Tanking 60 - 70

[Arees]

Hey guys. I've been leveling a pally and he's 56 now. I've been reading these forums for a while trying to get an idea of what to do once I get to Outlands, but only just now decided to post anything because I've been leveling. I have a 70 mage, but have wanted to create a melee class for a while, and then decided on making a tank. I debated between a druid and pally because a warrior is just to traditional. I settled on pally because on my realm, there are a lot of druid tanks, but I don't see many pally tanks.

I know that at 70 I need to work on getting my def to 490 and combined dodge, parry, and whatever to 102% with HS up, but what about before then? I have mainly been soloing with the exception of tanking through ZF twice (which went very well both times). Should I mainly just wing it and get what gear I can with def, or should I have a specific goal? In particular, when I hit 58 I will go to outlands and work on some of the quests, and by 60 I want to be tanking ramps and maybe BF (dont remember the exact level range).

Here is my armory page:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ravencrest&n=Arees

PS I'm sorry if this has been answered before, but most of the posts here seem to deal with tanking level 70 instances.

[Ehtirno]

Ramparts can be tanked at 60 with no prot talents and a 2hander. Doesn't mean your healer will love you tho.

[Pizbit]

Gear wise you can wing it just fine:)
Just save up all the tanking items and you can't lose.

[Exodius]

I'm not quite sure what your question is...

490 defence and uncrushable stats are goals to aim for when you are settling in at 70. They certainly won't come straight away unless you "twink" your paladin tank something fierce - things like being handed the BS epic belt from someone, for example. And that's plain silly in my opinion.

I just recommend going for any tanking plate you can get. It's alright to have strength and agility on it, it's alright to have intellect and mp5 as well.

Just try and get a good balance of stamina and defensive stats - defence, dodge, parry, block. If it vaguely looks like tanking or non paladin healing plate, grab it. Try and work with your gear to make the best set you can.

Tank early, tank often, get experience. I personally believe it's easier to be a tank from level 1 and learn/read about/experience different tanking rotations and item ideas, than to be given a hand me down tanking set from Kara and respeccing holy.

A kara ex-holy paladin might have better gear, but they won't know good threat rotations for the life of them. That's my opinion, and I do see examples of it.

[Snake-Aes]

I just recommend going for any tanking plate you can get. It's alright to have strength and agility on it, it's alright to have intellect and mp5 as well.

Just try and get a good balance of stamina and defensive stats - defence, dodge, parry, block. If it vaguely looks like tanking or non paladin healing plate, grab it. Try and work with your gear to make the best set you can.

Tank early, tank often, get experience. I personally believe it's easier to be a tank from level 1 and learn/read about/experience different tanking rotations and item ideas, than to be given a hand me down tanking set from Kara and respeccing holy.

This. I'm tankadin since I created this character, and tanked all but mana-tombs and Steamvault in Outland, and it's a blast. SL and BM eat me but It's very doable. Working on gearing myself now, 490 defense is already beaten, but it doesn't matter *much* before 70..get what you can.

[Hyouzan]

I just recently got to Outland myself and before then the last thing I tanked was Wailing Caverns. I was hesitent to tank my first Ramps but I had another "tank" with me. Well he is a holy pally but he tanked before respeccing to holy. He was giving me pointers and helping me learn the best was to pull. Sounds noobish but having a mentor there really made me feel more comfortable.

Gear wise, I loaded up Hellfire Penisula on WoWHead and looked up all the hordie quests(using the filter method). I went down the list and found the best upgrades from the quests, my first objective - Complete those quests. Then I started looking at what 5-mans dropped for gear (tanking and healing). I made short work of running Ramps the first time. Not because I'm all that and a bag of chips, but because I did a little self twinking to get my party a better chance for survival.

[kalbear]

Here's how I geared up for 60-70:

Do every quest you can.
If the quest rewards a plate item, weapon or jewelry, see if it could be either good for tanking or for damage output (sta/int/+SD) or for healing. If it was, take it. Otherwise, get the highest value item.

If you do this, you'll have plenty of gear for 60-70 and will be a reasonable tank. There are some things that you should specifically aim for, but honestly you can do all of 60-70 without any hard quest rewards, rep rewards or anything and be fine just based on quest rewards alone.

[Arees]

Gear wise, I loaded up Hellfire Penisula on WoWHead and looked up all the hordie quests(using the filter method). I went down the list and found the best upgrades from the quests, my first objective - Complete those quests. Then I started looking at what 5-mans dropped for gear (tanking and healing). I made short work of running Ramps the first time. Not because I'm all that and a bag of chips, but because I did a little self twinking to get my party a better chance for survival.

That's a really good idea. I'm going to do the same but for alliance. Thanks.