Here's what I tried out. It's heavy into protection and gives up some significant Holy healing support talents. I've decided that I am not taking my paladin in the Healadin direction. I think those are going to be GREAT healers, but my main is already a healing priest -- i'm looking for play diversity.
Patch 2.0 Level 60 Tanking Protection Pally
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=aVxZVGzIgMzgzxo
Holy (10 points)
5/5 Divine Intellect
5/5 Spiritual Focus
Protection (41 points)
5/5 Redoubt
3/3 Precision
2/2 Guardian's Favor
1/1 Blessing of Kings
3/3 Improved Righteous Fury
3/3 Shield Specialization
5/5 Anticipation
2/2 Stoicism
2/3 Improved Concentration Aura
1/1 Blessing of Sanctuary
5/5 Reckoning
2/2 Improved Divine Shield
1/1 Holy Shield
5/5 Ardent Defender
1/1 Avenger's Shield
If nothing else, let me first comment that the Paladin spell animations have changed a lot and they look cool! Kudos Blizz. I totally did not know that was coming.
Here’s what I tried out last night. I wanted to see if Paladins could FINALLY tank effectively. Yeah, yeah … I know I’m not going to be tanking endgame bosses in BWL but it would be nice if Paladins could tank the tier 0 instances and really do a good job.
I tested it a bit solo last night in the Burning Steppes against multiple mobs. I took a very little physical damage. Blessing of Sanctuary, Holy Shield, Redoubt and shield spike. It all seemed to be working fine. I’ve tried Holy Shield in the past and it really sucked big time. Last night, I was doing enough reactive damage to take the mobs down reasonably. It’s a big improvement! I couldn’t test my agro generation because I was solo. That will have to wait. On paper though, I should be generating a butt load of hate with all the improvements.
Reckoning is also much different now. The Reck-Bomb is gone. You can’t store the charges anymore. Now it is triggered by *any* damage (not just crits) and gives you an extra attack on every swing up to 4 attacks over the next 8 seconds (better get a 2.0 or lower speed weapon now). This worked like a charm. I checked the combat logs and it was indeed proc’ing like it should. It also seemed to trigger my Seal of Righteousness correctly.
I am a little disappointed with the Avenger’s Shield 41 point talent. It is a nice ranged attack, but it costs a lot of mana (615 mana). In my PVE tests, it went out and hit the target mob, but it did not always hit additional ones unless they were packed in pretty tight. I later went to laceName>ArathilaceName> laceType>BasinlaceType> and tested it there. It seemed to be hitting people more often. But then again, players get more packed together in the big fights. I noticed that it can crit nicely. The dazed effect it causes is also beneficial. It slows players/mobs movement speed for several seconds.
Another thing I am going to watch closely is Ardent Defender. This talent is supposed to reduce ALL damage by 50% when I get below 20% health. I didn’t start looking at it until I was in the battlegrounds. I could not find report lines in the combat logs nor in the floating combat text to indicate it had done anything. I hope it’s not broke :-(
Summary: Initial tests look good. My physical damage mitigation was great. I still need to test it in a dungeon group setting really tanking. |