- Author: Kurathis
- Date: April 1, 2021
- Updated: July 6, 2021
- Expansion: TBC Classic
Single Mob/Boss Spell Rotation
Let’s make sure we have Righteous Fury, Blessing of Sanctuary and Retribution Aura active before we pull!
- Seal of Righteousness should be your current seal for immediate threat
- Avenging Wrath before you initiate the pull
- Avenger’s Shield will be your first spell cast at the boss
- As you are closing the gap between you and the boss, Judgement followed by Seal of Vengeance
- Casting Exorcism next if the mob happens to be Undead or Demon
- If not, Holy Shield will be next
- Consecration will be next
- We’ll be repeating 4-7 with the exception of using Judgement with either Seal of Wisdom or Seal of Light and then returning to Seal of Vengeance if either resource (mana or health, respectively) is being depleted
Secondary Single Mob/Boss Spell Rotation
While the above is an effective rotation for tanking single-target pulls, Paladins are gifted with another option for threat generation, more often than not in 25-man raids rather than 10-man raids. Combining Improved Righteous Fury and Greater Blessing of Might will allow each cast cause 133 threat per raid member buffed. So, if you had 5 players of the same class, you could cause 665 threat for the cost of 295 mana on a 1.5 second cooldown (It’s affected by the Global Cooldown) Greater Blessing of Might replaces the Classic WoW standard, Greater Blessing of Kings, since Rank 3 of Greater Blessing of Might is learned at level 70, increasing the threat generated. Greater Blessing of Kings generates 114 threat per raid member buffed.
Area of Effect Rotation
Let’s make sure we have Righteous Fury, Blessing of Sanctuary and Retribution Aura active before we pull!
- Seal of Righteousness should be your initial seal for immediate threat
- With the exception of LoS (Line of sight) pulls being started with Avenger’s Shield, we’ll be “body-pulling” (running head first into the pull) most pulls to conserve mana
- Because of the potential number of mobs that will be hitting you, Holy Shield will be our second spell used while closing the gap
- Consecration will be next to start building threat on all mobs
- Judgement is next (If you have melee in the group with some casters, you may wish to mark a skull so that the melee are killing the same mob) followed by a reapplication of Seal of Righteousness
- We’ll be repeating 3-5 throughout the pull
Note: If you feel like it, you can tab-target between mobs and auto-attack them to generate threat more evenly throughout the pull, but it shouldn’t be necessary if you don’t. Also, tab-targeting allows for you to monitor each mob’s threat levels if you have, for example, a Mage who decides to use Arcane Explosion, which can crit on all or just some mobs affected. By tab-targeting mobs, we can see spikes in threat on certain mobs and use Judgement with Seal of Righteousness to build enough of a threat cushion that all is well!
Note: Judging Seal of the Crusader CAN provide an increase to your threat generation, but, unfortunately, outside of Consecration’s damage, it’s not guaranteed, so I would recommend only judging Seal of the Crusader once you have established a large enough threat cushion that forgoing judging Judgement of Righteousness or judging Seal of Vengeance won’t put you and your DPS in close proximity for threat, and you don’t need mana or health regeneration.
Also, new with The Burning Crusade Classic, Paladins receive Spiritual Attunement (Rank 1 at level 18, and Rank 2 at level 66) which allows us to receive 8% and 10%, respectively, of every heal we receive in mana, as long as it is not “over-healing.” For example, if we were healed for 100, we would receive either 8 with Rank 1, and 10 with Rank 2.
About the Author
Your guide should mention the TPS benefit of applying Judgement of the Crusader. I notice you compared Seal of Righteousness with Seal of Vengeance in a previous comment (to show that Vengeance causes more threat at 5 stacks). Seal of Righteousness deals roughly 135 damage per hit if your target has Judgement of the Crusader applied to it (88 damage without Crusader). Judgement of the Crusader will also increase the threat of all following spells/abilities you use on the target. Obviously hit rating is a factor in this, but it is also a factor in applying stacks of Vengeance. Ideally you would have a Retribution Paladin apply Judgement of the Crusader, but this is not always possible. I am yet to do a 5 man or 10/25 man with a Ret Paladin (I play on a very highly populated server).
Thanks.
I appreciate you bringing this up because there’s actually a couple reasons behind me leaving it out in terms of TPS increase to be used by the Protection Paladin itself:
Thank you for your response. Whilst I can’t comment on your play style, or what your experience with Classic TBC has been like so far, I have found Judgement of the Crusader to be extremely beneficial. Again, I will caveat this by saying that it depends on your group/raid strategy, and the availability of other Paladins (and their talent builds). I can say for sure that Seal of Vengeance has very little relevance when doing 5-man content (heroic and normal).
1. I made specific mention of hit rating in my comment, which is also a factor when stacking Vengeance (you are potentially burning GCDs, mana, and time while doing this over the course of a fight). You need to apply the same reasoning. The increased damage of Righteousness is more reliable than the application of a Vengeance stack, since Vengeance has absolutely no guarantee to apply a stack even when you hit your target.
2. I do agree that Wisdom and Light have their uses (again, procs from these are not guaranteed), however when you speak of “longevity”, this really depends on the fight itself. I have found the healing of Light to be trivial when compared to damage taken by yourself or the raid/party (or lack thereof). Wisdom can be of more benefit, however I have found spiritual attunement to be enough to sustain my mana in both heroics and raids (when receiving adequate effective healing). You also need to factor in the mana cost (and GCD cost) of switching into Seal of Vengeance (to maintain a stack), and then back to Righteousness (or Wisdom if you are maintaining that as a Seal). Judgement of Wisdom can be useful to your party/raid over longer fights.
3-4. Having a Holy Paladin would be great, but it depends on how highly you value the 3% Crit chance increase of Improved Seal of the Crusader. A Protection Paladin will be more likely to use points in Improved Seal of the Crusader (and will benefit more from it) than a Holy Paladin. A party/raid wide 3% increase to critical strike chance is a boost to both DPS and TPS (making mana less of an issue as well). If your party/raid does not have a Retribution Paladin, then you make yourself even more valuable by choosing Improved Seal of the Crusader.
5. The initial sacrifice of threat by judging Crusader is made up by hitting the target with Seal of Righteousness (lost by having to stack Vengeance), and then again by every subsequent Judgement/spell. I have found that the initial threat caused by Avenger’s Shield and/or Exorcism (combined with the increased damage of Righteousness) to be enough to maintain a good threat lead over the 8-10 second period before your next Judgment of Righteousness. Vengeance would need to apply 100% of the time to have a chance of reaching 5 stacks before your second Judgement.
6. Having Judgement of the Crusader fall off would impact the entire raid, as you wouldn’t be causing as much threat (this would be even more noticeable if your Judgement of the Crusader has the 3% increased crit chance attached to it). Having Vengeance stacks fall off would have a similar impact, but the recovery from this will take longer as you must start again at 0 stacks.
7. When you mention “off-tanking”, the sort of situation where a Paladin is going to be “off-tanking” are extremely niche , and are heavily reliant on your raid strategy and the specific mechanics of the fight (Gruul being one of these fights, but you would much rather a warrior/druid off-tank this boss). Unless the boss/mob has a threat drop/reset, or is able to be taunted, you are never going to sustain enough threat to be second on the meter (especially given the overpowered nature of DPS classes in Classic TBC, when compared with what life was like in Retail TBC). Judging Wisdom, and/or using Seal of Vengeance/Wisdom, is not going to change this, and you would be severely limiting the DPS output of your raid if your strategy was to keep a Paladin as second on the threat table.
Thank you.
While I respect your position, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend that players go and judge Seal of the Crusader in the initial pull because every situation is different, so I will be leaving that decision up to each players’ discretion. Do I recommend picking up Improved Seal of the Crusader? Absolutely not.
I have made a note in the guide regarding this.
Have a look at the gear & best in slot section of this guide. You might notice that the content creator has listed Gavel of unearthed secrets as both bis and pre-bis for the weapon slot. This will make stacking holy vengeance (or blood corruption if you play horde) super fast at 2.7 seconds per swing……
Make of that what you will.
I always appreciate comments on the guide. However, what I will say in response is that Gavel of Unearthed Secrets is better, stat-wise, AND can potentially apply all 5 stacks quicker than Blade of the Archmage since successful melee hits are not guaranteed to apply stacks.
“AND can potentially apply all 5 stacks quicker quicker than blade of the archmage since successful melee hits are not guaranteed to apply stacks.”
You are swinging 0.90 seconds slower by using gavel. Of course you could potentially apply 5 stacks faster but this will rarely be the case. The math on this is not hard to understand…
Are you sure Retribution Aura works when blocking in classic? I tested this on a certain tbc server, that shall not be named, and it didn’t. This means that starting around t4 level gear, you won’t see any benefit from Ret. Aura because you’ll have a 0% chance to receive a normal hit.
Retribution Aura doesn’t (or, at least, shouldn’t) cause any damage on a full block. (Full blocks are when you block all damage)
Retribution Aura does cause damage on partial blocks.
You’ll likely find that your blocks are full blocks when boosting in lower level dungeons but when in raids/heroics, you will not be able to have full blocks, so Retribution Aura will cause damage.
With this being said do you think Devotion Aura is better for a Crush Capped 450+SP, main tank, or do you think ret aura is critical for maintaining threat?
Devotion Aura increases armor by 861; this, in turn, increases your damage reduction by 1.64%
Retribution Aura, on the other hand, provides 26 reactive damage, totaling 49.4 threat per hit (Roughly 24.7 TPS)
If a boss were to hit you for 3,500 damage with a regular attack, using Devotion Aura would save you from 57.05 of that damage.
It’s kind of a toss up, really. As a Protection Paladin, on Beta, you don’t need Retribution Aura for most pulls/bosses. The bosses it may come in handy on are bosses like Maiden or Curator; basically, any mobs we can’t use Exorcism on.
1-Minute Interval (Based on attacks every 2 seconds)
Devotion Aura = 1,711.5 damage saved
Retribution Aura = 1,482 threat (if the attacks don’t miss or you dodge them)
Hard-hitting DPS may benefit from you using Retribution Aura while new(er) healers may benefit from Devotion Aura. There is no one-size-fits-all method for this. It comes down to your current situation.
Great question!
Thank you so much for the in-depth well thought out answer!
Thanks for your awesome question! Any time you have a question, feel free to send it our way and we’ll gladly help you!
Your math seems horribly wrong here.
Against a raid boss, even at 35k armor devotion aura would still give you over 1.8% damage reduction.
I’m going to assume you simply took your damage reduction with and without aura on your character sheet and did a substraction… but it’s an awful thing to do.
The correct formula to calculate the damage reduction from the aura is 1 – (1- damage reduction with aura) / (1 – damage reduction without aura).
I guess you had around 12,550 armor given these numbers, wich gives a 3.59% damage reduction from the aura against level 70 enemies and 3.4% for level 73.
That doesn’t really change your conclusion but it’s better with correct numbers.
I appreciate you bringing this up as it is always interesting take a deeper dive into the game.
Honestly, I can’t remember the armor value I had when I posted that comment, so we’ll use my new values:
Without Devotion Aura:
Armor: 16,456
Reduction: 60.92%
With Devotion Aura:
Armor: 17,317
Reduction: 62.12%
I took your formula at face value, and came up with this:
-61.12 / -59.92 = 1.02%
Using the calculation in our character sheets, the difference would be 1.20%.
Would you be able to provide the steps in your formula?
Sorry for the confusion, the damage reduction is a percentage.
So, in your case, the formula ends up being 1 – (1 – 0.6212) / (1 – 0.6092) = 0.0307
3.07% damage reduction
Hi love the site and the work you put into this.
I have never tanked in max level in any expansion, always healed or sometimes dps as offspec.
This time in tbc I have my head set on tanking. Which of druid or paladin do you think will be the “easiest” tank for a totally newbie in that role? (with no experience of tbc, I started in wotlk)
The rotation itself looks easier for druid but the shape shifting and such kinda scares me compared to shield and concentrate stuff
Hope you will answer this 🙂 thanks again for the guides and site.
The complexity level of tanking varies from situation to situation.
For AoE tanking (mostly trash pulls, in this case) players will find an easier learning curve with Paladins over Druids or Warriors because there’s less moving parts, if you will, with Paladins.
For single-target tanking (boss or individual mob) players may find an easier learning curve with Paladins if the target is Undead or Demon (Allowing us to use Exorcism for significant threat) However, if it’s a mob that isn’t Undead or Demon, or that has silencing effects, like Maiden of Virtue in Karazhan, players will often find an easier learning experience playing a Druid or Warrior since they are both able to still use abilities while silenced.
Overall, Paladins are likely the easier class to learn how to tank on thanks to how our spell damage scales with our spells in TBC. There’s less opportunity for error. If we miss an attack, it’s not the end of the world, because Consecration cannot miss, while Druids and Warriors rely 100% on landing each attack.
Thanks alot for the indepth and quick answer.
All of which you said makes perfect sense. Druid just seems like the obovius choice for a casual like me. Cat form for dailys and world content, bear for tanking and flight form.
Last question and you have officially saved my day:
How is the Prot paladin for doing daily quest and other solo stuff? Will it take forever or is it perfectly doable
Druids are the most versatile class to tank with. While Paladins and Druids are both able to fill all three roles, Druids are able to switch to cat form (as you mentioned) and DPS without switching specs from tanking and without interchanging much, if any, gear, while Paladins are not so lucky.
Paladins are the best class to play in terms of quests that require a certain number of mobs to kill because we can AoE like nobody’s business. Now, in terms of competition for mob tagging (I assume the servers are going to be flooded, and competition will be fierce) Paladins do not excel here. This is actually our weakness. A Druid using Moonfire to tag is a lot more efficient than what a Protection Paladin will be experiencing until the competition for those specific quest mobs/veins/nodes decreases.
We’re the third-best class to solo with due completely to our level of survivability. (Behind Hunters and Warlocks because of their pets, Fear/Feign Death, etc.) It’s doable for Protection Paladins to go one-on-one against mobs, but it’s a lot more ideal – if possible – to utilize AoE pulls instead for increased efficiency.
Which rank Consecrate are normally using while tanking? I’ve read some math that with Paladin spell power ranking with rank 1 is ideal but I had no such luck.
My apologies. I did not see your comment until now.
Consecration at Rank 1 causes 64 Damage over 8 seconds. (8 DPS => 15.2 TPS) With how our spell damage conversion works with Consecration, sitting at a 1:1 ratio, if we had 200 spell damage, our Rank 1 would cause 264 damage over 8 seconds, which would equal only 62.7 TPS.
If we look at the average Mage’s Blizzard at level 60 causing 149 DPS, that exceeds your TPS generation by roughly 237% – which is 107% HIGHER than they’re allowed to before they pull aggro. (They’re allowed to pull 130% of your threat as long as they are outside melee range) This, of course, is factoring in zero spell damage for the Mage.
Realistically, you shouldn’t be using Rank 1 Consecration unless you either don’t have enough mana for a higher rank, or if you know for 100% sure that you are far enough ahead on the threat table that you’re just using it as a cushion.
As a rule of thumb, the highest ranks are always best to use. We have access to Spiritual Attunement from level 18, Blessing of Wisdom (if it’s necessary) and Seal/Judgement of Wisdom, as well, to help maintain our mana pool.
Great information, holy lord I love this site! Nicely done 🙂 I have a question though, I don’t quite understand how step 8 in single mob/boss tanking works.
I don’t quite understand what “resource” you’re referring to here. Do I go for Seal of Vengeance when it’s about to run off to refresh it on the mob, and then go back to Seal of Wisdom if my mana is low? Seal of Righteousness is only used in the first initial pull for threat boost?
Thanks again for a wonderful website!
Heya Chris!
The resource I’m referring to is either your mana or health levels. If either are low we’d Judge the appropriate seal (Seal of Light for health and Seal of Wisdom for mana)
If you notice your mana as an issue that Judgement of Wisdom isn’t solving on its own, you can stack Seal of Vengeance to 5 stacks and switch to Seal of Wisdom if absolutely necessary. However, remember the mana cost (about 230) and how many attacks you can land before switching back to Seal of Vengeance. You’d just have to make sure you switch back to Seal of Vengeance in time to refresh the debuff so it doesn’t fall off. The debuff doesn’t require Seal of Vengeance to be our active seal to deal damage.
In the ideal raiding composition, you’ll be grouped with a Shadow Priest for Vampiric Touch and in a perfect world, a Restoration Shaman for Mana Tide Totem or Mana Spring Totem, so your mana shouldn’t be a very big issue.
If you are looking to maximize your TPS as a Protection Paladin, and your mana can survive it, the ideal method would be “seal twisting.” (Basically, get to 5 stacks of Seal of Vengeance, and use Judgement, then use Seal of Righteousness for a couple of attacks, switching back to Seal of Vengeance in time to refresh the debuff, use Judgement and rinse and repeat.)
Yep, we’d use Seal of Righteousness and Judgement immediately for the immediate threat boost since many DPS don’t like to hold back, and this way gives us the best chance of maintaining enough threat so they can go nuts right away.
Thanks for a swift reply, I’m still a bit confused.
I think my confusion comes down to that I don’t fully understand how vengeance work. If I just seal vengeance I get those stacks up on mob as a debuff, If I also judge there will be a DoT applied as well (?), if I switch seal the stacks of vengeance will still be in effect and I need to change seal to reapply them. What happens if I judge wisdom while stacks of vengeance are in effect? Will they still be in effect (and only the judge of vengeance DoT disappears)?
Sincerely,
Chris
Seal of Light and Seal of Wisdom require us to use Judgement in order to affect the target as a debuff. (The debuffs are called Judgement of Light and Judgement of Wisdom, respectively) Seal of Vengeance, on the other hand, does not require us to use Judgement to apply its debuff. Every time we land a melee attack while Seal of Vengeance is active, we have a chance to apply one stack of the debuff, Holy Vengeance, up to a maximum of 5 stacks. Because of the fact that we do not need to use Judgement to apply this debuff, if we were to use Judgement of Light or Wisdom, the target would be affected by both debuffs as long as we refresh them. (Each of these debuffs only require you to hit the target to refresh it) Judgement of Light and Wisdom can be refreshed by a Retribution Paladin using Crusader Strike, but Holy Vengeance cannot because it is not technically a Judgement on the target, but rather a basic debuff.
While we can have Holy Vengeance and Judgement of Light OR Wisdom active at one time, we cannot have both Light AND Wisdom debuffs on the target unless there’s another Paladin to apply the other debuff (Light or Wisdom) since as the tooltip for Seal of Light and Seal of Wisdom states, “Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.” The important note here is that the Holy Vengeance debuff that we generated by using Seal of Vengeance did not require us to use Judgement to apply and thus does not fit in to this rule.
The reason why we use Seal of Righteousness and Judgement during the initial pull is because its threat is greater than Seal of Vengeance and Judgement since you won’t have even one stack applied at that point.
When you make the change to Seal of Vengeance after using Seal of Righteousness and Judgement and are not interested or able to “seal twist,” then yes, you would continue to use Judgement and Seal of Vengeance.
Typically, if you think you may need mana or health during a fight, you want to build a cushion of threat before switching to Seal of Wisdom or Seal of Light because if you switch too early, you’ll lose out on precious threat generation. We always want to Judge either seal (Light or Wisdom – whichever you feel you need) and then return to using Seal of Vengeance and Judgement since Judgement of Wisdom and Light provide mana and health to every one in your group (raid or party) At Rank 4, Seal of Wisdom gives us the chance to restore 121 mana on every attack while Judgement of Wisdom gives everyone the chance to restore 74 mana on every attack, so we should always judge either of those seals rather than just using Seal of Wisdom or Light.
Okay, got it! Thanks for the great explanation!
You are very welcome!
Casting GBoM or GBoK generates threat? Could you tell me how it looks with other greater blessings?
Awesome guides by the way!
Heya Adwers!
You bet they do! Any beneficial buff cast technically generates threat. This includes Arcane Intellect, Power Word: Fortitude, etc. Mana, Health and Rage Potions also generate threat when used. However, the threat values associated with each spell/item varies.
The way that a Paladin’s blessings produce threat is based on what level you learned it at. So, for example, we learn Greater Blessing of Kings at level 60, so the threat output would be 60 multiplied by how many players buffed. With Righteous Fury active, that would be 60 x 1.90 = 114 per player buffed. So, if we had 5 Hunters that we buffed, that could be 570 threat every GCD (Global Cooldown) Because we learn Rank 3 of Greater Blessing of Might at level 70, its default threat is 70, so, we would do 70 x 1.90 = 133 threat per player buffed. In Classic, GBoK was used due to the mana efficiency of the spell, and in TBC Classic, GBoM will be used due to ITS mana efficiency.
This method is mainly used in raiding environments for a couple of reasons:
1.) Typically, in a 5-man group, you won’t have more than two of the same class, making this method a slight waste of mana
2.) Typically, we won’t have that many threat issues in 5-mans because the amount of DPS players can achieve is always higher in raids due to having certain consumables deemed wasted on regular dungeons and specific raid composition to maximize damage
Greater Blessing of Wisdom maxes out at Rank 3, learned at level 65 – so its threat is 65 x 1.90 = 123.5
I have a question. Is seal twisting to get Seal of Vengeance really worth it? It seems like the damage doesn’t beat righteousness until you have 5 stacks and several judgments. The dps, even at 5 stacks, is worse that SoR, and only gets worse with more spellpower. The only saving grace is that the judgment hits like a truck. I wonder, though, is that alone enough to justify it, and if it IS, does that make Improved Judgment mandatory?
From a tanking perspective, “Seal Twisting” is immensely beneficial, as long as it is done correctly.
Assuming a level 70 character, with 230 Spell Damage…
Seal of Righteousness causes roughly 88 damage per successful melee attack. With a 1.8 speed weapon, that would work out to be roughly 48.89 DPS (Or 92.89 TPS)
Seal of Vengeance causes roughly 189 damage every 3 seconds at 5 stacks. This works out to being 63 DPS or 119.7 TPS.
Once Seal of Vengeance has 5 stacks, it doesn’t rely on you successfully hitting the mob to generate that threat, while Seal of Righteousness requires you to hit your target which would rely on Melee Hit Rating, which Paladins don’t normally prioritize.
With “Seal Twisting,” most Paladins can get 5 stacks of Seal of Vengeance, and then use Judgement, and then complete 4 melee attacks for a total of 352 threat before having to use Seal of Vengeance to refresh the debuff and then Judgement, and then rinse and repeat. (Of course, SoR, as I said above, relies on the player actually hitting the mob, so that number may vary)
Very informative. Thank you.
You’re very welcome! 🙂
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Your damage reduction is increased by 7.35% but that does not represent your damage reduction gained from going from 1.36% to 8.71%.
Let’s say an enemy hits for 100.
With 60.92% damage reduction, you get hit for 39.08.
Now with the aura you get to 62.12% damage reduction and get hit for 37.88.
The damage reduction IS increased by 1.2%, I totally agree.
But you’re not taking 39.08 * 1.2% (0.47) less damage but 100 * 1.2% (well, 1.2) less damage.
The hit with the aura represents 96.93% (37.88/39.08) of the hit without it, effectively reducing your damage taken by 3.07%.
Thank you for the explanation. Much appreciated.
You’re welcome.