Avoidance Prot Paladin - New to Heroics

Newer 70 prot paladin. I have 491 defense, 10k unbuffed health, but like 42 avoidance (dodge/block/miss) without using holy shield or trinket.

I have tried to run Heroic UB/Heroic MT but im getting dropped quickly by trash packs of 3-4 mobs. Normal melee hitting around 2k, see some melee spikes at like 7k.

I have run all normal dungeons repeatedly, where is next step to go to get ready for heroics since simple trash is killing me so quickly. Do I need to just lose all the spellpower and stack all defensives to get some heroics down?

There isn’t really a next step outside of doing the raid content.

Heroics are quite tough at first and require a lot of CC so the tank can stay up.

They get pretty easy pretty fast, though. Enjoy it!

I would avoid Shattered Halls and Blood Furnace at first.

The first boss in Old Hillsbrad hits quite hard too.

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At 490+ defense, you should be crit immune, so big hits like 7k should be rare. That said, the Underbog Lords at the end of Heroic UB hit HARD. They get a stacking buff that boosts their damage the longer you take to kill them, and I’ve seem 9k+ hits from them. Even then, they hit slow enough that a healer spamming their biggest heals should be able to keep you up long enough for the dps to kill him, unless the dps are very weak.

That said, Heroic UB is hard on the tank. CC is important in heroics, unlike normal. You need much better gear (full Phase 1 BiS) before you can comfortably go without CC. I’ve gone without CC in less gear than that, but I also had cracked dps that annihilate things. A mage with improved Blizzard is invaluable, as that slow allows you to back out and give your healer a chance to catch up.

As for gearing, you have the “benchmarks” I’d get before doing heroics (490 def, 10k unbuffed hp), but I do have to admit, your avoidance is low. With Holy SHield and buffs, you’d only be at around 75%, 80% with the badge trinket. That’s really low. With only a couple pieces from heroics, I’m sitting at close to uncrushable (101.6% buffed). You don’t need uncrushable for heroics, no mobs in their can crushing blow you, but that avoidance/block really helps out healer mana. It also helps your threat, as blocks = threat for a tankadin.

Big Pieces to aim for to help you get there: Cloak from SV, Chest from Mech, Legs from revered with CoT, shield from Slabs. That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Tanks actually only have minor upgrades in heroics (though badge rewards are GREAT).

TL;DR, make sure you’re using CC when you can, especially “soft” cc, like hunter trap and imp blizzard, and seek out the last few upgrades you can get from normal dungeons. Gem for Stam unless the socket bonus is stam.

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So you have around 72% avoidance with Holy Shield. You’re WAY under avoidance cap, so you’re taking significantly more damage. Work on increasing your avoidance. 102% will make you uncrittable, uncrushable, and you’ll completely avoid more damage.

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He doesn’t have to worry about crushing blows in heroics, which is what he was asking about, but you’re right on point. He’s taking a lot of normal hits, and therefore will be very draining for healers to heal.

Heroics just hit hard. Even on my bear tank that has 71% armor reduction unbuffed, some trash mobs still smack me for 2-3k per hit.

You have to use CC if you’re undergeared.

Also, run Mechanar, Botanica and Slave Pens, those three heroics are pathetically easy.

Everyone else has given good advice but I wanted to point out these two instances in particular are on the nastier side of Heroics available to us right now.

Mech/Bot for Shatar
Sethekk for Lower City
SP/SV for CE
Ramps for HH/Thralmar

These significantly easier to begin with compared to others like Blood Furnace, Mana Tombs, etc.

Try using cc. I can hold aggro just fine on my warrior. But still use cc to allow the healer to be able to keep me up. Its nice to be able to hold aggro on 4 but its not about that in heroics. U have to be able to survive. So sap or sheep or freeze at least one. Every pack. If it a 2 mob pull then have a rogue sap one. Just get used to it. Aftet a few pulls u will br able to see how your healer is doimg and then take on a little more. Some packs u just cant get cc on or it igjt break early. Thats when u use your oh sht cooldowns.

Unless you over-gear heroics, you can’t just casually AoE round-up up mobs like you usually do in regular dungeons as a Paladin. You have to use CC, kiting, etc. depending on group configuration, to reduce how many mobs are hitting tank at one time, . We’ve even used multiple healers (one being a good heal/dps hybrid) for certain pulls in heroics back in the original TBC when we were going in there with regular dungeon blue gear & lacked a lot of CC.

All 3 tanks at max level,

Prot paladin is by far the squishiest tank from my experience, that being said. Depending on the dungeon. None of the tanks can regularly tank 3-4 mobs at a time in Heroic. I can do it in MT and UB heroic easily on my warrior who is uber geared but I probably wouldn’t be able to in SH or BF. I would need to have an extreme amount of faith in my healer to do it on my paladin. You should still be using CC and trying never to tank more than 3 mobs unless you have a frost mage then your responsibilities shift.

I see. Our run had a shaman healer, a priest dps and 2 paladin dps so we had no CC. I was just face tanking the groups and died 3x to packs of 3-4 trash mobs.

2 pally dps…no cc? you have double repentance AND THREE hammers of justice. you got earthbind. Might be more of a kiting group then a traditional cc group, but everyone in heroics needs to use ALL the toolkit.

Honestly, your stats seem perfectly reasonable for starting out the easier heroics. In my experience, stamina > avoidance for heroics, where mobs hit like absolute trucks. Bring Stam food and if possible, bring a priest for their fort buff. That will help you out a ton until you can get yourself to around 12k unbuffed.

And as others have said, cc is king. Warlocks and mages being the best at it (just pull waaay back so the lock can fear). But almost every class has SOME kind of cc they can use. Even you have a stun which can be super helpful for lowering damage on big pulls. Protip: the talent to reduce hoj CD is SUPER useful for 5mans, even though most guides say don’t pick it up

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Yeah, I’m not sure I’d worry about avoidance in heroics. I healed plenty of heroics back in the day and I never cared much for avoidance tanks. Stack some stam. Taking the hits will help your mana regen anyway.

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Heroics require cc…

You either cheese with some type of slow effect and kite around consecrate while all slow or you need hard cc on X amount of mobs…

As you and your healer get better gear X (mentioned above) decreases.

Also little things help, demo shout, scorpid string, disarm, etc all help you take less damage and will help a ton.

Agreed. Avoidance is a bit overrated in general. You will get plenty of avoidance naturally though getting defense cap and by acquiring tank gear. There’s a reason you stack Stam gems and not block rating gems.

There is only 1 fight in the game where I would gear specifically for avoidance cap, and that’s prince in kara. A single crushing blow in phase 2 can be a wipe on that fight

You should be fine tanking most Heroics, you’ll just need to focus more on having a good comp. Take plenty of CC and you’ll be fine.

As for increasing your avoidance, you can see if there is any gear you still need from normal dungeons, like the Righteous set pieces and target those. Afterwards you can target specific heroics.

You can definitely get Avoidance capped before raiding though.

Also, prioritize Block Rating as much as you can. It counts for preventing Crushes and it’s better to take some damage to keep getting mana back. Block Rating is king IMO.

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