't forget to act as dungeon rodent control in-between pulls. Smacking a rat near the end of your Divine Plea will refresh the duration just as well as swinging at the big scary boss.
Shield of the Templar: Who wants (another) free 3% damage taken reduction? I know I do! Yippee! SotT delivers just that, along with the immensely useful 3 second silence on your Avenger's Shield. Makes pulling casters so much easier (see previous post). Pretty simple bread and butter core talent here.
Judgements of the Just: The two points you put in this tree will provide more mitigation than any other 5 you will spend anywhere else in this tree. That's right. Pick any 5 talent points, anywhere in the tree, and the two points you spend here will provide more mitigation. It's so powerful and yet I see so many tankadin's not using it, and that just makes me want to cry. JotJ's 20% reduction in the target's attack speed is a flat 20% reduction in the boss's DPS. Yes, it works on bosses. It's just like Thunderclap, Infected Wounds or Frost Touch, except slightly suckier in that it only affects one target. Every tank has it, this is ours. Learn it, Love it, Live with it. Not so useful on Caster Mobs, but that is what the 20 Second Reduction on HoJ is for. Did you know that HoJ also has a interrupt effect? Even if a boss is immune to the stun, they will not (likely) be immune to the interrupt. Combined with the talent earlier in the tree, you could have a 20 second cooldown on your 6 second stun. Hot damn.
Hammer of the Righteous: Excellent capstone of the Protection tree. HotR provides excellent TPS and is an essential part of this balanced breakfe-...Tanking cycle.
Retribution:
Deflection: Just like Anticipation, 5% more Parry is a bread-and-butter core talent. It sits there and does it's job. Nothing special, nothing flashy. just 5% more parry.
Improved Judgement: 1/2 points here is what you need for the 96969 rotation, covered earlier.
That's about it for essential talents. If you have these talents listed here above that is all you need to have to tank. That's right, everything you NEED is available at level 68. The rest of the 12 points are up to you. Those of you in the audience who are doing the math and following along on your talent calculator's may have noticed a critical flaw in the build I have outlined above. I'm missing 3 talent points in early Prot to continue. Somewhere before Blessing of Sacntuary you need to spend 3 points to continue. This is where the second part of my guide comes in. The optional (and not-so optional) points.
First let's discuss the 3 points you need to spend in early protection.
Starting with the talents that aren't so great:
Guardian's Favor and Stoicism are pretty much out the window right away. They provide PvP (and I'm not talking Player vs Pug) benefits. A large number of bosses stun in the game, but Stoicism does not affect these bosses stuns. I can count the number of bosses that include a dispell mechanic on one hand, two are in the same instance, and both can be avoided completely with a dispeller of your own or focus fire on adds. A reduction on the cooldowns and uptime of buffs you are rarely going to use is also a negligible buff. Guardian's favor is definitely the stronger tanking talent of the two, but it does not make the cut.
Reckoning: Provides an excellent boost to your white, auto-attack, damage. Unfortunately, this does nothing for you as a tank. It cuts down on the whopping 6+/- seconds it takes to get a full stack of your DoT seal, but if you are so close on threat you are trying to decrease the time it takes for your dot to get to full capacity, you have bigger problems honestly. Back when the DoT application was not a guaranteed thing and Tankadin's used Seal of Righteousness, reckoning was viable and useful. Now, it is not. Reckoning may be useful, however, when you are still leveling. When AoE-ing, reckoning's Seal of Light proc's may mean the difference between efficient leveling and "Why am I leveling as prot again?" Especially if you are grinding harder hitting mobs. For an end, or near end-game tank, Reckoning simply is not worth the points you have to sink into it.
That leaves us with two talents to choose from. Divinity and Divine Sacrifice/Guardian. Both are useful, both help tanking. Let's take a closer look.
Divinity: Probably the most hotly debated option in pre-BoS prot. Divinity boosts the healing you do(clearly a throw-in for the Ret and Holy pallies looking to pick up some talents in Prot) and healing you take. We could care less about our healing output, but an extra 5% on healing input is excellent. Problem is, the more you need this talent, the less it's giving you; inversely, the less you need the talent the more it's giving you. When you need heals the most...low HP, large burst incoming, healer down, etc. You are recieving a small bonus from this talent. When you need heals the least...Max HP, multiple healers on you, outgearing the instance, is when the talent is boosting your heals the most.
A lot of the benefit to Divinity is lost from over-healing, and a lot of the fights in WotLK seem focused on challenging healer's by making them react to burst damage. Which Divinity doesnt help with. If you're bursted from 100% to 10%, chances are either 1) You have about 5x your max HP in healing coming to you in the next .5 seconds, or 2) Your group is about to wipe, because you are dead on the next swing.
Some people swear by it, some people swear it sucks. Personally I went for Divine Sacrifice/Guardian, and I haven't had any problems. Best advice I can give is pay attention to when you die. Were you just bursted down without receiving healing? Were you "overkilled" by several thousand? If so, not much you could have done. If you are over-killed on the last hit by a few hundred, divinity could have saved you there, if you find this happens often on runs with your regular crew, you should consider grabbing a few points. Otherwise, you would have still died.
Divine Sacrifice/Guardian: I'm sure you already know how I feel about Divine Guardian. Divine Sacrifice is also a very useful spell. For example: Sapphiron. During the air phase, both of your ice-blocked players are fairly close to each other. Your raid stacks up right behind them when, oh no! A blizzard is going right over-top of everyone in the raid! Potential disaster right? Not for the super-Tankadin!. Activate Divine Shield THEN Divine Sacrifice and save the raid as 30% of that blizzard bounces off your bubble. Divine Shield will continue to work until it does 150% of your health in DAMAGE to YOU. If you're bubbled you're not taking damage. DS will continue to last it's full duration. Which will be plenty to give your healers some breathing room on keeping everyone alive through the blizzard. Which is excellent group utility for you, it also paves the way to Divine Guardian, which provides massive boosts to Sacred Shield, which you, or your holy pally, should always have on yourself.
Improved Hammer of Justice: Combined with Judgments of the Just, which you should already have, you will have a 20 second cooldown on your Hammer. While the stun won't affect many bosses, the Interrupt will. The stun is still useful in any number of other tanking situations. Especially in Heroics. I use my stun more often in a heroic than anywhere else. You will still need 1 more point in Prot if you choose this talent.
Retribution:
There are many valid options in Retribution, or the "Threatribution" tree. Once you have your initial 6 points for Deflection and 1/2 Judgement you have a couple options to shoot for.
Heart of the Crusader 3/3: Puts a debuff on your Judgment Target that increases anyone who attacks it's crit chance by 3%. Basically it increases your TPS by a little, and your group/raid's TPS by a lot more. It's a very nice buff to have and it stacks with most other crit% buffs. Yes it affects both melee, ranged and spell crit so it's useful to your party no matter who you are rolling with. The only things it will not stack with are Elemental Shamans' Totem of Wrath, and Assassination Rogues' Master Poisoner abilities.
Improved Blessing of Might 2/2:
Turns your 550 AP BoM into a 688 AP BoM. A Fair boost to your Buffs.
You're going to need to spend 4 points in Ret to go further down the tree, and I don't recomment Benediction. We don't have mana problems, we don't need a 10% mana cost reduction on our abilities.
Anyway, further on down the Ret Tree are some rather juicy gems.
Vindication: Don't let the 46 Ap listed on the talent calculator fool you. The AP Debuff scales with your level, topping out at 547 AP at lvl 80. Slightly ahead of a fully talented Curse of Weakness. Testing has shown this ability to have a 100% or near 100% proc rate on melee abilities. This is rather significant. 540 Attack power off a Boss Mob is much more significant than 540 AP off Bob the Feral Druid with 6,000 AP. Vindication is capable of providing nearly as much mitigation as Judgments of the Just. Every boss has a different Attack Power value, Vindication may reduce one boss' DPS by a whopping 30%, but another boss' DPS by only 10%. I am very tempted to place this in the "Necessary" for tanking category. I like it because most DPS cry and whine like a two-year old when asked to keep a debuff on a boss. God forbid they care about something other than their damage meters. Most won't do it anyway. I would very much recommend consideration of this fine talent.
Pursuit of Justice: A fine talent. 15% run speed is 15% less time chasing down a boss or a stray add. The 50% reduction in disarm effects, while great, doesn't affect us THAT much. After all, you can still Judge, Consecrate, Holy Shield and ShoR while your weapon is disarmed.
Crusade: 3% extra Damage to everything, another 3% damage to humanoids, demons, undead and elementals. Approximately half of all bosses in WotLK get the extra 3% damage. It's a very nice TPS boost and well worth the points you've spent to get it.
Holy:
Seals of the Pure: 15% bonus to Seal of Corruption/Vengeance AND Judgement! Holy TPS Tank-Man.
Unfortunately there is little else in holy worth spending your points on. Unyielding Faith is more of a PvP talent since you don't lose threat while feared.
There you have it, Tankadin Talents. What you need, what you want, what you don't. Hope it helps.
I'm going to do something different. I'm not going to link you a build at all.
That's right. I'm not going to tell you what you should spec. I'm going to lay out what is and is not necessary, why it is and is not necessary. Fortunately, you will still have quite a few points left to spend after getting what is necessary. From there I'll go over what is helpful and why and let you make the decision on what you want from there.
The Core talents which are necessary for tanking in any scope are as follows:
Protection
Divine Strength: 15% Strength is immensely helpful. We get a lot of synergy out of Strength and 15% more strength is a big boon. Though our white auto-attack damage doesn't matter much, our white damage is what Hammer of the Righteous scales with, which is one of our primary threat generators. Not only that, but we get 1 Block Value for every 2 Strength we have. Divine Strength is an excellent place to start your journey down the Protection tree.
Anticipation, Toughness, and Imp Righteous Fury: 5% more Avoidance, 10% more armor from items, and 6% less damage taken off the top. Nothing flashy and not much to say about these really. It's pretty simple, they reduce the damage you take, which is the core part of our job as a tank. The less damage we take, the easier it is for everyone. These are pretty core bread and butter talents that should be taken at first opportunity.
Improved Devotion Aura: More armor for you means you take less damage. Note that the healing bonus affects all your aura's not just Devotion. So if you need to switch to a resistance aura for a spell damage-heavy fight, You won't be missing out on that extra healing. Though the 6% healing bonus doesn't stack with the Restro Druid's Tree-Aura, it is still a very nice boost in any situation.
Blessing of Sanctuary: This is your only blessing. If you have any one blessing on you at any time, This is it. It provides a flat 3% bonus to your damage reduction and is one of our primary source for mana regeneration while tanking.
Sacred Duty: 8% more Stamina is that much more HP you have to survive heavy hitting bosses and sudden burst. Absolutely core talent, take it as soon as you can. The HP difference is very noticeable.
One-Handed Weapon Specialization: 10% damage is 10% more threat. This is perhaps the strongest passive threat talents we have. That's 10% more damage on anything... consecrate, Judegment, Seals, Shield of the Righteous, Everything.
Spiritual Attunement: All the major theoretical tankadin's out there have done the math. Attack by Attack mathematical analysis of an average boss fight. If you're get as much healing as you are taking, have Blessing of Sanctuary up, and have constant Divine Plea...one of two points spent in SA will provide you with enough mana to keep up your 96969 rotation. It also nicely boosts you up to the next tier in the talent tree.
Holy Shield: Holy shield is what the better geared paladin's use to gain what is called being "Block Capped". Being Block Capped means that every incoming attack that is not outright avoided through misses, dodge and parry will be blocked. That is a rather lofty goal, that you shouldn't consider shooting for until you are well into Naxx-level Gear. Holy shield is still a core talent to take. The damage isn't great, but the mitigation you gain is superb.
Ardent Defender: Thanks to the recent changes in Patch 3.2, Ardent Defender is now even more necessary than it was before. The talent does two things. First it knocks off 30% of the damage you take while under 35% HP, which is great because it is mitigating the "Danger Zone" HP that would otherwise kill you. Which is great and earned AD a spot on the necessity list pre Patch 3.2. Now, AD is absolutely necessary in a "you're insane if you don't take this" way. Now, it has a constant Guardian Spirit effect. Meaning that once every two minutes, a hit that WOULD have killed you, will instead be absorbed and bring you to 30% HP instead. It gives you a nice little Ardent Defender Debuff which counts down the 2 minutes. Which is crazy because. while GS brings you to 40% HP, It has a 3 minute cooldown and a 10 second duration. The priest has to cast it on you within 10 seconds of the killing blow for it to work, or its a 3-minute cooldown down the tubes. Yours is ALWAYS up and will be ready again in 2 minutes.
Redoubt: Part mitigation talent, part situational talent. The 30% block value is essential to your mitigation , and is well worth the talents spent to get it. The 10% chance to increase your block chance by 30% is next to useless on boss and single-target fights, though in AoE situations where all of your Holy Shield charges would be used before the cooldown was up Redoubt Charges would be there to supplement your defenses then. Despite this, Redoubt is still a critical talent in the Protection Tree.
Combat Expertise: Another +x% Stamina talent. Which alone makes it worth the talent points and a critical part of any tank's build. However as icing on the cake, it increases your chance to crit on all attacks and spells by 6%, which is a nice boost to your TPS. It also increases your Expertise by 6. Expertise is very useful to every tank except us. The only thing that we do, that Expertise affects, is Hammer of the Righteous and Auto-Attacks. HotR produces great threat and all, but there are better ways to improve it's TPS. The vast majority of our threat-producing abilities cannot be parried or dodged anyway. Despite the Expertise, the talent is still an excellent place to spend points.
Touched by the Light: Great talent. Absolutely wonderful. Provides scaling on all your abilities from two ends. You are already going to have a respectable amount of Attack Power from Strength, and a massive amount of Stamina because you're a tank and tanks have lots of Stamina. Now, 30% of your stamina is also Spellpower. Which boosts the damage on nearly all your abilities, and provides extra healing in-between fights while solo-ing. If you're into that sort of thing that is... Either way, large and powerful boost to your scaling with stat boosts. Power Word: Fortidude is now an offensive buff!
AVENGER'S SHIELD!!!: <3
Guarded by the Light: Awesome Talent. GBTL gives you a needed boost to your spell damage tanking, you're not quite a DK when it comes to tanking spellcasters, but who cares, You're smart enough to use a shield =D. Combined with all your 3% damage taken reductions, you're looking at a significant chunk of spelldamage reduced. Not to mention the capability of un-ending Divine Plea. Don't forget to act as dungeon rodent control in-between pulls. Smacking a rat near the end of your Divine Plea will refresh the duration just as well as swinging at the big scary boss.
Shield of the Templar: Who wants (another) free 3% damage taken reduction? I know I do! Yippee! SotT delivers just that, along with the immensely useful 3 second silence on your Avenger's Shield. Makes pulling casters so much easier (see previous post). Pretty simple bread and butter core talent here.
Judgements of the Just: The two points you put in this tree will provide more mitigation than any other 5 you will spend anywhere else in this tree. That's right. Pick any 5 talent points, anywhere in the tree, and the two points you spend here will provide more mitigation. It's so powerful and yet I see so many tankadin's not using it, and that just makes me want to cry. JotJ's 20% reduction in the target's attack speed is a flat 20% reduction in the boss's DPS. Yes, it works on bosses. It's just like Thunderclap, Infected Wounds or Frost Touch, except slightly suckier in that it only affects one target. Every tank has it, this is ours. Learn it, Love it, Live with it. Not so useful on Caster Mobs, but that is what the 20 Second Reduction on HoJ is for. Did you know that HoJ also has a interrupt effect? Even if a boss is immune to the stun, they will not (likely) be immune to the interrupt. Combined with the talent earlier in the tree, you could have a 20 second cooldown on your 6 second stun. Hot damn.
Hammer of the Righteous: Excellent capstone of the Protection tree. HotR provides excellent TPS and is an essential part of this balanced breakfe-...Tanking cycle.
Retribution:
Deflection: Just like Anticipation, 5% more Parry is a bread-and-butter core talent. It sits there and does it's job. Nothing special, nothing flashy. just 5% more parry.
Improved Judgement: 1/2 points here is what you need for the 96969 rotation, covered earlier.
That's about it for essential talents. If you have these talents listed here above that is all you need to have to tank. That's right, everything you NEED is available at level 68. The rest of the 12 points are up to you. Those of you in the audience who are doing the math and following along on your talent calculator's may have noticed a critical flaw in the build I have outlined above. I'm missing 3 talent points in early Prot to continue. Somewhere before Blessing of Sacntuary you need to spend 3 points to continue. This is where the second part of my guide comes in. The optional (and not-so optional) points.
First let's discuss the 3 points you need to spend in early protection.
Starting with the talents that aren't so great:
Guardian's Favor and Stoicism are pretty much out the window right away. They provide PvP (and I'm not talking Player vs Pug) benefits. A large number of bosses stun in the game, but Stoicism does not affect these bosses stuns. I can count the number of bosses that include a dispell mechanic on one hand, two are in the same instance, and both can be avoided completely with a dispeller of your own or focus fire on adds. A reduction on the cooldowns and uptime of buffs you are rarely going to use is also a negligible buff. Guardian's favor is definitely the stronger tanking talent of the two, but it does not make the cut.
Reckoning: Provides an excellent boost to your white, auto-attack, damage. Unfortunately, this does nothing for you as a tank. It cuts down on the whopping 6+/- seconds it takes to get a full stack of your DoT seal, but if you are so close on threat you are trying to decrease the time it takes for your dot to get to full capacity, you have bigger problems honestly. Back when the DoT application was not a guaranteed thing and Tankadin's used Seal of Righteousness, reckoning was viable and useful. Now, it is not. Reckoning may be useful, however, when you are still leveling. When AoE-ing, reckoning's Seal of Light proc's may mean the difference between efficient leveling and "Why am I leveling as prot again?" Especially if you are grinding harder hitting mobs. For an end, or near end-game tank, Reckoning simply is not worth the points you have to sink into it.
That leaves us with two talents to choose from. Divinity and Divine Sacrifice/Guardian. Both are useful, both help tanking. Let's take a closer look.
Divinity: Probably the most hotly debated option in pre-BoS prot. Divinity boosts the healing you do(clearly a throw-in for the Ret and Holy pallies looking to pick up some talents in Prot) and healing you take. We could care less about our healing output, but an extra 5% on healing input is excellent. Problem is, the more you need this talent, the less it's giving you; inversely, the less you need the talent the more it's giving you. When you need heals the most...low HP, large burst incoming, healer down, etc. You are recieving a small bonus from this talent. When you need heals the least...Max HP, multiple healers on you, outgearing the instance, is when the talent is boosting your heals the most.
A lot of the benefit to Divinity is lost from over-healing, and a lot of the fights in WotLK seem focused on challenging healer's by making them react to burst damage. Which Divinity doesnt help with. If you're bursted from 100% to 10%, chances are either 1) You have about 5x your max HP in healing coming to you in the next .5 seconds, or 2) Your group is about to wipe, because you are dead on the next swing.
Some people swear by it, some people swear it sucks. Personally I went for Divine Sacrifice/Guardian, and I haven't had any problems. Best advice I can give is pay attention to when you die. Were you just bursted down without receiving healing? Were you "overkilled" by several thousand? If so, not much you could have done. If you are over-killed on the last hit by a few hundred, divinity could have saved you there, if you find this happens often on runs with your regular crew, you should consider grabbing a few points. Otherwise, you would have still died.
Divine Sacrifice/Guardian: I'm sure you already know how I feel about Divine Guardian. Divine Sacrifice is also a very useful spell. For example: Sapphiron. During the air phase, both of your ice-blocked players are fairly close to each other. Your raid stacks up right behind them when, oh no! A blizzard is going right over-top of everyone in the raid! Potential disaster right? Not for the super-Tankadin!. Activate Divine Shield THEN Divine Sacrifice and save the raid as 30% of that blizzard bounces off your bubble. Divine Shield will continue to work until it does 150% of your health in DAMAGE to YOU. If you're bubbled you're not taking damage. DS will continue to last it's full duration. Which will be plenty to give your healers some breathing room on keeping everyone alive through the blizzard. Which is excellent group utility for you, it also paves the way to Divine Guardian, which provides massive boosts to Sacred Shield, which you, or your holy pally, should always have on yourself.
Improved Hammer of Justice: Combined with Judgments of the Just, which you should already have, you will have a 20 second cooldown on your Hammer. While the stun won't affect many bosses, the Interrupt will. The stun is still useful in any number of other tanking situations. Especially in Heroics. I use my stun more often in a heroic than anywhere else. You will still need 1 more point in Prot if you choose this talent.
Retribution:
There are many valid options in Retribution, or the "Threatribution" tree. Once you have your initial 6 points for Deflection and 1/2 Judgement you have a couple options to shoot for.
Heart of the Crusader 3/3: Puts a debuff on your Judgment Target that increases anyone who attacks it's crit chance by 3%. Basically it increases your TPS by a little, and your group/raid's TPS by a lot more. It's a very nice buff to have and it stacks with most other crit% buffs. Yes it affects both melee, ranged and spell crit so it's useful to your party no matter who you are rolling with. The only things it will not stack with are Elemental Shamans' Totem of Wrath, and Assassination Rogues' Master Poisoner abilities.
Improved Blessing of Might 2/2:
Turns your 550 AP BoM into a 688 AP BoM. A Fair boost to your Buffs.
You're going to need to spend 4 points in Ret to go further down the tree, and I don't recomment Benediction. We don't have mana problems, we don't need a 10% mana cost reduction on our abilities.
Anyway, further on down the Ret Tree are some rather juicy gems.
Vindication: Don't let the 46 Ap listed on the talent calculator fool you. The AP Debuff scales with your level, topping out at 547 AP at lvl 80. Slightly ahead of a fully talented Curse of Weakness. Testing has shown this ability to have a 100% or near 100% proc rate on melee abilities. This is rather significant. 540 Attack power off a Boss Mob is much more significant than 540 AP off Bob the Feral Druid with 6,000 AP. Vindication is capable of providing nearly as much mitigation as Judgments of the Just. Every boss has a different Attack Power value, Vindication may reduce one boss' DPS by a whopping 30%, but another boss' DPS by only 10%. I am very tempted to place this in the "Necessary" for tanking category. I like it because most DPS cry and whine like a two-year old when asked to keep a debuff on a boss. God forbid they care about something other than their damage meters. Most won't do it anyway. I would very much recommend consideration of this fine talent.
Pursuit of Justice: A fine talent. 15% run speed is 15% less time chasing down a boss or a stray add. The 50% reduction in disarm effects, while great, doesn't affect us THAT much. After all, you can still Judge, Consecrate, Holy Shield and ShoR while your weapon is disarmed.
Crusade: 3% extra Damage to everything, another 3% damage to humanoids, demons, undead and elementals. Approximately half of all bosses in WotLK get the extra 3% damage. It's a very nice TPS boost and well worth the points you've spent to get it.
Holy:
Seals of the Pure: 15% bonus to Seal of Corruption/Vengeance AND Judgement! Holy TPS Tank-Man.
Unfortunately there is little else in holy worth spending your points on. Unyielding Faith is more of a PvP talent since you don't lose threat while feared.
There you have it, Tankadin Talents. What you need, what you want, what you don't. Hope it helps.
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