[Guide] Paladin Tanking Compendium 2.0

[PiedPiper]

This guide expects your DPS to perform extremely well, in line with the math that is underlying the entire game. When a black mage is DPSing against you, both in i90 gear, he will have to eventually have to wait to dps due to procs, you picking up new mobs, and so forth. What you are saying is luxury and not going to make or break a fight. You losing aggro will break the fight though. Your job is to gain aggro as quickly as possible on a mob, raise the enmity ceiling as high as possible, all while not taking very much damage. You do not have to do any damage as long as the DPS are doing it for you. This is a team game, be a team player. A DPS's job is to do as much damage as possible without taking aggro or dying. You trying to do damage is stepping on their toes and underperforming your task. Classical tanks live by the quality "Do little damage, take little damage."

Exactly, its a team game, bring every point of contribution you can to help the team.

And I explicitly stated this was only for stable fights against a single target where your hate is actually balanced against the healers not the dps. Also, pld threat is immensely consistent where as all dps other than smn is proc based, over time in equal gear with equal play you will gain insurmountable leads. Not to mention, quelling strikes on a blm / brd / smn will consistently give you accumulating leads.

Also, increasing your dps in this mannor does nothing to increase the damage you are recieving, I see no point in the "do little take little" when you can "do more take little." Its a team game, bring every piont of edge to your team you can.

Again, at the point you are using things like fracture and shield swipe on coil bosses, you should know the class well enough to know when you've got more hate than you need. There is no functional difference in a 10% hate lead or a 90% hate lead. And, pld dps, while low, does stack up over several minutes.

Besides, we've all wiped to bosses with 1%. Be that one 1%.

[Pixelshader]

Exactly, its a team game, bring every point of contribution you can to help the team.

And I explicitly stated this was only for stable fights against a single target where your hate is actually balanced against the healers not the dps. Also, pld threat is immensely consistent where as all dps other than smn is proc based, over time in equal gear with equal play you will gain insurmountable leads. Not to mention, quelling strikes on a blm / brd / smn will consistently give you accumulating leads.

Also, increasing your dps in this mannor does nothing to increase the damage you are recieving, I see no point in the "do little take little" when you can "do more take little." Its a team game, bring every piont of edge to your team you can.

Again, at the point you are using things like fracture and shield swipe on coil bosses, you should know the class well enough to know when you've got more hate than you need. There is no functional difference in a 10% hate lead or a 90% hate lead. And, pld dps, while low, does stack up over several minutes.

Besides, we've all wiped to bosses with 1%. Be that one 1%.

As I stated before this guide it to baseline the player at a very high performing level. As you can tell, even in the "multi-target" rotation it is extremely wasteful when only tanking 2 mobs. The player should learn to split their halone combo, watch the enmity bars, and play with a bit more finesse. The one stated in this guide works for sure, but you can put out a lot more dps once you learn how to ride the line of "just enough enmity." If the player knows enough of when they should fracture, when they should shield swipe, then surely they wouldn't need this guide or believe it to be word of god. They would simply take the information here, add it to their own experience, compile it all, draw their own conclusion and create their own play style. That being said, nothing in this guide is incorrect or harmful to the player. You can be a paladin such as I that doesn't have shield swipe or fracture on their bar and still be an end game tank that performs at a very high level. Sure I could add some overhead to myself watching debuffs and trying not to reset my halone combo by keeping fracture up. I could add shield swipe to my fast blade macro so I use it every time its up and increasing my dps, but I won't. I prefer to give the dps as much room as they need because even with min/maxing threat on occasion they do pull. I only have 4 pieces of i90 whereas some of our dps have 7 pieces. My enjoyment of tanking isn't from saying "I do a lot of damage as a tank," it's from saying "You'll never catch me on threat."

For some reason you misunderstood what a tank is. You must understand you are not going to do a lot of damage as a tank and just live with that fact. The only game I've seen that defies this in my experience is World of Warcraft due to the vengeance mechanic. Where when I was a Death Knight I was able to be top damage, 3rd top healer, and also be the main tank.

Ironically enough I haven't gotten those heartbreaking 1% wipes in this game outside of dungeons. We are stuck at 55% on turn 5 simply due to mechanics, not lack of damage.

[PiedPiper]

For some reason you misunderstood what a tank is. You must understand you are not going to do a lot of damage as a tank and just live with that fact.

Bro, bro, bro. I do respect you bro.

All i was tyring to poitn out is that these skills do ahve a use, your inital guide makes them sound useless, and many people won't have ever thought about shield swipe's potential use to conserve tp.

I'm not saying you should do real damage, or that for me tanking isa bout doing damage. I'm perfectly aware that we can't do real numbers. I also get my enjoyment out of having an unmatchable hate lead.

My point was simply that if you find yourself with said hate lead, these two skills can have a nice situational use. That's all bro.

Telling me I fundamentaly don't get tanking or w/e, that's just uncalled for. If your dps are so close to your hate that a single gcd out of 7spent on fracture will cause you to loose threat, then don't use it, but bro, surely your unmatchable lead is bigger than that.

[klops]

Shield Swipe is an obvious DPS increase and a net gain in TP. Therefore, it will not impair the number of Halone combos used over the course of the fight. Assuming you end the fight near 0 TP, it is free damage that in the long run will establish more damage and threat than not using it. It is, of course, only viable when you have an established threat cushion. It's viability also declines in fights that do not last long enough to TP starve you. I am currently on Turn 5 and have only been TP starved in Turn 1.

It is an ability with limited uses (and one I hope gets looked at in the future to be made more interesting), but it still has a place on the action bar.

[Pixelshader]

Shield Swipe is an obvious DPS increase and a net gain in TP. Therefore, it will not impair the number of Halone combos used over the course of the fight. Assuming you end the fight near 0 TP, it is free damage that in the long run will establish more damage and threat than not using it. It is, of course, only viable when you have an established threat cushion. It's viability also declines in fights that do not last long enough to TP starve you. I am currently on Turn 5 and have only been TP starved in Turn 1.

It is an ability with limited uses (and one I hope gets looked at in the future to be made more interesting), but it still has a place on the action bar.

So this is incorrect. It slows down your halone combos by 2.5sec every time you use them. Here are a few examples of swiping and not swiping.

Swiping every GCD:
Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe -> Shield Swipe
420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 420 Enmity
Total: 5040 enmity using 480 TP
Efficiency: 420 enmity for 40 TP every GCD = 10.5 EPTP

Swiping every other GCD
Fast Blade -> Shield Swipe -> Savage Blade -> Shield Swipe -> Rage of Halone -> Shield Swipe -> Fast Blade -> Shield Swipe -> Savage Blade-> Shield Swipe -> Rage of Halone -> Shield Swipe
300 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 1500 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 4100 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 300 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 1500 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 4100 Enmity -> 420 Enmity
70 TP -> 40 TP -> 60 TP -> 40 TP -> 60 TP -> 40 TP -> 70 TP -> 40 TP -> 60 TP -> 40 TP -> 60 TP -> 40 TP
Total: 14320 enmity using 620 TP
Efficiency: 1193.33 enmity for 51.66 every GCD = 23.1

Swiping every 2 GCDs
Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Shield Swipe -> Rage of Halone -> Fast Blade -> Shield Swipe -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone -> Shield Swipe -> Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Shield Swipe
300 Enmity -> 1500 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 4100 Enmity -> 300 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 1500 Enmity -> 4100 Enmity -> 420 Enmity -> 300 Enmity -> 1500 Enmity -> 420 Enmity
70 TP -> 60 TP -> 40 TP -> 60 TP -> 70 TP -> 40 TP -> 60 TP -> 60 TP -> 40 TP -> 70 TP -> 60 TP -> 40 TP
Total: 15280 enmity using 670
Efficiency: 1273.33 enmity for 55.83 TP every GCD = 22.81

Not Swiping
Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone -> Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone -> Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone -> Fast Blade -> Savage Blade -> Rage of Halone
300 Enmity -> 1500 Enmity -> 4100 Enmity -> 300 Enmity -> 1500 Enmity -> 4100 Enmity -> 300 Enmity -> 1500 Enmity -> 4100 Enmity -> 300 Enmity -> 1500 Enmity -> 4100 Enmity
70 TP -> 60 TP -> 60 TP -> 70 TP -> 60 TP -> 60 TP -> 70 TP -> 60 TP -> 60 TP -> 70 TP -> 60 TP -> 60 TP
Total: 23600 enmity using 760 TP
Efficiency: 1966.66 enmity for 63.33 for every GCD = 31.05 EPTP

Above are a few scenarios of what your tp and enmity look like within 12 GCDs. As you can see for the most part shield swipe is extremely damaging to your rotation. In regards to enmity it is actually better to wait for more TP to continue your Halone combo rather than use Shield Swipe. As for DPS, its a non point. Your dps should be dealing the damage.

[klops]

snip

That's not the point I was making. Obviously Halone spam has the greatest Threat/sec ratio of your GCD uses when TP permits. Anyone who passed high school Algebra can attest to that.

However, the point I was making was so minor that it's not even worth continuing with and was probably a waste of a post to begin with. It would have been easier to write, "Shield Swipe sucks."

None of my information was incorrect, though, as you said it was. It is true that because Shield Swipe is a net gain in TP, it will over a course of X seconds result in larger threat where X is a number that would leave you TP starved. It's all moot because this never happens and you can't afford to not be spamming Halone outside of a few instances during Turn 4.

[Pixelshader]

That's not the point I was making. Obviously Halone spam has the greatest Threat/sec ratio of your GCD uses when TP permits. Anyone who passed high school Algebra can attest to that.

However, the point I was making was so minor that it's not even worth continuing with and was probably a waste of a post to begin with. It would have been easier to write, "Shield Swipe sucks."

None of my information was incorrect, though, as you said it was. It is true that because Shield Swipe is a net gain in TP, it will over a course of X seconds result in larger threat where X is a number that would leave you TP starved. It's all moot because this never happens and you can't afford to not be spamming Halone outside of a few instances during Turn 4.

I'll take your advice. "Shield Swipe sucks." Even in a TP starved situation its better to pool your TP for more halone combos rather than to hit that useless skill. Halone combo is 31.05 enmity per TP used whereas Shield Swipe is 10.5 enmity per TP used. Don't put it on your bar. Simple.