Tank Paladin 1.12 (Classic)

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments and feedback regarding our guide for tanking as a Paladin in WoW Classic.

 

[CaperfinWoW 21]

Might want to address the Holy Shock Build used in Naxx and in general to better leap frog threat to circumvent the lack of Taunt. 

Happy to talk more about this topic!

 

P.S. I suggest adding a small paragraph about the non-deserving negative stigma surrounding paladin tanking.

Edited September 12, 2019 by CaperfinWoW

[Impakt 25]

On 9/12/2019 at 1:37 PM, CaperfinWoW said:

Might want to address the Holy Shock Build used in Naxx and in general to better leap frog threat to circumvent the lack of Taunt. 

Happy to talk more about this topic!

 

P.S. I suggest adding a small paragraph about the non-deserving negative stigma surrounding paladin tanking.

The guide is meant to be tailored to phase 1, but I'll definitely add it once it starts to be viable later. That is a good point though, I should probably be clearer about how you leapfrog threat as prot. 

 

As for the negative stigma, I'm hesitant to add something like that since there is a real negative stigma for some good reasons. I don't want people to look at the guide, play a prot paladin, and be shocked when 99% of raiding groups and guilds tell them no.

[Guest Armor]

Guide has armor listed twice. 2nd one appears it should be hit chance.

[Impakt 25]

18 hours ago, Guest Armor said:

Guide has armor listed twice. 2nd one appears it should be hit chance.

Good catch, thanks. I'll fix it.

[invisusira 0]

"Capping Defense so that you cannot be critically hit requires 440 Defense, which is not obtainable until much later in WoW Classic. "

This is especially wrong now that DM has been released; 440 defense is very attainable.

[CaperfinWoW 21]

Force of will is showing the talent and not the tank trinket item.

Edited November 25, 2019 by CaperfinWoW

[Guest Berenold]

Yes Tankadins are not ideal for main tanking in raids, and therefore, true, many guilds and raids will say no, that doesn't mean it's impossible. Other than main tanking 40-mans, a tank pally can do pretty much everything else. Also, I think too much is made of the lack of taunt spell. If you know what you're doing, HoJ, Judgement and Exorcism can all be used to get back aggro, only using burst damage or outright CC. It's more challenging to be a tankadin yes, but it just means it's more challenging, not impossible. Also, I think you're downplaying the importance of intel in the stat priority and over-emphasizing strength. That's more a later and retail WoW way of thinking of tankadins. IMO

[Guest Willatin]

You're website has good info but i gotta disagree on your opinion about INT on gear. I running a lot of Stam Int, and some Str and im doing great tanking, no issues whatsoever. I also have SP on some of the gear.  The style of tanking i chose lets me do more that 1 pull before i sit down and drink. Plus i never lose aggro. Of course i wont be main tanking any raid and im aware of that but i do AMAZINGLY well in Dungeons. I just want people to know this website isn't the only way.

Have fun playing 

[Guest justsomedude]

Paladins cant use daggers, might want to change main hand that is listed as BiS.

[Guest Denny]

On 3/3/2020 at 1:30 AM, Guest justsomedude said:

Paladins cant use daggers, might want to change main hand that is listed as BiS.

What he said. You definitely don't need nearly as much defense gear as you're suggesting either. With all that lack of spell power, you will literally never have threat without throttling your raid. Get some *filtered* spell power bud.

[Guest Dagger-idan]

You you believe hard enough you two can get a dagger or a pally, no the writer of this guild 100% understands what he is saying. why would not not think that when his BIS tank gear only has 32 int on it. 

[Guest Juyovais]

Why is blessing of kings threat not mentioned? It's 140 threat per class. So if you have 10 warriors that's 1400 threat per BoK ranged aoe threat. Blupost confirmed that this is working correctly with righteous fury.

For raid tanking you prioritize Def, armor, etc. Then use a fast 1h sword or mace with BoW/JoW. Use rank 1 cons and rank 1 holy shield and spam blessing of kings. This allows paladins to use mostly warrior offset tank pieces and no spell power gear and still match warrior threat. 

For dungeons however this is a great guide

[Impakt 25]

On 7/5/2020 at 3:32 PM, Guest Juyovais said:

Why is blessing of kings threat not mentioned? It's 140 threat per class. So if you have 10 warriors that's 1400 threat per BoK ranged aoe threat. Blupost confirmed that this is working correctly with righteous fury.

For raid tanking you prioritize Def, armor, etc. Then use a fast 1h sword or mace with BoW/JoW. Use rank 1 cons and rank 1 holy shield and spam blessing of kings. This allows paladins to use mostly warrior offset tank pieces and no spell power gear and still match warrior threat. 

For dungeons however this is a great guide

 

That's a great point, I'll look into including it for raiding. Thanks! 

[Guest Rhaegos]

Wow. This guide is hot garbage. You obviously don't know what you're talking about, so let me bring some things to light. 

 

With greater blessing of kings (cast on a class with somewhere between 5 and 10 members in a raid), paladins have better single target threat generation that both warriors and druids. When tanking a single target raid boss, paladin should maintain 100% uptime on seal of wisdom, judgement of wisdom, holy shield (rank 1) and spam blessing of light while auto attacking the boss. Threat, mana, and damage intake will not be an issue if you are geared correctly. By correctly, I mean not gearing as if you are a warrior, because you aren't. Use the fastest 1h weapon you can find, preferably a flurry axe, and stack block, dodge, and parry on gear, followed by stamina and intellect. Your base mana bar should be around 3k, but no more than 3500 in pre-raid gear. Stamina is your weakness, so stack stam pieces and enchants where you can without giving up mitigation. As long as your miss, dodge, parry, and block percents add up to 43, you're fine. With 43% base mitigation, holy shield will increase your mitigation to 73%. Now you're at 73% chance to miss, dodge, parry, and block throughout the fight. Since you didn't stack defence, the boss has a 5% chance to crit you, 15% chance to crush you, and a 7% chance for a normal hit. As soon as a critical hits you, redoubt procs. Now, for the next 4 hits (compared to 2 hits with a warrior talented into imp shield block) You are uncritable and uncrushable. The boss can only miss you, you can dodge, you can parry, and you can block. This makes you a much tankier option for any and every boss fight than a warrior or druid. For fights that "require" a taunt swap, start out as tank and let the warrior or druid taunt off you. You can easily stay right under them on the threat meter with GBoK. When they are ready to swap, bop them and pass them in threat. If your raid group doesn't like this idea, just let the warrior and bear tank that fight. Who really cares?

 

I dont understand why there is so much misinformation floating around about paladin tanking. It's like nobody could figure out the correct way to do it, so they wrote it off as a lost cause and that stigma has grown over the years with everybody mindlessly repeating what they've heard from other people. Guides like this on a big name fan site help absolutely NOBODY. You should be ashamed for posting such a guide. If you're not going to help people, or you don't know what you're talking about, don't just regurgitate the same stuff you heard someone else say. Thanks.

 

 

[Impakt 25]

On 8/15/2020 at 10:58 AM, Guest Rhaegos said:

Wow. This guide is hot garbage. You obviously don't know what you're talking about, so let me bring some things to light. 

 

With greater blessing of kings (cast on a class with somewhere between 5 and 10 members in a raid), paladins have better single target threat generation that both warriors and druids. When tanking a single target raid boss, paladin should maintain 100% uptime on seal of wisdom, judgement of wisdom, holy shield (rank 1) and spam blessing of light while auto attacking the boss. Threat, mana, and damage intake will not be an issue if you are geared correctly. By correctly, I mean not gearing as if you are a warrior, because you aren't. Use the fastest 1h weapon you can find, preferably a flurry axe, and stack block, dodge, and parry on gear, followed by stamina and intellect. Your base mana bar should be around 3k, but no more than 3500 in pre-raid gear. Stamina is your weakness, so stack stam pieces and enchants where you can without giving up mitigation. As long as your miss, dodge, parry, and block percents add up to 43, you're fine. With 43% base mitigation, holy shield will increase your mitigation to 73%. Now you're at 73% chance to miss, dodge, parry, and block throughout the fight. Since you didn't stack defence, the boss has a 5% chance to crit you, 15% chance to crush you, and a 7% chance for a normal hit. As soon as a critical hits you, redoubt procs. Now, for the next 4 hits (compared to 2 hits with a warrior talented into imp shield block) You are uncritable and uncrushable. The boss can only miss you, you can dodge, you can parry, and you can block. This makes you a much tankier option for any and every boss fight than a warrior or druid. For fights that "require" a taunt swap, start out as tank and let the warrior or druid taunt off you. You can easily stay right under them on the threat meter with GBoK. When they are ready to swap, bop them and pass them in threat. If your raid group doesn't like this idea, just let the warrior and bear tank that fight. Who really cares?

 

I dont understand why there is so much misinformation floating around about paladin tanking. It's like nobody could figure out the correct way to do it, so they wrote it off as a lost cause and that stigma has grown over the years with everybody mindlessly repeating what they've heard from other people. Guides like this on a big name fan site help absolutely NOBODY. You should be ashamed for posting such a guide. If you're not going to help people, or you don't know what you're talking about, don't just regurgitate the same stuff you heard someone else say. Thanks.

 

 

Hey, thanks for the feedback. I appreciate your passion for the issue, but personal insults are not the best way to go about having productive an meaningful conversations about an issue. That being said, I'll do my best to address some of your points.

 

First off I'll say you are correct about the Greater Blessing of Kings spam. It is a great way to generate threat right now in larger raids where you're stacking more of a class (usually Warriors), but it is not the end-all threat generating tool that beats out Warriors and Druids. Paladins are still the weakest tanks both for threat generation and defensively, which is reflected in their very poor showing in raid compositions. Additionally, the guilds that do take Paladins tend to still have Warriors or Druids as their main tanks for this reason. I'll edit the guide to talk about GBoK spam though, it is a good point.

 

As for your point about stats, I'm afraid you are incorrect. You are vastly overvaluing Intellect when you can, as you yourself put it, easily use BoW and Judgement to make up for your mana consumption with mana potions and other consumables covering the rest. If you want to use some Judgement pieces for a higher mana pool to start with you can, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a hard requirement. If you are going this route however, then sure, a faster weapon will let you get mana back faster from BoW and Judgement, so that is an acceptable gearing choice.

 

The last point about tank swaps is also viable, but is going to make any fight that has tank swaps significantly more challenging and finicky than just using tanks that have a taunt to begin with. This goes back to the overarching idea of Classic - you can do any content with any combination of classes, but it doesn't make it good. I can absolutely clear content as an Elemental Shaman and carry my own weight with world buffs and consumables, but I still would be doing significantly better if I put the same effort into playing a Mage or Warlock. That's not saying you shouldn't play off-meta specs such as Prot Paladin, but it is important to understand what you're getting yourself into. I understand the desire to champion your own spec as being the best there is, but it does more harm than good if you don't prepare potential players for the uphill battle that they're about to begin.

[Guest Aarandal]

Are you kidding me? You updated this two weeks ago, what a load of crap. I have been tanking every boss in mc, zg, aq20, and bwl. All with kings spam and smart spell power tabk gearing. The author of this guide is either complete blind to class wow or WAY too lazy to update it with concepts like Blessing Kings Spam, and BoP Taunts. What a huge disapointment, icy veins used to have integrity.

[Impakt 25]

12 hours ago, Guest Aarandal said:

Are you kidding me? You updated this two weeks ago, what a load of crap. I have been tanking every boss in mc, zg, aq20, and bwl. All with kings spam and smart spell power tabk gearing. The author of this guide is either complete blind to class wow or WAY too lazy to update it with concepts like Blessing Kings Spam, and BoP Taunts. What a huge disapointment, icy veins used to have integrity.

Hey, thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure specifically what you're referencing, but it looks like if you read my response to the post above you can find some of the answers you're looking for. I went ahead and also committed a section in the rotational page to specifically talk about BoPs for taunt swaps since I probably didn't mention it prominently enough in the guide, only as a footnote. The GBoK rotational section is also already in there as well now.

 

Thanks!

[Guest Pacman]

Question about the guide. The rotation says I want to be spamming Blessing of Kings, but we didn't take it in the talent section. Am I missing something? Little confused.

[Impakt 25]

39 minutes ago, Guest Pacman said:

Question about the guide. The rotation says I want to be spamming Blessing of Kings, but we didn't take it in the talent section. Am I missing something? Little confused.

Depending on what you're doing the build will be different, but if you are raiding and want to use the GBoK spam for threat then you'll need to pick up Blessing of Kings as a talent. Just divert one of the leftover points at the end to pick it up. Blessing of Kings is generally worth taking if you do not want to swap talents a ton, but as I mention in the guide you can choose to skip it if you either aren't planning on using it for threat in raids or if you have other Paladins that will use the buff in raids.

[Guest Pacman]

I tried tanking some dungeons with those talents since we last spoke, and got told I was doing it completely wrong because I didn't have Guardian's Favor for aoe pulls and Improved Judgement for more threat. Your guide didn't mention them at all. Are those staples for prot tanking, or more just extra bits?

[Impakt 25]

9 hours ago, Guest Pacman said:

I tried tanking some dungeons with those talents since we last spoke, and got told I was doing it completely wrong because I didn't have Guardian's Favor for aoe pulls and Improved Judgement for more threat. Your guide didn't mention them at all. Are those staples for prot tanking, or more just extra bits?

That depends entirely on what type of content you're doing. If you're doing dungeons especially, you might have trouble holding threat especially against Mages or Warriors that have some gear. Since you do not have a taunt, your best way to get threat back from them is to BoP them so they lose all threat. If you take Guardian's Favor, you can do this more often, so it's a great choice! If you are more geared and do not have threat issues as much, it's much less useful. Dropping Improved Judgement in that case is a totally fine choice.

 

 

[Guest Jorgen]

Nice

[Guest Rhaegos]

On 9/6/2020 at 4:39 PM, Guest Pacman said:

I tried tanking some dungeons with those talents since we last spoke, and got told I was doing it completely wrong because I didn't have Guardian's Favor for aoe pulls and Improved Judgement for more threat. Your guide didn't mention them at all. Are those staples for prot tanking, or more just extra bits?

You don't need guardian's favor for anything unless you have extra points to spend on your way down the tree to holy shield. Its a great talent, but in no way is it essential. You definitely don't need improved judgment. The only way to get it is to give up 2 points in parry (by far the best mitigation stat), give up holy shield (never an option for tanking), or giving up consecration (an option for very advanced tanks, but I don't recommend it). You should be marking the target you want to focus with skull and then pulling with judgment of righteousness (immediately reseal yourself with righteousness or wisdom), then drop consecration, then keep up holy shield rank 1 and drop lower ranks of consecrate if anyone in the group is using aoe. In dungeons, you should have no issues with aoe pulls done this way. 

[Guest Sif]

This guide is great for the exact spec and playstyle you describe with no deviations, but you acting like this exact spec and rotation is the only viable way to play prot paladin is really tunnel visioned and arrogant