The badge lewtsFollow

I believe this is adressed in a sticky, but there are few benchmarks after which you get stamina/armor:
200 +spell damage. This is usually accomplished via an epic caster weapon, allowing the rest of your gear to be devoted to tanking. 200 SD is about what you need to hold aggro, more isn't necessarily bad but the items could go to defensive stats.
Uncrittable. Yes, 490 defense is mandatory, any more helps your avoidance but isn't the best in terms of itemization.
Uncrushable. If you have 102.4% avoidance+block with holy shield up, you're doing fine. More avoidance helps, but isn't the most important thing anymore.

After that, stack armor, stamina, and more avoidance. Armor will scale with new gear, stamina should be your focus, but you'll still get avoidance as it goes up.

Going to agree with skribs on this. ~200 SD is plenty to hold aggro on heroics/Kara. I purchased the Warrior chestpeice as I think it's superior to the Pally chest for 2 reasons:

1.) Spell Hit:
Why Blizz... WHY!? Not only is our RD not based on spell hit anymore. But neither are our spelldmg hits from SoR.. So why Blizz? Why do you insist on giving us a completely useless stat splooged all over my tier pieces?.. It's a crime and someone should be maimed..

2.) Lack of Avoidance:
Here's the thing; when it comes to either threat or avoidance, which is the easiest to come by? For me, I say threat. You can slap spell dmg on your gloves and weapon, spell dmg maces are easy to come by, and spelldmg/stam gems are there as a last resort(dunno why it would come to this, but to each-his/her-own). What I do find that is hard to come by is avoidance, namely pure avoidance like Dodge. When attempting to get as close to the 102.4% line as I can without going under I'll toy with enchants on either spelldmg or Agi for gloves and weapon. With 2 Agi chants you can get around ~1.36% dodge chance if I remember right. With 2 spelldmg chants you can get +35spelldmg. Now on the chestplates, if you take the Warrior-intended chestplate you get 1.7989417989417989417989417989418% Dodge Chance. And with the Pally-intended chestplate you get 60 spelldmg. Either or is going to be a close trade off. But looking at either spell hit or extra block value, I'll take the block value please.

I guess after writing all of this out, if you include enchants for your gloves/weapon with the chestplates, both are pretty close on Threat:Avoidance ratio. So then it comes down to either spell hit or block value. And my HP is always going to be lower than droods or warriors. So I'll take some extra survival over a pretty useless stat such as Spell Hit.

200 or a little more works just fine. I MT'd all of kara and went into the first bit of ZA and some Gruuls with about 215 SD...Aggro was never a problem. Like its been said though, after 102 avoidance and 490 def, stam, stam, and more stam. :)

If your dps is kara/t4 geared, 200spell dam is fine. Once you get out of kara and want to hold agro on a non demon/undead you better be pushing 350 spell dam. I run heroics with 500+ now and don't bother giving t5 melee salvation, casters still get salv of course as t5/t6 caster threat is extremely high. More spell dam=more dps for your grp/raid as the higher threat ceiling means dps can really go all out more of the time. Elemental shaman + superior wizard oil are your best friends:)

The new pally badge chest is crap for main tanking. The previous badge chest is far superior and requires fewer badges. Only get the new one if you really need the extra spell dam and don't need to remain uncrush when you wear it, ie, aoe tanking trash, etc.

I was putting out around 800~ TPS average I think, but often spiking into 1k. However I'm now pushing around 390 spell damage, so I'm not sure.

Thanks for the replies, but I think a couple of you misunderstood my OP. What I meant was:
What are your opinions on the badge loot in general? Good? More stuff needs paladin-tailored? Less stuff paladin-tailored? What about the general awareness of tankadins playing their class?

I believe that a tanking paladin has the most stats to balance of any class/role combination (armor, stam, spell damage, spell hit, melee hit, expertise, avoidance, block rating, int, etc.). Of course, I think this is because of our completely messed up mechanics: some things use spell hit (holy shield, judgements), some use melee hit (avenger's shield, our swing/SoR), I believe our taunt uses melee hit with the miss chance of a spell, etc.

Because we gain benefit from so many different stats, it's hard to come up with pieces of gear that have enough of the "right" things together to make it work. Like most of the "paladin" tanking gear, the new badge loot is hit or miss in this department as most of it seems like you'd be required to change several other pieces of gear along with it to maintain tanking minimums like uncrushability/uncrittability.

I'd like to see more paladin tailored tanking gear, but I wish it would be better tailored to paladins. I find it almost impossible to get to uncrushable in 'paladin' tanking gear. Why can't more of it have stats like Justicar Shoulderguards and less of them have stats like Shattrath Protectorate's Breastplate.

As to the general awareness of tankadins playing their class, I'd have to say it's poor to mediocre. However, as mentioned above tankadins have inconsistent and complicated mechanics (not to mention that for some crazy reason I play on a PvE-RP server, so I shouldn't expect anyone to know what's going on). Anyway, evertime I hear a paladin cry about how badly they want the King's Defender, it makes me die a little inside. (Of course, there are a couple of situations where it's useful, like those spell imune worms in the kara library, and it looks cool, but....is not for paladins.)

And, to answer your original question about gearing. I usually aim for between 50-55% true avoidance, as much spell damage as I need to keep the DPS happy (not very much in kara~250, but quite a bit more quen I run out of demons/undead~350-400), and as much stamina and armor as I can fit in after the first two are fulfilled. Hit, Spell Hit, and Expertise are nice to have, but I don't gear for them, they just come along with whatever else I have. Int is nice too, but I don't gear for that either.

Edit: fixed link

Edited, Apr 22nd 2008 10:07am by nimrokon

my guild has tried to give me kings defender a couple times, because of that. most of my guildmates are now experts on pally tanking . . . mainly i go into long rants/explinations now when someone says something about a pally that a warrior tank would think.

they are pretty good at being Ret too, despite not actually having rolled a paladin. c.c

I have a Kings defender in the bank, just to pull out and annoy people, I turned down a mallet of the tides though, went to a rogue in the end...

Currently using an Amani Punisher and have my eye on a Hammer of Judgement too.

Being high speed, with a fair bit of stam, both were clearly designed with a nod and a wink at prot paladins, I wish they'd implement a mace (and it has to be a mace so we're competing with SPs, Elem Shamans and Boomkins instead of the much more common Mages and Locks) which put those spell hit points into more spelldamage, point for point they could be 237 and 258 spelldamage each.

If you're looking strictly for an answer to this question, here you go. The badge loot in general is really good. I feel that that there is a very good mix of choices there that people can choose which gear they want to boost which of their stats they feel needs help the most, whether it's survivability, avoidance or threat.

There may not be an item for every slot with every stat budget for every playstyle, no, but in general, things are pretty good. Far better than they were at 2.0 or 2.1.

This, very true. However Ruen got it right on the money. After Crystalforged Sword there is no "Paladin tanking" weapon. There are weapons that anyone but a Warrior would be stupid to take, and there are staves that only a Feral Druid would want: why then are there no weapons that only a Tankadin would want?

There was a discussion (multiple actually) on the PTR forum before 2.4 came out that I looked at, and the biggest reason against a Tankadin itemized weapon were because "it would take up a boss loot slot with an item only 1 class/spec would use". But, as I said, that argument holds about as much water as a bottomless bucket as there are already weapons that only one class/spec would use. Also, they could avoid that issue altogether and just make it a Badge reward or trash drop.

Yes, things like the Cudgel and my current tanking weapon, Hammer of Judgement, are used for Paladin tanking, but are they a tanking weapon? Can a Shadow Priest or Elemental Shaman not also get good use out of them? What we need is to take out the Spell Hit as mentioned in an above post, but instead of putting those item points into even more spell damage, give us Defense Rating, Dodge Rating, SOMETHING for avoidance like a Warrior tank weapon has on it.

The 10% is only Holy damage, so not even close on the raid DPS there. It DOES provide 2% damage boost to the Ret's group, and the Ret provides 3% additional crit to the raid, but not 10% raid damage.

Also just because the tank is gaining 10% more threat, doesn't mean the DPS magically will put out 10% more damage. If they have been holding back a lot, then upping the tank's threat will up their DPS as they won't have to hold back as much. But if they've been DPSing to their limit, upping the tank's threat gain will do nothing for raid DPS: they will still be DPSing the same as nothing has actually changed about their own ability: make sense?

The only thing a Ret does for the raid is provide 3% additional crit. The rest is situational or only related to the Ret's group.

Edited, Apr 24th 2008 7:28am by Maulgak

Could a pally get something more by having a weapon with defense or dodge instead of spell hit? Yes.

However, as I said earlier, even though stat distribution isn't always how you wish it to be, the items still can be quite phenomenal. I use the Hyjal mace, and while the spell hit wouldn't be the first stat I would pick, it DOES still help with threat, especially since I use Seal of Vengeance.

I personally would hate an "epic crystalforged sword". The crystalforged sword has its place, as an entry level sword to help push you towards uncrushable. The block rating on it is the fastest way to get you there. However, block rating quickly becomes... less than optimal once you get into 25-mans.

You have to look at it from a full-set outlook. We don't get much in terms of defensive ability from our weapons, but we get a TON of threat. I'm perfectly happy with having a high spell damage weapon than trying to get a full set of gear that has spell damage on all the pieces.