3.1 / Ulduar Concerns

From Zero To Hero: An Introduction

As much of you already know through experience, Protection Paladin's have been in much worse positions than we are in now. Plagued by doubt and the looming hesitation of the WoW Community during The Burning Crusade. Laughed at and berated during Vanilla. Now however, we are being taken seriously. We are recognized as viable MT's and for once, can compare ourselves to other tanks without having to make excuses or overplay our benefits. I, as with a significant portion of Protection Paladins, are our guild's MT's even, leading the charge through progression content. In fact, during the first month or so of WotLK, we were deemed such great tanks that there was no other viable choice for an MT, according to some.

With such great progression over the last few years, we as a tanking community have finally carried our vision of the ideal Protection Paladin with a combined voice to the Blizzard Developers and have somewhat shaped our Spec into what it is today. Now, some people reading this might be wondering what this has to do with the topic of the thread, with all these great things to say about Protection Paladins, what is there to complain or worry about?

As The Red Giant Dies, A White Dwarf Is Born: The Future Of Protection Paladins

It is time to get to the meat of this post. With Sartharion +3 Drakes came the painful realization that Paladins could be not only a lesser tank for a job, but there was a strong possibility that having a Protection Paladin attempt to tank Sartharion during the encounter would take such an astounding amount of extra effort and babysitting compared to using a different class, but might also prove impossible without an ideal group setup.

The reason this is such a big deal is not because of the Sartharion +3 Drakes fight itself, but the numbing realization of a blatant weak point in the mechanics of a Protection Paladin. This weakness is of course, Frequent spurts of intense burst damage, specifically magic damage. The most unnerving problem with having such a large weakness is that one of the main tactics of making a fight harder is for the boss to do more damage, obviously. This puts Paladins at a serious disadvantage for being considered as a progression MT for serious raid content.

There are two factors that I can think of, if you have any others, or any opinions to share I encourage you to comment in this thread. The first factor that contributes to this deafening weakness, is the lack of pro-active on-demand cooldowns. The only pro-active on demand cooldown we have is our version of shield wall, Divine Protection. Every other tanking class has at least 2 of these abilities, and with patch 3.1, all of these classes will have at least 1 of those 2 abilities on a shorter cooldown than ours. This leaves us highly susceptible to burst damage. Our only other cooldown is Lay on Hands which, as much as I don't like to admit, sucks horribly. The only thing LoH is good for is to give a healer that is running on empty an extra few thousand mana. It is on the GCD, making it almost impossible to use when you really need too, not to mention the only raids it has saved from wiping are raids where the healers aren't doing their jobs.

The other factor I would like to mention is our health pool relative to the amount of cooldowns available. While it is comparable to a Warriors health pool, we cannot even get close to the health of a well geared Druid or Death Knight without being a JC, and even then it is still minute compared to them. This is not as significant of a factor as the first but it is still a legitimate concern to anyone hoping to be a progression MT for Ulduar.


Even A Hero Needs A Renewed Hope: Suggestions

To combat the first factor, I have come up with a series of suggestions or ideas that I believe would solve our innate weakness to high burst damage.

1. A Knight's Wish - 3/3 Your Lay on Hands no longer heals your target, instead it puts a protective barrier on your target, absorbing damage equal to 50/100/150% of your current Health. Also reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands by 3/6/9 minutes. This talent would be located deep in the protection tree.

2. Improved Ardent Defender 3/3 When a damaging spell or physical attack would normally trigger Ardent Defender, its damage is reduced by 5/10/15%. This would be another talent deep in the Protection tree, Ardent Defender being its prerequisite.

3. Last Resort - Increases the Paladins health by 30% for 15 seconds. This would be our 11 point talent and our version of Last Stand. Of course, as it's name suggests, it would also be a last resort and personally I would not want to see another last stand-esque implemented for us.

For Every Death Begins Life Anew: The End?

It is late and after reading about Ulduar and the first boss, Hodir, it really got me in the mood of expressing my opinion. I do not expect everyone to agree with me or share my opinions. I would, however, enjoy feedback on this issue and for other people to contribute their thoughts. Thanks for reading this far and I look forward to the release of 3.1 and what it has in store!
_________________

You're focusing on Paladins, which is understandable, but you should note that Warriors are equally as unfavored by Sarth3 mechanics.
_________________
Levantine: 80 Frost [27k HP, 27k Armor, 544 Def]
Anzen: 30 Elemental [Resto in the making]

Right now, there is only one encounter that really make some tank classes shine in comparison to others. In Ulduar, we can expect to see a lot of hard modes which challenges the tanks in different ways, so you cannot and should not focus your considerations on a single kind of encounter.

I agree with you that there should not be any encounter that puts a tanking class at a huge advantage or disadvantage in comparison to other classes, but the conclusion should not be that every class should get the same strenghts and weaknesses. Lets other classes have a slight advantage if it comes down to surviving massive damage, let's wish for encounters that give paladins advantages over those tanks that are superior at eating massive damage.

Examples would be:
- Encounters that are Tps-capped
- Bosses with special attacks (e.g. stacking debuffs) that can be blocked/dodged/parried
...

Even better would be situations where you do not only need one good tank that is challenged to the maximum, but two/three tanks. I can see that finding 2-3 very good tanks for normal mode can be too hard to manage for weaker guilds and the encounters might also become too complex, but for hard modes, it should be possible to make the classical "1 Maintank to rule them all"-rule obsolete.

If one PainSuppression is a "extraordinary amount of babysitting" i'm confused.


It only takes 1 cooldown for us in 25 men, and i can survive full breaths with PWS and Divine Aegis in 10 men |: (even if we use DK just to make it easier)
_________________

Uord - Prot Warrior
Darkworldie - Death Knight

Tanking... srs business

It's also worth mentioning that Sarth 3d is not a single tank encounter. There are drakes and adds to deal with. Paladin's might now have the snap threat to pick them up, but we have very good AOE threat, probably the best mitigation in this circumstance, and utility in HoProt, HoSac, some good ranged pick up utilities in HoReck, RD and AS.

Comparing Paladins to Druid/DKs in one of the three tanking duties in this encounter doesn't show the whole story. Druids have a harder time picking up the adds and far worse add mitigation than us. DKs have good AOE threat but worse add mitigation than us.

All these things considered, any tank is still capable of filling any of the available roles, the only difference is that a Paladin or Warrior (or even druid) need to have a few other people push a button instead of pushing the button themselves.

That is an extraordinary amount of QQ for a single role within a single encounter.

Blizz has already made it clear that their mission statement for Wrath is "let's give everything to everyone!" Those few things that make classes unique should be savored while we still have them.

For example, I could write an equally impressive book on how warriors or druids are even less viable add tanks in S3d than we are Sarth tanks.

Our oh shit buttons are fantastic. I can't remember the last time I touched a health pot or warlock cookie. In fact, I have never been more in love with prot pally right now than I ever have been, don't make me start pulling out the "back in my day" stories.

I don't know what's up with all the emo QQ post lately (even very nicely written ones like yours), but they're getting annoying.

Also is this Big from Smolder? I want to make a 4 prot/1 disc team, know any other good ally tankadins besides us?
_________________
armory | youtube | pally stole my bike

Have you played a warrior tank and tried to pick up ads?

There's a big difference between theorycraft and playing.
_________________
armory | youtube | pally stole my bike

Regardless of Druids not having ezmode AOE threat, they also can't block, which makes them take much much more damage than we do as an add tank.

i tanked, i tank, and i will tank. I'm not too concerned about my "role" or if I'm the main tank or off tank or add tank or drake tank. If I have trouble doing it, we either fix it or switch roles. I'm the add tank on sarth +3. I definitely see the shortcomings consecrate has with snap threat, and there are times where i lose a chunk of adds with a poorly timed spawn, but we live and learn and go pewpew once more ^_^ any shortcomings the class might have i more than make up for it with skill and knowledge.

only reason i haven't pushed to MT sarth is because i don't trust anyone else picking up the adds ^_^
_________________