A defensive update on the patch

Patch 5.0.4 brought us some changes, and its taking some players like me a while to understand and absorb them. I’m damned if I can fit 9 classes worth of changes in my head at once, so I’ve kept to just a few. My Death Knight main and a few of the toons that I tank with: DK, Warrior, and Paladin. I’ll get around to adding the Guardian Druid into that soon, and then also spec’ing the non-tanks like my Warlock and Hunter. I wonder if Hunters and Warlocks can pet tank / solo now.

One thing about the new Tanking model is that multi-mob tanking is much more viable, as long as the tank does not get stunned or overwhelmed. When either occur you are in deep trouble very quickly. DKs, Pally, and War all hurt when faces with 10+ mobs, and the old days of doing an instance in a single pull. Now if the mobs cannot hit your character for enough damage per second to chew through the shield, then your character will never get hurt at all. Generally that will never happen at level, and even (Level -10) needs to be considered. At (level-25) or less I think its the same old run and giggle mode, which is good. At level on normal mode all Tanks should be able to solo bosses like Slabhide with reasonable gear and use of cool-downs.

As a quick summary:

• Death Knights – feel essentially the same as previous Blood spec did, and play very much like a dps character. Good solid fun.
• Paladins – slow and steady damage, unkillable due to great cooldowns, highly controllable self heal. The cockroach is back.
• Warriors – fast paced leaps, charges, and thunderclaps. High damage, lower survival. Best fun to be had by far.

Death Knight – overall nothing greatly changed, and everything did. The Blood style plays the same, and it is the other tanks who now are moved to an absorption/healing based actions (aka Active Mitigation). Essentially our world changed because we have moved from having a somewhat unique ability, to having just one of the best implementations of the soak/damage model. I liked it a a DK and like it on the others too. As dps the talents feel narrow.

I’m not sold on the concept of switching talent choices per fight, except to say that if a player can do that well they are a much greater asset to their raid than a player who specs once and never changes.

Paladin – I was newbie tanking in Outland back in the day, and loved the fact that mana was returned by getting hurt. Likewise now we get all sorts of resources back from being hurt. I’ve run a few old heroic 70 and 80 dungeons in solo mode to test the performance of the Tankadin, and while I think their overall damage is too low, the survivability is very strong.Cooldowns are needed for heavy damage spike fights and too many mobs can rip through the bubble very quickly.

Paladin’s strength is the control of when they can apply their heal, and the advantage of doing either a powerful shield strike or heal as a 3x holy power combo move. I found on bosses or big trash pulls that sometimes all I did was self heal, and the slow attrition of concentration and the AoE effects whittled down the creatures. The Paladin was never in trouble, but also never was near the DPS that the Warrior did.

Warrior – A Protection Warrior at the moment is crazy fun. They do as much damage as some lowbie dps and can head smash their way through mobs darn quickly. Having additional uses of charge via talents means that for now I grind quests as Prot. Never dying has many advantages. They are still a very agile tank, being able to move across the battle exceedingly quickly. Solo’ing was almost as easy as the others, but at times my health was dropping and it took special attention to snap it back up. Thankfully the cooldowns provide for some interesting power-ups, and I was also using Herbalism’s small heal and spare potions.

If I could somehow get a huge gear jump I think the Warrior would benefit strongly from a powerful set of items and correct re-forging. Parry and mitigation re-forging appear to make a large difference in the form discussions out there, and my Warrior feels like she wants to smash heads harder, but cannot just yet. The potential is certainly there.

But why have 3-4x tank characters?

Heroic Utguard Pinnacle (h-UP), Heroic Magister’s Terrace (h-MgT), and Normal Stonecore are all easily solo-able for all three classes, which means grinding for those elusive mounts is now easier as a character can be parked out the front of each to do each one each day with no travel time. Till the new world events this is what I’ll be spending free time on. I’m pondering adding the Druid to be parked in front of Molten Core, purely because the rare mats and drops from there still sell well.

In terms of comparison neither the Paladin or the Warrior can hold a torch to a Death Knight for solo’ing and damage. Some of that might be due to much better gear (ilevel 333 vs 378) and my familiarity with the DK class, but it seems the DK is slightly ahead for now. Warrior is probably a close second, but their healing is still not as exceptional or as controllable as the Death Knight. Things will be interesting at level 90 where we are meant to be playing, as I can see a Warrior becoming once again the powerhouse of Tanking. Having the only AoE taunt will be an exceptional ability, and as gear improves their block/soak mechanics will get stronger and stronger. A Paladin too might also be powerful again for the ancient reason they were awesome in the past, that they have so many cooldowns which increase survival. By comparison the DK cooldowns are just trivial. This is also good as I think there needs to be some separation between the tank styles and perhaps this is enough. Not sure as yet.

I’m looking forward to adding a Monk to the lineup too; 5x Tanks will be excellent.

Related articles

• Mists of Pandaria Beta: Rage tanks get angrier (wow.joystiq.com)
• Initial thoughts on WoW patch 5 (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• For WoW Tanks, It’s Time To Take Our Pants Off Again (mmomeltingpot.com)
• What do I know about other classes and specs? (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)

Pally Holy Power mod

Simple mod called KAHolyPower, for pallys like my alt who wish the Holy Power display to be adjustable around the screen.

AFK, Real World Crit my Gamming

Its been a long time since I posted regularly, and by golly gee its been busy – both in game and out.

I’ve been planning a huge life event (because you can’t say wedding without somebody charging you a 200% bullshit surcharge), changing to a new and exciting job, and also burning time on trying to find a house to buy. By comparison a Sarth 3D kill will a tank and healer AFK, and 3 screen-lickers is easy.

But you don’t read a wow blog to ponder my real life ramblings, so straight to the wow goodies:

A new Guild

After much nashing of teeth and requests, I’ve moved 3 toons into Insidious of Nagrand. The members are almost all people I knew before joining, and it is great to have a few of the wow circles I know combine into a guild. Darn good people really help the game stay fun.

I am a very happy player at the moment with the guild.

General Instance Grind is dull

I am sick of running heroics. Period. Five level 80 characters means a heroic is dull and old content. That goes double for OCC due to the suckage of players and stupid fight mechanics, and triple for HOL and and HOS which just take too damn long.

That said, I’d do any of them with a good set of players and enjoy it; just wish that the Pug system could allow some team matching based upon likes as well as dislikes.

Warlock love

I dusted off my Warlock recently and in the free time I had between jobs, I now have a Level 80 toon who is hopelessly under-geared. It is frustrating to be a solid level 79 who can top the damage and scream flaming death at everything one day, but at 80 then be reduced to a total scrub again.

Thus begins the gear grind on my 5th level 80 character. He has over 100 recent achievements, but the good ones are:

• Level 80 (duh!)
• 1500 quests (when did that happen?)
• The regular Dungeon Master (all the LK normals complete)
• Heroic UP: Girl Skadi and Lodi Dodo at once – which is easy now with 264 epic toons to run with.
• First item of the T9 badge set – and the dread that all the others will take months to get.
• Looking for Many award.
• A stack of H runs, gear updates, and wasted money on ilevel 200 gear.

Death Knight, still darn fun

• DPS gearset is looking OK. T10 in four places now, with three items the “Santified” upgraded T10. Just need to replace my Helm, Neck, and Ring – and I’m golden.
• Tank set is a little more work, but still ok. I have a T10 Glove from VoA that is altogether pointless unless I also grab another T10 item – which will be soon. T10 Shoulders for Tanking look average, but will at the very least get me the first set bonus.
• Took the time to actually get the Weekly Raid, Daily quests, and the VoA all done in one week – which for me is a twice a year thing given the time that takes and the amount I play.

Druid, Bear is for Tank, but Boomkin is feathery fun.

• Also got VoA and weeklies done, and slowly bumped my Boomkin set to mid 4.5ks, which is ok.
• Then got into my guild’s ICC 10 man run, and replaced 4 items in one night. Now the Boomkin set is in the health 5250 range, and the Tank set ios around the same level. So in one or two runs my Druid has comparable gear to my DK (dk = 5.45/5.1 vs Druid = 5.25/5.2).
• Boomkin is fun, and the form is so cool that it makes me behave like a stupid kid. Silly jokes in raid chat, bouncing while dps’ing, and altogether strange behaviour is what the CritChicken does to me.
• I love the Starfall change.
• I can’t wait for a UI element that will make detecting the procs faster. I know it won’t help my dps (as I have been known to faceroll when tired), but will certainly make me feel guilty about it.
• I think getting runs will be easy now should I choose, as 5.2 seems to be the sweet spot for getting invites at the moment.

Next update will either be really soon. or another month away. No idea – we’ll see.

Hope the bosses drop all the good stuff for you, and you find a game ticket on the train.

80 Prot Paladin Talent Build

Now that Diamon (my Paladin) is 80 and patch 3.3.3 is live it is time to update the Protection Paladin talent build. Once again I’ve read through forums, and the base build is pretty steady, but there are a ton of variations for a Tank build.

Here is a Tank build I’m planning to use for Diamon. Like most builds it uses the Retribution talent tree for additional powers and that makes threat building easier.

Now no build is good without some explanation, so here goes:

1. I’ve seen builds that have more points in Crusade and Seal of Command. This seems to me to be a build for when you’re never out of mana, and also looking for maximum threat. That is not my case as a new Paladin tank, so I’ve taken some points out of these areas.
2. I did however put a point in Conviction, as a 1% crit chance is always a great thing.
3. If I was being totally selfless as a new 80 tank, I would have taken at least some points in Divinity in the Prot tree, as it increases the healing that the Paladin receives. But meh, most runs have very over-geared toons, so and I’d rather match the pace of the run to the gear and spec of the characters than try to stay alive the most.
4. On the flip side of that is choosing a Glyph for reduced cooldown on Lay of Hands. I can’t think of a handier ability for a protection paladin. The self heal is huge, and having that power more often is a godsend.
5. Some builds will only have 1 rank of Spiritual Attunement, but I want and need both points.
6. An alternate could also be to put some points into the improved Seal of Vengeance in the Holy tree, but I rate Crusade’s 2% to all and 4% to Undead as a better bonus.

Much of what is good in Tankadins is available for easy reading at MainTankadin.failsafedesign.com.

This post is an update to my previous post for a level 70 spec from October 2008.

Rise of the Paladin, ding 80!

After a weekend of burning through all the rested xp, a stack of instances, and more kills that I can poke a stick at; my Paladin is now level 80!

/happydance /rawr

Diamon (armory link)* was my first Warcraft character, rolled as I like the Paladin class from DnD, and has always been a character that resonates with me. I leveled primarily as a tank, with a bad dps set for solo questing, and honestly I think the tanking is far more fun.

Upon hitting 80 I spent a stack of gold on the skill-ups, equipped a few upgrades that I had in the bank waiting, was gifted a set of ilevel 200 Shoulders (thanks Rakk), bought a few upgrades from the AH too.

Now wearing a mix of blues and purples, and looks ready to strike into the basic Heroics. Bring it on.

In the coming weeks I’ll probably add to my list of daily pugs, all the stories of being an under geared dps and tank, and no doubt will have some utterly stunning stories of ineptitude (like x2 DKs in a CoS run who could not do more that 500-700 dps).  I suppose I should dps a run and see if I can do any better. 🙂

Grats also to Rakk who’s shammy levels with me and also ding’ed last night.

*Armory was down when I posted, but honestly – he is 80.

Insane alt-a-holic rules

There are some things I’ve been doing with Alts that will drive me insane eventually.

Having one DK character active was a tad dull, so I added a Priest as another. Then I found that my second choice of toon was interesting for a short time, but not fun overall, so I added a Druid instead. Then decided to add a lowbie alt Hunter to be silly on; and then was impressed by a Tank I saw and added my old Pally.

But having seen a DK, Druid, and Pally tank, I felt like I was missing out on having a Warrior, so pondering starting a Warrior. But my Shaman also has ok gear as heirlooms, and the Mage will get some play soon.

So Death Knight, + Priest, + Druid, +Paladin, + Hunter, + Warlock, + pondering a Warrior or Shaman, + Mage afterward…

Yes, I’m an Alt-a-holic again. So now I need a rule set for what to play.

How to Tank Heroic runs?

As a rambling short-attention-span reader, sometimes great articles pop out of nowhere. One such from mid Feb is a good article by Tanking notes, on the value of Crit Immunity. Go read if you’re interested in a discussion on getting Critical Hits while Tanking.

However if you’re newer to Tanking, and theory-crafting is a bit aberrant then perhaps a simpler approach is better. As such I asked my self…

How should tanks actually execute a Heroic run?

Here is a series of pointers, which make sense to me, and following afterward a rambling stream of thoughts for how a heroic run should be done. Written for new tanks, by somebody who remembers what it was like to be new.

1. Be realistic about how ready you are to tank. Really. You can expect some pretty insane comments if you make mistakes, and if you’re not the type that can take it without flipping out; don’t tank. Might sound odd as the first point in a how to tank post, but it needs to be said.
2. Talk to the team when you enter, and let them know anything special in advance.
   1. Start with a hello.
   2. Warn them, or ask questions, maybe even set loot rules (need Orbs).
   3. ie. I’m pondering a macro that says how I’m a new Bear tank, so please give me a few extra seconds on threat. That might cause a few folks to leave, but you didn’t want that player in the group then anyway, and its better to say up front.
3. Remember you are a team – don’t just bash orders out on the keyboard.
4. Check if everyone is ready before the pulls..especially the boss pulls.
   1. if your healer is sitting down, they are not ready.
   2. if the healer has less than 50% mana they might not be ready.
   3. if the Shaman does not have totems down, they might not be ready.
   4. check your own big cool-down abilities before a boss pull.
5. Always enter the instance in the gear that meets the basic caps for your class, and stacks Health. In a heroic a large health pool is often better than a lot of avoidance, and in the situations where this is not true the make-up and skill of the team is a far greater issue.
6. Consider threat generation to be your next biggest target. You’ll need to have your taunts ready, and have plenty of threat on everything. My experience is that highly geared and skilled players will try to go “all out”, and end up ignoring threat.
7. Configure your trinkets, old-tank gear, and other items so that you have a lot of sub-sets for Tanking.
   1. HP set.
   2. Threat set, even if that threat set means you have a much lower hp pool. Better that the healer with aweseom gear is kept busy healing you, than busy trying to heal 3 people.
   3. Avoidance set.
   4. Stun resist set (maybe, I just chucked this in, but it seems like a handy idea).
   5. Try to consider the boss fight for which set to use.
8. Don’t be afraid to pause, but generally keep the team moving forward.

The old days – silly

This was a pretty good reminder of the old days before the Death Knight took my heart away from Paladins.

Some days I miss my Paladin Tank

Food for thought, salty goodness?

About a week to go till the 70+ run begins and the choice between 1st and 2nd is still hard. Pally and Druid both still rock, and even my hunches change from day to day. I’m torn and confused. Druid Cat dps output is not high, and I attribute that problem to the lump between the keyboard and chair (me). Pally multi-mob grinding seems awesome and even the *adjustment* in the patch will not totally diminish that role.

Not that it counts as much, but the 3rd and 4th spot of Warlock and Shadow Priest are affected by all sorts of rumour and hearsay,  and while they’re not in the real running, I like to watch them. Especially on the back of the 3.0.3 changes. My initial impression of Warlock and Priest changes from 3.0.3 is that Warlocks did not get as much love as Shadow Priests, and SPrs are getting very serious play at 80. I’m glad both got some love.

Oh no, not again.

Seems that Ret Paladin are getting the nurf that the forums cried out for. And I don’t mean an adjustment, or a conservative change, or a series of tweaks. Its a fully blooded destruction of the class that reached beyond Ret pvp (where there were major issues), beyond Ret pve raiding (where there were adjustments needed), and right into Prot tanking (which was just getting good), and into Holy (which needed a dps boost).

Its right back to Blizzard saying they think they know where the class is going, and has a vision for it. Sure, I see your vision:

– Ret: melee dps without snare, cc, intercept, or flee abilities. Fun? maybe.

– Prot: tanking was really good, but being still grounded in abilities that are affected by every other spec change means that there is potential for damage to Prot in every other change. And then boosting aoe tanking of other classes (which needed it), and adding a new class to tank. Right, so who is looking for a Paladin tank when the other tanks are around?

– Holy: being a good single target healer. Same old story.

WoW Insider has a good post about this.

WoW v3 + Tankadin = Steamroller

We ran Kara last night, and when I say ran I really mean we crushed Karazhan and ate its young. The group make up had me as the only Tank, and a Shammy was OT’ing for the 2 times it was needed. We had 2 players who had never been in Kara, and a few who were inexperienced and it was still easy.

Everything in there is weaker, and the bosses are now like very hard trash mobs. There is no excuse except mana for not chain pulling, and if the group is already over geared you should be chain pulling in sets of 2-3.

43 seconds to drop Maiden, Attumen was a bit over a minute, and I don’t even recall how fast the others were by comparison. It was nuts. Prince’s new name is Princess, because that prancing Erodar is a softie now.

Badge farming and Alt gearing has a new home in Deadwind Pass.

Prot Paladin Talent Build

Update 2: This post is now out of date due to the changes in Cataclysm, and has nothing specific to level 85 tanks anymore.

I can tell you that builds for Paladins have changed in an incredible range of ways, as to has the rotations and use of resources. The Holy power addition means a Paladin Tank is no longer just a AoE tank – target switching is real for all Tanks now. If you don’t like switching targets and loved being lazy then Paladin is probably the best choice for tanking, but you’ll readlly need to be careful and change your style to be effective.

The EJ Forum is the best place to start, read the first sections, and then jump across to TankSpot for more information.

Update: A new post for Paladin Tanks at Level 80 is here, updated for 3.3.3.

The patch v3.0.2 has me thinking of how to spec, and honnestly I just don’t know. I’ve tried to silently troll the usual forums for builds, but found a storm of activity with no clear winners.

So here goes…Here is a spec that is for a level 70 Prot Paladin, is heavy on Tanking, and has little flex into the other talent trees.

Edit: As 3.1 is fast approaching, consider this spec out of date. I’m sure the basics will be ok, but I’m not claiming this is accurate anymore.

Ret Paladin Build

Looking about for Ret builds there are many options. So in keeping with experimentation, I’ll throw my hat into the ring. The usual warning about trusting the Internet should apply here too.

Go read the abilities and make up your own mind. I’m sure that during play we’ll find an optimal mix, or not have realised some micro affect.

Here is a Ret build for a level 70 [0/6/55]. And why…

Edit: As 3.1 is fast approaching, consider this spec out of date. I’m sure the basics will be ok, but I’m not claiming this is accurate anymore.

My Class of Choice

Via a shared topic we were all asked why we chose the class we love?

Um, I can’t choose. I’m an alt-a-holic. But I can explain why each class appeals.

My top 3 classes

The top 3 are basically the ones I have at the highest levels. And thats mainly due to those are teh ones that I’ve spend the most time on. For me part of the immersion is the time spent.

Paladin

– Some of the best flavour in the game. Mounts, special quests, and a raft of non-wow lore to build from.

– Hybrid means that even if one tree gets nurfed back to the dark ages, there are a few more roles I can do. Hybrids are very powerful for that reason.

– Tanking AoE is the most fun you can have wearing plate. I’d say it was the most fun you can have period, but a Warlock’s Seed of Corruption is totally incredible if you have a paladin tanking. If I could have one message to deliever to the Devs about Pally Tanking: Please keep AoE tanking for Pallys.

– Almost unkillable if played correctly.

– Offers great buffs to the group.

– Plate wearing healers are much tougher than all others. That means that when something aggros to you, you’re not totally smashed in the first hit.

Warlock

– some of the best flavour in the game. Mounts, special quests, etc.

– pets used to be awesome and the best in the game. I think the Hunter pets in Wrath will make Warlock pets secondary.

– an outstanding damage class.

– a great set of odd abilities that add real facility to the raids (banish, enslave, drain life, seed of corruption).

Druid

– More special quests, flight form (got it a few days ago, its incredible – Can I haz flavour?).

– Hybrid means diversity. Diversity is good., see Paladin above.

– Feral is DPS and Tank at the same time! Um, I say this makes Druids almost broken when compared to other hybrid classes, but its is also wonderful.

– Having HoTs means that you can stack heals then shift back into another form and continue to kill. The HoTs are powerful and directly useful.

– Sprint to get out of trouble, and stuns to stop mobs casting.

So I don’t know.

An interesting question would be if I had my time again, what would I play? Or if a new expansion was released (say called WotLK) what would you choose to level?

Um, at this stage still a Warlock, but that depends on how they resolve the Paladin, and if Druids get more buffs than nerfs. So the jury is still out. All I know about the beta is that Hunters are getting significant love, paladins have had the “spirit” of the class declared, but anything else is still in flux.

Pfffft – that means Alpha-Pally rather than Paladins that have had serious time in a solid build for a long period in Beta.

So Warlock for now.

The Runners Up

Then there are these classes that I like and have tried, but not taken far. In most cases this is because of time and also that what they bring to the game is covered by one of the three above.

Priests

– Bubble, burst heal, Hots are currently very good.

– Shadowform is great mechanically, and also looks fantastic! Its eye candy for all those guys who like a toon to have a consistent appearance.

– Stamina buff is something that everybody loves. Handier that Warlock stones.

– Shackle and Mind Control.

Rogue

– Very hard to kill due to how many “get out of trouble” abilities they have.

– Great dps, and some good utility for runs.

…And Not

Hunters

– Funny pet class, that I seem to encounter over and over played badly. Which tells me two things: (a) its a popular class that is easy to solo, and (b) its hard to do very well.

I’d like to say that low attention span players should avoid Hunters, but I really want them to avoid Warcraft altogether. If you are a bad Hunter go learn what BRK has to say, or re-roll in a Hello Kitty MMO.

Paladin class gear in flux

Paladin gear to have Strength rather than Int and Spell Damage in the current Wrath Beta. Interesting.

The class is basically in flux, and the feedback thus far in the community has been either “This Sucks”, “Trust Us”, or “Come Back Later”. I realise this is a Beta and that means its ok to be unpolished, but in my never humble opinion the degree of change demonstrated is so huge this should have been altered way before now. This is an Alpha level change.

Top 5 – Worst Tanking Mistakes

Rather than the worst ever, or even the worst I’ve seen; this is my personal list of screw-ups that I try to never do again.

1. Pulling without or forgetting the Righteous Defense buff. This is a bad one, and now that OMGBuffs is in my mods this should never happen again. After this happened recently the Mage even commented that he must be doing ok as he was getting threat….um, ya, sorry.
2. Forgetting to switch gear sets for a boss fight. Thankfully I’ve never been smashed, but I’ve had completely useless trinkets equipped in some fights. Trash sets tend to be geat for threat and HP but bad at keeping you alive in the long run (crit/crush).
3. Not using Lay of Hands. Healer might be stunned / silenced / etc, and Pallys have a great recovery spell in Lay of Hands. Its on a very long timer, but it is fantastic for getting yourself a few extra moments alive. It also grants mana back too! I love this spell and hope they buff it more in Wrath.
4. Not watching the squishies enough. I tend to watch the mobs in my face first, and the mobs we’re CC’ing second. But sometimes a mob gets past and will start wailing on a squishy. Not good, as they go down faster than Windows on a patch day. My plan for the future is to love the healers and squishies more and practice moving the camera around for a good wide view.
5. Having the wrong Aura in use. This can easily happen, especially at the start of an instance or after a wipe. OMGBuffs nags about this too, and there is also a mod I use to warn when entering combat with Crusader active in big red letters.

What use is tollerance?

I just had a lesson in tolerance, with a positive outcome. So on the back of my posts about bad players, pugs, anger, and frustrating experiences here is something where bad turned into good.

Last night I decided to do something chilled and do an easy run, my plan was to grab the non-heroic daily and do some daily quests on my Warlock. You know, turn the brain off for the eve.

The daily was Arcatraz, which is a long trashy Instance that I dislike. Arc is odd in that:

– Some of the trash is tougher than the bosses. eg. big elemental guys who drop meteors can really crunch a group even when you stack up.

– The first boss you see is considered damn hard due to the shadow damage output, the seed of corruption, and a general lack of shadow resist gear. As a Warlock this is OK as I can buff myself with some resist, and if you have a paladin’s aura thats even better. He’s also often left to last in case the rest of the run is a wash too, which means that you miss out on his drops. Frankly I think this boss is not difficult at all on normal, the group just needs to concentrate.

– Layout is curvy and twisted, without adding flavour. Its a very beautiful place without question though, anywhere that has laser doors can’t be a total waste of pixels.

– You need to kill everything in the place. That makes it easy to follow as you don’t need to remember to skip trash, but that also adds time.

– The last boss is a few mobs in sequence, which means you’re always at risk of dropping a character early, and therefore the boss is harder.

But that does not mean its impossible, and if you have guys who are geared and paying attention Arc can be a good run. I was thinking that a Pally Tank and a healer who can cross-heal well would be the go.

Downranking Paladin Tank stats

While you’re leveling you’re always hunting for the best gear, and IMHO good Tank gear is not as common as other stuff. As you get to 70 that gear continues to improve well past the pre-70 items.

But I’ve noticed that as a Paladin Tank you need to swap gear out if you’re doing a lower level instance (downranking gear rather than spells). This is so that you’re not as tough as you are normally.

You’ll actually take damage, so you can get healed; and continue to load threat where you need to.

Q. How rare are pre-70 Paladin tanks, and what can we expect?

Tricks for young Pallys

As a tanking Paladin there are some subtle parts of playing that it took me a long time to commit to memory, or practice with regularity. Many of the tips & tricks below carry across for any character or class, but in particular I have found a significant difference when using a Protection Paladin who is still gearing up, as opposed to a character who is already using high quality gear.

I’m going to assume that you know about stacking blessings, and you’ve read all about what buffs to use in Opportunistic Rotation – if not let me know and I’ll post on it.

A. Check the damage type from mobs regularly.

Most creatures will be hurting you with physical damage, so the choice of aura/buff is easy. However there are some creatures where the damage type is not obvious, or you may forget to switch Aura type to gain more resistance to a particular type of mob. Especially true of casters who might do shadow damage (like the Skettis casters).

For example the Mana Worms in the Bashir Landing do Nature damage when you hit them, and their physical attacks are really weak. So instead of worrying about which aura or buff, I buy a few Nature Resist potions and absorb the damage. This means the recovery between fights is much quicker.

This is normal behavior in an Instance so you learn what the best strategies are, but it applies equally to solo play.

B. Check the AH for cheap pots, food, scrolls, and buffs.

As prot spec the mana bar when soloing is never full enough, and a few extra mana pots are always handy. Browsing the AH for cheap potions is always a good idea, and the don’t have to be Super Mana or Health to be handy. Also keep an eye out for cheap food, and other consumables, as often folks sell these items without an appreciation of how valuable or handy they really are. That extra Amour potion, or health regeneration can make a difference. Lower level water seems especially cheap (or find a mage and press the button on their forehead). A few silver spent on buffs can cut significant time off your combat recovery.

Extra buffs will make a difference when doing an instance where your gear is close to the limit of what you can survive. Doing a harder instances means you will need stamina food, weapon and shield buffs, and a potion or two. Get them and encourage those you play with to do the same.

A good list of items to watch for is any mid level to late level scrolls and cheap potions. Also check the AH at different times during the week, as popular raid nights will create shortages, and other nights you’ll see a few bargains.

C. Use a buff time manager.

As you run more and more instances, you’ll find the demand for Blessings to be many and varied. There will be times when you will be using 30 minute buffs on some classes, and also 10 minute buffs on others. A good tool for managing this is PallyPower, as it lets you set what buffs each paladin in the group will use. This might seem overkill initially, but it becomes a no brainer to see how long each buff has remaining, who is missing a buff, and re-buffing is a simple one click on each class icon. My old guild was so happy with PallyPower that it is a raid requirement for all Paladins.

An example of this is when you are Tanking with another pally in group. Your tanking buff is useless to them, so hit them with Salv (or what ever is useful), and use the 10 minute tank buff on yourself. The monitor will warn you when its time to re-buff them, which means you only need worry about yourself. They can in turn use the tool to buff you with Light or Wisdom, and 10 minute buff themselves.

Also consider a strategy when in a group with more than one Paladin. If you have buffs that they don’t (Bo Kings) then get them to apply buffs in accordance with what is useful all round. eg. One Paladin does Salv all round (not you), then you do Wis/Might/Kings depending on the target class. If you have three Paladins, get Salv and Kings all round, and Wis/Light/Might on class specifics.

Also check out a mod called Aurora (Ace2 compatible) which gives you a warning when you enter combat with Crusader aura on. The big red warning will help train you to switch before pulling, and catch it for you whe you’re being forgetful.

D. Learn about your friends

Spend the time to learn about what other classes and professions can bring to the run. Taunt, Sap, Shackle, Sheep, Fear (pally and warlock), Stun, Slow, Mind Control, Seduce, Kite, Trap, etc, should all be part of what you regularly consider, but it takes extra effort to really understand what the limitations of these control methods are. Some instances are almost impossible without the right type of crowd control.

For example: if your Priest doing the Mind Control gets hurt, it all goes sour. So tank well away from them, or get them to stand way off to the side. Ask what spec your Rogue and Hunters are to see if they will have the improved versions of Sap and Trap. Might be handy to know that you have a few extra seconds longer than normal on that CC, or that the Hunter is happy to chain trap.

Also learn what professions can help. The Drums of Fear from Leatherworking can help in a pinch, and you can use Freeze bombs and other explosives from Engineering to help slow and pull mobs to where you need them. There may even be times when a well placed Net created by a Tailor may help (like when the Warlock tailor drawns aggro and you taunt is on cooldown).

An Uncrushable Paladin

After tweaking, grinding gear, and spending a fortune on mats and enchantments, my Paladin is now Uncrushable. This opens opportunities to main tank Karzhan and may other places, and means that as long as I watch my upgrades carefully; I should only be improving HP and Damage from now onward.

I did have to watch Diamon’s stat and item configuration, and also sacrifice some HP for the Uncrushable status. That’s the beauty of gear sets, for the trash I have more HP and more SpDam, but for bosses they can swipe as hard as they like and I just stand happily.

I still will need to manage Mana/Hp return vs. Threat generated, and I’m really looking forward to seeing exactly how hard these nasty bosses can be.

Might have to make a macro for Prince – “You think thats air you’re breathing? Interesting”.