moving from warrior to pallyFollow

Pally tanking is a little more forgiving than Warrior. You don't have the same worry about rotating skills to maximize threat and keep uncrushable. You also have less "Oh sh'it" abilities like Shield Wall etc. Basically you drop consecrate (don't break sheep though) throw up Holy Shield and start hitting things with SoR, if Mana is an issue on bosses feel free to throw up Judgement of Wisdom, hell our Pally MT did that in Hyjal/BT as well since the mana regenerated actually allowed for greater threat generation due to being able to cast and never run out of mana than a base increase to Holy damage from JotC.

Basic suggestions for leveling.

1) Levels 10-35/40 Level Ret. I know, I know, Lawl Ret and you wanna be Prot but you can tank just as fine as Ret at that level, if you put up a sword and board, as you would as Prot and Prot prior to lvl 35 moves like cold Molasses in terms of leveling.

2) Level 35/40 is when make the switch to Prot AoE leveling. Why? You get Reckoning maxed at lvl 35, and Holy Shield at lvl 40. Both these abilities increase your damage output the more you get hit. This coupled with the survivability given early on in the tree means you can grab 4+ mobs and watch them beat themselves to death as they attack you.

3) Your threat comes from spell damage, which is why when you get end game you want a Spell Damage weapon rather than a warrior tanking weapon. It is also why you see a lot of tier and badge geared designed for Prot Pallies has +spell damage on it. Ideally 200+ spell damage min for threat.


There is a sticky at the top of the page giving lots of info as well if you want to get more indepth.

Yes..

One of the big differences you'll find is OUT of combat. Paladins take a TON more attention to gear than Warriors and are WAY more gear-dependant than their plate wearing brothers and sisters. Preparation is a much bigger factor in Paladin tanking than in Warrior tanking.

That said, if you prepare well, expect to pull off some incredible feats. Both in terms of gimmicks (like the obligatory Paladin tank move of tanking ALL of the trash in Heroic BM in a single pull -- "Wait here guys, I'll be right back") and serious tanking (a Warrior tanking Rage Winterchill? Lawlcakes, what a waste).

I just wanted to say, Warriors had better not get a great AOE threat move, or we'll be out of a job. This is all :(

Oh, I do approve of this advice though, and also point you to the stickies. Hope that you do enjoy your Paladin. It really is a lot of fun, particularly with those "gimmicks" mentioned ;)

Yea.. in the current Alpha, Warriors and Druids both get some primitive AoE threat generating abilities. They also get a slight boost to their threat modifiers. We can't tell if any of this will stay through to live though. Furthermore, we have no clue what we're getting yet. We can be fairly certain that we'll be getting a pumped up threat modifier, otherwise we won't be able to keep up with level 80 DPSers, since you can be fairly sure their DPS will scale MUCH better than our Holy Damage will.

I'm looking forward to the preliminary Paladin changes/additions. We've been getting progressive boons since TBC launch, and with the recent additions to gear in 2.4 it appears Blizzard is finally starting to address another of our big issues, the absurdity of tanking gear itemization it regards to Paladin tanks.