Tankadin post TBC

One example of a class-tailored fight would be Thekal in ZG.

I don't know if any of you have noticed, but Tony in troll form has this really nasty Mortal Cleave ability that drops anyone in melee range to 50% of their remaining health and (of course) puts in a bleed effect that reduces healing by 50% for 5 seconds or so.

Now, the reason I said I don't know if any of you have noticed is that he only ever uses that attack if he's taking a lot of melee DPS. I've never really seen him use it on a warrior unless there were rogues helping out. But as a druid, I get smacked with it about every 7-10 seconds.

For this reason I actually find it much easier to tank Broodlord Lashlayer than to tank Tony the Tiger. So basically warriors get this one free and druids get pwned. On the flipside Broodlord likes to eat warriors and I'm really not scared of him.

I'd really like to tank Ony one day tho... but I don't see that happening any time soon... oh well.

Anyhow getting back to the thread at hand, I have to agree with God's Peon that you'll only get stronger by exploring the different avenues avaliable to your classes. I mean, I realize that most raid leaders are staunchly resto, resto, holy, and holy on the brain, but those same raid leaders never understand the benefit of teddy tanking (and LotP), ummwhatevershammiesdo, never-need-healing warlock groups, and tankadins.

Perhaps the real reason why I promote tankadins so much is that I was one of the first ever teddy tanks, so I know what it is like to get passed up for dungeons because you only have 1400 mana at level 60, or to be barred from rolling on +stamina +critchance leather because you're not a rogue*.

I'm willing to give tankadins a chance because I'm convinced that if people take time to learn how to play their class the way they want to, and put the effort into training themselves, then they will be an asset to the raid no matter what spec they are. I think that denying Plankeye a chance to prove himself is just asking for dissention and frusteration**. Of course, there's nothing wrong with denying him a spot on the tank roster if he CAN'T prove himself. But to peg him down as incompetant before he ever gets in range on a boss is not cool.


Anyhow, that's my two cents. Again. Lol. God bless.

*+stam&crit gear is clearly feral gear, specially when it is high in armor. But you'd be suprised how many rogues refuse to acknowledge that, even though they also don't care to roll on it.

**What I mean by "dissention and frusteration" is this. When I first started tanking, nobody would believe that I could hold aggro and survive. I eventually teamed up with a priest friend of mine and she practiced the fine art of healing a teddy***. She and I then spent about three months running instances wherein I would aggressively and purposely start pulling aggro off of the Main Tank without a moment's notice. Suddenly halfway through Drakkissath I'd have aggro and take him out. Or the beast, or a random mob, you'd never know when. I'd do it in MC, as well, and I'd also learn to beat the warriors to the catch if the MT got mind controlled or killed.

I'm not at all implying that this is good. In the very least I don't think it was a very Christlike way to get the point accross. Actually I think it was sneaky and underhanded when I look at it now. So please, warriors and druids, don't make Plankeye get frusterated to the point where he has to fight you for his position. Especially when he gets a new talent build that he starts dubbing "the warrior emasculator build****." That would be your signal that he's out to prove a point :)

***maybe the other reason I like the notion of tankadins is because I'm actually not very partial to healadins as my main healbots... Teddy mitigation mechanics and healadin healing mechanics don't work all that great together.

****No, he hasn't got a talent build that he's dubbed "the warrior emasculator." Yet.
 
I got to tank giants and destroyers tonight in MC post 2.0.1 patch and learned quite a bit right away. The most important thing is to have a macro for Righteous Defense:

/cast [target=targettarget] Righteous Defense

It was painful to try to target the person who stole agro from me in a 40 man raid then cast the taunt my first couple of pulls. The nice thing about this macro is you stay on your current target and when I cast this, it targets my target's focus (which would be the shadow priest that just stole agro) and poof the mob is back on me before he gets a chance to make it all the way back to the casters.

Mana was not an issue for the trash. I couldn't use it fast enough spamming consecration/holy shield/righteousness/judgement. Multiple HoTs are HOT. Reminds me of the bug were you could judge wisdom/seal wisdom with righteous fury on and proc judged wisdom 3 times per swing. Of course it will be interesting to see bigger boss fights.

I need to get better at the pull and initial judgement. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I noticed afterwords that I kept forgetting to judge crusader for the extra holy damage threat along with turning on Holy shield while the targets were slowed on my avenging shield pulls.

I was able to hold Destroyers without using retribution aura so raid buffed I was at 9902 AC, 5501 health, 5462 mana, 344 defense. Gear wise I would like to get the health and defense up a bit more. Especially defense as I noticed the slower hitting giants did not proc all 4 of my Holy Shield charges which is a ton of lost agro. Also watching for redoubt procs then using Holy Shield would be useful next go around.

Overall, I still buffed, I still healed and decursed away on every other non giant fight just like a good pally does. It was just a ton of fun to get to tank every once in a while just to shake things up and do something pallies for so long have been told not to do. Thanks TeamEternity for giving me an oportunity to do something other then cleanse spamming. ;)
 
try this one:

MACRO 6 "Taunt" Spell_Holy_HolyProtection
/cast [target=target,help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget,help] Righteous Defense
END

This way weather you are targeting the mob or the person it will still work!
 
If you're trying to taunt on a caster, why don't you just target them using the target's target? Since it's a ranged taunt anyway, it works every time, as long as the caster is not too far away from you.

Also, just judge crusader once, and then righteousness everytime after that. If you want light, then just ask another pally to do it for you.

I've never tanked in MC, so I'm saying this with somewhat limited experience, but a judgement of crusader, righteous fury, and seal/judgement of righteousness and holy shield should be able to keep aggro just fine. If you lose the aggro, see if the target is stunnable first (like in Ony, ZG, or AQ). If the target is not stunnable, then either just do a taunt, or a BoP, assuming the mob/creep is a melee and physical attacker (this is not necessarily meant for Sandric, just for any tank-specced pallies).

And, despite what everyone says, pallies can keep aggro insanely well. It takes some experience, the right player, the right specc, and the right group to be able to pull it off, but it is absolutely possible. I steal aggro from warriors all the time in my raids on UBRS, and I keep it the entire fight. I know UBRS is small compared to MC, but it's still a good raid dungeon with good raid-like boss encounters and lots of adds.

And, no other tanking class can keep aggro on multiple melee mobs like pallies can.

Part of the reason that pallies get such a bad rap is because 80% of them are either Holy or Retribution specced. And, the few that are Protection, rarely are ever able to use their abilities, simply because the group doesn't allow them to do it, or because they don't need them to do it (like in most raids.. you don't need 10 people tanking, duh).

There's a false assumption that all pallies are healers and not tanks, just like there's a false assumption that all warriors are tanks. And, don't get me wrong, Holy paladins and Fury warriors are awesome. I had 3 Holy paladins, so they still get my deepest respect.

Most people don't realize that Protection specced Paladins have improved judgement of crusader and seal of righteous, which increases the amount of damage and aggro by a considerable amount. Improved Righteous Fury, a Protection talent, further increases the aggro generated by the paladin by a whopping 90%. Holy Shield also increases aggro (and blocking) by 30%. Stack this with the previously mentioned spells along with Consecration and Retribution, and that target's is not going anywhere.

One last thing. If anyone wants to give the protection paladin a chance at tanking, then please give them time to "aggro-up", just like you give time for warriors to sunder and aggro the target. Let the paladin pull, or at least take it from the pull for a few seconds (IE: take aggro from the hunter), before everyone else digs in. If I were tanking a difficult boss or mob in a raid encounter (or even in some 5 or 10 mans), I would ask the group would give me 4-7 seconds before the DPS of the group starts.
 
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Gratz, Plankeye -- this is the first step to becoming a great tank :) learn to use stuff like a "target's target RD macro" and once you've come up with a good rythm, you're set.

Bowser said:
One last thing. If anyone wants to give the protection paladin a chance at tanking, then please give them time to "aggro-up", just like you give time for warriors to sunder and aggro the target. Let the paladin pull, or at least take it from the pull for a few seconds (IE: take aggro from the hunter), before everyone else digs in. If I were tanking a difficult boss or mob in a raid encounter (or even in some 5 or 10 mans), I would ask the group would give me 4-7 seconds before the DPS of the group starts.
Click to expand...

This is the same problem that Teddies face. I think that's why in BC we'll be getting Lacerate and Seal of Vengence.
 
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It looks like it might work like a sunder.
 
Thanks for the better macro ewoks.

Got one more nugget of wisdom.

Reckoning is a must have. I was grinding a bit last night to recover some of the gold I lost repairing after my tanking experience in MC. Judge/Seal of Wisdom/Light procs of reckoning swings. That is a lot of additional mana/health regeneration.
 
ewoksrule said:
MACRO 6 "Taunt" Spell_Holy_HolyProtection
/cast [target=target,help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget,help] Righteous Defense
END
Click to expand...

I can't seem to get this to work on my pally :( am I missing something (e.g. a library like Ace that gives me increased macro functionality?)
 
If you are in the WoW macro interface, then you only need:

/cast [target=target,help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget,help] Righteous Defense

The MACRO 6... & END are what you see if you edit your saved variable text files directly.
 
TBC has been out for several weeks now. Here are my thoughts so far.

Paladin itemization is a lot better. I have two bags full of pieces and have already replaced numerous pre TBC items. Because Mana5 and +Spell Damage/Healing plate is so plentiful I have been changing pieces of my healadin gear pretty regularly. I am only 63 as school and my two kids have kept me pretty busy but I have managed to upgrade my tanking gear to get up to 400 defense, 9.9k AC, 6k hp and 4.8k mana (5man party buffs considered). Most of that defense by green gear at the moment so I know I can bump up some of those stats even more as I replace the greens with blues. The socket items have been a nice way to add more stamina and defense to my gear.

I have been slightly annoyed with the ganking. The quickest way to grind quests as a protection paladin is to gather multiple mobs and consecration/holy shield them down (plus all my other damage return gear). Because of Ardent Defender (damage taken is reduced to 50% when I am at less then 20% health) I tend to let my health go. I guess I look like an easy HK to the horde and they tend to kill me. Although I have exacted my revenge on a few oportunistic rogues lately. Often without even healing or bubbling during the fight. I love duel wielding dagger rogues the most. The funniest was a rogue that had stunned me and while trying to backstab me killed himself on my damage return gear.

Tanking in 5 mans so far is going well. I haven't had a bad group yet so I usually get away with giving kings and other blessings verses giving salvation. The hardest part is still similar to warrior problems in getting initial agro when right after the pull everyone digs in. Once I get agro, it sticks pretty well and Righteous Defense still works great for the times I can't maintain threat.

The hardest part still is figuring out appropriate use of seals and judgements. When is it better to judge/seal light, judge/seal wisdom, judge wisdom/seal light, judge light/seal wisdom, judge crusader/seal righteousness or judge/seal righteousness? Not to mention hitting consecrate/holy shield/Righteous Defense/Exorcism and still cleansing debuffs. Tanking is the most interactive of the tasks I have had to do as a paladin and is a nice break from the heal, heal, heal and cleanse routine that has been my 60s life for the past year.

I have to say the most fun 5 man group I have been in was with Quantum and FJ. FJ was the tank and because of Quantum's sick healing DPS I got to offtank/offheal which was quite a bit of fun. I say offtank/offheal as I did not equip my tanking gear since I was not main tank but I had my spell damage/mana5 gear on with a shield so I could still take some hits. I was able to get right in the middle of things. Judge light for the melee, seal wisdom for myself and spam consecration. Every once in a while I would have to toss out a heal or taunt mobs of the squishies but I was able to do all that in the front lines meaning my plate got dirty which is what it was intended for. I really hope this style of play continues throughout the rest of TBC even to end game as I still like to play the protector role more then being a straight healer or tank.
 
2 amazing links for paladin tanking
Tankadin Guide

The Tankadin Gear Compendium

There was a great quote that summarizes my tanking playstyle.
The Paladin is the ultimate in micromanagement tanking. It's more like playing an extremely fast-paced realtime strategy game than an action game. You never reach a point where you're spamming a certain skill cycle: you're always adjusting timing, utility functions, managing cooldowns and spell durations, and your effectiveness as a tank is directly related to how efficiently you can do these things.
Click to expand...
 
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Wow I am having a blast tanking these 5-mans. I am getting geared up too...sitting at 10,200 k unbuffed health and 490def. I still got like 3 upgrade quest items to finish up once i get a group as well.

Anyways, wanted to share a sweet link. It has links to all the other good pages too.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Paladins_as_Tanks
 
Don't holy \ Retribution spec pallies rely on +int and +mp5?

And now that pally tanks risk taking less damage, thereby receiving less heals, and because of the additional +stam, receiving heals later, not being able to maintain an effective mana level? Without a decent mana pool size or mana regen, is this not the trade off?


===EDIT===

I was just reading that thread in more depth and this does indeed appear to be a worry in the pally community, that without good MP5 or decent mana pool, tanking effectiveness may actually decrease, well, at least a few have come up with that. Blizzard has always offered a double edged sword when they fix things. Nothing comes for free with them. You'll get your buff, but what you give up may end up hurting more then you first realize. 'tis all I'm saying.
 
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