Forum post of the day: Collateral damage
by Amanda Dean 
Nov 5th 2008 at 1:00PM
Retiribution Paladins had about three weeks to really shine. Think of it as retribution for many years of being laughed out of PUGs. Blizzard implemented promised nerfs to the Class in patch 3.0.3. Dumptruk of Frostmourne is upset about the effect that these changes have had on tanking in the Protection specialization. He opined that reduced damage in Judgments equates to reduced threat per second. He finished is post with a plea to reevaluate protection Paladins.In a response to the thread Rauss of Sentinels disagreed. He believes that a Paladin tank should not rely on Judgments to build threat. Rauss relies on Consecration, Hammer of Righteousness, and select Seals/Judgments to build aggro- depending on the situation. He thinks the original poster should expand to additional aspects of the class to realize its true potential.
I haven't had the pleasure of running with a Pally tank since the patch. If threat generation has truly been nerfed, the whole group must throttle down and adjust in order to keep the tank tanking. What has been your experience as (or with) Paladin tanks since the patch?
Filed under: Paladin, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Instances, Forum Post of the Day
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Lodur Nov 5th 2008 1:06PM
pally tanks are still fine so far. Haven't had any issues.
Geiss Nov 5th 2008 1:14PM
i've been poking my two pennies in on most of the threads in both the pally forums and tanking forums over on blizz's site, and another issue under discussion is mana regen.
a lot of this (threat and mana regen) seems to stem around weapon choice - someone, i forgot whom, appearently armoried most folks who were loudly stating that we prot pallies caught some carry-over from the ret nerf. their deduction, and i dont know if it is unfound or not, was that those who complained about lacking mana and running into threat issues were wearing the good ol 60 dps, 200 spell damage weapons.
i for one have been using my HHM's sword since the day i got it, with a few exceptions (T5 pugs being one) where i break out the crystalline kopesh.
now, i wasnt able to get online and stay connected at ALL last night to test this out, but my feelings are in line with the minority - that we SHOULD be just about where we were pre-3.0.3. further testing will come tonight, hopefully via a raid pug or at the least heroics.
i do tend to agree with the mana complaint issues, however - i had the tendency to out-threat T5 geared DPSers by at least 40% through some of the T4 25-man raids that i've done, but i'm running into OOM problems when the boss is around 20-30% health remaining. with the JoW/SoW nerf, I fear that this (OOM problem) will be coming into play even sooner.
i dont think i'm too worried right now about attempting to re-gear for more block and less avoidance (taking blocked damage = mana return from spiritual attunement as well as BoSanc) since we're 7 days away from wrath.
BUT! blizz seriously needs to re-address this issue with the prot side of things at a bare minimum. our mana regen, i forsee, will be fairly shoddy again for the time being (unless we can stack block, which i wouldnt count on so close to Wrath)
/end rant
nicholas Nov 5th 2008 1:30PM
Yeah. Id have to agree with the HH Sword. It paired with an affordable +20 Str seems to do sustainable DPS. The days of pure Spell Power Threat Gen are over I think. I feel Prot is far more powerful now.
But I plan to re-roll a DK. Playing one on the Beta confirmed my assumptions.
Heilig Nov 5th 2008 1:48PM
End-game pally tanks have the highest threat gen of any tank if they gear right. Spell damage is out, Weapon DPS is in. I'm using a Brutalizer. The other two end-game pallies on my server use a Dragonscale Encrusted Longblade and Muramasa. Our threat is NOT an issue.
Mana efficiency scales with your gear. When I am out soloing I put on a passive block set that has me at just under 100% block/dodge/parry without Holy Shield up. If I start to run low on mana, I just pull more mobs. Blessing of Sanctuary is expressly designed to play to our AoE tank strength. Nerfing Judgment and seal damage is about a 3% hit to our threat in infinite-mana situations (I.E. any time you're really tanking.)
We're fine.
Brian Nov 5th 2008 3:22PM
I use the Headless Horseman's sword on my tankadin, in my case with Deathfrost, and haven't had any threat problems at all.
baneleaf Nov 5th 2008 4:18PM
I tanked a heroic last night and did notice a slight difference in threat generation. It did not help much that I had two rogues taking turns critting the heck out of the wrong targets but we were able to push through. I am in Pre-kara gear mostly so heroics are a slight challenge when people ignore threat meters but I still think the judgement nerf did hurt a little.
Caed Nov 5th 2008 9:18PM
Ran Hyjal last night; pallies are fine. I don't think one mob in any wave slipped past their consecrate, or got pulled by AOE spamming mages, or myself spamming Reck-boosted, trinketed Sweeping Strikes-Bladestorm whenever I could. Mana didn't appear to be an issue in trash or boss-fights. I actually prefer to run with pally tanks (class traitor lol) because of how solid their AOE threat is, I generally pull off a warrior or druid while Bladestorming.
seiya Nov 5th 2008 1:07PM
Tanked a heroic last night and it was fine. Perhaps in a raid setting it will be tougher, but as far as five mans aggro and damage output is still very good.
Heilig Nov 5th 2008 1:50PM
Raids are easier, actually. When you get the benefit of ALL the raid buffs, our threat scales better than warriors or bears. Add to that that you are taking enough damage that you can spam EVERYTHING, and it's a lot of fun to raid.
andyjay220 Nov 5th 2008 2:56PM
I didn't have the problems with threat so much as mana in our kara run last night. I think the JoW nerf might have hurt me, but it's hard to tell since I greatly overgear the instance so much i wasn't requiring many heals. I just started pulling two groups at a time and it wasn't so bad.
Will be hard to tell for sure until we start running things in Wrath.
Nick S Nov 5th 2008 2:14PM
Yeah, we use a Paladin tank for quick pickups on Illidan. I've seen absolutely zero evidence that Paladin threat is low, in fact it's so much better that what you said about raids being easier is absolutely true. The threat ceiling even without an MD is very high.
Borkr Nov 5th 2008 1:08PM
My Pali tank, patch 3.0.2 was doing 1600-2200 TPS, since patch 3.0.3 my ZA run last night I was doing 1200-1800 TPS. While it's still impressive, I have to utilize every spell and ability I can to achieve that level of threat. My tank is only Kara/ZA and BoJ equiped, so better geared will have better TPS.
I know and understand that Ret DPS had to be toned down, but were we have been a laughing stock for years, maybe the tone down should not have been as severe as it was...
gundamxzero Nov 5th 2008 3:06PM
As both a 70 hunter and 70 druid I was getting stunlocked and would die in a few hits from ret pallies. A hybrid class! Not even a rogue can do that and they are a pure dps class. Blizz has always said hybrid should not be able to out dps pure hybrids. It was necessary.
Nick S Nov 5th 2008 4:42PM
@Borkr
Have you re-itemized your gear? Paladin tanks using the old itemization are going to see a huge drop in threat generation versus those who switch to the new stat-standards. Our Pally tanks (single-target) are up by around 500 threat per second, and against multiple targets they're pretty much rolling the score on Omen.
Have your guild help you get King's Defender, Cleaver of the Unforgiving, Mallet of the Tides, the Brutalizer, or whatever you have access to, and re-gem/enchant to maximize the new Prot threat-stats. If your guild could clear ZA before Echoes of Doom, you'll certainly now be able to bump off Lurker and start Wrath off with a great tanking weapon.
Kyle Nov 5th 2008 1:08PM
Pally tanks will be fine. I am one. Right now our threat is lower, but that is because we dont have our shield slam yet (Level 75) which is what we will be spamming to build lots of threat.
Lyraat Nov 5th 2008 1:10PM
Aye. Pally tanks have been as solid since the patch as they were pre-patch in both 5-mans and raids. Even if they weren't, the 30-second cd on Misdirection will help keep them up.
Xtofer Nov 5th 2008 1:12PM
I'm a feral tank, myself, but last night my guild ran Kara. I was the MT, a pally was the off-tank, and we were fine. The pally had no problem picking up mobs and building/keeping threat.
bone2pick Nov 5th 2008 1:11PM
Blizzard, ror the sake of all the Ret Pallys/Prot Pallys/Holy Pallys, that are still sane (including myself) needs to erase this class from WoW history. At the rate they are traveling now, Blizzard could have just implemented a new class and had fun nerfing and unnerfing it. I dont know if they understand this or not, but im sure there are more than a handful of subscribers that only desire to play one toon and that one toon might just so happen to be their "Nerf-Pinata".
Ancro Nov 5th 2008 1:12PM
I think with the threat changes, this really doesn't equate to be a very big problem. Granted, it is less TPS, but that doesn't take into account that our BT tanks are having trouble on Bloodboil because one of us builds up to much threat and literally has to stop doing anything for a full thirty seconds or pop up a bubble to drop aggro. Hand of Salvation doesn't cover the distance between Tank threat and the Offtank, I think that it might be worth giving it a longer duration with a more Vigilance-like effect of the Warrior's talent. Perhaps it could transfer the threat from one member to the Paladin, like a longer duration Misdirect? That would be kind of nice, and add a bit of flavor to the ability.
If I notice something different in BT tonite, I'll come back and post here, but honestly I don't think its going to work out to be that big of a difference.
Gadai Nov 6th 2008 4:17AM
On Bloodboil I (the paladin tank) just pop evasion trinkets at the beginning and tank him the whole way to the first fel rage. Once that hits I Divine Shield to remove the debuffs and then tank him until death (usually getting to pop the two minute CD trinkets again). Seems fine tbh. BT content is ridiculously easy now with one ZA guild I know of going 6/9 BT in their first night. Enjoy the epics folks :)