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Talents for level 20 tanks. Ret > Prot?
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Post by
Maliander
I currently have a level 20 warrior (
Armory
) on a trial account that I use to tank instances with, using the new LFD system. He's certainly fun and effective to play, keeping aggro on multiple mobs with ease and with good survivability.
For my next trial account I plan to make a paladin tank and am wondering what a good build would be and if I would be as effective as my warrior. Looking at the talent trees, I notice that the shallow ret tree actually seems to give better talents then the shallow prot tree. A build like
0/0/11
seems more effective for tanking then a level 20 prot build
0/11/0
. Acces to Seal of Command for multi-mob tanking, with the same 5% avoidance as a prot build.
Am I missing important aspects of paladin tanking at level 20 when I assume all important tools are consecrate, seal of command, exorcism and judgements? Will the gameplay seem dull compared to the bag of tricks a warrior can use at that level (thunderclap, cleave, heroic strike, sunder, rend, demoralizing shout)? Will I be forced to join the mages' drinking habits every other pull?
Post by
biogoo
First!
(do you really want some meaning from answer to this?)
EDIT: edited for awesomness
Post by
Maliander
First!
(do you really want some meaning from answer to this?)
EDIT: edited for awesomness
Trailing through your posts I have a slight sense I may be doing some feeding of that which should not be fed here, but let's try it anyway:
The answers to my questions appear to be trivial to experienced paladin players, but I have very limited experience with the paladin class. Can you share your knowledge with me so I can be prevented from using an incorrect build or playing a class that does not perform well at level 20 tanking?
Post by
biogoo
Trailing through your posts I have a slight sense I may be doing some feeding of that which should not be fed here, but let's try it anyway.
Feed me please!
Feed me and you will be answered!
Yet there is no answer.
Just a question:
What the hell do you want from a lvl 20 paladin?
Please, buy the game.
Or.
Better not.
Post by
Maliander
I do have an account but it is not currenlty active due to time and financial constraints (you can check my profile if you're interested).
I play games for fun. Tanking instances like Shadow Fang Keep or Deadmines is one of the activities I consider to be "fun". Doing so on a trial account is enough to fill the few playing hours I currently have available, for now at least.
I hope that answers your question. Now can you answer mine?
Post by
Red054
Since your only going to a max level of 20, I'd say that you should go with the Ret one personally. I know Divine Sacrifice is a really good move but it can only be used every 2 minutes. Where as SoC would constantly be active and giving you benefits the entire time your tanking. I mean think about it, if your doing this for fun ( i'm not downing it, that's the reasoning behind most of my characters ) you most likely don't want to be frustrated all the time with it. If your actually having to use DS then something is going wrong within the group and frustration is about to happen.
Just my thoughts.
Post by
488829
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Wyrmnax
For tanking, protection is the way to go. If you are able to go after level 20. The real good stuff protection has for tanking doesnt appear until the 30s.
If you are limited to level 20, lets take a look at what you have avaliable:
Protection:
Most likely you will be going with 5/5 Divine Strenght, 5/5 Anticipation and 1Improved righteous Fury.
That gives you 5% Avoidance, 2% damage reduced and 15% strenght
Retribution:
5/5 Deflection, 3/3 Heart of the crusader, 2 in anything and probably 1 in Conviction.
5% avoidance, 4% crit when judgements are up.
So, choice is simply 2% damage reduced and 15% strenght vs 4% crit.
Not all that great. Damagewise it should put you on nearly even ground. 2% damage reduced is very little when you will be getting hit by 70s or 80s.
Either way, if you cant level it over 20, both choices should be good enough.
Post by
GreatePier
Having the priviledge of having access to Heirlooms, I started up
a Paladin
and have gotten him to L26 now.
I've been enjoying the new LFG system very much (hey, how often do you get the chance of doing Ragefire Chasm at L20 as Alliance :P). I've only got points in Ret and from my own experience, I'd say at this level all you really need is
Righteous Fury
and
Consecration
(and a healer)
Using those 2 spells alone with autoattacks has yet to lose me agro. That said, with my gear I typically out-dps the DPS in the group by almost 2 to 1 (3 to 1 in pulls of 3+), so that may also be a pretty big agro-factor.
At L20ish, the talents, at least from a tanking point of view, are for a nice
cherry
on top, or
strawberry
if you so prefer.
At the moment, I've very biased to Ret myself, so I would probably go with a
build like this
Post by
AnrDaemon
If you want prot build at that level,
go there
. Divine Sacrifice is pointless.
But I do agree you can utilize SoComm for a greater effect until level 64, where you have access to both HotR and SoV/SoCorr.
Post by
Quest
Ret is the thing to be till at least mid level these days if you have access to looms.
I never did have that access so I leveled purely as prot. The undead of Duskwood will never be the same.
Post by
Maliander
Thanks for the tips guys. Ret it is then. Just wondering about the 2 extra talent points when taking 5/5
Deflection
, 3/3
Heart of the Crusader
and 1/1
Seal of Command
. I suppose it's only a minor detail and will depend on if I get mana issues (
Benediction
, -4% mana cost for effectively all spells), run into the CD limitation of Judgements often (
Improved Judgements
, CD from 10 to 8 seconds) or frequently use Blessing of Might (
Improved Blessing of Might
, +9 AP for all melee DPS and hunters).
The damage component from Judgements seems to be very poor, so I guess their only use is for the debuff. The debuff is only useful on the primary target and with a duration of 20 seconds and a cooldown of 10 seconds, it should be easy to keep up, even when switching to a new target, making Improved Judgements a poor choice in my opinion. I'd hate having to drink between pulls, so will probably go with Benediction, since the benefit of Improved Blessing of Might also seems quite minimal.
Post by
Quest
Dont take deflection as ret.
Survivability is a non issue.
You are GOING to have mana issues leveling becuse you should be murdering every pixel in sight until you need to drink.
Post by
AnrDaemon
If you going down to ret tree for leveling and want to tank with it, forget survivability from talents. Get a board and a plate suitable for tanking, that should make it through.
In any day, in any instance, if you managed to hold aggro, you are fine. It's much easier for healer to heal single target, even if it taking some serious amount of damage, than healing multiple targets... taking same serious amount of damage. And the faster you kill stuff, the easier it will be for the group. Just make sure (and that's what many tanks failing to do) to watch your healer's mana pool - empty healer will kill you more likely than any mob.
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