#0 - April 27, 2007, 2:46 p.m.
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.
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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.
