- Author: Kurathis
- Date: April 1, 2021
- Updated: July 5, 2021
- Expansion: TBC Classic
- Defence (490)
- Total Avoidance (102.4%)
- Stamina (Roughly 785 for Karazhan)
- Spell Damage (200+)
- Hit/Expertise
Every tanking class has a required amount of defence rating and skill that they must reach in order to negate all chances of being the victim of a critical strike. A critical strike hits you for 200% of normal damage. For both Paladins and Warriors, you’ll need 490 defence skill, which is equivalent to 285 defence rating with Anticipation and your regular defence skill at 350. Without Anticipation, you will need 332 defence rating to reach cap.
A total of 102.4% avoidance (a combination of Block – including Holy Shield, Dodge, Parry and Miss) is required to negate the chance of being the victim of a crushing blow. A crushing blow, while not as dangerous as a critical strike, still causes 150% of normal damage.
Stamina is our third priority since it increases our direct survivability by increasing our health pool. If you intend on starting your raiding experience as the off-tank, you can aim for roughly 11,000 health before entering Karazhan and be a-okay tanking it.
Increasing our spell damage is a means of increasing our total threat-per-second (TPS) potential.
Paladins rely on both Melee and Spell Hit Rating to ensure their attacks and spells land successfully, respectively. With Precision, we only need 6% of each to become capped. While pieces of gear with either hit rating on them should not be avoided, you shouldn’t go out of your way to find and use them, either. Paladins have Consecration, which only relies on Spell Hit for the first tick, as it cannot miss during the other seven ticks. We also have Seal of Vengeance‘s damage-over-time (DoT) which, when applied, doesn’t require us to successfully hit the target to cause its damage/threat.
Paladins benefit from Expertise – hence Combat Expertise in our talent tree. However, we do benefit from it less than Warrior tanks since it benefits tanks in two ways:
- It allows for less of our attacks to be dodged or parried – which grants us more threat. The only real time that this actually affects Paladins is when we’re “Seal Twisting,” since we can otherwise not melee attack our target and still generate threat
- Because it improves our chances of not being parried, the boss has less of a chance to benefit from parry-haste. Similar to above, Paladins can more-or-less disengage in melee combat unless Seal Twisting
Neither Warriors, nor Druids, have this luxury.
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About the Author
Greetings fellow Tankadins. I have a quick question regarding DEFENCE and AVOIDANCE. You often hear people using the terms “Def cap” and “Crush cap”, which leads me to believe the values you have stated above (490 and 102.4%) are the caps for these values. Of course the game allows you to have more, but my question is… is there any point in having more than 490 defence and 102.4% avoidance? Or are these simply the targets to reach before then switching your full focus to stamina and spell power?
The Defence Cap is 485 for Heroics, and 490 for Raids. Exceeding this is not necessarily the best option since it provides 0.16% total avoidance per point of Defence Skill, while we can be increasing other vital stats such as Stamina or Spell Damage (as you pointed out)
The Crush Cap is 102.4% – this only applies to raids and not heroics or normal dungeons. While increasing this value is inevitable as you improve your gear, there is no desired number above 102.4% to achieve since crushing blows will already be removed from the attack table with 102.4% total avoidance.
Realistically, you want to be taking damage as a tank, so we can benefit from Spiritual Attunement, regenerating our mana based on heals received.
Your Defence Skill will exceed 490 naturally, and your avoidance will also naturally exceed 102.4% but this isn’t something to concern yourself with achieving since in later phases it will happen naturally.
I, too, healed the majority of my time in Classic. I spent 1-60 tanking, though, and I loved it!
If you are looking for an addon that will convert the stats in WoW to their actual percentages (i.e. 10 Defence Rating = 4.22 Defence) I’d recommend “Little Buster” – you can find more information/download it here. (The link is through Curseforge) It includes all stats except resilience at this time.
Brilliant thank you! I did try to have a search through curse forge but was obviously using the wrong key words. Will give this a try later, thanks again.
In your defence, I didn’t find it through browsing Curseforge, I found it through searching through Google and searching the full name in Curseforge. 🙂
Im leveling my paladin tank – now 55 – and i can’t get easy list of what stats shall i look in dungeons gear.
Im not interested in long theorycraft explanations as im still leveling.
Example: Is strength or attack power important ? Last night on my 2nd run in BRD dpsiers told i should look for Spell power gear. I’m bit lost as seems only thing is by sure seems to he:
– Plate gear.
– Gear with avoidance – Def, Block, Dodge etc.
– Now seems having Spell Power and probably Spell hit makes sence.
– So does this means Strength and/or Attack power not really important ?
I wonder if above is correct, shall all gear good for me paladin protection tank be of Plate type, or will i jeed to start competing with non plate gear just to have spell power/hit stats ?
Thanks in advance,
~ Budha ~
who Stat Priority Gruls’lair and maghteridon?
how Stat Priority grul’s lair and maghteridon ?
You did forget about parry hasting from raid bosses, but as paladin tanks we don’t go out of our way too expertise cap too prevent the boss from hitting us 40% faster after they parry out attacks, because the gear is simply none existent for us too be capped for it during phase 1. but if your building into reckoning you are best too get as much expertise as you possibly can.
I mentioned parry-hasting in the last paragraph in the guide. Expertise is not a stat that any class or role can max out in Phase 1 or 2, really.
Reckoning isn’t a worthwhile talent since it relies on your melee hit rating, which is another thing we don’t prioritize, and it relies on your weapon speed, and if you’re below that Expertise cap, you could be setting yourself up for failure early on.
We also don’t need Expertise in the same way that Warriors or Druids would. If you’re not Seal-Twisting, you get up to 5 stacks of Seal of Vengeance, and stop auto-attacking, eliminating the chance of parry-haste affecting you.
It’s to, not too.
Overweight people are everywhere
“Paladins have Consecration, which doesn’t rely on either stat since it can’t miss.”
Consecration can miss when it is first applied to a target (the first tick can be resisted).
I have not experienced a resist as of yet, but I will continue to monitor my Consecration ticks and change the above section if necessary.
Thanks for your input.
This was known all through Classic as well (wowhead mentions it in their Paladin guide). If you have spell hit you won’t notice it as much, or at all depending on how much you have.
I have gone ahead and updated the guide to include Consecration having a chance to miss on its first tick.
If I’m being honest, I felt uncomfortable adding it in since I can’t base it on my own experience since in Vanilla, TBC, Classic and TBC Classic, I haven’t experienced it. But I did add it.
I’m not sure why you feel uncomfortable about giving people accurate information in a guide. Seems more likely that you feel uncomfortable about being wrong.
It’s not about being right or wrong – it’s about providing information potentially based on hearsay, since I haven’t experienced it myself.
“hearsay” – confirmed by other guides.
If you haven’t experienced it a single time yourself, one of the following is happening:
> Your gear has enough spell hit to avoid it.
> You’re lying.
Run some heroics (or Karazhan) with 0 spell hit, then tell me that you haven’t experienced it.
It was never a case of me lying – I don’t often lie.
My spell hit has never changed, regardless of if we’re discussing 2007 or 2021 TBC. Precision + Continuum Blade.
I did, in fact, notice a resist as of last night. Does this mean I lied? Nope. It means that as a tank, my mind was elsewhere rather than focusing in on whether a Consecration tick was resisted or not. Could it have been resisted in the past? Sure, absolutely. Did I notice it? No, because, again, as a tank, my mind isn’t focused in on one little word on my screen when doing my job.
Overall, it does make sense as to why it can be resisted, but in no way was I lying about anything.
Also, something being “confirmed” by other guides doesn’t mean that it isn’t hearsay. I won’t speak ill of guide writers, but just because it’s written in a guide doesn’t mean that they have experienced it and are only including it based on what other guides say, which implies hearsay.
You probably aren’t in the best position to be an authoritative source of information if you base your guides purely on what you notice (or don’t notice).
Flick over to the Warcraft Tavern guide for PvE Retribution Paladin. You might notice something in the table at the bottom of the “Stat Priority” page. You don’t agree with your fellow Warcraft Tavern guide writers?
Also, why are you using Continuum Blade? You don’t mention that weapon at all on your “Gear & Best In Slot” page.
Jesus man, he added it in based off your advice, why heckle the man further? Be grateful for the guide, or go spend your own quality time making a guide yourself. Whilst I’m sure he appreciates the feedback, he certainly doesn’t need attitude like yours for trying to lend a hand to starter tankadins. Get a grip and ask yourself if what your typing genuinely helps the situation
Comment removed.
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Sorry but this is incorrect.
The resist you are seeing is the debuff application and, in that case, is immediately reapplied without affecting the ticks.
However ANY tick can be resisted.
The thing is, nothing explicitely tells you when it’s happenening, it’s just not dealling damage.
I think you’re arguing semantics here champ.
No, it doesn’t.
The debuff is applied at cast and the first tick happens 1 second after that.
All 8 ticks can be resisted.
Fully resisted ticks do not appear at all in the combat log.
Also, I didn’t investigate much on that but the debuff seems to be subject to heartbeat resist.
As long as the enemy stands in the consecration, the debuff is quickly reapplied but, as the ticks are only starting 1 second after that, it will delay the remaining ones.
I’ve done some additional tests on PTR and failed to replicate this behaviour on the boss dummy.
So I have no idea why the debuff is sometime fading earlier than expected in raid.