Tanking as Ret?

So atm i'm ret spec'ed because the guild needs a mana battery... but it leads to a lack of tanks for heroics, how possible is it for me to tank heroics as ret? 21.2k hp, def cap etc. Lacking money atm for respecs

The heroics have been tuned so that you shouldn't be able to manage this with appropriate gear and normal teammates. Sorry. Grind money somehow or befriend some tanks.

The dual-spec system, whenever it comes out (3.1 at the earliest) should solve your problem, but until then it sucks to be you.

Edit: Do you PuG and keep track of the names of the good members? It can be easy to overlook the work of a good PuG tank because they - well, they make things dull. Their health bar doesn't jump around, they just stand in one place and eat all the damage and the bad guys drop one, two, three, four. Remember those guys.
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Everything in war is very simple. But in war, even the simplest thing is difficult.

nah we have a really really active guild, it's just im really the only ACTIVE tank, most other tanks just log on before raids etc... guess it's off to grind money or something T_T

If your guild is that desparate for a proper heroic tank that you need to respec for their sake, then they should be willing to front the respec cost.
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A'dal says: Fear not, young one, for this crusader shall not taste death. In life, Bridenbrad was the bearer of great deeds. Now, in passing, he shall taste the only paradise. The light does not abandon its champions.

ROFLcopter...I win

1. Fly to Grizzly Hills
2. Spend 20 minutes doing the 8 pvp dailies.
3. Have 80 gold in your pocket and go to Orgrimmar.
4. Respec and be quiet about the cost.

Not to be harsh or anything, but seriously, getting gold in this game is such a ridiculous joke. I literally make 100+ gold a day just from looting corpses in heroics, much less doing dailies. And hell, you should be doing dailies for Sons of Hodir which is good for another 50+ gold right there.
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I tanked a normal as ret and its a painful difference.
You lose so much DR and EH it would be impossible for heroics.
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I've tanked heroics as Holy in TBC, but only when I outgeared the instances. Shouldn't wanna try anything like that before I outgear the place, and Ret is even more horrible than Holy. The only advantage is that nowadays being Ret automatically provides an additional CC to the group.

If you're the only tankclass online outside of raids, you/your guild should consider putting you in a tanking role, to ease the game outside of raids. Raiding is not the only thing the game's about.
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Zoe's guide to building your tankadin

We decided not to try it.... BUT I'm the only JC on the server atm with the titanium choker so im making quite a bit of money from the Dragons eye/design, so respec's arent an issue now

I have healed all matter of shitty tanks through Heroics, the most memorable is Lolidin http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmourne&n=Lolidin

What made this even funnier is that Loli had just been MT for the Vault 10 man in Wintergrasp that I healed as well. Didn't think to inspect in a raid and had a good chuckle with them in the heroic when I asked what defense rating was as I saw a few crits and they said 463

Nevertheless I rock so we got through HVH ok, anything else woulda been fail.
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Not to resurrect an old thread, but I just wanted to jump in and say it is entirely possible to have a skilled ret paladin flawlessly tank heroics in WotLK - at least Nexus and Utgarde Keep.

Factors that helped us: history of working well together, halfway well geared resto shaman (me), very nice prot gear (ilevel 187+ I think) and capped defense on our ret tank, enh shaman able to toss out a CH every now and then with Maelstrom Weapon, and good DPS overall to kill things fast. It's actually a lot of fun and a nice challenge for when we've gotten bored of everything else being too easy. I would recommend it. :D



(Edited to fix misspelling.)