Looking for the best Tankadin glyphs (prolly NoOb Q)Follow

Paladin tank slogging his way to 80. Been in Kuwait for the last year now trying to play catch up. Would like opinions on the best glyph setups for Prot Pallies. I am 21,000 + in armor, lev 78.5 and 539 Def

Thanks ever so kindly!

Trav

I'm using Glyphs of Judgement, Righteous Defense, and Hammer of the Righteous. I had been using Glyph of Seal of Vengeance, but my expertise is quite high without that Glyph anyway, so I traded it for the Hammer one: one more target hit on the spell that accounts for the highest percentage of my damage? Yes please :D

For just starting out at 80 though (when you get there, and pre-gratz for the ding), I'd probably suggest using Righteous Defense, Seal of Vengeance, and Hammer of the Righteous. You're not going to have much, if any, expertise when you first hit 80 and start gearing up, so the SoV one is going to be a nice boost. Same with hit rating: not gonna have much, and if you're like me who is now in full naxx gear, I'm still not hit capped, so the 8% hit for your taunt is gonna be huge. And HotR: as I said above, this spell accounts for the highest percentage of my damage. In normals, Heroics, and Naxx (where I assume you'll start out. Go right to Ulduar? *shudder*) there's gonna be a lot of AOEing to do, so this Glyph will put out a lot of damage.

EDIT: forget minor glyphs, hehe. I'm using Glyphs of Lay On Hands, Sense Undead, and of the Wise. The first 2 are really the only useful ones for a Prot imo. The Wise Glyph was mainly in there for solo purposes, but really with how Divine Plea has changed, I don't have a need for it anymore. I'll probably switch to Glyph of Blessing of Kings since all Paladins have Kings now. Seems like the one I'll be most likely to take advantage of.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2009 1:13pm by Maulgak

Even if you're a MT, which I am, it's nice to have. It may just be my personal preference, but I use my multi taunt in any situation where I don't run the risk of pulling something I shouldn't. I just like the fact that it is a sure thing, where as my single taunt isn't (since I'm not hit capped). I don't like leaving something as important as a taunt up to some chance resist mechanic :)

Maybe this requires further clarification: I always have a SP in the raid without exception, and a Draenei to give their aura. My RD never misses. My Hand of Reckoning has missed.

Given the right circumstances, you can have a 100% reliable taunt. I don't think I ever said it was perfect for everyone.

I've been away for a bit but I have returned.

The SA glyph is terrible. If you're running low on mana, it's because you are doing something wrong.

The consecrate glyph DOES break the 969, unless you have some weird mystical way to shave 1 sec off that cons. It has been proven a number of different ways that 8 sec Cons > 10 sec.

Divine Plea should have roughly a 100% uptime in an instance.

Tanking glyphs should help you do the tanking job (holding aggro and staying alive). I use SoV (low on Expertise), DP and HoSalv at 80. Pre-80 I would switch the HoSalv glyph for HotR, but if you plan on raiding seriously, you want to drop the HotR glyph pretty quickly.

1) Yes, it does do more damage for the same mana but, and this matters on bosses, it produces lower overall single target threat than not having it.

2) If you aren't using BoSanc when you outgear and instance, you're doing something wrong. If you're not pulling fast enough to keep your mana up when you outgear an instance, you're doing something wrong. Your contention is that you take so little damage in the instance that the extra 2%/heal is useful. My point is that if this is true, go tank more enemies. It gets the job done much faster.

3) My point about the HoSalv v. HotR glyphs was simply that HotR will work in heroics but if you're an MT past the heroics (i.e. 10/25man raids) level, its value quickly falls and you will be better off replacing it. Thus,"if you plan on raiding seriously...etc"

Honestly, I haven't done tanking on the pally since BC. But honestly, the one glyph that stands out above the others as a very obvious choice is Divine Plea. What that 3% really does is add up with the 6% from imp r fury so that you can match the defensive bonus of the warrior defensive stance.

Also, I wouldn't go with the Salv glyph for tanking. Salv doesn't reduce the threat you generate, what it does is wipe away a chunk of the threat you have accumulated. The moments when a tank would use a damage reduction of this kind are usually at moments were losing that chunk of your threat is going to send you to hell. So really, just stick to divine protection instead.

I'll tell you what salv is good for... In PvP you stun someone and drop a ton of bricks on him hoping he dies before he breaks out of the stun, obviously not everyone dies before breaking out of the stun, so as soon as they break out of the stun you alt-click salv so that their attacks on you are weak for 10 more sec and you can continue to drop another ton of bricks.

Unless your friend has a trinket or something else I have missed it should be -18% to spell damage and 12% to physical attacks.

These are the damage reductions that any 80 Prot Pally can spec/glyph for:

-Glyph of Divine Plea -3% all sources
-BoSanc -3% all sources
-Imp RF -6% all sources
-Guarded by the Light -6% Spell Damage

Might become higher if you consider some other raid buffs like a Warrior's Vigilance. I wont start a debate on whether or not that buff should be on a Prot Pally though =P

And which boss would this be on? XT-002? Razorscale? Steelbreaker? Runemaster? All bosses with pretty punishing attacks that I've mitigated
with HoSalv and not lost threat. They're tauntable, for one. I have a huge threat lead going into the spikes on these fights, too.

If you don't need another "Oh ****" button, i.e. you're still running heroics or lolNaxx, then that's one thing. I said before that the HotR glyph is probably a better choice for the slot, especially in heroics. But the fact of the matter is, HotR is NEVER going to save you from a wipe. HoSalv can (and for me, has).

I would guess that if you are in Ulduar you wouldn't be here asking the OP's question. :)

And yeh damage reduction buttons similar to Icebound Fort are very useful to have and all that even before Ulduar. But the moments where damage becomes more intense so that you're blowing a 2-min c/d for a 10-sec reduction are usually boss enrage moments or something like that. Or in heroic trash pulls when something hits the fan. At those moments if you don't have a threat lead higher than 20% bo salv is going to take away your threat lead. And in those situations Divine Protection will do, it has the same CD as shield wall too.

If you're doing Ulduar I don't know. Personally, I got glyph of salv, but I didn't get it for tanking. :P

The Glyph of Salv is a very situational glyph. Granted, most bosses now days are tauntable, which helps immensely with threat. (And with determining which DPS DKs are window-lickers) As a Tankadin, you pull retarded amounts of threat as the MT. But then again, being 20% over your trigger-happy DPS isn't always viable.

The way I see it is: It's better for you to momentarily lose agro and lose a DPS than to have the MT die. Of course, if the boss isn't tauntable then you'll have some problems. You just need to pick the best time and situation to pop a Salv.

But overall, is this worth a glyph spot? For a *potential* zomgwtfbbq moment? Personally I think not. If you find yourself having to pop both your Shield Wall and STILL need another mitigation "cooldown" later on in the fight, either you're doing something wrong, your healers are doing something wrong, or your DPS are doing something wrong. Sure, there are times where you'll get unlucky and something stupid'll happen where the mitigation might be good, but I don't think it's worth wasting a glyph spot on a "what if" moment.

Show me a fight where you NEED to pop a cooldown to survive.

Flame Leviathan: I guess if you're bad and forget to get picked up by a vehicle
Ignis: Not as the add tank, not as the MT. Your healers should not be getting silenced and you should be moving out of the fire.
Razorscale: You need to do tank swaps on this due to the debuff. 20% damage reduction won't help when you have no armor and are taking a bajillion extra fire damage. The loss in threat is going to be too great, due to the phases where the raid brings him down to 50%.
Deconstructor: Unneeded.
Council: This I will give to you. When doing it on hard mode, your tanks must rotate cooldowns to mitigate the FalconFusion Punch. On normal, as long as he's not in a rune you don't need cooldowns to prevent death.
Kologarn: You don't need this at all. Tank swaps ensure you're never getting too many stacks of the debuff.
Auriaya: Nope, it's nice to run in with cooldowns up in case of unlucky RNG pounces, but you could always sacrifice a Hunter or two.
Mirmon: Nope
Hodir: Possibly.
Thorim: Nope
Freya: Add fight, you don't need cooldowns to survive.

I don't know about General and Yogg.

The point I'm trying to make is this: Like I've said before, it is a SITUATIONAL glyph. It is there for those "Oh ****" moments, where either your healers were sleeping, the boss enrages at 10k health left, you DC and come back standing in a flame patch, etc. Obviously, when doing progression content there's going to be a lot more of these moments, simply because everything's new.

Irregardless, if there's ever a fight where you NEED to pop cooldowns in order to survive (Think Sarth +3, as the Sarth tank) there are a lot of classes better suited to it than a Tankadin. This glyph, while giving us a nice chunk of mitigation, is far to situational (in my opinion, at least) to be of any use as a proper glyph.