Tankadin 101 - Gestalt

[Aergis]

Copy / pasted from the wow forums. Great overview on many aspects.

Dedicated to the Tankadin Community, who made this possible through continuous discussion, support, and help. A Special nod goes to our forum regulars.

Since the forums won't update my Avatar: I want to thank my guild (Abandon of Ysera) for their contined support and investment in putting Paladins in the front lines. Special thanks to Simon and Skynet, our raid leaders who keep me sane, and Semerkhet, for running the show with grace and style.

This guide is a work in progress, and will be updated and edited regularly as I have time to work on it. The currently blank sections should be done within a week (I have to finish grinding to Outlands )

The game has changed in many ways in recent months, and one of the most dramatic of these has been the opening up of tanking roles. When you were filling out a party 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 even maintanking unless the dynamics of a fight encourage a specific tank choice (which many of them do, even to the point of having different classes tank different stages of a given fight). In 90% of the content, they are interchangable. They can all do the job, but they do it somewhat differently, and 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, a Retribution 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 difficult 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 of them may not have 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 slots on threat. The downside to this is that they can't get gear to upgrade their threat: it's mostly a fixed quantity that doesn't improve with gear upgrades (though their weapon and shield do provide some improvement). As they level they will see improved threat generation from new skills trained. 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 also have a great variety of special tricks they can pull out for emergency mitigation. 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 generally high 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 actually pretty complicated and beyond the scope of this general overview). They have a few "panic buttons", but these are overall 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 Druid, 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 debuffs. 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.


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.

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 (this sucker is long enough already), but a far more thorough explanation 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.

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 all started changing in TBC beta. A number of key abilities were added to the paladin class, covering 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 slight 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 is less effective on mobs that hit extremely slowly (equivalent to warriors when getting hit every 2.4-2.7 seconds, at 3.5 a Paladin is taking 6%-8% more than the warrior)
-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.

[Aergis]

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 constantly. 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, 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 when DPS gets to them. 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) cuts all damage recieved in half if the Paladin is below 20% health, but it is sometimes "leapfrogged" by big, slow attacks: an attack that takes them below 20% 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.

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 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).

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 fire-and-forget, 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, unless...

Unless they don't have to choose at all. The Cooldowns for the primary tanking spells can be staggered in such a way that they will rarely, if ever, 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.

[Aergis]

**-{ 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.

**-{ 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.

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. 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). Note that the amount healed scales with +dam/heal. 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 (including ranged weapons and wands). 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)
This is the seal of choice when you have a fantastic threat lead and both you and the healers are incredibly bored. The issue with this seal in its current form is that it scales incredibly poorly with +dam/heal. At 64 you only need about 75+dam/heal for SoR to be doing more damage than SoB. Even more fun is that this seal damages you with every swing. Again, only break this out when the healers start complaining about being bored (and if JoL is on the target, they probably won't even notice).
As a Judgement(JoB): Inferior to JoR in every way, for the reasons noted above. Cross your fingers and hope that we see a tweak to the spelldamage coefficient to make this useful.


Seal of Vengeance(SoV)
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. Try it, experiment, and if you master this ability and find it's irreplacable, let us know

[Aergis]

**-{ 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 Protection(BoP)
Makes the target completely immune to physical damage for a short time, and also prevents them taking any action but spellcasting. 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.

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.

[Aergis]

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. Skip 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. Given that blocking is also a primary threat source, this is an absolute must.

Row Two
Precision
3% to hit is very handy, particularly for seals. Generally worth taking if you can fit it in your build.

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 very handy. 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. Since you'll be spending a lot of time in 5-mans you can't count on having another paladin 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. The recent buff to this ability is one of the things that put Paladins up there as serious tanks: 6% reduction to all damage recieved is big, and upping your holy threat multiplier to 1.9 is very nice. A must-have, even for an offtank build.

Shield Specialization
Paladins block a LOT. 30% improvement on the damage reduced by blocking is great. Take it for a MT build, though it's optional for a support build.

Anticipation
Increases defense SKILL by 20: this talent is worth more in terms of Defense RATING as you level up. A definite must for a MT build, highly desirable in an OT build.

Row Three: Most of these talents are skippable for Tanks.

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
15% chance to resist interrupt and silence is nice, but this talent is mostly a head scratcher. 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%. Skip it.

Row Four 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. Must-have, both for itself and as a prerequisite.

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. The buff only lasts 8 seconds, so you want to be using a weapon that will use all 4 charges within that time. With a weapon at 2.0 or faster you are certain to get all 4 charges, regardless of timing (thanks for catching this, gang) . With anything slower, timing becomes a factor. Reckoning will rarely proc in even time with your swing timer, so most of the time you'll be getting 3 charges out of a Reck proc. The closer you are to 2.0 (or below) the higher the chance of getting all 4. This is a game-changing talent. Must have.

Row Five
Sacred Duty
6% more stamina is a nice survivability buff, and the extra functionality from Divine Shield is nice. Give this a serious look as a Tank.

One-handed Weapon specialization
Ignore for a moment that this effects physical damage as well: 10% more physical damage isn't the point. The bonus also applies to Seal damage. 10% more threat from seals and swing procs is nice, but not an absolute. If you can fit it into your build, snag it.

Row Six

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 when Redoubt is up. 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: most of the time you'll expend the 4 charges long before the cooldown is up. Practice and personal style will help you figure out when and how to time your Holy Shield.

Ardent Defender
When below 20%, all damage dealt to you is halved. Sounds nice, yes? It is, though not quite as nice as it sounds. All it takes to completely negate this talent is a hit that does more than 20% of your total health: if you were at 21% health, and took a hit that was worth 22%, AD never kicks in (since you were never below 20%). This is referred to as "leapfrogging", where the damage bypasses your reduction range entirely. Hopefully this is going to get changed soon. For the time being it's still a nice talent (there are actually very few "leapfrog" situations), and well worth fitting into a tanking build.

Row Seven

Weapon Expertise
Don't spend a single point here. After the weapon skill nerf this talent is almost perfectly useless (0.5% crit for 5 points???). Cross your fingers and hope this gets replaced in a class review.

Row Eight

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. AS is an absolute must-have for the serious Paladin tank, though it is frequently misunderstood. I think you have to spend a lot of time behind the keys on a Warrior tank to understand just how big a deal this skill is.

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). 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.

Look again. Look at the range. It's exactly the same as Charge and Intercept, with the same deadzone, the same cooldown. This is the Paladin Intercept: this is how you move your threat to a target outside melee range, and with the fast cast time you can toss it when they're JUST outside melee range. You can even toss it on mobs that you're currently engaging so long as you have some method of keeping them from following you at full speed. A snared or rooted mob is an opportunity for a quick sidestep and AS for massive threat. Note that for this trick you only need to have ONE of the mobs outside melee range, and the ricochet effect will bounce to mobs that are closer.

Clever use of mid-combat intercept is one of the player skills that defines the best of the best warrior tanks. Clever use of Avenger's Shield is what will define the best of the best Paladin tanks.

Sample builds
Bread and Butter, Sword and Board
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?000000000000000000000532513350002152515010520500000000000000000
This is the most straight-forward Protection build, and probably the build of choice for paladins seeking to Main Tank. All the major mitigation talents are there, as are the important threat talents. When in doubt, this is the way to go.

Tank with Perks
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?000000000000000000000530513350002152015010520501022200000000000
This build gives up 1h-spec and Guardian's Favor for a few very nice perks from the Ret tree. Pursuit of Justice provides a constant 8% run speed boost, offsetting the paladin's limited mobility. Imp Ret aura is a bump to passive threat generation. Eye for an Eye gives us an interesting means of dealing with casters: they crit us, we return damage, and we own the threat on that returned damage.

[Aergis]

Gear
This section is still in progress: update on overall gearing schema soon.
Paladin tanks have a very diverse range of considerations in gear selection. Unlike Warriors, who gear exclusively for mitigation, or Druids, who scale their mitigation and threat simultaneously from a single set of stats, the Paladin must specifically gear for multiple facets of performance. Paladin tanks often need gear that overlaps with other classes. This is often a point of contention, both in pugs and in guilds. A close inspection of most of the cross-class drops, however, illustrates a definite class preference for each drop. I'll note these within the individual categories.
Damage Management

This is the most warrior-like aspect of Paladin gear, and is the area most likely to cause contention if there are multiple people going after the same drop. Be considerate, be patient, but most importantly, be knowledgable. Strength does very, very little for us, while it serves Warriors as a secondary threat source. The differences between Paladin tanking gear and Warrior tanking gear become more pronounced as you move further into outlands, and become quite distinct in most cases at the raid level. Trinkets, rings, necklaces, and especially Shields will likely be shared between the classes, but most armor pieces (and all weapons) are going to be different. When in doubt, look for Strength: there is no shortage of pure mitigation gear with little or no strength on it. Not having Str on them frees up points in the item budget for more pure mitigation stats, which in turn gives you more leeway in your other gear to pick up the casting stats you need.

These stats, in broad categories, are Table Values (Def/Do/Pa/Bl), Block Value, Stamina, and Armor. Armor is essentially "free": any armor with valuable mitigation stats is also going to have a high armor value. The same goes for Stamina, though you'll want to make some careful choices to optimize your Stamina pool. This tends to be the weak link in Paladin gear, so anything you can do to boost it without compromising your other stats is valuable. The other side of Stamina is that it is, by far, the easiest aspect of your damage management to raise: you'll be getting massive boosts to stamina from buffs, enchants, etc.

The Table Manipulators are pretty broadly distributed through the level range. These stats are all rating based, and face AGGRESSIVE diminishing returns as you level up. Tanking builds that heavily rely on Ratings are going to have some serious problems during the levelling up process, but they are too valuable to entirely ignore. Once the levelling process is complete you don't have to worry about a ding dropping your stats, but while still levelling take every "overall" upgrade you can get, even if it means a substantial drop in one of your ratings. Those ratings will take a huge hit the next time you level anyway.

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.

Staying Power
While Spiritual Attunement does provide a great deal of mana in the course of the fight you're going to need a decent mana pool and a bit of regen to fill in the gaps. This is one area where gear competition is limited: priests aren't going to be complaining about you rolling on regen plate. There may be some competition for non-armor items, but this shouldn't be a huge issue. You don't need much, and your armor will be able to provide most of what you need.

Threat
This is one of the reasons paladins can tank so well: our threat ramps up very well with spellpower from gear. A little goes a long way. Paladin tanking spells have fantastic coefficients, so very little of the spellpower is lost. A lot of your tanking gear is going to have a bit of spellpower built-in: keep an eye out for anything with damage management stats and spellpower, as you likely won't have any competition for it. You don't need to build your spellpower to fantastic levels to tank effectively, and that's reflected in the stat balance on our set gear. You'll need to beef it up a little bit, and that's where it gets a bit hairy.

Your best option for boosting your Threat is a high spelldamage 1-hander... exactly the sort that Mages, Warlocks, and quite a few shaman look for. The real crunch point is going to be swords, since both mages and warlocks can use these as well. There are a few things you can point out that may help grant perspective in a potential dispute: Paladins can equip neither daggers nor staffs, the two most common spell damage weapons. Swords (and to a lesser extent maces) are really our only option.

Sample Gear options: Pre-Raid Gear
Major credit to Sven on the Paladin Forums.

In order of how easy they are to get, by slot. The best choice is listed in bold, and should be your ultimate target.
Helms
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28560 Exorcist's Lamellar Helm (Requires 66, token vendor)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=4573 Cover of Righteous Fury (67 Quest)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=14857 x-52 Technician's Helm (69 Quest)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=7186 Greathelm of the Unbreakable (SH Boss drop)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=15906 Helm of the Righteous [Righteous Armor Set] (Mechanar Boss drop)

Shoulders
http://thottbot.com/beta?i=1485 Pauldrons of Brute Force (Underbog drop, 63 required)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=1754 Eagle Crested Pauldrons (65 Quest)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=8682 Warchief's Mantle (68 Quest)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=16360 Spaulders of the Righteous [Righteous Armor Set](Botanica Drop, SMALL %)

Chest
I'm posting lower level chest pieces than other slots because there are some fantastic chests available early, through quests. While you may upgrade out of some of these early quest rewards quickly, the ease of getting these items makes it a null issue.
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=568 Gilded Crimson Chestplate(60 Hellfire Peninsula Quest, doable almost immediately after zoning in)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=1705 Breastplate of Retribution (63 HFC quest)
Note: there's a big gap in chest armor for paladins, but it picks up again at 70
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=15861 Jade-Skull Breastplate (Mechanar Drop)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=8494 Vindicator's Hauberk (Aldor, Revered)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=15448 Breastplate of the Righteous (Black Morass drop, SMALL%)

Wrists
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=14592 Vambraces of Daring (Heroic-mode Ramparts drop)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=12443 Bracers of the Green Fortress (Craftable! Pattern drops in the Hillsbrad COT instance)

Hands
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=8473 Gauntlets of the Chosen (Scryers, Revered)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=16523 Thatia's Self-Correcting Gauntlets (Arcatraz drop)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=13680 Gauntlets of the Righteous (Drop ambiguous, Shattered Halls or Steamvault)

Waist
http://www.thottbot.com/?i=Lightwarden%27s%20Girdle Lightwarden's Girdle: seen on live, no idea where it comes from. BoP, no level requirement: probably a quest.
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=16288 Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable (No clue)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=16298 Girdle of Valorous Deeds (No idea)

Legs
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=14863 Kirin'Var Defenders Chausses (69 quest)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=15002 Legguards of the Resolute Defender (69 quest)

Now here's the sticky wicket, and the reason you will NOT be wearing 5/5 Righteous Armor. Check it:
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=16346 Legplates of the Righteous (Black Morass Drop, tiny%)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=15716 Timewarden's Leggings (Keepers of Time, revered)
If you've been running Caverns instances (which HEAVILY favor paladin drops in general) to farm up your other gear, you'll be revered LONG before 70. DING70, 30 gold, and you get the best pre-raid tank legs in the game.

Feet
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=5528 Flesh Beast's Metal Greaves (66 Manatombs quest)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=8663 Uther's Ceremonial Warboots (Old Hillsbrad Drop)
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=15133 Boots of the Colossus (Heroic Mana Tombs drop)

Weapons
This merits special attention, so I'm going to ramble (briefly).
The White damage on your weapon is absolutely irrelevent. The vast majority of your threat is coming from Holy damage, and the best way to scale that is spell damage. Most of the spelldamage weapons from 61-70 are either daggers or staves, neither of which we can use. There's a reason for this: the remaining weapons (mostly maces and swords) generally have high Stamina, a swing speed below 2.0 (making them ideal for Seal of Righteousness), and often even have a bit of armor. Yeah, that's right: basically every spelldamage weapon that isn't a dagger, staff, or 2-hander has been designed as a Paladin tanking weapon. You'll be getting at least a third of your spelldamage from your weapon slot, so please pass high DPS 1-handers to warriors, rogues, etc, and trust that the mages and warlocks are going to be doing the same for us. These weapons are all VERY close in overall performance. Once you get one of the below, you're more or less set for your weapon.

http://thottbot.com/beta?i=7100 Sky Breaker (Sethekk Halls drop)
http://thottbot.com/beta?i=16163 Mana Wrath (Mechanar drop)
http://thottbot.com/beta?i=5559 Greatsword of Horrid Dreams (Shadow Labyrinth Drop, bonus points for looking SWEET)
http://thottbot.com/beta?i=15717 Continuum Blade (Keepers of Time, Revered... points off for being a retexture of a lvl30 weapon)
The only weapon wit

[Aergis]

The Serious advice
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 in Abandon is 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 the guild in general, it is absolute amongst the 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. Duelling 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, we're 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 the 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 judgement 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 gameplan. 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, chainpulls, 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.

[Aergis]

Dealing with 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". Our 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 gameplan 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 is that if you Spec for the Job, you get the Job. This isn't by any means true. A Protection-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 Warriors 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 Prot as well) or if their spec is even desirable (a 51 Prot spec is generally a less functional tank spec than 44/7, 41/10, 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. The best way to deal with this in the short term is a simple "no", but this won't resolve it in the long run.

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.

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 Warriors 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 a 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 that I'm *terrible* at PvP and that even with decent DPS gear I just don't have the skill to pull off playing a DPS warrior. These statements are exaggerations, and it may be that in the case of the Warrior 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 Warriors 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 cooshy 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 cooshy 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.

Patience in Progression: Playing when you're not Raiding
In progress.

[Kathryn]

I'd like to add knowledge about Seal of Blood and it's usefullness as it is very badly represented in this thread.

In it's current state Seal of Blood is an incredibly usefull situationnal Tanking tool.

Scaling:

SoB scales with weapon damage, with a weapon such as:

Latro's Shifting Sword
Binds when picked up
One-Hand Sword
70 - 131 Damage Speed 1.40
(71.8 damage per second)
+15 Agility
Durability 90 / 90
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases sword skill rating by 14.
Equip: Increases attack power by 26.

with a +7 weapon damage enchant, in my current tanking gear (about 700 AP) Seal of Blood's holy dmg portion hits for around 80.

With Continuum Blade and +spelldmg enchant SoR hits for 95ish (without JotC)

Increasing weapon DPS will increase SoB's dmg.

Utility:

Seal of Blood effectively counts as "another swing" as opposed to added dmg like SoR. That means that for each swing, you get Twice the chances of a JoL or JoW proc.

Using SoB with JoL, even after you calculate the dmg from SoB and Judging it.. Double procs of JoL will make up for more healing then the dmg self inflicted. That means: you effectively take less dmg using SoB and JoL than using SoR and JotC.


Another perk is when performing as an Off Tank, you can still build aggro through the holy dmg of SoB / JoB while having double procs of JoW on the mob feeding your mana when you dont take much dmg. (a single Rejuv takes care of the dmg self inflicted when you aren't getting hit)

Also, Seal of Blood can, unlike SoR, crit for double dmg, (so can the Judgement). Using SoB with JoL, factoring the crits and the healing aggro from double JoL procs with Imp Righteous Fury.. You are looking at more Threat than using SoR + JotC

[comparing Continuum Blade + spelldmg enchant vs Latro's with +7dmg enchant, the rest being same gear, 700ish AP, +50 spelldmg (without counting the +160ish from sword)]

Pros and Cons:

SoB's drawbacks is that in order to work properly you have to get more "Warrior"-ish gear. So since spelldmg will be lower, Consecration, Exorcism, Holy Shield will yield less aggro generation. SoB makes for a poor seal in AoE tanking.

However, it's a bit better for single target tanking since your melee dps loves JoL, and so do you when pairing it up with SoB for double procs.. Also great for soloing since i dont have to put a point in SoComm and still have similar long term DPS potential (a lot less burstier).

Bottom line, it's a situationnal seal, but in no way a poor seal overall.

[Aergis]

That's so unfair.

I was already planning on getting The Sun Eaterfor solo bosses where DPS has to do "soemthing else" as well as dps. It seems that many of the fights DPS are rarely just tearing into the mob for 5 mins straight. They always have something going on like adds to kill, fears, stuns, etc. For race fights I'd stick with continuum blade, but sun eater would be really nice for some fights, especially when dodge is very valuable.

Lucky horde, get to use it at all times except AOE.

[Lore]

I'm not a big fan of SoB for a lot of fights, for the simple fact that the judgement generally causes around 300 damage to myself. I'll make that up with JoL procs over the next few swings, but Tankadins already handle spike damage worse than Druids or Warriors, I don't like the thought of adding more into the mix.

[Aergis]

Could you use SoB primarily, but when judgement is ready switch to judge SoR then back to SoB? Trickier on cooldown management, for sure, but could probably be done without much loss on gcd

[Kathryn]

I only get hit for 110ish by JoB, do you use it with a lot of spelldmg?

JoB hits you for 30% of it's dmg, and mine sure dont hit for 900ish.

The judgement on Blood also can proc JoL. lets say JoB hits me for 110, and JoL procs for 95.. Sure JoB could crit me for 220ish but it has yet to kill me..

Best case scenario:

Getting a swing with a double JoL proc (8 incoming dmg + 190 healing) and then a judgement 110 dmg + 95

Worse case scenario:

Swing with no proc and crit dmg on me (16 dmg + 0 healing) and judgement with no procs and crit on me (220 + 0 healing)

SoB crits and self dmg crit are on sepperate rolls.

For some reason (being my relatively low crit chance in tank gear) Best case scenario happens a LOT more than worse case scenario..

I use SoB to tank moroes.. With each of my swing at a 1.4 speed, getting healed for 0 - 95 - 190 VS moroes who hits me for about 1.1k per hit at a very fast pace actually makes me take less dmg. Oh and have you ever loved reckoning for quad procs of JoL per swing.

[Lore]

Hmm, I was indeed using it with a Continuum Blade as I don't have a decent warrior-style melee weapon to test it with. Next King's Defender that drops is likely defaulted to me, and I was planning on picking it up anyway, so I'll have to try it out.

I guess that's ultimately the issue, if the weapon upgrade as far as mitigation is worth the extra damage taken. SoB just gives us the option.

[Nich]

A couple of things I noted:

Uunless they changed it while I had my back turned and levelling, SoL doesn't proc for ranged attacks, such as magical damage, wands, etc. And, it doesn't scale with damage/heal gear.

Also, are PvE casters able to spellcrit you? Otherwise, Eye for an Eye is solely in the realm of a PvP tool, and a relatively good one if you're a tankadin, with high stam and no way to close the gap on, say, mages.

Also, for the quoted comprehensive link section for gear, try removing 'beta' from them - Bracers of the Green Fortress, for example, are quite different now than in the closed beta.

Possibly also worth noting, is that while AS can be used similarly to intercept and charge, I find it moreso valuable after casting RD - being a ranged cast, the threat caused is going to be less than you'd expect, and may not be enough to bring it back to you with no other intervention; after a taun locks aggro back on you, and assuming the target is far enough away for you to be able to cast it, AS will generally lock it into place, assuming your ranged nukers ease up a little for the transition back. Otherwise, worst case scenario is that you cast AS, still can't snap aggro back, and then have to cast RD - while being out of range to lay down any further threat until the distance is closed by running.