mana and paladin tanking

[coldthing]

so i'm having a serious problem with my mana regen when tanking uldaur and toc or anything just about anything. (my armory)

despite having sanc. glyph of spiritual attunment and being 2/2 in guarded by the light so divine please is always up i'm still finding myself rarely with even a half full mana bar.
i've asked other paladins what they do about and they seem to have no problems with it. i'm obviously missing something important
my threat is great and i have no problems with my survivability except when i don't have the mana to do anything

short of geming for mp5 (hah!) i have no idea what to do

[Alent]

Hmm... Get rid of Glyph of spiritual attunement. It really doesn't do much, Glyph of seal of vengeance is generally more useful.

To some extent, if your survivability is too high, it will hurt your mana generation. Usually, the following are good rules of thumb:

Always Judge Wisdom if it's not up.

Maintain Divine plea whenever possible. Pop it before the pull. Save critters.

Don't consecrate if you think mana will be a problem. Consecrate is a huge drain on your mana pool.

Blessing of Sanctuary is better than BoK if you can't have both.

etc.

[Martie]

First question.
Are you maintanking or offtanking?
Offtanking often means you take very little damage, but it also means you have to build very little threat.

Second question.
Do you ever go under 25% mana?
As long as you don't run out of mana, there's no problem. I don't quite understand how it would happen, but constantly being between 50% and 25% isn't a bad thing.

Third question.
Are you counting trash?
The fights against trash don't really count. Either explain to your fellow tanks that you need to tank more mobs, or stop casting consecration on trash.

Fourth question.
Are you using blessing of sanctuary?
Blessing of sanctuary is essential to tanking - don't tank without it. If the other paladins in your group are nagging you for other blessings, give them a small blessing, or keep small sanctuary up on yourself.

Fifth question.
Are you using 969?
the 969 rotation is all you need during most fights. Feel free to drop anything not 969-related from your rotation. Especially shielding yourself shouldn't be done if you have mana issues.

Sixth question.
Are you taking too much damage for your healers to handle?
Your gear has a lot of optional avoidance on it. Perhaps it's an idea to gem for more stamina, or swap that dodge trinket out for some more stamina. The same goes for the black heart trinket. It's a lot of armor, and while you should generally aim to take as little damage as possible during tanking, running out of mana as a paladin tank means that you should be extremely tough. (Not counting heroics, though.)

Seventh question.
Are you using proper mana management?
Are you making sure that you are always buffed and at full mana when going into a fight? Remember that more intellect means more mana gains from divine plea and judgement of wisdom. On that note, you are judging wisdom, right?
Same goes for blessing of wisdom - it's not a whole lot of mana, but it may tip the balance in your favor. Remember you can swap to seal of wisdom anytime to regenerate some mana at the cost of threat. (I use Glyph of seal of wisdom for that purpose.)

Eighth question.
Does your raid know about your issues?
It's possible that the healing setup is hurting you. I've had fights where I had so many shields on me that I was taking barely any damage, and that hurt my mana situation a bit as well. (Note that this wasn't against a boss.) Remember that you don't gain any mana from damage prevented, so if you have a discipline priest in your raid, let him know of your issues and ask if he could shield you a little less and heal you instead.
(Note that this is a change of playstyle, and as such may take a while to learn, and you may run into resistance from the player.)

I hope these questions and the explanations for asking the questions were of assistance, feel free to answer them here, but it's obvious that that wasn't the intend of my post.

ps. Don't gem for mp5, you get a lot more mana by gemming for intellect. Still don't do it though.

[Synapse]

First question.
Are you maintanking or offtanking?
Offtanking often means you take very little damage, but it also means you have to build very little threat.

Here the paladin has some tricks up it's sleeve. Generally the paladin can sustain half his threat cycle without taking any damage, and hand of sacrifice is very handy here.

Second question.
Do you ever go under 25% mana?
As long as you don't run out of mana, there's no problem. I don't quite understand how it would happen, but constantly being between 50% and 25% isn't a bad thing.

Third question.
Are you counting trash?
The fights against trash don't really count. Either explain to your fellow tanks that you need to tank more mobs, or stop casting consecration on trash.

Trash does count, sir! Most fast clears are fast because people don't waste time on trash!

[Maèl]

Tell your healers about you issues.

One Disc Priest can really mana starve a Paladin when there is not much damage incoming to begin with.
We call it "torturing holy trash cans".

I've only had that happen on marginal trash or 5 man heroics, tho.

[Juu]

"torturing holy trash cans"

Bahahahahahahahaha!

I'm so using this to refer to myself from now on.

(off topic. please feel free to continue. )