How viable are Prot Paladins in TBC?

The principles are exactly the same regardless of expansion or class, bud.

EHP is only useful to the point of surviving some extremely unlucky combination of boss swings and mechanics, and beyond that it serves no purpose. That doesn’t matter whether your nameplate is orange, pink, or brown.

The fundamental mechanics of tanking are universal.

Absolutely not. Maybe before you’ve gotten ANYTHING else, but even a Styleen’s would be better than that.

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Mindlessly stacking EH doesn’t help anyone once you’ve hit the necessary thresholds for survival. People learned this lesson in WotLK even while EH stacking was still the go-to method, and TBC isn’t even going to be as punishing as WotLK will be regarding EH. Druids can get away with heavy Agility setups in T5/6 and not get burst down, EH is not a hard thing to build up. Plus, Paladins have some fantastic EH scaling anyway, better than Warriors, assuming Sunwell balancing, so there’s even more freedom in gem/gear choices to get the EH you need and stack Avoidance/DPS as needed otherwise.

…for what fights?

There isn’t a single fight in Vanilla, TBC, WotLK, Cata, etc, where you can just make a grand statement like “Stamina trinket better than everything” and it remains true for all content. This is especially true when a variety of defensive trinkets can and will help push a Paladin up and over the unhittable threshold, which dramatically smooths out their DTPS and increases their guaranteed survival scenarios by quite a bit.

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There is no ‘best’. Depending on the fight you will wear. Stam set, Threat set, Block set, or a mix. If you aren’t MTing you can be waay less balanced in your stats to do your specific job on that fight.

It’s been a while so I’m sure I won’t get everthing but the good threat trinkets are.

BOJ spellpower on use, Za Hex head, Magtheradons caster trinket.

Dodge is the Moros pocket watch

Block has the BOJ block one and the Brewfest block one with same stats (this combo is very good for Warriors, more of a meme for paladin).

Stam is the one from MGT Heroic and the Darmooncard which procs damage on hit like thorns (good on threat set aswell to give you some HP and threat)

We don’t know if Blizzard may change drums in TBC so I wouldn’t change professions just yet. I would however save the needed mats to level leatherworking from 1-300.

Leatherworking drums probably wont be needed until Sunwell Plateau unless your guild is a bunch of die hard raiders who want you to have every world buff before doing MC/Ony.

So if you don’t need leatherworking you still have those mats to sell at a higher price because they will be selling for those who want leatherworking.

Nothing is needed. It’s a matter of what’s best. 80 Haste Rating for your party at 100% uptime is worth far more than anything else available to you personally.

I agree in practice, but remember, there are a large amount of people that play WOW that adhere to the philosophy “if it isn’t on the BiS list, it isn’t the best”

Well, that statement isn’t exactly false. It’s just missing a bit of context. BiS… for what?

BiS mitigation? BiS AoE tanking? BiS threat? There are items that are objectively the best at these things.

The issue comes when people want a universal BiS list, e.g. “what items are best for all situations?” This stems from people wanting to pretend they are good at the game and are knowledgeable while actually putting in no effort to understand their class, their stats, or the weights thereof.

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Also one thing to keep in mind is Blizz may make changes to drums to prevent a Leatherworking or bust meta.

But I doubt many guilds will requires leatherworking until BT or Sunwell.

Most of the BiS lists don’t differentiate. They just say “this is your best XXXXX”

I agree with swapping gear to meet the encounter. The average player doesn’t do that.

Raiders may

They won’t. They didn’t do anything of the sort in Classic; they have no reason to do so in TBC.

It’s not exactly gamebreaking, by any means, and there were far bigger benefits in Classic that went totally untouched.

Any guild that takes its rankings seriously will require it from day one. Casual guilds will NEVER require it.

You’re not going to hit a wall in BT or SWP and think “80 Haste Rating is going to make the difference here.”

For sure. I lambast the WoWhead BiS lists constantly, especially for the classes/specs I play, because they don’t really know what they’re talking about and are geared for people of similar knowledge: zero.

Given that, the average player should never gear for stamina. The average player should, if they refuse to ever swap gear, wear the gear that is useful for the most encounters.

If you’re wondering which trinkets are better than some stamina trinkets for that purpose, the answer is literally any trinket with something other than stamina.

Best dungeon tank. Best add tank. Best AoE farming spec. Excellent main tank potential in the right hands. Expect several replies disagreeing with the last sentence.

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Hi Fasciae, Can you pls enlighten me about the 2.4 change that makes paladin a viable MT? I read that paladin gear will be weaker than war. We won’t have the same threat and mitigation. The talents are mostly about blocking attacks, which is suitable for trash mobs AOE tanking.

This is functionally no different than Shield Block and the talents that augment it for Warriors.

However, Prot Paladins get threat on blocked attacks, and their threat generation is not dependent on damage taken like it is for Feral and Prot Warriors (due to rage). If a Paladin parries an attack, they still get to swing their mace or cast Judgement or refresh Holy Shield. If a Warrior parries an attack, they might not have rage to cast a Devastate or Shield Slam or Shield Block.

Combat Expertise in the Protection Tree. I don’t remember what it was before the change, but it definitely didn’t have 10% Stamina attached to it originally. With at least this much in terms of talent changes, Paladins went from lagging behind Warriors on EH scaling to being well ahead of them.

Warriors get:

  • 10% damage reduction to all types from Defensive Stance
  • 6% damage reduction to magic types from Improved Defensive Stance
  • 5% extra Stamina from Vitality

Paladins get:

  • 6% damage reduction to all types from Improved Righteous Fury
  • 4% damage reduction to magic types from Spell Warding
  • 16% extra Stamina from Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise

Both Tanks get the same 10% Armor bonus from Toughness and base Armor is the same whether you’re wearing Paladin tier, Warrior tier, or an off-piece, so long as it is the same ilvl. There may be some random Plate pieces that have inflated Armor values, but I don’t know of any off the top of my head.

That only leaves Stamina differences, and Paladin gear is either equal to, or only slightly less, BASE Stamina compared to Warrior. I highlight “base” because often both pieces have the same number of sockets, so if you wanted to slam down a few Stamina-only gems, the Paladin simply gets more.

All-in-all the Paladin, if properly geared, should be able to handily keep pace with a Warrior’s EH without using as much of the gearing budget to do so. Since we know Warriors can Tank all content in TBC, if a Paladin can meet/exceed Warrior EH, the Paladin can survive any burst TBC content can dish out.

I can’t speak explicitly about TPS/DPS comparisons. I know there are formulas and old spreadsheets floating around, but I honestly just don’t trust numbers like those until I can confirm them myself. If I had to guess, Paladins probably cannot exceed a Rage-filled Warrior on TPS/DPS for single targets, but I’m not sure that’s actually a liability either. Threat never felt hard to control back in TBC, but I was also a Druid and single target threat was a joke for us. So really what we need to find out is if Paladins can deal decent DPS in single target fights (I suspect they’re low) and can a Paladin maintain that long enough for the fight to finish since Mana is a concern.

Paladins are absolutely kings/queens of AoE Tanking, there is no doubt there. But you also have to remember that Warriors also get mostly Block-centric talent improvements in TBC, if they’re not getting generic stuff.

Warriors are reliant on good Shield Block usage, and most of their Protection talents improve their Rage efficiencies or grant direct TPS skills like Shield Slam and Devastate. Warriors have to go 25pts deep to get the same 30% increased Block Value talent that Paladins get 10pts deep, get the same 10% Armor from Toughness, the same 20 Defense Skill from Anticipation, and have the same option for 5% extra Parry from Deflection in another tree.

Paladins at this stage (TBC) are truly just Warriors+Holy Magic, with mostly the same base stats but with different methods of acquiring and holding aggro. Paladins will use Seals, Judgment, Holy Shield, and Consecrate to hold, whereas Warriors will use Heroic Strike, Revenge, Shield Slam, Devastate, and Thunder Clap to hold.

Clearing trash is really the majority of a raid, and adds become more of a prominent feature of many boss fights in TBC. Even if the pally is just tanking on trash and dealing with adds, he’s still offering a huge QOL improvement for the raid.

Also, if you’re not familiar with TBC there’s a raid called Mt. Hyjal. My recollection is that it’s pure cancer and everyone hated it because much of it is just wave and after of gargoyles and stuff. It was doable without a prot pally, but it just sucked that much more without one. I was willing to kiss my prot pally’s feet just to have him show up and tank that stupid raid.

Its tricky, but it’s possible. There are regular windows every couple of seconds where you aren’t silenced, which is plenty of opportunity to establish and maintain aggro. Pallies aren’t GCD capped so it’s not a huge deal.

Ahhh cool, makes sense. I’ll remember that.

Paladins can not offtank in TBC they are main tank only

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This entirely depends on what we mean by “OT” for a given fight.

  • A Paladin can easily OT a fight like Mother Shahraz because the only requirement is that you stack with the MT to soak Saber Lash cleaves.
  • A Paladin can easily OT a fight like Illidari Council because there is no express MT/OT duties, you just have your add to pick up and Paladins are fine with all but the Mage-only one.
  • A Paladin is perfectly suited to do any fight that necessitates a Taunt swap since they can actually Taunt.
  • If the fight necessitates staying high on threat for swaps (Gurtogg, Void Reaver) or some Hateful mechanic (Gruul), then the Paladin is at their weakest. That being said, all the Tanks are worst off when not actively taking damage, but Druids are the best at this because they’re so ridiculously Rage-efficient.

The whole MT/OT designation was loose at best even in TBC and Wrath.

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Guys…is there a discord anyone knows of for more information regarding Prot Pally in TBC?

I plan on rerollin to Prot Pally for TBC and tryna learn as much as possible before hand.