*** I figured I should post this since Alatria posted about Holy and Ret, it's going to be a bit longer as I want stats, consumables, gems, enchants, etc. consolidated to one thread. Sorry in advance for the wall of text. I suggest if you have a specific question on something such as gems, you [ctrl] + F key and type in "Gem" for faster searching. This post is from ElitistJerks.com ***

Introduction

This guide, and the discussion thread accompanying it, is intended to be a compendium of collected community wisdom regarding Protection Paladins and tanking. This is, however, a field of ongoing discovery and development, so this guide should be considered a work in progress.

The primary audience for this guide is Protection-specced Paladins (generally meaning at least 51 talent points in Protection including Hammer of the Righteous) who tank (or are interested in tanking) in PvE progression content, primarily heroic 5-mans and 10- and 25-man raids. Some of what's contained herein may touch on leveling 5-mans, soloing, farming, and PvP, but the primary focus will be "serious" tanking.

Much of tanking is art rather than science, and as a result a lot of the information contained herein will be based on opinion -- sometimes the "conventional wisdom" of the Prot paladin community, sometimes my own more personal opinions. I will try to be as fair as possible in relating the opinions of others. Nonetheless, if you disagree with me, post in this thread and I'll try to quote and include as many sensible viewpoints as possible.

Acknowledgements

Many people have contributed to the development of paladin tanking wisdom, both on this forum and in other venues; far too many for me to thank them all personally.

Regarding this guide, I am indebted to:
Quigon for his excellent Protection Warrior Guide whose format I have loosely copied and adapted. In particular, reading his guide helped me mentally catalog the important topics to cover.
Chicken, who maintained the Protection and You thread for TBC. Similarly, Chicken's guide helped me remember what's important and what isn't.
All prot paladin posters on this forum, far too many to name without missing someone.
The Elitist Jerks for hosting and maintaining the premier WoW raiding discussion forum for the last several years.
My guild, The Eleventh Hour, for not complaining when I decided I was going to try the unproven Prot Paladin spec at the beginning of The Burning Crusade, and especially the warrior tanks for treating me as an equal.

Frequently Asked Questions

Simple questions that you expect to have simple answers, especially questions relating to paladins generally moreso than protection specifically, should be asked in the Simple Questions/Simple Answers thread.

(More specific FAQs to be added later.)

Tanking responsibilities and the Tanking Ethos

Opinion follows, so feel free to skip this section if you like.

For any guild seriously committed to endgame raiding, the tanks are in many ways the most important characters. Generally the tanking role shoulders a great deal of responsibility, and the tanks are more often in a position to wipe the raid with a single error than other character. This is somewhat less true than it used to be, and as raid encounters become more difficult other players are usually forced to assume more personal responsibility for the raid, but it's still the case that the tanks are under the most overall pressure. Being a raid tank is not a low-stress position.

This focusing of responsibility on the tanks also applies to preparation outside of raiding time. Most of the damage taken by the raid gets funneled through the tank; for this reason many guilds give tanks priority on loot tokens and such. With this privilege, however, comes the responsibility to maximize your strength as a tank. You'll end up spending more on keeping gems and enchants up to date, and you'll end up using more consumables. When the rest of the raid is skipping consumables while learning an encounter, the tanks won't be, because the longer the tanks live on learning pulls, the more learning happens.

Exactly how much work is involved will depend on your guild/raid and how committed you are to pushing progression. In general, it's a good thing if the tanks are a bit more focused and "hardcore" than the other raiders, but not by too much. If you're super-gung-ho about perfecting your character while the rest of your guild takes a relaxed attitude towards raiding, you're going to end up frustrated. If the situation is reversed, your guild is going to end up frustrated. It's important to find a guild or raiding situation that matches your level of playtime and commitment to raiding.

In addition, don't be a jerk. Being a tank, especially the main tank, is important but it's not a license to not ignore your guild leaders or yell at your healers every time you die. Recognize that your guild probably puts a lot of resources into you; this doesn't mean they own you or your gear, but if you're going to stop raiding with them for some reason (real life situation or moving to another guild, for example) give them advance warning so they can start looking for another tank.

Speaking of healers, your life is in their hands, so it's extra-important not to piss them off. If you seem to be dying a lot, communicate with your healers about what's going on and try to fix it together. Even when it's genuinely their fault, yelling at them is still a bad idea. Even if yelling is part of your guild's raiding atmosphere, it's still better if someone besides you chews the healers out. Communicate with your healers and respect the work they're doing; if they know you appreciate them they'll bust their asses extra-hard to keep you alive.

If you're a raid leader, consider not being the main tank, or at least make sure you have competent assistants who can help at leading the raid, since you often can't see the whole raid and you're usually busy with other things. Anyone who's tanked Prince Malchezaar in TBC knows that you can't call out infernal locations while you're staring at a blue demon crotch.

And finally, be prepared for raids. Bring a couple stacks of the right food, bring flasks, and come with a raiding talent spec. Yes, getting the +5% crit talent in Ret makes for some awesome yellow numbers, but Ardent Defender will save your ass, and by extension your raid's ass.

Mechanics

Summary of Changes from TBC to WotLK

Mechanics have been changed to eliminate the need for spellpower (formerly spelldamage) on gear; a new talent gives spellpower based on stamina, and all threat and mitigation effects scale with physical damage stats (strength, AP, block value) in place of or in addition to scaling with spellpower. Hence, physical dps weapons or standard tanking weapons are now preferred over "caster" weapons, and ideal paladin tanking gear is effectively indistinguishable from ideal warrior tanking gear. (Virtually all paladin tanking gear from TBC has been modified to match the new mechanics.)

Substantial "pro-active" threat abilities added, scaling with block value and physical dps, making it much easier to "pick up" a mob without needing to taunt.

Divine Protection changed to now provide 50% damage reduction for 12 seconds. No longer shares a cooldown with Divine Shield, but both abilities cause and are affected by Forbearance.
Blessing of Salvation removed. Additional (undocumented) threat modifier added to Righteous Fury (and warrior/druid/DK equivalents) to make it unnecessary.

Blessing of Sanctuary substantially improved for all tanking classes.
The level difference required for crushing blows has been increased; these no longer appear in raids.

Various talent changes which can be seen by examining a talent calculator.

Last edited by Jenoab on Fri Jan 09, 2009 1:31 pm; edited 2 times in total

Basic Stats Reference

Assuming level 80 in all cases. Note that in item design, all primary stats and ratings "cost" the same amount per point, with the exception of stamina which costs 2/3 as much per point as the other stats and ratings (or equivalently, 1.5 stamina costs the same as 1.0 of any other primary stat or combat rating.) Note also that primary stats are affected by talents and by Blessing of Kings, while combat ratings are not.

Primary stats
- Strength (str)
1 strength = 2 attack power (AP) = 0.14 dps weapon (white) damage.
2 strength = 1 block value before talents, 1.3 block value with the Redoubt talent
The Divine Strength talent increases total strength by 15%.
- Agility (agi)
52.08 agility = +1% dodge chance. While this is a nice effect, Dodge Rating is a more efficient way to increase your dodge chance.
52.08 agility = +1% melee crit chance.
1 agility = 2 armor.
- Stamina (sta)
1 stamina = +10 total health (hp).
10 stamina = +3 spell power (SP) from the Touched by the Light talent.
The Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise talents increase total stamina by 6% each, for a total increase of slightly more than 12% with both talents.
- Intellect (int)
1 intellect = +15 total mana. This increases the size of your starting mana pool and the maximum amount of mana you can store at any point. It also increases the rate of mana regeneration from effects that restore a fraction of your mana pool, such as Replenishment, Blessing of Sanctuary, and Divine Plea. This is a nice effect, but it doesn't make intellect worthwhile as a stat for tanking gear.
166.67 Intellect = +1% chance to crit with spells, but all Prot paladin offensive abilities use the melee crit rate.
- Spirit (spi)
Increases mana regeneration outside of the five-second rule. As a tank, this effect is negligible (and frankly it's negligible for all paladin specs).

Combat Ratings
Defense Rating
4.92 defense rating = 1 defense skill (If you're new to these stats, pay careful attention to the difference between defense rating and defense skill.)

25 defense skill gives:
-1% chance to take a critical hit from melee or ranged (non-spell) attacks.
+1% chance to be missed
+1% chance to dodge, parry, and block (each).

Mobs have a 5% chance to crit a player of the same level with a fully trained defense skill (400 defense skill for a level 80 player). Each level of difference increases the mob's chance to crit by 0.2%. Hence:
A level 83 mob (e.g., a raid boss) will have a 5.6% chance to crit a level 80 player with 400 defense. Accordingly, the player will need an additional 5.6 * 25 = 140 defense skill, or a total of 540 defense skill to be uncrittable by raid bosses. This is equivalent to 689 defense rating.

A level 82 mob (the highest level found in heroic 5-man dungeons) will have a 5.4% chance to crit a level 80 player with 400 defense. Accordingly, the player will need an additional 5.4 * 25 = 135 defense skill, or a total of 535 defense skill to be uncrittable in heroic 5-mans. This is equivalent to 664 defense rating.

Players with enough defense to be uncrittable don't benefit from the crit-reduction aspect of additional defense skill, but they still gain miss, parry, dodge, and block chance as defense is added.
25 defense skill gives +1% to miss, parry, dodge, and block. This requires 123 defense rating.
Hence, adding 1% total avoidance (blocked attacks included) requires approximately 31 defense rating.
Adding 1% full avoidance (blocked attacks excluded) requires 41 defense rating.
Importantly, defense rating does not suffer from diminishing returns, unlike dodge and parry rating.

Dodge Rating
39.35 dodge rating = +1% chance to dodge.
Dodge rating is affected by diminishing returns in WotLK: the more dodge you have, the more dodge rating is required to add each additional percent chance to dodge. This is a rather complicated system, but effectively it means that dodge rating is probably inferior to defense rating as a means for adding pure avoidance.

Dodging opens an opportunity for Overpower mechanics to hit you for a large amount of damage. This is primarily a concern in PvP (against warriors) but there are a very few raid bosses and mobs that have an Overpower-type mechanic. This is not generally worth worrying about, but it may come to bear on specific encounters.

Parry Rating
49.18 parry rating = +1% chance to parry.
Like dodge rating, parry rating is subject to diminishing returns, but it's already inferior to defense and dodge for adding avoidance.

When an attack is parried, your next attack will happen more quickly. (This is why parry is more "expensive" than dodge.) I won't go into the exact mechanics here, except to note that (a) this effect is more pronounced with slower melee weapons, and (b) weapon-based threat is generally not significant enough for this to make much of a difference, and hence it's not worth considering when gearing for tanking.

Block Rating
16.29 block rating = +1% chance to block.
This does not suffer from diminishing returns.
Block is far "cheaper" than dodge or parry or even defense per point of avoidance; however, blocking only absorbs an amount of damage equal to your block value whereas m/p/d avoid all damage. (It does, however, provide threat when Holy Shield is active.)

Hit Rating
32.79 hit rating = +1% chance to hit with melee or ranged attacks (-1% chance to miss).
For our purposes, this applies to melee swings (white damage), Avenger's Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of Wrath, and Judgements.
Against a raid boss, melee and ranged attacks have a base 9% chance to miss, so 296 hit rating is required to eliminate all melee misses if there are no other bonuses to hit.
Draenei have a racial aura that gives +1% to hit. This reduces the requirement for melee hit-capping to 263 hit rating.
26.23 hit rating = +1% chance to hit with spells. For our purposes, this only applies to Righteous Defense.
Against a raid boss, spells have a base 17% chance to miss. In the past, some bosses that required frequent taunting and tank-switching (e.g., Nalorakk, Mother Shahraz, and Brutallus) had only a base 9% chance to resist a taunt. It's not known whether that will continue to be the case.
The Draenei racial aura also applies to spells, as do the Misery and Improved Faerie Fire debuffs (+3% to hit with spells, only one of these can be present).
The Glyph of Righteous Defense reduces the miss chance of Righteous Defense by 8%.
It's not worth going through all the combinations of buffs and debuffs and the hit rating required to cap spells for each, but a few are worth noting:
If you have no other buffs and no RD glyph, 446 hit rating is required to reach the hit cap for RD.
If you have the RD glyph, only 236 hit rating is required to cap RD. This is less than the hit rating required to hit-cap melee attacks, so once you reach the melee hit cap, the glyph will safely put you over the top for RD as well.
If you really want to cap RD without using a glyph slot, the best possible case is to have a Draenei around (+1%), and to have Improved Faerie Fire or Misery up on the mob (+3% hit bonus, only one can apply). This reduces the miss chance to 13%, which would only require 341 hit rating to cap (78 more than the melee hit cap.)

Expertise Rating
8.10 expertise rating = +1 expertise (As with defense, this can be confusing, so be careful.)
Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be parried or dodged by 0.25% each. Hence, each point of expertise reduces the total chance for your attacks to be avoided by 0.50% (until the target's dodge chance reaches zero.)
32.79 expertise rating = -1% dodge and -1% parry for your attacks.
Human racial bonuses give +3 expertise when using maces or swords (-0.75% dodge and -0.75% parry). This bonus is worth approximately 24 points of expertise rating.
The Dwarf racial bonus gives +5 expertise when using maces (-1.25% dodge and -1.25% parry). This bonus is worth approximately 41 points of expertise rating.
The Combat Expertise talent gives +6 expertise. This is worth 49 points of expertise rating.
Expertise will affect normal (white) melee attacks as well as Hammer of the Righteous (a parry is reported as "Deflect").
Expertise will not affect Shield of Righteousness, Righteous Defense, Avenger's Shield, or Judgements, because these cannot be parried or deflected.
Since parries by bosses hasten their next attack (using the same mechanic as for players who parry), expertise can be useful for reducing this effect and preventing damage spikes.
Prinsea: "The estimated dodge cap is at 6.5%, which would require 26 expertise or 214 expertise rating to achieve. Removing all parries would almost certainly require much more than this, as boss parry rates ranged from 11% - 15%, but the dodge cap could serve as a decent point of reference until we get more WWSes and such for confirmation of the parry cap."

Crit Rating
45.91 crit rating = 1% chance for a critical strike with all attacks and spells.
All critical strikes for Prot paladin offensive abilities do 200% of normal damage.
Critical heals do 150% of normal healing, or 195% with the Touched by the Light talent.
Crits are fun (especially with Shield of Righteousness) but crit rating is generally not an efficient tanking stat. Hit rating is much better, as it increases your threat more efficiently and makes your threat output more reliable as well.

Haste Rating
32.79 haste rating = 1% haste. This increases autoattack speed by 1%, reduces the cast time of spells by 1%, and reduces the global cooldown triggered by all spells (including instant-cast spells) by 1%. This does not affect the global cooldown triggered by special melee attacks.
While it's always nice to be swinging faster, this is not very useful for a prot paladin, since for the most part they're limited by cooldowns on key abilities rather than by the global cooldown or melee swing speed.
It is possible that a large amount of haste might reduce the global cooldown enough to allow a greater variety of ability rotations, and potentially more threat. However, this seems unlikely to be worthwhile, since prot paladins generally produce plenty of threat already, and there are other stats that can more efficiently improve threat output.

Resilience Rating
81.97 resilience rating = -1% chance of taking a critical hit with any kind of attack, and -2% damage done by critical hits against you.
Resilience is almost exclusively a PvP stat. While resilience is more efficient than defense for eliminating critical hits (123 points of defense vs 82 points of resilience to get -1% crit), defense also provides a large amount of avoidance while resilience doesn't. The reduction in spell crit provided by resilience is useless in PvE because mobs can't crit with spells, and the reduction in critical damage is meaningless since a tank will (hopefully!) be immune to crits from mobs in the first place.
Nonetheless, it may be useful to use resilience for tanking on a situational basis:
When first gearing up for serious tanking, resilience gear may be useful as a temporary stop-gap measure to eliminate crits while you collect gear with enough defense rating.
Fights that require magic resistance may make it more difficult to reach crit-immunity through defense alone, and a few pieces of PvP gear may be helpful in keeping crit-immunity.
In cases where you need to tank a not-too-dangerous mob early in a fight and then switch to DPS or healing after that mob dies, PvP gear with high stamina and resilience may be useful. However, this is a role generally better-suited to a Ret or Holy paladin than a Prot paladin.

Other Stats

Armor
Armor reduces all incoming physical damage. While it does not work on magic attacks, it is guaranteed to mitigate all incoming physical damage. It does not rely on "chance" effects like blocking or avoidance, and it works even when you're stunned or otherwise incapacitated. Armor is your most reliable damage mitigation. The amount of incoming physical damage mitigated by your armor can be seen by mousing over the armor stat on your character sheet; this number is usually referred to as the damage reduction, or DR, and is expressed as a percentage.

There is some confusion about "diminishing returns" on armor. The DR given by armor follows a diminishing-return curve, so the higher your DR is, the more armor is required to increase it by 1%. However, the value of each extra point of DR increases as your DR increases. For example, consider an attack that does 10,000 physical damage before armor is considered:

If your armor DR is 50% and you increase it to 51%, the damage done by the attack is reduced from 5,000 to 4,900, a 2% reduction.
If your armor DR is 60% and you increase it to 61%, the damage done by the attack is reduced from 4,000 to 3,900, a 2.5% reduction.

So, even though your DR% will increase more slowly as you add more and more armor, each extra point of armor is providing roughly the same relative benefit. Hence, increasing your armor is always worthwhile. (For a more detailed explanation with math and such, see Quigon's Protection Warrior Guide.)

The important thing to remember is that while your character sheet shows the changes in the absolute value of your DR, your healers will see the relative change in your DR. For example, if you go from 60.0% DR to 64.0% DR, your character sheet only shows a 4% increase, but your healers will notice you taking 10% less damage. (Actually they'll see even more than that when blocks are factored in.)

Shields have a disproportionately large amount of armor compared to other armor pieces. Hence, almost any shield from a higher tier of loot than the one you currently have will probably be an upgrade, even if the other stats aren't quite what you'd like. Even a shield with caster stats on it may be a mitigation upgrade compared to a lower-tier tanking shield. (Obviously however, you should respect the resto/elemental shamans and holy paladins in your raid regarding caster shields.)

There is a cap on armor DR at 75%. However, this value is rarely seen in normal practice, and can only be achieved through the use of multiple stacked buffs (Improved Lay on Hands, Inspiration, armor potions, etc). In general, unbuffed armor DR values for plate-wearing tanks in endgame gear in TBC were between 60% and 65%.

Some talents, items, and spells increase your armor value by a percentage. A good rule of thumb for normal tanking armor values is that every 2% increase in your total armor will reduce the amount of physical damage you take before blocking by 1%. So for example, the Toughness talent (+10% armor) reduces incoming pre-block damage by roughly 5%.

Block Value
Each point of block value causes your blocks to absorb an extra point of damage, and causes your Shield of Righteousness to deal an extra point of damage.

Block value is increased 30% by the Redoubt talent.

Note that strength also increases block value at a rate of 2 str = 1 blkval. If you're interested solely in increasing block value, items with direct block value bonuses are more efficient than items with strength. However, if you're interested in damage and/or threat generation, strength is more efficient overall since strength increases the damage done by other abilities as well (via AP). Overall, pieces with both strength and block value usually give you the most bang for your buck.

Blocking is the last mitigation effect applied to incoming damage. Since armor is applied before block value, increases in armor also increase the fraction of total damage you block as well.

The Hit Table

It's often assumed by casual observers that the different kinds of avoidance are checked in sequence, e.g. first the server checks to see if the mob misses you; if it doesn't miss then the server checks to see if you parry; if you don't parry then the server checks for a dodge, etc. This makes intuitive sense, but it's not the way things actually work.

What actually happens is the server makes a single "roll of the dice" to determine what happens on an attack, and all your avoidance chances, as well as your chance to be crit, are applied at the same time to that one roll. So for example, if a tank is naked and using a trash can lid as a shield, and has a 5% chance to be missed, 5% chance to dodge, 5% chance to parry and 5% chance to block, the server constructs a hit table that looks like this:

01 - 05: miss (5%)
06 - 10: parry (5%)
11 - 15: dodge (5%)
16 - 20: block (5%)
21 - 95: hit (75%)
96 -100: crit (5%)

... and then a single random number between 1 and 100 determines the outcome.

If a tank has a 10% chance to be missed, a 10% chance to dodge, 10% chance to parry, 10% chance to block, and has enough defense to be immune to critical hits, the table looks like this:

01 - 10: miss (10%)
11 - 20: parry (10%)
21 - 30: dodge (10%)
31 - 40: block (10%)
41 -100: hit (60%)

If the tank has Holy Shield active, the chance of a block goes up to 40% and the chance of a regular hit goes down to 30. If the tank has Holy Shield active and Redoubt procs, the chance of a block is 70%, and it is impossible for an attack to hit without being blocked.

The important thing to be aware of here is that the more of each kind of avoidance you have, the more valuable the rest of your avoidance becomes. Every increase in your chance to parry, dodge, or block comes directly out of your chance to take a hit.

Oggie: "I don't have quite enough data or armor pieces to really verify this, but it seems like dodge/parry diminish at the rate they improve in value, so x dodge rating is always worth the same amount of incoming damage. Aka, like armor, avoidance stats can now be measured at a constant value for time-to-live."

Prinsea: "Oggie is correct in that you can basically consider avoidance as a constant increase to your TTL with these diminishing return mechanics. Technically, the fact that miss, parry and dodge are on different DRs can mean that it may be possible to reach unhittable (as galzhohar pointed out), but there is nothing to suggest that the itemization exists to support this."

Threat generation

The primary means for generating threat as a paladin tank is the Righteous Fury buff together with Holy damage. All special attacks for a prot paladin deal holy damage, so effective threat generation comes down to using the appropriate Holy-damage abilities for the situation.

Note that in addition to the 90% threat bonus to holy damage, Righteous Fury also provides a hidden buff that increases all threat you generate by 43%. (This is the same as reducing everyone else's threat by 30%, which is in fact exactly what it's intended to do, replacing the old Blessing of Salvation.) This works multiplicatively with the holy damage threat boost, so in fact Holy damage generates 172% more threat with Righteous Fury than without. Needless to say, this is a huge difference, and if you try to tank without Righteous Fury up, you'll notice the difference pretty quickly.

Shield of Righteousness (ShR): A very large amount of single-target damage and threat for an extremely cheap mana cost. In single-target tanking situations, ShR will produce by far the largest portion of your threat, and should always be part of your rotation. In multi-target situations, ShR can be used to boost threat on individual mob that you may not have locked down. For example, if you pull a pack of 4 mobs with Avenger's Shield, the one mob that doesn't get hit will reach you first (due to the snaring effect) and you can compensate for missing it with AS by whacking it with ShR.

Because it generates a large amount of threat in a single attack, ShR is also excellent for "burst" threat to quickly pick up individual lose adds and other annoying mobs. As paladins lack a single-target taunt, ShR can be invaluable for situations where you need to pick up one and only one target.

ShR scales with block value, so adding block value is a very good way to boost your threat and your mitigation at the same time.

Hammer of the Righteous (HotR): Excellent threat against up to 3 mobs at a low mana cost. Damage per target is not as high as ShR, but total damage against 3 targets is greater than ShR damage.

In addition to generating significant threat itself, HotR also triggers your current seal against all targets it hits. (The exception is seals with a "chance on hit" effect, in which case an HotR hit has the same chance to proc the seal as any normal attack.) This is most effective with Seal of Vengeance, since it allows you to build and maintain full 5-stacks against 3 mobs at once without switching your primary target, but is also handy if you're using Seal of Wisdom or Seal of Light to regenerate mana/health.

HotR will not bounce to crowd-controlled mobs, so you can use it with impunity around CC, as long as you don't throw it directly at a CC'd target.

Since HotR's damage is dependent only on your weapon dps, it scales with attack power (and consequently strength). Weapon speed is irrelevant for HotR's direct damage. The only cases where weapon speed has any bearing on HotR's effect are when it's used with Seal of Righteousness (which deals damage per swing proportional to weapon speed) or with Seal of Light, Wisdom, or Justice (which have a chance to proc proportional to weapon speed). Generally these effects are not considered worth worrying about, and if you want to maximize HotR damage the simplest way to do it is just to use the highest-dps weapon you can get your hands on.

Avenger's Shield (AS): Excellent threat against up to 3 mobs at a moderate mana cost. In general it makes a great tool for pulling packs of mobs, but it can make things difficult when you only want 1-2 mobs out of a larger group.

The 10-second snare effect is either a blessing or a curse, depending on your point of view. In the best possible case, it gives your group time to get CC taken care of, with the bonus that when the CC wears off the mobs are aggro'd on you, and not on the mage/warlock/whatever. In the worst possible case, it means you stand around for 10 seconds waiting for the mobs to get to you, during which time your ranged dps may be building threat but you probably aren't.

Like HotR, AS does not bounce to CC'd mobs.

The Glyph of Avenger's Shield doubles its damage but removes the bounce effect, limiting it to one target. This has situational usefulness.

AS scales with both attack power and spell power.

Holy Shield (HS): Reactive threat and mitigation. The threat from Holy Shield is not as important as it once was for tanking, but it's still useful as a threat builder, and it remains an important mitigation tool. Even in pre-raid gear, block values can easily exceed 1000, which represents a significant chunk of mitigation. Moreover, blocks generated by Holy Shield will trigger mana returns from Blessing of Sanctuary; it only takes 1-2 blocks for HS to pay for itself.

HS lasts 10 seconds but has an 8-second cooldown, meaning you can refresh it before it expires. In single-target situations, it's very rare for all 8 charges to be consumed, but it does happen on certain fast-hitting bosses. It's more common to use up all the charges in an AoE-tanking situation, but even with 3-4 mobs you won't often see HS get used up.

HS damage scales with both attack power and spell power. The amount of damage absorbed by a block scales (obviously) with block value.

Consecration: AoE threat and damage. Affects all mobs within 8 yards of you for 8 seconds, with an 8-second cooldown. This is obviously a great tool for multi-target tanking, but it's also a decent single-target threat generator, and worth using if you have the mana for it.

Consecration will break most forms of crowd control (polymorph, sap, ice trap, etc) so take care with your positioning when consecrating around CC'd mobs.

Consecration continues to "tick" in the same location where you cast it. This can be useful for pre-consecrating an area that mobs will have to run through, and then moving elsewhere. The mobs will run through your consecration, take damage, and run over to you (assuming nobody else has built threat on them). However, it also means that once you've consecrated, you can't consecrate in another spot for 8 seconds.

The Glyph of Consecration increases its duration by 2 seconds, but also increases its cooldown by 2 seconds, so it still doesn't allow you to have multiple consecrations up at one time. The only real benefit from the glyph is that it makes consecration a bit more mana efficient (you only pay once every 10 seconds instead of once every 8 seconds). Most threat rotations rely on casting Consecration every 9 seconds, so this glyph is generally not taken by prot paladins.

Consecration scales with attack power and spell power.

Judgements (JoL, JoW, JoJ): Fairly low damage. The main point in judging a mob is generally not to build threat, but to keep up the JoL or JoW debuff for your group's benefit. Judgements are part of most standard rotations, but when non-standard threat abilities become available (e.g., Exorcism) Judgements are usually the first thing replaced. If other paladins in your group are keeping JoL and JoW up, you can feel free to ignore judging entirely if you like.

Healing done by JoL scales with attack power and spell power, while the mana restored by JoW is always 2% of the total mana of the recipient. Since both Ret and Holy paladins usually have higher AP+SP than Prot paladins, you should have other paladins do JoL if they're present, while you do JoW or even nothing at all.

JoJ is rarely used in PvE, and virtually never in tanking. The only real use is for preventing trash mobs from "fleeing in fear", but there are many other tools for handling fleeing mobs, and mobs in raids never do this anyway.

Damage from judgements scale with attack power and spell power.

Seal of Vengeance/Corruption (SoV): This is generally considered the premier tanking seal, since a full stack deals more damage than SoR, and it can be kept active on multiple targets at the same time, especially with HotR.

The DoT will continue to tick for 15 seconds after the last time it was refreshed (melee hit). This can be very useful for mobs that have a threat-wiping ability. It also means that you don't lose any substantial dps/threat from the seal when your melee attacks are avoided. On the downside, the DoT nature of the damage means that Reckoning will have very little effect on SoV damage.

The Glyph of Seal of Vengeance adds 10 expertise when SoV is active (-2.5% chance to be dodged or parried).

Seal of Righteousness (SoR): In most situations this seal is less effective than SoV, but it can be useful for situations with fast-dying mobs that don't give you time to build a full SoV stack. Effectively, SoR sacrifices steady threat for "up-front" threat; you may prefer to start a fight with SoR to help establish threat quickly and then switch to SoV for the long haul.

The Glyph of Seal of Righteousness reduces the mana cost of Judgements by 50% when SoR is active. This is extremely low utility, since Judgements are fairly cheap to begin with.

Seal of Blood/of the Martyr (SoB): Rarely used for tanking due to low threat and the recoil effect. Can be handy for tanking instances you outgear since the extra mana from healing SoB recoil will be helpful.

Seal of Command (SoC): Rarely used for tanking since it's proc-based and depends on weapon damage and most tanking weapons are fairly fast.

Gear[b]

[b]Gemming and Enchanting

Understanding the "cost" of stats

The WoW item designers distribute stats on an item by "buying" them with a budget of points that's based on the level of the item and its gear slot. For example, any epic shoulder that drops in Naxx-10 will have the same point budget; shoulders for different classes will spend the points on different things. Understanding how this works can help you evaluate enchants and gems.

Here are the costs of some common stats:

Stat Item Point Cost Notes
+1 str, agi, int, or spi 1.0
+1 any combat rating 1.0
+1 sta 0.67 1.5 stamina = 1 of any other base stat or rating

+1 spell power 0.86
+1 block value 0.65
+1 attack power 0.50 always worse than equal value in strength
+14 armor 1.0
+1 magic resistance (one school) 1.0

Gems will always have the same number of item points at a certain quality level. This means that for any quality level of gem and any specific number of slots on your gear, you can shuffle stats around however you like to activate socket bonuses. For example, rare-quality ("blue") gems in WotLK have 16 item points each. If your gear has 5 gem slots on it, that means you have 80 item points to spend on whatever stats you can get through gems. You can spend all 80 on stamina (+120 sta), or you can spend 40 on defense rating and 40 on strength (+40 def rating, +40 str) or whatever you like to get the stats you need.

Enchants, on the other hand, do not always have the same number of item points in a given slot. This means that some enchants are "more efficient" than others. For example, [Enchant Chest - Super Health] gives you 275 hp, while [Enchant Chest - Greater Defense] gives you 22 defense rating. The defense rating enchant is 22 item points worth of defense; the same number of points would get you 33 stamina, which would be 330 hp -- actually more like 400 hp once you apply talents and BoK. Thus, it's pretty obvious that the defense enchant is a more "powerful" enchant than the health enchant -- if you need more defense but also want to add more stamina, you should use your chest enchant to get the defense, and then get the stamina from gems or some other source.

But that doesn't mean the enchant with more item points is always the best enchant. For example, [Enchant Shield - Greater Intellect] is worth more points than [Enchant Shield - Defense]. But defense is an important tanking stat while intellect is nearly useless, so obviously you'd want to go with the defense enchant.

In general, if you're trying to sort out which enchants and gems to use, it's best to first figure out which stats you need. Then, look to see if there are any efficient enchants to get those stats. If so, get those; if not, figure out how you can get those stats from gems and work on that.

Slot-by-slot enchant analysis

Head

[Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector]: 37 stamina, 20 defense rating. Argent Crusade: Revered
[Arcanum of the Defender]: 16 defense rating, 17 doge rating. Keepers of Time: Revered

The Argent Crusade arcanum is what you'll be wanting to use on pretty much every tanking helm you ever get. If you're not revered with the Argent Crusade, that should be your top priority. The arcanum from Keepers of Time is a TBC item; the only reason to ever use it is if you need a helm enchant and you aren't yet Revered with the Argent Crusade.

Shoulder

[Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle]: 20 dodge rating, 15 defense rating. Sons of Hodir: Exalted
[Lesser Inscription of the Pinnacle]: 15 dodge rating, 10 defense rating. Sons of Hodir: Honored

[Greater Inscription of Warding]: 15 dodge rating, 10 defense rating. The Aldor: Exalted
[Inscription of Warding]: 13 dodge rating. The Aldor: Honored
[Greater Inscription of the Knight]: 10 dodge rating, 15 defense rating. The Scryers: Exalted
[Inscription of the Knight]: 13 defense rating. The Scryers: Honored

Master's Inscription of the Pinnacle: 52 dodge rating, 15 defense rating. Requires Inscription (400)

The Sons of Hodir run the shoulder-enchantment market in WotLK, so getting to at least honored with them (through a quest chain that starts at K3 in Storm Peaks) is a good idea (unless you picked Inscription as a profession, obviously). In the meantime if you're in a pinch you can use old TBC shoulder enchants to tide you over. In particular, the Aldor/Scryer exalted enchants have the same item value as the SoH honored enchant, and the Scryer one may actually be better if you need the extra defense to become crit-immune.

Cloak

[Enchant Cloak - Titanweave]: 16 defense rating
[Enchant Cloak - Major Agility]: 22 agility
[Enchant Cloak - Mighty Armor]: 225 armor

[Enchant Cloak - Superior Agility]: 16 agility
[Enchant Cloak - Steelweave]: 12 defense rating

The raw efficiency of Major Agility is mitigated somewhat by the fact that agility is not an optimal tanking stat, but it's still the best enchant to get if you're interested in pure avoidance. Mighty Armor is good if you're going for mitigation, and Titanweave is obviously the best enchant to get if you're still looking for defense.

Note that the high-end enchants are pretty expensive (Titanweave requires two Titanium Bars, for example) so if you're tanking on a budget the weaker enchants will give you more value for your gold piece.

Chest

[Enchant Chest - Exceptional Resilience]: 20 resilience
[Enchant Chest - Super Health]: 275 health
[Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats]: 10 to all (primary) stats
[Enchant Chest - Greater Defense]: 22 defense rating
[Heavy Borean Armor Kit]: 18 stamina

[Enchant Chest - Super Stats]: 8 to all (primary) stats

Greater Defense is the most itemization-efficient, and definitely the way to go if you still need/want defense, or can use the enchant to switch defense gems to something else. The super and mighty health enchants are only worth ~15 and ~10 stamina, since they don't get any effect from BoK or stamina talents; generally the stat enchants are going to be better than these if you don't want the defense. Resilience should only be used if you absolutely need it to reach the crit cap (such as with resistance gear). The armor kit comes out to 227 hp on average with talents and BoK; not as good as the health enchant, but not far off and a great deal cheaper.

Wrists

[Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault]: 50 attack power
[Enchant Bracers - Expertise]: 15 expertise rating
[Enchant Bracers - Greater Stats]: 6 to all (primary) stats

[Enchant Bracer - Fortitude]: 12 stamina
[Enchant Bracer - Major Defense]: 12 defense rating

[Enchant Bracer - Major Stamina]: 40 stamina (patch 3.08)

[Leatherworking: Fur Lining - Stamina]: 90 stamina (req. 400 leatherworking)
[Blacksmithing: Socket Bracer]: Extra prismatic gem socket (req. 400 blacksmithing)

WotLK bracer enchants are all fairly lackluster for tanking (which in itself is perhaps a good argument for Leatherworking or Blacksmithing as professions). The TBC major defense enchantment is still the way to go in most cases, though if you're happy with your defense and really want more threat, the attack power enchant is a pretty good deal.

The Major Stamina enchantment will appear when the 3.08 patch goes live, at which point it will pretty clearly be the best choice for bracers unless you absolutely need the defense to reach crit-immunity. This enchantment will likely be on the expensive side, however.

Hands

[Enchant Gloves - Armsman]: 10 parry rating, +2% threat
[Enchant Gloves - Major Agility]: 20 agility
[Enchant Gloves - Precision]: 20 hit rating
[Enchant Gloves - Expertise]: 20 expertise rating
[Heavy Borean Armor Kit]: 18 stamina

[Enchant Gloves - Major Strength]: 15 strength

[Blacksmithing: Socket Gloves]: Extra prismatic gem socket (req. 400 blacksmithing)
[Engineering: Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket]: 1035-1265 fire damage, 1 min cooldown (req. 400 engineering)

All of the WotLK enchants are viable choices here, depending on what you want/need. Personally I'd recommend skipping Armsman until you get to the point where threat is actually a concern. The Major Strength enchant is from TBC, and should only be used if you're hell-bent on maximizing block value and dps. The armor kit is less efficient than the other options but if you really really want stamina, there it is.

If you're an engineer, the hand-mounted rockets are fun to play with, and are useful for getting the attention of single loose mobs when Avenger's Shield is on cooldown, or on pulls where you want to get the attention of only one mob in a group. (This will be less of an issue when Hand of Reckoning is added in the 3.0 patch.)

Waist

[Eternal Belt Buckle]: Extra prismatic gem socket

The one and only good thing to put on your belt. Doesn't affect the belt socket bonuses in any way, so fill it with whatever you need most.

Legs

[Frosthide Leg Armor]: +55 stamina, +22 agility
[Jormungar Leg Armor]: +45 stamina, +15 agility

(Leatherworkers get a cheap leg armor patch with the same stats as the epic armor kit, but they can only use it on their own armor.)

The blue armor kit is a good deal cheaper than the epic kit, so plan accordingly if you're expecting upgrades soon.

Feet

[Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude]: 22 stamina
[Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality]: 15 stamina, +8% run speed

The run speed improvement on Tuskarr's Vitality does not stack with the 15% increased run speed from the Pursuit of Justice talent. Since most serious tanking builds will put enough points into Ret to easily pick up PoJ, Greater Fortitude is usually preferred. (It's also a lot cheaper.) However, if for some reason you need those points elsewhere, the run speed increase can be very handy for tanking.

There's also an engineer-only boot gadget, [url=http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=55016]Nitro Boosts][/b], which increases your run speed for 5 seconds on use, with a 5-minute cooldown. At first glance, this looks like a nice answer to one of the weak spots of paladin tanks: the inability to close distances quickly (e.g., Intervene, Feral Charge, Death Grip). However, the rather unfortunate drawback is that the boosters have a chance to backfire and launch you straight up in the air. When this happens, mobs that you're tanking will lose aggro on you and run off to beat up other people, and you'll die from falling damage when you come back down unless you have Divine Shield ready, or your cloak has the parachute gadget. While this can obviously be an entertaining effect, your 25-man raid won't be particularly pleased if they wipe on a difficult fight because your boots malfunctioned. So use these only if you're really sure they won't get you into trouble.

Finger

[Enchant Ring - Stamina]: +24 stamina (req. 400 enchanting)

This is the "perk" for being an enchanter: you get 48 extra stamina from enchanting your rings in a slot where non-enchanters get nothing.

(More to come later.)

Weapon

[Enchant Weapon - Accuracy]: +25 hit rating, +25 crit rating
[Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Agility]: +26 agility

[Titanium Weapon Chain]: +28 hit rating, 50% reduction in duration for disarm effects.

[Enchant Weapon - Potency]: +20 strength

[Enchant Weapon - Titanguard]: +75 stamina (patch 3.08)

The Titanium Weapon Chain is very nice for hit-capping, and until patch 3.08 it's probably the best overall value even if you have Pursuit of Justice (they don't stack). Accuracy has almost as much hit rating and a lot of crit, so it's a solid enchant but extremely expensive right now. Exceptional Agility is the only option if you want avoidance. Potency is included because it's the only +strength enchant, so it's the only way to increase block value if that's what you're really after.

Titanguard will appear when the 3.08 patch goes live, at which point it'll probably be the best choice if you don't need to worry about the hit cap.

Shield

[Enchant Shield - Defense]: 20 defense rating

[Enchant Shield - Major Stamina]: 18 stamina

[Titanium Plating]: 40 block value (patch 3.08)

Defense is generally the way to go here; Major stamina is a TBC enchant and should only be used if you really really really want stamina and you can't get it anywhere else. After patch 3.08, the Titanium Plating will be a nice (though not cheap) option for block-heavy setups.


[b]Gem analysis

As mentioned above, all gems of a the same quality level have the same number of itemization points worth of stats. The numbers are given in this chart:

Quality (WotLK gems) Primary color (red, yellow, blue) Secondary color (green, orange, purple)

Uncommon 12 points 6 points + 6 points
"Perfect" Uncommon 14 points 7 points + 7 points
Rare 16 points 8 points + 8 points
Meta (vendor) 17 points + secondary effect
Meta (crafted) 21 points + secondary effect
Prismatic (jewelcrafter only) 27 points

For the most part, gems just represent a pool of points that you can spend on whatever stats you want. If you don't care about the socket bonus for a piece of gear, then obviously you can just throw in whatever gems you want. If you decide you do want the socket bonus, then you'll need to figure out which gems can activate the bonus while still giving you as many of the stats you most want as possible.

Comments on the specific stats available for each gem color:

Red
(also orange, purple)

Good
Dodge rating (avoidance)
Agility (avoidance, tiny bit of mitigation)
Strength (threat, some mitigation)
Expertise rating(some threat, some avoidance)
Parry rating (avoidance, though usually not as good as dodge)

Bad
Attack Power (always worse than strength)
Spell Power (even worse than attack power)
Armor Penetration Rating (only affects white damage threat, which is small)

Red gems can have some useful stats for tanks, but there are no crucial red stats as there are for yellow (defense, hit) or blue (stamina). Strength can be handy for threat generation, but it's secondary in importance to hit, and the block value provided by strength is a fairly inefficient way to boost mitigation. For most tanks (as of the early stages of WotLK anyway), red gems are practically never used, and orange/purple gems are only used to activate socket bonuses.


Yellow
(also orange, green)

Good
Defense rating (crit-immunity, avoidance)
Hit rating (threat, especially reliable threat)

Bad
Crit rating (fun, but a waste of points that could be used for something better)
Haste rating (minimal threat value)
Intellect
Resilience rating (unless you desperately need to be uncrittable and defense won't get you there)

Yellow is one of the bread-and-butter gem colors for tanking. It takes a lot of defense rating to reach crit-immunity, and hit rating is absolutely crucial to reliable taunts and realiable threat generation. Between the two, you can plan on using a lot of yellow and yellow-hybrid gems, especially early on in gear progression.


Blue
(also green, purple)

Good
Stamina

Bad
Everything else

Do not get mp5, do not get spirit, and don't even think about spell penetration. Stamina is the beginning and end of blue gemming for tanking. Whether you want to slant your "free gems" to stamina or to avoidance is a matter of personal preference, but every single blue or blue-hybrid gem you ever socket in tanking gear should have stamina on it. Period.


Meta

[Austere Earthsiege Diamond]: 32 stamina, +2% armor from items
[Eternal Earthsiege Diamond]: 21 defense rating, +5% shield block value

[Effulgent Skyflare Diamond]: 32 stamina, reduces spell damage taken by 2%

Effulgent Skyflare is really only useful for extreme magic-damage fights; the real choice for standard tanking gear is between the two earthsiege diamonds. The stamina and defense rating on these gems has the same itemization cost; obviously if you need the defense rating on the eternal to reach the crit cap then your choice is made for you, but otherwise you can take either the stamina or the defense rating and make up for the other by shuffling gems around somewhere else.

So it comes down to the 2% armor bonus vs the 5% block value bonus. For most realistic armor values (DR's between 50% and 65%) an extra 2% armor will reduce the damage taken by approximately 1%. So the two gems are equal in overall damage reduction when 5% of your total blocked damage is the same as 1% of the total incoming damage before blocking. That is, if you're blocking 20% or more of the incoming physical damage, you'll get more damage reduction out of the 2% armor bonus than out of the 2% blockvalue bonus.

This is something you'll have to determine for yourself, because it depends on what content you're doing, what kind of other gear you have, what your overall gearing strategy is, etc, etc. Also, keep in mind that in situations where you can't block at all, such as stuns, extra block value does absolutely nothing for you, but the armor is always there. On the other hand, the block value bonus increases your threat, especially your burst threat, whereas the armor bonus doesn't.

Talents

At the level of difficulty this guide is aimed at (heroics and upwards), any serious tank will have at least 51 points in Protection -- quite often more -- and at least 5 points in Retribution for Deflection. Beyond that, opinions vary due to differences in tanking styles and personal preference. Most of the "cookie cutter" type builds, however, tend to have 55+ points in Protection and 10-15 in Retribution, forgoing Holy entirely.

Protection

Blessing of Kings, Improved Blessing of Kings: This is the "white elephant" of paladin talents. Everyone wants it in raids, but nobody really wants to spend the point to include it in their build. If you want BoK in a group with multiple paladins, you should have another paladin pick it up, because you'll be blessing Sanctuary on yourself and other tanks, and BoK on tanks is generally more important than BoK on anyone else.

Divine Strength: This is a staple tanking talent; strength is a primary threat stat as well as a moderate defensive stat. Obviously you'll be getting this if you're not getting BoK, but it really belongs in all serious tanking builds.

Stoicism: This is generally considered a PvP talent. Stuns do happen in PvE, but not frequently enough to merit this talent. Dispel effects are even rarer in PvE.

Guardian's Favor: Also a PvP talent. If you find yourself with Hand of Protection constantly on cooldown and wishing you could use it more often, then pick this up, but otherwise skip it.

Anticipation: This is a must-have tanking talent. Not only does dodging save you damage, it also restores mana through Blessing of Sanctuary. This talent does not suffer from diminishing returns and doesn't contribute to diminishing returns on dodge from gear: Your dodge chance will always be 5% higher with this talent than without it.

Improved Righteous Fury: Essentially required. You'll always have RF up when tanking, so this is basically a permanent 6% across-the-board damage reduction.

Toughness: Another must-have talent. A 10% boost to your armor value is roughly a 5% reduction in physical damage taken before blocking is considered. The reduction in snare duration is also more useful than you might expect, since many mobs will use rooting or slowing effects.

Divine Guardian: You don't want to use Divine Shield while tanking something, so this is not something that directly effects your tanking role. However, if you're in a raid with multiple tanks, you may not always be tanking on every fight, and even on fights where you are tanking there are often phases in which you don't tank and you can use this talent to soften raid damage. Whether you consider it worth the points is a matter of personal preference and your particular tanking situation.

Improved Hammer of Justice: Like Divine Guardian, this is fairly easy to evaluate yourself. If you use HoJ a lot, get this talent. If you don't, skip it.

Improved Devotion Aura: Strongly recommended. Devotion Aura is the aura of choice for tanking things that hit hard, and the extra 600 armor at level 80 is not insignificant. Moreover, this helps other tanks as well, and the healing bonus helps healers no matter who they're healing.

Blessing of Sanctuary: Core tanking ability and required for other core tanking abilities. Don't leave home without it, and be sure to share the love with your warrior/druid/DK tanking buddies.

Reckoning: This is a lot less useful than it was in TBC for three reasons. First, melee attacks and seals are a much smaller fraction of threat generation than they used to be. Second, now that SoV is the premier tanking seal, the extra swings have very little effect beyond the extra white damage. Third, one of the virtues of Reckoning in TBC was that it worked with two-handers as well, which was handy for soloing caster-type mobs, or for raid dps when not tanking. But ShR and HotR now allow prot paladins to do far more dps with a one-hander and shield than they ever could with a two-hander.

Reckoning can still be handy for soloing/leveling/questing, where you'll be using SoR or SoW while fighting multiple mobs at a time. But for a serious tanking build, the points are generally better spent elsewhere.

Sacred Duty: Must-have. An 8% stamina increase for two talent points (in patch 3.08) is a ridiculously good value. The cooldown reduction on the bubbles is just icing on the cake.

One-Hand Specialization: Strongly, strongly recommended. Since you'll always be using a one-hander and shield (see comments for Reckoning) this is a permanent 10% damage increase. It's true that threat generation is not difficult these days, but burst threat is still quite important. And if your dps is about half of what the dps'ers in your raid are putting out, then this is still equivalent to a 5% damage increase for one of them, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Holy Shield: Must-have, obviously. If you think you won't need Holy Shield for what you're doing, you're probably in the wrong tree to begin with.

Ardent Defender: Opinions differ on the value of this, but most serious tanks consider it well worth the points. Critics points out that the talent can be "leapfrogged" (that is, it only activates after the blow that takes you below 35%) and that if you're falling below the threshold regularly it's probably a sign that you should talk to your healers. My view is that shit happens; even the best healers are going to occasionally have to run out of a fire, or have a momentary lag hiccup, or whatever, and AD is potentially a lifesaver in those situations. Also, many bosses have burst damage abilities that are designed to push you down to low health, and AD helps you survive the next few small attacks before heals can land (consider Maexxna.) Considering that your death will frequently mean a raid wipe, I'd say this is a pretty important talent even if it's less than perfect.

Redoubt: Must-have. This is worthwhile for the increased block value alone, but the proc effect can also be nice if you don't have enough avoidance to block all hits with Holy Shield alone, or if you're tanking multiple mobs and your Holy Shield charges are getting used up frequently.

Combat Expertise: Also a must-have. The extra stamina alone is worth the price of admission, but the expertise gives a little extra threat and mitigation, and even if you can't rely on crits for threat, they're still fun.

Touched by the Light: Another must-have. The spellpower from this talent adds rather substantially to your threat. The crit healing effect has nothing to do with tanking, obviously, but it's still nice for situations where you're forced to heal.

Avenger's Shield: Must-have.

Guarded by the Light: Must-have unless you're in a specific situation where spell damage is not a concern. Many of the burst-damage abilities of bosses are spell damage, and a 6% reduction is nothing to sneeze at.

Shield of the Templar: Must-have. Ridiculously good.

Judgements of the Just: This is basically a substitute for Thunderclap or the druid/DK equivalents. You'll want this effect up in some form anytime you're tanking something serious. Bosses have special attacks on cooldowns that aren't affected by this, so a 20% reduction in attack speed isn't a 20% reduction in damage taken, but it's still a significant benefit.

The question that gets asked frequently is whether there's any reason to take this talent if you know you're going to regularly have a prot warrior, feral druid, or frost DK in your raids. The answer (in my opinion, anyway) is yes. Raids frequently have to split up, with tanks in different areas where they can't debuff each other's mobs. The value of JotJ is that it's yours, and you will always have it on whatever you are tanking, even if your prot warrior is on the other side of the room. Unless you're customizing your spec for a specific fight where you know this won't be a problem, it's best just to take this.

Hammer of the Righteous: Must-have.

Retribution

Deflection: Must-have for tanking. Like Anticipation, this doesn't have anything to do with diminishing returns; it's always worth 5%.

Benediction: Not required, but very nice to have. All tanking spells are instant-cast, so this basically stretches your mana bar 10% further. Obviously when big things are hitting you for huge amounts of damage mana isn't an issue, but if you have the points for it, this can be nice in more relaxed situations.

Improved Judgement: One point is must-have. Second point is personal taste. Lowering the cooldown of Judgements to 9 seconds makes them fit much more smoothly into a nice spell rotation, which gives you much better threat and dps.

Heart of the Crusader: Not a tanking talent, but if you run with a smaller group and don't have a Ret paladin, this can be a nice dps boost for the raid.

Improved Blessing of Might: Also not a tanking talent. However, depending on the number of paladins in your raid, you may find yourself frequently handling BoM on the melee dps and hunters. If that happens a lot, this talent might be a nice benefit for your raid's dps.

Conviction: Not really necessary in any way, but fun if you have the points to blow.

Pursuit of Justice: Very very nice to have if you can get it. Tanking frequently involves moving, repositioning mobs, dodging fire, etc, and a permanent run-speed bonus is a very nice thing. PvE mobs also often have disarm abilities, and the reduction in duration is nice since you can't HotR while disarmed. This talent doesn't stack with gear enchants that do the same things.

Crusade: It's unlikely you'll get this deep into Ret, but if you do, this talent is a flat 3% damage increase, and against many many raid mobs a 6% increase.

Holy

Seals of the Pure: Seal damage isn't really large enough to make this talent worth getting on its own, but if you're putting some points into Holy for other reasons (off-healing, for example) then this is a useful place to put them to unlock the deeper tiers.

Unyielding Faith: Not a huge deal, but it's nice, and if you're here anyway with points to burn it's not a bad choice.

Improved Lay on Hands: This is a very nice talent from a tanking perspective. With full talent points, it's a 50% buff to armor during the duration, which is roughly a 25% reduction in all physical damage taken. Effectively this turns LoH into a kind of stackable mini-shieldwall on a 16-minute cooldown, and it can be cast on other tanks as well. Not worth going this deep into Holy for, but if you find yourself here anyway it's worth thinking about.


(Still to come: defensive abilities, gearing philosophies, rotations, macros, glyphs, etc.)

this is a lot to read nikki, you might want to bold and color really important key things...

just a suggestion