Ill start off with some basics and add more specifics when i think of them I dont

like to do a lot of copy and paste, but ill borrow some stuff from Maintankadin. Keep
in mind that there will be some changes in 3.2. Specially concerning dodge-parry and
blockvalue.

Basics

First some basic numbers for lvl 80 tanks

Defcap = 540. This means you are uncrittable by bosslvl 83. This is your maingoal at
lvl80.

Avoidance: you need a total of 102.4 % to reach the 'block-cap'. This number is
created by adding the numbers from Def-dodge-parry-block-5 % base miss - holy
shield.

Always focus on Dodge before parry and block, since its the best mitigation stat.
Ofcourse Stamina and Armour beat them all

A little more in detail for all you theorycrafters out there

Primary stats

* Strength (str)

o 1 strength = 2 attack power (AP) = 0.14 dps weapon (white) damage.

o 2 strength = 1 block value before talents, 1.3 block value with the Redoubt talent
o The Divine Strength talent increases total strength by 15%.

* Agility (agi)

o 52.08 agility = +1% dodge chance. This is somewhat less efficient than Dodge
Rating at increasing your dodge chance (39.35 dodge rating = +1% dodge chance),
but with Blessing of Kings the number decreases to 47.35 agility, which makes it
about 80% as efficient as agility.
o 52.08 agility = +1% melee crit chance.
o 1 agility = 2 armor.
o Agility is often overlooked as a tanking stat, but it's actually an efficient way to get
avoidance, mitigation, and threat from one stat.

* Stamina (sta)

o 1 stamina = +10 total health (hp).

o 10 stamina = +3 spell power (SP) from the Touched by the Light talent.
o The Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise talents increase total stamina by 8% and 6%
respectively, for a total increase of 14.48% with both talents. If you're buffed with
Blessing of Kings as well, then each additional point of stamina increases your total
health by approximately 12.6.
* Intellect (int)

o 1 intellect = +15 total mana. This increases the size of your starting mana pool and
the maximum amount of mana you can store at any point. It also increases the rate of
mana regeneration from effects that restore a fraction of your mana pool, such as
Replenishment, Blessing of Sanctuary, and Divine Plea. This is a nice effect, but it
doesn't make intellect worthwhile as a stat for tanking gear.
o 166.67 Intellect = +1% chance to crit with spells, but all Prot paladin offensive
abilities except Exorcism use the melee crit rate.

* Spirit (spi)

o Increases mana regeneration outside of the five-second rule. As a tank, this effect is
negligible (and frankly it's negligible for all paladin specs).

Combat Ratings

* Defense Rating

o 4.92 defense rating = 1 defense skill (If you're new to these stats, pay careful
attention to the difference between defense rating and defense skill.)
o 25 defense skill gives:
+ -1% chance to take a critical hit from melee or ranged (non-spell) attacks.
+ +1% chance to be missed
+ +1% chance to dodge, parry, and block (each).
o Mobs have a 5% chance to crit a player of the same level with a fully trained
defense skill (400 defense skill for a level 80 player). Each level of difference
increases the mob's chance to crit by 0.2%. Hence:
+ A level 83 mob (e.g., a raid boss) will have a 5.6% chance to crit a level 80 player
with 400 defense. Accordingly, the player will need an additional 5.6 * 25 = 140
defense skill, or a total of 540 defense skill to be uncrittable by raid bosses. This is
equivalent to 689 defense rating.
+ A level 82 mob (the highest level found in heroic 5-man dungeons) will have a 5.4%
chance to crit a level 80 player with 400 defense. Accordingly, the player will need an
additional 5.4 * 25 = 135 defense skill, or a total of 535 defense skill to be uncrittable
in heroic 5-mans. This is equivalent to 664 defense rating.
o Players with enough defense to be uncrittable don't benefit from the crit-reduction
aspect of additional defense skill, but they still gain miss, parry, dodge, and block
chance as defense is added.
+ 25 defense skill gives +1% to miss, parry, dodge, and block. This requires 123
defense rating.
+ Hence, adding 1% total avoidance (blocked attacks included) requires
approximately 31 defense rating.
+ Adding 1% full avoidance (blocked attacks excluded) requires 41 defense rating.
o Increases to the chances to parry, dodge, and be missed generated by adding defense
count towards the diminishing returns on those stats (see below). However, there are
no diminishing returns on the chance to block.

* Dodge Rating
o 39.35 dodge rating = +1% chance to dodge.
o Dodge rating is affected by diminishing returns in WotLK: the more dodge you
have, the more dodge rating is required to add each additional percent chance to
dodge. This is a rather complicated system, but effectively it means that dodge rating
is probably inferior to defense rating as a means for adding pure avoidance.
o Dodging opens an opportunity for Overpower mechanics to hit you for a large
amount of damage. This is primarily a concern in PvP (against warriors) but there are
a very few raid bosses and mobs that have an Overpower-type mechanic. This is not
generally worth worrying about, but it may come to bear on specific encounters.

* Parry Rating

o 49.18 parry rating = +1% chance to parry.

o Like dodge rating, parry rating is subject to diminishing returns, but it's already
inferior to defense and dodge for adding avoidance.
o When an attack is parried, your next attack will happen more quickly. (This is why
parry is more "expensive" than dodge.) I won't go into the exact mechanics here,
except to note that (a) this effect is more pronounced with slower melee weapons, and
(b) weapon-based threat is generally not significant enough for this to make much of a
difference, and hence it's not worth considering when gearing for tanking.

* Block Rating

o 16.29 block rating = +1% chance to block.

o This does not suffer from diminishing returns.
o Block is far "cheaper" than dodge or parry or even defense per point of avoidance;
however, blocking only absorbs an amount of damage equal to your block value
whereas m/p/d avoid all damage. (It does, however, provide threat when Holy Shield
is active.)

* Hit Rating

o 32.79 hit rating = +1% chance to hit with melee or ranged attacks (-1% chance to
miss).
+ For our purposes, this applies to melee swings (white damage), Avenger's Shield,
Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of Wrath, and
Judgements.
+ Against a raid boss, melee and ranged attacks have a base 8% chance to miss (this is
changed from TBC, where ti was 9%), so 263 hit rating is required to eliminate all
melee misses if there are no other bonuses to hit.
+ Draenei have a racial aura that gives +1% to hit. This reduces the requirement for
melee hit-capping to 230 hit rating if you're a draenei or have one in your group. (This
is group-only buff, not a raidwide buff.)
o 26.23 hit rating = +1% chance to hit with spells. For our purposes, this only applies
to Righteous Defense.
+ Against a raid boss, spells have a base 17% chance to miss. In the past, some bosses
that required frequent taunting and tank-switching (e.g., Nalorakk, Mother Shahraz,
and Brutallus) had only a base 9% chance to resist a taunt. It's not known whether that
will continue to be the case.
+ The Draenei racial aura also applies to spells, as do the Misery and Improved Faerie
Fire debuffs (+3% to hit with spells, only one of these can be present).
+ The Glyph of Righteous Defense reduces the miss chance of Righteous Defense by
8%.
+ It's not worth going through all the combinations of buffs and debuffs and the hit
rating required to cap spells for each, but a few are worth noting:
# If you have no other buffs and no RD glyph, 446 hit rating is required to reach the
hit cap for RD.
# If you have the RD glyph, only 236 hit rating is required to cap RD. This is less than
the hit rating required to hit-cap melee attacks, so once you reach the melee hit cap,
the glyph will safely put you over the top for RD as well.
# If you really want to cap RD without using a glyph slot, the best possible case is to
have a Draenei around (+1%), and to have Improved Faerie Fire or Misery up on the
mob (+3% hit bonus, only one can apply). This reduces the miss chance to 13%,
which would only require 341 hit rating to cap (111 more than the melee hit cap.)

* Expertise Rating

o 8.10 expertise rating = +1 expertise (As with defense, this can be confusing, so be
careful.)
o Each point of expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be parried or dodged
by 0.25% each. Hence, each point of expertise reduces the total chance for your
attacks to be avoided by 0.50% (until the target's dodge chance reaches zero.)
o 32.79 expertise rating = -1% dodge and -1% parry for your attacks.
o Human racial bonuses give +3 expertise when using maces or swords (-0.75%
dodge and -0.75% parry). This bonus is worth approximately 24 points of expertise
rating.
o The Dwarf racial bonus gives +5 expertise when using maces (-1.25% dodge and
-1.25% parry). This bonus is worth approximately 41 points of expertise rating.
o The Combat Expertise talent gives +6 expertise. This is worth 49 points of expertise
rating.
o Expertise will affect normal (white) melee attacks as well as Hammer of the
Righteous (a parry is reported as "Deflect").
o Expertise will not affect Shield of Righteousness, Righteous Defense, Avenger's
Shield, or Judgements, because these cannot be parried or deflected.
o Since parries by bosses hasten their next attack (using the same mechanic as for
players who parry), expertise can be useful for reducing this effect and preventing
damage spikes.

* Crit Rating

o 45.91 crit rating = 1% chance for a critical strike with all attacks and spells.
o All critical strikes for Prot paladin offensive abilities do 200% of normal damage.
o Critical heals do 150% of normal healing, or 195% with the Touched by the Light
talent.
o Crits are fun (especially with Shield of Righteousness) but crit rating is generally
not an efficient tanking stat. Hit rating is much better, as it increases your threat more
efficiently and makes your threat output more reliable as well.

* Haste Rating
o 32.79 haste rating = 1% haste. This increases autoattack speed by 1%, reduces the
cast time of spells by 1%, and reduces the global cooldown triggered by all spells
(including instant-cast spells) by 1%. This does not affect the global cooldown
triggered by special melee attacks.
o While it's always nice to be swinging faster, this is not very useful for a prot paladin,
since for the most part they're limited by cooldowns on key abilities rather than by the
global cooldown or melee swing speed.
o It is possible that a large amount of haste might reduce the global cooldown enough
to allow a greater variety of ability rotations, and potentially more threat. However,
this seems unlikely to be worthwhile, since prot paladins generally produce plenty of
threat already, and there are other stats that can more efficiently improve threat output.

* Resilience Rating

o 81.97 resilience rating = -1% chance of taking a critical hit with any kind of attack,
and -2% damage done by critical hits against you.
o Resilience is almost exclusively a PvP stat. While resilience is more efficient than
defense for eliminating critical hits (123 points of defense vs 82 points of resilience to
get -1% crit), defense also provides a large amount of avoidance while resilience
doesn't. The reduction in spell crit provided by resilience is useless in PvE because
mobs can't crit with spells, and the reduction in critical damage is meaningless since a
tank will (hopefully!) be immune to crits from mobs in the first place.
o Nonetheless, it may be useful to use resilience for tanking on a situational basis:
+ When first gearing up for serious tanking, resilience gear may be useful as a
temporary stop-gap measure to eliminate crits while you collect gear with enough
defense rating.
+ Fights that require magic resistance may make it more difficult to reach crit-
immunity through defense alone, and a few pieces of PvP gear may be helpful in
keeping crit-immunity.
+ In cases where you need to tank a not-too-dangerous mob early in a fight and then
switch to DPS or healing after that mob dies, PvP gear with high stamina and
resilience may be useful. However, this is a role generally better-suited to a Ret or
Holy paladin than a Prot paladin.

Other Stats

* Armor

o Armor reduces all incoming physical damage. While it does not work on magic
attacks, it is guaranteed to mitigate all incoming physical damage. It does not rely on
"chance" effects like blocking or avoidance, and it works even when you're stunned or
otherwise incapacitated. Armor is your most reliable damage mitigation. The amount
of incoming physical damage mitigated by your armor can be seen by mousing over
the armor stat on your character sheet; this number is usually referred to as the
damage reduction, or DR, and is expressed as a percentage.
o There is some confusion about "diminishing returns" on armor. The DR given by
armor follows a diminishing-return curve, so the higher your DR is, the more armor is
required to increase it by 1%. However, the value of each extra point of DR increases
as your DR increases. For example, consider an attack that does 10,000 physical
damage before armor is considered:
+ If your armor DR is 50% and you increase it to 51%, the damage done by the attack
is reduced from 5,000 to 4,900, a 2% reduction.
+ If your armor DR is 60% and you increase it to 61%, the damage done by the attack
is reduced from 4,000 to 3,900, a 2.5% reduction.
So, even though your DR% will increase more slowly as you add more and more
armor, each extra point of armor is providing roughly the same relative benefit.
Hence, increasing your armor is always worthwhile. (For a more detailed explanation
with math and such, see Quigon's Protection Warrior Guide.)
o The important thing to remember is that while your character sheet shows the
changes in the absolute value of your DR, your healers will see the relative change in
your DR. For example, if you go from 60.0% DR to 64.0% DR, your character sheet
only shows a 4% increase, but your healers will notice you taking 10% less damage.
(Actually they'll see even more than that when blocks are factored in.)
o Shields have a disproportionately large amount of armor compared to other armor
pieces. Hence, almost any shield from a higher tier of loot than the one you currently
have will probably be an upgrade, even if the other stats aren't quite what you'd like.
Even a shield with caster stats on it may be a mitigation upgrade compared to a lower-
tier tanking shield. (Obviously however, you should respect the resto/elemental
shamans and holy paladins in your raid regarding caster shields.)
o There is a cap on armor DR at 75%. However, this value is rarely seen in normal
practice, and can only be achieved through the use of multiple stacked buffs
(Improved Lay on Hands, Inspiration, armor potions, etc). In general, unbuffed armor
DR values for plate-wearing tanks in endgame gear in TBC were between 60% and
65%.
o The following table shows the returns for adding additional armor at a few different
DR levels. Note that the additional reduction in damage taken is always relative to the
current incoming damage (before blocking).
Armor DR% DR% w/ +100 armor DR% w/ +1% armor
16594 50.00% 50.15% (0.30% reduction) 50.25% (0.50% reduction)
24891 60.00% 60.10% (0.25% reduction) 60.24% (0.60% reduction)
38719 70.00% 70.05% (0.18% reduction) 70.21% (0.70% reduction)

* Block Value

o Each point of block value causes your blocks to absorb an extra point of damage,
and causes your Shield of Righteousness to deal an extra point of damage.
o Block value is increased 30% by the Redoubt talent.
o Note that strength also increases block value at a rate of 2 str = 1 blkval. If you're
interested solely in increasing block value, items with direct block value bonuses are
more efficient than items with strength. However, if you're interested in damage
and/or threat generation, strength is more efficient overall since strength increases the
damage done by other abilities as well (via AP). Overall, pieces with both strength
and block value usually give you the most bang for your buck.
o Blocking is the last mitigation effect applied to incoming damage. Since armor is
applied before block value, increases in armor also increase the fraction of total
damage you block as well.
The Hit Table

It's often assumed by casual observers that the different kinds of avoidance are
checked in sequence, e.g. first the server checks to see if the mob misses you; if it
doesn't miss then the server checks to see if you parry; if you don't parry then the
server checks for a dodge, etc. This makes intuitive sense, but it's not the way things
actually work.

What actually happens is the server makes a single "roll of the dice" to determine
what happens on an attack, and all your avoidance chances, as well as your chance to
be crit, are applied at the same time to that one roll. So for example, if a tank is naked
and using a trash can lid as a shield, and has a 5% chance to be missed, 5% chance to
dodge, 5% chance to parry and 5% chance to block, the server constructs a hit table
that looks like this:

01 - 05: miss (5%)

06 - 10: parry (5%)
11 - 15: dodge (5%)
16 - 20: block (5%)
21 - 95: hit (75%)
96 -100: crit (5%)

... and then a single random number between 1 and 100 determines the outcome.

If a tank has a 10% chance to be missed, a 10% chance to dodge, 10% chance to
parry, 10% chance to block, and has enough defense to be immune to critical hits, the
table looks like this:

01 - 10: miss (10%)

11 - 20: parry (10%)
21 - 30: dodge (10%)
31 - 40: block (10%)
41 -100: hit (60%)

If the tank has Holy Shield active, the chance of a block goes up to 40% and the
chance of a regular hit goes down to 30. If the tank has Holy Shield active and
Redoubt procs, the chance of a block is 70%, and it is impossible for an attack to hit
without being blocked.

The important thing to be aware of here is that the more of each kind of avoidance
you have, the more valuable the rest of your avoidance becomes. Every increase in
your chance to parry, dodge, or block comes directly out of your chance to take a hit.

Ok..enough with the numbers..lets talk about threat and tanking

Threat and damage generation

The primary means for generating threat as a paladin tank is the Righteous Fury buff
together with Holy damage. All special attacks for a prot paladin deal holy damage, so
effective threat generation comes down to using the appropriate Holy-damage abilities
for the situation.

Note that in addition to the 90% threat bonus to holy damage, Righteous Fury also
provides a hidden buff that increases all threat you generate by 43%. (This is the same
as reducing everyone else's threat by 30%, which is in fact exactly what it's intended
to do, replacing the old Blessing of Salvation.) This works multiplicatively with the
holy damage threat boost, so in fact Holy damage generates 172% more threat with
Righteous Fury than without. Needless to say, this is a huge difference, and if you try
to tank without Righteous Fury up, you'll notice the difference pretty quickly.

Shield of Righteousness (ShR): A very large amount of single-target damage and

threat for an extremely cheap mana cost. In single-target tanking situations, ShR will
produce by far the largest portion of your threat, and should always be part of your
rotation. In multi-target situations, ShR can be used to boost threat on individual mob
that you may not have locked down. For example, if you pull a pack of 4 mobs with
Avenger's Shield, the one mob that doesn't get hit will reach you first (due to the
snaring effect) and you can compensate for missing it with AS by whacking it with
ShR.

Because it generates a large amount of threat in a single attack, ShR is also excellent
for "burst" threat to quickly pick up individual lose adds and other annoying mobs.
ShR can be invaluable for situations where you need to pick up one and only one
target (for example, when you need to leave other mobs untouched for other tanks to
pick up.)

ShR scales with block value, so adding block value is a good way to boost your threat
and your mitigation at the same time.

The [Glyph of Shield of Righteousness] reduces the mana cost of ShR to next to
nothing. Since mana is rarely an issue when tanking, this is generally not considered
very useful, and there are other glyphs that will give you more value from your major
glyph slots.

Hammer of the Righteous (HotR): Excellent threat against up to 3 mobs at a low

mana cost, or 4 with the major glyph for this ability. Damage per target is not as high
as ShR, but total damage against 3 targets is greater than ShR damage.

In addition to generating significant threat itself, HotR also counts as a weapon attack
against each target for your currently active seal. This is most effective with Seal of
Vengeance, since it allows you to build and maintain full 5-stacks against 3 or more
mobs at once without switching your primary target, but is also handy if you're using
Seal of Wisdom or Seal of Light to regenerate mana/health. Situationally it can even
be useful with Seal of Justice to interfere with caster-type mobs.

HotR will not bounce to crowd-controlled mobs, so you can use it with impunity
around CC, as long as you don't throw it directly at a CC'd target.

Since HotR's damage is dependent only on your weapon dps, it scales with attack
power, and consequently strength. Weapon speed is irrelevant for HotR's direct
damage. The only cases where weapon speed has any bearing on HotR's effect are
when it's used with Seal of Righteousness (which deals damage per swing
proportional to weapon speed) or with Seal of Light, Wisdom, or Justice (which have
a chance to proc proportional to weapon speed). By and large these effects are not
considered worth worrying about, and generally you'll get the highest threat from the
weapon with the highest dps.

Avenger's Shield (AS): Excellent threat against up to 3 mobs at a moderate mana cost.
In general it makes a great tool for pulling packs of mobs, but it can make things
difficult when you only want 1-2 mobs out of a larger group.

The 10-second snare effect is either a blessing or a curse, depending on your point of
view. In the best possible case, it gives your group time to get CC taken care of, with
the bonus that when the CC wears off the mobs are aggro'd on you, and not on the
mage/warlock/whatever. In the worst possible case, it means you stand around for 10
seconds waiting for the mobs to get to you, during which time your ranged dps may
be building threat but you probably aren't.

The Shields of the Templar talent adds a 3-second silence effect to AS. While this is
most useful in PvP, it can also be handy for pulling caster mobs in PvE. Of course, the
mobs will also be snared during the silence, so you probably won't be able to pull
them very far. You can also use this as a spell-interrupt in a pinch.

In situations where you don't want the snare or silence effects and/or you only want
one target, use Exorcism instead.

Like HotR, AS does not bounce to CC'd mobs.

The Glyph of Avenger's Shield doubles its damage but removes the bounce effect,
limiting it to one target. This has situational usefulness, so by all means take it if you
like it and skip it if you don't.

AS scales with both attack power and spell power.

Exorcism: Very good threat against one mob at range, at a moderate mana cost.
Exorcism is a great tool for getting the attention of a single mob, either when
Avenger's Shield is on cooldown, or when the secondary effects of AS are
undesirable. Exorcism always crits against demons and undead.

The Sanctity of Battle Talent increases damage from Exorcism by up to 15 percent.

Holy Shield (HS): Reactive threat and mitigation. The threat from Holy Shield is not
as important as it once was for tanking, but it's still useful as a threat builder, and it
remains an important mitigation tool. Even in pre-raid gear, block values can easily
exceed 1000, which represents a significant chunk of mitigation. Moreover, blocks
generated by Holy Shield will trigger mana returns from Blessing of Sanctuary; it
only takes 1-2 blocks for HS to pay for itself.

HS lasts 10 seconds but has an 8-second cooldown, meaning you can refresh it before
it expires. In single-target situations, it's very rare for all 8 charges to be consumed,
but it does happen on certain fast-hitting bosses. It's more common to use up all the
charges in an AoE-tanking situation, but even with 3-4 mobs you won't often see HS
get used up.

HS damage scales with both attack power and spell power. The amount of damage
absorbed by a block scales with block value (obviously).

Consecration: AoE threat and damage. Affects all mobs within 8 yards of you for 8
seconds, with an 8-second cooldown. This is obviously a great tool for multi-target
tanking, but it's also a decent single-target threat generator, and worth using if you
have the mana for it.

Consecration will break most forms of crowd control (polymorph, sap, ice trap, etc)
so take care with your positioning when consecrating around CC'd mobs.

Consecration continues to "tick" in the same location where you cast it. This can be
useful for pre-consecrating an area that mobs will have to run through, and then
moving elsewhere. The mobs will run through your consecration, take damage, and
run over to you (assuming nobody else has built threat on them). However, it also
means that once you've consecrated, you can't consecrate in another spot for 8
seconds.

The Glyph of Consecration increases its duration by 2 seconds, but also increases its
cooldown by 2 seconds, so it still doesn't allow you to have multiple consecrations up
at one time. The only real benefit from the glyph is that it makes consecration a bit
more mana efficient (you only pay once every 10 seconds instead of once every 8
seconds). Most threat rotations rely on casting Consecration every 9 seconds, so this
glyph is generally not taken by prot paladins.

Consecration scales with attack power and spell power.

Judgements (JoL, JoW, JoJ): Fairly low damage. The main point in judging a mob is
generally not to build threat, but to keep up the JoL or JoW debuff for your group's
benefit. Judgements are part of most standard rotations, but when non-standard threat
abilities become available (e.g., Exorcism) Judgements are usually the first thing
replaced. If other paladins in your group are keeping JoL and JoW up, you can feel
free to ignore judging entirely if you like. (However, you may still need to judge to
keep the Judgements of the Just effect active, if nobody else is providing a substitute
effect, e.g., Thunderclap).

Healing done by JoL scales with attack power and spell power, while the mana
restored by JoW is always 2% of the total mana of the recipient. Since both Ret and
Holy paladins usually have higher AP+SP than Prot paladins, you should have other
paladins do JoL if they're present, while you do JoW or even JoJ.

JoJ is rarely used in PvE, and virtually never in tanking. The only real use is for
preventing trash mobs from "fleeing in fear", but there are many other tools for
handling fleeing mobs, and mobs in raids almost never do this anyway.
Damage from judgements scales with attack power and spell power.

Seal of Vengeance/Corruption (SoV): This is generally considered the premier tanking

seal, since a full stack deals more damage than SoR, and it can be kept active on
multiple targets at the same time, especially with HotR.

The DoT will continue to tick for 15 seconds after the last time it was refreshed
(melee or HotR hit). This can be very useful for mobs that have a threat-wiping
ability. It also means that you don't lose any substantial dps/threat from the seal when
your melee attacks are avoided. On the downside, the DoT nature of the damage
means that Reckoning will have very little effect on SoV damage. (However, even if
you do have Reckoning, SoV is still better for threat than SoR.)

The Glyph of Seal of Vengeance adds 10 expertise when SoV is active (-2.5% chance
to be dodged or parried, so this means your chance to hit goes up 5%). This applies to
melee attacks and to HotR (parries of HotR will show up as "deflected" but it's the
same thing). Although not hitting doesn't cost you very much in threat when you're
using SoV, getting parried still has the undesirable effect of speeding up your target's
next autoattack.

Seal of Righteousness (SoR): In most situations this seal is less effective than SoV,
but it can be useful for situations with fast-dying mobs that don't give you time to
build a full SoV stack. Effectively, SoR sacrifices steady threat for "up-front" threat;
you may prefer to start a fight with SoR to help establish threat quickly and then
switch to SoV for the long haul.

The Glyph of Seal of Righteousness increases the damage done by the seal by 10%.
While this is a nice effect for times when you're using SoR, you won't be using SoR
often enough to make this worth using a major glyph slot.

Seal of Blood/of the Martyr (SoB): Rarely used for tanking due to low threat and the
recoil effect. Can be handy for tanking instances you outgear since the extra mana
from healing SoB recoil will be helpful.

Now you know what your basic-threat-abilities are. But how to use them?

Ability rotations

Because most of the abilities used in tanking are instant-cast spells that have
cooldowns and trigger the global cooldown, it's natural to set up a rotation that allows
you to maximize your activity in a stretch of time and lets you stay active without
waiting on cooldowns to finish. nBy far the most common rotation is to interweave 6-
second cooldowns and 9-second cooldowns; this rotation is variously known as 6/9,
696969, or other combinations of those two digits.

The 6-second cooldowns are Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous.
Since the global cooldown is just a little less than 1.5 seconds, we can say that these
spells have a cooldown 4 GCDs long. So if we lay out the rotation in GCDs, with one
slot for each GCD, we can rotate these two spells like this:
(ShR) ____ (HotR) ____ (ShR) ____ (HotR) ____ (ShR) ____ (HotR) ____ ...

The 9-second cooldown abilities are Holy Shield, Consecration, and Judgement. Holy
Shield and Consecration actually have 8-second cooldowns, but Holy Shield lasts 10
seconds so it's fine to let it spend a second off cooldown each cycle. Judgements have
a 10-second cooldown by default, so one point in the Improved Judgements talent is
needed to bring the cooldown down th 9 second. A 9 second cooldown is six GCDs,
so we can thread these three spells into the rotation above like this:

(ShR) HS (HotR) Cons (ShR) Judge (HotR) HS (ShR) Cons (HotR) Judge ...

While the cycle looks complicated, it's easy to maintain once it's going. With a good
display of cooldowns, you should see each ability finishing its cooldown just slightly
before its spot in the rotation. I recommend setting up your hotkeys in a way that
makes it easy to move your fingers through the cycle. (For example, I use 1-2-3 for
the 9-second CDs, Q for ShR, and E for HotR. This lets me cycle easily through the 9-
second cooldowns on one row of the keyboard and the 6-second cooldowns on
another row, all within reach of the hand on the movement keys.)

An important thing to remember is that you shouldn't stick rigidly to the cycle if you
need to do something else. Because it's easy to generate a large amount of threat when
you need to, you'll often be tanking with a comfortable threat lead. If you're in that
situation, and you need to do something else like cleanse, use a Hand spell, switch
seals, or whatever, go ahead and do that and get back to the rotation afterwards. The
rotation is meant to be something you can default to when you have nothing else to
do, not something that you stick to all the time no matter what.

On a personal note. I am not that much a fan of the 9-6-9 rotation. I use whatever i
can to get threat. Although it is helpful to use your cd's to the max, always judge for
yourself what you need to get threat on a mob or boss asap.

Ok...next step...what Talents do i pick?

Talents

At the level of difficulty this guide is aimed at (heroics and upwards), any serious tank
will have at least 51 points in Protection -- quite often more -- and at least 6 points in
Retribution for Deflection and 1/2 Improved Judgements. Beyond that, opinions vary.
Most builds go with at least 53 points in Protection to pick up every talent in the sixth
tier and deeper (except perhaps the second point in Spiritual Attunement), and then
use the remaining points to fill in personal preferences or raid needs.

This spec represents the talents generally considered "required" for tanking, with the
remaining 12 points being fairly flexible and subject to personal preferences or the
needs of specific encounters.

Protection

Divinity: Opinions vary on how useful this talent will ultimately turn out to be. It's
certainly an increase to the amount of healing your healers can do to you, but it's not
clear how useful this will be (a lot depends on how much future content stresses
healers). One thing that's clear is that this talent will be more effective for a main tank
than an off-tank, since the MT generally has more healers assigned.

Obviously if you're forced to heal on some encounters, this talent has extra value. In
theory, it should affect self-healing effects twice (since it's healing done by you to
you) for a total of slightly more than 10% extra healing from healthstones, potions,
bandages, Seal of Light, and Lay on Hands (which probably won't matter since LoH
already heals you for 100% of your health.) (Poster qixxin has verified that this talent
affects self-heals twice, including all of the above-listed effects.)

Divine Strength: This is a staple tanking talent; strength is a primary threat stat as well
as a moderate defensive stat. Take this before Divinity; it belongs in any serious
tanking build.

Stoicism: This is generally considered a PvP talent. Stuns do happen in PvE, but not
frequently enough to merit this talent, and dispel effects are even rarer in PvE. Still, it
may be useful on some specific encounters.

Guardian's Favor: Also a mostly-PvP talent. If you find yourself with Hand of
Protection constantly on cooldown and wishing you could use it more often, then pick
this up. Otherwise skip it.

Anticipation: This is a must-have tanking talent. Not only does dodging save you
damage, it also restores mana through Blessing of Sanctuary. This talent does not
suffer from diminishing returns and doesn't contribute to diminishing returns on
dodge from gear: Your dodge chance will always be 5% higher with this talent than
without it.

Improved Righteous Fury: Essentially required. You'll always have RF up when

tanking, so this is basically a permanent 6% across-the-board damage reduction.

Toughness: Another must-have talent. A 10% boost to your armor value is roughly a
5% reduction in physical damage taken before blocking is considered, and effectively
a larger reduction in post-blocking damage. The reduction in snare duration is also
more useful than you might expect, since many mobs will use rooting or slowing
effects.

Divine Sacrifice: Using this while tanking is usually not a good idea, since you don't
want to increase the damage you're taking, but this can be a useful ability during off-
tanking situations, or during phases of a fight in which you aren't tanking anything.
It's especially useful in conjunction with Divine Shield, since the two abilities
together simply cause all the absorbed damage to go away. Divine Sacrifice can only
absorb a total of 150% of your health in damage before expiring. However it appears
this is a limit on the damage dealt to you, not the damage saved on other people, so
using this while Divine Shield is active will keep it up for its full duration no matter
how much damage it sucks up. Also note that the damage transferred preserves its
type (physical, holy, fire, etc) so you can resist it as normal, and if you have Divine
Sacrifice and Hand of Protection active on yourself at the same time, physical damage
absorbed will go away and not count towards "overloading" Divine Sacrifice.

Divine Guardian: The increase in effectiveness for Divine Sacrifice is nice, and if you
use Divine Sacrifice with an immunity effect it represents a pure gain in the amount
of damage you divert. As of the 3.1 patch, multiple Sacred Shields can be active on a
single target if they have different levels of this talent. Since most Holy paladins don't
have Divine Guardian, this talent allows you to stack your Sacred Shield with a Holy
paladin's. The increase in duration applies to both the Sacred Shield spell itself (60s
duration with the talent instead of 30) and to the shield effect it creates (12s instead of
6). A new shield "proc" while an old shield is active will simply refresh the effect, but
will not stack. So in addition to making your Sacred Shield more powerful, it also
reduces the busywork involved in keeping it active. The combined effects make this a
very nice talent.

Improved Hammer of Justice: Judgements of the Just will already reduce your HoJ
cooldown from 60 seconds to 40, so if you have that talent (which you should) this
talent will further reduce the cooldown to 20 seconds. Whether this is useful depends
a lot on your playstyle; some tanks love to use HoJ as a stun and an interrupt
frequently on adds and trash, and some almost never use it. Basically, if you find HoJ
is always on cooldown when you want to use it, this is the talent for you; otherwise
spend the points on something else. (Personally I'm finding HoJ extremely useful in
Ulduar in a number of situations.)

Improved Devotion Aura: Strongly recommended. Devotion Aura is the aura of

choice for tanking things that hit hard, and the extra 600 armor at level 80 is not
insignificant. Moreover, this helps other tanks as well, and the healing bonus helps
healers no matter who they're healing. This is one of the talents that you'll generally
be expected to bring to a raid.

Blessing of Sanctuary: Core tanking ability and required for other core tanking
abilities. As of the 3.1 patch, this does not stack with the effect of the priest Renewed
Hope talent (which also reduces incoming damage by 3% on the entire raid), so if you
have a Discipline priest in the raid the only person who's really going to benefit from
this blessing is you. This can be extremely annoying if you have 3 or fewer paladins
in the raid. (Note, this will be changed in 3.2 where BoS will also gain a 10 % stamina
increase)

Reckoning: This is a lot less useful than it was in TBC for three reasons. First, melee
attacks and seals are a much smaller fraction of threat generation than they used to be.
Second, now that SoV is the premier tanking seal, the extra swings have very little
effect beyond the extra white damage. Third, one of the virtues of Reckoning in TBC
was that it worked with two-handed weapons as well as one-handers, but WotLK prot
paladins do far more dps with a one-hander and shield than they ever could with a
two-hander.

Reckoning can still be handy for soloing/leveling/questing, where you'll be using SoR
or SoW while fighting multiple mobs at a time, but it doesn't do much for tanking.
And since it's easy to spend 25 talent points in the first five tiers on core tanking
talents, it's not a useful point-soaking talent either.

Sacred Duty: Must-have. An 8% stamina increase for two talent points is a

ridiculously good value. The cooldown reduction on the bubbles is just icing on the
cake.

One-Hand Specialization: Strongly, strongly recommended. Since you'll always be

using a one-hander and shield (see comments for Reckoning) this is a permanent 10%
damage increase. It's true that threat generation is not difficult these days, but burst
threat is still quite important. And if your dps is about half of what the dps'ers in your
raid are putting out, then this is still equivalent to a 5% damage increase for one of
them, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Spiritual Attunement: This talent provides mana that scales with the damage you take
(provided you're getting healed, of course). With the new refreshing effect on Divine
Plea, this talent is of debatable value. On the minus side, if you can keep DP up near-
permanently you'll probably never notice this talent. On the plus side, keeping DP up
permanently is one more thing you have to actively manage, whereas Spiritual
Attunement is entirely passive so it can be a good value if you often find yourself too
busy to pay attention to Divine Plea.

Holy Shield: Must-have, obviously. If you think you won't need Holy Shield for what
you're doing, you're in the wrong tree to begin with.

Ardent Defender: Opinions differ on the value of this, but most serious tanks consider
it well worth the points. Critics points out that the talent can be "leapfrogged" (that is,
it only activates after the blow that takes you below 35%) and that if you're falling
below the threshold regularly it's probably a sign that you should talk to your healers.

My view is that the proverbial shit happens; even the best healers are going to
occasionally have to run out of a fire, or have a momentary lag hiccup, or get
distracted by their spouses/children/pets, or whatever, and AD is potentially a
lifesaver in those situations. Also, many bosses have burst damage abilities that are
designed to push you down to low health, and AD helps you survive the next few
small attacks before heals can land (consider Maexxna's web-wrap.) Considering that
your death will frequently mean a raid wipe, I'd say this is a pretty important talent
even if it's less than perfect, and a very good value for 3 talent points.

Redoubt: Must-have. This is worthwhile for the increased block value alone, but the
proc effect can also be nice if you don't have enough avoidance to block all hits with
Holy Shield alone, or if you're tanking multiple mobs and your Holy Shield charges
are getting used up frequently.

Combat Expertise: Also a must-have. The extra stamina alone is worth the price of
admission, but the expertise gives a little extra threat and mitigation, and even if you
can't rely on crits for threat they're still fun. (Note that as of the 3.1 patch, this also
affects spells.)

Touched by the Light: Another must-have. The spellpower from this talent adds rather
substantially to your threat. The crit healing effect has nothing to do with tanking,
obviously, but it's still nice for situations where you're forced to heal -- even if that
means nothing more than soloing.

Avenger's Shield: Must-have.

Guarded by the Light: Must-have. This talent allows you to keep Divine Plea active
permanently while tanking or dps'ing, and a 6% reduction in magic damage is nothing
to sneeze at.

Shield of the Templar: Must-have. Ridiculously good for many reasons.

Judgements of the Just: The increase in SoJ stun duration is mostly a PvP effect, and
the reduced HoJ cooldown is nice if you're a frequent HoJ user. However, the real
importance of this talent is the slowing effect, which is a substitute for Thunderclap or
the druid/DK equivalents. You'll want this effect up in some form anytime you're
tanking something serious. Bosses have special attacks on cooldowns that aren't
affected by this, so a 20% reduction in attack speed isn't a 20% reduction in damage
taken, but it's still a significant benefit.

The question that gets asked frequently is whether there's any reason to take this talent
if you know you're going to regularly have a prot warrior, feral druid, or frost DK in
your raids. The answer (in my opinion, anyway) is yes. Raids frequently have to split
up, with tanks in different areas where they can't debuff each other's mobs. The value
of JotJ is that it's yours, and you will always have it on whatever you are tanking,
even if your prot warrior is on the other side of the room. Unless you're customizing
your spec for a specific fight where you know this won't be a problem, it's best just to
take this.

Hammer of the Righteous: Must-have.

Retribution

Deflection: Must-have for tanking. Like Anticipation, this doesn't have anything to do
with diminishing returns; it's always worth exactly 5%, and parries provide mana
through Blessing of Sanctuary.

Benediction: All tanking spells are instant-cast, so this basically stretches your mana
bar 10% further. Generally speaking, mana shouldn't be a significant enough issue
when tanking to make this talent really necessary. If you've got 2/2 Spiritual
Attunement and you're still frequently running low on mana, you might want to invest
some points here, but otherwise it's probably not worth it.

Improved Judgement: One point is a must-have because the optimal ability rotations
require a judgement every 9 seconds.. The second point is a matter of personal taste.

Heart of the Crusader: Not a tanking talent, but if you run with a smaller group and
don't have a Ret paladin, this can be a nice dps boost for the raid.

Improved Blessing of Might: Also not a tanking talent. However, depending on the
composition of your raid you may find yourself often casting BoM on melee dps and
hunters. If so, this can be a nice dps boost for them.

Conviction: Not really necessary in any way, but big ShR crits can be a lot of fun if
you have the points to blow. Also effects spells, so this can be handy if you end up
healing frequently. Once your gear reaches the Naxx-25 level of better, this is worth
(slightly) more dps per point than Seals of the Pure.

Pursuit of Justice: Very very nice to have if you can get it. Tanking frequently
involves moving, repositioning mobs, dodging fire, etc, and a permanent run-speed
bonus is a very nice thing. PvE mobs also often have disarm abilities, and the
reduction in duration is nice since you can't HotR while disarmed. This talent doesn't
stack with gear enchants that do the same things.

Sanctified Battle: A nice talent if you're this deep in Ret. One point in this is always
better than one point in Conviction, since it does everything Conviction does and
more.

Crusade: This talent is a flat 3% damage increase, and against many many raid mobs a
6% increase. Nice if you can get it.

Holy

Seals of the Pure: This is not a huge increase in damage, but it's not trivial either.
Once you get to the Naxx25 gear level, this talent is slightly inferior to Conviction
point-for-point. The only reason to get it is if you want to unlock the deeper tiers of
Holy.

Unyielding Faith: Not a huge deal, but it's nice, and if you're here anyway with points
to burn it's not a bad choice.

Aura Mastery: Note that the doubling effect doesn't apply to talents that improve
auras; hence if you use it with Devotion Aura for example, you'll only get the base
1205 extra armor, even if you have the Improved Devotion Aura talent. Still handy as
a kind of weak shieldwall that can also help other tanks.

Improved Lay on Hands: This is a very nice talent from a tanking perspective. With
full talent points, it's a 50% buff to armor during the duration, which is roughly a 25%
reduction in all physical damage taken. Effectively this turns LoH into a kind of
stackable mini-shieldwall. With the appropriate glyph you can reduce the cooldown to
11 minutes, and it can be cast on other tanks as well. Potentially very useful if you
find yourself in need of another damage-reduction or instant-healing cooldown.

So, you read all the basic info and decided to make a tankpala. What to do from
lvl 70 to 80?

Quick and Dirty guide to getting level 80 gear

This is a list aimed at tanks starting leveling in Northrend who need to put together a
set of tanking gear quickly, but can also be useful for people looking for pieces in a
slot or two. All the items listed here are blue quality, and can be obtained through
quests, reputation, or crafting. Drops are not included because the intent is to give a
list of gear that can be obtained quickly.

1. Starting at 71-74, do all Wyrmrest quests at the Wyrmrest temple. Once you've
completed these, purchase a Wyrmrest Accord tabard and put it on. (Don't let the first
level 80 instance catch you by surprise.) Continue wearing the tabard, and do the daily
quest at Wyrmrest temple every day as you level until you reach at least Revered with
the Wyrmrest Accord.
2. At level 74, get yourself a [Tempered Saronite Belt] off the Auction House or have
someone make you one. Buy and attach an [Eternal Belt Buckle] to it, and socket it
with a [Thick Sun Crystal] for a total of 69 defense rating. Optionally, purchase other
pieces in the Tempered Saronite "set" to use as leveling gear or as fallback pieces in
case you can't get one of the recommended items before you start raiding or doing
heroics.
3. Head to Zul'Drak as soon as you can. (level 74 or so) and find a partner to do the
"Wanted: Ragemane's Flipper" quest at given the first Argent Crusade camp. Get
[Crescent of Brooding Fury] for completing the quest.
4. Still in Zul'Drak, follow quests to Argent Stand (the major Argent Crusade base in
the zone). Do quests there to improve your Argent Crusade rep, including the dailies.
Continue to do these daily quests every day as you level until you reach Revered with
the Argent Crusade. (There are more quests that give Argent Crusade rep than
Wyrmrest rep, so don't take off the Wyrmrest tabard until you're finished with
Wyrmrest rep.)
5. Move back to the west edge of Zul'Drak and do the quests from the Argent Crusade
Forward Camp for more AC rep. Also do Stefan's quests from Ebon Watch to acquire
[Betrayer's Choker]. Socket it with a [Thick Sun Crystal] for a total of 29 defense
rating.
6. When you reach an appopriate level (76-ish) start keeping your eyes open for a
Gundrak group to complete the "For Posterity" quest and get [Solid Platinum Band].
7. When you go to train at level 77, get a [Saronite Bulwark] off the Auction House.
8. When you go to train at level 78, get some [Daunting Handguards] off the Auction
House. Once back in Northrend, go to Wyrmrest Temple and purchase [Cloak of
Peaceful Resolutions], and then go to the Argent Crusade camp in the southeast corner
of Icecrown and purchase [Special Issue Legplates]. Apply a [Jormungar Leg Armor]
to the legplates and socket them with a [Stalwart Huge Citrine] for a total of 87
defense rating..
Also buy an Argent Crusade tabard and have it handy to switch when you do this.
9. Starting at level 78, keep your eyes peeled for groups for Halls of Stone to do the
Brann Bronzebeard event and get [Pauldrons of Reconnaissance], and for an Oculus
group to do the quests inside for [Bracers of Reverence].
10. Optionally, also keep your eyes peeled for Utguard Pinnacle groups; the instance
will give you Rep with whatever faction's tabard you're wearing, and the plate chest
reward from the quest in the instance is a useful intermediate and backup piece if you
have trouble completing Wyrmrest rep.
11. Starting from the Argent Crusade camp where you purchased the legplates and
tabard, complete the quest chain given by Tirion Fordring through the building of the
new tower, and obtain [The Crusader's Resolution].
12. Follow the breadcrumb quests to your faction's airship and do quests for
Thassarian (Alliance) or Koltira Deathweaver (Horde) to establish the new Ebon
Blade base at the Shadow Vault. If/when you reach Honored, purchase [Toxin-
Tempered Sabatons].
13. When you reach Revered with the Argent Crusade, purchase [Arcanum of the
Stalwart Protector] and apply it to your helm.
14. When you reach level 80 and Revered with the Wyrmrest Accord, purchase
[Breastplate of the Solemn Council].
15. As soon as possible, go to K3 in Storm Peaks and follow the chain starting with
the quest "They Took Our Men!" until you get access to the Hodir quartermaster.
Then begin working on dailies and other quests until you reach at least Honored with
the Sons of Hodir and purchase [Lesser Inscription of the Pinnacle] and apply it to
your tanking shoulders. This does not need to be done to become uncrittable with the
recommended set if you follow the instructions, but you should start on it as soon as
you can find the time in order to work your way up to Exalted for the epic inscription.

16. If you have not already, obtain the following enchants:

* A +12 defense rating enchant to cloak.
* A +22 defense rating enchant to chest.
* A +40 stamina enchant to bracers.
* A +20 hit rating enchant to gloves
* A +22 stamina enchant to boots.
* A [Titanium Weapon Chain] to weapon.
* A +20 defense rating enchant to shield.
In total, you should have an additional 54 defense rating from enchants.

Alternatives:

1. [Blade of the Empty Void] from a quest chain at Ebon Hold involving the nearbly
Vykrul village. (Lose 7 defense rating.)
2. [Reinforced Titanium Neckguard] from quests against the Scarlet Onslaught.
Requires a group to finish the chain. (Gain 9 defense rating.)
3. [Tempered Saronite Shoulders], crafted. You may actually prefer these outright.
(Lose 14 defense rating.)
4. [Daunting Legplates], craftable. (Gain 13 defense rating accounting for the lost
gem.)
5. [Tempered Saronite Bracers], crafted. (Gain 14 defense rating.)
6. [Tempered Saronite Helm], crafted. (Gain 23 defense rating.)
7. [Silver-Plated Battlechest]: From the "Junk in My Trunk" quest in Utguard
Pinnacle. (Lose 2 defense rating.) Also [Tempered Saronite Breastplate], crafted.
(Lose 20 defense rating)

If you've obtained all the recommended except the Sons of Hodir inscription, you'll
have 705 defense rating, which is 16 more than required to be uncrittable. Depending
on exactly what items you end up with you may have to alter your gems a bit, but it
should be possible to make a viable tanking set from just about any combination of
recommended and alternate items.

Ok, you got the gear now..but..what professions to pick?

Good professions for tanking:

* Jewelcrafting: 33 direct itemization points from Dragon's Eye gems

* Engineering: 800 armor at the cost of a glove enchant (net gain of approx 40
itemization points, but only if you like armor)
* Blacksmithing: 32 itemization points in extra gem slots
* Alchemy: Variable depending on consumables used; max of approximately 34
itemization points (with Stoneblood Flask)
* Inscription: 32 dodge rating
* Leatherworking: +50 stamina (approximately 33 itemization points)
* Mining: +50 stamina (approximately 33 itemization points)
* Enchanting: +48 stamina (approximately 32 itemization points)

Horrible professions for tanking:

* Herbalism: Small self-heal

* Skinning: Crit rating
* Tailoring: Useless cloak enchants

As long as you avoid herbalism, skinning, and tailoring, you can't really go wrong.
Jewelcrafting, blacksmithing, and alchemy all offer solid and flexible buffs.
Engineering offers the most interesting "bag of tricks" if you're the kind of player who
enjoys playing with in-game toys, and the glove armor patch is quite good if you like
armor as a stat. If you want a gathering profession, make it Mining.

You got the gear, you got the professions...last thing you need is Glyphs

Glyphs

Major

There are a number of useful major glyphs for tanking, and the exact set that's best for
you comes down to personal preference and the types of encounters and roles you end
up seeing.

Must Have

[Glyph of Divine Plea]: Since the Guarded by the Light talent allows you to keep
Divine Plea active full-time as long as you're hitting something, this glyph effectively
amounts to a flat 3% reduction to all incoming damage. This is probably the only
glyph universally considered a "must-have" for tanking.

Good and/or Situationally Useful

[Glyph of Seal of Vengeance]: 10 expertise (not 10 expertise rating) decreases your

chance to be dodged and parried by 2.5% each, potentially increasing your chance to
hit a mob by up to 5% if you're not already at the dodge cap. Against a boss this is of
debatable value; since Seal of Vengeance is a countinuous damage-over-time effect
your threat doesn't really suffer from a miss, but on the other hand reducing a boss's
opportunity to parry your attacks can help prevent damage bursts.

Against groups of mobs, this glyph can often be very handy, especially in the case of
trying to initially pick them up with HotR. HotR can be dodged or parried
("deflected") so this glyph can potentially make the difference when you're trying to
get that first hit in on a mob.

[Glyph of Righteous Defense]: Handy in multi-mob situations, especially if you don't

have much hit gear. Against bosses this is somewhat less useful than you might
imagine; most bosses that require heavy use of taunting have artificially low resist
rates.

[Glyph of Salvation]: Useful if you need another damage-reduction cooldown.

Obviously using Hand of Salvation as a mini-shieldwall will cost you threat, so make
sure you're running with a good threat lead.

[Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous]: Good if you frequently find yourself managing
crowds.

[Glyph of Hammer of Justice]: Situationally this can be very useful, especially if

you're specced into the 20-second cooldown on HoJ and frequently find yourself
dealing with stunnable or interruptable mobs.

[Glyph of Avenger's Shield]: This is a matter of personal preference. I've never been
interested, but if you'd prefer to have a stronger ranged threat burst on one target, then
by all means go for it.

Avoid

[Glyph of Consecration]: The cooldown increase that comes with this glyph will
screw up a standard 6/9 rotation. (The glyph is intended for Ret paladins to reduce
their cooldown-collision issues and improve their mana efficiency.)

[Glyph of Exorcism]: Exorcism doesn't usually figure into the standard Prot rotation.
This glyph will increase your ranged burst threat, but it's not a significant enough
effect to warrant using a major glyph slot.

[Glyph of Judgement]: Prot paladin judgements don't do enough damage to make this
worthwhile. (Another glyph intended for Ret, since their judgements -- Blood and
Command -- have a weapon-damage component and do much more damage.)

[Glyph of Seal of Righteousness]: Seal of Vengeance is almost always preferred as a

tanking seal. Even in those rare situations where SoR is preferable, the damage buff
from this glyph is not enough to make it worthwhile.

[Glyph of Spiritual Attunement]: This is worth 40% of one talent point in SA. If
you're at 1/2 SA and having mana problems, the first thing you should do is respec
and pick up that second point. If you're at 2/2 SA and still having mana issues, it's
unlikely that going from 10% to 12% is going to fix them, and you should probably
take a closer look at how you're managing your mana usage, Divine Plea, etc.

[Glyph of Turn Evil]: Primarily a PvP glyph. If you're relying on Turn Evil frequently
for crowd control in PvE, then perhaps this is worthwhile, but offhand I don't see how
that would happen.

Minor

While the question with major glyphs is "which three should I choose?", the question
for minor glyphs is "how many of these are actually useful?" (The answer: not many.)

Take because they're useful

[Glyph of Sense Undead]: A 1% damage increase against a specific mob type may not
sound great, but it's a pretty good deal for a minor glyph, especially since one of the
major raid instances (Naxxramas) is chock full of undead.

[Glyph of Lay on Hands]: Reducing the cooldown of a potentially lifesaving spell fro
20 minutes to 15 minutes is a nice effect.

Take because it's convenient

[Glyph of Blessing of Kings]: Once you start raiding you'll discover how tiny your
mana bar is compared to the buffs you have to cast after every wipe. Well, that's what
this glyph is for! Anytime you can claim BoK duty in a raid, this glyph will allow you
to buff the entire raid, cast Righteous Fury, and activate your seal without having to
drink!

Don't take because you'll never use them

[Glyph of Blessing of Might]

[Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom]

Just shoot me now

[Glyph of the Wise]

I know this is a lot of info..if you made it this far...GZ...you are on your way to
become a tankpala