Proposal of a new Paladin build: Vampiric Paladin
---------- INDEX
1. INTRODUCTION..
2. GEAR AND PLAYSTYLE.
3. SEALS, JUDGEMENT, AND WEAPON ENCHANT.
4. TALENTS AND GLYPHS.
5. SUMMARY.
1. INTRODUCTION
Greetings, I'm Koldwen. Althought I'm not a main tank, nor a main paladin, I've been playing around with them for a long time trying the most common tank builds and trying to find new ones that can be equally good or better (or at least viable).
I've always enjoyed the gameplay style of block-based tanks (warrior, paladin), but I also found pretty fun and useful the self-healing of a DK. I always thought that a DK with shield and some block mechanics would be great, but unfortunately DKs can't equip shields and the self-healing that other tanks can provide is not that great to be considered a reliable "defensive".
However, Paladins talents and abilities are quite diverse, offering pretty much anything you want. You can use seals and judgements to regenerate mana, deal damage or... regenerate life.
While I always thought that Paladin self-healing is something pretty useful while leveling, never considered it a viable option for raids because the lack of aggro or the poor healing that it provides. Taking a closer look to how mechanics and abilities worked, I started to change my mind and I highly believe that I've found a new viable self-healing Paladin build.
Note that this build might have been tested and tried before, but I'm not aware of that and for that reason I apologize for my ignorance. Otherwise, I present you my "Vampiric Paladin" build, based around the idea of the DKs self-healing while providing everything that a Paladin can offer.
Also note that this is pretty much my first "guide" (this is not a guide, but a proposal) and I don't really know how to stylize forum posts, so I'll try to make it as cleaner as possible.
2. GEAR AND PLAYSTYLE.
To make it clear, this build does not change how you play a Paladin or how you equip it. You gear the same as the common protection paladin build, and your rotation is also the same. What this build really changes is the philosophy behind what you are building.
With the classic paladin build (0/52/19 variations) you focus on increasing your aggro so your hardcore dps can keep pumping. To achieve that, you even ignore talents like Divinity, and you use dps seals like Seal of Corruption or Seal of Command. You even go for %crit to get that extra aggro on your target.
While this is a nice build that yields goods results, it completely ignores someting very important: You don't really have to worry about aggro unless you are playing in a highly competitive enverionment, or you are undergeared compared to your dps.
This means that most people will pick this build just because "it is the best" without really understanding why do you even go for dps talents as a tank. Most dps in pugs or even in guilds are fairly low (or at least not hight enough to worry about aggro), as I've experienced many times. Even with an undergeared tank I've been able to hold aggro of very well-geared dps just because they can't do that much dps (whether because they are just being lazy, gentle, or simply don't know their class).
Most of you may think that this is not a problem, but actually it is. Your first and more important job as a tank is being alive, if you can hold aggro without the dps talents then you should focus on survability instead of getting that extra aggro that you don't even need. This is exactly what this build does: Focus on survability. While it is true that your aggro output will be lower (I still haven't calculated how much), it will be still good enough to tank without problems in almost any raid group.
This build is intended to be useful in progression where your tanks are still getting hit very hard and you have to be very careful about your damage income, for soloing content, or simply for fun (if you like the idea of being a Paladin while having the self-healing mechanic of a DK).
3. SEALS, JUDGEMENT, AND WEAPON ENCHANT.
---------- 3.1. SEAL
This build revolves around the use of Seal of Light. Yes, you've read it well, Seal of Light (https://wotlk.evowow.com/?spell=20165). You are probably thinking right now "How am I supposed to hold aggro with a non-dps seal?", but I will explain you why this seal is tricky and can be actually used to generate a fairly good amount of aggro, both for aoe and single target.
Have you ever wondered why, sometimes, your healer takes aggro from you? Thats because almost all healing abilities generate aggro. This aggro is usually so low that healers never have to worry about it unless your tank is sleeping or they are healing gods. This is also the case for the healing that you recieve with Seal of Light: Each time it procs, you generate aggro for EVERY enemy, as it is a heal.
This, itself, is not enough to hold aggro, but here's the tricky part: the heal is also from the holy school. This means that Righteous Fury (https://wotlk.evowow.com/?spell=25780) will increase its aggro by 80%.
You may still be wondering "Well, it's true that it generates aggro, but it still not enough because it doesn't proc that much", and you are right. This itself is not enough to make a decent amount of aggro or generate a noticeable self-healing. However the seal have a very high proc rate (20 PPM), and it also procs from any melee damaging ability.
This means that it not only procs from our AA, but also from some of our abilities, increasing a lot the number of healings and, therefore, your threat (both for AoE and single target). It can even proc several times with one single Hammer of the Righteous (https://wotlk.evowow.com/spell=53595), increasing A LOT your self-healing and threat. Now everything is starting to make sense, isn't it?
Aside from using this seal, you should try to use the slowest weapon you have, since this procs is PPM based. This means that using a slower weapon will make it more likely to proc from your damaging melee abilities and AA (you'll understand this in the TALENTS section).
---------- 3.2. JUDGEMENT
The judgement you use isn't very important because in a raid you'll have, at least, 2 paladins (enough to have both judgements). However, you should always try to use Judgement of Light, because:
1. This judgement should never fall of from bosses.
2. You can switch targets and still hit an enemy with the Judgement of Light on, allowing you to heal yourself more.
If, for some reason, you have mana issues, consider using Judgement of Wisdom.
One important note is that ability works similar to Seal of Light: It can procs from both AA and melee damaging abilities, and it is PPM based. However, these healings WON'T INCREASE YOUR THREAT.
Only with Seal of Light and Judgement of Light alone you can heal yourself a farily decent amount, but believe me, it gets better.
---------- 3.3. WEAPON ENCHANT
Here you can use whatever you like, because weapon enchants are not that good unless you are a DK. You can go for Mongoose if you are comfortable with it, or go for Lifeward (https://www.wowhead.com/spell=44576/lifeward) or Blood Draining (https://www.wowhead.com/item=46348/f...blood-draining) for the "build fantasy".
- Lifeward is a PPM (around 3.5, some say) weapon enchant that heals around 400 per proc, and being able to crit. It can also proc from damaging abilities, and can proc several times from a single ability (like HotR).
- Blood Draining is also a PPM (around 4, some say) weapon enchant that puts a buff on you that can stack up to 5 times. Once you fall below 35%, the buff is consumed and you get healed based on the amount of stacks (up to 2k, being able to crit). It takes around 40s to get all stacks.
Lifeward will help you better in AoE situations and will be always there, but its healing is quite poor and it will usually heal you when "you don't need it". Its like having a HoT on you.
Blood Draining will help you better in single target and will only be useful in situations where there is some serious damage (aka, Boss fights). It will always heal you "when you need it the most", but nothing else.
Overall, Lifeward will provide more healing that Blood Draining and will help you in every situation, "flattening" all incoming damage. I recommend Lifeward, as it also way cheaper than Blood Draining.
4. TALENTS AND GLYPHS.
---------- 4.1. TALENTS
They key concepts of this build are:
1. Seal of Light generate threat (both for single target and AoE) and proc from AA and any melee damaging ability.
2. Seal of Light proc is PPM based.
3. Judgement of Light proc from AA and any melee damaging ability.
4. Judgement of Light proc is PPM based.
5. Lifeward and Blood Draining can proc from AA and any melee damaging ability.
6. Lifeward and Blood Draining proc is PPM based.
This means that:
1. Using slower weapons will highly increase your self-healing (from your melee damaging abilities).
2. Getting extra strikes outside of your AA will also highly increase your self-healing.
3. The more you heal yourself, the more threat you generate on every single enemy.
4. Any healing buff will increase your threat.
With that in mind, this is the talents that this build use: https://wotlk.evowow.com/?talent#sZE...sIufzxf:pjkczm
As you can see, its not very different from the classic protadin pve build. However, here's the following changes and why:
1. We pick Divinity because it will increase all your healing recieved (from either healers or your self-healing), increase survavility and threat.
2. We pick Reckoning to get extra AAs, increasing our self-healing and threat.
If you know about parry-haste, you are probably thinking that taking Reckoning is a terrible idea, but that is only an excuse for lazy, or naive, players. Not all bosses have parry-haste enabled, and you can use macros to remove Reckoning while using your normal rotation when you face a parry-haste boss. You can even use your second spec to completely remove this talent while maintining everything else.
Sure, maybe the planets align and there will be a fraction of second where Reckoning is active, in that fraction of second you hit the boss, and it parry-haste twice killing you in a fatal blow because you don't have Ardent Defender, but the odds of that happening are so low that its pointless to even consider it. It could also happen that, without Reckoning, the boss parry-haste you twice in a row and kills you, yet I don't see anyone overcapping expertise to reduce those odds.
---------- 4.2. GLYPHS
Since we always use Seal of Light, we have one free glyph that we can fill with something else. I highly recommend going for Glyph of Salvation > Glyph of Judgement > Glyph of HotR.
1. Glyph of HotR will increase your AoE threat and self-healing (only in AoE situations), but it is quite pointless on single target (aka, most bosses).
2. Glyph of Judgement will increase your single target threat in all situations, and its a good choice if you need that extra threat but don't want go change this build.
3. Glyph of Salvation is the best choice out there, and its a great CD against heavy damaging abilities (like soul reaper) or heavy incoming damage (like a bunch of big adds). Note that this glyph must be played cleverly, and you must understand well how Hand of Salvation works.
Hand of Salvation reduces your total threat by 2% every second, for 10s. This leads us to three possible scenarios where we can use it safely on ourselves:
1. Use it right at the start:
As it works with percentages, it means that the greater your threat, the greater it will reduce it. For example, 2% out of 100 is just 2, but 2% out of 1M is 20k. However, your threat generation is usually constant, which means that at the start you will generate "the same" threat as 4 min later. If you use Hand of Salvation on yourself at the start, it will almost ignore your threat because you are still building it up, so you can safely keep it on for 10s without worrying of losing aggro.
2. Use it when there is big threat difference between you and your dps:
Even if you are 4 min into the fight, you can still use it on yourself for full duration if the threat difference between you and your dps is so big that it wont make a difference. However, I suggest you to always keep an eye to your threat table when you do this, and have a macro ready to remove your Hando of Salvation if your threat is going way too low.
3. Use it only to reduce heavy incoming damage:
Even if you are struggling to keep threat, you can still use Hand of Salvation to cleverly reduce heavy incoming damage. For example, you can use Hand of Salvation and let it last only 2s (removing it with a macro). That way, you can use it for big damage (for example, soul reaper), but still keep your threat (as it will only reduce 2% for every second you have it on).
5. SUMMARY.
- Always use Seal of Light.
- Try to always use Judgement of Light, use Judgement of Wisdom if you have mana issues.
- Try to use slower weapons.
- Talents: https://wotlk.evowow.com/?talent#sZE...sIufzxf:pjkczm
- Have a macro ready to remove Reckoning, and another one to remove Hand of Salvation out of yourself.
- Enchant your weapon with Lifeward or Blood Draining.
- You rotation and gear is pretty much the same as the classic build.