3.1 Action Plan

So 3.1 is dropping today, so we need to prepare for the major tasks tonight.

Assuming the servers are up and running, which is no small assumption on patch day, my first order of business will be to get Honorshammer to Ironforge and the Paladin trainer. There I will lay down the 1000 gold and get Dual Spec. I'm very excited.

Of course, all my talent points will have been refunded, so I'll need to respec.

(Props to the staff at WoWhead for keeping it up on Patch Day!)

Tank Spec: 13/52/6

This will be the initial spec I try out in Ulduar. This spec dives into Holy for the new Aura Mastery talent, and also grabs Improved Lay On Hands. It's a build that looks for survivability, and tries to give the Paladin a couple of extra buttons for Oh No! moments. We'll see how it works out.

Then I'll need to get over the Lexicon of Power and redo my Glyphs.

My planned Glyph loadout (assuming I can find a Scribe with the new Glyphs) will be:

Major:
Glyph of Divine Plea - This will be another added damage reduction, and that's job #1 in the tank world.
Glyph of Salvation - The idea here is to give me another Panic button, albeit one with a heavy price tag. I can either have DPS back off or hope I have enough of a lead it won't matter.
Glyph of Judgement - 10% more threat is pretty strong.

Minor:
Glyph of Sense Undead - A straight threat gain and one of our better Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Lay On Hands - Combining this with my talent spec to get Lay On Hands cooldown reduced to 11 minutes.
Glyph of Blessing of Kings - A little mana savings, Paladin's don't have a strong third choice.

Then I'll needs to start working on my second spec. This will be a Ret spec with an eye to PVP.
Ret Spec: 0/18/53
I'm about as far from an expert on Ret PVP as you can get, so if you know a better Ret PVP spec, leave me a comment. My thinking is Ret PVP will do plenty of damage in a PVE situation. The Developers have stated they won't balance around Dual Specs. So anything more than the 1500 of so DPS I can do as Prot would be a boon to the raid. Then it will work great for Battleground weekends, or soloing, especially since I'm on a PVP server.
For our Glyphs, I'm going with
Major:
Glyph of Judgement - More damage on our biggest nuke.
Glyph of Exorcism - New nuke, usable against all targets.
Glyph of Salvation- PVP Glyph to pop when I'm focused fired. This will be especially helpful as I lack any real PVP gear right now.
Minor:
Glyph of Sense Undead - Probably the best minor glyph Paladins have.
Glyph of Blessing of Might - This is for soloing. It gives you the Greater Blessing length without the reagent.
Glyph of Blessing of Kings - A little mana savings in raids. We really don't have a strong third glyph.
The next thing I'm going to want to do is hit the Guild Bank for some Abyss Crystals and then find an Enchanter who can do Blade Ward. I like avoidance enchants, to the point of having Agility on my weapon right now, so I'm really excited about this enchant.
Hopefully I can get all that done and be ready to join my team storming the gates of Ulduar!

Comments

Crofe said…
Aura Mastery seems like an interesting choice, since I would think you wouldn't be using Concentration Aura. Will you try to create a macro that changes to Concentration Aura before using Aura mastery? Or will you be keeping CA up all the time?

Or now that I read it again, are you going to use it more for the second effect of increasing other Auras by 100%?

I don't know that I could give up Pursuit of Justice, as I find mobility very helpful. I'm going to have to play around with the new talents more.
Honors Code said…
Aura Mastery is a multipurpose button. Know a fear is coming? Switch to CA and pop it.

Got nailed by a big hit? Pop it for double armor for a few seconds.

Big fire or frost blast coming? Switch to the appropiate Resistance aura and pop it.

I don't currently have PoJ in my build, so I won't miss it, but I understand some Paladins just can't live without it.
Ragar said…
I still need to sit down and put together some builds for my tanks. I like the idea of having Aura Mastery for another "oh crap!" button and a faster LoH is always nice, but the five points in Divine Intellect seem like a steep cost to pick those two up since all we're getting out of it is +15% of our base Int with raid buffs.
Mister K said…
Just a quick note, you don't need a Lexicon of power to put on glyphs anymore. I think I'm gonna go 0/53/18 I just like the threat points from ret and more mobility with pursuit of justice then Aura Mastery, but thats just my take.
DuckiLama said…
I'm curious: Why are so many prot paladins taking touched by the light?
When I'm tanking, I'm almost never casting heals, so the odds of me critting and getting benefit are slim. Mighty slim.

So I get 200 SP out of the deal, which doesn't seem worth the 2-3 points I generally see put there.

Just "throwing it together" I ended up with http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent 0/51/20.

I guess I just don't see what's so great about TbtL that's worth 2 talent points over, say 1-3% more crit for your whole raid on anything you've Judged or even 1% more crit just for you.
Thanks!
Duclama
Anonymous said…
I think the holy build is a good starting point for learning new fights. Gives you a couple of buttons to use to help survivability as everyone is still learning and making mistakes.

How do the different cooldown times work with dual spec? Will Lay on Hands be available earlier in tank spec, or will the CD be evoked from the spec that started it?

Why use 5/5 Divine Intellect? It will only give you a fraction of mana. Surely at least 2 points in the talent that reduces stun/disorient by 30% would be better (or are their no fights where this will be useful)? Then I would think that upping heals may be better than 9% INT, as there may be an occasion to toss a heal off in some fights (phase changes, down times, etc).
DuckiLama said…
I apologize. My link to wowhead *should* have been http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sZV0tAbuMGsIzfdxsbhbs

Sorry for the goof.
Duclama
Screech said…
you dont need to use a lexicon of power to change your glyphs which it states in the patch notes
BigFire said…
Good luck on finding Glyph of Divine Plea. None to be had on my server, and the quality and quantity of glyph on AH is shockingly low.

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