Does anyone have any guides handy? As a lone paladin raid tank for my guild, I'm hoping to see what abilities/spells others are using to make sure I'm not missing anything important or small.
You're mostly going to be support/backup tank with AE heals, splash, and where I find my most usage, keeping pad heals on an MT via ToT healing. If for some reason you're designated as an MT, it's really up to you how you use your disc's. I generally use blessed guardian+epic first, shield flash then armor of mercy+inquisitor, then karzok+chest - but honestly, I happen to be in a guild with such high dps that as long as I make sure I live at any cost, I don't have to worry about having to cycle through discs/AA's and worry about them dropping and tanking with nothing up. That said, make sure you always have refute for honor and prot up. Those are worth a lot of your mitigation. Even if you have to cast refute every other cast, it's worth it. Your job isn't to do anything but keep the mob focused on you. My spell line up is: 1) Valiant 2) Protective 3) Sanctimonious 4) Twincast 5) Force of Mercy (group) or Crush (boss) of E`Ci 6) Force (group) /Crush (boss) of Timorous 7) Refute 8) Aurora, Preservation if MT'ing boss, Harmonious for group content 9) Wave of Expiation 10) Wave of Grief 11) Dissident 12) Expiation I'm RoS raid geared with 3 or 4 pieces of TBL raid gear. 330-340k hp/10k ac raid buffed give or take.
I agree with most of this, I would personally use defiant stance. My line up is this: 1) wave of expiation 2) burst of daylight 3) burst of morning light 4) preservation of Marr 5) defiant stance 6) valiant 7) refute honor 8) crush 9) crush 10) protective devotion 11) twincast 12) splash
Much of this depends on your gear level, the type of support/caliber of your heal team and dps level of raid force. Paladins have a plethora of go to sets depending on these situations. Are you finding yourself tanking and dieing often? Is your guild struggling with encounters? Feel free to post that type of info and will give a more detailed answer later
You guys are dropping the ball without Dicho/Dissident in the rotation. Aurora is woefully underpowered and easily could be swapped out. Otherwise, some good data here.
I haven’t played with dissident much yet, I wasn’t a huge fan of dicho due to mana cost. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl to see, whether I’m tanking or backup tanking, I’m chain casting tot spells, so concerned that mana *maybe* an issue.
Dissident is just a slightly more powerful version of Dicho. On events with a mana drain it could be a challenge, but usually mana is such a non-issue. There is no other spellbar option for an instant group heal for a paladin. Aside from Hand of Piety and Reflexive Reverence there is no other instant option of a group heal period (no Force of Disruption triggering Healing Light AA does not count).
Sorry Seldom, I completely missed your post! We have some great and some lackluster in just about every area. The group as a whole generally struggles with 1-2 expansion old content and is not a DPS machine. Gear Level - Raid Force: Pieces - Some Group TBL, Numerous of RoS, Some EoK My own: Pretty much ditto, I'll DM you though if you want more specifics. I am tanking almost every hit and not dying super often, but my tanking role has increased to the point of being a designated main on numerous hits and phases. It's hard for me to objectively say if I'm dying often, because it's as often as I'm used to dying and maybe slightly less. There's also been some increasingly frustrating deaths though (single pulled plow mobs). Hopefully this is enough info, glad to add more though!
I always kept aurora memed because I could spam it in a pinch as a self heal but most importantly it’s ability to heal through da
Discs/abilities: Blessed Guardian, Karzok Mantle, Armor of Mercy, Glyph of Dragonscales. If you’re in a difficult situation with high probability of death, stack Glyph on top of one of these, preferably Blessed if up. Otherwise stagger everything out for uptime purposes. Once you know an event, you should have a decent idea in your mind of around the times you’ll probably be using these in advanced. If running something like Blessed+Glyph you shouldn’t be dieing unless something very wrong happens. Note: I saw magelo in the private message and realize you’re a little light on AA currently. Don’t have to worry about popping that Glyph until you get some more under your belt but it’ll definitely help you on raids when you reach that point. Deflection, Shield Flash, Armor of Experience Vet: These type of abilities should be lifesavers on the frustrating plow deaths you speak of. Don’t forget to be hitting Spurn style ability consistently as well. Lay Hands, Reflexive Reverence, Hand of Piety, Gift of Life: All of these can prevent the quick plow type of deaths also. Strive to not be dieing with any of this type of stuff unused. AA Armor of Inquisitor, Group Armor of Inquisitor, First Spire, Gift of Life. If you’re the only Paladin in raid force then you also need to figure out when are the most ideal times to be utilizing Group Armor/First Spire/GoL for yourself and the other tanks in group as well. This is easier to do when knowing the event, average group makeups and when your force tends to need heavier healing. Note: In your magelo, I noticed you had 2nd/3rd Spire maxed and not 1st. You virtually always should be using First Spire versus those. The boost to heals on yourself and group > far greater than what those other two provide. Spell Sets: Plenty of good recommendations have already been made. My spell sets tend to look like; MT, Bad/no healer, Good Healer, DPS, Undead, Main healer, Ramp tank, Stunnable, Survive etc. If I were predominantly raiding with a force that struggled with 1-2 old expansion content then I’d mostly lean more heavier than normal on my Bad/no healer/survive type spell sets. 1.) Valiant 2.) Protective 3.) Censure 4.) Brilliant 5.) Splash 6.) Crush; Possibly stun instead 7.) Crush; Possibly stun instead 8.) Refute; Possibly stun instead 9.) Preservation; Possibly Defiant Stance instead if I had no Sham/Druid that casted Growth line and I was soaking up heavy enough damage 10.) Harmonious- Possibly Expiation, Burst or Dicho/Dissident instead 11.) Wave of Expiation 12.) Wave of Grief/Dissident/Grief-Possibly Aurora instead to help heal a Divine Aura ramp tank etc. if I felt tank/healer on that assignment is iffy and I’m in same group Other stuff: Get a Frosty Gem of Enhanced Protection for your shield. Divine Hammer of Consternation- I don’t think I saw this when taking a quick skim through your bags. Can easily grab that to help out on ramp tank duties if it’s ever needed. Feel free to check back and let know how you’re faring or any other questions
I memorize Aurora when another knight in my group is designated to DA rampage tank for that reason. Otherwise I don't use it anymore in favor of 2 or 3 ToT heals and 1 or 2 Wave heals. In the case where you're taking damage but not tanking your target, then Aurora spam self healing would work instead.
Lots of good information here! Using abilities all the time is something that I've been coaching a lot of my tanks on. Dying with an unused skill is worse than using a skill and not getting hit at all because someone else picked up a mob. I originally did Second Spire because I was never tanking and was only trying to boost my DPS output, but have definitely been bumping that one up and using that one as of late. I've been TRYING to get that bloody Frozen Gem, I wish the lockout wasn't so long on it (it's a decade old at this point!). It was fun for maybe the first attempt, now it's just annoying. I adopted some of this new spell set and got rid of some of my single target heals and self-heals. If you could only pick between Wave of Expiation/Wave of Grief/Dissident/Grief, is there one you would pick? My lineup (off the top of my head) is currently: 1) Crush 2) Censure 3) Valiant 4) Audacious 5) Refute for Honor 6) Stun 7) Stun 8) Dissident 9) Twincast 10) Splash 11) Single target quick heal 12) Preservation (I think?) 13) Protective
I’d make room for them in the spell slots I bolded that you tend to use . Definitely looks like your on the right track. When choosing between stuff such as another Wave Heal, Dissident or Expiation/Grief, ask yourself if your group is going to need additional consistent heals or are you better served with running with another emergency type heal. My 13th spell gem which I forgot to list is nearly always dedicated to Burst heal as well when I’m using the type of spell sets I posted earlier. Even if it ends up not getting much use, it’s very hard for me not to have a Burst memed if my heal team isn’t very strong. I’ll also put a few people who are likely to die/need a quick burst heal in extended target that aren’t in my group. This may be a weak geared app that dies to AE damage, tank that tends to take on a ton etc. Good luck on getting the Frozen Gem to finally drop!
Another run, another lack of aug. Oh well! Curious, which crushes exactly are people using? I tried swapping out the hate crush for Audacious tonight, but didn't really notice a huge different in it's aggro taking/holding abilities. I did swap in group heal when I was only a backup tank, I wish it was faster, but it sure heals for a ton.
Arx for sure. Also TBM with Vim & Vigor since they both rampage (non trivial in era). I think it's been that long (2+ years) since I memorized Aurora. Harmonious was the first spell to replace it. I think the lesson here is to remember that Aurora is unique (for paladin) in that it can group heal someone who's protected by Divine Aura and needs a heal.
I think most paladin's have the fast recast Crush memorized most of the time since it's our highest aggro spell. The 24 second recast Crush is used less often, from what I see and read. My own personal parsing of e.g. Crush of E`Ci is that it offers good (not great) burst aggro and benefits for +spell damage (because of it's long recast time) making it our 2nd highest dmg (not dps) all purpose nuke behind the DP AA nuke. Personally, I memorize something from the Consecration line over this long recast crush every time.
It will depend of the quality of your guild DPS. In high end raiding guilds, not using your best aggro stuff you will loose aggro to some quality DPS. Best aggro stuff is : 2 crush, valiant, refute for honor, and FoD AA.
plus keeping up Preservation for the +15% hate modifier. That's 5 spell gems for aggro right there, whether one uses E`Ci or Remembrance.
