Protection Paladin Basics.

[Maximoose - welcome. I've given your question its own thread so we don't overload the FAQ too much - Arcand]

Hi thank you for the guide its been the most helpful I've found searching through various websites. I have been ret for as long as I can remember but I want to try tanking to help my guild. I'm slowly getting gear so I can do heroics, is there a recommended level for stamina/dodge etc as I already reached the 329 level with my ret gear. I know it will depend on healer etc just wanted a rough figure so I know how much more work I have to do on my gear.

My other thing was to do with macros, I hadn't really bothered much before but I think they will be helpful to me now while setting up action bars etc for this. So far I have one that does DP then shift press to cast Exo (for pulling). I have one for AS then HW when I press it again, and I've made one for SotR and WoG when I shift press. Are they going in the right direction or will it cause problems? I've only been practising on the dummies so far, waiting for my gear to be good enough to go straight to heroics as I dont really want to spend all the time doing normals then move up. Thanks for any advice.

Those sound good. I don't like to click anything with a cooldown
less than about 30 seconds, and I don't like to take my hand away
from the WASD cluster, so nearly all my characters have their rotations
stuffed into 1, Alt 1, 2, Alt 2, 3, Alt 3, 4 and Alt 4.

The advantage of your system is you won't accidentally hit Alt-Tab
in the middle of a fight, which I do about twice a week.

Also - I don't think you'll be able to avoid doing normals prior to
heroics unless you spend amazing amounts of gold to get some 359 items
to pull up your item level...and you probably don't want to anyway.
If you're a new tank you need to learn all kinds of fine points about
pulling and positioning to do a good job, and it's easier to learn those
when you aren't also taking ass-kicking amounts of damage and trying to
stay ahead of DPS who outgear you by a bunch.

i am the same way, i have my standard bar, and then shift+1....5

as far as running heroics, i would suggest running regs until you are most, if not all, 333's and above
watch videos, run with expirienced tanks, read guides, do w/e you can to be as prepared
reading this site is a great start

another thing that would help is posting an armory link
that way we can take a look at your gear, and be able to give you suggestions

Thanks for the replies

Yea looks like ill have to do some normal. I only had time to do Throne of the tides quickly tonight, low level I know thought I should start small, nobody died anyway.

Pretty sure I logged out in the right gear; http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/a ... ble/simple

Thanks again

From a really fast scan:

Gems! Seeing empty sockets drives me up the wall. There are a few gemming philosophies, mine is Puissant (mastery/stamina) wherever possible and always pick up the socket bonus.

You're heavy on expertise, to the point where I think you'd be over the soft-cap if you're using glyphed Seal of Truth. Expertise is a good stat but if you get any more, consider reforging some to mastery.

Reforge the haste on your chestplate into mastery. (...or anything else, really. I think even crit rating would be an improvement.)

I don't know how much money you have, but try to pick up some cheap enchants. There are a few that are very good value for their AH price like mastery to gloves/boots, and the leg armors. For other slots, at a minimum slap on some armor kits. And of course, get busy on reputations - Earthen Ring for the tank head enchant and Therazane for shoulders. After that I'd recommend Wildhammer for the boots. (Hyjal has an epic cloak, but you appear to be set there.)

Returning to gems - I can understand not wanting to spend the money on a buckle for that belt, but glove/bracer sockets are cheap, cheap, cheap. Make it happen.

Talents and glyphs look fine. In heroics I think you'd get more value out of Avenger's Shield without the Focused glyph, because it chains around interrupting casters without any special effort from you.

Thanks, will have a look later at buying some things. Thought I'd spend more time getting sorted before I started but then I had some unexpected free time so jumped in, and it seems the best way to learn.

Did think that glyph wasn't as good as I had been led to believe when I did the instance last night. Will get it replaced.

At the moment I have grid and clique set up so that if I click a person it casts Righteous Defence, trouble is it wasn't always easy to see who had pulled aggro, i'll check the options in grid later but if it can't do it what's the best way of seeing this?

Thanks again

Maximoose wrote:Thanks, will have a look later at buying some things. Thought I'd spend more time getting sorted before I started but then I had some unexpected free time so jumped in, and it seems the best way to learn.

Did think that glyph wasn't as good as I had been led to believe when I did the instance last night. Will get it replaced.

At the moment I have grid and clique set up so that if I click a person it casts Righteous Defence, trouble is it wasn't always easy to see who had pulled aggro, i'll check the options in grid later but if it can't do it what's the best way of seeing this?

Thanks again

Personally I don't find Righteous Defense to be all that useful, but when I do use it it's typically targeted on the mob, not the person who pulled threat. I use TidyPlates and ThreatPlates to view which mobs are stuck solidly to me and which ones need more threat (or have been pulled off me completely), so check out some screenshots of those on curse if you haven't seen them before.

I haven't really had to use it yet, as I said I've only managed one instance so far, the low level normal TotT, anytime we had a runner it was dead before i could get on it to try.

I've got a couple of gems, done my sockets (thought there would be an update to a more expensive Cata version so that was nice ) and reforged as much as I think i can. I've had a look through the failsafe thread and found 4 simple things to update - necklace from Hyjal rep, shield from JP (no idea where I got 1k points from, only done 2 BH and 2 heroics that I can remember), ring from Therazane and Legs from Earthen Ring.

I also have enough Tol Barad vouchers for a trinket but im not sure which is best, the agility one or the resistance one, so if anyone has an opinion on that, or if they're in fact not worth getting at all that would be something else I can get later.

Thank you

Maximoose wrote:I haven't really had to use it yet, as I said I've only managed one instance so far, the low level normal TotT, anytime we had a runner it was dead before i could get on it to try.

I've got a couple of gems, done my sockets (thought there would be an update to a more expensive Cata version so that was nice ) and reforged as much as I think i can. I've had a look through the failsafe thread and found 4 simple things to update - necklace from Hyjal rep, shield from JP (no idea where I got 1k points from, only done 2 BH and 2 heroics that I can remember), ring from Therazane and Legs from Earthen Ring.

I also have enough Tol Barad vouchers for a trinket but im not sure which is best, the agility one or the resistance one, so if anyone has an opinion on that, or if they're in fact not worth getting at all that would be something else I can get later.

Thank you

The resist trinket is fantastic, I'd get that first.

Maximoose wrote:Did think that glyph wasn't as good as I had been led to believe when I did the instance last night. Will get it replaced.

If I spent my evenings whomping raid bosses, I'd definitely consider Focused Shield. But in heroics, free interrupts on bad guys you don't even have to target is pure gold-plated awesomeness.

(At the end of a run, my Interrupts meter typically looks something like Arcand 22, Coolrogue 6, SomeotherDPS 1, ThirdDPS 0, Healer 0.)

Maximoose wrote:At the moment I have grid and clique set up so that if I click a person it casts Righteous Defence, trouble is it wasn't always easy to see who had pulled aggro, i'll check the options in grid later but if it can't do it what's the best way of seeing this?

If you're using the default UI, Blizzard has put a "red aura" around the portrait of anyone who's pulled aggro, and a yellow one around ppl that are about to. This is true in both their default Party UI and Raid UI.

For fights like Lockmaw in LCoT, or Maloriak in BWD, I usually just watch the UI for auras, then RD off of them, should I happen to lose an add.

Aerron wrote:For fights like Lockmaw in LCoT, or Maloriak in BWD, I usually just watch the UI for auras, then RD off of them, should I happen to lose an add.

As the adds tank in Maloriak, I once did a RD to get a hold of them. Sadly, the one I was targeting had just been hit with a Holy Wrath from the MT and I ended up pulling Maloriak over to my little corner.

boneyjellyfish wrote:

Aerron wrote:For fights like Lockmaw in LCoT, or Maloriak in BWD, I usually just watch the UI for auras, then RD off of them, should I happen to lose an add.

As the adds tank in Maloriak, I once did a RD to get a hold of them. Sadly, the one I was targeting had just been hit with a Holy Wrath from the MT and I ended up pulling Maloriak over to my little corner.

That's also happened to me. Thus why I use RD only with the UI, not targeting the mob itself. I look at the UI and if the red frame is around anyone other than the MT, RD. If I see there's a mob still up there, I know it's on the MT and I wait to use regular Taunt.

I have another question for you guys...

When reforging and choosing gems/enchants etc is there a maximum/minimum amount of dodge/parry I should make sure I stay at. Im asking more towards reforging as I don't want to take too much away into mastery.

Thanks

Maximoose wrote:I have another question for you guys...

When reforging and choosing gems/enchants etc is there a maximum/minimum amount of dodge/parry I should make sure I stay at. Im asking more towards reforging as I don't want to take too much away into mastery.

Thanks

There is no specific minimum or maximum avoidance threshold to watch for, and the only concern you should have in regard to your avoidance stats is their relative value to eachother (the ideal is to have roughly 1% more Parry than Dodge). Dodge and Parry are good, but if you aren't bumping your head against full CTC, reforging them to Mastery is still ideal. However, while some may disagree with this, my personal approach is, on pieces with either Dodge or Parry and a threat stat, to always reforge the threat stat to Mastery, even when reforging the avoidance stat would actually give more Mastery. I feel that the 40% lost threat stats to Mastery will be a greater overall gain to survivability than a loss 40% of an avoidance stat on a given piece. As I said, others may disagree.

The main reason Mastery is always the better option to reforge to/gem/enchant for when possible is that it does not suffer diminishing returns, which Dodge and Parry do. Basically, the more Dodge rating you have, the less avoidance each point gives you, and the same goes for Parry.