My first tank was my paladin i was one of the lucky few Paladins that had thier guild backing them while being protection before protection was buffed and generally acceptable. I recall times when i was in max T5 SSC/TK gear and i was turn away from pugs because i had 2k less HP than a warrior in greens who didn't know anything about tanking let alone having experience as a raid tank. Eventually when Paladins got buffed to Jesus levels with 16% more stam from talents they started show up everywhere. This was both a happy and a sad time for me because now that paladins had pretty equal HP when in epic tanking gear it made pugs more willing to accept Prot Paladins. This also had the side effect of alot more people speccing paladins protection without knowing anything about tanking or what uncrushable/uncritable was let alone that there was a difference between them.
Alittle while after that content patch that brought the paladin changes in I decided that i would see just how greener the grass was on the other side and Rolled a Warrior and leveled to 70 prot. Once i hit 70 i found it immensly easier to find groups for instances because i was a warrior. However instances were quite a bit different to run on my warrior compared to my paladin. First off when i started CC was needed if there were more than 4 mobs in a pull. Now the only place i might consider CC necessary on a warrior pre 3.0 would have been heroic SH just because it would make things go smoother and be less risky. the second thing i noticed right away was that tanking on a warrior was alot more interactive which while it is fun i no longer had as much free time to check out what the other people in my raid/party where doing. Where as on a paladin it was consecrate and forget about it or pull the next pull with the current one if your healer can keep you up. So the change of pace was nice and the challenge was also nice what i really loved about playing a protection warrior was the fact that on a boss no one could pull aggro off of me. I was bringing in T6 geared mages/hunters/warlocks and as long as i could keep up the SS,Rev,Dev,Dev cycle while mixing in HS there was no way the dps could pull off of me even tho they out geared me by about 1.5 tiers as i was in mostly badge/kara gear. This was due to the fact that i kept 145ish hit and 33 or so expertise even at the cost of HP and the cost of not debuffing bosses aka TC/Demo which i could afford to do because i usually brought a T6 healer with me.
Now that 3.0 is here i am kind of torn as to which class i want to play as my main for the expansion. My guild will let me tank on any character that i choose since gear is being reset to unimportance anyway it wont matter. This is where i would really like some help from the communities of both Tank Spot and Maintankadin because i will list some pro and cons for both classes and my hope is that members can help me come up with some counter points to them for the other class.
First i will start off with the most important one to me because it absolutely drives me nuts on my paladins and that is spell interupts.
Warriors get sheild bash on a 12second CD, Spell refect on a 10 second CD, assuming you spec for gag order which i will you will also have Heroic Throw as an interupt on a 1min CD, Toss in a charge every 15 seconds (unglyphed) with warbringer. and if the mob is stunable they also have Concussion Blow on a 30 second CD. So warriors have 5 ways to interupt casts or reflect them back with the longest one having a 1min CD and only 2 Charge/Conc blow requiring a mob to be stunable. Could also add Shockwave in this category if i am counting stunning mobs but shockwave wont ever be used by me as an interupt.
Paladins until recently had 0 unless the mob was stunable now they have 1 from hammer of justice every 1min (because raid specs doesnt have extra points to spec into imp HoJ).
Next we will look at AoE tanking aka normal 5mans or some boss gimick.
Warriors have Tunder clap on a 6 second CD and Thunder clap also has the benefit of reducing attack speed of all the mobs attacking. warriors also have Shockwave which stuns mobs for 4 seconds aka stopping quite a bit of damage. Warriors have Damage Shield which can crit and is based off of BV.
Paladins have consecration which lasts 8 seconds on the ground and has a tendency to break sheep that wander near it. I cant really count Retribution aura because well warriors also get it if there is a paladin in the raid. Ret aura is based off of either AP or Spell Power and cannot crit as well as does not scale as well as Damage Sheild from my tests at 70 with my warrior and my paladin.
Third i would like to cover the oposite of the above Single Target tanking.
Warriors have not really gotten any new abilities they have instead been reworked to have better synergy in using their single target skills. Sword and Board is amazing to say the least. and it is also kind of annoying at the same time. With the old system you had a set rotation of SS,Rev,Dev,Dev + HS for extra rage. Now it is SS, Rev if off CD, Dev with a SS from a Sword and Board proc being prioritized to the top of the list. With glyphs and talents using HS has become almost mind numbingly simple with it being able to be used almost every swing assuming your on a raid boss. Rage managment has gotten significantly easier it is almost hard to burn all of your rage if you are being attacked and melee swinging.
Paladins have gotten 2 new abilities in the form of Hammer of the Righteous, and Sheild of the Righteousness Gone are the days of consecrating and auto attacking now there is a new rotation that is 9696 so you can actually put out amazing single target threat and can actually start paying attention to what you are doing rather than being able to be lazy and face roll consecration. This is great because on my paladin i really noticed that towards the end of T6 as a paladin i was keeping some classes like boomkins and Warlocks threat capped no matter what i did because my gear and threat gen just wasnt scaling as well as thiers.
While threat isnt a huge deal in 3.0 it is still important to do as much TPS as possible because now tanks are actually doing decent damage i usually end fights around 800 DPS in 25 mans at 70.
Next i will compare glyph's and thier interaction with each other as well as with talents. (These are the glyphs i plan on using on my tanking chars)
Warriors
Glyph of Blocking http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=43425 It just (pardon my language) "FUCKING!" Boogles my mind how this made it into the game. They nerfed the universal meta to be 5% BV but this glyph stacks with the meta and is 10% more BV which from playing with my warrior in 3.0 with Sword and Board SS is always used more often than even its CD of 8 seconds which would be enough to keep this glyph working.
Glyph of Revenge http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=43424 With this glyph my threat on live has sky rocketed because i can HS almost every 5 seconds (GCD eats up the remaining CD for revenge to be back up) without even having to look at my rage bar. This is just amazing so if i get lucky 1/3 revenges also procs Sword and Board so i just got a HS and a SS for 0 rage all on the next CD.
Glyph of Heroic Strike http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=43418 This glyph in conjunction with the glyph above makes me never have to worry about rage when i am HSing. aka at 70 i can almost always Que up HS with an Auto attack.
Paladins
Glyph of Judgement http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=41092 This glyph affects on of our ablities that we can only use once every 9 seconds if a paladin goes with standard raid spec. judgements arent a large % of paladin threat.
Glyph of Seal of Vengeance http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=43869 It gives 10 expertise which is kind of nice i guess since paladins have Hammer of the Rightousness which can be dodge/parried. with the new tanking seal for paladins being SoV getting dodge/parried isnt a huge threat loss as SoV is a dot not a proc on a melee hit. Someone else might know for sure but as far as i know Sheild of the Righteousness is not dodge/parry able it is deflectable which i guess is kind of like a parry but idk for sure.
Glyph of Spiritual Attunement http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=41096 Not much to say about this its a bit more mana back when healed which is better than an empty glyph slot at 80.
Next i will go into talent points per tree/allotment
Warrior my personal tank spec will be close to http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMZhLZVItrxczidIzsGo maybe i will take points out of cruelty for imp Spell reflect ill have to see how if that would be worth while at 80.
I havent honestly done enough research for DPS warriors in the expac to make a dps talent spec hell i might dps at prot in dps gear since damage seems to scale really well with crit/AP
Paladin my personal tank spec will be close to http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxVAzuMteIRGoxRb0b might drop some ret points for divine guardian at 80 depending on how the raid fights look.
Ret dps is amazing atm and is one of the classes that gives replenishment which is great for raiding so my 2nd spec might be ret.
Holy is also and option for paladins. One that warriors do not have. As most people have learned through tanking the only way a tank can live is by having good healers. While my healing gear wont be as good as the people who main spec healing having the ablity to be an extra healer is always a great option.
The final topic I would like to touch on but couldnt really do from actual personal testing is blocking and block value because my warrior is still and alt and is not in anyway compareable gear to my paladin. I just do not see how paladins are supposed to compare to warriors in terms of mitigation from block.
Warriors have 10% extra BV from the glyph of blocking which should have 100% uptime if your tanking. Warriors get 5% blocking from Shield specialization. Warriors also have 10 out of 40 seconds that they will block for 2X from shield block. On top of that warriors have 30% chance every time they block that it will block for 2X as much from critical block. Unless Sheild block and Critical block cannot stack which if they can it is then 4X as much for 30% of the blocks that occur during shield block since it adds 100% block. on a small scale these numbers dont seem to be a whole lot my warrior in full BV gear can get about 1k BV at 70 assuming it scales relatively well i could see 1.5k BV easily at 80. which seems like to me warriors would take alot less damage from melee mobs.
Paladins have Holy shield which is 30% more blocking for 10 seconds on an 8 Second CD which means they have 100% up time of 30% more blocking. Paladins also get redoubt which is another 30% blocking on a 10% proc of being hit. This just seems wrong to me because as anyone who knows about the combat table knows that blocking is the first thing pushed off the table so the 10% of the time redoubt is up means i will have 30% more of a chance to block which unless stats change alot most of that 30% is going to be pushed off the combat table and makes the proc from redoubt useless. Someone might try to argue about AoE tanking 30 mobs or something but in reality a warrior who is tanking 30 mobs might not block as much damage but warriors can stun mobs for 4 out of 20 seconds for Shockwave to come off CD as well as slowing all 30 of thier melee attacks by 20% from TC.
Extra random thoughts.
The HP gap between paladins and warriors isnt really a concern for me atm because blizzard does address these issues if it becomes a real problem for progression tanking. While it maybe a stigma for some people that you have less HP than a warrior let your tanking skills do your talking for you do not think you are entitled to anything. As a raid leader i deal with new recruits all the time that have better gear than some of our raiders and they get blown away on dps or healing because they never learned how to properly do thier job.
Overall mitigation i did not mention because judging by all of the feed back and changes there have been to both warriors and paladins I think blizzard is watching out for all the tanks equally this time.
Oh shit buttons I didnt mention them because to be honest paladins and warriors are about even now that both have a shield wall. Last stand is nice but usually a Lay on hands would be enough to also save you and Ardent defender works amazingly well with paladin shield wall to give you extra time to determine wether or not you need to use LoH. On top of that most situations where Oshit buttons would have saved the day it is because someone screwed up and it should not be needed to complete an encounter.
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