... and Admonish/Censure aye. Paladin passive healing comes from Preservation, Blessing of Life (from auto attacking), life tap weapons and augments, Ardent Cleansing or Force of Ardency (lines). I still use the Soul of the Grandmaster in my shield for extra passive healing (and for fun). If tanking, a paladin can add passive healing from all their tanking disciplines, except for Deflection and Mantle, and including Blunted Blade which triggers Healing Light from stuns.
Thanks for the additional suggestions! Have not been using blunted blade. Does it stack with the mit discs? I've started experimenting with alternatives to Expiation. Aurora does not heal pets!? Spash was my first choice, but i will have to get used to targetted aoe clicking. What about Mark of Orthis? No one mentioned this, and it seems very helpful in theory, no? I think I will sub out both Expiation and the aura (to macro buff when needed). If aurora does not affect pets, i wil not be using it. Is wurmslayer still best tanking weapon for spike dmg control for Paladin? Are there stacking issues w Jann Illusion dmg reduction?
Don't for get the Steel line of self-buffs that give you healing procs. Those are also very nice. I don't think Wurmslayer offers much to paladins at 110. I suppose it depends on the content.
Also Protective vie recourse doesn't work on pets as ToT. Known bug in other thread. Blunted Blade is a combat ability so no. Use it to add passive healing and DPS while not tanking. Although with high ranks of Healing Light AA and active heal focus it can be used defensively too. In your use case Mark spell line is useful aye. I don't remember if Aurora works on pets (with pet affinity classes). Give it a test. Wurmslayer guard stacks fine, often as a fallback, while other SPA 162 vies are down. This only matters if your paladin is tanking.
For wurmslayer, how much effective hp is it adding (how much dmg is it preventing) assuming 8 hits for 50k in a spike? Alternaive weapons offer 2-3k more hp and maybe 50 ac, so i'd want some evidence that dmg prevented by wurmslayer in the above example is less than 4k before even considering alternatives. If there are wurmslayer guard stacking issues, what are they, for Paladin specifically? Ive heard the reports that warriors and Sk can more confidently leave this weapon behind, but not paladins. In the 8 hits for 50k example, how would the dmg prevented by wurmslayer vary with some of the common Paladin stacking scenarios? The lengths we go to to keep that paladin vertical....
You have to look at each individual hit. Your stacking conflicts are the Protective (15) recourse, Armor of Whatever/Merciful Whatever (20), and Mantle (35). These are % mitigation abilities. So if you have Protective running, any hit below ~11750 will use Wurmslayer mitigation (1750 flat damage). If you have Armor/Merciful, it's any hit below ~9000. Mantle, any hit below ~5000. That's damage taken *after* SPA 168 (Stance, Knight's Sedulity, Blessed Guardian), but before SPA 451 (Refute for Whatever). I'm... pretty sure that's accurate, but don't quote me unless one of the tank mains confirms. Someone can check my math here, but I think it's mostly accurate. I generally don't use Wurmslayer on my Paladin, unless I really feel like I need to "turtle up," or when fighting lots of really weak adds.
Wurmslayer guard is a flat 1750 dmg absorb per hit. If you're paladin is tanking and you take 8 hits that saves 14k hp right there, assuming no better SPA 162 is active. That's passive mitigation that fits nicely with your play style, should the paladin take aggro. In that case you also want to get the Skull of Null for its SPA 161 spell shield (Guard of Null). ps: there's no stacking "conflict" re Gotwar, those other abilities tend to supersede WS Guard. The best set of mitigation effects wins on a per hit basis, sometimes it's WS. Against hordes of under 10k hitters, WS is a clear winner (e.g. farming tradeskills, greens, light blues, old raids, etc).
So, if I'm mitigation discing and hits are large (TBL named), then WS guard provides no benefit? And i'd be better off with TBL weapons with more hp/ac if i wanted to control spikes while under disc? I looked up skull of null, and i don't see it as worth getting even if it was low effort. It looks like it must be worn, and it's an approx 1300 hp and 90 ac loss vs TBL charm of security. A wash at best, assuming there is some incoming melee dmg. Or maybe im missing something?
Depends on the active disc. Guardian uses SPA 168, re Gotwar's post, and WS Guard uses SPA 162 and so stacks with that. A tank's best melee mitigation boost is a combination of SPAs 185 + 516 + 168 + 55 + 162 + 451. There may be a few other SPA that participate in melee damage mitigation calculations. Knights don't have an SPA 185 reduction ability. For a paladin, your self best pure mitigation is: Glyph of Dragon Scales + (Knight's Sedulity + (Defensive Proficiency or Blessed Guardian)) + (Knight's Synergy or Devout Rune proc) + (Spurn or Protective or WS Guard) + (Glyph of Dragon Scales or Refute recourse) Of all those, only Knight's Sedulity, Def Prof, and Wurmslayer Guard have the beauty of being "permanent". You're getting a mix of advice on boxing a paladin that tanks and one that doesn't (pet tanking). Those are fairly opposite group roles and character setup. Grain of salt.
Warriors/Shadowknights often tend to be the go to box group tank over Paladins due to their aggro capabilities, especially AE. Whenever you go Wurmslayer route on Pal over a weapon with Devout Rune proc you’re leaving a large portion of passive AE aggro generation on the table. That’s in addition to DPS and the other stuff you listed. If one of your goals is to become good enough on the Paladin to be consistently MTing, then WS should be an extremely niche type of thing. If you desire to use him as a puller that heals and maybe steps in to control adds from time to time, I’d still be using WS as a niche thing personally. Once you reach a good skill level, if you have time to be pulling on a tank then you have time to be hitting enough things to be handling tank duties over the pets in majority of scenarios
