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

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

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.

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)