Imp Devo Aura, Toughness, AnticipationFollow

Don't forget that Redoubt also gives access to Shield Spec or as Cap calls it in his talent tree: "Block harder! HARDER!"

My build has toughness and anticipation personally, I'd say if you run with a holy pally or can get a friend to run one than have him cover improved devo while you cover ret aura. In my old kara group we'd have me as prot and two holy pallies, one had improved devo, one would run ret aura and I would run Concen, was quite nice.

The ONLY reason to have redoubt at 70 is for shield spec. Saying "well, what if you're silenced" is just stupid. Essentially this mechanic is something you have to worry about on Gruul and that's pretty much it until Azgalor. The chances that the melee swing before the silence will proc redoubt is 10%*(Block%), essentially around 5-6%. The chance that you will have timed a holy shield in such a way that redoubt will proc and that proc will remain active through the duration of the silence is even lower. Any time redoubt procs with holy shield up it is being entirely wasted. Redoubt is entirely a means to an end.


The end is Shield Specialization. If you're rocking low end stats and your shield is blocking around 270 damage per hit, the 30% bonus nets you 90 more on the 50% of hits that you actually block. Even at 500 block value it is 150 damage per hit. That's about 1/10 of a renew tick at that gear level at roughly the same intervals. Yes, shield spec is awesome for when you're trying to AoE grind mobs, as is redoubt. But for the actual act of tanking they don't provide nearly the promised mitigation. Combined they have around the equivalent bonus of using BoSanc and Dev. Aura, however BoSanc/Dev provide slightly more threat than Ret Aura and Shield spec. While Kings is considered the end-all-be-all of tanking blessings, assuming you aren't the only pally in your 25 man raid, Sanc comes in, albeit distant, 2nd. Wisdom is wasted when you're being heal bombed and Might is a joke.



Edit: This is, of course, assuming you're looking toward late game content. When it comes to leveling and to low end instance tanking, redoubt is the greater talent. When you start playing the higher end content is when it becomes a waste of talent points.)

Edited, Feb 6th 2008 3:00am by Loki

To be honest, when my guild comes up against a boss that silences, we don't use a paladin tank. While it's certainly possible to have a redoubt proc keep you uncrushable while you're silenced, there also is one other rather significant problem. Sooner or later, redoubt will NOT be up while you are silenced, and you eventually WILL get crushed.

You don't want to rely on a proc to keep you uncrushable, because procs are not constantly up.



Yes, but it's kinda disappointing when the main benefit you get from spending 5 talent points is the ability to finally spend points on something useful...



First, we are talking high end raid content. While it's certainly easy to run around 5-mans with ret aura always up, when you come up against a raid boss, you need to stack every bit of mitigation that you can get. Now a common counter argument is to have a holy pally put in the same group as you and use them for the Devotion Aura buff, and if they have improved devo aura, that's great! However, if they don't, it would be awesome if you had improved devotion aura, and then the holy pally could put up ret aura (which will likely be the same strength as yours anyways) Imp Devo Aura is guaranteed help on 39 of the different level 70 raid content bosses in the game that deal physical damage. Redoubt may possibly help you on the 3 that silence which you shouldn't be tanking anyways.


You should always use the appropriate aura for a fight. Simply always having ret aura up isn't always the answer, especially since it provides less than 20 TPS, and gets worse as your avoidance goes up.

I never said you need to rely on it. I said it CAN help. I think the few times it 'might' save your life out weigh 400 bonus armor.

But why is your guild so short on tanks that you are the ONLY one who can tank the 3 bosses with silence effects, especially since 2 are MH+. Retribution Aura is not the Aura of choice in a raid, devotion aura is, and if I'm getting another pally in my group for a 2nd aura I want it to be the RET pally, not the Holy Pally (unless it's Foldingchair the Shockadin). Like I said before, the difference made up from Redoubt + Shield Spec isn't enough to justify spending 8 points for it. The tree is bloated enough and saving the 3 points for use elsewhere really does make a difference.