Tankadin 101
-Gestalt, the Warrior formerly known as Zalkir

Latest edits:
2-28-08: Gear section posted, new builds in talents section, minor edits throughout

Dedicated to the Tankadin Community, who made this possible through continuous discussion, support, and help.

For the Knighted Owls, for their continued amusement.

Huge props to the gang at MainTankadin, for continued support, research, and advocacy.
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/index.php

The game has changed in many ways since TBC and one of the most dramatic of these has been the opening up of tanking roles. Back when Onyxia was scary and people gathered around to see the guy with the epic mount, you had lots of options for DPS, healing, etc, but when you were looking for a tank you were probably looking for a warrior. That's changed: the warrior, druid, and paladin are all capable of filling a tank role, both in 5-mans and in raids.

The three tanking classes: overview

All three classes are CLOSE on overall mitigation and single target threat. Any of the three are suitable for tanking 5-mans, offtanking raids, or maintanking raids. Every boss that has been killed has been tanked successfully by warriors, druids, and paladins. The three tank classes are roughly interchangable on most content, though each go about the job in a different way, allowing different strategies and approaches. I've been stunned as I've been going through familiar content with each of the tank classes: a fight I knew inside and out seems brand new, as the approach and strategy for each class is quite different, posing different challenges and advantages. Understanding those differences will help players adjust their strategies according to the tank on hand.

Specs matter, much moreso than before. While a Resto Druid, Holy Paladin, or a Fury Warrior CAN tank in some situations, they're missing many vital tools that help them do the job. Tanking can be a rough job, especially on unfamiliar content, so having a tank that is well suited to the task at hand is important. Good tank selection will help the run progress smoothly, and also ensure that the tank doesn't get frustrated by tackling a job they're ill-suited for.

Spec and gear are particularly important for the Hybrid-class tanks. Paladins and Druids have a broader range of gearing options than Warriors, to the point that some specs may not be carrying any melee-oriented gear at all. While they may still be able to step up to the plate in a pinch, they're going to have to work much harder to maintain control over a pull. Any time an off-spec or off-gear Hybrid is willing to tank, let them know you appreciate their willingness to help out where it's needed.

While this guide is for Tanking Paladins, it's not really possible to discuss Tankadins without a look at tanking in general and where they stand in comparison to the other tanking classes. World of Warcraft is now a game built around COOPERATIVE tanking, so you're going to need at least a rough understanding of how the other two tanks function.

A brief comparison

Let's take a look at some of the key differences between the three tanking classes. While we're making these comparisons we're going to be assuming that these tanks are wearing at-level TBC gear. I'm mostly referencing 64-66 greens and blues, but will note when there is a substantial difference at a different level of gear.

Warriors
Warriors will have a slight mitigation advantage over the other two tanking classes at most levels (though this evens out a bit and stays pretty close through most of the raid game). Their threat generation is innate to skills, so they don't have to spend any of their gear budget on threat. The downside to this is that gear upgrades have little impact on their threat output: it's mostly a fixed quantity (though their weapon and shield do provide some improvement). As they level they will see improved threat generation from new skills trained and better rage generation (allowing them to use their skills more often). Their single-target threat is good, though they may need lead time in some situations (the habitual "wait for sunders"). They run into some problems when trying to tank multiple targets.

Warriors have a great variety of debuffs they can apply, the best selection of "Oh NO!" panic buttons, and fantastic mobility. Overall, at most level ranges Warriors will have the best staying power of any of the tanking classes, somewhat offset by relatively limited threat generation. Thier overall staying power, situational tricks (like Spell Reflect), and great variety of panic buttons continue to serve them well.

Druids
Druids have comparable mitigation to the other two tanks by virtue of their high Dodge and high Armor values. Their large HP pools are great for absorbing large hits that can't normally be mitigated (like spell damage), and they have some unique abilities that help them deal with AoE damage. Their overall mitigation is slightly less effective than the plate-wearers over time, but not so much so as to cause problems in most situations. They have good single-target threat generation (slightly superior to warriors), and good threat generation on up to three targets.

Druids as tanks have two features of note. First, they are holding aggro by dealing substantial damage: a tanking druid is doing a great deal to help a boss die faster, and not just by holding aggro. In addition to very solid damage-dealing (even when tanking), the druid is providing some great DPS buffs to their party. The second, and truly unique, feature of druids as tanks is that when their tank target is down they still have a lot to offer the party. Unlike warriors and paladins, druids don't need to swap gear to switch from a tanking role to a melee dps role. While a gear swap would help them crank out a bit more DPS, they are still making a substantial contribution if they're in cat form wearing their tanking gear (much moreso than a Prot warrior or Prot Paladin).

Paladins
Paladin mitigation is roughly comparable to warriors (they're mostly wearing the same gear), reduced by the need to allocate a few gear slots for int/spellpower/mp5 (though not many... paladin itemization is pretty complicated and beyond the scope of this general overview). They have a few "panic buttons", but these are more situational than the ones available to the warrior. The aspect of the paladin that really shines is threat management. Paladins generate threat through spell damage, much of which is applied through passive procs, DoT's, and stacking effects. The upshot of this is that Paladins will generate slightly superior single target threat to warriors, comparable threat to druids on up to three targets, but on more than three targets they are vastly superior. Their use of mana rather than rage also means they can "frontload": start a fight by throwing a lot of high-threat abilities, allowing DPS to start immediately.

Like Druids, Paladins are holding aggro by dealing large quantities of damage. Unique to the Paladin, however, is that most of this damage happens when a mob hits them. Paladins really WANT to get hit, as most of their abilities trigger on hits taken (and these abilities operate independantly of the global cooldown). On single mobs that hit very slowly, however, many of these skills take a backseat. They also have a lot of utility in a tanking role, providing a great variety of buffs, debuffs, and decursing. Their threat management options are second to none: Blessing of Salvation and Blessing of Protection are very powerful tools for reducing the threat of other players in the party.

When you've got more than one...
This won't happen often in 5-mans, and for 5-man content any of the tanking classes will be able to do the job very well.

Occasionally, though, there may be more than one possible tank within a group, and the group will have to make decisions about who will tank what. While I'll be going into greater detail on this subject later on, there are some simple things worth considering right off the bat.

First, Protection Warriors and Protection Paladins are very limited in their contributions when they are not tanking a target. The Protection warrior is geared and talented to act as a damage sponge: they can generate moderate DPS when not tanking, but nothing compared to a Druid. The Protection Paladin likely has a small mana pool and a limited amount of spellpower, and will lack real staying power in a healing role (and doesn't do a lick of damage if they're not getting hit).

When multiple targets are present and multiple tanks are available, the general rule for kill order should be Druid, Paladin, Warrior. Killing the Druid target first allows the Druid to continue contributing by doing substantial DPS, and killing the Warrior target last will insure that they have the lead time necessary to build a threat lead. In a situation such as this, if there are more than three targets, it is generally safe to give the Warrior the biggest (since their mitigation over time functions very well), the Druid the one that needs to die first (due to special abilities, etc), and the Paladin multiple tanking targets (since their threat and mitigation actually get better the more often they get hit).

Blizzard has designed the TBC raid game to actively encourage multi-class tanking strategies, even to the point of optimizing certain stages of a specific boss for a specific class (i.e. Druid tank phase 1, warrior tank phase 2, paladin tank phase 3), as well as having some bosses that strongly favor one tanking class over another. Cooperation is key, and the beginning of cooperation is understanding.

Tanking Universals
The primary aspects of tanking carry over between the classes, though how each tank manages these aspects are somewhat different. These three aspects, and the differences in how tanks manage them are:

Threat
All the damage reduction and perfect positioning in the world don't do any good if the mob isn't paying attention to you. Holding aggro on the appropriate target/s is the entry-level requirement of a tank, the aspect of the job that must be mastered before any other aspect of tanking becomes important. As outlined above, Warriors hold aggro through innate threat on skills, Druids hold aggro through high physical damage dealt with innate threat multipliers (and some innate threat on skills), and Paladins hold aggro through multiple spell damage sources and stacking threat multipliers. We'll get more in-depth on the particulars of paladin threat in a moment.

Positioning
Every pull in the game has positioning considerations, from wandering mobs in the world to instance bosses. Whether it is as simple as tanking the target outside the patrol path of another mob (and thus preventing an unintentional add) or as complicated as knockback, arc damage, AoE, and environment hazards on a boss, there is always a proper place for you to stand and a proper place for the mob to stand. The positioning requirements of your group are contingent on you getting your positioning correct, and it is your responsibility to be familiar with the proper layout of the battlefield. This is but one area in which the tank must be aware of the entire fight: total-field awareness is part of the job.

Target Management
Join me for a moment in my 5-man mantra:
CC is for the weak. CC is for the weak.
In all seriousness, CC does have its place (and learning how to work around necessary CC is another learning curve). However, one of the unique personal challenges of tanking is seeing how many mobs you can manage at once. This is where Threat and Positioning begin to merge. You'll need to maneuver the targets into a position where you can maintain your threat on all of them, consider the positioning problems each mob poses, and keep track of your threat on each target to ensure that they stay locked on you. Druids have a strong multi-target melee attack and Warriors have Thunderclap, but most of their multi-target management involves rotating between targets. Paladins generate multitarget threat through reactive procs (i.e. they hit you, they take damage) and area of effect spells, but also benefit from target rotation.

Mitigation
There are many complicated methods and philosophies for how a tank can, and should, deal with damage. In practice these vary radically from class to class, but in principle it's the same. Damage mitigation can be broken down into two components:
Combat Table Manipulation
I'll only be covering this briefly here. A detailed explanation of the combat table is provided later in the guide, and a very in-depth description is available at http://www.wowwiki.com/Attack_table.
Exhaustive testing and sly confirmations from Blizzard indicate that physical combat involves a one-roll system. All the possible outcomes for an attack are arranged on a table and assigned a range value, totalling 100. A random number is generated by the game and this number is compared to the table.
Miss
Dodge
Parry
Glancing Blow (only players and pets versus mobs)
Block
Critical
Crushing Blow (mobs only)
ordinary hit

Values on the table can slide off the bottom, not the top. Additionally, certain effects may directly reduce other values (for example, Defense will reduce the range of Critical, and increase the range of Miss). This is how the mitigation numbers can be true "absolute values". If your block rate is 65% at the time of the attack, "Block" will have a value of 65% of the table. If there isn't enough room for all 65% (for example, if your Miss, Dodge, and Parry already totalled 40%), the excess Block will "fall off" the table. Note that at that point Critical, Crushing, and Ordinary Hit have already been pushed off, but we'll get to that later.

The first aspect of Tank damage management is manipulating this table into as advantageous a configuration as possible, both through gear selection prior to the fight and skill use during the fight. The options for this table manipulation vary radically between the classes.

The second aspect of Tank damage management is preparing yourself so that when a strike gets past your table manipulation it poses as little a threat to your survival as possible. This is generally done through gear selection, optimizing armor and stamina to provide you with effective reduction on damage that does connect and a large HP pool so that damage reduces your health by as small a PERCENT as possible. Viewing incoming damage in terms of percentages rather than absolute values (i.e. 25%, rather than 3000) helps you conceptualize stamina as an integrated part of your overall damage management plan.

The Paladin at a glance
Now that we've covered some of the basics on where they fit in the overall scheme of the tanking game, let's focus on the Paladin.

The Paladin was originally designed as a tank first, healer and support second. This was the case during closed beta and for the first months post-launch: Paladins were the preferred tank for 5-man groups thanks to their (at the time) superior threat generation and mitigation. Changes to class balance nudged the paladin further and further towards the back lines, excepting a few gimmick fights. That started changing in TBC beta. A number of key abilities were added to the paladin class that covered the gaps in their tank game. Most significant has been the addition of serious Paladin tanking gear. Make no mistake: at every level of itemization the paladin has gear available to put them on par with the other tanking classes. The Blizzard design team has confirmed this is not a fluke, and that Paladins are now considered a top-shelf tank class.

Here's the short version:
Paladins have comparable mitigation to the other tanking classes, with a slight disadvantage when taking slow hits and a substantial advantage when taking fast hits.
Paladin threat is DPS-based, and in a tanking role is roughly comparable to an equivalently geared mage. Their damage also scales up as they take hits.
Paladin mana is constantly replenished while tanking thanks to mana returned from heals recieved (a class ability).
Paladin damage and threat are subject to no form of mitigation short of Silence or Magic-Immune. Armor, Resistance, and to a lesser extent Dodge, Parry, and Block have little to no impact on threat building.
Many of a Paladin's threat generating abilities are fire-and-forget or passive: they build threat on anything hitting them, targetted or not.
Strengths
-High DPS and Threat when tanking, both highly scalable with gear
-Mitigation, Single target, and multitarget threat get better the more often they're hit.
-Several taunt-like effects that work on taunt-immune mobs
-Great utility options while tanking
-Ranged options: taunt, some taunt-like abilities, and Avenger's Shield operate from range. A Paladin rarely has to run during a fight.

Weaknesses
-Overspecialized: the tanking paladin cannot perform any role other than tanking without a full gear swap. The limited mana pool on their tanking gear has them OOM very quickly as a healer, and their DPS is almost entirely based on taking hits. A Tankadin, in tank gear, contributes much less when not tanking than a Feral Druid, and substantially less than a Protection Warrior. They can change gear between fights to act as a support healer.
-Mitigation and threat generation are less effective on single targets that hit extremely slowly.
-Limited Mobility: The Paladin is the only tank class that does not have a charge-like ability. When a Paladin has to get close, they have to walk.
-Extremely gear dependant: Paladins have to gear carefully to balance threat, mitigation, and staying power.

Challenges
-Paladins have the most complex cooldown management of the tank classes. Most of their abilities are tied to the global cooldown and have different cooldown durations: managing these cooldowns so that they never coincide (so you can always hit every ability as soon as it's available) is vital to success.
-Paladins must manage spell durations mid-combat. Most Paladin spells are short-term self-buffs or DoT's. Keeping track of these durations and refreshing them mid-combat while performing other tanking tasks can be quite demanding.

Playstyle suggestions
The Paladin is the ultimate in micromanagement tanking. It's more like playing an extremely fast-paced realtime strategy game than an action game. You never reach a point where you're spamming a certain skill cycle: you're always adjusting timing, utility functions, managing cooldowns and spell durations, and your effectiveness as a tank is directly related to how efficiently you can do these things.

The Slightly longer version

The Paladin has several key features that operate very differently than the other two tanks.

The Paladin uses mana where the other tanks use rage. While this originally prevented them from being viable tanks for long fights, mana regen from healing recieved (via Spiritual Attunement) makes this no longer an issue. Tanking Paladins affectionately refer to their "Blue Rage bar", as SA replenishes their mana supply so long as they are getting heals. The remaining functional differences are twofold: first, a paladin has a much larger (and scalable) functional resource pool (i.e. 100 rage is worth X seconds of ability use, 4000 mana will be more time of ability use than X), offset by a greater need for efficient spending. Second, they start a fight at full resource, making heavy frontloading possible.

The Paladin generates threat through Holy spell damage (with threat multipliers). Their overall threat model is more like a Druid than a warrior: high damage with bonus threat for damage dealt. They differ from Druids in that their damage source is unaffected by any mitigation mode in the game. Holy Damage has no resistance value: the spell damage can "miss", resulting in a full resist, but partial resist or school-specific resists don't apply. Since the damage is magical, rather than physical, the armor of the mob has no impact on the threat generated by the paladin. While some of the threat is generated from holy damage procs on successful weapon swings, a lot of Paladin threat is coming from reactive procs (i.e. damage when hit) and AoE DoT, so even outright mob avoidance has only a moderate effect on threat generation. This spell-based threat mechanic does make the paladin less effective on mobs that silence (see below) and are magic immune (though resistances aren't a factor).

The Paladin generates threat through multiple sources that are active simultaneously, most of which are fire-and-forget. At any point in a fight a Paladin will probably be building threat from seals on weapon swings, hits taken, area of effect damage, hits blocked (at all times), bonus damage on hits blocked (when Holy Shield is active). These multiple damage sources all scale with gear and add up FAST. In any multi-mob encounter the Paladins screen will be covered with a constant stream of numbers.

Since much of the damage and threat of the Paladin is passive or nontargetted, there is no real limit to the number of mobs a Paladin can hold. The threat built on non-targetted mobs is substantial: instance nonelites will usually kill themselves from reactive damage long before DPS gets to them on the target list, and elites will still be substantially weakened. Paladins rarely require crowd control: the only limit to the number of mobs they can tank is the amount of damage the healers can stay on top of.

Paladins can frontload a LOT of threat. At level 70 (in decent pre-raid gear) Avenger's Shield (the primary pulling ability) will generate 2-5k threat on the three targets it hits, followed by 1-2k threat from Judgement of Righteousness. While applying 3,000 to 7,000 threat on the first DPS target before it gets into melee range is remarkable, consider the real trump card on Paladin threat generation: Avenging Wrath ups all damage dealt (and thus all threat) by 30% for 20 seconds, once every 3 minutes.

Paladins are somewhat limited in their "Oh No!" buttons. While Righteous Defense *does* function through a Divine Shield (i.e. the paladin can bubble, then taunt, and the mob will come back and smack at them to no effect), the timing on this is very tricky and only works on mobs that can be taunted. Ardent Defender (always active) drastically reduces all damage recieved if the Paladin is below 35% health, a very poor man's Shield Wall: an attack that takes them below 35% may be followed up an attack that flat out kills them, even with the damage reduction.

A Tankadin who is not tanking is more or less dead in the water. Paladin tanks have very small mana pools: 5-6k at 70 pre-raid, at best. They rely on mana regained from Spiritual Attunement so that they can focus their gear on mitigation, and as such don't have much staying power when they aren't a primary healing target. They miss most of the mana efficiency options from the Holy tree so their healing is limited. Their best DPS options require taking hits to function, so their damage is laughable (substantially less than a Protection warrior) when they're not tanking. With a gear swap they can be a support healer (as well as handle buffing and decursing), but they are limited when it comes to changing roles mid-combat.

The single greatest challenge a Paladin will face is their own versatility. A Paladin has more manual control over their pacing during a fight than other tanks, making efficiency very important. They have more things to keep track of, so a lot of multitasking is required (even on single-mob fights). They have a wide range of options that may be required at various stages in the fight, and it's up to the Paladin to determine when to emphasize threat, mitigation, or efficiency.

General systems
The rule of the Paladin is 1-per: 1 seal at a time, 1 judgement per target (per paladin), 1 blessing per target (per paladin).

The On-hit rule:
Effects that proc when you take a hit only take effect if you actually TAKE the hit, that is, recieve damage. Attacks that miss, are dodged, parried, or have their damage reduced to 0 by blocks or other damage reduction effects will NOT proc On-hit effects. Abilities this includes are Retribution Aura, Redoubt, and Reckoning. These effects negatively scale with avoidance gear (since you'll be taking less hits and proccing less often), but occur more often in large fights (like tanking 6-8 mobs at once).

Paladin holy damage generates 1.6 threat per point, 1.9 post talents.

Judgement operates independantly of the Global Cooldown.

Global Cooldown
With the exception of Judgement, all Paladin spells and skills use the Global Cooldown. Given that most of the spells used for tanking are instants, the Paladin has no method of "soaking" the downtime between GCD's: this built in pause is a true pause. The Paladin offsets this with the duration of all their GCD-consuming effects: most Paladin tank spells are something you can activate then simply allow it to work for a few seconds. The moderate cooldowns on most of these spells means the Paladin will rarely have to choose between more than 2 or 3 abilities on any given Global Cooldown. A Paladin will have to choose carefully to optimize their efficiency.

The Cooldowns for the primary tanking spells can be staggered in such a way that they will only rarely overlap. Your initial series of casts throughout a fight will determine how frequently this overlap will occur: if you start out with a string that brings an early overlap, you will have to deal with those overlaps frequently. If you start out with effective staggering, you will only have to maintain it. The one curveball you will have to deal with is long cooldown skills, like HoJ, or long fights where reapplying BoSa is necessary. There are a few tricks that help in this process:

-use Consecrate before Holy Shield any time you'll be using both. The 2 second gap between their CD's means that if you reverse this, they'll overlap on the next CD.
-The time when both HS and Consecrate are on Cooldown is when you Judge. While Judgement itself does not invoke GCD, the seal you'll be refreshing will.
-Special or situational abilities like HoJ, AS, or refreshing BoSa should also be fit into this window, but be aware of how this may effect the timing of other skills.
-Keep an eye on your cooldowns. If you aren't using a mod that displays the cooldowns on the buttons themselves, get one.
-Keep an eye on your spell durations. Turning on "Aura Fade" for scrolling combat text will give you a visual cue when seals and blessings fade, but you need to be thinking ahead so you can fit refreshed buffing into your skill rotation.

Putting it together: A typical pull
1. Prep Seal of Righteousness
2. Avenger's Shield, break line of sight/ have other players counter if the pull involves casters.
2a. If CC is necessary (and it usually won't be), apply it after the AS pull.
3. Judgement of Righteousness on the first kill target.
4. Consecrate, Holy Shield, up a Seal, in this order (to insure timers are appropriately staggered).
4a. If more threat is needed, Seal of Righteousness
4b. For more threat on a longer fight, Seal of the Crusader (Judged immediately, then up another seal).
4c. If more mitigation is needed, Seal of Light (Judged immediately, then up another seal).
4d. If the mobs are runners, Seal of Justice (judged, up another).
4e. If it's going to be a long fight, Seal of Wisdom (Judged, up another).
5. Keep Consecrate and Holy Shield up, rotating seals and Judgements as necessary. Try to maintain active judgements on as many targets as possible, rotating weapon swings between judged targets to maintain them.
6. Throughout the fight try to move your targets a little bit as they die. It can be difficult to loot 12 corpses stacked directly on top of each other.

**-{ General Spells and Abilities }-**
The magic word for a Paladin tank is OPTIONS. You have a lot of them from base class abilities and talent-granted spells. We'll get to Seals, Blessings, Auras, and abilities from talents shortly, but first lets take a look at some more general abilities.

Spiritual Attunement
This is part 1 of "Why Paladins can tank now".
You don't have a mana bar. You have a blue rage bar (that starts full instead of empty), and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Spiritual attunement will provide you with plenty of staying power as a tank: until you hit 70, 8% of all healing you recieve will apply to your mana as well, and at 70 it moves to 10%. This may not sound like a lot, but in most tanking scenarios where staying power is very important (i.e. boss fights), you will be recieving a LOT of healing (think 6-7 digits). That's a lot of mana, and should be more than enough to keep you cranking out threat.

Righteous Defense
This is part 2.
You have a taunt. At first glance it may seem a bit odd: it's player targetted, effects multiple mobs, and operates from range. The first thing to do when you get this ability is to macro it (macro below). It will now function more or less like a default taunt, with a few noteworthy exceptions. First, if that player pulls aggro on multiple targets (up to 3), they'll all come to you. Second, it operates from range. I can't stress how awesome that is. A Paladin does not, and should not, move to pickup a target: they can taunt from range, and have some handy abilities to build threat while the target is walking back to them.
Macro:
/cast [help] Righteous Defense; [target=targettarget,help] Righteous Defense

Consecration
Consecration is a terrific threat source when dealing with multiple targets: toss it down and let the holy damage tick away at your enemies. It's effective for adding another source of threat on a single target as well, but be aware that it's a mana hog. The relatively high mana cost is offset by its fantastic scalability: consecrate recieves a full 96% of your +dam/heal, though divided evenly between the ticks.

Avenging Wrath
Obtained at 70, AW is a powerful threat tool. It increases all damage dealt (from all sources, including reactive damage procs) by 30% for 20 seconds. With a 3 minute cooldown it's usable once per trash pull and a few times per boss fight.

Cleanse
I didn’t appreciate how powerful a tank tool this was until I went back to playing my warrior for a week. Cleanse is awesome. You’re going to get hit with poisons, diseases, but mostly a lot of pain-in-the-butt magic effects. There are some magic effects that will ruin your day, and if you were a warrior or druid you’d have to wait until one of your healers had time to deal with it. As a Paladin, click, it’s gone. The power this gives you becomes most evident in fights where those magic effects get frequently reapplied. If you’re on the ball, it’s like they’re not even there. Note that many DoT’s are magic effects, as are many boss-specific effects. Be sure to share the love when you’ve got time. On encounters you know well, you’ll find you have time to manage your targets AND provide good Cleanse cover for your party/raid, letting the healers focus on healing. Macro this and click away.
/cast [target=mouseover] Cleanse

**-{ Blessings }-**
There are a few blessings that are of particular interest to the Paladin tank. While you should be familiar with the general function of your buffs for 5-mans, you won’t be doing too much buffing in a raid environment (and as a Protection Paladin, it won’t be complicated either: Kings for everyone). That being said, there are a number of Blessings that perform an important utility role for a tank.

Blessing of Freedom (BoF)

BoF removes any movement impairing effects on the target. This is another ability I didn’t really appreciate until I went back to my Warrior for a while. Roots and snares are a royal pain for a tank, as most mobs that use these abilities will move away from you when they know you can’t follow. The joke is on them: not only does this ability break the root, it provides you a nice window of immunity. Save your BoF cooldown for yourself, macro it for self-cast, and enjoy being a tank who can’t be rooted or snared.

Blessing of Protection(BoP)
Makes the target completely immune to physical damage for a short time, and also prevents them taking any action but spellcasting. BoP has some very nice uses in specific encounters, as it will remove most DoT’s applied to the target, even ones that can’t be removed otherwise. BoP is handy for saving an overzealous caster, but the most important function it performs is an aggro redirect. Any mob that has a single physical attack on its attack table (i.e. virtually everything) will stop attacking the target and move to the next target on their hate list. In virtually all situations this should be you, bringing the mob directly back to you. What’s interesting about this “taunt” is that it technically isn’t a taunt: since the effect is applied to a player, immunities on the mob are irrelevent. You can, effectively, taunt a mob that is taunt-immune. Note that this will cancel any blessings you’ve placed on the target. Conversely, you can prematurely remove the BoP by applying another blessing. Macro BoP thus so you don’t have to switch targets to use it as a taunt, but be careful you don’t wind up putting it on yourself:
/cast [help] Blessing of Protection; [target=targettarget,help] Blessing of Protection

Blessing of Salvation(BoS)
This lowers the threat generated by the target player by 30%. Note that this does not work retroactively: they keep the threat they’ve already generated, but BoSa will reduce all threat generated after it is applied. This is a great followup to BoP: If you had to BoP someone, you probably need to BoSa them as well. Do NOT use the macro above (or a sequence macro) for BoSa: it is entirely too easy to accidentally apply it to yourself, as the “help” syntax does not prevent self-application. Also note that there is often a bit of lag in the “target of target” window, so you can’t rely on it when using BoSa. Instead, bind this to a button configured for mouseover, or macro it with [target=mouseover]. When you BoP someone, remember who it was, mouseover their name on your raid list, and hit BoSa. Chances are good you won’t have to taunt for them again.

**-{ Auras }-**
Changing your aura costs no mana, but does invoke the global cooldown. While you need to be careful about your GCD use, there are some situations where swapping auras mid-combat will be necessary.

Retribution Aura
The Aura of choice whenever you have more than one target hitting you (unless you have a Ret paladin available to provide the Improved version). The threat generated by Ret aura is free (i.e. costs you nothing), constant, and non-negligable. Note that Retribution Aura follows the On-hit rule: if you dodge, parry, or are missed, it will not proc.

Devotion Aura
The Aura of choice when you need a little boost to your mitigation. While the armor provided does not scale, it’s still a bit less damage taken, and in many situations a little is all it takes to make the difference between a screenshot in front of a corpse and a up-close inspection of the quality tilework on the floor.

Resistance Auras: Shadow, Fire, Frost
These are very, VERY handy for fights that are heavy on the associated damage type. On element-heavy fights witching to these on the appropriate fights can provide a MASSIVE damage reduction for both you and your party. Be aware of what the other classes in your group are capable of buffing: Priests can help with Shadow, Shaman can help with Fire and Frost. There may be situations where you’ll want to fill in the gaps, especially in 5-mans. Note that these resistance buffs do NOT stack. If a shaman throws down a Fire Resist totem and you’re using FR Aura, you’re wasting your aura slot.

**-{ Seals and Judgements }-**
Seals provide the tanking paladin with a wide range of tactical options, allowing for "on the fly" adjustments to your performance during an encounter. While it is possible, and even sometimes desirable, for a Paladin tank to focus purely on threat generation and do just fine, the class really shines when used to its fullest capacity, and doing that means knowing when to use what seal and judgement combination.

There are two macros that can substantially increase your efficiency in the use of Judgement and Seals, though personal preference and style may vary. The first Judges your current Seal then refreshes it with the Seal of choice:
/cast Judgement
/cast Seal of ______ note that the "stopcasting" line is no longer necessary
The second macro is a simple tool for adjusting where your judgements go. This allows you to judge your current seal on a target OTHER than the one you're currently hitting:
/cast [target=mouseover] Judgement Yes, I'm very fond of mouseover macros
A variation of this macro allows you to cast your Judgement on Mouseover or, if you aren't moused over an enemy target, cast it at your current target. Note: enabling "Sticky Targetting" in the interface options highly recommended if using this macro
/cast [target=mouseover] Judgement
/stopcasting This particular macro seems to function more reliably with this line included
/cast Judgement
/cast Seal of *Etcetera*

Seal of Righteousness(SoR)
Bread and butter: Holy Damage per swing. This is your primary source of direct-to-target threat as a tank. The holy damage dealt per swing scales very well with +damage gear (with reasonable amounts of +damage it outperforms SoC because of how well it scales). You're using this any time that you don't have a compelling reason to have another Seal active.
As a Judgement(JoR): JoR is a nice little swat of holy damage. Like other Judgements that don't apply a debuff, this won't replace an existing judgement, so fire away. When you're trying to build a threat lead, judge this every time the cooldown is available. When you need to be a bit more mana efficient, Judge right before the Seal runs out.

Seal of the Crusader(SotC)
SotC gives you a nice boost to overall physical damage dealt over time. Since physical damage doesn't benefit from the beefy threat multipliers of Righteous Fury, this is almost perfectly worthless as a tank.
As a Judgement(JotC): Ah, here we have a very different story. JotC boost Holy damage dealt to the target (varying by the coefficient of the spell that deals the damage). For all intents and purposes, JotC raises your +dam/heal against the target by the indicated amount. Judge this early on fights where you have some lead time: the extra efficiency over time is worth the Judgement cooldown. On short fights, or fights where you need threat FAST, don't bother. Also: do not Judge this when you have a Retribution Paladin available to do it for you. Their talents make their JotC much more powerful than yours.

Seal of Justice(SoJ)
SoJ adds a chance to stun the target to your weapon swings. This sounds interesting, and could be useful in paladin-heavy groups (i.e. 4 paladins with SoJ up), but in most situations it's just not worth the hassle. First, the stun percentage is relatively small. Second, most of the things you really wish you could stun you can't.
As a Judgement(JoJ): This judgement completely cancels the run behavior of the mob in question. If maintained on the target they will not run, ever. Handy for dealing with humanoids or other runners in position-sensitive areas. If you are in an instance where runners are an issue, judge this on every target. Better yet, toss it on them as they run using your mouseover judgement macro. There are lots of options for dealing with runners, but none of them are this simple or effective.

Seal of Light(SoL)
SoL is a perfect example of the flexibility and utility of Paladins in a tanking role. If you have enough of a threat lead to maintain it with other Holy damage sources you can throw on SoL and heal yourself with your weapon swings. This effective reduction in your overall damage goes a LONG way: a Paladin using SoL on a target with JoL on it has the best overall damage reduction in the game (at the cost of a temporary reduction in threat generation). When you're comfortable with your threat lead and notice the healers are having trouble, SoL can help (especially paired with JoL).
As a Judgement(JoL): This debuff has a chance to heal when striking the target. The amount healed is less than the Seal, but applies to everyone striking the target. This is your Judgement of choice on short to medium duration fights (especially trash mobs). The overall reduction in the healing the raid needs is substantial, saves healer mana, and makes it possible to move to the next pull faster. Note that the chance to proc is a fixed percentage per swing, so people attacking move often will recieve healing more often (rogues, enh shaman, and fury warriors love this).

Seal of Wisdom(SoW)
Another option for extending your efficiency in a fight: Seal of Wisdom has a chance to restore mana per swing, thus giving you more mana to spend on your other abilities. In most tanking situations you'll be getting enough mana from Spiritual Attunement to use all your abilities as soon as they're available, but you will need a boost from time to time. If you have enough of a threat lead you can use this to give your mana pool a bit of oomph, but most of the time you're better off using this as a Judgement.
As a Judgement(JoW): This judgement functions similiarly to JoL, restoring mana instead of health. This is the judgement of choice for long fights, both for yourself and for the other casters in the group. With JoW on the raid target, healers and casters can replenish their mana by wanding (which stacks with normal regeneration). JoW will also let you more or less throw mana efficiency out the window: you'll be able to set ridiculous threat levels, spam your abilities, and not worry too much about running out.

Seal of Blood(SoB)
Seal of Blood is complicated, contentious, interesting, and, in my opinion, of highly situational value as a tank. Every swing causes an extra attack, dealing Holy damage equal to 35% of normal damage and hitting you for 10% of that. On one hand, this allows for greater flexibility in gear choices. You could forego +dam alltogether, use a high damage one-hander, and still generate substantial threat. Debates rage on about whether this gear scheme generates more threat than the conventional SoR and +dam. The most interesting aspect of this seal is that the second attack counts as a physical attack, not a spell. This means that unlike SoR, it can proc JoW or JoL. This also means that it can miss, be dodged, blocked, or parried. See my commentary on Reckoning for why giving bosses Parry opportunities is a problem. Tinker, try it, and if you can make it work, great. I use this a lot when I'm tanking content that I'm overgeared for, and that's about it.
As a Judgement(JoB): Inferior to JoR in every way, for the reasons noted above. Even on content when I'm using SoB I'll switch to another seal before Judging. Note that while the Seal damage is based on melee dps stats (attack power, crit, etc), the Judgement scales with spelldamage. To get nice mileage out of the Judgement you'd have to be stacking spell damage, which defeats the entire purpose of using this seal.


Seal of Vengeance(SoV)Much credit to the numerous people who have described the intricacies of SoV tanking
The Alliance-only seal is much more interesting than the aptly named SoB: each swing has a chance to apply a stackable holy damage DoT, and the Judgement deals direct holy damage based on the size of the dot stack (which caps at 5). In theory, SoV and JoV could provide better threat generation than SoR/JoR, but for one problem: keeping the dot stack maxxed is by no means certain. Alliance tankadins give SoV very mixed reviews because of this: some love it, and say that it's great, when it works. Others point out that "when it works" isn't often enough to really rely on it as a primary threat tool.
Flatlyne suggests the following:

---

Q u o t e:
If you have the mana for it, switch back to SoV before the dot wears off, (when it's about halfway through it's timer) that way it will keep the full stack refreshed, as soon as your judgement is up, and you have a fresh application, judge it and switch to righteousness for a few swings, this will increase your threat since the dot is still ticking, and you're doing the full dmg that you would from your SoR. If you use a rotation, this can be tricky, but definately worth it.

---

A number of variations have also been suggested, like switching to SoR as soon as the stack timer refreshes and switching back to SoV when your Judgement timer is up. SoV adds another layer to the rotation mechanics of paladin tanking and, as with all rotations, is as much about style as skill.

Talents
Talents provide most of the core tanking abilities. The Paladin has very limited options as a tank before investing heavily in the Protection tree.

Row One
Improved Devotion Aura - More armor is always good, but the returns here just aren’t worth 5 points (less than 400 extra armor at 70). Since devotion aura is applied post-gear, Toughness doesn’t boost this either. This is a debatable talent: the 5 point investment is steep for the modest returns you get, especially a boost that doesn’t scale with your gear. I’d recommend skipping it.
Redoubt - Core ability, and indicative of the overall way that Paladins tank: reacting to hits taken. This is one of the few mitigation talents in the game that scales real-time: the more often you’re hit, you’ll block a higher a percentage of the hits. This is vital early in your career as a tank, but becomes less important as you get higher avoidance stats (and get deep enough in the tree for Improved Holy Shield).
---Redoubt has some limitations, especially once you’re deep enough into Protection to get Holy Shield. It does not really stack with Holy Shield: if you're Uncrushable with Holy Shield up, all the block from Redoubt is going to fall off the table.
---Redoubt will still provide valuable, if unpredictable, coverage between Holy Shield cooldowns. While it will be very rare for you to expend all your HS charges before the cooldown is up, it will happen (especially when tanking several mobs at once), and Redoubt can help keep crushes from becoming a problem.

Row Two
Precision - 3% to hit with melee and spells is very handy. Holy effects cannot truly be resisted (if you see "Resist", it was a spell miss). You're not going to find a lot (or any) spell hit on your tanking gear, and melee hit is in short supply. While this talent won't get you spell hit capped, it'll get you close. Great returns for 3 talent points.
Guardian’s Favor - A longer-lasting Blessing of Freedom is handy, but the real treat here is reduced cooldown on Blessing of Protection. Since BoP acts as your backup taunt, being able to use it more frequently is a nice perk. Worth fitting in your build, but not absolutely required.
Toughness - 10% more armor. Very simple, and very necessary. Must-have in any main tank build.

Row Three
Blessing of Kings - While a tank isn’t generally concerned with buffing, BoK is too good NOT to take. This is one of the most powerful buffs in the game: 10% to all stats is very potent, and one of the few buffs that becomes more powerful the deeper into the game your party/raid gets. Since you’ll be spending a lot of time in 5-mans you can’t count on having another paladin to cover this for you. In a Raid you’ll be able to pitch in with Greater BoK, but you need the talent first. Must-have.
Improved Righteous Fury - Wow. 6% reduction to all damage recieved is big, and upping your holy threat multiplier to 1.9 is very nice. The damage reduction is so significant that many healing or pvp builds include this talent for that reason alone. Absolute must.
Shield Specialization - Paladins block a LOT. 30% improvement on the damage reduced by blocking is great. The role of Blocking in the damage mitigation scheme is often misunderstood, and many players skip Block Value in their plan (i.e. “4oo less damage on a 5k hit? who cares?”).
---Block value is flat reduction: 400 block is 400 less damage on a 1k hit or a 5k hit, and this is the point at which many players decide it’s worthless. Bear in mind that, for a Paladin tank, Blocking is almost a constant. Any situation likely to burn through our Holy Shield charges is also likely to proc Redoubt, giving us 8 guaranteed blocks per 10 seconds, not including the ones we would have blocked anyway (or extra blocks from a likely Redoubt proc). 400 damage off a 5k hit sounds trivial, but what about a minimum 3,200 out of 8k? Block value matters most in the situations where Paladin tanks perform best: fast, small hits.
Anticipation - Increases defense SKILL by 20: this talent is worth more in terms of Defense RATING as you level up. Even if you're uncrittable without it, the mitigation and avoidance returns are beefy. A definite must for a MT build, highly desirable in an OT build.

Row Four
Most of the following row Four talents can be skipped:
Stoicism - Largely a PvP talent: the stun resist is decorative, since most “stuns” in WoW aren’t really stuns (incapacitates, disorients, etc). The main point here is to prevent other players from dispelling your buffs. As a tank, skip it.
Improved Hammer of Justice - PvP talent. Reduces cooldown on Hammer of Justice. Nice for PvP, occasionally useful as a tank.
Improved Concentration Aura - 30% reduced silence duration is nice but by no means necessary. Every situation where you'd be encountering silence (and these will be rare), you will have means of working around it. Note again that most of your spells are "fire and forget", silence durations tend to be very short to begin with, and you will likely be able to "coast" through any silence effect with only a moderate dip in your threat output (and silence should NOT effect your HS rotation if you're playing carefully). You will very rarely be using Concentration Aura as a tank, and the extra chance to avoid interruption from damage is pointless: the whole point of Concentration Aura is that it will, at skill base, take any player who has taken their own interruption avoidance talents up to 100%. This is a passable group buff talent, but tank specs have so many point considerations that justifying 3 points here is difficult.

Row Five (GREAT stuff)
Spell Warding - 4% reduction on spell damage may not sound like much, but it goes a long way to helping you deal with the one damage type you have issues with. Combined with Improved Righteous Fury you have a good baseline reduction to spell damage. Take it if you tank (and if you’re this deep in Protection, it’s to tank).
Blessing of Sanctuary - This Swiss Army Knife talent provides damage reduction and extra threat from your blocks. In most tanking situations this is the blessing that you’re maintaining on yourself. Of particular interest is the flat damage-per-attack reduction: the more frequent the hits, the higher the effective percentage of reduction. The reduction is pre-armor, so the amount actually reduced will not be the listed value. The damage reduction component scales very poorly with gear (your armor may reduce the damage reduction to single digits), but the Holy proc remains. Think of this as a second Ret Aura. Must-have as a prerequisite, but you'll get some mileage out of the spell itself, especially while you're still levelling up.
Reckoning - Reckoning is a bit involved. This one has changed a lot. In it’s current form it is AMAZING for threat generation, and the main reason that paladins can set very high single-target threat. Every hit that causes damage has a 10% chance to proc, including hits blocked (so long as any damage gets through the block). Reckoning causes your next 4 hits to produce an extra attack, including any procs from active seals. This is the point in your spec where you’ll have to ask yourself what sort of content you’re primarily tanking:
---If you’re exclusively focused on 5-slot content, this talent is an absolute must.
---If you’re exclusively focused on off-tanking raid content, this talent is debatable.
---If you’re exclusively focused on Main-tanking raid content, this talent is one you should skip, for one reason: Bosses parry. When you’re dealing with a boss with an average or fast swing timer, parrying isn’t a big concern. When you’re dealing with a boss with a very slow swing timer, parrying is a big deal. Reducing a boss swing timer from 3.8-4 down to 3.0 or below drastically increases the amount of incoming damage, and worse, does so in an unpredictable fashion. This isn’t generally a large concern, as it’s something that healers naturally deal with. When Reckoning goes off, however, you’ve doubled the chance of giving the boss Parries, reducing their swing timer, and possibly causing a massive damage spike for which your healers aren’t prepared. Note that the Parry issue is the main reason I object to Seal of Blood tanking, as the same problem applies.

Row Six
Sacred Duty - 6% more stamina is a nice survivability buff, and the extra functionality from Divine Shield is nice. Stamina and Health are one of our weak points, and this does a nice job of offsetting that problem Give this a serious look in a support/ offtank build. Absolutely mandatory in a MT build.
One-handed Weapon specialization - This talent provides a 5% boost to *all* damage dealt when you have a one-handed weapon equipped (which you will, unless you’re fond of tanking with a two-hander). This applies to white damage, seals, consecrate, auras, Holy Shield procs…. everything. This is a great threat gen boost and well worth fitting into your build if you've got the points.

Row Seven
Holy Shield - 30% block on 4 attacks in the next 10 seconds, causing substantial (and scalable) threat for each block. A must-have, and the centerpoint of the Protection tree.
---The use of Holy Shield is largely a matter of context, personal style, and finesse. How you use Holy Shield is how you define your Tank style as a Paladin. Some downrank it for the block bonus and use full rank only to frontload threat. The cost is low enough that I don’t find this necessary, and use full rank every time. The real question is one of timing, unless you get….
Improved Holy Shield - You love Holy Shield, and it loves you. With this talent you’ll love it even more. 2 points in Imp HS doubles the number of charges you get, giving you a total of 8 charges per 10 seconds. At this point you won’t burn all your charges unless you’re tanking a LOT of mobs or a mob that is hitting ridiculously fast. This talent secures the Paladins position as the best Blocker in the game, so get that Block value high. The icing on the cake is the increased HS damage. With this talent you’ll start seeing Elite mobs kill themselves on your shield, and once something starts hitting you it will STAY hitting you. A fantastic mitigation AND threat gen boost for 2 points. If you have specced into Holy Shield, you are speccing into this talent as well. The benefits are too powerful to skip.
Ardent Defender - When below 35% health all damage dealt to you is reduced by 30%. Note that this synergizes very well with Stamina talents. While situational, the extra "padding" to your hp pool this provides is very valuable.

Row Eight
Combat Expertise: This talent provides a 10% multiplier to Stamina (which DOES stack with the 6% from Sacred Duty). While most Tankadins are excited about more stam, the 5 points of expertise are nice as well. Expertise reduces the chance that your attacks will be dodged or parried. While the increased likelihood of your attacks landing is nice, the real treat here is less parries (and thus less “I accidentally buffed the boss’ DPS” moments).

Row Nine
Avenger’s Shield - This merits special attention. This is the big, juicy cherry on top of the Prot sundae, and it’s worth every point you spent along the way. I’ve gone back and forth on AS during my time as a Paladin, and it’s currently back in the “must-have” category. The use of this skill is so intricate I could, and probably will, give it its own subsection. For now:
---At first glance it’s a great pulling skill, something that Paladins, at class base, lack. It generates a ton of frontloaded threat, and the daze effect makes mob positioning and on-the-fly crowd control much easier (always CC *after* AS. If your rogues keep walking up for the sap that the party/raid leader told them not to do, keep hitting em with Blessing of Protection). The Daze duration keeps them slow long enough for CC to be applied EXACTLY where you want the mobs parked. A lot of Paladins look at this aspect of the skill and stop there.
---The Deadzone from this skill has been removed, making it better than ever. The two remaining problems with this skill, limiting its use, are the high mana cost and the casting time. Make no mistake: this is still not a skill you want to be using carelessly on mobs already in melee range (or when you have ANY mobs attacking you). That one second cast time can stretch out for a painfully long time when you’re taking hits.
---Note that you CAN safely use this in melee range if you’re very good with your timing. The 1 second cast is pretty easy to fit between attacks on bosses with a slow swing timer, and with practice you’ll find you can use it on most single-target fights. The technique is somewhat similar to hunter Steady Shot weaving, using the mob attack timer instead of your own. Make sure you’ve got a good sense of the rhythm for the incoming attacks, work this in during one of your “free” global cooldowns (as a replacement for Judgement, for example) , and watch the threat meter skyrocket. This takes a lot of practice and you’ll want to reserve it for situations where mana isn’t an issue, but mastering this technique will dramatically increase your threat output.
---AS is your third ranged threat management skill. Your “taunt” operates from range, you can BoP a target that pulls aggro to redirect the mob back to you, and in most cases AS will put you back on top of the threat list. In most situations where you’d need to use RD or BoP, you’ll have time to follow it up with an AS to further secure your position at the top of the threat list.
---Effective use of AS requires practice. Tinker with when and how you use it and you’ll likely surprise yourself with the tricks you discover.

Sample Builds
[i]Note: I'm a fan of "always on" specs, i.e. talents that provide a consistent and constant effect. For this reason I don't put points into multiple auras. I also tend to favor "Spec for reduction, gear for threat": if I'm overmitigating the content I'm running, I'll fix that with a gear swap, not a respec.

My current "default" spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhtIx0dMMqtVbx0hb
-The Standards. If it reliably increases survivability, it's in here. Nuff said.
-Great spell damage reduction. The synergy of Spell Warding and Pursuit of Justice results in a 7% overall reduction (4% reduction, 3% avoidance) of incoming spell damage.
-Mobility. Paladin tanks *were* the least mobile of the tank classes, lacking a charge. This was offset with ranged threat and taunt abilities. PoJ lets us have the best of both worlds: 15% run speed boost (independant of gem/enchants) is almost an "always on" intercept. It takes a little adjustment, but the positional control afforded by this talent is nothing to sneeze at.
-No Reckoning. I miss it when I'm soloing or overmitigating. On that big, bad, slow-swinging boss, though, I do NOT miss the occasional Reckoning-inspired Parry bursts. Ahhh, Reckoning.... 10% chance to buff the swing timer of a raid boss.

A bit more Holy:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVVZVhtIx0dMMqtVb
-A bit more Int and harder hitting SoR traded for some mitigation and mobility.

A lot more Holy:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVEhbxzZVGtIx0dMMo
-Jack of all trades, master of none. You can tank or heal 5 mans with the right gear, and may work as a switch hitter in raids {i.e. offtank then support heal}.
-Imp SoR for extra threat, Imp Lay on Hands gives you a fantastic "Oh No!" button.

A lot more Ret:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVhtIx0dMMRxVrx0hcz
-Sanctity Aura and a few damage buffs for improved threat generation.
-No Avenger's Shield: You're trading your biggest burst threat skill for higher base threat.

My "5-man healers are getting bored so I'm spamming JoB" spec:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZVothx0zxgoZVfxxh0zR
-Fun. Just that: this spec is fun. It's not a good idea, not good for farming heroics, certain death in a raid, and will probably have people asking you what you were thinking. Note that it's basically married to Seal of Blood. Sorry, Alliance brethren. Pull a point out of PoJ for SoC.
-Simply awful survivability. Many of the mitigation and stam talents get skipped. This spec is a statement of confidence in your gear and/or healers. This may seem like a bad idea right out the gate, but it's a BLAST when you're going to be running a lot of instances that you're horribly overgeared for (i.e. helping guild gear up, etc). You will NOT be mana-starved with this spec and will likely top out the damage meters.
-Excuse to break out all that banked Warrior gear with Strength on it and that slow 1-hander with no +dam. If for some strange reason you've wound up with a soulbound Blinkstrike, now's the time to use it.
-The most ridiculous proc strings you'll see this side of Windfury. If you can, get a shaman to come along and prepare to cackle like a lunatic when you see 8 hits off a single swing.... often. Note that this includes 4 SOB self-damage procs. You ARE confident in your healer, yes?

My sig file paraphrase: "Pshaw, real men tank 5-man instances with a 2h'er and sanctity aura.":
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZxbthx0bg0VxVbxxh0z
Variation on the above spec, dropping all the shield-based talents and picking up a bit more stam/mitigation.
-If you're doing anything but trivial 5-mans with this spec your healer must be amazing. Having an amazing healer is great.
-How often do you get to turn a bluetext joke into a spec?

Gear
There are a number of guides reviewing and suggesting specific gear as it becomes available. I highly recommend checking through the Big List of Links! Sticky and spending some time sorting through the database site of your choice to come up with specific gear choices. Paladin tanking gear is in a state of near constant flux. It seems that every other patch introduces new options at various levels of progression, as well as new ways to get this gear. I've also become wary of the problems of stat awareness. Many an up and coming tank finds themselves staring at two pieces of gear in their bags, debating between which would better suit their gear scheme. We've all seen guild text asking us "Which is better?", and my answer is almost always the same: "It depends on what else you're wearing".

For these reasons, I'll be offering a breakdown of the stats and their functions as they pertain to tanking rather than a list of specific gear recommendations. My hope is that this section will be a useful primer on gear choices, better fitting the overall intent of this guide as a starting point rather than the final word. For space considerations I'll be focusing on stats most pertinent to tanks.

When considering gear I highly recommend RatingBuster, which provides a functional breakdown of the stats on an item {i.e. translates Stam into HP, etc}.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info5819-RatingBuster.html

Primary Statistics
Note that the values here are stat returns above and beyond class "base stats". Every class has base values for AP, Dodge, HP, Mana, etc, to which values from prime stats, ratings, etc are added.
Strength
- 2 attack power per 1 Str
- 1 Block Value per 20 Str
Paladin threat is generally based on spell based effects rather than physical damage. Our most powerful threat multipliers impact spell damage, not physical dps {unlike warriors and druids, whose threat multipliers are type agnostic}. The ratio of Strength to Block value is poor, and Strength has a higher item budget cost than Block Value. The only situation where you'd be taking Strength into consideration at all is if you are heavily and regularly relying on Seal of Blood, i.e. extremely situational.
Agility
- 2 armor per 1 Agi
- 1% melee crit per 25 Agi
- 1% Dodge per 25 Agi
The armor bonus to Agility is trivial: with armor values between ten and twenty thousand it would take a monstrous amount of Agi to make a substantial contribution. Melee crit is situational in the same way Strength is: applicable if you're using SoB, negligable otherwise. The one aspect of Agility of interest to the tanking Paladin is Dodge. While we generally rely on Dodge Rating for our Dodge values, our favorable Agi to Dodge ratio {superior to Warriors, inferior to Druids} makes Agi an attractive secondary attribute. Skip it in gems {you're better off with Dodge gems}, consider it on your gear, and consider Agility enchants for gear slots where you're having trouble finding better enchanting options.
Stamina
- 10 hp per 1 Stam
Stamina is the source of your HP pool. Your mitigation stats {armor, block, block value}, avoidance stats {miss, dodge, parry}, and table manipulations {uncrittable, uncrushable} effectively make your hitpoints "count for more". Between all the attacks you avoid, the amount you reduce the hits that land, and preventing those hits from critting or crushing, 5k worth of damage to you might have been 25k to someone else. You're doing everything you can to make sure you're taking more damage than anyone else in your group by holding attention and reducing that damage to a level that the healers can manage. Stamina is the most important of the Prime Stats for tanks: it extends our survivability and, most importantly, provides "spike protection". You need enough hitpoints to be able to survive occasional damage spikes, giving your healers time to get you back to full.
Intellect
- 15 mana per 1 Int
- 1% spell crit per 80 Int
Intellect provides the mana you'll be using to cast spells, generate threat, keep Holy Shield active, etc. You'll be getting a constant flow of mana from healing recieved via Spiritual Attunement, but you'll still need a bit of Int to have a workable mana pool to start with. Most Paladin tanking gear is fairly generous with Int. If you find yourself constantly short on mana, you may be overmitigating {i.e. overgeared for the content that you're tanking, reducing damage to the point that you aren't recieving enough healing to keep your threat generation going}. If you find that most of your tanking gear lacks Int, consider gems, enchants, or relying more on Seal/Judgement of Wisdom.
Spirit
The function of the Spirit stat is perpetually changing. Read http://www.wowwiki.com/Spirit for the latest information Spirit provides mana regen while outside the "five second rule": mana regeneration starts 5 seconds after the last time you spent mana. As a tank, you will NEVER be outside the 5 second rule and your gear will have negligable Spirit, if any. There has been mention made of a total overhaul of the function of the Spirit stat in Wrath of the Lich King. Keep an eye out for any news on this front.
Armor
The calculations for damage reduction per point of armor are the most complicated of our gearing considerations and are far beyond the scope of this guide. For general reference: more armor is always better. It is literally impossible for a Paladin to even approach, much less reach, the point where Armor value no longer provides substantial damage reduction {31k}. For a detailed look, read http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Damage_reduction .
Table Values
The function of Defense, Dodge, Parry, Block, and Block value are discussed in detail elsewhere in the guide. Here are the rating to skill ratios for each:
Dodge: 18.9 rating = 1% Dodge
Parry: 23.6 rating = 1% Parry
Block: 7.8 rating = 1% Block
Defense: 2.37 rating = 1 Defense Skill = 0.04% Dodge/Parry/Block, -0.04%% Hit/Crit
Other Ratings / Misc
Spelldamage
Our primary threat stat. Spelldamage improves most of our threat building abilities: Holy Shield, damage seals, consecrate, etc. The breakdown of how much benefit a given spell gets from how much +dam is in the appendix of this guide. The biggest question regarding +damage/heal is "How much is enough?" When looking at your stats, ask yourself:
1.} Am I losing aggro frequently, even when using a high threat skill rotation {i.e. full rank holy shield and consecrate}?
Paladins have very high threat generation, and the TPS boost from a little improvement in spelldamage is remarkable. If you're losing aggro, Blessing of Salvation the daylights out of your DPS. If you're still losing aggro, get more Spelldamage. For a reference point, most Tankadins report having no difficult with the early raid game at 150 to 200 +dam, i.e. the amount you'll get from a weapon with a spelldamage enchant.
2.} I'm holding aggro just fine.... for the 5 seconds before I go splat. What gives?
You, dear friend, are suffering from "Mage in Plate" syndrome, and you're not alone. I've encountered a number of Tankadins in the mid 60's sitting at 600 +dam and 4k health. If this playstyle appeals to you I'd suggest taking a look at Shockadin builds {playing one as an alt myself}, but it does not work as a tank. Trade down that +dam for some survivability.
Hit
- 15.76 Hit Rating = -1% Chance to Miss
Hit rating has a solid place in your gear as a secondary threat stat. Missed weapon swings won't proc seals, missed Avenger's Shields are frustrating in the extreme, and Hit Rating now effects the chance that Taunt effects {Like RD} will be resisted. Precision helps with this, but a little hit rating {possibly from a gem or two} can help if you're seeing a lot of "Miss".
Expertise
- 15.76 Expertise Rating = -1% Dodge/Parry chance on your target
Replacing the much maligned, often abused, and thoroughly ambiguous "Weapon Skill", Expertise provides us with a means of dealing with "the other Miss": Dodges and Parries. In addition to the boost to threat, Expertise finally gives Tanks a way of dealing with the Parry problem mentioned throughout this guide. Combat Expertise helps with this a bit, but Expertise is {at the time of this writing} tragically scarce.
Spell Hit
- 12.6% Spell Hit Rating = -1% Spell Miss
Holy spells are not, truly, resisted. There is no "holy resist" in the game on players or mobs. When you see a "resist", it means your spell has fallen in the base chance for a spell to miss. For a detailed look at how spell hit is calculated read http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell_hit . Spell Hit provides consistency in our threat generation, reducing the chance that a badly timed miss will throw off our rhythm or result in DPS being crunched. The Precision talent goes a long way to covering our spell hit needs, but a little bit from gear goes a long way. You'll mostly be seeing this on weapons, but if you're seeing "resist" a lot, consider swapping some gems.
Spell Crit
Tankadins don't crit. Rather, the abilities that we use that have the ability to crit are Avenger's Shield and some Judgements. That's it. That mage in your guild that's been complaining about you rolling on their weapons is right if you've been oggling spell crit. This is mostly pertinent to weapons, as at most gear levels where you would find a weapon with spell damage and +spellcrit you'll also find ones with +spell hit.
Mana/5
Exactly what it sounds like: Provides the indicated amount of mana every 5 seconds. Many Tankadins are finding this stat increasingly necessary as they move deeper into the raid game. Mp5 is almost completely absent on tanking gear, so you're going to be getting this mostly from gems.

Uncrushability

In the overview section we talked a bit about the combat table. Now it’s time to talk about it in greater detail. There are two values on the combat table that we, as tanks, are particularly concerned with: Crit and Crush. Hopefully you’ve already taken care of Crits by raising your Defense skill to at least 490. The Defense skill directly reduces chance to be crit, i.e. “shrinks” it on the table until it’s gone. Removing crits is very important: a tank who occasionally gets hit for double damage won’t likely be a tank for long.

We handle crushes in a different way. Since we cannot directly reduce their position on the table (the defense tooltip says that crushes are reduced, but this only applies to your defense skill up to the level-based maximum, not the defense from gear), we deal with crushes by “pushing them off the table”. Take another look at the combat table:
=======
Miss
Dodge
Parry
Block
Critical
Crushing Blow (mobs only)
ordinary hit
vvvvvv

Let’s assume your Defense is at your level base (i.e. no defense from gear), and that your Do/Pa/Bl% are at 12% each. We’ll assume that you’re getting hit by a level 70 mob, the same level as you. You just activated Holy Shield and still have charges left. The effective combat table would look a bit like:
=======
Miss 5%(1-5)
Dodge 12% (6-17)
Parry 12% (18-29)
Block 12% +30% (30-71)
Critical 5% (72-76)
Crushing Blow 5% (77-81)
ordinary hit (81 -100)
vvvvvv

We’ll roll 1d100 (kudos if you have dice on hand for this), and I got a 67. Compare this to the table, and we see that this blow was blocked. We would then calculate the damage of the blow and subtract the block value.

See the problem? With our stats like this, we’ve got a 10% chance to be hit with a crit or a crush, and still have a large chance to be hit with the normal damage of the blow (before our armor comes into play). Let’s take a look at this same table, with better stats:
=======
Miss 5% + 5% from Def(1-10)
Dodge 20% (11-30)
Parry 15% (31-45)
Block 25% + 30% (46- 100)
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Critical 0% (5% - 5% from Def)
Crushing Blow
ordinary hit

See what we did there? No matter what we roll on our 1d100, we can’t get a result in the “danger zone”: it is impossible for us to get hit with a crit, a crush, or the normal damage of a blow. Now, if we were dealing with a level 73 mob, the table would look a bit different (since our chance to be missed would be lower). Getting our stats to the point that we can make the table look like this when we have Holy Shield up is what we mean when we say “uncrushable”.

To calculate your “crushability”, take your dodge, parry, and block percentages, round down to the nearest whole number (the combat table ignores trailing decimals, rounding down instead of to the nearest integer), and add the total to 5 ( for base chance to be missed). Mouse over your Defense skill. The tooltip will tell you how much your chance to be missed has been raised by defense (note that this value is against an at-level mob). Round down and add this to the earlier value. You’re looking for a total at or above 102.4% (to allow for the lowered chance to be missed by a 73). If you’re not there yet, that’s your top priority.

The Table values, taken individually:
Defense: While this stat does not appear on the combat table, it works primarily by altering the values found on the table. See the Gear section for the breakdown of how much Defense does what. Your first Ratings goal is to get your Defense Skill to 490 to remove the chance to be critted, but Defense continues to provide substantial boosts in Do/Pa/Bl%. More importantly, Defense is the only way to increase your chance to be Missed, an avoidance stat often overlooked (likely because it doesn’t appear on the Defenses tab on the character screen). “Missed” functions like Dodge, with one noteworthy exception: while Dodge is an absolute value (i.e. 20% dodge is always 20% dodge), “Missed” is modified by the difference between your level and the mobs level. This is of particular concern to us since we’ll often be fighting level 73 mobs (bosses), which will miss us less often than a level 70 mob would. This is why we shoot for an overall value of 102.4%: the values on our character sheet reflect our Missed value against a level 70 mob, and the extra 2.4% covers the difference for a 73.

Dodge: A dodged attack completely negates the damage from an incoming attack, including any “on hit” effects the attack might have had. This means that Reckoning and Redoubt will not proc off a dodge, but also means that an enemy skill that requires a hit (such as an attack that would apply a poison) will not proc either. Dodge is the easiest of the avoidance stats to raise, as it has a good rating to skill ratio and is available in comparatively high values.

Parry: Parry mostly functions like Dodge. A parry negates incoming damage (as well as “on hit” effects), but also has the perk of reducing the time till your next weapon swing. This side effect doesn’t do much for a Tank. We tend to favor fast weapons, and the swing timer reduction is most noticable when wielding a slow 2-hander (there’s a reason the Parry talents for both Warrior and Paladin are in their 2-Hand weapon DPS trees). For a tank, Parry is generally less desirable than dodge, since they function very similarly (for our needs) but Parry has an awful rating to skill ratio and is one of the most expensive stats in the item budget system (i.e. parry rating is available in small amounts, and tends to lower the stats on an item overall).

Block: Blocking reduces the damage from an attack by your Block value. As long as a single point of damage gets through (i.e. you are hit for 301 and block 300 of it), “on hit” effects can proc. While this means that a block can allow for a Reckoning proc, it also means that Block doesn’t offer protection from enemy procs. The main function of Blocking (from a damage management standpoint) is to flesh out the combat table, though for a Paladin Blocking is a substantial source of damage and threat. It’s important to note that Block Rating has a good rating to percent ratio and has a modest item budget cost, so it’s a great way to push your overall mitigation and avoidance level up to Uncrushable status.

Block value is very interesting: it’s not a rating, so it doesn’t decay with a level. It reduces damage by a fixed amount, not a percentage, so it mitigates a higher percentage on a small hit than a large one. As a Paladin, you’re going to be blocking a LOT, and raising your block value will help make those blocks count for more.

I love tanking, I love being MT, I love working hard to help my guildies. It’s a great job, but it IS a job. There really is nothing like the satisfaction of knowing that you, personally, are helping your friends and guildies make their gameplay experience as much as it can be. The tactical and strategic demands of the position are very rewarding for players who like a challenge. It’s a lot of fun being the guy on the business end of a dragon.

For all that, it’s very demanding.

Main Tank has the highest burnout rate of any raid position: more than offtanks, more than healers, more than DPS, more than Raid Leaders, more than Master Looters, for the simple fact that it is the only position that can’t be traded out on anything but trivial content. They don’t get nights off. The “optional” raids are optional for everyone except the MT. You are there every raid, in one of the highest pressure positions in the raid.

This is why many guilds put the emphasis on a Corps of tanks, rather than a single tank. With the changes in class balancing and encounter design this is more important than ever: there really isn’t room for *one* main tank anymore.

Approach Tanking as a team effort. We have class MT’s, but this is really a secondary consideration. The real emphasis on Tanking should be on the Tank Corps: the group of players who have committed themselves to tanking for the benefit of the guild. Tanking is a team-oriented role, and the Tanks, themselves, are a team. We help each other out. We’re friends, brothers, sisters, whatever analogy works for you, because we absolutely MUST be on the same page. Since Tanking is, itself, a team-focused role, there is no room for competition in the Corps. We all have the same goal: help our guildies get where they want, what they want, and have fun doing it. We play together, for the benefit of our guildies, knowing that as we help the guild, the guild is in a better position to help us. While this is true across a guild in general, it is absolute amongst tanks.

It’s hokey, sappy, etc, but it’s true:
There is no “I” in the Tank Corps.
A Tank has no ambitions for themselves, only ambitions for their team.
A Tank is not wearing their gear. They’re wearing the teams gear.
Help and Support the Corps so the Corps can help and support you.

If you’re part of the Tank Corps, I have a few bits of serious advice:

If you’re confident in your tanking abilities, find a protege NOW. Find someone who you are confident you can hand Tank to for at least part of the raiding schedule. Keep em as your primary offtank for all runs if at all possible. Start rotating them in as Tank from time to time. You need to have someone who can step up to take a bit of pressure off you, and it is VERY important that the two of you get along. Dueling MT’s can be catastrophic for a guild, but a pair that really get along can go a long way to preventing burnout. With multiple tanking classes on the way, most guilds are going to have at least 3 MT’s, numerous OT’s, and more casual tanks as well. Make sure you’re all on the same page before trying to move forward.

Build the team. This is the responsibility of every tank in a guild: do what you can to help each other out, and help each other improve (we’re all in it together). Beyond a Warrior, Druid, and Paladin MT (and hopefully some enthusiastic understudies for each of those), you will want/need a reasonable base of prospective tanks to draw from for offtanking, filling in, etc. Your offtanks save you headaches, they save you grief, and anything you can do to prepare them for the job of making your life easier is time well spent. TAKE TIME TO TEACH THEM, no matter how limited their initial skill base is. As strange as it may sound, every “problem player” who complains about who gets to tank what is a great opportunity: many of the jealous wanna-tanks can be redirected into becoming very valuable members of the tanking team. It takes time, patience, and effort, but it is absolutely worth it.

The Tank corps is an integral part of a guilds raiding approach. As such, the Tank is as much a symbol to the other players as they are a player themselves. Their attitude, behavior, and performance are highly visible and have consequences. As a Tank, you have to keep it upbeat. A discouraged or angry Tank demoralizes the entire raid. So, you’re there every raid, in a high pressure position from which you can see more or less every mistake that every player is making, and you absolutely MUST maintain a positive demeanor no matter how things are going. Even if things are going badly, or some players are being a problem, a lapse in judgment or proper conduct on the part of the Tank is a big problem. It will happen from time to time. Again, there are reasons that Tank-burnout is so high, but it’s part of your job to NOT say you’re pissed off in an open channel.

Your Raid Leader is your best friend. If this is not true right now, do everything you can to make it true. The Tanks and Raid Leader go hand in glove: every problem, challenge, or frustration that you have to deal with is one that they have to deal with from a different angle. If you’re having a problem, chances are good that the RL is having the same problem, and if you put your heads together you’ve got a much better chance of successfully resolving it than either of you would alone. My Raid Leader keeps me sane, and I try to help keep him sane, and the way that we do that for each other is being honest, open, and remembering (no matter how frustrated we are over this or that) that we are on the same team, with the same goals and the same obstacles.

You are not alone. If there’s something that is bothering you, it’s probably bothering someone else. Talk with people about your concerns and you’ll often find that they have the same ones. Talk with officers about them: our officers are friendly, frank, and really WANT to know if something is bothering you. If you’re having a tank-related issue, start talking to the other tanks. They may have already found a solution, and even if they haven’t, it takes a lot of pressure off to sit and compare kvetches.

Take your orders. Period. When the Raid Leader makes a call, you do it. When your class primary makes a call, do it. If you have a better idea, discuss it after the run. Mid-pull is NOT the time to discuss the ins and outs of various strategies, and it is not your job as Tank to deliberate. You don’t have time to waste. Timid tanks cause wipes, just like tanks who change the game plan. If you are REALLY concerned about the strat, send a tell to the raid leader before the ready check.

This extends beyond the raiding environment as well. The Tank is responsible for setting the pace of progression INSIDE the instance, during the run, not out of it. Inside the instance, the people setting the pace (i.e. when do we do the next pull? When can DPS start?) are the tanks and the Raid Leader. Outside the instance, the people setting the pace (when are we going to start raiding such-and-such?) are the Raid Leader and the Officers. If you are concerned, get in touch with an Officer, and remember that your opinion is one of many that they have to consider. Our Officers are conscientious and discuss things like this in great detail, and if there’s a decision you don’t understand or disagree with, they will likely provide you with an explanation.

That point merits saying again: Talk with people. Talk with the other tanks, talk with the Raid Leader, talk with the officers. We’re exactly as effective as a guild as we are effective at communicating within the guild. You may be amazed at the problems that can be solved in 5 minutes of conversation.

Know your core raid team. What movies do they like? What do they do for a living? How’s their sense of humor? Knowing the personalities of your team helps a bit with logistics, but it serves a much more important purpose: it helps you all have fun, it helps you be more patient. It’s much easier to brush off a mistake from “my friend the Schoolteacher who’s having a rough week” than from “that blasted aggro-tastic mage”. Knowing your raiders will help you keep perspective, and letting them know you will help them keep perspective. More, it makes the raiding process more fun.

Find time to goof off, both alone AND with your team. Some of this can happen during the raid, but not all of it. For example, before TBC we hit Scholo regularly for Flasks, and these runs are usually a MESS. Mobs everywhere, chain pulls, wipes… and they’re fun. Since we don’t really care about performance or progress on these runs (so long as we get to the alchemy lab), we play sloppy, do stupid but amusing things, gab on vent, and have a grand old time.

It’s important to have SOME of your playtime be relaxing time, but the most important aspect of getting to know your team as people is this:
When I’m busting my butt to make sure we don’t wipe on a new fight, I know the people that I’m doing it for.
When we finally down that boss, I know the people I did it with.
THAT’S where the real satisfaction in tanking comes from.

Tank Envy
So, you’ve got a player that you know, you like, have never had an issue with, and all of a sudden they start taunting things off you, sulking in chat and vent, and are generally cranky. Where did this come from?

This is an aspect of group roles that some Paladins and Druids may be unfamiliar with. Warriors have been dealing with this for a long time, and have seen enough of it to coin a term for it: “Tank Envy”. I’m sure your Guildies are sharp and on-the-ball, so these aren’t things that you’re going to be seeing much of, but it’s still good to be able to recognize it and have a game plan ready ahead of time in case it DOES happen. With 3 viable tanking classes on the table, Tank Envy is a bigger issue than ever before.

The Tank is a highly visible position in any group. In a guild that does even light raiding, guild Main Tank affords a fair degree of status just by virtue of visibility. As such, the position is viewed by many as highly desirable. People want it, spec for it, compete for it, and often without being aware of what the job actually entails. There are a number of myths that go along with Tank Envy, and they’re all worth addressing.

All of these problems have a single best-case long term solution: talk with them. Spend time with them. Teach them as much as you can. Start handing them off-tank duties and give them a ton of feedback. Encourage them. With time, they’ll get just enough of the tanking experience to satisfy their craving while getting some perspective on just how hellacious a Main Tank job really is.

The first myth is that if you Spec for the Job, you get the Job. This isn’t by any means true. A Protection (or Feral) heavy spec indicates one and only one thing about one’s suitability for a Main Tank role: the person in question is familiar enough with the game to find their talent window and allocate points. That is all. Many players have labored under the misapprehension that their spec will automatically make them a primary choice for Main Tank without considering whether or not their spec is unique (i.e. other people may be specced that way) or if their spec is even desirable (a 61 Prot spec is generally a less functional tank spec than 44/17, 41/20, etc). I have had Warriors with literally a quarter of my damage mitigation argue that they should get my tank slot because they spent 51 points in Protection and I had only spent 46. Someone making this argument understands so little about game mechanics that a brief explanation will most likely be wasted on them. On anything but absolutely trivial content, keep it to a simple “No”, and make sure the healers are warned. This sort of Tank Envy is the least common and at the same time the most problematic when it DOES happen: people who argue tank slots based purely on spec honestly don’t understand enough of the game for your explanations to make much of an impact. Start with “no”, but be aware that won’t solve it in the long run (and will probably feed their dissatisfaction).

A much better long-term solution is to make time to do runs with this person and let them tank a bit. Fill out the groups with healers and DPS’ers that you are very confident in, and let them know beforehand that this is a “training run”. Explain to the new tank that the group generally does a post-run assessment chat, talking about how things went and how they could have been better, to help everyone improve. During this chat, make sure that the feedback is pretty evenly distributed (so the new tank doesn’t feel singled out). The words from the healers give them some perspective on their mitigation approach, the word from the DPS gives them some insight in how their approach to holding aggro could use some improvement. This sort of player can be difficult to work with, but if you invest some time, you will more often than not find they’re a great asset to the team. The “training run” is an invaluable tool for resolving personal conflicts based on guild roles. Try to mix in a few runs where you’re doing the tanking, so they have some basis for comparison. While you’re tanking, explain HOW you’re tanking. The blend of feedback and example may help them understand the complexities of the job and the underlying game systems.

The second myth is that the Main Tank for class X is the best player of class X (and that they should get the job because they’re a better player than you). The only aspect of class skill that matters in a Tanking role is one’s skill as a tank. As absurd as it may seem, I have had players dispute my tank slot based on my very low PvP rank or low DPS. This is another case of a fundamental misapprehension of what a Tank does and what skills are applicable in a tanking role. At first glance, this seems like another situation where another quick “No” would work, but there’s a much more elegant solution. The person who is competing for a tank role for these reasons isn’t interested in Tanking, per se, so much as they are interested in validation. They’re viewing MT status as a trophy, an indicator of overall skill, and disabusing them of this concept is the best way to deal with this.

A little self deprecation goes a long way here. I’ll be the first to tell a new Warrior/Paladin/Druid that I’m *terrible* at PvP (and it helps that I actually am) and that even with decent DPS gear I just don’t have the skill to pull off playing a DPS warrior, Ret pally, etc. These statements are exaggerations, and it may be that in the case of the player in question I’m actually quite a bit better than them at PvP and DPS as well as tanking, but that’s not the point. You’re offering validation and encouragement, and most importantly, making it very clear that the Tank slot is NOT about “who is the best of Class X”. I’ve had great success with this method in the past, and have had people that were previously a pain to deal with turn around completely. You’d be amazed at the attitude adjustment you can get from a few words in Ventrilo during a raid, and can even work it into your regular feedback routine: try telling a DPS warrior that they need to scale back their “uber DPS” and you may find they’re less interested in bickering over who gets to tank what.

The third, and broadest, Tank myth is that tanking is a cushy job. Upon reading that phrase, every player with serious main tanking experience probably rolled their eyes and groaned. I’ve already covered tank burnout above.

The reality is that it is ANYTHING but a cushy job. This is why the above advice for Tanks is so important, and why a solid and supportive Tank Corps is absolutely vital. Your fellow tanks experience all the frustrations that you do, all the problems that you do, and there are times when the only person who can understand what’s driving you nuts about tanking is going to be another tank. Help the team so that they can help you.

Appendix A: Useful Threads

The MainTankadin Forums (absolute MUST visit. Everyone who's helped with this guide, participated in the discussions that inspired it, etc hang out there and share their thoughts. This guide is the basics, they provide the "advanced class"):
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/index.php

My "Scratch pad", where I do edits, updates, etc before posting.
http://tanking.sneakykitty.com


Tankadin Post Index:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=60779044

Tankadin Gear Compendium
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=0E7841EC87B31627019FAD13DBDBEE68?topicId=59495030


Appendix B: Spelldamage coefficients (Thanks, Texaporte):
Appendix B: Spell damage coefficients of major paladin abilities:
Seal of Righteousness (1H) - 9.2% * weapon speed
Seal of Righteousness (2H) - 10.8% * weapon speed
Judgement of Righteousness - 71.4%
Seal of Command - 20.0%
Judgement of Command - 42.9%
Seal of Vengeance - 3.4% (per application per tick - at 5 applications, this is 17.0% per tick)
Judgement of Vengeance - 42.9%
Seal of Blood - 0.0%
Judgement of Blood - 43.0%
Consecration - 95.4% (per target)
Holy Shock - 42.9%
Hammer of Wrath - 42.9%
Exorcism - 42.9%
Holy Wrath - 19.0% (per target)
Holy Shield - 5.0% (per block)
Avenger's Shield - 13.6% (per target)

Great Info!!

/sticky

Just got to the Resistance Aura part, and as far as I know, they don't stack :/

Sticky RQ of course, it was probably my post at #2 that made it take so long to begin with >.< sorry ^_^

EDIT: Now reserved for more space, should I need it.

Reported.










(for stickie, of coruse. =P ^_^)

EDIT: You are the Troll Warrior from a while back that posted that "The New Tank" post, right?

A very nice read. I thank you.

The intercept AS thing is new to me. I'm going to have to play with that a bit tonight.

((66. Why won't my guy update. =( ))

---

Q u o t e:
The Slightly longer version


Putting it together: A typical pull
1. Prep Seal of Justice
2. Avenger's Shield, break line of sight/ have other players counter if the pull involves casters.
2a. If CC is necessary (and it usually won't be), apply it after the AS pull.
3. Judgement of Righteousness on the first kill target.
4. Consecrate, Holy Shield, up a Seal, in this order (to insure timers are appropriately staggered).
4a. If more threat is needed, Seal of Righteousness
4b. For more threat on a longer fight, Seal of the Crusader (Judged immediately, then up another seal).
4c. If more mitigation is needed, Seal of Light (Judged immediately, then up another seal).
4d. If the mobs are runners, Seal of Justice (judged, up another).
4e. If it's going to be a long fight, Seal of Wisdom (Judged, up another).
5. Keep Consecrate and Holy Shield up, rotating seals and Judgements as necessary. Try to maintain active judgements on as many targets as possible, rotating weapon swings between judged targets to maintain them.
6. Throughout the fight try to move your targets a little bit as they die. It can be difficult to loot 12 corpses stacked directly on top of each other.

---

Since I am alliance - 4b. For more threat on a longer fight, Seal of the Crusader (Judged immediately, then SoR or SoV for longer fights). Currenly working on a using a sequence of Judge SoC, Use SoV for 5 Dots - Judge SoV, then move to SoR. After judge timer is up I judge SoR and move back to SoV to get the Dots back up and judge SoV.

Reported for sticky.


And thank you for all of your efforts, As Zalkir you did much to contribute to the tankadin discussion, and this guide, especially the listing of tanking gear, will be invaluable.

In short, thank you.

Not quite finished, but this is the only tanking guide I've seen that wasn't completely full of it. Thanks for putting in the effort.

Sticky RQ.

I recommend including a brief section on how Seal of Vengeance is so utterly worthless with a fast weapon.