A Newcomer's Summary to Paladin Tanking

[Alkhara Majere]

Original Post: WoW-Europe.com Forums -> A Newcomer's Summary to Paladin Tanking
By: Kaithalar

Your Server and My Guide

If you're on any half decent server, you'll be given a shot at tanking. A lot of people grinding to 60 at the moment will be instancing with warrior, druid and paladin tanks and there are a lot of people, such as myself, who rolled a paladin specifically to tank. Paladins aren't such a grind as a warrior in their protection spec as you can still deal damage while minimising your downtime. Many protection paladins have found a successful niche with their local AoE grinding mage - With a paladin capable of holding aggro in full plate armor, the mage can proceed to unleash due amounts of area-smackdown on anything suicidal enough to wander in your path.

This opens you up to the wonderful world of 1-60 tanking. For veteran paladins they can skip this part and play whatever spec the feel comfortable with to 60 and 70, but for those of you who are new and looking for something a little different than your generic druid or warrior, here's what you can reasonably expect to find.

1-60 is a very good place for paladins. You're capable of DPS, (with the assistance of leather gear, as there isn't any mail gear with Of the Eagle stats until 40 where you'll be wearing plate anyway) healing AND tanking. None of the 60-70 healbot buffbot prejudices tend to hold you back as younger and less experienced players are far more open minded. This is where you will play the field and apply your trade as a PalaPanzer (That's PalaTank for those who don't get it.)

This is not a comprehensive paladin guide, nor is it an in-depth look into the world of paladin tanking. This is a guide for those of you who want to know what to expect on your Joe-Average server, those of you who want to know if paladins really can find the gear to tank and those of you who just want to learn more about this exciting little niche paladins have created for themselves. This is a guide telling you what to expect and what decisions you should be prepared to make - Yes, that's right. You'll get to make decisions and all of them have positive and negative consequences.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The First and Foremost: Your Gear, Gems, Talents and Mitigation

The Pre-70 Era

As a paladin tank 1-60, you can expect to get away with any old "Of the Bear" or "Of the Eagle" tanking combination. Crushing blows don't exist, crits are rarely a big issue and defense itemisation is very low at these levels. As you'll probably be the only plate wearer in your group, you can expect to run away with whatever plate gear you desire. Your choice of tanking weapon is neither here nor there, but it is advised that you level up all weapon skills equally. While it make take time now, on my journey from 60-70 I used everything from 2 handed swords, to polearms, to 1 handed axes, to 1 handed swords, to 2 handed maces, to 2 handed axes. These are the easy levels of your life, and while it is true that a tank needs to have good gear to tank an instance, it's very rarely a wipe-deciding factor. Your healer's gear is 10 times more important and any priest running around in Of the Wolf greens would probably fail to keep any geared tank alive.

1-69 you will find yourself picking up your first major peices of plate +damage gear. On your journey to 70, before Tempest Keep wings, Shattered Halls, Shadow Labs and Black Morass these peices of gear will serve you well. You can heartily expect to end with a good 300 +damage by the time you ding level 70. Once again, crushing blows and crits are not a concern in non-heroic 5 man instances and you can effectively tank everything up to the level 68-70 instances in "Of the Sorcerer" gear. These instances are very non-competitive, with more DPS and healers wanting to run than there are tanks, you'll oftentimes be the only plate wearer in your party and you get a full monopoly of paladin and warrior gear at your disposal.

The Post-70 Era

70+ you have your work cut out. You should have a few good tanking quest rewards and a few decent peices of gear from the odd instance 1-70, but this is where the ease ends. Paladin gear itemisation is very weak for tanking, and while our dungeon set 3 has tanking stats, they are far too weak to be of any real consideration in your tanking arsenal. You will be forced to replace all your spelldamage gear with warrior tanking gear and work towards the magical 490 defense. Your tanking will start to scale down and your monopoly on threat will be challenged as DPS get more damage and threat as they progress through 70. This is where your experience with 1-69 tanking makes it's mark.

There is a very important point to make now, gems. A paladin at level 70 has approximately 1000 less base health than your average non-Tauren warrior. You will be "expected" to have warrior-like health values if you tank. This is generally ignorance portrayed by warriors and druids who do not know the slightest about paladin tanking mechanics, skills and talents, which is also picked up by people who think they know how to play better than you. You will just have to deal with this and remember their ignorance is only something you can remedy using brute-force tactics by dragging them to 5-mans and heroics. You will be expected to fill all your gem slots with +12 sta gems in order to reach a warrior's health level. This is VERY detrimental to your health. In stacking +12sta gems, you miss out on the pride of tanks, the +8defrating and +8dodgerating gems. A paladin can expect to take upwards of 4-10% more damage than a protection warrior right off the bat, due to the difference between a warrior's [Improved] Defense Stance and your [Improved] Righteous Fury - Pumping your health that 1000 higher does nothing if you have to sacrifice avoidance (Dodge% and Parry%) to achieve it - We already take more damage than warriors, we don't want to take that increased damage more often. This does not mean +12 sta gems are useless, infact they're essential - but they're of equal importance to dodge gems at the very least, with defense gems value lowering after 490 defense. Do not neglect your stamina, but also don't neglect your avoidances either.

If your guild are annoying you to get more stamina then you might as well just regem gear you replace with +12 sta gems. Many people are ignorant of the paladin tanking issues and think that because you have 12k unbuffed health you're a better tank than someone with 10.6k - While you may have 15% dodge and 15% parry rating, as well as being susceptible to crushing blows for the 15% of the attacks you don't block, dodge or parry. In PvE, 15% doesn't mean 1.5 out of 10 times, it means 15 out of 100. You may not block 4 attacks in a row and get massacred, while the person with 10.6k health may block, dodge or parry every single attack and be far easier for healers to keep alive.

The Summary

So, a summary. As a paladin tank, you will have to make very difficult decisions in your gear. While it is completely and utterly possible to generate upwards of 700 threat per second with only 80 spelldamage in a 5-man instance, without Judgment of the Crusader up, you may find yourself sacrificing tanking gear for spelldamage gear. The biggest choice you'll have to make is between epics with +damage+defense+int+stam in your tanking slots, or a single sword with +damage +40spelldam enchant leaving the rest of your slots free for warrior-like gear. Your main disadvantage is that in order to scale fully, you will need to sacrifice defensive traits for spelldamage. This is not as bad as it seems, because you will get to a point where you generate so much threat you're making a warrior cry for his mother and the DPS are left thinking "What the hell can I do to take aggro off this guy?". The paladin has two main points: They can not equal a warrior's health, but they sure as hell can give them a run for their money in avoidance. Just because you have 1k less health, doesn't mean you should sacrifice 7% dodge of gems to make up for it. Secondly, so what if you have 1k less health when you generate over 1000 threat per second making your lack of health a generally invalid point as the DPS can go 130% all out popping cooldowns and trinkets and still not touch your threat generation capabilities.

Secondly: The Art of the 5-Man Party

The Pre-70 Era

As a paladin tank before level 60, you've got a strong position in the lower level 5-mans. Your ability to hold AoE aggro is undisputed and the healers will be worshipping the ground you walk on when they're unable to take aggro, remembering fondly that time they did Blackfathom Deeps, cast a renew on the tank and got aggro from 4 mobs. Equal scaling on gear for a majority of classes 1-60 will ensure that you will be able to spend a majority of your life holding aggro with Seal of Righteousness, Autoattack and Holy Shield alone, while careful experimentation with your spec, gear and skills can give you a good compromise between mana and health, allowing you to tank those pesky bosses without needing heals to keep your mana up. You will not be expected to heal before level 61 as plate healing itemisation does not exist at level 59 and below. (Well, it does exist, but you'll suck at healing all the same because it's so weak.)

Level 60-69 will be your "defining moments" - You will be picking up your first real peices of tanking gear, replacing your spelldamage gear with defense gear and refining your tanking technique. You'll begin to learn which blessings go on which classes and you'll earn great fame amongst your comrades for your /assist /cast Righteous Defense or /assist /cast Blessing of Protection macros that will save many-a-ranged DPS from their own overaggroing ways. You will excell in both organised Pick Up Groups and unorganised ones alike - People will expect you to mark, and that's just the way you like it. Your avenger's shield is easy to use as long as the person marking killing and crowd control targets knows it's mechanic. In high crowd control groups you can conserve mana with single target tanking, in low crowd control groups you can tank everything up like and angry, drunk trucker screaming obscenities about the mob's sister(s). You will learn how to adapt to low spelldamage tanking, and you may even go as low as 100 spelldamage at some stages and learn to adapt your tanking style, alternating ranks of consecrate for the amount of DPS in your groups and switching judgments as is needed.


The Post-70 Era

At level 70 you will have to work hard to prove you're the great king of 5-mans. People assume paladin tanking is as easy as consecrate and judge, but it's far more complicated than that. You're the only tank with an unlimited-mob count persistant AoE tanking DoT. The upside: You can generate threat on a number of mobs directly proportional to the healing you recieve. The downside: If crowd control happens late or breaks early and wanders into your consecrate, it's asta-lasagne. The mob will never be crowd controlled again. You have to move a LOT, making sure that you are far away from all crowd controlled mobs before using consecrate and gathering up long-range attackers into your AoE can take a considerable amount of painful time. We've already established most paladins will be expected to spec holy, I might as well tell you why now - Because paladins expect people to want them to heal and because people expect all paladins to be holy. It's a deadly circle, most of the peons who ask you to heal don't know if paladin healing is good or bad, they just hear people say "All paladins have to spec holy because we're the best endgame healers" or similar phrases, but replying "I'm sorry, I'm protection spec. But if you need an experienced tank, I'd be delighted to join you!" will get you far in life. This is where you're perfecting your tanking technique, learning how to kite with the aid of a frost mage and learning multiple ways to generate threat.

Suggested 5-Man Tanking Values:
Minimum 9000 Health with approximately 460 defense will allow you to complete any non-heroic 5-man as a tank with a minimum of fuss. You can tank with worse tanking stats, but that means your healer has to be better geared/more competant.

As a paladin tank, you are the king of heroics. Nobody will want a tank other than you if you play your job right. Why? You've got a 40 yard taunt, making you the bounce-kite master, ping-ponging mobs between you and the second highest threat caster. You can effectively clear all non-ranged trash without a healer in almost any heroic with a skilled elemental shaman and hunter in your heroic group. When it comes to bosses, your party really appreciates "Give me 1 second to pull then nuke" - As the time between 0 and 5 sunders is far too long for most DPSers tastes. Most people running heroics are fully aware of a paladin's lack of pure damage mitigation, knowning full and truely that a paladin will take more damage than a warrior with equal gear - But they don't care. You open the pull with Avenging Wrath and blow every single skill you've got, and you're generating more than 1000 threat per second. The DPS can go all out and some heroic boss fights that would be difficult with a warrior tank due to threat concerns take 2 minutes less with a paladin as the DPS just went all out with trinkets, cooldowns and sacrificing their mother for a +400% damage boost and still couldn't touch your threat-per-second.

Suggested Heroic Tanking Values:
Minimum 11000 Health with approximately 490 defense will allow you to complete any heroic 5-man as a tank with a minimum of fuss. Uncrushable is not 100% needed and you can tank with worse tanking stats, but that means your healer has to be better geared/FAR more competant than usual.

The Summary

Youll be loved in your 5 man groups but you must take the time to learn how to tank, how to use your skills effectively and how to deal with slow crowd control. Never leave yourself backed into a corner where it's a case of "Consecrate so the healer doesn't get aggro, but break a sheep, a sap and a seduce." - You will learn to manouver yourself on the battlefield. You may be asked to heal, but you can often use the LFG and LFM systems to introduce yourself as a tank and buy the confidence of your party right from the go-ahead. Ask to be leader and learn the pulls, learn the marks and learn all your available forms of crowd control. Do not be scared to use a hunter to trap, and don't let the rogue feel left out if he wants to sap on a 3-mob pull - You just have to learn to keep aggro on multiple mobs in the first 5 seconds of combat without using consecrate or an Avenger's Shield pull.

Finally: The End of Your Joruney, The Start of Your Legacy

The Paladin Raiding Tank

A protection paladin tanking in 10 and 25 man raids is the pinnacle of your ability. To get this far you have proven to a guild on your server that you have what it takes to be a different flavor of paladin, a flavor with a sweet and subtle taste that takes awhile to aquire, but is an instant hit with the masses.

As a paladin raid tank, you'll find yourself offtanking a lot. This is not because you're an inferior main tank to a warrior or druid, hell no - This is because you're a superior offtank. Both of these classes are limited to rage mechanics, meaning they take awhile to warm up. As a paladin, you're already warmed up and ready for your workout - On groups where you absolutely, positively HAVE to DPS before the mob even reaches the tank, the paladin is your tool of DPS serenity. You are capable of generating 100% of your maximum threat per second from the first 2 global cooldowns of combat. This also makes you superior on so-called "double tank" fights, where two tanks are required on one boss. I have an excellent spec combining the utility of Seal of Blood (The horde's unique seal) with a low spelldamage build (81 spelldamage) to generate 600 threat per second at a mana loss rate equivalent to 1% of my mana every 30 seconds while keeping Judgement of Wisdom up on the mob/boss. No warrior or druid could even dream of generating that much threat while not being hit for such a length of time. Your target will be the first to die in trash pulls because you generate so much more burst threat than warriors that the DPS can go all out from the start. With the mob dead, you're free to do as you wish. Switch to a 2-hander, judge the MT's target and do some DPS. Switch to your healing weapon/shield and provide some support healing. No other class is capable of generating insane burst threat, letting DPS blast all cooldowns in the first 0.5 seconds of combat, still hold aggro and then perform a multitide of roles once their target it dead - Druids suffer from slow-to-start threat generation and still require the mob to physically reach them before they can frontload threat - A paladin should already have 3000 or more threat before the mob even reaches him through Avenger's Shield and a good Judgment. Druids are rarely capable of healing in their feral gear and protection warriors can't do anything when they're not tanking, whereas a good protection paladin will have some modicm of spelldamage on thier gear and possibly some intellect. Finally, paladins will very soon become the kings of quick-hitter tanking, the 2.1.0 patch allowing us to double our Holy Shield charges for 2 talent points, meaning paladins are capable of blocking an attack every 1.25 seconds - Where a warrior would be susceptible to crushing blows while his Shield Block is on cooldown, a paladin is capable of blocking again and again and again.

As a paladin main tank, you'll have your work cut out. The paladin block mechanic is severely broken and you will find yourself sacrificing so much defense and dodge rating just to achieve "uncrushable" that it's hardly worth it. People will comment on your unusually low health pool for a tank, and you'll often feel like filling every gem socket with +12sta, giving you a warrior's health with the avoidance of a concrete block. Remembering your damage mitigation is less than that of a warrior, you will take more damage more often. You must resist this peer pressure and socket gems as you please. There is no denying that you take more damage than a warrior, so you should aim to take that more damage less often instead of trying to hide it behind a concrete wall of stamina. You're capable of tremendous feats of tanking with such ease, you'll almost forget you just tanked Attumen and Midnight at the same time because your prot warrior went AFK just as the hunter pulled to you and you decided you'd tank both the gits anyway.

The Summary

While the grandeur and flashing lights of being a main tank may appeal to you, you have to face the facts - You're a superior offtank. As a maintank you lose 90% of your utilitiy, you can't offheal a raid and you're sometimes forced to put Judgment of the Crusader up just to avoid losing aggro as you've had to sacrifice so much spelldamage for pure mitigation, losing your wisdom/light judgment that made you the favourite or ranged/melee DPS. Your only panic button is situational, restoring your health to 100% instantly but costing all your remaining mana and having a 1 hour cooldown - This would be better spent healing a warrior just before he pops shield wall. And on that note, thats all your panic buttons. You do not have last stand, you have no effective shield wall that is up 100% of the time for a set duration and you're not very cut out for main tanking. I'm not saying "Don't aim to be a maintank" - I'm just saying a paladin's utility is mostly wasted on this role and you lose all your advantages over a long fight, since a warrior or druid's sustained threat will overtake you on long fights where you're going to run out of mana no matter what you do.

Suggested Raid Tanking Values:
Minimum 10500 Health with approximately 490 defense will allow you to complete early Karazhan bosses as a main tank. You can not tank with worse tanking stats as these are the bare minimum. To put it into perspective, in my avoidance gear I had 10600 health unbuffed with 20% dodge unbuffed and 18% parry unbuffed, I was uncrushable. I tanked Attumen and Midnight at the same time with two healers in the raid and they had no problems at all keeping me alive.

Later Karazhan encounters will require you to push that health up to in excess of 12500-13000 unbuffed. This is VERY difficult to achieve without good luck with drops and a lot of Star of Elune farming or collecting gear with gem slots, for your 12500 health unbuffed, you'd have to have the same gear as a warrior with 13500 unbuffed. But don't dispair, your blessing of kings will give you more health than the warrior because you have a far higher stamina value.

As a little trivia, do you know a level 70 blood elf paladin with 999 stamina will have 13337 health.

Do not be disheartened, paladin tanks are loved on every server. They offer a different manner of tanking - "You're nothing like a bear and a warrior, but that's what makes you so good!"

[MrBrain]

nice +rep 4 u

[connoromg]

cool thanks