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This guide will provide a general overview of how to best use a paladin tank, and the gear requirements and stats that you require to tank successfully in the level 80 raids.

1.Gear Requirements

A paladin tank needs to have gear with a minimum of 540 defence rating for Naxx and subsequent raids, and 535 defence rating for heroics. This is the  minimum level at which you cannot be critically hit by bosses. This can be accomplished fairly easily between crafted items and drops from various dungeons. Also, assuming you have the reputation, you can get items from the various faction quartermasters.

Rather than go into the exact gear required and where to get it from I will explain what the mechanics are and what you need from your gear. This gives you the basis to make your own choice in gear and allows you to adapt to any given situation.

Defence should be your first priority for tanking, and you will find as you gear up that you will need to have a selection of gear to ensure you stay above the 540 threshold. Sometimes you’ll get a piece of gear with more dodge and less defence for example, so quite often you need to use different combinations to keep that level. With that in mind it’s a good idea to keep the gear you collect from dungeons to ensure you can switch as needed until it no longer becomes an issue.

In terms of mitigation stats the priority after defence is dodge – parry- block.
Dodge is the most important stat overall as it provides complete mitigation from a blow that could hit for a few thousand damage.

Parry is similar, but as you gain more points in dodge and parry, both are subject to diminishing returns. This means that it takes more points in each stat per 1% of mitigation. Dodge provides the best ratio of points/1%, hence it is better to stack dodge.

Shield block is less useful against bosses as it only mitigates a certain amount of the damage, never the full amount. It does have its uses in aoe tanking against trash etc, but it is less useful than either of the other two stats if you are MT in a raid due to the large damage output of most of the bosses.

In terms of aggro generation, the most important stat is strength. This has changed from spell power since the BC days, due to different game mechanics. Suffice it to say that you don’t need spell power on any gear now, including weapons. A paladin’s gear should be similar to a warriors in terms of stats.

The next important stat is Hit, this is not so important at the heroic level and it can be hard to find items with enough until you get into Naxx 10man’s and above. Realistically you need to be near capped in this which is 263assuming you have no other hit modifiers in your raid. I would advise having at least 100+ in hit rating going into Naxx, preferably more. Enchants and gems can help provide this, IE Precision on gloves(+20) and using a titanium weapon chain to start with is a must on your weapon. I did tank in Naxx with just over 100 hit rating without too many problems with aggro from the dps, but the sooner you can get it up the less problems you will have.

Stamina is a dual use spec now as it provides the obvious high hit points a tank needs to survive, but also provides your spell power for aggro generation. In general terms you are aiming for around 23-25k hp for heroics and 26k upwards for 10/25man raids unbuffed.

Expertise provides a little extra hit rating and can be useful against bosses who parry and dodge, but as most of a paladins threat comes from spell damage it is not as useful for paladins as for warriors. Some expertise helps, but it is not as important as strength and hit.

Agility does have some use as it improves your mitigation from your armour value, and gives a small amount to avoidance and crit chance and if you are aiming for avoidance over mitigation then enchanting your cloak or weapon can be useful. This will probably not be an option when you start tanking as I found all my enchants were in defence or hit rating. As you improve your gear it is an option worth looking at.

The other stats such as crit, intellect, spirit and haste are all pretty much useless for doing anything positive for a tank. There are always other more effective ways to improve your mitigation and threat generation.

2.Talents

A protection paladin should have the following kind of build as a basis.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sZV0tAbuMusIufdxo

This build provides the main abilities you need to tank successfully. I’ll explain each of the chosen talents in more detail and the options for each, then explain the other options available from each tree assuming this build.

Protection Tree

Divine Strength – Fairly obvious choice to increase your threat and mitigation through shield block.

Anticipation – Gives an extra 5% dodge rating which is a must, and is not subject to diminishing returns unlike that dodge on gear.

Toughness – This provides more mitigation from armour and the lesser duration on movement effects can be useful.

Righteous Fury – Provides 6% mitigation from all damage, again a necessity.

Divine Sacrifice – This is probably a more optional talent based on what your raid is doing and what part you are playing in the raid. It can be a raid saver on certain bosses, i.e. Sapphiron in Naxx or Malygos in the Eye of Eternity when the whole raid is taking damage. It should only be used in conjunction with Divine Protection for obvious reasons(i.e. you die otherwise).

Improved Devotion Aura – This gives an extra 6% healing for the raid, which takes some pressure off the healers and helps generally. When you are just starting tanking it’s a good idea to use the devotion aura for the increased mitigation, but as you progress you can use Retribution aura, or any of the elemental resistance aura’s as the situation requires.

Blessing of Sanctuary – Provides mitigation for the tank, as well as some mana regeneration. It is the main blessing for a paladin tank and it is the best choice at the start of a tanks raiding.

Sacred Duty – With and 8% stamina increase for 2points this is a no brainer.

One Handed Weapon Specialization – This is again about threat generation and overall dps. While tanking is not about damage output, it still helps if the tank can do as much as possible.

Spiritual Attunement – This provides mana to the tank from healing which is no bad thing. If you are finding your mana pool running low then put 2 points in this. When I started tanking I had 2 points in this at all times and never had a problem with mana regen.

Holy Shield – Provides extra block rating while active and extra threat generation due to holy damage, thus a necessity for tanking.

Ardent Defender – This talent provides an extra fail safe when things go wrong. It can be bypassed by a large amount of damage, i.e. 35%-0% in one hit, but it can and does let you take an extra hit when healers may be just out of range and need a second to get to you.

Combat Expertise – The 6% stamina on its own makes this a necessity. The expertise and critical strike increase make this an excellent talent to have.

Redoubt – The block value  provides damage mitigation and is a great talent when tanking multiple trash mobs if your holy shield charges are used up.

Touched by the Light – This is where your main threat will come from, and while the healing aspect is not much use it can help in situations where you have just finished off tanking a mob and you need an extra heal, or a healer needs help.

Avenger’s Shield – The prime pulling spell for a protection paladin, its required without exception.

Guarded by the Light – This gives damage mitigation against spells which helps in a lot of situations where armour is useless. The additional effect of renewing Divine Plea after hitting an enemy makes this vital.

Shield of the Templar – This is about damage mitigation again, with the advantage of being able to silence casters on the initial pull.

Judgements of the Just – The main advantage to this is the slowing of melee attack speed. Less attacks = less damage. The HoJ reduced cool down is less useful in pve than pvp, but of you need to control mobs it has its uses.

Hammer of the Righteous – This is simply a must have for tanks, tanking trash you can hold aggro on 3 targets at once with no problems.

Retribution Tree

Deflection – This, like anticipation in the prot tree, is a necessity. Again it is not affected by diminishing returns, thus it gives a full 5% parry.

Improved Judgements – The point in this gives your Judgements a 9 sec cool down, which is useful if you use the spell rotation I will describe later.

Optional Talents

With the remaining 12 points you have a choice. In the Holy tree the only talent I personally put points into is Seals of the Pure. It increases damage of your judgements and their seals. It is not a huge damage increase but until you are Naxx 25 geared or better it can give a boost. After you are well enough geared 5 points in Conviction from the Retribution tree is slightly better dps overall.

The Retribution tree provides a few more options, Heart of the Crusader helps your group overall with and extra 3% crit chance on the enemy, which if you don’t have a retri paladin can be useful.

Benediction is of little use as you get mana from 3 different sources, so it is of limited benefit getting a 10% reduction on spell costs.

Improved Blessing of Might can be useful if you are buffing a raid group, again I personally raid with retri paladins so it is of limited use for me. Your group composition should dictate whether this is useful or not.

Conviction is a talent which I have usually got maxed out to improve my dps overall. It is a useful way to increase damage, but not to be used as a substitute for steady high threat generation. Make sure you are not relying on crits to build your threat quickly, this is a bad idea and can go wrong quickly.

Vindication and Seal of Command are pvp talents as your normal seal will be Seal of Vengence/Corruption, and bosses are immune to vindication.

Pursuit of justice I personally don’t use, but it can be useful for moving targets more quickly into a position. My own feeling is that it is better suited for pvp.

Sanctity of Battle and Crusade can both have points in them, the extra damage from Crusade can be 6% depending what enemies you are facing and quite often is the full amount. The crit chance from SoB is useful and the extra damage on exorcism can help if you need to do burst damage quickly on a mob.

There is a lot to take in regarding your talents and the options within them, but when you understand them and how they can help in various situations it allows you to vary your style as necessary.

3.Spells/Abilities

There are many spells in a paladins arsenal, some of which you will use frequently, some rarely. I will present a general overview of these and their various uses in tanking.

There are 5 main spells you will be using – Holy Shield, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement, Consecration and Shield of the Righteous. These should be used in such a way that maximises threat and minimizes wasted cooldowns. For this we have a spell rotation, i.e. a set of spells which used properly should be being used throughout the fight one after another.

The initial pull should be done with your Avenger’s shield, which gives threat on the target immediately. When you engage in melee combat the following rotation of spells is typically used-

1)Shield of the Righteous(6sec cd)
2)Holy Shield(9sec cd)
3)Hammer of the Righteous(6sec cd)
4)Consecration(9sec cd)
5)Shield of the Righteous(6sec cd)
6)Judgement(9sec cd)
7)Repeat ad infinitum(till boss is down)

This is the basic rotation of spells which a paladin tank will use to generate threat on the mob. The cooldowns(cd’s) on each spell are not exact here, i.e. consecration has an 8 sec cd as does holy shield, but the overall importance is that the pattern can continue in a smooth way without gaps where you are not generating threat.

This is the normal pattern but there may be reasons to change it, i.e. perhaps you have to let another tank taunt the boss off you due to a stacking debuff. It is best not to be using this sequence then as you may overaggro the other tank, especially if you are better geared than the tank in question.

The other spells which you will use a lot consist of your taunts, damage instants and Seals/Judgements.

The judgement I normally choose is Judgement of Wisdom(JoW) to keep my mana pool up. Judgement of Light(JoL) and Judgement of the Just(JotJ) can be used depending on the circumstances, thought JotJ is mainly for pvp usage.

The Seal of Vengence/Corruption(SoV/C) is the seal of choice for a tank, the other seals I very rarely use. That being said there are reasons to use them.

Seal of Blood(SoB) can be used when your gear surpasses the instance you are in to help mana regeneration from healing. For example if I’m tanking Violet Hold heroic I simply don’t take enough damage with my gear, so using this seal helps stop my mana from becoming too low.

Seal of Light/Wisdom(SoL/SoW) I use if I am running solo and I need a little healing/mana, i.e. in 70heroics or an old school raid.

Seal of Righteousness(SoR) gives more burst threat at the start but lacks the constant threat generation of SoV/C.

Seal of Justice(SoJ) in my opinion is mainly a pvp seal though against caster mobs it could be useful to interrupt casts.

Your taunts consist of Hand of Reckoning(HoR) and Righteous Defence(RD). The HoR is a one target taunt which I usually find is my taunt of choice for pulling enemies. RD pulls three mobs which can be useful in situations where a healer has aggro from adds, but bear in mind it can be a nightmare if you a get a pull wrong. I have made mistakes with this on Sartharion with many adds and pulled a drake by mistake, and likewise on Grobbulus when we had more than one slime and I accidentally pulled the boss of the main tank. It is useful but be very careful what you pull, it might just bite a little too hard .

Another possibility for using as a taunt would be your Exorcism spell. It can only be used as an initial pull, but it does add another option to your abilities if your Avenger’s shield would cause problems or is on cool down

 As your main tanking blessing I would always use Blessing of Sanctuary(BS). Blessing of Kings(BoK) does give a nice stamina boost to tanks and if you need to soak up a lot of damage this can be useful, though in my experience there are usually other paladins to give this buff anyway.

Blessing of Wisdom(BoW) and Blessing of Might(BoM) are given to buff others. There is no reason a tank would use either of these in any situation where they are tanking. With regard to the blessings I usually ask which people prefer, as some priests for example prefer BoK, other BoW.

The final set of spells you will use are the various protection spells.

Cleanse can be used to remove a debuff of poison, disease or magic and comes in useful against bosses like Heigan and Maexnna in Naxx.

Divine Shield is only used if you are not the main tank and you want to prevent all damage.

Hand of protection(HoP) is similar to divine shield but only prevents physical damage. Neither of these abilities can be used if you are tanking at the time as you will loose aggro immediately. However in combination with Hand of Sacrifice or Divine sacrifice, which redirect some damage to you they can help reduce individual or raid wide damage in a situation where you are not tanking a boss or adds.

For example against Sapphiron in Naxx you could use this ability while he is in the air if a healer gets iceblocked and a blizzard is nearly on top of a group, thus giving more chance that everyone will survive it.

Divine Protection is a good spell to use if you are in trouble. It reduces damage by 50% and is my spell of choice if I am getting into problems. It can also be used when a boss soft enrages, i.e. damage increases, this can give the healers time to adjust if they weren’t quite ready for the enrage.

Lay on Hands like Divine Protection I use if my health bar is dangerously low and I feel that I could die. It should be saved for emergencies but its your call to make if you think things are going wrong, better to use it and be wrong, than not use it and be right.

Hand of salvation(HoS) I have very rarely found time to use when tanking as I have to keep my threat high and concentrate on the boss, however it can help if only 1 dps is going too high on threat. The main problem I have found is targeting the player in question in a 25man raid. I have managed it once or twice but generally the dps should be able to manage their own aggro.

Hand of Freedom(HoF) is another spell I have not really had much reason to use. In the right situation it can be used on yourself and other players, and has the advantage of making them immune to movement reducing effects for 10 seconds.

Righteous Fury is your main threat generation spell and as such should be on all the time to increase your holy damage threat. Rebuff it often so that you don’t lose it in the middle of a fight, it is disastrous if this happens, trust me!

The other spell of note is your Divine Plea which should be activated just before you pull and with the appropriate glyph provides a 3% damage mitigation and a constant stream of mana as long as you are hitting something(preferably the boss:P).

4.Glyphs

The 3 main glyphs a paladin tank should be using are as follows-

1.Glyph of Divine Plea
2.Glyph of Seal of Vengeance
3.Glyph of Righteous Defense

The 1st Glyph is a necessity, the other 2 are more a personal choice. There are a few major glyphs which do not make good choices.

The Glyph of Consecration and the Glyph of Spiritual Attunement aren’t that useful. The first puts your 69696 rotation out of sync which isn’t ideal and the second simply won’t make enough of a difference to your mana regeneration.

The Glyph of Exorcism isn’t useful as this is not a generally used spell for a protection paladin. The Glyph of Seal of Righteousness and Turn Evil have a similar problem to Exorcism, they are simply not used enough by a protection paladin.

In terms of minor glyphs my own choice would be -

        1.  Glyph of Sense Undead
        2.  Glyph of Lay on Hands
        3.  Glyph of Blessing of Kings

These provide small but useful enhancements to each of the spells/abilities. The other minor glyphs are not really worth getting at this time.

Tanking Strategies

So with all the above your probably thinking that tanking is quite complicated and requires a lot of thinking. Well, it is and it does. To be competent requires a great deal of versatility and a real understanding of how to best apply your abilities in any any given situation.

That being said you can’t learn exactly how to react in a given situation unless you are in said situation. The key to learning how to tank well is to simply to get on with tanking. After each dungeon or raid analyse what you did well and what didn’t work. If you wiped a lot try and be constructive in dealing with it. Try not to blame anybody, it never helps a raids’ morale when someone is being critical.

So with the above in mind let me give a few examples of situations where things go wrong and how to think about them.

1.You are in Violet Hold heroic. You are tanking Xevozz, the captured Ethereal with a pug group. You start kiting him from the bottom of the stairs and pulling him up to follow your usual path around the room. You find your health suddenly takes a hit and no healing seems to be happening just as you go around the corner at the top of the stairs. Then you take another hit 2 secs later and die. The group wipes and you have to start over again.

Now typically in this situation you get a load of grumbling about the healer and/or tank and usually if you don’t do it first try people leave. So what went wrong?  The main problem here is lack of communication, which is quite often the case with pug’s(random groups found through the looking for group channel). You need to explain before the boss starts where you are going so the healer doesn’t loose line of sight(los). Also you could have used Lay on Hands and divine shield to give your healer time to get in to a better position. Don’t assume just because you know what your plan is, that everyone does. Any fight like this where there is a lot of movement requires planning to ensure that everyone knows what their role is, and where to be at any given moment.

2.You are off-tanking Grobbulus in Naxx, picking up the slimes as the spawn. Suddenly 3 slimes spawn due to the boss turning as he does his slime spray. You use Righteous Defence on one of the slimes and end up pulling the boss which the MT fails to taunt back in time, you end up being killed and the group wipes.

This situation happens a lot in this fight. It is not necessarily any one persons fault, but the key to dealing with it is being aware it exists. The biggest reason most guilds fail at certain points is because the members blame each other for mistakes. Again the key to this is being aware of your abilities and the MTs’ abilities. Don’t panic when this sort of situation occurs. If you and the MT have talked before the fight then he knows this can happen and simply to taunt the boss back at this time. On your end this is a time to use HoR, to pull the slimes individually, if you can. The Mt can take a few extra hits and will have a couple of healers on him so let him take the aggro for a few secs until you can taunt the slimes to you. When you have them you should be using your Divine protection to help the healers as you will take a fair hit in damage. The main point is – Do Not Panic – difficult to do if you are trying to do things well, but when you learn to deal with things logically and realise that no run is going to be completely smooth then you will find you improve and your overall enjoyment of the game improves.

3.You are doing the Obsidium Sanctum in a 25man with 3 Drakes up. Your normal warrior tank who is on the fire elemental adds is unavailable so you have been asked to do this in his stead. On your first try you lose aggro to dps and healers and feel as if your letting the side down. After several more attempts you are getting criticized by some of the members as you can’t do this job as well as they think you should.

The key to this is the fact that this is the hardest job for any tank, controlling adds, especially in this fight. Do Not let peoples criticism get you down. I have done this fight and it is nigh impossible for a paladin tank to do this as his consecration just doesn’t generate aggro quickly enough and you are running about a lot in this fight. Yes you have to do the best you can, but realise that this is not your strongest point, and that in this particular fight a warrior is far superior to a paladin because of his instant burst aggro abilities. Any raid leader with experience knows this and should realise that this is not the best raid setup for the task. Unfortunately you are always going to get those who criticize and you have to try and be as constructive as possible with them. A whisper to the raid leader may help, as they can rearrange things and possibly talk to the critical members of the group.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to think about the situation you are going into before it happens, as the above examples show it makes everyones gaming experience easier and hopefully more enjoyable. That being said you will wipe many times in raids and it is part of how you learn to improve.

General Raid Guidelines

1.Always make sure you have studied the tactics of any raid you are going into, ideally watch videos which are available on wowwiki.com, or a site you know and prefer. This is always my preference as it shows exactly what is happening and if you get a narrated video it can be extremely helpful to understand the fights in the raid.
2.Always bring along any flasks and food you need, for tanks this is Strength/Stamina food and Stoneblood Flasks. Don’t rely on others to provide you with them. Part of raiding is being self sufficient. It is expected that you have everything you need with you.
3.Don’t criticize others or slag others off because they make mistakes, you will make mistakes as well, and it is much more fun to play in a relaxed atmosphere.
4.In most guilds there are addon’s which are required for raiding. The following are my addon’s and help immensely with any raid.

        Deadly Boss Mod’s(DBM) – Alerts you when specific abilities are     going to happen.
        Omen threat Meter – Shows your threat in comparison to the raid.
        Pally Power – Helps give the various blessings to the raid members.
       
These are the 3 main addon’s most guilds use. There are others out there so you will have to see if you have any preference for some of the other options available to you, ie BigWigs – Similar function to DBM, but not one I have used.

Conclusion

I hope this guide has proved useful to readers in understanding how to play a paladin tank. It is complicated but take it one stage at a time and through a combination of practical experience and the theory you will improve and become an asset to any raid or guild you are a part of.

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