A couple of paladin questionsFollow

That either I can't find answers for or I didn't look hard enough to find. I'm hoping it's the former.

First I'd like to say thanks to Captain Jack and the other scholars around here, you guys have made this the best class forum on alla in my opinion and I have checked the other ones quite a bit to get a feel of how I should play with them and if I ever wanted to make an alt.


I'm only a level 18 human paladin on Thrall, oh and I'm planning on being Protection.

So onto the questions.

What is a good add-on for tracking the duration of my Seals? I feel that I'm losing out on possible damage by either Judging too early or letting the seal run off.

I play with a party of myself, a rogue, and a mage. I'm there for healing and tanking. I find that my tanking is more important than healing as I only have to heal myself and as long as we aren't fighting 4 or more mobs I can heal pretty easily. But I'm considering respecing over into Holy so that I can pick up Spiritual Focus for when we do have those nasty occasions of adds and "I didn't see that guy behind the rock". But I'm not sure if the loss in Prot of Redoubt and Toughness is an equal trade. We are planning on AoE grinding eventually. So basically porcupine + blizzard with a rogue stabbing stuff. So what in your opinion is the best approach? After heroics I'll probably respec into a 41/20/0 build.

Just to clear something up just in case I have to argue this point at a later date inside of a PUG or something. Paladins make better 5 man tanks than warriors because of porcupine and righteous defense? We can more easily hold aggro on more mobs and do damage to them all at the same time plus self heal with seal of light and/or FoL when it's needed. Oh and consecrate. Is that basically it? Thats not including blessings and stuff. But at end game even as great as our Protection is our secondary ability to heal outweighs the secondary ability of a Warrior to DPS?

Well I got a couple replies.

FIRST AND FOREMOST!



Aww shucks *blush*


SECOND AND NOT-AS-FOREMOST!



I'm not sure about an add-on for tracking seals. The best thing I can tell you is that the best time to judge a seal is immediately after swinging your weapon. This should give you enough time to bring it back up before your next weapon swing.


THIRDLY AND WHY-IS-IT-EVEN-HERE?!



If you were saying that you just started your Paladin I would have advised you to start in ret and respec at around 35 or 40 to get into prot. However you're already lvl 18 so no point in doing it now. Just keep pushing down protection and get a shield spike if you can. When you need to heal, use Seal of Light/Judgement of Light and that should keep you alive pretty well.

So I'll respec into Retribution.

And then jump over to Prot around 35. Kinda like playing a Shaman as Ele until I could get 2H when I last played.

I'll see a DPS increase and really won't lose much it looks in my defensive abilities at this level.

Well, you see you want to get that spec so that you can make this spec, knowing that you had that spec and missing it while you work towards this other spec.... ahh, more rum!!!

Things to note:


Hard to cast as 4 or 5 guys are pounding on you. Yes, there's a bubble... every 5? min.

As for seals... I use CT buff mod. There are enough options that you could narrow it down to just your seals. You don't need the whole package, just the buff mod ( http://www.ctmod.net/downloads/ ) and to open the controls it's /ct buffmod

Have fun!

Except for the fact that they're either doing no damage and are therefore not second on threat or they're completely out of mana before the healer they're supposed to be backing up is...

There is an option in the interface options that shows all buff durations underneath them. Since seals count as buffs, you can easily see when the 30 timer is about to run out. As you play more though, you will soon learn to judge how long you have left on your seal without looking (its only roughly timing 30seconds anyway!).

Except for our heals causing 1/4 threat, even "buffed" by Righteous Fury, that's still lower than other healers right? You won't be staying high on the threat list by throwing out some heals, and you'll be wasting mana on weak heals that could be spent on some real threat abilities.

Healing while tanking may have worked in SM, but it'll never work at 70. You can't block or parry while casting, so chances are you're taking more damage than you're going to heal anyway.