#0 - April 5, 2007, 5:51 p.m.
Hopefully this will be a slightly different and more constructive slant on the age old paladin protection justification.
As a raid leader, what i want is -
Chars which can do their job well enough to get it done and not cause a problem elsewhere
Flexibility in my raid.
The ability to adapt to encounters
I'm going to look only at Karazhan and mostly the early parts and show what you, the raid leader, will get by taking a paladin and a warrior as your choice of tanks instead of a two warrior combination.
Firstly the negatives. Your paladin is not as good at tanking bosses as your warrior. He will have less health and he will take a tiny bit more damage. For this reason unless the paladin way out gears your warrior, the sensible choice is to have your warrior MT and your paladin OT. The paladin actualy thrives in the OT position anyway due to all the functionality i'm about to explain that you just can't do when you're MTing. Remember that this is Karazhan, there's not many fights here where you actualy need a 100% effective fully maxed out tank. Most of the time the fact a paladin would take a little more damage will have little effect to the outcome of the fight. This is what i mean by chars which can do their job well enough to get the job done.
So now on to the benefits. I'm going to assume you also have a holy paladin healing btw, i guess most do.
Rather than quoting facts and figures and analysing data, i'm going to tell you how a protection paladin can benefit you in different situations.
I won't mention buffs and judgements, but obviously you'll either get blessings or if you had a holy already, you'll now get two blessings, so your casters can have mana and threat reduction for example. You also get a judgement up on any mob that the paladin will auto refresh. Won't give lay on hands a point either, but we have it, 1 hour CD, so that's an instant full heal for someone 4 times a raid.
1 - The pick up - The paladin can easily pick up his mob, he hits it with a nuke and instantly has strong agro. Even if your hunters FD fails or he is late on it, the mob will go to the paladin
2 - Ranged agro - The paladin will agro the mob before it actualy reaches him, so even if someone in the raid does something stupid, the mob won't go to him.
3 - Front loaded agro (builds up fast) - The paladin can agro his mob before it reaches him, have your raid kill the OT's target first and they can go straight into DPS on every single pull, the paladin will have no problem keeping agro. This alows the warrior to build up strong agro and as he takes less damage, he will be tanking longer.
4 - Ranged taunt - If there's a bad pull or the warrior dies, or a shackler dies or whatever, the paladin can instantly taunt the mob to him from a distance. Warriors can taunt but only in melee range, thus the site of warriors chasing mobs and the old "if you get agro run to the warrior" shout. In kara if the warrior is too far away your healer is likely dead.
5 - Life saver - Paladins can also use blessing of protection any time things go wrong to save a healer. Blessing of protection stops all melee damage and have no negative side effects for casters (you can't melee while it's up) so it can freely be used on them. Any mob which can melee (most of them) will not target someone with BoP, so if one of your healers gets agro, just BoP them and the agro is lost for 10 seconds.
6 - Extra soulstone - A small but useful benefit, especialy while learning fights and given kara is only 10 people, so generaly you use your SS, maybe use your ankh then it's release and run. Paladins have Divine intervention which sacrifices their own life and makes the target (a resser) immune for 3 minutes and causes complete mob reset, so if it's a wipe the pali hits a healer, everyone dies, the healer clicks it off and resses.
7 - Attuman pick up - Have your MT warrior tank Midnight, have your paladin stand to one side a bit and spam tab, the moment attuman gets targeted he hits exorsism and attuman runs straight to the paladin and safely out of the way. This is more secure than a warrior pick up and gets him out of the raid quicker, it also doesn't need any tricky targeting or turning if he runs behind you.
8 - The guest non elite groups before Moroes - The paladin can tank these easily, let him be MT, have the hunter misdirect to him or run over him (FD can even be on cooldown, just have the hunter stand a couple of feet behind the pali). The paladin will spam consecrate and tank them all, melee can attack anything as long as they stay in the aoe and ranged should all just wait 3-4 seconds then aoe, they will not pull agro unless they go full out and this is much faster and less messy than single tanking/cc/single kill
9 - Moroes - Have your paladin nuke one of the mobs to be shackled on the pull, this way the mob will go to the paladin for the first 2-3 shackles and not the priest.
10 - Moroes - Make sure your paladin uses Blessing of Protection on raid members to clear the garrotte. Usualy save it for healers but if you have a holy pali as well you can just it on the first two to be garrotted then it will be up again later.
11 - (This can be done long with 6 and still keep 2nd on Moroes agro list) If you get the protection or mortal strike adds, have the paladin nuke then fear one (just fear if you're nuking one to be shackled). It will be free for 10 seconds (20 sec fear, 30sec CD) but the paladin can happily tank it for that amount of time then refear. He can still stay 2nd on the agro list of Moroes while doing this and if you put a shadow priest with him, he will need no more than the occassional hot to keep him up. Just do this til Moroes is dead. Assuming you kill a holy one and shackle two, this probably frees up your hunter to DPS the whole fight.
12 - Maiden - Your off tank is next to usless here, even if he melees he won't do that much due to being in and out all the time. With a warrior you may as well let him do that and do what DPS he can, with a paladin you have another option. Have your paladin put his healing gear on, he should keep blessing of sacrifice on the MT the whole fight, thus taking damage every time the MT is hit. When repentance hits, the MT will be released when he's hit and so will the paladin. The paladin then heals the MT through the repentance til the other healers are back. In between the paladin should cleanse people. You may have a holy pali with you as well but this takes this task off him and saves him and your priests from cleansing. A shadow priest in the group for this is extremely useful to heal the constant damage, but it's not vital. A minor benefit is the MT himself takes a bit less damage too.
13 - Skeletal flayers. This actualy works better with 2 paladins, but that's not what the post is about. When you have pairs of flayers, have your paladin use avengers shield while they're incoming then nuke his target. Once the mobs are at the tanks (standing together ofc) have the paladin consecrate. The paladin should now easy have enough agro to stay top and 2nd on the agro list of the two mobs. It's a good idea to have the warriors mob killed first as it's tougher for him to stay 2nd on the list if the raid is killing the paladins mob than for the pali to stay 2nd if it's on the warriors. Due to the healing these mobs require the pali can pretty much spam abilities here.
14 - Opera - Romulo and Jullianne - The paladin can tank jullianne and still cleanse the poison from the MT on romulo, which lets the healers concentrate on healing (less of a problem now they nerfed it)
15 - Opera - BBW - Only 1 tank is required here, your paladin should melee the wolf while it's in position then as soon as someone gets the debuff, just have him switch to healing (plenty of mana, just dps with SoR), then straight back to DPS while he's back again. He can also bubble when debuffed to remove a cycle (like rogues and hunters can avoid it).
16 - Curator trash groups - Fight in the round room, hunter pulls over the paladin, warrior picks up the big guy and the paladin aoe agro's all the small ones. Yes they mana drain but he will get 2 aoes off which is enough to agro all of them the whole fight. Once the big guy is dead the raid can pick off the small ones. This is the fastest way to do these (imo) becuase it requires no CC, so your mage and druid can carry on healing/DPSing.
That's all i can think of at the moment. I could add a ton more but they'd be more marginal ones and i don't want to make it look like i'm making things up. There's 16 clear benefits that will give visable and real help to your raiding, be it speed or success chance.
Again i personaly don't consider paladins to be prime main tank material, but i 100% do consider paladins to be excellent raid tanks. To touch on my original point again, the fact the pali takes a bit more damage is only a problem if it's a problem. Think about your fights, how many times do you die becuase you can't keep your MT up, i bet it's a lot less than you think it is. Now how many is becuase you can't keep the OT up? even less. Our experience in kara would have only rommulo a problem for keeping the MT up, but he's been nerfed and anyway the MT would be the warrior.
Feel free to add any benefits i may have missed. Hopefully a guild or raid leader or two will read this and see a few benefits there he'd not considered and will give a paladin a chance. One thing i will say is becuase it's a flexible roll and most of the above requi
