I know I have written a lot about Paravel and her lovely, wonderful, active tree form lately. I also know that you might be wondering just what has happen to all the news about Resto Druids. Well that will all still come. BUT. . .I have recently dusted off my shield and mace, and brought Valimonde back into action since patch 3.0.2. And right from the start I have to say.
I FREAKING LOVE PROT PALLADINS AND TANKING AGAIN!!!!! Link to heading
Blizzards has finally given protection speced paladins the tools needed to do everything we have always dreamed of. They have given us at least two new talents that have turned the tables on all those old stuck in the mud, this is how it has always been done, warriors out there who say Paladins can tank 5 mans but never a raid.
One of the bigest concern and arguments used against paladin tanks on larger raids has been that. . you use mana. A tanking situation is a careful dance of agro managment and mitigation. In order for a paladin prior to the patch to stay ontop of the threat list he had to do holy damage. To do holy damage he had to use his skills which would use mana, lot’s and lots of mana. When you run out of mana you are unable to do your spells and before long that mage in the back starts to overtake your threat. If you are unfamilure with what happens when a mage, or any other class, over takes your threat on a boss, well, lets just say it looks a lot like the floor.
It was because of the mana issue that many old school raiders would never allow a paladin to tank raid bosses. To some extent they had a valid point, however, I have seen some fantastic tankadins prior to the patch porve the sceptics wrong.
So, what to do about mana? Blizzard answerd our issue with this. Greater Blessing of Sanctuary
This new spell, which is only in the protection tree, offers a wonderful solution. What does it do?
- Reduces damage taken by 3%. This may not sound like a lot of damage mitigation, but every bit helps, and frankly, this is not the reason it will be the only blessing I use. This is:
- Gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% maximum mana whenever the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack.
O.o Let me put this in real world terms. The new guild I am in just did our first Kara run Saturday night. I seldom had to drink. When we got to Prince on the roof we had one slight misshap. Many of our team had NEVER been in Kara and did not know the dance with the enfeble. We ended up loosing half the raid, BUT, we 5 maned prince and got him in one shot. I tanked him with only 5 members for more than 3/4 of the fight. When he died I looked at my mana bar. It was full!
This allowed me to keep at least 1K TPS (Threat Per Second) on the boss at all times. So mana is no longer an issue for a tankadin. It should also be noted that Warriors, Druids, and Death Knights will also benifit from this blessing when they are off tanking to us paladins. :)
The next tool that Blizzard has given us is our 51 point talent *drum roll*
Oh how I LOVE this new talent. This is a new AOE, err. . well 3 target Melee atack that gives the paladin up to 4 times (NOTE, tool tip is being changed to reflect the real 4 times damage with 3.0.4 as I write this) your main hand damage per second as Holy damage. This attack causes HIGH treat.
Perfect! What we have always needed! In normal situations a tankadin would use his Avengers Shield to get a head start on frontloading threat. Only issue with the old method is a very long cool down on Avengers Shield makeing it nearly useless to climb back on top of the threat list once you started to slip. With HotR we simply nail the mob every 6 seconds to not only build threat on them, but on the mobs next to them then you are AOE tanking.
I have to admit I am aprensive to write about HotR. I am so fearful of others crying about it. You see. . I belive this little gem has made the prot spec fun again in more areas than just tanking. It has helped to increase tankadins over all DPS.
In our Kara run I was 4th on the DPS chart! I have NEVER been above another DPS class no matter how bad their gear was before patch. It was just not my build or skill set. Now I am wraking up 2.5K avenger shield pulls, 1.5K to a whopping 3K HotR crit. Its. . its. . just AMAZING!
And then! PVP! OH MY WORD! Forget how over powered Ret Paladins are in BG’s. In previous days I would take Val into BG. I could live a long long time, but kill nothing! Now. . .Arms and Fury warriors run from Prot Paladins. Ret Paladins end up screaming WTF when a prot nails them into the ground with HoTR and a few avenger shield tosses. ITS AMAZING!
In conclusion, (You know, I was taught to never end a message or post like that :P ) I am so excited to play my tankadin again. It is so much fun. We are still having the OH WOW factor. Just last night we took a 65 fury warrior, and a 66 Enhacment shaman into Underbog. It was cake. We planed to do Slave pens as well to get the quest done for them. We where done in no time. Tatiaana, my wifes mage, had to go at this point, but Mel, my healer and I said, why not do Steam Vaults. When all was said and done, even with under level DPS, we did all three colfaing instances in under 2.5 hours! WOW! I can not wait to hit Northrend.
Here is to all the protection paladins out in the world. Education will prevail and we will be given the chance to do what we always knew we could, or always wanted to do.