How to be a great OFF tank ?

[Hyrhawk 0]

Hi !

I plan to play my protection paladin, so I'm trying to learn the basics before trying to save Draenor. I have a lot to learn, and in my opignon I will learn by practicing tanking, reading class guide like the one I've found on Icy veins and... Asking question to experimented players ! ^^

To do a quick presentation, I'm playing to wow since the Firelands patch at Cataclysm, mainly as a hunter. I'm mostly a PvE player, and I've experienced HM and MM raids since Dragon Soul, so I'm supposed to know all the basics of raiding, do not worry about that. :)

So, all that stuff to tell my question :

How to be a great OFF tank ? ^^

I will explain myself. I'm enjoing to play tank to protect my raid friends, and particulary protection paladin because they have a lot of ability to perform this goal ! As a new tank, I will firstly try to focus on staying alive, but it will not be sufficient to satisfy me. :D

I hope to become a palatank who can save his friends not only by tanking, but also by using my utility skills as well as I can. That means for example, saving someone who's about to die with Lay on Hands.

So, an other way to ask my question is ; Is it usefull, when off tanking and not taking a great amount of damage, to focus on extra survivability for my friends instead of extra DPS ? I'm thinking about using, for exemple, my sacred shield on my MT2 when he have the aggro, or my heal spells like Word of glory or even my execution sentence to help him and the healers until it´s my turn to tank. I'm not sure that I'm understandable... ^^'

I think it´s going to depend of the situation, if the raid is needing extra DPS, or extra survivability. But what´s your opignon ? Did you guys have any tips ?

Thanks for your help ! :)

PS : Please excuse me if I've made some English mistakes, this is not my main language !

[Kulia 39]

If you can do great DPS + help the raid, then great. But IMO helping your healers out and raid survivability is something a good tank should be doing if they can. So as a paladin, I wouldn't use Lay on Hands to save a DPS, but if it's you, your co-tank or a healer about to die, then by all means Lay on Hands them! Use your hands (Sacrifice, Blessing, etc) to help out your healers and co-tank. (but be careful not to wipe your current tanks aggro! Because that'll probably end in a wipe).

With Foundry now open, from what I can see it's a LOT more healer and tank focused than Highmaul was, so being able to throw Words of Glories, Lay on Hands', Sacrifices, etc out to help the raid will be noticed a LOT. So yeah, it IS useful. 
But like you said, it is gonna be situational, fights where there's a large DPS requirement you might be more inclined to throw out more DPS rather than using your holy power to word of glory a low-health raid member. But you can *ALWAYS* use your Lay on Hands and all of that without killing your DPS.

[Troels 9]

I'm raiding as a protection paladin in my guild and i almost never use Word of Glory on the other tank, the reason is that the stacks you get from shield of the righteous doesn't buff the heals on others than yourself, so it doesn't heal that much, same goes for SS which doesn't get buffed by resolve when applied to others than yourself. You should however use a mouseover macro or something like that for Hand of sacrifice (preferably glyphed) and Lay on Hands, which i use frequently.

I'm not saying to NEVER use WoG on the other tank, but it's rarely useful unless he's about to get killed and no healer can give him any healing. Also be aware of when a ranged dps (not hunters in general) needs a Hand of Protection or salvation.

And a glyph you'll be swapping a lot is glyph of diving protection, which will be swapping depending on the amount of magical vs. physical damage, so always have a lot of tomes so you can swap for each fight if needed

 

Another important thing is to know all aspects of the fight, so you can focus on staying alive and make sure no one else dies, instead of using too much focus and brain capacity on avoiding mechanics

I just did normal BRF last night, and coming from HM where it was all farm content, it was a bit harder to stay on top of the fight and focus. So a really important part of tanking is to get experience, and not be afraid to make mistakes, but learn from them.

 

And a last note is to not delay the use of Defensive CDs because you are afraid you might need them later, you have a wide selection of CDs, and divinge protection has a really short CD, and when tank swapping you almost always have one up when you're tanking. The use of CDs also gets easier when you learn the fight and know when you need them.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Troels

[Hyrhawk 0]

Thanks for your answer ! It´s true that resolve do not affect the healing rate on other players. I will keep that in mind.

Edited February 9, 2015 by Hyrhawk