[protadin] gear, talents, glyphs, concerns

profession choices: jc, eng
gear and talents: http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=20722609
putting it all together I've tried to avoid dodge items (with chill of throne in mind). That also explains preferance of pvp shoulder enchant over Hodir one.

first concern (not yet solved) is lack of decent tanking libram. Tome of lightbringer is BT drop from Mother Shahraz (hard to get raid and 1 week lockout) and 15 badge Libram of Obstruction easy to get, but not allowed, as it's epic. Leaves with either current venture co libram (16 dps/28,8 tps) or Libram of eternal rest

second concern - low unbuffed tps. According to rawr, I'll be doing around 2611 tps unbuffed in this spec/gear combination. Alternative would be to move 3 points away from divine sacrifice and divine guardian into reckoning, gaining roughly 80 tps and also sacrificing Pursuit of justice for 30 more tps (imho ability to quickly cover distance is worth more).

glyph choice - first 2 major glyphs - prety obvious. In single target situations I've been thinking about replacing righteous defence glyph with avenger's shield - gaining extra tps ability at the expense of possible taunt fail (however failed taunt could probably lead to wipe in tank rotation situations).

Comments and suggestions most wellcome

First concern - Unfortunately the BT Libram would also not be allowed. I'm playing a DPS DK, and besides the starter sigil we only have 3 options from venture co as well.

Second concern - I wouldn't be too fussed about TPS. After all, the DPS you are trying to stay ahead of aren't putting out 8k dps. They will be putting out somewhere in the range of 2.5 to 3.5k. Add to that their threat reduction talents and abilities (not getting aggro isn't only the tanks job), AND the misdirects and fan of knives you probably will get, threat still shouldn't be a very big issue.

As Chop says, I don't think threat will be an issue at blue gear level. I remember being consistently double any dps current threat in half blue, half 200 epics as a prot paladin. As for the libram, it might be worthwhile to pick up the lvl70 badge libram, Libram of Repentance, especially for ICC since you won't be block capped. Even though BV will be a small percentage of any ICC boss melee, at least it's marginally useful, where extra threat may not be.

I was talking today about pala tanking with liviann and he told me he had issues with tps against some heavy dps classes, here's what I found, maybe it can help anyone: http://rhida.ch/2009/10/21/5-ways-to-boost-your-threat/

Actually seems, you got me a bit wrong.
Worst so far is ranged caster/hunter type trash
Although it seems, that a bit workaround here is to rush in, slam first target, hotr others and hope for no patrols. Also for some next "random heroic" will try pulling with engi bomb, to see if it works better.

Got a good feedback today with figuring out, that using taunt as a pulling spell is a no way to go at 80, as you probably will need it just a few secs later. (someone taught me to pull with it in leveling instances to save mana and it has worked miracles there).

Some thoughts on those 5 tips
1) yes, there's nothing better than 969 so far for tank and spank fights.
2) glyph choice - raiding one already mentioned in first post. Currently glyphed for heroics to have 4target hotr instead of unrezistable taunts, as there are lots of 4 mob trash pulls.
3) yes, it helps more to put points in crusade than in reckoning/holy tree. Though at our gear level reckoning is pretty close per point to crusade (according to rawr), if mobs are not humanoids/undead.
4) hit capped - painful. It was already quite hard to get def capped, so worrying about hit cap would sacrifice survivability. But right - if first spell misses the target, we're pretty much pushed into "recovery" sequence with taunts.
5) tank with dps trinkets? again it would mean sacrificing (limited) survivability for extra tps, specially if trinkets give almost 2k hp and defense from gem/shield with damage absorbtion from Gossamer's essence.

on side note - "she" instead of "he" would be nice

Oh, really sorry I'm a she too

Liviann wrote:
4) hit capped - painful. It was already quite hard to get def capped, so worrying about hit cap would sacrifice survivability. But right - if first spell misses the target, we're pretty much pushed into "recovery" sequence with taunts.

Like before, I wouldn't worry too much about threat. Yes it'll be nasty to miss it, but in this project you'll have to be able to count on your dps to not be drooling monkeys and start/keep up the top DPS rotation. We'll have threat meters and give you a slight head start I suppose. Especially seeing has how your survivability will be key to beating most encounters and not your TPS.

ICC might be different, seeing the amount of enrage timers and DPS Checks there. I am not yet sure how we're going to beat those

Chopsui wrote:ICC might be different, seeing the amount of enrage timers and DPS Checks there. I am not yet sure how we're going to beat those

Well, isn't that what this project is all about?

Tal wrote:

Chopsui wrote:ICC might be different, seeing the amount of enrage timers and DPS Checks there. I am not yet sure how we're going to beat those

Well, isn't that what this project is all about?

Aye, it is. Still, a 7k+ avg dps requirement makes baby Chopsui cry.

My original guild downed just 1st wing and Festergut + Rotface from 2nd wing, but I haven't seen there any 7k dps fight.

On our Festergut kill we had 38201.0 raid DPS using 6 dps 2 tanks 2 healers. 38201 / 7 (2 tanks = 1 dps) = 5457 DPS requirement. And we still have time left on enrage timer.

So I have no concern for now.


edit: I had wrong data at work

Actually after playing with Rawr more, I've noticed, that buffs and debuffs really make difference at this point. Some of gear pieces seem to be better than others in buffed/unbuffed versions.
Should be doing around 5.8k tps on humanoid/undead fully buffed with debuffs on boss (like sunder and such). That's without rogues and hunters helping in tps boost and Festergut's "buff" for damage increase.
Also - least survivability sacrifice for tps increase seems to be titanium plating on shield and defense enchant moved to chest slot.

That's quite a lot of work, Liv.

The two things I could rant about are:

1) By taking no point in Vindication, I assume you will be relying on your offtanks to provide the AP debuff?
2) There is no def cap. Seriously, there isn't any. Don't make the marmots angry.