mahlerite wrote:
Quote:
I'm not convinced. If someone were able to point me to a link that shows definitively that all these talents being thrown into the ret tree are really offering all that significant boost, I would be appreciative.
Here ya go: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?p=496472&rb_v=viewtopic#p496472
For Demon/Undead/Humaniod/elemental mobs 18-20 pts in ret spec is going to be better threat. Not to mention you get a little more utility with vindication, PoJ and Heart of the Crusader(doesn't hurt to have some buff redundancy as tanking you will most likely always be alive to keep it up).
As to there being no 'cookie cutter' prot build, there are definitely a number of choices that are viable. Mostly because our threat, utility and survivability are better than any other tank class atm regardless of how we spec(mandatory talents excluded of course).
Basically every prot build should start as 0/53/6 with 12 pts to spend wherever. There are also 3 pts in the 53 spent in prot that have to be used for some utility: Divine sac 1-3 pts, Imp HoJ 1-2pts, Reckoning 1-3 pts. All have their uses, although Imp HoJ is probably the weakest for raiding purposes.
Of the 12 left there are basically 3 choices imo(Spec examples are all using Reckoning as the 3 prot utitlity pts):
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0/53/18 - full crusade, vindication, Heart of the Crusader, PoJ and possibly Seal of Command(if you do a fair amount of heroics its totally worth it, also very nice on heroic Anub adds for quicker threat and quite a bit more dps when combined with reckoning).
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11/54/6 for Aura Mastery, although with the change to AM next patch this may not be as useful.
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4/53/14 for 4/5 Seals of the Pure with Vindication, Heart of the Crusader and PoJ from ret.
Edited, Dec 2nd 2009 4:02am by mahlerite Thanks for the link. There's one thing missing from that post, however, and that's any talk of survivability. Prot pallies are highly survivable with Holy Shield (phys only) and especially Ardent Defender.
What tipped me off to the focus on threat in that post was the commentary on Redoubt. There's no mention of the BV bonus on Redoubt as a talent in terms of mitigation. It talks about the DR on SotR threat.
It's as though pallies saw their niche as the "high threat tank" taken away and decided that the new focus would be on driving into the ret tree for threat. In a way, I'm tempted to give kudos to Blizzard for giving pally tanks that freedom to decide between a defensive build and a more offensive/threat build, but the trend I see is disturbing. Fights like NB in ToGC25 still give our tanks fits from time to time (primarily Gormok) where a bad Impale + melee can insta-gib a tank (we had our main warrior tank take 57k damage in 0.4 seconds the other night).
I used to be very confident about my tanking skill and general knowledge of prot pallies up until this past March when I took a break from WoW. I only took up tanking with my pally again about 6 weeks ago (I'm 2-3 upgrades away from feeling ready to tank ToGC10). It's taking a bit of time to get caught up with the tweaks since then, but the way people are expounding the virtues of driving ret isn't sitting well with me right now.
I read through
this article last night and was again concerned about the logic employed by the author. An example would be his take on Divinity. I don't want to keep referencing Gormok because that's a fairly extreme case, but the reality is that tanks still die in raids. At the point of their death, their threat gen becomes zero. If it's a case where a greater focus on a defensive build could have averted the wipe, the extra 500tps at any other point throughout the raid would become moot.
I've actually got two prot builds on my pally right now with dual spec, even though my second prot build is pretty much identical to my first (I haven't seriously tweaked it yet). I could see turning the second prot build into one that focuses on heroics/raid trash and one that focuses on boss tanking in which case I would seriously consider going as deep into ret as I could because survivability is less of an issue. For boss tanking, I still don't see pallies having threat issues (or at least, not issues as created by class mechanics).
As long as I can out-threat the dps, I don't need more. That's not to say that more threat beyond what is required is useless since it's also dps and damage kills mobs, but I'm seeing a view on pally tanks that seems to assume that they're already geared beyond the content they're running at which point threat will obviously take a back seat to survivability because the gear itself is making up for some of the lost defense from talents. If a pally tank is still progressing through the content, my personal feeling is that survivability > threat and will remain so until they see the most current content they're running as easy farming.