Advice for a Young Tankadin

[sherck]

My problem is this.

My friend whom I play with has a Level 70 Warrior Tank named Erenagh whom was part of a pretty large guild (100+ level 70s). He became Raid Leader of a new Raid Group and in the course of like four weeks, built a new Raid group that successfully did Kara on their first night, did a progression kill on ZA during week number two and was working on Gruul's by their third week with Kara already on farm. He had previous raid experience as a DPS class but never as a tank.

Anyway, his larger Guild wanted to break up his Raid group to spread their experience, he said "no way." Guild leader pushed and my friend led an exodus of about 40 of the level 70s out of the guild to form their new one with him as the new Guild Leader. They now have like five raid groups doing Kara & ZA with one or two doing Gruul's.

So, he invited me into this guild but I am still grinding levels on this Pally and am not yet level 70. Once I get to be level 70 and want to start joining raids, they will already have a full complement of Pally Tanks and I will have crap gear (for a raiding 70).

The guild is already critically short of healers for 25 man content and I just know I am going to be asked as one of the new 70s once I make it to respec Holy in order to heal.

What would you do? If I were an established Tankadin with raid ready gear, I would say "no way" but since I will probably not get to raid if I stay Protection...

What would you guys do?

Cheers,

[Robbert]

Talk to your friend and tell him your heart is in tanking and you're worried about being pushed into a healing role that you won't enjoy. In a case like this a bit of communication with a friend can go a long way.

[Frickit]

If you dont mind healing and the warrior is willing to watch your back and let you pick up tank drops than id say ok. Otherwise Id find a guild more at your level so that you can pwn instead of be in the background, its more fun that way imo.

It isnt worth it to join the ranks of a hardcore raiding guild just for its own sake because you did nothing to help progress to there. But Ill repeat, if you can play a duel roll and have help paying for respecs and build both your sets at a reasonable rate than why not?

[Ryu]

To be honest man, you bought this game to play a certain class/style that you like, so if tanking is what you would like to do most, go for it, and keep fighting for it. Just keep reminding yourself that you don't pay a monthly fee to please others, it's your game, and whilst there's certain commitments involved while being in a guild/raidgroup, at the end of the day, you should enjoy the game.

[Wyleai]

Keep in mind that your friend and his core members have already demonstrated that they would rather rip a guild apart than build it up when they did what they did to their past guild.

Speccing holy or prot, its a guild that is likely to have drama again of that magnitude as soon as somebody is asked to put a little effort in for the team.

[Oneironaut]

lets put it this way. if i were to give advice to 'a young tankadin,' that advice definitely wouldn't include "respec Holy to please other people." Ya dig meh?

[Brave Sir Thalus]

This site is (as you may have guessed) full of Maintankadins, so the majority of replies are going to be along the lines of "Holy is for wusses, Pallies are great Tanks, play how you want to play" etc etc. And frankly, for the most part they'd be right..

I'm a (relative) newcomer to the Maintankadin scene, and before I respeced I was a Holy Pally. I raided Kara for a while, and did Heroics. In my experience, it's easier to get gear for Healing than it is for Tanking - the PvP sets are relatively easy to get and are a good base for Heroics and Kara. It's also easier for an 'undergeared' healer in Kara than it is an undergeared tank, especially if you run with 3 healers, so you'd be more likely to be accepted on runs. While you're there as a healer, you can pick up a lot of good tank items (especially if the rest of the raid is just there for badgers)

Just be careful not to let the 'temporary' Holy spec turn into full time. If you try it and love it, fine - but if you don't, as long as make it clear to them when you spec Holy at the start that you're aiming to be a Tank, and they accept that, they can't really complain if you turn round a month down the line and say "I've got the gear to Tank, and I'm gonna do it" and respec.

[Worldie]

This site is (as you may have guessed) full of Maintankadins, so the majority of replies are going to be along the lines of "Holy is for wusses, Pallies are great Tanks, play how you want to play" etc etc. And frankly, for the most part they'd be right..

That's really really wrong.

Noone here denigrates the Holy paladins.

Simply, most of people posting here (not all actually, we got some Holy and Ret paladins here as well) prefer the tanking side of Paladins, but noone here will ever tell anyone "Holy sucks, go for Protection".
If he does, he clearly has understood nothing about the spirit of this forums

Those boards are a line of guides for Paladins who have already chosen their path, or a way for Holy and Retri paladins to find informations needed in case they want to experience the tanking line of the force. In no way those boards or anyone posting here intend to denigrate or istigate people to spec out of Retribution or Holy.


To answer the OP now, well, you might as well build up both sets of gears, Holy gear is very simple to find, and baseline protection equip is as well relatively easy to find. Maybe you might even find yourself liking healing, and eventually remaining Holy.
Eventually, should your protection gear get finally ready, start making practice, and possibly ask to be given a try. Should you succeed, it's possible you get into their tank squad.
Should you fail, or should they just be too full of tanks, you might as well just look for a guild looking for tanks instead.

[Gonan]

I myself started out as holy. I did a lot of high-end arenas, which gives you the basic idea and power of the paladin class. Now I have a full S3 ret set, and a pretty decent tanking set as well.

To be able to get any gear for any spec you need to raid as a spec the raid most needs. Let them know you want to be a tank, so that they will distribute tanking gear to you as well as holy gear. Seeing how your gear won't be amazing, you won't need to down rank heals at all. Just teach yourself to cancel a heal if the tank is topped off.

As for my tanking set, I did Kara and Za for badges, bought the badges gear, make sure you get the T4 helm and gloves too for extra spell damage on high tps fights. Fully buffed I can hit over 21k hp (stam set), with 350 spell damage. So save those badges, also use this website to help you determine the best avoidance upgrades.

Good luck and have fun!

[Failed-Stormscale]

Being holy in my opinion is alot easier than being prot, what i did was heal some heroics and gather the badges as holy and then did some karazhan and took what the tanks didn't want, before i knew it i had maidens gloves, curators pants and the 33 badge shield, so i went to shattered halls got that helm and some other easy instance loot and started tanking karazhan.
Now i have all but one thing i want from kara, 14k unbuffed health some ZA gear, some t6 equivilant gear and alot of fun tanking.