Wanted to ask about tanking at the lower level instances.

I'm leveling a BE Paladin who is Ret at the moment but have tried tanking in the lower level instances. She's level 23 atm. Have tried tanking in RFC, WC and SFK. Those are easy lowbie instances where a tank is not really needed.

Anyway, is it normal to run out of mana fast with SoR and Consecrate? My Mana Pool isn't that big since I'm mostly in mail gear that doesn't have +int.

if or not aoe tanking dont bother with conse. and even with aoe tanking, unless you really needed the threat boost (which i doubt at noob levels) you can just SoR/judge multi mobs after the first consecrate.

and as far as paladin tanking go, pre bc it'll be pretty f***ing shit as theres barely any spell dmg plates with decent mana pool level to support paladin tanks.

Actually, I do need the threat boost. I'm a pitiful tanker tbh when I'm up against hunters at that level. And haven't been building my healing set because my bags are too small.

Paladins are more suited for aoe tanking, single target wise, unless u have tons on spell damage, a warrior and druid would beat you in terms of threat.

correct. and at lowbie level, dont even expect spell dmg plates coming your way

Well, atm yeah. But my DPS is bad now. My healing not that great coz haven't really build up a healing set due to lack of bagspace.

Any kind soul who can donate Runecloth bags? Am on Thaurissan (H). Synxia.

Heheh i have an UD lock at lvl 49 on thau. I'd prolly join you when you get to that level

I have no idea how i lvled my pally to 70....... dps really sucks and its so so boring. Only advantage of lvling a pally is you die less. BOP+DS FTW.

At lower level you might have issues with threat, especially if you have not the talent in Improved Righteous Fury, holy shield etc. to generate more threat on single target against dps at your level.

Personally for fast leveling I would advice to just forget instances at the moment ^^
Continue on Ret until around 36 then respec in prot with Reckoning and go AOE grinding.

It's quite efficient, more than ret imo and with the talents in prot you should be much better in tanking if you decide to do some instancing while leveling.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: May 29 2008, 11:58 AM

hmm i have a lvl 47 ret pally too just too lazy level... any good tanking tips for pally? i m now ret and gonna change to prot soon hehe...

Maintankadin

This is the best resource of information on palatanks ever.

Overall:

Activate RF.

Judge SoR on Skull,

Consecrate.

Holy shield each time it's up

These are the basics

Errr....the basics is a bit more complicated than that, if I read the Tankadin 101 post.

Bear in mind that I'm a lowbie Ret pally atm. Leveling seems pretty fast though or maybe because I know BE area well enough to lvl relatively fast.

And yeah, my DPS sucks. But I've been lucky on my RFC, WC and SFK runs. All of them took one hour to do and came out with loot. Only reason I do them is to get some gold + gear upgrades for better DPS and for faster leveling. I usually skip the instances lvl50 onwards.

Lvling my lock was fast but I get the feeling that leveling this pally will be a lot faster.

ret all the way imo cuz 2hander = real men
shield are fer sissies.

Real men = level 70

The objective is to reach there asap and aoe grinding is one of the fastest way available to pallies.

After that it's a question of preference so let's not start a war between ret and prot leveling

@myremi: the maintankadin has indeed lots of info but people there love number crunching. You can find all the information you need in there.

Personally when I tank something in an instance it looks something like this:

- If it's a pack of mob:

Mark a skull
Activate SoR
Use your Avenger's Shield to pull, targeting the skull with it

LOS the mobs so they all group on you.

Judge SoR on the Skull
Holy Shield
Consecrate (in this order, so the CD are not screwed up)
Renew SoR

For the rest continue Judging SoR on the main target.
Keep Holy Shield up at all time
Consecrate at least two times. After you should have a huge aggro lead on the other mobs if your dps are not AOEing and focusing on Skull.
Some people use lower rank of Consecrate or rely more on Holy Shield. At lower level mana is a big issue since you have lower return from heals.

- For Boss/single target:
Activate either SoW or SoC (SoC if you need more threat, SoW if you get OOM too fast)

Pull with Freesbe
Judge your seal, renew a SoR and keep judging SoR at least twice
Holy Shield
Consecrate (again in that order for the CD)

Then you have to adapt to the threat you need versus your mana.
Either use SoW or SoR depending.
Consecrate as needed as well depending of your mana/threat
Keep Holy shield up at all time in most of the situation, it reduce the damage you take, avoid critics and generate lots of threat

These are just some real basics, you need to adapt to the situation and your group (AOEing or not etc.)
Once you are use to it, it turn into a routine of few buttons to get mashed for the basics of tanking.

For all the more advanced questions, refer to the Maintakadin forum, they have heaps of stickied info and they are usually quite friendly to new comers.

are you talking about prot spec?

no he's talking about combat spec with mutilate.

Ret lvling is incredibly slow.
When your slow 2h attacks getting chain parried and dodge, you feel like punching a baby in the face. They lack of instant attacks and next attack moves to speed things up. Just sit there and wait for SOC to proc.
I know you are going to reply "get hit rating", but most low lvl gear has no hit rating.

This post has been edited by Goblinsk8er: May 29 2008, 02:56 PM

Dunno if ichigo was asking me or TS but TS was asking some tips on tanking.

And yar, soloing with a 2H as ret made me wanna cry.... my advice would be to respec prot at around 36 (if I remember correctly... you need to be able to reach reckoning in Prot then it becomes pure gold)

If you really wanna stick to ret... switch on tv or take a book while killing something... because you are going to spend a lot of time just auto attacking.

With Aoe protection leveling all the quests "Kill X of these" can become really super quick and "safe" as long as the mobs are melee or you can LOS the casters/ranged.

With prot you just run in a pack of mob and kill them all.... a runner go and attract a nearby mob? You are happy coz it will save you the time to go and grab it. With just quest items or buying some greens/blues from the AH you can easily take 3-5 of mobs at your level or 1-2 under you at the same time + some adds when then run away.

Using SoL and SoW gives you very lasting stamina and most of the mobs will just kill themselves on your shield.

You need to know how many of the mobs you can take at the same time but pallies have it easy if you make mistakes with bubble/heal, LoH etc. I did not die very often while leveling compared to my main warlock for example (and warlocks are not the worst while leveling)

i just stack str + agi or int and just crit 2-3 shotting mobs. my retardin is lvl 30, havent logged her on for 2+ months and during the time i was playing they havent buffed 1-60 yet IINM or just the first phase buff. and still it was EZ mode to lvl considering mobs die 2-3 shots. and i AM aoe'ing 2hander lulz. only drawback is the extra dmg taken, but i kill mobs faster so i med faster anyways.

also, my 2hander is 2.9 speed, only 0.4 slower than my glad sword on the rogue. so its really not bad, + i get to judge too, on avg 1 mob only need 1 judge, so the CD/slowness of the 2hander is barely and issue.

it really depends on how good you are at playing a style eg: single killin or aoe killin. Obviously after playing the same rogue since closed beta would make me better at dealing with single target and/or small scale multiple mobs. which i ultilize in my ret. (seal of crusader as many guys as i can while consecrating and focus SoC judge 1 target at a time) and as mentioned, during the SoC "phase" my 2hander atks faster than an avg 1 hander
with more AP too (although reduced dmg) so i am still doing almost the same dmg (without SoC proc though) while setting up my "aoe"

REAL MEN LVL with 0/0/0 using rank 1 sor

Doh, male players

have to QFT this.

AoE grinding is incredibly fun. I went ret till level 40 then AoE grind my way to Outlands. Lv 50 is one of the best levels to AoE grind. Head to Sorrow Hill in Western Plague lands and just kill the packs of undead there. Gain about 4 levels just kill those packs of mobs and helps you acquire AD rep (not like you need it anyway)

When you reach level 40 spec reckoning and do aoe grinding. Here is a simple guide you can follow. Paladin aoe grinding. It have specs you can use while leveling, gears and grinding spot.

As mentioned by above poster the maintankadin forums is mainly catered to lvl 70 players who are planning to raid. So i think its not very useful to you at this point of play.

Basically with this spec you can easily solo 4 mobs 2 level higher then you and 6-8 mobs similar level as you with minimal down time. But you need some practice to get it right.

Pros
- Can kill alot simultaneously
- Hard to die
- Can tank instance to a certain extend

Cons
- Killing 1 mob will take as long as killing 6
- Bad against casters. This method works best on melee mobs.
- Big repair bill. I highly suggest you bring an extra shield.

Glad to have more prot pallies among us.

I have 3 Paladin.. Here is my experience with them :-)

One is Human Ret Paladin lvl 35 - I don't like it.. It spoiled my mood! I stopped leveling him at lvl 35 lol.. (Maybe I'm too inexperienced that time)

Second is Human Holy Paladin lvl 70 - I really leveled him from lvl 1-70 as holy lol, well it's a pain in the a$$ but I kinda like holy leveling, you just can't die, but dps is average cause you get only +sta +int gear, don't bother with str, it's useless for leveling, even for ret imo..

Third is BE Prot Paladin lvl 48 - I leveled him as ret, but yeah, you have high damage, but if you got other dps class b4, you will feel that the Seal of Command proc is very frustrating to see, I rather use Seal of Righteous.. By the time you at lvl 40, it's good to spec Prot, yeah the damage is not low actually, just that it hit fast with low dps, but I still like see my block damage + reckoning proc, more fun.. I actually tanked RFD without healer at lvl 42, I use Seal of Light + JoL, yes we did all bosses (we 4-man it) with me healing myself with that seal and tanking at the same time (u must use a 1hand weapon with speed below 2 second, 1.5 sec if the best, don't worry if it's not blue, even a lower level sword with 1.5 speed can serve u for another 10 level) At lvl 45, I killed 10-15 murlocs at the same time at Dustwallow with more coming to me when they run away for backup, and I'm got 75% hp left with them all dead.. It really fun to see them died hitting me lol..

So Prot is the way to go for leveling till you're a GEM at 70's

Cheers

This post has been edited by shoduken: Jul 14 2008, 03:54 PM