New in Tanking and need adviceFollow

I have been a ret from the start till lvl 80 and only few days ago i dueled to Prot too, i need to know some facts about the gear and gemming

1- deff rateing : what is the cap
2- what should i gem for first, dodge , parry or block , i know i have to increase them all but which one of them is more important to start with, and what is the minimum needed and the cap for each one of them
3- what are the best enchants for every item

finally i have a major problem with mana , i use devine plea whenever it is on CD and still i run out sooo fast especialy when i am taking out multiple targets so is there something that i am missing or is the specs done wrong

any advice from the good tanks out there will be appreciated

1. 535 for HC's, 540 for crit immune.
2 & 3 Get Rawr, that'll tell you your best item/kit configuration and enchants

You can use seal of wisdom and judge wisdom and blessing of sanctuary if mana is a problem.

To add to this;

1: There is no cap, only a required minimum. I myself use the term cap too but there is no such thing as too much Defense Rating. It just becomes less worth aiming for after 540.

2: In gemming AND enchants, once you hit 540 Def you only do Stamina. You do not gem or chant dodge/parry/block.

3: There are lotta guides out there if you look. But again, Stamina and Defense are it. Bladeward for a good weapon.

Your spec is a bit off, you much rather have this.

Unyielding faith is not worth talents, and dropping 2 points from Divinity(which generally only adds to overheals but its nice to be safe) gives you Vindication. Taking like 183 AP from a boss is a lot less damage you take, and as a tank your job is to 1: Hold threat and 2: Mitigate damage.

Also you have NO Glyphs. That is not something you can do as a tank. Get Divine Plea, Hammer of Righteousness, and Seal of Vengeance. Divine Plea should NEVER be down and with BoSanct and keeping Holy Shield up 100% of time, you should never ever oom. Stick with Seal of Vengeance for far superior threat. Not being expertise capped is a heavy gimping of yourself and it hurts you AND healer. Parries = bad. Misses = bad.

Early on, gem for Stamina, plain and simple unless you need a meta. Then, pick either purple or green (if the said gem you need isn't Blue) and aim for avoidance+stamina (strength+stamina works too) if you are trying to activate a Meta or a Socket Bonus. For the Meta, get either the +Defense/Block Value, or +Stamina/2% Armor from Items. Either/or, though I think Stamina will help you more in the earlier phases of gearing up, as you need that health.



There is no "cap". But to tank a heroic you need _at least_ 535, and for raids you need 540 to avoid Critical Hits. Note, that is 535 DEFENSE. Not 535 DEFENSE RATING. "Defense" is what you see in the Paper Doll. If it reads less than 535, you need to stack moar defense rating.



Start with +Stamina as much as possible. Otherwise, Block > Dodge > Parry IMO. There's no minimum/cap, if there were, it is unlikely you'd ever reach them until you're near, or at current BiS (Best-in-Slot).



+Defense to Armor, Back, and Shield. +Stamina to Bracers, Sons of Hodir has your Shoulder Enchant, Argent Crusade has your Head Enchant, and there's Leg Armors for your legs. If you take Pursuit of Justice, get +Stam to boots. If you took Conviction instead, get Tuskarr's Vitality for boots. Weapon, Bladeward is good, but might be a bit too expensive. Wait until you have at the very least, the Argent Crusade Tanking weapon or better. Accuracy isn't a bad enchant either, some +hit can help you, especially if you can't afford Blade Ward.



Assuming you're still in early gear-up phases, you must be doing something wrong. Most fights go like this:

1). Turn on Righteous Fury.
2). Activate Devotion Aura.
3). Buff with Blessing of Sanctuary.
4). Use Seal of Vengeance/Corruption.
5). Run up to mob.
6). Throw Avenger's Shield.
7). Lay a Consecrate down.
8). Use Hammer of the Righteous.
9). Use Judgment of Light.
10). Use Shield of Righteousness.

Basically, if you do it like that, you should never run out of mana, assuming you took the following talents (you should never, ever, tank without them):

1). Blessing of Sanctuary. Every time you dodge, block, or parry, you gain 2% of your maximum mana.
2). Spiritual Attunement: Every time you receive a heal, you gain mana equal to 5% of the amount healed.
3). Guarded By the Light: Every time you strike an enemy with a melee attack, your Divine Plea duration is refreshed.

So, recap:

You gain mana whenever:

1). Divine Plea ticks. Divine Plea should never, ever wear off during battle, as long as you keep swinging, especially if you use a true tanking weapon, as they are 1.60 speed.
2). Every time you dodge, parry or block.
3). Every time you receive a heal from one of your party members.

This should be plenty. When you start out-gearing content, and you don't take enough damage, THEN we'll talk about mana issues. My own tank is ready to start Ulduar soon, and I've noticed in Heroics, I'm not taking enough damage sometimes and I start running dry on mana mid-fight, even with Divine Plea up.

But in the "gearing up" phase, I have my sincere doubts you're running OOM unless you either forgot a talent, or you're not using BoSanc.

Edited, Oct 12th 2009 9:54pm by Zariamnk

Get to 535/540 defense, and feel free to gem for def or def+stam gems to pickup socket bonuses, its far more important to be crit immune than to have another 3-400hp(or whatever the value of a couple of stam gems).

As to avoidance, there are caps to dodge(88%) and parry(47%), but due to Diminishing Returns(DR) it takes a very large number to reach them(10,000+ rating).
As to a minimum dodge/parry, there really isn't one, as your gear gets better your avoidance will increase. Basically prot pallys don't gem for avoidance except to activate the meta gem(so 1 dodge+stam or parry+stam or agi+stam gem).

If you're worried about the balance between your dodge% vs parry% just use this formula found at Tankspot.com:

"Warriors and Paladins
Take your total values for dodge and parry from the character sheet. From there, your optimal balance between dodge rating and parry rating is

(character_sheet_dodge-10%)/(character_sheet_parry-10%) = 1.88

Of course, if you're outside of your "optimal balance" and you add a parry gem, that may be enough to tip the balance back. The odds of you needing to actively pursue parry are pretty low."



Not quite true, it's situational like most tank gearing decisions. Generally its a good idea to stay away from block rating when you have the choice. Although this is partly because of the bad itemization on block gear. The newer ToC gear is much better in that block value is paired with other stats than block rating as had almost always been the case with prior gear lvls. Block value=good, block rating=has it's uses, but generally wasted itemization.



As mentioned previously, Blessing of Sanc is huge, and 2/2 Spiritual Attunement is nice. As to keeping DP(Divine Plea) on cd, its far better to just make sure you keep it active, so pull fast/pull the 2nd grp when the 1st grp is around 20%, things like that. This isn't always possible(Violet Hold for example, even judging wisdom i go oom there if i go full out), and there will be times you get mana starved. Just drink for 2-3 sec any time you're under 2k and you should be good to go. Also judging wisdom is the way to go unless your healer is really slacking with the grp heals.



These are kinda subjective as to their order. If its a grp of 4 or less and the dps in your grp is geared similarly to you, you can skip consecrate, just AS+HotR+HS. HS is going to be pretty good for you at your current gear lvl, you may want to pop it right before you pull on most occasions. Remember to skip it against casters though.

As to HS being the majority of your mana back, that's debatable, but due to your rather low total avoidance and low block value that's probably correct. As your gear improves you'll find that you can block too much incoming damage and the mana you could get from SA > than the mana you get from a few extra BoSanc procs. Given a buffed mana pool of 7k BoSanc gives 140 mana whenever you dodge, parry or block, so once your block value is 1400+ its actually a mana loss to block rather than be healed for the extra damage. This falls under the 'don't try this at home' until your gear is much better though.

Thank you all for your detailed answers i treid most of your ideas and i can say that the mana problem is no more :D , it is still on the low side but i don't oom , probably i still need a little more practice on the rotation. i will try the practice dolls tonight and see how it goes

thank you all you have been a great help

That makes sense :))) , i guess i am still thinking as ret pally , i guess i will go out there and try while rep farming although i will not get any healing , the thing is that i don't want to drag a whole group into an instence and wipe them up until i am at least confident enough about myself ... tanking is a responsibility and as a melee dps i used to hate bad tanks and i don't want to be one of them :D



Edited, Oct 13th 2009 8:45am by waelss

Just tank a few normal instances before you get into heroics. Damage is light enough that your DPS aren't likely to die, even if you mess up (or if they do something stupid, which is more likely). You'll get the hang of it quickly enough.

Regular ToC is generally pretty simple to find a farm group for, and it's at least a little easier than most heroics. My usual groups can AoE the trash before Eadric/Paletress on regular, so a group of beginners should be able to handle it the normal way just fine if they are careful with their pulls.

Last time i was there, we tried tanking and AoEing everything at once before Eadric/Palatress. It was going fine til i got mind controlled (3 times). So not only did all the mobs go running for the rest of the party, i started smacking the rogue around with a 200 dps tanking weapon. It wasn't a wipe, it was about as close as you can get though.

He deserved it if he wasn't bothering to interrupt. xD

Mind control can be rough, but even with just one interrupting class--not counting all the stuff a pally has, since I know that's mostly on pretty long cooldowns--the MCs in ToC should be fairly trivial. If you were trying to AoE down the group without focusing on the Priestesses, though, I can see how that would have made it tricky. A pug might not be the best place to try. ;)

Edit: Do they even MC on regular, or is that only Heroic? because I really can't remember it ever being a problem on regular.

Edited, Oct 19th 2009 4:48pm by isyris

I did my first tanking last night VH normal with a group of lvl 75s overall it was good no one deid :-) i noticed the following

- i was almost not getting any damage from mobs , damage from bosses though but it wasn't that threatening even with not so great healer
- with the rotation mention in the above threads i had no problem with mana
- i had no problem holding agrro but again i was the highest damage and dps in the group :-), so i wonder if this is going to be an issue with better geared players who will burst damage left and right , will i be able to hold agrro on multiple creaters or not

also i want someone to tell me when approaching a mob of 3-4 what is the best practice to get their attention and keep them on me , i have seen in more than one occassion one or two slip away and start attacking casters (had 2 mages in the group)what am i doing wrong

finaly i use hands of reckoning on bosses then i start the rotation is this ok ?

I do a lot of tab-targetting if I'm pulling a large pack and I know the dpsers will start AoE nuking.

If you have a group of 5:

1 2 3 4 5

I'll normally start the pull by throwing my shield at 5, Judgement on 1 as I'm running in, HotR and immediately conscecrate. Then I tab to 2 and SotR, tab 3 Judgement back to 1 for HoTR. Then just keep targetting different mobs.

For a single target, I'll normally throw my shield, SotR as soon as I'm in melee range and then Judge followed by standard rotation after that.

If you have threat issues, the HotR Glyph is an excellent choice.