Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

Full time WoW addict: Maximize your character links to the theorycrafting posts on Elitist Jerks for most classes/specs. The theorycrafting can be quite complex but it can at least provide you with some good pointers even if you don’t calculate everything to the last decimal point.

WoW Forums -> Paladins

This is the best breakdown I’ve seen of what my tanking paladin is aiming for. Now to get those stats up… I still can’t figure out the avoidance thing. I’m going to have to study that some more.

490 Defense - Crit immunity, you must have this or more, or else you might as well go home.

102.4% Avoidance - Essential for the second half of Karazhan, nice for the first half. Calculated as Dodge Parry Block Miss (Miss is the amount granted by mousing over your defense skill 5 for the mob’s base 5% miss rate). Include Holy Shield (30% base, 35.33% with the Heroic Badge Libram) in your calculation, barring latency issues, no boss can chew through 8 charges of Holy Shield in 10 Seconds in Karazhan. This will effectively negate Crushing Blows (150% damage) from bosses. That being said, Moroes crushes for about the same as Nightbane hits, so it’s not really that critical until youg et to the second half of Karazhan.

10k unbuffed health - Good enough for the first half, get to about 11k-12k unbuffed if you have any intentions of tanking Prince/Nightbane. It’s pretty hairy to tank Prince without 15k buffed, and even then, you’re throwing a lot of luck to your avoidance. Though it’s nice that Pally tanks shouldn’t get crushed ever on Prince, something that can often spike warrior tanks.

121 Spell damage sword - Minimum is 121, more is better, but don’t gimp your tanking stats, in Karazhan, you can ride Exorcism’s threat generation from the main tank position, toss a 42 oil on it, and use something like Adept’s elixir for trash/aoe pulls. Continuum Blade is optimal, Crystalforged Sword if you need the 1.5% block rating to reach 102.4%.

See also Zoe’s guide to building your tankadin and the outdated gear thread.