Learning to tank - Plz go easy...Follow

Ok, new paly and I'm learning to tank.

If it's a single mob, unless the mage or warlock goes knuts I'm fine and good to go.

My question what is your spell rotation for multi-mob tanking positions. (Aka - Running the Stocks, or Gnomer - where multi-mob pulls are very common and CC is either not an option or the mage is a damn noob who didn't buy "Sheep" cause he never needed it to solo.) (I have a mage so that really bothered me when i heard that.)

Here's my rotation:

Ret. aura up (I use this if the healer is good... If I need to i'll up my defense, but i figure i'd start with this and see how things go.)
Blessing of might
Righteous fury up

Seal Crusader, then judge main target.
Then Seal of Righteousness (spelling?)
Drop in a Consecration,
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Fight mobs
-----

Now either I judge with Righteousness (If it's up/mana considering)
OR I redo Consecration

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If anyone pulls agro I just target the mob and whack at it or drop a judgement on them. I've never used righteous defense (Cause i've never had to do it)


SO - am I doing this right?








Edited, May 11th 2008 8:24pm by Borsuk

At the point you're at the best answer will come with your own experience with your abilities.

For trash I probably wouldn't judge Crusader, they go down pretty quickly. Blessing of Wisdom, Sanctuary, or Kings would benefit you more than Might. You should have no problem holding aggro with Consecration and Ret Aura unless you're poorly positioned or every DPS is attacking a different target.

Try to get them to use a marked kill order or just /assist you for targets.

And yes, use Righteous Defense. It now operates like any other taunt in that you DONT have to macro it so that you can cast it on a mob anymore. You can either target a mob or your party member that is under attack and it will work if the party member is in range. The advantage of Righteous Defense is that is puts you on top of the aggro chart, so you can immediatly judge Righteousness and be ahead.. rather than using Righteousness to take aggro and then losing it right away.

First of all, please don't throw fits here. This isn't the way to get people to help you out. For all you know those 27 views could have all come from people who were checking out this site as a guest. It's not like people LIVE on this forum and can get to a new topic every minute of every day.

That said a couple things that'll help you out:

1) as stated above me, use a marking system. Explain which targets you want dead in what order, and stick to it. This should eliminate any confusion and keep the DPS on track.

2) make sure you use the appropriate Blessings. Might on yourself is a waste. Use Wisdom if you need the mana or Kings/Sanctuary (if you have them). Your physical DPS is so low, and gives you so little threat, you will always be better off using one of the other 3 Blessings I mentioned: choose based on the situation (Wisdom if you're going oom, Sanc if you need threat, Kings if you need more health/avoidance). And make sure any DPS has Salvation no matter how much they whine. If you are holding threat fine, feel free to give them a different Blessing, but Salvation should be the first priority to help manage threat.

3) Dropping your Consecration should really be your first step after the pull. Seal up with your Seal of choice, make the pull, drop Consecration. You want to get that threat started on your targets first so the healer won't pull aggro, then start your Judgement/Holy Shield rotation. This is for multi-target pulls though. If you have one target, only use Consecration if you have aggro happy DPS.

EDIT: couple typos.

Edited, May 12th 2008 2:24am by Maulgak

Yes, tanks are generally put in charge of leading the run. At least in my experience, whatever toon I am on, the tank always gets handed group lead for marking purposes unless they specifically say they aren't good at it (blah, get good you slackers!). The tank and healer need to be more focused than the DPS, mainly because it is their jobs to keep everyone alive. DPS needs to pay attention as well of course, but for most of the game (until raids) the DPS can half-sleep through anything and be fine. You do that as a tank or healer, people will die.

People say Paly tanking is easy, and I guess when you compare the number of buttons we need to push with a Warrior or even Druid, then yea it is. But, tanking is not necessarily easy, and it takes the same amount of focus to tank with a Paladin as any other tank.

BEHOLD: The power of the interwebbynet:
Maintankadin Threat Theory/Strat/Etc I ::heart:: these folks.

Basically, until you get 41 points in prot., you'll have to depend on Consecration and Ret. Aura to hold a threat lead on your healers. Watch your positioning of course. Be sure that DPS is focus-fire on the main target, which is not always your target. Also tell DPS to 5-count before unloading.

Hope that helps.


Poor DPS can, good DPS cannot. ;)

One thing I didn't see anyone else mention: Don't even bother consecrating unless you're trying to hold multiple mobs. It isn't worth the TPM otherwise and you shouldn't need it. Based on the same criteria, you also may or may not want to pull with Avengers Shield. In this, you'll just have to use your own judgement.

Seals, Judgements, and reactive damage (most notably Holy Shield, which should always be on spam) should be more than enough to generate acceptable single-target threat.

Lol... Yeah, guess I missed that. Oh well. You can never have too much advice. =P

Fixed ...

I guess it depends on how you pull. No sense in dropping your Consecration first if you pull with Avenger's Shield at max range.

Some mages take too long to get the sheep in.

Do you guys ever ask mages to do 'sheep pulls'? i.e. ask them to sheep the caster at max range, then u stand in front of him and consecrate?

Is that a risky approach?

Generally I don't... some pulls like the third boss in Heroic MrT I have the Mage make the pull. This is because there's no tanking, they attack random targets. If the Mortal Strike Warrior add isn't sheeped on the pull, he'll immediatly charge, stun, and MS the Mage buying himself enough time to rip the whole group apart if I've already HoJed the Priestess.

For the most part, I throw Avenger's Shield at the target I want to be sheeped. That way not only do I have threat built on it so it doesnt gun down the Mage if sheep breaks, but it slows that target buying the Mage time if needed. If the Mage isn't fast enough I generally just pick that mob up myself... the only stuff I bring Mages that I don't know can get their sheep off immediatly after AS hits for is easy stuff anyway.

Not on AS... they reverted one of the things they changed and kept the others.

LOL! Touché my friend! ;)
Lazy dps players just **** me off I guess.


Sheep-pulls (or Fear/Hibernate/etc pulls) can be very useful in some circumstances. But the mage really needs to stay on top of the CC until focus-fire can get to that target or they could get all melty-faced.

There have been times when losing a tick or two of Consecration (dropping it before the mobs are on me) has been useful for cool-down management. That 1.5 sec that the mobs are running through the dot allows me to pop HS right when they're on me so that I'm using all of the available uptime of HS that I can.

But, then again, I'm not that bright. So maybe there's a better way to do it.