Burning Crusade Classic Protection Paladin Guide : Stats
Tankadins are looking for three things in their gear: Threat, Stamina and Mitigation. This is the same for any tank, but Paladins do it in their own way.
Threat
Threat comes from Spell Damage, and Spell Crit. Your weapon will provide the majority of your threat stats in most cases.
Stamina
Stamina is relatively easy to get. 10,000 unbuffed is a good pre-raid goal. This will get better as you start getting more epics.
Ratings
Burning Crusade Classic implements a ratings based system that most retail players should be familiar with.
Let's take a look at ratings and what they mean for us.
2.4 Defense Rating = 1 Defense = .04 Miss/Doge/Parry/Block
18.9 Dodge Rating = 1% Dodge
31.5 Parry Rating = 1% Parry
7.9 Block Rating = 1% Block
25 Agility Rating = 1% Dodge
Mitigation
Here's where it gets far more complex. Your ability to mitigate damage comes from your Armor, Defense, avoidance (Dodge/Parry/Block%) and your Block Value. There are many other ways to mitigate damage (including some procs from gear, such as the Argussian Compass.
Armor
Armor reduces physical damage by a % based on a formula. 12-13k unbuffed is a good goal for pre-raid. That's about a 53% reduction on a level 73 (boss) mob's melee. This can be pumped up to 16-17k with consumables/raid buffs like Inspiration, Ancestral Fortitude, Improved Lay on Hands, and Ironshield Potion.
Defense
490 defense is your goal, as this will make you immune to critical hits from level 73 (boss) mobs. Every point past that is .04% chance to be missed, or for you to Dodge/Parry/Block. Anything past 490 is good, but since dodge is cheaper (more on this later) it is better for pure avoidance. In WoW Classic, Defense became a dump stat and wasn't sought after. It will be interesting to see if that pattern repeats in Burning Crusade Classic.
490 Defense is also a bit raw, as you only want to be uncritable, you are able to use Resilience to help you.For every point of Resilience you have, you can reduce the 490 Defense cap required by 0.625
Avoidance
Avoidance is the sum of your Dodge, Parry, and Block.
During Burning Crusade there were two key breakpoints you wanted to hit with your gear: Uncrushable and Defense cap. It ensures a boss can't score a critical strike against you. Critical strikes do double damage. Taking that much damage in a single hit makes it difficult to do your main job of not dying.
Uncrushable means the boss can no longer hit you with a Crushing Blow. Crushing Blows do 1.5x normal damage. It's a little less than the 2x you get from a critical strike, but a Crushing Blow can still be lethal.
To achieve the Defense cap, you get your Defense up to 490. This is pretty much entirely done with gear and some talents.
Uncrushable
How do you know when you've hit uncrushable? Easy! Assuming you have 490 defense, the parry, dodge and block values on your character sheet need to add up to 56.47% (if you have the Badge of Justice purchased Libram of Repentance or 61.8% (if you don't). Give yourself 0.04% bonus for each point of defense you have above 490. See the Gear page for more details.
You can also use this macro by Baelor in game to check your uncrushability:
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combined avoidance. Currently at:",0.8,0.8,1)
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5+(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)*150/355 + 20)*0.04,1,0.5,0)
Uncrushable requires manipulating the attack table. Your goal with Miss/Dodge/Parry/Block is to get a value listed on your character sheet to a total of 102.4% while Holy Shield is active to completely remove the chance of a Crushing Blow from a level 73 (boss) mob in ideal situations. Once you get past that point, Block starts "falling off" the attack table, which is good for you because instead of reducing the damage you're taking by a certain value, you are completely avoiding it.
Until you reach 102.4%, Block Rating is the cheapest avoidance stat, followed by Defense, Dodge and Parry in that order. Once you hit 102.4%, 1 Defense Rating gives you 0.05 pure avoidance, whereas 1 Dodge will give you 0.53. Parry is even worse, yielding 0.031 pure avoidance. For comparison 1 Agi = 0.04 avoidance.
At this point, extra Block is useless, so you should focus on Dodge, then Defense. Agility is worse than Defense, but better than Parry for Avoidance.
Block Value is the 'weakest' mitigation stat. Bosses melees are in the thousands. A few hundred blocked is way less useful than completely avoiding the damage, however, large amounts of block value will help to smooth out the consistent damage you are taking, making it easier on your healers. Dodge is more efficient, but this is never a 'bad thing.'
How does the attack table really work?
Exhaustive testing and sly confirmations from Blizzard indicate that physical combat involves a one-roll system. All the possible outcomes for an attack are arranged on a table and assigned a range value, totaling 100. A random number is generated by the game and this number is compared to the table.
Miss
Dodge
Parry
Glancing Blow (only players and pets versus mobs)
Block
Critical hit
Crushing Blow (mobs only)
Normal hit
Values on the table can slide off the bottom, not the top. Additionally, certain effects may directly reduce other values (for example, Defense will reduce the range of Critical, and increase the range of Miss).
If your block rate is 65% at the time of the attack, "Block" will have a value of 65% of the table. If there isn't enough room for all 65% (for example, if your Miss, Dodge, and Parry already totaled 40%), the excess Block will "fall off" the table. Note that at that point Critical, Crushing, and Ordinary Hit have already been pushed off.
The first aspect of Tank damage management is manipulating this table into as advantageous a configuration as possible, both through gear selection prior to the fight and skill use during the fight. The options for this table manipulation vary radically between the classes.
The second aspect of Tank damage management is preparing yourself so that when a strike gets past your table manipulation it poses as little a threat to your survival as possible. This is generally done through gear selection, optimizing armor and stamina to provide you with effective reduction on damage that does connect and a large HP pool so that damage reduces your health by as small a percent as possible. Viewing incoming damage in terms of percentages rather than absolute values (i.e. 25%, rather than 3000) helps you conceptualize stamina as an integrated part of your overall damage management plan.
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