Paladin Tanking 101
Updated March 29, 2007: New Tanking Spec linked, added forum links to other guides
Welcome to the World of Theorycraft. Today is Paladin Tanking 101: The Math Behind the Madness. Check links throughout this article for graphs related to the topic at hand. Huge thanks go to Ananke, of the guild Vision, on Khaz Modan US. His math skills are amazing, and without him this guide would never exist.
The guide below assumes a good tanking spec, something similar to, but not necessarily exactly like this one. The numbers are based on having the talents that best suit a tanking build, including Imp. SoR, Imp SoCrusader, and Imp Judgement. This guide also assumes numbers at level 70, though you can easily see how viable tanking could be while leveling up as a paladin.
There are lots of folks out there who wonder what it takes to get to the sweet spot as a Paladin tank, where you can be as effective as a warrior was in a pre-2.0 tanking position.
Holy Damage
Looking at the numbers it seems that 250 Holy Damage is very important for threat. However, you can't ignore your weapon damage either. Your bread and butter is Seal of Righteousness. This takes Main Hand Weapon Speed, Main Hand Top End and Main Hand Bottom End damage into consideration while determining its damage. Unfortunately there aren't any good Paladin Tanking weapons that have both Holy Damage and DPS on them. However, taking a 41DPS weapon with lots of spell damage is a better trade-off, as it allows you to fill your other slots with tanking gear.
Judgement of the Crusader
Judgement of the Crusader is your Main Target judgement of choice. It adds 190 Holy Damage to your total Holy Damage when you have that mob targeted. As well, Light does not return mana from the healing - you want outside healing as much as possible. If you are not able to keep up your threat cycle because you are running out of mana then you might have to keep Wisdom up, but you will be giving up threat generation for mana.
Crushing Immune
Lots of people like to say Warriors are Crushing Immune but that is false. There seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that Crushing has been switched to a Proc Per Minute. Mobs have a 15% chance to crush, but most Warriors are saying that as soon as they lose shield block they get crush after crush (which supports PPM). There are no logs to back this up so it could be that humans like to apply patterns where there are none. Regardless - Warriors can be Crush immune for two attacks every 5 seconds under best conditions. That does not make them crush immune.
Now, off Warriors onto Paladins right!? There are two theories about being Crush Immune. Neither have been proven.
- Your total mitigation (dodge/parry/block) must be greater than 100% to push crushings off. This is the theory supported in this guide. It's believed to be right based off game theory/design (basically the algorithm for 1 roll hit tables supports this theory). This theory means you need to add up your dodge, parry and block together. While the sum of them is greater than 100% you are crush immune.
- Your total block percentage must be greater than 100%. This theory says that the only time you are crush immune is when your total block is greater than 100%
I mentioned Warrior before because it seems that many Paladins say to themselves, "We don't have the Shield Block ability so we can never be as good as Warriors" (and a lot of Warriors want them to believe that). But Warriors are not Crush Immune - this is even more true if Crushes are indeed PPM. The difference between a base 15% crush vs. a 15% PPM to crush is massive. That means as soon as you become un-immune you will get crushed with near 100% frequency until the PPM requirements are fulfilled.
How to be as crush immune as possible? Get your dodge/parry/block (with specials) above 100%. Then try your best to keep your block rating specials up all the time (harder with Paladins because you can't control redoubt).
Key concept: Block Rating is much more important to Paladins than Warriors.
Crit Immune
As with Warriors, the magic Defense number is 490 to "generally" be crit immune. What does that mean? Blizzard does have the ability to make monsters and bosses have a higher base crit percentage than 5. However, 5% seems to be the default and most mobs/bosses just use the default. However, some mobs (especially the rogue types) have higher than 5%, so 490 will not totally protect you on those mobs. However, like Warriors, it is best to get 490 and then work on other stats rather then sacrifice other stats to get more defense.
TPS Values
A key thing to know about Paldins is their spell-damage co-efficents:
- 9.2% per 1.0 weapon speed, One-handed Seal of Righteousness
- 73% Judgement of Righteousness
- 76% Consecration
- 20% Holy Shield (5% per Block)*
- 9% Avenger's Shield
- 17% Seal of Vengeance (per tick)
- 43% Judgement of Vengeance
This lets you figure out Threat Per Second (TPS) values for each ability.
Seal of Righteousness
SoR Threat without Judgement of Crusader using a 41DPS weapon.
With 250 Spell Damage it adds 190 Threat with Righteous Fury. By comparison, max-rank Heroic Strike adds 193. If you had 250 Spell Damage and had Judgement of Crusader that would be 257 Threat per attack (or 128 TPS).
Judgement of Righteousness
With 250 Spell Damage it would cause 564 Threat when judged every 8 sec (70TPS). If the target has Judgement of the Crusader it would be 828 Threat. Damage for a decently geared warrior is usually around 400 with Shield Slam, meaning Shield Slam causes about 750 threat for Warriors every 6 sec.
Consecration
Let's look at Total threat for Consecration because it is easier for the math. To figure out per-tick just divide the numbers by 8.
At 250 Spell Damage that is 1333 Threat over 8 seconds or 166 Threat per second. On your Main Target (with Judgement of the Crusader) that is 201 Threat per second. For comparison lets look at Sunder Armor. Sunder is 300 Threat every 1.5 seconds if you are spamming it. That works out to be 200 Threat per Second.
Reckoning
Reckoning is hard to determine a Threat per Second value for, as it procs off you being hit. However, we can figure out how much extra threat it generates when it does proc.
Let's assume the same weapon as the Righteousness calculations used. It is 1.8 speed so lets say all 4 Reckoning Charges get used. That means 4 free Righteousnesses over 8 seconds. So, 10% of the time you will generate an extra 790 threat over 8 seconds. (1028 on a Judgement of the Crusader target). This works out to be 98 TPS on non-judged and 128 on judged (SotC) targets. Of course, this only happens sometimes and is hard to count on.
Holy Shield
Holy Shield is also based on being attacked. But let's figure it out.
So, with 250 Spell Damage every attack blocked with Holy Shield adds 718 Threat. If the target you blocked is Judged with Crusader it adds 961 Threat.
For comparison for every Blocked, Dodged or parried attack Warriors can counter attack with Revenge. It causes 483 threat for 60 damage, or about 543 Threat every 5 seconds. Even if you only block 2 attacks with Holy Shield every 10 seconds you are still generating more threat than revenge does.
Avenger's Shield
This attack is primarily used for pulling, so no Judgement of Crusader calcs on this skill. Avenger's Shield's threat is pretty good for an opening attack. With 250 Spell Damage it will cause 1083 Threat on 3 targets. Comparing to Warriors, the first attack a Warrior usually does on an incoming mob is Shield Slam. It does ~750 threat to a single target (and must be in melee range).
Greater Blessing of Sanctuary
Sanctuary has a 0% co-efficient so it does a flat amount of holy damage. At Rank 2 it does 46 Holy damage an attack.
Each time you block you will generate 87.4 Threat. Another way to look at it is this blessing makes your Holy Shield generate 805 on a non-JoC attacker and 1048 on a JoC attacker. It def. looks better when you see it stacked with Holy Shield.
Retribution Aura
Retribution aura does 26 Holy damage everytime you are hit. This also has a 0% co-efficient as far as I know. That works out to be 49 Threat everytime you are attacked. Again - doesn't seem like much.
However, lets look at it with Consecration. Retribution is not really a Single Target threat generator - it is more for AoE pulls. Lets assume a standard attack speed of 2.0. That works out to be 197 Threat generated on each target over the lifetime of 1 Consecration. Now lets stack the two effects, over 8 seconds on non-JoC targets, your Consecration Ret Aura will generate 1530threat on every target attacking you.
Not great for single target but nothing to shun on AoE pulls.
Seal of Vengeance
Reports seem to indicate that it has a 20ppm, so about every 3 seconds it will proc.
We're going to do it 'easy mode' first and just calculate the actual threat as if it stacked to 5 instantly. (120*5)/12 = 50 per tick. 17% co-efficent at 250 spell damage is 42.5 additional damage so ~92 holy damage. That is 175 TPS.
Judgement: 120*5 = 600 Holy Damage. At 250 Spell damage and 43% co-efficent that's an extra 107 damage, making a total of 707 damage which is ~1343 Threat every 8 seconds.
Now lets do it the real way.
Now here is the interesting thing. From what I can find out about this seal every tick uses 17% of your Holy Damage. As long as you have 1 application you are getting 17% - the amount of holy damage from your co-efficent does not increase as you get more stacks. Each application will only increase the amount of holy damage by 10. That is only an extra 19TPS. This is pretty minor.
Based on that, lets just calculate the threat as if you only had 1 application up. 10 dmg from 1 application at 17% co-efficent is 52 damage a tick or 80 threat a tick. Now, every 15 seconds you can judge (based on 20ppm) meaning you can burst your threat for 1343 every 15 seconds. Over those 15 seconds the ticks alone would generate (very roughly) 1437 threat. Total that would be 2780 over 15 seconds or 185 TPS.
Now, on a non-JoC target (just like these Vengeance calcs were done) Seal of Righteousness would generate 198 TPS.
So, Seal of Righteousness is better at 250 Spell Damage. The reason is: You can only judge Seal of Vengeance every 15 seconds (20ppm is 1 proc every 3 seconds = 15seconds to get a full stack) and its co-efficient on a judgement is way too low. Stacks of SoV do stay on the target, but as it is so easy to lose the stack, this guide assumes building a fresh stack each time. Judging Righteousness every 8 seconds with a 73% co-efficient makes Righteousness better.
Conclusion
So, if you've skimmed to the bottom, you're likely looking for a summary of everything above without really digging into the nitty gritty. Here it is then, lazybones:
- Get 10-12k hp at level 70
- Get 490 Defense
- Get 250 Spell Damage
- Get your total of dodge/parry/block to 100% (with holy shield/redoubt)
- Put up Retribution Aura
- Cast Greater Blessing of Sanctuary on yourself
- Pull with Avenger's Shield
- Judge Seal of the Crusader, then keep up Seal of Righteousness
- Judge Righteousness every 8 seconds
- Consecrate
- Holy Shield
- Win big loots, have your party love you
That's it. We hope that the math behind paladin tanking is interesting and useful to you, and that by presenting this guide, paladins can rest assured that they do have the skills to succeed as a primary tank.
Other Paladin Tanking Guides:
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