0 Holy/49 Protection/12 Retribution

This build is specifically for raid tanking, as everything is built around maximizing health/mitigation, easing uncrushability gearing and threat generation. There are plenty of great protection builds for more hybrid healing or DPS roles, but this isn’t one of them lol.

Protection (49 points)

I dropped Reckoning because it’s not really useful for high level tanking anymore. It doesn’t proc much at all because I avoid roughly half of all attacks. Doing more attacks is not necessarily a positive thing anyways because of the way Parry works for mobs. Other than that, I maximized mitigation, avoidance and threat.

5/5 Redoubt

Damaging melee and ranged attacks against you have a 10% chance to increase your chance to block by 30%. Lasts 10 sec or 5 blocks.

Great for AoE tanking, marginally useful in a raid tanking situation. It is however, a prerequisite for Shield Specialization (besides, Imp Dev Aura is trash).

3/3 Precision

Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons and spells by 3%.

Being able to hit a mob more with your attacks and spells means more threat generation (and DPS :P).

5/5 Toughness

Increases your armor value from items by 10%.

Scalable! Toughness will increase a well geared tankadin’s armor by around 2,000 to 3,000 AC. Good talent, take it.

1/1 Blessing of Kings

Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats by 10% for 10 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

BoK is one of if not the best player buff in a the game. Unless you are 100% certain that you will always have another paladin to be the BoK slave, you might as well take this. 10% all stats means more health, more mana, more dodge (from agility), and more love from group members.

3/3 Improved Righteous Fury

While Righteous Fury is active, all damage taken is reduced by 6% and increases the amount of threat generated by your Righteous Fury spell by 50%.

Almost doubles your threat and reduces ALL damage taken by 6%. A staple for all paladin tanks.

3/3 Shield Specialization

Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 30%.

Paladins are block heavy tanks; Much of the high level tankadin gear is heavy on Block Value. Shaving an extra 100 off of a 3,000 damage hit may not seem like much, but it adds up. Taking less damage = the healers won’t hate you as much.

5/5 Anticipation

Increases your Defense skill by 20.

Even though Anticipation doesn’t scale, 20 is a LOT of defense skill. Remember that at level 70, 2.37 Defense RATING = 1 Defense SKILL. This talent is equivalent to having a piece of armor with 47 defense on it.

2/2 Spell Warding

All spell damage taken is reduced by 4%.

With Imp RF, that’s a total of 10% spell damage mitigation. Not bad. If you are aiming for raid tanking, take every single bit of mitigation possible.

1/1 Blessing of Sanctuary

Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage dealt from all sources by up to 80 for 10 min. In addition, when the target blocks a melee attack the attacker will take 46 Holy damage. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time

Decent buff, though highly situational and rarely used unless you have like, a bazillion paladins in the raid. It is though, a prerequisite to Holy Shield so take it.

2/2 Sacred Duty

Increases your total Stamina by 6%, reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield spell by 60 sec and reduces the attack speed penalty by 100%.

The Divine Shield buff isn’t really useful from a tanking standpoint…but MORE STAMINA IS!

5/5 One-Handed Weapon Specialization

Increases all damage you deal when a one-handed melee weapon is equipped by 5%.

This was semi-recently changed: This talent will increase ALL of your damage by 5%: Consecration, seals, judgements, white damage, ALL. More damage = more threat.

1/1 Holy Shield

Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 sec and deals 185 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Damage caused by Holy Shield causes 35% additional threat. Each block expends a charge. 4 charges

The bread and butter of paladin tanking. The threat bonus is awesome but the true beauty of this spell is the 30% block bonus. Absolutely necessary for uncrushability.

2/2 Improved Holy Shield

Increases damage caused by your Holy Shield by 20% and increases the number of charges of your Holy Shield by 4.

It’s very easy for a fast attacking boss to use up all 4 Holy Shield charges before you have a chance to recast it. 8 charges means that it is almost guaranteed to stay up. More holy damage = more threat.

5/5 Ardent Defender

When you have less than 35% health, all damage taken is reduced by 30%.

AD is more useful than it seems, it’s saved my butt quite a few times. 30% reduction isn’t as much as 50% (how it used to be), but the increased threshold to 35% means that it kicks in earlier and reduces the chance of a big hit leapfrogging AD and instagibbing you.

5/5 Combat Expertise

Increases your expertise by 5 and your total Stamina by 10%.

MORE STAMINA! This talent boosted my unbuffed health by around 1.2k or so…

1/1 Avenger’s Shield

Hurls a holy shield at the enemy, dealing 494 to 602 Holy damage, Dazing them and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. Lasts 6 sec.

The 41 point talent, the crown on the king’s head, the showcase of the protection tree. At first glace, Avenger’s Shield appears to be nothing more than a pulling spell. Upon further inspection it is so much more:

• 
  Frontloading threat: With imp RF, an average AS hit will yield approximately 1,000 threat. Judge SoR, recast SoR, throw on a Conc. That is easily several thousand threat in a couple of seconds. The more threat you frontload, the sooner your party can start DPS. Being able to generate buttloads of threat within seconds is one of the advantages of a paladin tank.
• 
  The daze: AS is the paladin equivalent of the warrior’s intercept. Same effect (minus the distance closing part :P), same cooldown, same range and deadzone (approx). The daze lasts just long enough for the other party members to CC. Did CC break midfight? The mobs are aggro’d on you already, they won’t run to the clothy. Can’t taunt and a mob starts running to someone on the other side of the room midfight? No problem: Toss a shield, daze, clothy has time to run away while you gain massive threat.

Retribution (12 points)

5/5 Benediction

Reduces the Mana cost of your Judgement and Seal spells by 15%.

I go through mana pretty fast, even with Spiritual Attunement. The better geared you are the less healing that I need, the less healing that I get, the less mana I get back.

2/2 Improved Judgement

Decreases the cooldown of your Judgement spell by 2 sec.

Faster Judgements means that you can generate holy damage faster.

5/5 Deflection

Increases your Parry chance by 5%.

Pretty much the reason for a tankadin to place any points into retribution. Invaluable towards raising your avoidance/mitigation to 102.4%.