Two Must Reads

WoW In An Hour has written an absolutely fantastic guide on Paladin Tanking. It is written specifically for the Warrior Tank who wants to try out Paladin tanking, and it's very well done. It would also be a great read for any new Protection Paladin as it explains nearly everything you need to know about being a solid Paladin tank in a beginner friendly way. The article is extremely well done and researched and I highly recommend you check it out.

The other article that you need to see this morning comes from our Death Knight friend, Gravity. He has been following the threads on Maintankadin researching the question of how many Bosses in ICC and ToC have Parry-Haste enable. This question is of great import to the Death Knight community because one of the downsides of Dual Wield tanking is the concern of causing more Parry-Haste.

At first, the community was beginning think that Parry Haste doesn’t exist in ICC. Then as more data came in and some well done analysis by Theck, and Tbdsamman, it is now mostly confirmed to be by and large off in Ice Crown Citadel.

This has a rather large effect on the value of Expertise. Let me quote Gravity directly.

The significance of the change for Icecrown raiders is that expertise should be seen as a threat stat (again), so it is not as valuable over the 6.5% cap as I thought last week, which in turn might have implications to your gear choices and gemming in the hard-modes.

Paladins don’t gem for Expertise, or at least they shouldn’t. If you are, stop it. Red slots are for Agility/Stam gems if the socket bonus is +9 stamina or more. Otherwise, get all misty eyed for another Solid Majestic Zircon.

Where it will come into play for Paladins is comparing the Emblem bought Expertise heavy Cataclysmic Chestguard aka the “Cat” against the Defense challenged T10 Chest. At the 251 level, the Cat is better because of the huge upgrade it represents in EH. At the 264 level it’s more a question of avoidance from T10 against the threat of Cat. Expertise is still our best threat stat until we reach the Soft cap of 26 (16 if you use Glyph of Seal of Vengeance/Corruption and the corresponding Seal – which you should be!). The Cat alone will get you there. However, if you choose to go with T10, you can get other Expertise pieces (stuff like the Facelifter, gloves from Blood Queen 10 and the boots from Dreamwalker 25 ) It also opens up the option of going with Pillars of Might with 4 piece Tier 10. You could still reach the soft cap with the Facelifter and eating Rhinolicious Wormsteak.