Quote:Also, just to keep things up to date, I believe I have made up my mind to go with this 0/38/23 build.
So with patch 2.3 in the works I thought I might post up some discussion on its effect on my build. The changes of note are:
Quote:Improved Seal of the Crusader (Retribution) benefits folded into the base spell. This talent now gives the benefits of the Sanctified Crusader talent instead. (+1 crit to all attacks per point)
Precision (Protection) now increases spell hit chance as well.
Pursuit of Justice (Retribution) is now 3 ranks and increases movement speed by 5/10/15% and also reduces the chance you'll be hit by spells by 1/2/3%.
Weapon Expertise (Protection) renamed Combat Expertise, now increases expertise by 1/2/3/4/5 and total Stamina by 2/4/6/8/10%.
The biggest of the bunch is Weapon Expertise. 10% more stamina is huge and so that is now a must have talent for a tanking build.
Precision is also a must have now since I thought it was worthy before they increased its use.
The change to Pursuit of Justice is interesting. I already liked the movement speed increase and now it makes spells hit less often. The chance isn't very high though. It is yet another small help against spell damage which is a trouble spot for paladins though. So the talent still seems borderline now, but much less so.
I had decided that Improved Seal of the Crusader wasn't worth taking in the old build. With the change I'm not so sure anymore. 3% crit to everybody hitting the mob is pretty big. In 5 mans where I'm likely to spend most of my time it isn't as big, but in raids it could be huge. So it comes back into consideration as a choice.
Basically I'm looking at 2 builds. (using the old calc so you'll have to imagine the changes to the talents)
0/49/12 which will probably be a pretty standard tanking build.
0/40/21 The point in SoC being a placeholder for the third point in PoJ.
The choice here seems to be pure tank and frontloaded aggro vs tank with less emergency talents, more long term aggro, and dps. It kind of bothers me that Sanctity Aura would now be only useful to myself, holy priests, and other paladins. I've also done one PUG run so far and noticed a few times where Avenger's Shield could be useful. I still feel like I run out of mana super fast though and AS will just make that even worse. Argent Defender is also becoming more tempting with the added stamina to make it come into effect at a higher value. I think currently I'm leaning towards the 0/40/21 build mainly because I'm still not sold on AS and AD despite all that I just said about them.
Another point of interest for me is in gemming my items. Currently I'm torn between using all +12 stamina gems and throwing in some +5 spell damage gems. I think that maybe in the current patch it is correct to use +12 in everything. In 2.3 I can see it possibly changing though. Gaining 10% stamina could make the loss of some stamina from gems worth the spell damage + socket bonuses. Its something I'm going to be watching anyway.