Hi guys! I’ve leveled a paladin as prot so far and just hit 68. I intend to continue as prot until 80, running as many dungeons as I can.
I was told that I need to aim for 490 defense as its the defense cap at 70 so that I don’t get destroyed in wotlk dungeons. I’ve achieved this (at 495 right now).
Looking at gear available through the starting zones in Northrend, there’s little to no quest gear with +Def on it. However, this green gear obtained from quests has more stamina and armor compared to what I’m wearing from Outlands.
So my questions are the following:
Is this 490 Defense Cap crucial?
Should I be replacing my current gear with greens from quests in Northrend that have more stamina and armor but lack +Def?
Should I only replace my current +Def gear if/when I’m over the defense cap.
As I said in the beginning, I’m playing a prot paladin.
Current Def is 495, with just over 10k hp self buffed.
Any advice and suggestions from experienced tanks/players is appreciated.
Def cap is only for raids and only for current raids at that.
Pre that the content either dose not hit hard enough or has been nerfed to the point of it’s not needed.
If you’re trying to keep def cap when leveling you are losing to much stam and armor and are overall way worse.
Def cap only matters when a crit 50 percent extra damage is likly to kill you with in 5 mans that’s not the case as so many small hits a small hit doing 50 percent more 5 percent of the time if 0 def is nothing. That’s basicly the same as adding less than half an extra mob to a pull of 4. I’m sure you chain pull often adding half a mob is not a threat.
The reason you really wanted 490 defense or a little higher at 70 was for crit from raid bosses, you only needed about 480-485 for lvl 70 heroics.
There was also crushing blows but you won’t need to worry about them.
This article will go over how defense worked in relation to crushing blows if you’re interested in how it worked.
h ttps://www.engadget.com/2008-09-23-shifting-perspectives-dealing-with-crushing-blows.html
(Fix the https for it to work)
You no longer need to worry about crushing blows in Wotlk as the level needed to crush has been moved from 3 higher to 4 higher so you shouldn’t normally see it.
As for the value of defense vs stamina while levelling, it’s not a big deal, choose whatever you want, if it’s only a small stamina increase (within 10) keep the defense items, if it’s more than 10 it’s an item to consider wearing, especially if it has more armor as you’ll need higher armor rating to mitigate as you lvl.
Yea when I was leveling through 70-80, like these people say Def cap is not an issue till you hit 80. i think 480 is good to get you through. I didn’t pay much attention to my Def till like 78-79 honestly
I’m surprised you were able to find people. I have a 63 Tankadin on Grobb and couldn’t even find one single person in queue. Unless you plan on raiding at 70 you don’t need all that defense. I personally would just go for stam and maybe some strength? I’m new to Paladin so not sure if they have talents similar to DKs which Strength also gives you some def stats. Right now I have 3 peices that have 2x gem slots in each and I put the +24 stam gems in them since they are 6g on my server sitting at a healthy 8k with kings.
The only defensive stat Paladins get from Strength is Block Value, and the conversion rate is not in our favour. What Paladins DO get from Strength, assuming talents are chosen appropriately, is spell damage, and thus, threat.
In terms of avoidance, it’s better to utilize actual tanking gear with Dodge, Parry, Block, and Block Value, rather than rely on Strength for that.
I have a question you might know the answer too then. After 540 def cap how much does diminishing returns affect defense rating? Like right now my DK has 619 def rating and I was told that’s bad because a lot is getting wasted with DR… So how much does DR affect rating after 540 and if it does affect it a lot I should prob start adding alittle STR into the equation to help with more threat right?
You’re right, it’s not as simple as I made it out to be, and requires our combined defensive stats and usually something like shield block or a similar defensive to assist but you won’t be anywhere near reaching crush cap without having 490 defense first, that’s the first step to get into raiding then you can go higher as you gear. Every point of defense you get increases your avoidance stats.
Technically there wouldn’t be a true defense cap, it just keeps going.
Not necessarily true. It was possible to obtain 102.4% avoidance without reaching defence cap. And at that point, defence wasn’t much of a concern since you could no longer receive critical strikes.
With Shield Block, it was impossible not to be immune to Crushing Blows, with or without the defence cap.
All Prot Paladin abilities scale off of attack power, Strength gives attack power directly, as well as a talented strength to spell power conversion. It just so happens that the attack power coefficients on our abilities are much more impactful than the spell power coefficients.
I’m pretty sure the DR only applies to the avoidance parts of defense (miss, dodge, parry). The crit suppression part of defense definitely does not get affected by DR.
Your desired threat stats are hit, expertise, and strength, in some order based on the situation you’re in.
The correct terminology would be the defense soft cap. You reach that soft cap when you get crit immune. After that, defense takes a nose dive in value.
Actually, Consecration, for example, scales from both, hence why we still have spell damage from Touched by the Light.
Also, not true. That wording doesn’t match with other soft caps - this would be the hard cap for defence. “Hard cap” doesn’t mean you can’t go further, it means there’s no point, as you gain nothing from it. For example, Expertise has both caps, while you can continue stacking it after the hard cap.
Yeah, I guess warriors had a easier time being main tank in TBC with their shield block being like 75% vs paladins holy shield 30% block, of course holy shield naturally did reflective damage and lasted longer with it’s multiple charges so a bit of a trade off.
As opposed to bears who either dodged or ate the hit.
That’s exactly what I alluded to with the rest of my post.
The point at which defense gives crit immunity is exactly a soft cap. You can still add on defense after that point and it still gives something useful - namely block, dodge, parry, and miss. It does not become useless after crit immunity.
That really only applied to raiding in normal/heroic dungeon gear. It was easy enough to get crush immune as a Paladin in pre-raid BIS gear, and after that point Paladins had no problem maintaining crush immunity throughout the expansion.
Warriors ultimately scaled the worst out of the 3 tanks, although that was primarily due to the fact that their damage output didn’t scale well while Paladin damage output scaled fairly well and Druid damage output scaled exceptionally well. It became harder and harder for a Warrior to keep threat as the expansion went on.
I wouldn’t be surprised if paladins eventually did more damage with most of their damage being holy which no NPCs had a particular resistance to and went through armor, atleast not in the same way that molten core was resistant to fire spells…and shadow I think, I feel like some bosses had shadow resistance too.
Personally, my guild kept a warrior for main tanking because of stuff like last stand and shield wall but I can see why a guild that doesn’t have to worry about tanks staying up would go for something a little different for threat purposes.