Talent Progression??

[Papawow]

I've seen several different builds offered, but I'm wondering how you progress in choosing the talents. Do you max out one tree before selecting talents from another???

[krick]

I assume you're talking about placing talents while leveling.

Generally, you work your way up the protection tree until you hit the 51 point talent at the end ([Hammer of the Righteous]).  Then you backfill your prot talents and branch out into the retribution and/or holy tree as desired.

You should play around with the talent calculator over at Wowhead and get a feel for the dependencies between the different talents as you climb the tree...

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#s

[Papawow]

Thanks for the help.

[Yourdaddy]

It depends on what you want to achieve.

Below 30, I did not notice any significant change, when you shuffle points.
For leveling, a mix of ret and proc with a few points in holy helps.

I suggest, get duel spec, play around with points, then decide what you enjoy the most. Tank, heal or kill stuff.

[krick]

Keep in mind that talents that are useful while leveling might not be what you'd want at level 80 while running raids.  So feel free to experiment as you level and see what fits your playstyle.  Some people want more survivability, some more dps, others want utility.  This is the beauty of playing a hybrid class that can heal, tank, and dps.  

[Freshtankadin]

Usually you put your talents into one tree while leveling. Mainly because the most desireable talents are deep into a tree, and force you to commit the points to get the worthwile talents. Like everyone has said before me on this thread, pick what you enjoy most about a paladin and put your points toward it.

[Bloodniron]

You did not say what your current level is, but due to the nature of the question, I will assume that you are relatively new to WoW, and hence, on the lower side of the game, level-wise.

That being said, and agreeing with everything that's been said already, I'm currently leveling a new Tankadin, with the intent of doing most of the leveling by Tanking instances repeatedly (no better way to get experience...).  It is my opinion that, if proper choices made, the Ret tree gives better talents for Tanking earlier in the Tree, as you can have an AoE Seal (Seal of Command) at level 20 (11 points in Ret tree), and at 30 (21 points in Ret tree) more AoE with Sanctified Retribution.  By putting 30 points in Ret tree, you can have quite a bit of AoE, which to me equals more threat which is what a good Tank needs, especially at low level.

The more I play with my spec (and I have re-spec'd my main Tankadin, Bloodniron, several dozen times it seems) the more I realize that there is a lot of room to experiment according to your personal play style.  Yes, the theory-crafters have gotten things down to enough of a science to say that there are certain things you can't do without, and those builds will do the best job while you are learning to do YOUR job as a Tank.  But after you know what you are doing, and you have a good idea of what needs to happen with your Tanking style, play with your talents and line them up as YOU want. 

Just make sure you have enough gold, because every time you unlearn your talents after the 1st unlearn, it costs like 5g MORE than the last time.  Once you get to 50g, it hovers in there.      Good thing Outland and Northrend are full of gold!  If you have not been there, do not despair.  Once you get to Outland at 58, you can easily make 100-200g a day just by doing quests and vendoring your drops... (even the grey drops from trash mobs are often worth a few gold each).  So yeah, it cost to reLearn your talents, so you might wanna wait for the crazy experimentation until you get some gold...

One thing you can do is, like krick said, use an online Talent calculator to see how your build will look, and play around with it.

Because I like to read, and like paper calculations (and I like to experiment and challenge myself with unorthodox things), I print off a list of the Paladin Talents from Wowwiki.com, and highlight the talents that appeal the most to me and my playing style.  Then I find out how I can get the most of what I want out of the trees.  Right now I'm looking at what will be a 0/41/30 build.  When I hit 80 with Bloodniron, I will try this build.  I can't link the build right now, so...

And I might mention that I am not a "bubble" person.  I have not yet learned what all to do in regard to protecting others or myself with bubbling talents.  I'm better at watching others and using taunts to regain aggro.  So in my builds I don't really put points into those things.  I'd rather have more damage, more threat, to keep aggro, and burn down the mobs/Bosses quicker...  (Oh yeah - and pray for good healer in your pug!)

I prefer the talents that DO something outright as opposed to "give a chance to" DO something.  For example, in the Ret tree, when you have already spent 15 points, your choices are Eye for an Eye (All crits against you cause a % of damage taken to attacker as well...), Sanctity of Battle (increases your CHANCE to critically hit, AND increases damage of Exor and CS... but Exor is not used that much, and CS is 41 deep in Ret tree), and Crusade (increases all damage...).  So the best choices there, in my opinion, are Eye for an Eye, and Crusade, since I do not use Exor much, and CS is 41 deep in the Ret tree.  Now, if I were to do a 0/30/41 Tank build (somehow), I would likely put points into Sactity of Battle because then I would be using CS.  Make sense?  Maybe, maybe not...    Further info to follow after I've had chance to play with this idea a bit in-game...

[johanullen]

Hi Bloodniron, can't help myself to give you a little advine. First Hammer of the Righteous, there is a very good reason that talent is in 51st spot in your protection tree and that it only works for 1h weapons: it is completely overpowered and really a must have for tankadins. I know you like to try out stuff and I like that too, and I have tried, I think I tried 4-5 different specs for ret/prot tanking and 2h tanking and there was no way I could even come close to the dps I have with 51prot/20ret spec. But go ahead and try and share your findings, you can read about my results in http://www.tankadin.com/forum/index.php?topic=1064.msg6943#msg6943

As for the chance to do something you shouldn't be so critical; critical chance is something you need and over a longer period of time chances will even out, still I agree that you can not rely a chances, like on chance to hit and on chance to being hit. Having said that, Eye for an Eye is also a chance on being hit, because it is based on the chance that someone critically hit you, and since you are a tank and should be uncritable that chance should be 0, Eye for an Eye is not a talent you should ever have as a tank, it is exclusively a PVP talent.

Generally speaking the best choices imo for threat are things that increases all your damage, like crusade which increases all damage by 3% and an additional 3% on most mobs. 2nd is 1% higher chance to crit, because 1% higher chance to crit is 1% more damage with all the skills that can crit, which include most your skills, I think between 70-80% of your damage is done by skills that can crit. I've done some numerical comparisons between seals of the pure (3% damage from most seals per point) and sanctity of battle (1% crit per point) or Conviction (also 1% crit per point) and just looking at the numbers 1% crit which covers 70-80% of your damage means .7-.8% more damage is fairly equal to 3% damage from your seal, which might be as much as 20% of your damage (seal of vengeance/corruption on single target), also about .7%.

It depends a bit on your playstyle and what seal you use to determine what talents are better, but please don't ever put points in Eye for an Eye when you are tanking.

[Freshtankadin]

I think we can all agree that for low level tanking, you need to get to seal of the command*. Multiple holy damage = win for pally tank. It's funny that you get that at the same level you get cons, but hey tanking is just amazingly easy now from lvl 20 on.

[Freshtankadin]

I guess I posted my last comment on the wrong thread.....should have probably gone over in the low level tanking thread. 

[Bloodniron]

...please don't ever put points in Eye for an Eye when you are tanking.

I'm pretty sure that I agree with the bulk and gist of what you said in your post, and always enjoy reading your thoughts.  

However...  I suppose I thought it was pretty obvious that I was not talking about an 80 build.  I understand indeed that at 80, Eye for an Eye should not be needed if the Tank is properly geared.  But I started my post with the assumption that Papawow, the originator of this thread, is lower level, as they seem to indicate a newness to the game.  (If I'm wrong, well... it wouldn't be the first time!)

So because my assumption is that the person I am specifically addressing (Papawow) is lower level, then that means they will be tanking while being quite crittable, and hence at lower levels it seems to me (and I suppose that I'm not the only one) that Eye for an Eye is a decent choice for a lower level Ret Tanking build.  The guy did not say they were an 80 that was re-spec'ing.

Anyways, its all good.  No one ever said that we had to agree on everything anyway!  I just wanted to make sure you understood why I was talking about Eye for an Eye...
_____

But let me suppose that you are right in saying:

...you are a tank and should be uncritable... Eye for an Eye is not a talent you should ever have as a tank, it is exclusively a PVP talent.

How, at level 20, can I be uncritable? Rephrase: Can I be uncritable at 20? If so, how? If not, then my original point is valid.

[krick]

Eye for an Eye was really designed for combat against other players in PvP, particularly casters.

NPC characters cannot crit on you with spells, so that part of the talent is for all intents and purposes worthless in PvE.  Note that even though NPC characters cannot crit with spells, because a quirk in the the way that Eye for an Eye works, IF you have enough resilience, and an NPC's spell would have crit if not for the restriction against PvE crits, then Eye for an Eye will trigger.  It's really weird how it works.  The problem is that you'd have to take a MASSIVE amount of damage for the reflected damage to amount to anything.  Plus there's the difficulty in stacking a ton of resilience and still being a viable tank.

However NPC characters CAN crit with melee, but as was pointed out, you can be uncrittable at lower levels.  And as stated above, you'd have to take a massive amount of damage for the E4E effect to add up to anything meaningful.

To be uncrittable at a particular level, you just need to have the right amount of defense based on the mob your attacking.  The problem is that this isn't that easy to calculate unless you use a spreadsheet.  Luckily, I've attached one (you must log in to the forum to see the attachment).

[Freshtankadin]

Krick, that spreadsheet is awsome, thanks. I've never said this to another man.....but I think I might love you! 

[johanullen]

OK, you are right bloodniron, as a low level tank you would usually not be uncrittable of for that purpose EFE will still be in effect. However like krick points out you will have to take quite a lot of damage for it to be of any good use.

I think it is not really that hard to calculate how much defense you need to be uncrittable at any level, it just depends on the level of the mobs you encounter.

The basic chance to crit any mob of the same level has is 5%, for each level up or down this changes by .2%, e.g. a mob 1 level over you have 5.2% chance to crit, a mob 5 levels over you have 6% chance to crit and a mob 5 levels under you will have 4% chance to crit, given that you have the maximum defense for your level (5*level = maximum defense). Now 5 defense is equal to one 1 level so to become uncrittable you need to become 50 levels above your target, e.g. increase your defense to be 125 above your mobs level*5.
For example if you are level 20 and you are fighting with a level 18 mob you will need 18*5+125 = 215 defense and you will be uncrittable.

Or just take a look at your defensive stats and see to it that the number says 5+0.2*(mob level - your level), e.g. on a level 18 mob when you are level 20 it should say 4.6% for you to be uncrittable by it.

Now the real problem is actually that how defense rating translates to defense is depending on your level, but I think, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that below 60 you will get 1 defense for 1.5 defense rating. So you will need 188 defense rating to become uncrittable against same level mobs below level 60.

Now back to EFE: Since your average same level target have 5% chance to crit you will only have 5% chance to return 10% damage taken, and if a mob hits you for more than your own hp you generally die, so this can not be more than 10% of your hp actually (for low level tanks with not much damage reduction and such, does damage reduction count before or after the return damage on this btw? That would be after http://www.wowwiki.com/Eye_for_an_Eye)

So I still stand by my words, I don't want to see any tank, high level or low level, with EFE in their spec.

[Bloodniron]

Nicely played!  Can't say I know everything, nor that I can't learn something new! 

But really - I'm not home, so I can't look at 'Fynn, but I'm just thinking/wondering how, at level 18, can I have enough DEF, according to your calculator (thanks, btw), to be uncrittable.  Maybe it will make more sense when I can log into WoW, or look at wowarmory.

Most low level gear has no DEF rating increases...

[krick]

But really - I'm not home, so I can't look at 'Fynn, but I'm just thinking/wondering how, at level 18, can I have enough DEF, according to your calculator (thanks, btw), to be uncrittable.  Maybe it will make more sense when I can log into WoW, or look at wowarmory.

Most low level gear has no DEF rating increases...

Yeah, at level 18, it's pretty much impossible unless you are completely outfitted in green drops "of Defense".

There's only a few drops with defense for level 18 that I can find...

[Kresh's Back]
[Ring of Defense]

Plus, there's a +5 defense wrist enchant...
[Enchant Bracer - Deflection] (Toggle Mats)

[Dream Dust] (2)

[Greater Nether Essence] (1)

I *think* that you can actually put the [Enchant Chest - Defense] (Toggle Mats)

[Arcane Dust] (8)

[Eternium Ore] (4)

[Greater Planar Essence] (4)

(+16 defense) to chest enchant on [Simple Black Dress] as kind of a twink thing, but I'm not positive that even works anymore.

The heirloom PvP shoulders have a little resilience on them, which would help towards getting you uncrittable...
[Strengthened Stockade Pauldrons]
...but keep in mind that the stats scale down to your level.

I think the idea is that you really don't need to worry about being uncrittable that much until you get into higher level content.  Low level dungeons aren't tuned for tanks with defense.

[johanullen]

If you buy heirlooms you can get resilience on shoulder, weapon and two trinkets.

[Impaqt]

And I might mention that I am not a "bubble" person. 

Okay, I've seen the 'bubble' term used a bit, but can't for the life of me understand what that means? Can you educate me, please?

[Azztank]

Bubble = Divine Shield = Immune from all Damage for 12 sec.

[Impaqt]

Bubble = Divine Shield = Immune from all Damage for 12 sec.

Thanks Azz