PVE Protection Paladin Tank Stat Priority

tbc classic pve protection paladin tank stat priority burning crusade classic

  1. Defence (490)
  2. Total Avoidance (102.4%)
  3. Stamina (Roughly 785 for Karazhan)
  4. Spell Damage (200+)
  5. 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:

  1. 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
  2. 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.

 

About the Author

Kurathis

Long-time WoW enthusiast who can't say no to a good-old poutine.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

29 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Samboi95
Samboi95
2 years ago

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?

HolyMac
HolyMac
2 years ago
  • Great guide Kurathis this really helped me. I healed through vanilla classic, but always loved tanking so have dived head first into it in TBC. I’m being quite lazy asking this… but was wondering if anyone had a simpler way (addon, converters) of knowing what gear is an upgrade with avoidance? Some are fairly obvious but others can be tricky to work considering how different the ratings can benefit avoidance.
HolyMac
HolyMac
Reply to  Kurathis
2 years ago

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.

emanueol
emanueol(@emanueol)
2 years ago

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 ~

Rifki14
Rifki14
1 year ago

who Stat Priority Gruls’lair and maghteridon?

Rifki14
Rifki14
1 year ago

how Stat Priority grul’s lair and maghteridon ?

Jesus
Jesus
2 years ago

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.

Teacher
Teacher
Reply to  Jesus
2 years ago

It’s to, not too.

Nerdtroller
Nerdtroller
Reply to  Teacher
2 years ago

Overweight people are everywhere

Inquizitor
Inquizitor
2 years ago

“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).

Inquizitor
Inquizitor
Reply to  Kurathis
2 years ago

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.

Inquizitor
Inquizitor
Reply to  Kurathis
2 years ago

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.

Inquizitor
Inquizitor
Reply to  Kurathis
2 years ago

“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.

Inquizitor
Inquizitor
Reply to  Kurathis
2 years ago

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.

HolyMac
HolyMac
Reply to  Inquizitor
2 years ago

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

Inquizitor
Inquizitor
Reply to  HolyMac
2 years ago

Comment removed.

Admin Note:
We’re happy to have constructive feedback on the guides on the site, the goal is always to provide the best information possible to players.
However this recent comment is going into personal attacks and a bit off the deep end into conspiracy theory and will be removed.

Last edited 2 years ago by Furious
The Weg
The Weg(@the-weg)
Reply to  Inquizitor
2 years ago

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.

PallypoWARx
PallypoWARx
Reply to  The Weg
2 years ago

I think you’re arguing semantics here champ.

  • Consecration deals damage on application, so if a target resists, the first tick will deal no damage to it. You will notice “Resist” fly across your screen for 1 target in a group, whereas XXX damage will appear for the other targets.
  • “However ANY ticks can be resisted” – Not exactly sure what you mean here, but the subsequent 7 ticks after application can’t be resisted.
The Weg
The Weg(@the-weg)
Reply to  PallypoWARx
2 years ago

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.

Last edited 2 years ago by The Weg
The Weg
The Weg(@the-weg)
Reply to  The Weg
2 years ago

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.

Last edited 2 years ago by The Weg
The Weg
The Weg(@the-weg)
Reply to  The Weg
2 years ago

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.

Scroll to Top