Leveling as a Paladin Tank

Hey everyone, as soon as I hit 71 and gained Divine Plea, I respecced my DPS spec to Protection.

I've tanked a few Utgarde Keep and Nexus runs successfully, but I am noticing on almost every pull I get hit extremely hard and my health drops fast. Healers have often asked me why I was dying so fast, but I honestly don't know. I maintain Holy Shield at all times, I use BoSanc, I use Divine Plea on pulls to keep my mana up, but I still find myself being hit very often, and very hard. I have no problem keeping threat, but I'm losing health extremely fast.

Here is a link to my armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...ar&cn=Keldaria


I'm not exactly sure what I am doing wrong... D: Any suggestions?

Well, your gear and your spec are absolutely fine - as is your tanking from what you say. The only thing I can think is that your healers are not used to how hard, proportionately, things hit early on in wotlk? They may be spoilt by healing heroics when everyone massively outgears the content. I recently levelled a prot warrior and was amazed - pleasantly - to find those early normal instances felt as challenging as ICC10 progression does for my main. You are just doing stuff that is balanced correctly for your level and gear. You are succeeding - gratz! - but it is challenging, which is what it should be to be fun.

The cobalt crafted gear is great for early tanking, but you will find that you can gradually replace it over time with better blue stuff (much of it crafted - the tempered saronite). IIRC, there are three Nexus instance quests that each give a nice blue piece of tanking gear - have you done those quests? You will see your hitpoints rise as you gear up, particularly now there are nice gems available. Once your hitpoints start exceeding 20k, healers will feel a lot more comfortable spamming you with heals - you will still be hit often and increasingly hard, but relative to your pot of hps, it will feel safer.

One thing I would recommend with Cataclysm on the horizon is to work on your professions. Level 80 gear will soon be binned, but getting mining up will help your HPs and particularly your bank balance in Cata. As a second profession, I would recommend BS or JC with JC probably being easier to level.

Alright cool. I was thinking it could be something like that. I also plan on training my professions at 80. I was thinking either JC/BS or JC/Enchanting, training would be funded by my main. Thanks for the reply. :)

Also, pre-northrend, tanks have a tendancy to chain pull and overpull as if they are icc geared in heroics. They get away with this because everything outside of northrend has been nerfed to make leveling easier.

Northrend marks the point at which you should start tanking correctly again. Watch your pulls and only get one group when you can. Watch for pats. The mobs in UK will stun you and while stunned, you can't dodge, block or parry.

Good luck.

It's definitely a gear issue as to why you are getting hit so hard. I went through the same thing with my warrior. The cobalt gear is a great start but they are still greens. You will notice there aren't many tanking drops in the first few LK instances. Just keep pushing and you will get there.

I recall doing a DTK run with my Warrior and the healer complaining about how hard I was getting hit. At the time I had every piece of blue tanking gear available to me from running LK instances combined with the Cobalt set. Tanking LK instances is a big step from BC instances.

You arent using http://www.wowhead.com/spell=64205 by any chance?

Good job by the way,

Well you set yourself up with gear almost identical to how I setup my three tanks at 70 plus my son's dk and warrior tanks.

Basically what I did was put heavy borean armor kits on all the items I could and I grabbed the two defense trinkets from outlands,
The regal protectorate - http://www.wowhead.com/item=28042
and
Dabiri's Enigma - http://www.wowhead.com/item=30300

Tanking wise those two trinkets are going to help you out more than the heirloom trinkets will in my opinion.

Also throw a 24 stam blue gem into your belt with a belt buckle

All this gear enchanted will take you well into level 74 at which point you can start switching into the Tempered Saronite set.
http://www.wowhead.com/search?q=tempered+saronite