[elio]

Hey Cider:

First nice to see you back involved in the warrior forums- we were truly missed.
I am currently in a small guild that clears Kara in one night and currently downing Gruul and working on Magy with joint venture with another sister guild.

We currently have 3 pally OT's. I don't know much about pallies tanking but they do remarkably well in Kara but don't know there roll int eh 25 mans. Havent seen many pallies OT or MT stuff past Kara. Anyway you know why and are they able to do it?

Any info is greatly appreciated.

thanks and welcome back to wow warrior forums man.

Elio

[Ciderhelm]

Hmm. Tough to answer this one.

First, Paladin tanking has a two specific weaknesses, Crushing Blows and Threat. Both of these can be solved through gear, but both take a penalty to do it that Warriors don't have to work against.

For a Paladin to eliminate Crushing Blows they have to stack a significant amount of Avoidance/Block. Whereas we have a Shield Block ability which covers 75% of the hit table (requiring only 25% Avoidance/Block, which 490 Defense easily covers alone), Paladins have (if I recall correctly) a Shield Block ability which has more charges but only covers ~30% of the hit table. The number escapes me, it may be 40.

Now, in gearing against this, a Paladin is going to wind up with a healthy amount of Dodge and Parry and alot of dead weight Block Rating. They will have better Avoidance than your average Warrior once they are "crushing immune." They'll be sure to let you know this, too.

For a Paladin to get any significant Threat, they have to use Spell Damage. This is similar to how Warriors scaled with Strength pre-Naxxramas. It scales moderately well in terms of Threat, but has no defensive qualities -- where as Block Value scales extremely well for Warriors and also increases damage absorbed. Also, +Hit has significantly less impact for a Paladin than a Warrior -- for a Warrior, a 1% increase in physical +Hit will equate to slightly more than 1% additional Threat; this is not true for Paladins.

In gearing for Threat, many Paladins rely on their party or raid group to watch aggro. The standard for Paladins is to only use a main-hand weapon with +Spell Damage and to use normal tanking gear in the other slots. More progressed Paladins will generally be able to switch in more +Spell Damage gear when handling 5-mans, giving them a nice edge.


Per the "rivalry" between Warrior and Paladin tanks, I get fairly irritated when reading alot of posts on this subject.

First, Paladins will often note that -- despite having significantly lower Stamina (the #1 raiding stat) -- they have much more Avoidance/Block than Warriors. This argument falls through because a Warrior is just as capable of putting the same stats together, they just don't because it's not an ideal set of stats in the first place.

Second, Paladins (like Druids) are repeating things they've read from over a year ago in regards to Threat. It is still commonly posted and believed by many of these players that Warrior Threat doesn't scale. Warrior Threat has scaled since day 1, and since Naxxramas it scales better than either Druid or Paladin Threat.

Does that mean that Paladins and Druids can't be competitive? Absolutely not -- if they outgear a Warrior, they'll have better stats. Common sense.


The next big thing to factor in is practical tanking experience. You will find plenty of Feral Druids who have years of tanking experience. You will almost never find Protection Paladins with the same background -- most of them picked up the "Flavor of the Month" attitude when Burning Crusade came out.

The thing is, much of practical tanking really has to do with experience. You can get by in many situations you aren't geared for if you have the skill to do it. Without experience, you can also break instance runs or, at the very least, make them very tedious for everyone involved.


There are good Paladin tanks!
I have seen one good Paladin tank, and I know of another I'd bet is pretty awesome.

The first is a prior (maybe current?) member of Afterlife, Kaganos -- he was Protection and tanking in Naxxramas before Protection Paladins were anywhere near popular. When I talked to him last, he was pretty angry with the Burning Crusade Beta messageboards, because Holy and Ret Paladins were trying to talk about what would be best for Protection. I do not honestly know, but I don't think he's returned to the game since Burning Crusade.

Also, there is a Paladin named Clovis who I have a deep respect for. He's the only Paladin I've seen who had the skill to take any spec and excel with it. Years ago, before he or I had ever raided, he was destroying me with engineering grenades in Southshore duels -- I outgeared him significantly (had an Arcanite Reaper to boot!), and he could wipe the floor with me half the time. He was also our Ret Paladin during our Kel'Thuzad kill. I know he has gone Protection.

Beyond those two, every Paladin I've known who has gone Protection has been complete trash. They have all been inexperienced, slow, and just doing it to prove a point. Sorry to be blunt.



So, yes, Paladin tanking is possible. Paladin raid tanking is possible, though under current circumstances you will not outperform Warriors (unless the Warriors are trash). You have to find the people who genuinely love what they do, not people wanting to be the next Paris Hilton of the WoW world.

[Kreiger]

Cider, I wanted to start off by thanking you for the guides and the constant feedback you give concerning warrior tanking (and tanking in general)

Little background. I rolled a couple different classes to 60 before I decided i wanted to be a tank. I took a druid to 60, and was dissatisfied, but stuck around switching between tanking and healing, depending on the raid (did decently in both, imo)

When BC rolled around, i rolled a horde paladin and leveled him protection. I found that protection paladins, when played by a knowledgable player have some fairly extreme positive points.

Unfortunately, as I progressed with my paladin, (I leveled with a warrior friend, an orc) I realized that the way the gear was going, and the way the later bosses hit, that he was the preferred choice for bosses until after we over-geared them.

While it was fun knowing I could pull entire groups with no CC and hold them against all out-dps (mages aoeing, rogues with blade flurry, etc), that stopped being the issue, and my ability to mitigate came into play.

As I did more and more research into the coming gear choices in Kara, SSC, Hyjal and BT, i realized that in order to maintain the uncrushable avoidance, my hp gap would get worse and worse, until again, I overgeared the instance.

I eventually, after much gnashing of teeth, decided that unless the way paladins mitigated was changed substantially, or their gear gave them more HP, that Paladins would be the "Trash and 5 man" tanks. Warriors were for raid bosses.

I've seen paladins tank up fairly high. I think the furthest i am personally familar with is SSC, actually. There was a post on the paladin US forums where a Prot paladin explains why SSC screws over paladin tanks. It was a good read.

I don't know how much of this you didn't know already, But it seemed you hadn't researched much of it by your own admission, so i figured i would fill you in.

Prot paladins rule on trash and group/AOE pulls, but lose to warriors on Harder hitting and spiky mobs. Their utility as an offtank in a raid is also debatable compared to the jack-of-all-trades Druids.

That being said, there is nothing more fun then Avenging Wrath-> Avenger's Shield->Holy Shield->Consecrate-> Seal of Righteousness and go get a coke and know you won't lose aggro.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Kreiger I don't know how much of this you didn't know already, But it seemed you hadn't researched much of it by your own admission, so i figured i would fill you in.

Thanks!

I honestly don't know much about Paladins beyond the basics of gearing and the Spell Damage coefficients. I just have not been impressed by many (the guild has had some amazing Paladins, but the best have been exclusively Holy with the exception of Clovis, who was ret).

[Narshe]

With the current tier itemization you no longer need weapons with spell damage and you can get "warrior" items in those slots where you can't put tier setpieces.
I've also found that it's not hard to get the uncrushable status with a paladin, there is out there a lot of items with insane block rating. Obviously you will get either less avoidance or less stamina, that's why a paladin don't excel at bosses like warrior does.
Now I'm raiding Kael with my warrior but finishing lvling my pala to 70. It's painful to do regular instances where a mistake can cost you around 5g and my new tank not only will be cheaper but easier too.

PS.: Paladins get +30% with Holy shield, +5% from the 10badges trinket.
PS2.: WTF there isn't gnome paladins?

[Ciderhelm]

I was considering deleting this thread a bit earlier. glad I didn't

That is an awesome signature

[Narshe]

The pic or the quote? ^^

[Ciderhelm]

The pic!

My somewhat more updated viewpoint on Paladins as tanks:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...4823&sid=1#123

I don't recognize the quote.

[Aaesop]

I really am glad that you don't set yourself to a decision in something like this. Your more than completely correct when the aspect of experience thought of. The current wave of protection paladins in comparison to warriors are really still very very new. This is an exceptionally big factor.
There's also the flavor of the month problem as well. I think for anyone to fully see what something is capable of you have to see it work. With that said even though there's quite a few dedicated to actually being protection seriously, there's plenty that just went for it cause it was popular or the "thing" now. Alot like alliance rolling shaman, or horde with the paladin, where people had no previous experience playing them and decided to roll one without real intent.
I think even for a while now there's going to be stipulation on how good or bad the protection paladin really is. Aside from that there's blizzards end of it. I don't ever believe at first they intended a Paladin to really be a great source of tank on par with a warrior. Or well who knows it is blizzard after all But at any rate this was a pretty rapid change in the community of paladins. It means that they might have gotten mechanics right, or there might be changes needed. Its still very new in what a "protection paladin" is at the moment. It certainly is alot different from ages ago. So they might grow or it might just stay where it is more or less. But that's entirely up to what the paladin community does cooperatively. To go through the same things more or less the warrior community did in terms of figuring out what works. How to stack this or that. What worked great during a raid etc. Warriors have shared tons of info over the course of wow time so that things are refined. I think a great deal of general quality of them will improve as that time goes on and theres more research done, and testing of certain theories to really get things into a spot where people openly can find out what tends to work out the best for them. I'd love to think that this learning period that the class is in will really sift out dirt from gold. Hopefully the hardwork involved turns away the bad and leaves the actual workers room to converse and then display to the whole wow community what really is there.