Beta tank set ups and initial thoughts:

[lakhesis]

Selfless Healer is useless for tanking because it has to be used on someone else. Hence, Selfless.

It does actually work on yourself, you just don't get the 'effectiveness' bonus. The cast time & mana reduction bonuses still apply.

[stevos]

Selfless Healer is useless for tanking because it has to be used on someone else. Hence, Selfless. For Holy all the options are good assuming more than one of Eternal Flame or Sacred Shield can be on a target a la Beacon of Light. If more than one can't be then they'll probably default to Selfless Healer when working with a paladin tank. PVE Ret will almost certainly take SS for the shielding since EF uses HoPo and SH needs to be consciously used. SS is just cast every 30 seconds and GTG. PVP Ret, however, will probably get some use out of SH if off-healing is viable.

As far as tank glyph setups go, those are the obvious defensive ones. Offensive options include Alabaster Shield, Word of Glory, Focused Shield, Final Wrath, and Consecration.

Selfless healer works fine.

Each time you judge you get a stack that reduces the cd of your flash, after 3 judgements you get an instant flash heal, which works on youself fine. Not sure if the 35% buff to output works on self but the instant flash does.

Just used it on a test dummy, competely unbuffed and without the glyph i am getting 18-20k heals.

With the glyph i am getting the buff for my next heal, so all seems to work fine.

Maybe they should rename it to selfish healer

[Klaudandus]

The problem with that is that if i wanted to heal, id be a healer...

They are putting to many things into us that allows us to heal ourselves... However, i dont want them to use that as a crutch or excuse that that is the way we will be surviving encounters...

Some occasional healing is fine, i just fear they will want that to be an staple of pally tanking survival...

I know flex agrees with me on this issue

[stevos]

The problem with that is that if i wanted to heal, id be a healer...

They are putting to many things into us that allows us to heal ourselves... However, i dont want them to use that as a crutch or excuse that that is the way we will be surviving encounters...

Some occasional healing is fine, i just fear they will want that to be an staple of pally tanking survival...

I know flex agrees with me on this issue

The alterative is to keep what we have now, which most of the time is to stand still and get hit and once in a while when bigwigs/dbm pings hit a cd.

I already use WoG and Holy Radiance and Seal of Insight (when i can) a lot when raiding, so more healing isn't a problem to me.

It would be nice if healers job was to heal us up and tanks job was to reduce dmg both to self and raid, but you already have disc priests that break that rule.

[Destruktive]

The problem with it blocking a certain number of attacks is that it will make us weaker while tanking aoe packs or even just 2 mobs. I think they are on the right track, but a 3 second buff is clunky to say the least. Increasing it to 4 seconds or just under would solve most of the issues with swing timing though.

What I would really like to see however is WoG also giving the SotR buff so I have a real choice on how I use my hp. Currently on beta I think the cost is too steep for using WoG because you sacrifice survivability and dps vs just dps on live.
Unlike some of you I do like healing as a tank. I took a lot of pride on fights like chogall, single tanking and pulling ~6k heals at a time when 11-12k healing was good for most healers. My healing was respectable on a lot of fights, I remember that one clearly for some reason though. Overpowered? Probably, but it was fun and it could be balanced.

Also I would really like to see them revisit the 45 and 60 talents. We don't really have much of a choice in those 2 tiers especially with the nerf to selfless healer.

[lakhesis]

The problem with it blocking a certain number of attacks is that it will make us weaker while tanking aoe packs or even just 2 mobs.

That's a very good point actually, surprised I haven't seen anyone point it out before.

There aren't that many fights where we're tanking a weaker add + a boss simultaneously, but it's not an absurdly rare occurrence either. The one-guaranteed-block model would've broken down nastily there.

Edit: And while I like a little bit of healing on the side, the style of the bastion heal as a quasi-medium CD is much more along the lines of what I like. To me paladin tanks are about shielding, not healing.

Warriors are skilled soldiers, parrying & using their weapons to maximum efficiency.

Bears are.. well.. bears. Unstoppable, shrugging off blows & just gaining fresh energy from the annoyance.

DKs have a necromancer's control over life - with every cliche unstoppable zombie movie trope.

Paladins are zealots. No retreat. No surrender. We might not have the same years-of-weapon-practice skill as a highly trained warrior, but we are quite literally the shield of the righteous & the impenetrable barrier which our enemies break upon. Returning from battle with our shields or on them.

If I'm gonna break off & go all quasi-rp that is

[stevos]

It's not major an issue

For AoE packs, DK/Druid shields are weak currently. Once it's broken they get hit pretty hard, whilst pally block is always there, no matter how many mobs are pounding us. It's will be like it was in tbc sort of. In tbc once holy shield charges were used (fast on AoE packs) you were no longer block capped and had to rely on hoping for blocks etc when burst hit.

[danpaladin]

It's not major an issue

For AoE packs, DK/Druid shields are weak currently. Once it's broken they get hit pretty hard, whilst pally block is always there, no matter how many mobs are pounding us. It's will be like it was in tbc sort of. In tbc once holy shield charges were used (fast on AoE packs) you were no longer block capped and had to rely on hoping for blocks etc when burst hit.

DK/Druid shields are no weaker against AoE packs than boss hits. A Dk hits Blood Shield and gets a 30k shield. It doesn't matter if the boss destroys that shield in one 60k hit, or if 5 small adds each hit the DK for 12k at the same time, the DK will still shield 30k and take 30k worth of damage.
The scenario you described with pally block always being there is equivalent regardless of whether we are tanking 5 adds or 1 boss.

[danpaladin]

I am also noticing a weird bug with SotR's stacking that I am wondering if someone else can confirm before I post on the bug forums.

1) If you do hit SotR with no buff present, it adds 3 seconds, like it should.
2) If you hit it with the buff already on you, it adds 6 seconds, unlike it should.
3) Once you hit it one time with the buff already on you, hitting it again will NOT cause cause it to stack until the buff falls off.

Examples of the above:
1)
Buff time left on SotR: None
SotR Used.
Buff time left on SotR: 3 seconds.

2)
Buff time left on SotR: 1 seconds
SotR Used.
Buff time left on SotR: 7 seconds.

3)
Buff time left on SotR: 6 seconds
SotR Used.
Buff time left on SotR: 6 seconds.

[stevos]

It's not major an issue

For AoE packs, DK/Druid shields are weak currently. Once it's broken they get hit pretty hard, whilst pally block is always there, no matter how many mobs are pounding us. It's will be like it was in tbc sort of. In tbc once holy shield charges were used (fast on AoE packs) you were no longer block capped and had to rely on hoping for blocks etc when burst hit.

DK/Druid shields are no weaker against AoE packs than boss hits. A Dk hits Blood Shield and gets a 30k shield. It doesn't matter if the boss destroys that shield in one 60k hit, or if 5 small adds each hit the DK for 12k at the same time, the DK will still shield 30k and take 30k worth of damage.
The scenario you described with pally block always being there is equivalent regardless of whether we are tanking 5 adds or 1 boss.

Yes i know, there is no doubt we are overly good for AoE packs right now. You can easily see this if you heal warriors/pala vs dk/bears in 5mans. If you have a bunch of mobs pounding on a dk/druid (need a not overgeared tank to notice) they will break the shield fast and then they take heavy spike dmg, that isnt' the case for us right now, we are pretty uniform. That makes us too powerful for this situation, not that there is a huge number of similar encounters at raid level outside (Hjyal had the last big AoE tank fights that i can think of right now)

As such as long as we are no worse off than other tanks in Mists, i am not concerned. The fact we might be weaker than now for a very niche situation doesn't concern me, since we are better than other tanks at it now.

[Kitmajere]

That makes us too powerful for this situation, not that there is a huge number of similar encounters at raid level outside (Hjyal had the last big AoE tank fights that i can think of right now)

Spine is an obvious example, for this tier. T12 largely skipped it, but T11 had several (Nef/Sinestra/Maloriak/Halfus whelps(lol)). I don't mind if they do away with our advantage in these situations, as long as everyone loses it. Until then I will enjoy my default add tank role since it is often more complex and interesting than the boss tank's job.

[stevos]

That makes us too powerful for this situation, not that there is a huge number of similar encounters at raid level outside (Hjyal had the last big AoE tank fights that i can think of right now)

Spine is an obvious example, for this tier. T12 largely skipped it, but T11 had several (Nef/Sinestra/Maloriak/Halfus whelps(lol)). I don't mind if they do away with our advantage in these situations, as long as everyone loses it. Until then I will enjoy my default add tank role since it is often more complex and interesting than the boss tank's job.

Some good examples, seems my brain isn't working for a monday evening.

[lakhesis]

I was thinking more about the 1 weaker add + a boss (i.e. tentacle + zon'ozz, raggy + an add, any 2 in halfus, etc), rather than purely aoe packs although obviously both are scenarios worth weighing up any new implementation of our mastery against.

To take the extreme example, if we somehow end up with one whelp on us + a drake in halfus then there'd be roughly 50/50 chance that the whelp would eat up the guaranteed block in that system. One stray add being able to negate an active mitigation system is not so hot.

[Sabindeus]

The problem with that is that if i wanted to heal, id be a healer...

They are putting to many things into us that allows us to heal ourselves... However, i dont want them to use that as a crutch or excuse that that is the way we will be surviving encounters...

Some occasional healing is fine, i just fear they will want that to be an staple of pally tanking survival...

I know flex agrees with me on this issue

I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating: What's wrong with Paladins healing themselves as a survival tool? Healing yourself as a tank is entirely NOT similar to being a healer. And hell, we did that back in Beta before they nerfed our healing threat. So I don't see the problem.

[Klaudandus]

The problem with that is that if i wanted to heal, id be a healer...

They are putting to many things into us that allows us to heal ourselves... However, i dont want them to use that as a crutch or excuse that that is the way we will be surviving encounters...

Some occasional healing is fine, i just fear they will want that to be an staple of pally tanking survival...

I know flex agrees with me on this issue

I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating: What's wrong with Paladins healing themselves as a survival tool? Healing yourself as a tank is entirely NOT similar to being a healer. And hell, we did that back in Beta before they nerfed our healing threat. So I don't see the problem.

I guess it's envy of the DKs that they're actually built around Death Strike heal and the shield it provides... and the fact that it's semi proactive... yeah, you do better by taking a lot of damage before a death strike for a bigger heal, but still.

WoG is entirely reactive...

Thematically? I'd rather have my shield protect me against physical attacks and the light against magic attacks (or WoG a combination of the two) rather than Heal myself after someone went SHOOP DA WHOOP on me.

I know it's entirely subjective, but I wonder how many people here would prefer a WoG shield over to prevent damage over a WoG heal after taking damage.