I suck at various things but don't want toFollow

Ok, this is going to be split into two things I'm a bad paladin at and want advice:

First is tanking: On both my horde and alliance server, I've noticed a troubling lack of tanks. I've put off playing both my hunter and respecced my holy paladin as a tank.

So far, I tanked ZF. It went alright, but I felt like I was barely holding on. I had to recover mana a lot, and use Righteous Defense a lot; people were pulling enemies off that I had to grab. All in all a pretty stressful time. Against bosses it was easy to keep hate, but it was against multiple mobs that I had trouble. Admittedly the party was a bit overzealous with their forward momentum, but even if I could get the mobs to hit me 1st I'd often end up chasing one.

Casters were a huge problem; since they weren't attacking me, they'd easily switch to the healer, and I'd have to charge over, dragging the other mobs, and DPS, along with me.

I don't even know what to ask really, just.. how do I make this work.. less stressfully :P What are the ideal blessings and seals to use? I used mainly blessing of sanctuary on myself/blessing of salvation on others. Seal of wisdom for myseal. Lots of consecration if things would turn away from me, causing a big mana drain.

PvP:

OMG BGs are a frightening place for a paladin ; ;

You're not much good on your own, so I usually find myself chasing after teammates who seem to scatter in all directions, trying to get heals onto them as they get smashed by a pile of opposition. Usually one or seven of the opponents wise up and lock me down, while my poor teammate gets turned into sauce. After that, I'm alone again and usually just /sleep until they kill me.

I would have thought protection would have been more fun in BGs, but I think I actually survive *less* and am less helpful as its hard to get heals off even with concentration aura.

You had RF on i assume? I diddn't have it on a few times and wondered why I couldn't hold aggro until someone pointed it out to me.

Edited, Jan 25th 2008 3:17pm by Killerheals

I think Blizz was just being cute. Playing on the word "hydraulic". But who knows...maybe hydra licking is some inside joke. :-)

It wasn't mentioned, but I assume that you are aware that your threat is generated mainly through Holy Damage. White damage doesn't do too much. So, that is where Seal of Righteousness comes in. It gives you a continuous output of Holy Damage (i.e. threat).

For caster mobs - my recommendation is to put the skull over their head, or else have them CC'd. The other thing you can do is run into the mobs (instead of pulling them). That way, you are right on top of the casters.

Finally -
That is so critical! If the DPS don't know who to target, then they will just start hitting random mobs. You'll never hold on to aggro that way.

I have a DPS alt, and it drives me nuts when a tank doesn't mark mobs. Please don't be that tank :)

Another great suggestion is to mark the second target too. That way, DPS know who to focus on when the first mob goes down.

Hope that helps.

Yeah marking is a big thing. I was running SM Library with my mage yesterday and the tank wasnt marking. Safe to say there were many close calls, a couple of wipes and a few angry people by the end. Explain what each icon is for as well. Most people know that skull means 1st target, moon is usually Sheep CC etc, but you would be surprised how many dont.

You will almost always have problems with casters compared to melee types. Just use Line of Sight so they come to you and drop a consecration. That should be plenty to keep them off the healer. I usually give priority to clothy dps mobs first or healer mobs then melee, just bcoz there harder to hold, whereas the melee types will usually just sit there pounding on your shield