Made me SICKFollow

This past weekend I was helping a friend of mine run MgT on my he needed a dps'er so I jumped over to my Ret pally. Joined the group and saw we have a pally tank I was thinking that this would be a easy run. I was WRONG! I inspected his gear when we all got summoned and this is what I found.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Greymane&n=Churchill

He was tanking in PvP Ret gear. Now I have seen some pallys tank in PvP a few peices of healing gear on the lower lvl outlands instances where you will not take much dmg. So the added mana and spell dmg. makes for a quick run. But a pally tanking in Ret gear, I didn't understand it.

But I was willing to give it a go to help out a friend buy the time we got to the third boss we had wiped about 6 times. He could not hold aggro on any mobs and never used his concecration.

Now me being a pally tank also seeing this made me SICK! I run that place on my tank and never have a problem most of the time we can clear it in just over 1 hour with a decent group.

I ran into another pally tank that had no idea what he was doing. I was on my 48 warlock we were running ST we get down to all the dragon mobs at the bottom and we pull the fist set his health gets low and what does he do he bubbles, and we wipe. So we run back do the pull again and he does the same thing, I tell him don't bubble you drop all aggro and we die. He tells me "I was healing myself." so I say "That is why we have a healer in the group to heal you." We start another pull it starts going bad so I run around a corner and hearth and drop group.

I was very fustrated with the 2 pally tanks I ran into this weekend.

/rant done

Yeah, I am also surprised as to how many Paladin tanks are trying to be warriors. They think white damage is king.

I spent a good chunk of today discussing this with a lvl 70 tankadin. On a plus note, he was very receptive to the change. At first, looking at a tankadin weapon, he was like "too low DPS". Then, I think he understood the power of spell damage. :)

I also knew another tankadin that was in Ret PvP gear, loaded with Attack Power gems. Again, I had to convince him otherwise. Now, mobs stick to him like glue. He's awesome.

I think a lot of tankadins just think that warrior tanking gear is the way to go. Since there is no real spell damage gear while leveling (i.e. pre Outland), they learned to think that white damage is key. If no one took the time to explain it to them, why would they think of changing? It's unfortunate if you are in a rush and find one of those people tanking for you. If you have time, you may be surprised how many of them are willing to learn the correct way.

I would have to strongly disagree here, because:



If it's so easy to be a Paladin tank, why are there so many that suck at it? It still takes a good amount of skill and know-how to be a Paladin tank. It's not all just, "lawl Consecrate spam, I is uber aggro king!"

I think part of WHY there are so many bad Paly tanks is that people watch the good ones make it look easy and see people say it takes little skill, then when they get there, realize that is not the case. If they wanted something easy, they should go back to Shining Force and leave the tanking to the real Tankadins =P

That.

I am limited by content seen as a prot pally, but i really cannot see it getting any harder past Kara. More of the same, just with better gear. Besides, this thread is about 5 man content anyway.

Everytime i tanked with my pally i chuckled at how ridiculously ezmode it was. I can understand a warrior having a hard time tanking. there can be a lot to do when you dont have the CC for the bigger pulls and **** can get out of hand. Yay for an AoE taunt on a 10 min CD. Not saying warriors have it rough, its just a different beast and requires a lot of input to excel and a different approach for most of the pulls. whereas with a pally it takes very little input to excel. You literally run in to a group of mobs (or AS pull, w/e) and drop consecrates with focus threat on the main DPS target. Thats it. Consecrate, JoR/SoR cycle. holy shield if the pull is big. >_> The hardest part i've found is trying to target the marked DPS targets when you have 5+ dudes hammering away on you.

On bosses the classes even out some as you have to be a little more careful with HS because of the GCD, compared to warriors Shield Block, which is independent of the GCD. and otherwise its just skill rotations, which warriors have many more of.

an example, my brother played my pally for me once cuz he was tired of his mage. did arc, i had adequate gear for the instance nothing special. He's never played a tank class before and he did the run flawlessly.

I played my pally quite a bit in the 5 mans and never encountered anything that remotely challenged my skill. gear maybe, skill no.

Warrior, much more intense.

If you're just an idiot in general though, you are going to fail at whatever you try to do. That's life.

yea, its simple. and not just simple for the person playing the tank. its simple for CC capable DPS because they dont (rarely) have to CC. It simpled for healers because there isnt mobs running all over. there isnt the mob that broke CC earlier and is either headed straight to the cloth, or straight to the healer.

its just almost relaxing. heh even with pugs!

I cannot say that I find paladin tanking all that hard, although, that may be because I probably understand threat generation through healing and dps as well as a tank's own threat generation. I think this goes a long way in holding aggro and many novice tanks just don't understand. Also, in runs where CC is necessary, some unexperienced pally tanks find it hard to get a mob CC'ed and still avoid breaking the CC because of poorly timed consecrates and the like.

This is why I like H MgT as a tutorial. Even with CC, the pulls do take some concentration. U can't just CC some mobs, throw AS, and spam consecrate.

Line of sight is important, distance from CC, mob kill order etc. And its a good way to learn how to mark. Hell, its a good way to learn how to play other classes too (e.g. telling mages to spellsteal a buff, or locks to put CoT etc..)

But hands down, the hardest thing about being a pally tank, is understanding how to best mitigate damage and how to achieve those goals.

the magical 490 and 102.4, even with badge gear and full kara epics, is quite close. its a constant battle to regem and reenchant and it truly takes a strong understanding of mitigation to learn.


one thing that i find warrior main tanks doing easily is disregaring avoidance and just gemming for stam (because, hey 75% shield block ability is quite a bit of avoidance). Pallys can't do that as well as they can.

Edited, May 22nd 2008 7:39pm by kensanity

Since we are on this topic, I'll borrow this thread and ask for more advice. (coz I see people who play both mages and pallies =)

In my static group (of alts) where I had a holy priest dedicated to healing me (Prot pally tank), I also have a mage, shaman and warlock.

THe problem I have is that the mage will get aggro when he starts to AOE. I presume consecrate alone is not going to be enough to hold the aggro for big bunch of mobs if mages AOE.

When can we do to help?

Ask the mages to hold on AOE, while we hit one target after another build up threat?

Ask healer to spam heal on mage and pray he lives thru it? =P

When I'm playing my shaman, I love Pally tanks, coz they can seemingly hold aggro on all the mobs while I just chainlightning away. How do u guys do that?

Edited, May 23rd 2008 2:43am by waihwang

I'll answer this question with an actual scenario in Heroic MrT.

The room with the first boss has 3 trash pulls in it. 2 of them are LARGE AoE pulls. Depending on the number of casters, they can potentially eat the 20k HP I usually have (given it's only 5 man buffs) in seconds if the healer isnt on the ball.

I mark one target. It's always a caster. I ask everyone to burn that target down first and then unload on AoE. This guarantees I have threat, and quickly eliminates one of the more powerful threats to me.

It also depends on how much the AOEers have. You may have 350-400 spell damage, but get a Tier 6 geared Mage in there, might have issues should they lay in too soon.

Frankly my biggest problem as a Paladin tank in 5mans is ******** DPSers who are addicted to big numbers, like some kind of endorphin rush. I can say over and over to the Warlock/Hunter (worst offenders) "Wait for Consecrate" but they wont bloody do it.

If I am exceedingly lucky I'll get a skilled group who are grinding alts to supplement their existing raiding main, but then you always get into discussions about how Paladin tanks suck and nobody uses them endgame...

However, when I am really lucky I get a group that understands Paladin threat and that understands the real strengths of the class (SH with a Paladin is easy street), and then tanking is a joy, as well as being spectacularly easy. No stance-dancing, no target-switching, just sword and board and lots of satisfying CLANK sounds as mobs pound on my shield :)

~sins

In defense of warriors, I was AoE-tanking Heroic Shattered Halls on my warrior way back in patch 2.1, when people had to run that instance to get TK-raid attuned. Zero wipes, only kara/blue gear, and we still finished the instance with 12 minutes left on the timed event timer. We still used focused DPS.




Why do so many Hunters suck at DPS when it's just a matter of setting up a shot rotation macro and literally pushing one button non-stop?

Never underestimate the suck of the averate WoW player.



One thing you'll find high end pally tanks doing is disregarding avoidance and gemming just for stam. Same goes for druids. Every tank gems for as much stam as possible because high stam gives cushion for burst damage, and no matter how high your avoidance gets there will be burst damage.



Be careful not to get a superiority complex. While there are a number of hardcore theorycrafter tankadins, the exact same thing can be said of absolutely every other class. Warrior theorycrafting is in fact even more complex than paladin theorycrafting because it includes more variables like the mobs armor value and attack speed.

All that being said, I've tanked through BT on both a warrior and a Paladin. My paladin has a much easier time on trash, and my warrior has an easier time on bosses. However in complete honesty, tanking on either one is rather simplistic, as is most of the entire game. Keep in mind one very basic thing. WoW was designed to be beaten.

EDIT: I still suck at quoting.


Edited, May 27th 2008 8:46am by Ialaman

Paladin tanking is pretty simple. It can get a little more complex in working out a spell rotation with GCD to keep threat maximized and HS up. But it will never be as indepth as Warrior tanking.

The biggest mistake I find in Pally tanks at the 5-10 man level is that they are so enraptured with reaching uncrushable that they completely neglect their threat generating abilities. You see pallies with Prot Warrior weapons (like the thread earlier this week), or Pallies with no points into 1h Wep specialization which boosts spell damage by 5%, and since your spell damage IS your threat that is pretty nifty, don't you think? That or they spec into PoJ for spell miss, when 98% of all boss attacks against them are melee (its like buying flood insurance in Arizona). Stuff like that.

As for players who don't know kill orders or who don't have omen and just pull threat, let them die and don't break a sweat. They will learn sooner or later or spend all their gold on repairs.

Thats one thing that surprises me, I always specify skull to be killed first, and the only threat any other mobs get is from consecrate and holy shield (because I only have to outstrip heal aggro right?) Yet on almost every pull x and skull die at almost the same time, this happens with pugs, guild groups, heroics, kara (I don't really tank anything else), you name it.

I am always surprised how dpsers think that just because its a pally tank they can just press tab and nuke whatever target they feel like. I don't mind as long as they don't pull aggro, as i would run oom pretty quickly if they nuked targets one at a time like they're supposed to.

Edited, May 29th 2008 9:50am by Tinyknight

Edited, May 29th 2008 9:51am by Tinyknight