How far into Ret should a tank go and when?Follow

At least 6 points is the firm answer, you can probably go a little further at the expense of other talents dependng on how you play.

5 points go into deflection and 1 point goes into Improved Judgement. The soonest that you can judge while tanking is 9 seconds after your last judgement if you're taking advantage of all your abilities so the extra point won't help you much.

Heart of the Crusader is certainly a valid wildcard talent, but it doesn't do jack if you have a Holy or Ret there judging it as well. And Conviction is nice for the 5% crit, but you'll get more damage and threat out of Seals of the Pure in the first tier of Holy.. barely. It's still nice to see Shield crits more often though :D

So you can easily fit in 6 points, you can pretty easily fit in 8 points without sacrificing anything else, then you need to make the decision which you'd rather have and possibly drop some other handy talents. But don't feel like the Ret tree is off limits to you.

Alright, the only question now is when? I know I want to focus mostly prot, but that 5% parry is a nice treat. Thing is, when do I grab it? Taking it puts off other prot talents...but waiting until I'm nearly 80 seems like a waste also. Maybe get it once I get the power that gives me mana every time I block/parry/dodge?

i disagree. 5% parry is killer especially at low lvls when you have crap for avoidence. you get the hasted side effect as well for extra punch power. also, this 5% doesn't scale down as you level.

i would start in the Ret tree at low levels. when you have enough points by mid levels to get some of the good stuff in Prot then you can respec accordingly. before you hit Outlands+ think about 1 more respec to get all the real dungeon tanking talents.

up to level ~30 you will be more successful tanking with Ret talents and a 2Her. the old way of going straight Prot is murder now for lowbies. it used to be you had to get imp RF asap...well guess what, you already have it.

Leveling my tank I took Heart of the Crusader and Benediction (AND - of course 5/5 Parry)

Bene gives you more mana efficient spells and HotC gives you more crits. I found both to be pretty helpful while solo, but the HotC was also a nice benifit to the 5mans. That +Crit in groups is a nice buff that *May* be too expensive to take at 80 (heroics + raids), but is nice to have while running 5 mans and solo.


A full tank build is possible at 73. Just take the Parry 5/5 and HotC first. Go back for the Bene. By 78 you'll be full tank with 12 points in Ret. I did it by dropping Reckoning. I figured it wasn't taken much at 70 for a tank - I got used to not having it....

Most of my quests are done via Grinding, so I've found this a very good build for lvling as a Tankadin.

I filled out the tanking tree first. (Skipped Kings, Took Improved Hammer) Then grab parry, +Crit, +mana efficent from the Ret tree.


EDIT: Organization

Edited, Dec 17th 2008 11:42am by Borsuk