Choosing a New Tanking Libram - Divine Purpose

For many moons, my Libram of Repentance has served me well.

As you progress through early raids, this is most certainly the best Libram that you can get for tanking. It grants approximately 5.33% extra avoidance with Holy Shield up, and it’s virtually the only way to get Uncrushable until you start getting T5 equivalent gear.

Now that I’ve picked up plenty of higher level gear (Badges, SSC, etc), my avoidance is nearing the point where I don’t need the Libram anymore. With the addition of my last piece of badge armor (Girdle of the Fearless), and assuming I have Blessing of Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild, my avoidance with Holy Shield is just a tad over 102.4%.

At this point, the Holy Shield libram becomes absolutely useless. Once you reach 102.4%, any extra Block rating has no impact on the Hit table. This begs the question - what Libram should I be swapping in?

Surveying the Options

There are a limited number of Librams that would be remotely useful for a Tankadin, so this list will be kindda short. Here are the options, from lowest Item Level to highest.

Libram of Zeal. An extra 47 Spell Damage would yield ~25 tps. This is an okay option for long fights where you’re likely to use Seal of the Crusader. Definitely a waste on trash. This will also fall off if you need to downrank Consecrate to maintain mana.

Libram of the Eternal Rest. On a single target, this would add roughly 45 damage over 8 seconds, or ~11 tps. Fairly weak for that purpose, but this is a nice threat bonus for AoE tanking (I already use it on the Hydross adds).

Libram of Divine Purpose. This seems, at face value, the best option for single-target threat. It doesn’t rely on wasting time Judging Crusader and it also doesn’t rely on a full rotation of spells (i.e. max rank consecration). Someone on Wowhead did the math, and it works out to roughly 30-35 tps.

My Choice?

I’ve got the Libram of the Eternal Rest, and I’m going to keep it around for AoE tanking. I spend a lot of time doing that in SSC and TK (Hydross, Morogrim, Solarian, Bird-trash, etc). I’d much rather have the minor threat boost spread across all of the mobs I’m tanking, and it ends up being more tps than the SoR/JoR Libram if I’m tanking 4+ mobs.

However, I’m definitely going to spend my next 20 Badges purchasing a Libram of Divine Purpose. This is the best option for single target threat generation. I really like that I still get the bonus if I have to downrank or stop Consecrating, because I often go OOM on Heroic bosses and low-end raid bosses.

So… 20 more Badges and I’m officially done buying tanking stuff. Then I can throw away tons of badges on healing gear. Yey!

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