New Paladin Tank - Heroics

[soundsav]

Hello all...

I am a long time Holy Pally that has decided to start tanking...I have started getting a decent set of tanking gear but I have a few questions...Realize due to limited play time, I tank a ton of Heroics and very few raids.

I have done my research and gotten the hang of the 969 rotation, however how should I adjust this for AoE tanking? I am having a bit of problem in Heroic HoR grabbing all the mobs and keeping them...especially those pesky casters.

What would be a good talent build for Heroic tanking? With some reading, I see the normally mediocre Reckoning can be useful in Heroics...In the same vein, what about glyphs for Heroic tanking?

I appreciate your time and anxiously await your advice...

My armory is http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...cn=Darklighted

[Njall]

Casters will always be a pain in the buttocks. If you have a kindly DK in your group, ask him to YOINK any casters to you. Mention to DPS that you'd appreciate casters dying first.* Smashing them with AS and SotR is good. Keep them close and hope they are burned down. FoS is a personal nightmare with all the blasted casters (and the 'tard DPS I usually have with me)

As to builds, I like my cookiecutter 53/18 build but tossing a few (not all 5!) points into Reckoning and making sure you have Seal of Command can help if you want more dps. Personally, I tank without it but I'm too lazy to respec out of my my raid configuration.

I'd probably go with Glyph of Judgement, Divine Plea, and Hammer of Righteous for heroics. Might swap out the latter for Vengeance but that's really personal taste.

* As of 3.2.2 it seems everyone can mark mobs...?

[Levantine]

Casters will always be a pain in the buttocks. If you have a kindly DK in your group, ask him to YOINK any casters to you. Mention to DPS that you'd appreciate casters dying first.* Smashing them with AS and SotR is good. Keep them close and hope they are burned down. FoS is a personal nightmare with all the blasted casters (and the 'tard DPS I usually have with me)

As to builds, I like my cookiecutter 53/18 build but tossing a few (not all 5!) points into Reckoning and making sure you have Seal of Command can help if you want more dps. Personally, I tank without it but I'm too lazy to respec out of my my raid configuration.

I'd probably go with Glyph of Judgement, Divine Plea, and Hammer of Righteous for heroics. Might swap out the latter for Vengeance but that's really personal taste.

* As of 3.2.2 it seems everyone can mark mobs...?

Casters will always be a pain in the buttocks. If you have a kindly DK in your group, ask him to YOINK any casters to you. Mention to DPS that you'd appreciate casters dying first.* Smashing them with AS and SotR is good. Keep them close and hope they are burned down. FoS is a personal nightmare with all the blasted casters (and the 'tard DPS I usually have with me)

Mention to DPS that you'd appreciate casters dying first.* Smashing them with AS and SotR is good.

Smashing them with AS and SotR is good.

SotR

Wut.

[Aedh]

Prot pally acronym crits Njall for 9002(9001 overkill)

[Njall]

Prot pally acronym crits Njall for 9002(9001 overkill)

Acronym use is Super Effective!

HotR = Hammer of the Righteous
AS = Avenger's Shield
SotR = Shield of the Righteous

WTB link to the acronym page.

[theckhd]

SotR = Shield of the Righteous

Wait, when did we get a new spell?

[Njall]

SotR = Shield of the Righteous

Wait, when did we get a new spell?

It happened when I typed without morning coffee. The patch update, HOTCOFFEE3.2.2, should correct the tooltip error.

[Levantine]

My favorite bit is where you try to defend yourself, and you're still doing it wrong. <3<3<3

[yappo]

I love the 0/54/17, three out of five Reckoning, SoV and two out of two SA at the cost of one point Crusade - spec for heroics.

I'm currently considering switching out my (antique) holy spec for a raid-boss tanking spec, on my main, for a more proper configuration in raids. I already run two prot-specs on my alt-tank, and I found out the hard way that the properly specced and glyphed 0/53/18 REALLY didn't work well with my reckless hc-tanking.

[Vorianloken]

I have done my research and gotten the hang of the 969 rotation, however how should I adjust this for AoE tanking? I am having a bit of problem in Heroic HoR grabbing all the mobs and keeping them...especially those pesky casters.

If you have a mage/hunter in the group, then save your CaptAmerica shield for herhim. I usually just do the pillar trick and when the mobs spawn i stand out to see what mobs I am getting. As soon as I see a mage/hunter nearby I shield-toss. The priests will just come to you anyway.

Make sure to put consecration down as soon as the waves spawn so they walk over it before anything else. Also save your Holy Wrath for when you have the mobs bunched up. Once you have that aggro, drag the melee mobs to the mage/hunter if any and put them down in their place.

Glyphs - i would say holy wrath, dp and hammer glyphs.

[Dravan]

When I do HoR I pretty much just make sure I slap every mob with at least something, so for instance taunt the priest, AV the mage, HoTR the warrior, Judge the rogue and then holy wrath and drop my consec. The hunter is always slow to come over but I just make sure I use taunts and anything else off CD when he gets closer. As Vorian suggested drag the melee over to a caster and then just start your 969 rotation off on the current mob being killed. If you haven't already got it I would recommend downloading grid and clique and then binding your righteous defense through clique (I use cntrl + left click). Makes it a lot easier to taunt off a party member should they grab some agro. But generally in my experiance in HoR if you are quick with abilities and taunts you can get at least some agro on everything and keep your healer alive!

[Vorianloken]

When I do HoR I pretty much just make sure I slap every mob with at least something, so for instance taunt the priest, AV the mage, HoTR the warrior, Judge the rogue and then holy wrath and drop my consec. The hunter is always slow to come over but I just make sure I use taunts and anything else off CD when he gets closer. As Vorian suggested drag the melee over to a caster and then just start your 969 rotation off on the current mob being killed. If you haven't already got it I would recommend downloading grid and clique and then binding your righteous defense through clique (I use cntrl + left click). Makes it a lot easier to taunt off a party member should they grab some agro. But generally in my experiance in HoR if you are quick with abilities and taunts you can get at least some agro on everything and keep your healer alive!

I keep an eye on grid+default party UI to see if someone is pulling aggro or close to it and just RD off them with a quick Fn key select

[Tordan]

Ok, since I´m far from an expert at the talents, would this be a good Heroic build? Heroic, no DS/DG

This is what I have atm: Lif´s armory. I will most likely never see any high-end raiding, at most the lower 10-man raids. I never use DS/DG so they fell a bit of a waste in my situation. What I´m looking for is using SoCleave on trash pulls and SoV for bosses.
The DG tootip says "... Increases the duration of your Sacred Shield by 100%...". Is that when DS/DG is used or always?
Basically I´m trying to figure out the order of importance of Reckoning, Conviction, PoJ and Crusade (maybe Vindication as well) when running normals/heroics?

[Boyfriend]

Ok, since I´m far from an expert at the talents, would this be a good Heroic build? Heroic, no DS/DG

This is what I have atm: Lif´s armory. I will most likely never see any high-end raiding, at most the lower 10-man raids. I never use DS/DG so they fell a bit of a waste in my situation. What I´m looking for is using SoCleave on trash pulls and SoV for bosses.
The DG tootip says "... Increases the duration of your Sacred Shield by 100%...". Is that when DS/DG is used or always?
Basically I´m trying to figure out the order of importance of Reckoning, Conviction, PoJ and Crusade (maybe Vindication as well) when running normals/heroics?

I'd take PoJ over conviction, you'll get to pull faster when running faster. And that's what heroics are about. I'd also take Imp. Judgement over Benediction, you're not really doing much 6969 in heroics and Imp. Judgement lets you use Judgement on that mob a bit more often that is just slightly out of melee range.

DS always increases SS duration by 100%. It is nice, I don't use SS in heroics but if you do it's worth taking just for that.

[ryan4nayr]

DS always increases SS duration by 100%. It is nice, I don't use SS in heroics but if you do it's worth taking just for that.

I use SS quite a bit in 5-man heroics (mind you, I'm not raid-geared so I have to fake my paly OP-ness). I don't always get the creme de la creme of healers when I queue up for random heroics. Pre-self-casting SS for big or dangerous pulls (i.e., 4 groups or several casters that fear) is an added safety margin that could save everybody from a corpse run in certain situations.

However for those just learning 9696 rotation recently... pre-SS is an added complication one can certainly live without.