A paladin's threat is Holy damage. Righteous Fury makes each point of it 60 % more threat, and in Forever almost everything you hit with is Holy: Seal of Righteousness on every white swing, Judgement, which now leaves the seal in place, Consecration and Holy Strike. You pay for it in mana, so your threat doesn't wait for the boss to hit you first.

This guide opens on the Threat build. On a one-minute single-boss fight it splits by faction: the Alliance plays a Holy/Prot hybrid built on Holy Shock, the Horde a Ret/Prot one, and neither reaches Holy Shield. The better of the two makes 1,201.6 TPS, 3rd of 3 threat tanks.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• Three bosses. Consecration gives its full damage to the first four enemies standing in it, so every boss of three takes all of it: 26.5 % of your damage on a three-minute fight against three bosses, against 14.3 % on one boss.

• Second on three bosses. The Threat build ranks 2nd of 3 on all three of those fights.

• Threat from the first second. Righteous Fury and your seal go up before the pull. Righteous Fury alone is worth 31.0 % of this build's score on a one-minute single-boss fight.

• Spell damage feeds everything. Seal of Righteousness adds a fifth of your spell damage to every swing, so a point of spell damage is worth 4.00 Strength here.

Weaknesses

• No Holy Shield on one boss. The single-boss build spends thirty points outside Protection, and Holy Shield needs thirty inside it. A level-63 boss turns 15 % of its swings into crushing blows until your miss, dodge, parry and block fill its table, and without Holy Shield's 30 % block they stay.

• Never first. The Threat build ranks second or third on every fight, 3rd of 3 on a one-minute single-boss fight.

• Caster loot. The set wears Talisman of Ascendance and Weakness Analyzer, two spell damage trinkets, so you compete with the casters for them.

• Holy Shield runs dry on three bosses. Three swing timers use up its four charges before the cooldown ends, so it is up 62.5 % of a three-minute fight against three bosses.

How tanks are measured

The benchmark boss is a level-63 Dragonkin that swings at you every 2 seconds for 3,000 base damage, more with its attack power, and it can crush. Against one boss a healing model gives you 2,000 health a second. Against three it heals you to full between swings, so the three-boss scores come down to threat. The three builds chase different numbers:

• Threat: your threat per second.
• Mitigation: Survival. Your health divided by the boss's average normal hit, then adjusted for how often its swings miss, are blocked or crush. Health and damage taken count fully, avoidance and blocks at half weight, because they break up the runs of hits that kill a tank without stopping them.
• Balanced: threat per health bar. Take your threat per second and multiply it by how long your Survival lasts against the boss's swings.

No build may drop below 4 normal hits from full, and the single-boss Threat build sits just above that line. Your chance of dying on one boss is 0.0 %. Nobody else tanks in the sim and nothing taunts, so your threat never has to beat anyone's: read it as a comparison between tanks. Seal of Fury, whose Judgement taunts, is never cast here.

On every fight

Your threat climbs on three bosses, because Consecration, Holy Shield's damage and Hammer of the Righteous reach all of them. The table lists all six fights, and each name opens the guide for that fight.

Races

Every Horde paladin is Undead, the one Horde race that can be one in Forever. Touch of the Grave helps: 5 % of your hits drain 5 % of your maximum health from the boss, 2.5 % of your damage on a three-minute single-boss fight.

For the Alliance, Human leads on a one-minute single-boss fight, for Sword Specialization's 2 % crit with the Alliance set's sword, Sageblade. Dwarves trail: no Protection set wears a mace.

What a Paladin brings to the raid

Greater Blessing of Kings is baseline for paladins in Forever, and every damage spec gains from it. The table also prices the raid's other paladin blessings and judgements, which matter most to the specs that deal Holy damage or run on mana.

Changes

Every simulator or game-data update adds a row with this build's new score on this fight. The Updates page explains each change.