Tanking in SSC/TK +Follow

Ok, so i've been prot for a while now. My guild is just starting TK and just killed VR this week (guilds first not mine). My question is what bosses will I be wanted to tank from here on out? Or specific trash pulls? I am the MT/ first tank for the VR fight, and i tank the bird trash pulls, other than that i stand around, or heal if im bored. I know healing is still a big part of playing a prot pally, but what other parts will i actually be needed to tank in TK/SSC/HYJAL+

There's some other trash pulls in TK where a Paly tank is pro (some BE packs that don't hit hard). Having a Prot Paly for Solarian makes one of her phases a lot easier. Paladins are also great tanks to have on add duty for Al'ar. Just don't have 2 Palys on add duty for the second phase of the fight (we did that once, Palys kept taunting both adds off each other, lol).

I never got all the way through SSC, but I do know a few things. A Paly tank is great for Tidewalker when he calls in murlocs. The Paly can just round them all up. Like ken mentioned, Hydross adds are a good spot for a Prot Paly. The packs around where you spawn Lurker have a bunch of engineers and a Prot Paly can easily tank all of them plus an elite. Lastly I have heard (and watched a video that for me at least proved this) that Paly tanks are better for tanking Leotheras. He attacks fast and does an aggro drop, making Avenger's Shield a great tool for getting him back under control.

EDIT: forgot you said Hyjal+ at the end, hehe.

Hyjal trash is the most fun I've had as a Paly tank! I swear, those waves come, you just throw down a Consecration, put up Holy Shield, and let DPS go to town :D There are some mobs that come in which you either have the other tanks peel mobs off the Paly or have melee DPS tank (for various reasons), but I would not want to see what Hyjal trash would be like in the absence of a Prot Paly.

As for bosses, my guild rarely uses a Prot Paly for a boss unless it's a multi tank fight, and never as teh first tank. This isn't true for every guild though. Mine is just hardcore and into the whole "min-max is the ONLY way to do this!" idea.

Edited, Jun 15th 2008 5:55pm by Maulgak

I have main-tanked all of SSC, except for Tidewalker, where I do the murlocs. Personally, I think Tidewalker might be easier for a pally tank. We would probably take fewer crushes than a warrior, and he hits fast enough that reactive threat would be high. In addition, our threat generation is less dependent on attack speed than a warrior, so the debuff wouldn't hurt us quite so much.

Hydross, you can tank one of his phases and a couple adds. In theory, one pally could tank him and all 4 adds for a phase.

For Leo, I've tanked the human phase, and having avenger's shield is great for grabbing agro after a whirlwind. Recently, though, I've gotten a fire resist set (350 FR), and I tank his demon phase. With enough spell damage, you can grab very fast agro with exorcism/avenger shield. It's also a huge benefit to be able to drop a de-buff stack whenever you need to using divine shield (usually right before transition to phase 3). Just make sure to get hit by his whirlwind a couple times during human phase, so you can regen your mana. We've had much smoother kills this way, than we ever did with warlock tanks.

I always tank Karathress, as we have our warrior on the priest add, for additional interrupt. We've had other pally tanks on the shaman and hunter adds, so all are doable.

We recently got our first Vashj kill, and I main-tanked that as well. We had two pally tanks. Probably not ideal, since it'd be nice to have some sort of charge. Phase 2 is fun. I would grab the Naga elites and bring them to the other tank who would taunt off me. That left me free to roam about and stun striders when they appeared. It's also really useful to have an extra cleanse for the poisons tossed about when tainted elementals spawn (takes a little burden off the healers).

Other than that, we've only downed Solarian (pally's are great for the adds) and VR in TK. We haven't even attempted Al'ar yet (wanted to down Vashj first), so that's coming this week.

We also spent one night in Hyjal, so we've only got Rage down. Obviously, Pally tanks are awesome for the Hyjal trash, but I tanked Rage as well.

In any event, you should be capable of main-tanking almost anything in SSC/TK. From what I understand, there are some fights later on that are trouble for pally tanks because of silences/mana use. But, I'm looking forward to either figuring out a way to do them, or throwing on my healing set for that.