It seems that our recent good luck in SSC has been offset by a terrible curse – nothing but failure and repair bills.

On Thursday, we went to Gruuls and Mags as usual. Some of our key players were missing (including the usual raid leaders). The SSC Raid Leader and I stepped up to lead the Thursday night raid, and we headed in with 5-6 new people. It turned out they were… less than extraordinary.

We had an extremely sloppy night. We mis-pulled Maulgar twice, because a Hunter failed to do his misdirect. We wiped on Gruul twice, because people couldn’t spread out. We eventually gave up on Mags, because people couldn’t click cubes when they were supposed to. /facepalm

Then, last night we traveled to TK. Some of my friends go there fairly regularly, but I usually don’t. I never got in with the raid leader, and they didn’t need any tanks… until last night. We had some sloppiness on trash, but we quickly made our way to Al’ar and decided to give him a few tries.

After three long wipes, we pulled the trash to Void Reaver. They still haven’t downed Al’ar, so that’s nothing out of the ordinary. However, the trash to VR took a while, we wiped at 1%, and we called it due to lateness. Not good for a run that typically kills both VR and Solarion.

The upside is I’ve gained some experience with Al’ar – and I’ve found a time when hit rating is very, very important.

Hit Cap – No Taunt Resists

After a recent patch, Righteous Defense (the Paladin taunt) is either resisted or not based on melee hit mechanics. This means that a Paladin has a base chance of 9% to miss a resist against a boss. Most (all?) Protection Paladins take 3 points in Precision, so that leaves a chance of 6% to resist a taunt.

For the most part, this is trivial. It’s a low chance to resist, and it might mean that a DPS pulls aggro and dies. They deserve that.

It’s also trivial because the vast majority of bosses in TBC are immune to taunt. If you can’t taunt them, they can’t resist. So what’s the point?

Hit rating is lower on your priority list in terms of threat generation than other stats (namely spell damage and expertise), so it’s not something a Tankadin is likely to stack. I currently have 13 Hit Rating – coming from my Tankatronic Goggles.

Where am I going with all this? Al’ar, like Nalorakk in ZA, is one of those fights where taunts are very important. Every minute, he puts a Melt Armor debuff on the tank, which reduces his armor by 80%. At this point, Al’ar should be taunted by the other tank. The tank with Melt Armor will die within a few seconds if he’s left to keep tanking with 20% of his usual armor.

Last night, we were making good progress on Al’ar. We moved him out of Phase 1 with no real difficulties. The MT (a warrior) and I were trading Al’ar fairly well and we got him down to 70% or so. Then the MT called out, “Melt Armor!” and I slammed my ‘6′ button – Righteous Defense. Nothing happened.

Doh! Sure enough, I looked in the combat log, and my taunt was fully resisted. Needless to say, the Warrior promptly went splat, and we wiped soon thereafter.

This led me to start looking for some +Hit gear. I may not want to wear it all the time, but I think it’s worth having to swap in on those fights that are very sensitive to taunts – i.e. Al’ar and Nalorakk.

The Gear Line-up

To reach the hit cap, I need 95 Hit Rating. I already have 13 Hit Rating on my helm, which leaves me with 82 Hit Rating to go.

After a little Wowhead searching, I’ve found a few things that should help round this out.

Here’s a list of the most useful items I found:

You may notice that I included the King’s Defender – usually a poor choice for a Paladin tank. There’s no spell damage, and the increased melee DPS doesn’t help our threat generation very much.

However, this is offset by the fact that you don’t need a lot of threat generation on Al’ar. Most of the DPS is concerned with killing adds, so the tanks are more or less keeping Al’ar busy. Also, it would be feasible to swap weapons and equip my King’s Defender 5 seconds before the Melt Armor debuff goes up… then I can taunt and go back to my lovely Amani Punisher.

The Talbuk food I think is particularly helpful. It’s easy to get, and basically you’re swapping 20/30 Stamina for 20 Hit Rating for that fight. Worth keeping a stack in your bags for those tricky fights.

So which items will I use? I’m definitely going to pick up the Dawnforged Defender. It’s available from the SSO Vendor at Exalted, which I am. So that’s an easy choice. Up to 26 Hit Rating.

I’ll be scarfing down some Spicy Hot Talbuk, since I just picked up the recipe off the daily cooking quest. That makes 46 Hit Rating.

I was planning on getting the Girdle of the Fearless anyway, so in another 31 badges I’ll have that. 69 Hit Rating.

That leaves Chestguard of the Warlord on my list. We’re currently running ZA once or twice a week (full clear), so hopefully I can pick this up soon. If I do, that’ll push me to the hit cap – 95.

Next time, Al’ar. Next time, I’ll be ready for you.