First Forays into Heroics..Follow

OK, first off I have spent time reading through the various Protadin guides here in Alla and on other websites- I now have an rough idea of what I need to be wearing/ carrying.

What I'm after is some critiques about my kit, stats etc- Am I geared enough to start running low end heroics without embarrasing myself hugely?

I know that I've not posted enough for any links I put into be considered legitimate, so feel free to look up Kytiahnan on EU Servers. For those that will click on anything the link is;

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bronzebeard&n=Kytiahnan

I've had a coupla guild hand-holdy type trips into Kara, but I know I'm nowhere close to being anything other than someone taking a spot that could have been better used. Hence the need for gear from heroics/ badges- I want to *earn* my raid spot, not be Scrubby McScrubber mooching off the guild; not my thing at all.

Anyhoo, enough of the waffle, and onto the (hopefully) constructive criticism/ comments from my fellow Pally Tanks

Cheers,

Snorri

Ok, a few things of note.

Run BM for rep for 3 reasons

1. Head Gylph
2. Legs
3. Sword

Run Coilfang zone for rep for the neck piece or do quest chain in BEM for natasha's battle chain

Run mech for jade-skull BP

Your spec needs work:

Drop vindication - no need for this
Drop Imp. devotion aura
Drop Stoicism

thoes 3 have no place in a tanking build

here are 2 sample builds

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhtIx0dMgqtVbx

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhxIx0dMgqtV0x0h

If this was my toon i would not take her into a heroic just yet. The changes listed above will take 2 weeks at most.

Also it seems that you are socketing gems for the bonus, not the stats you need.

You have a good base, just some tuning needs to be done.






Edited, Jun 11th 2008 10:50am by Thesleepyrogue

Ok, thanks for the response chaps.

I knew I needed more work on my rig, but, tbh, I thought it was a case of get 495 def n good to go- guess I've been disabused of that notion :)

As for the gems in the lid etc, I wasn't really in a position to complain- mate from another guild knocked up the F'steel set, gemmed it n mailed it to me. But, yeah, I didnt really look at what was on there- the whole 'christmas shiny' feeling took over :)

As for the build, I gotta admit I started spending Tank points before I did any research- again if it sounded funky I picked it :/

Hey-ho...may well be immaterial- guild seem to want me to re-spec Holy- we shall see...

But, again, thanks for the input, always appreciated, and if anyone else would care to their tuppence ha'penny into the mix, feel free:)

Regards,

Snorri

This, in a big way. Like Maul pointed out, your spell damage (and therefore threat) is at a serious low. The basic premise for a tanking paladin is to gear for avoidance (which you've done pretty well with), your weapon is your threat (which means spell damage with the spell dmg enchant) which you need some serious work on, and gem for stam.

I understand where you're coming from with your felsteel set. But 9 times out of 10 the set or socket bonuses aren't going to get you half as far as gemming to offset your deficiencies. And at this level you're lacking stam. An example - an uninterrupted Tempest forge destroyer in HMech will hit for 20k health in... 5 seconds? I'm not saying you need 20k health because that will skew the paladin gear dance but you need to be a little higher in stam. And what shoulder enchant did you actually apply? Yeah it's stam but you could have enchanted for avoidance there.

Also know that you're going to get more avoidance out of +dodge than you EVER will out of +parry.

As for the Jadeskull breastplate. Well if that fiery bint Sepethea will actually drop it for you that's great but you've got enough rep with Aldor to get their chest piece don't you? If not, then work towards it because that's a perfectly viable alternate choice.

You need better trinkets too. Yours aren't horrible but they're certainly not optimal.


As stated though, the best thing you could probably do for yourself is run some Keepers of Time Instances and get all the good stuff that rep has to offer. The pants rock, the glyph rocks the sword rocks if you don't get the crystalforged one or the PvP weapon.


You're on your way butm just judging by your rep stats, you've skipped some stuff that could have given you better.

Also, while you're boots are good for your level, if you plan on trying to get the Boots of the Collosus, I hope your accumulating every bit of shadow resist gear possible. You'll need it if you're intenting to tank HTombs.


Edited, Jun 12th 2008 2:30am by Celcio

A combination of a lot of wiki editing and a lot of whiskey.

Not to hijack this thread, because this is an anwser aswell as a question for advice.

I am a recent respec from holy to prot, meaning i have ditched my purples for easy blues and such. Just starting to dip my (tanking) toes into heroics aswell.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eitrigg&n=Macloud

I wouldnt mind the advice aswell. Though some things are clear:

shield - will come when rep is high enough or honor for s2
shoulders - hoping on a drop from Laj or getting that green quest reward.
belt - from HSP, Quaqmarin or Shatari one from quest

The leather boots are the best tanking boots i could find so far. And i dont mind losing some armor, looking at that defense and stam.

I have several alternatives at hand, such as cloak of eternity, felsteel helm and felsteel gloves, though unsure what combination would be the best.

Also what second trinket would be good, pure defense rating? or some high stamina one?

And to snorri, my talents have worked quite well for me, including the spelldamage sword. I have no threat issues unless t5+ players join in. I miss reckoning
from back when i had it (pre 60), but for pure tanking its useless compared to alternatives.

the way im working on improving is making a list of priorities. I just did the KoT rep farming to get glyph, legs and sword. (i do have the s1 healing mace,
with 129 spd, but i just cant be ***** to enchant it and kill my healing gear.), I am now doing sso rep farming, mech/arc/bot for rep and possible drops, but im wondering if should perhaps do them on heroic mode instead of normal..

To kind of fortify this thread with some base numbers that you should be striving for, I would say the absolute bare minimum for doing the easier heroics:

10.5k hp - unbuffed,
485 defense,
161 sp damage, (weapon + enchant should get you that)
11k armor,
roughly 15-17% dodge/parry (puts you at about 40% pure avoidance, you can probably get this higher though to about 45%)


Also in addition to that you should know the usual tanking strategies and be able to carry them out accordingly, and hopefully have a healer and group that are ready for heroics as well.

Yep, stuff just hits hard. If you're keeping Holy Shield up there's not going to be a whole lot more you can do. Though if you find that you're taking a whole lot of spell damage I'd pick up Spell Warding in the Protection tree.



Yeah, this a bad tactic from an aggro-generation/maintenance standpoint. On trash I usually start off with a nice judgement of Righteousness. I'll even do this on bosses and then have my second judgement be Crusader (or Wis, if I need it). And if you're running low on mana but feel like you're not generating threat you're almost better off judging wis and keeping seal of Righteousness up.

Though I wonder why you're having that much difficulty with mana. You're not exactly over geared for heroics or Kara (your gear is fine, I'm just saying it's not like you're not getting hit hard) so you should be getting a fair bit back from Spiritual Attunement. When my gear was at that level I was finding myself at half or more mana at the end of fights. Are you, by chance, spamming consecrate? Don't do that. Use your seals. It's a much more efficient threat generation tool.

Now, your build. Just a couple of things. For the most part it looks good, but: Imp Devotion aura? Really? Not so much. I mentioned the lack of spell warding. You're almost getting to the point where Reckoning is going to be just about useless for you, but if you're still questing or soloing it can be helpful. At the very least I'd probably dump Imp Devo and max out Deflection and pick up Spell warding. But that's just me others may have more for you.