Is it my fault?

hello,

First post here and my first tank char so im pretty green. Of course ive played with a few awsome tanks so im kind of going by what I've scene from them. Im still only level 40 but i want to get my good habits early instead of late. sorry for the length and if i complain a bit:)

Basically I have been having a horrible time keeping the groups together and stuck onto me and its real frustrating. I was running SM, Uldaman, and Gnomer in my 20's and 30's (up to 39 in Uldaman the other day). I would head in judge whatever was the most usefull, seal back up and consecrate. I had RF up, BoS, Ret aura (or dev if we had our retadin there). Still i would hold for a few seconds and then the mobs would break up and scatter about. in the 3-4 instances my guild ran i have pretty much had to use my RD almost everytime the cooldown was up, and had to chase down mobs like crazy to keep them on me. This happened even with me giving everyone -30% by the blessing. I finally figured out that our retadin had his RF up as well and was matching me judgements and consecrates and using a blue 2 hander, no wonder he kept pulling them off of me:) These are the things that i see wrong with what we were doing...

1. No aggro time. Everyone would blast away as the mobs started to aggro on me. many times the hunters or casters shots would land before i touched the mobs.

2. no DPS focus. Pretty much everyone in the party took a liking to whatever individual mobs they felt like and tried to bring them down.

3. no focus on the mobs i was fighting. I would start building my single target threat figuring my consecrates, Bos, and Ret aura would hold the aggro on the sidelines, but since ppl were dpsing mobs i wasnt focused on the group would break apart and i would have to corral them back.

I have mentioned these things to the group but when i bring them up the people who set up these guild runs tell me that its just impossible for me to hold aggro on all 3 mobs or something similar. I think i can, even without holy shield (which i just got last night anyway). I dont like pointing fingers, id rather see what i can personally do to improve something, but i dont think theres really anything i can do that will overcome these issues, and I feel they are rather important.

Am i wrong? do i just need to pick up my game a notch? I can get all the mobs back onto me by the middle of a fight and have even thrown of heals, BoP's, purifies, etc, so i feel confident that im doing decent.

I really dont care how many times we wipe, but this problem leads almost everytime to my biggest pet peave, runthroughs. We get 1/4 of the way through and start having problems, then someone says we cant do it and leaves to get there 70. At this point i dont even want to go any farther, If I didnt want to play the instance i would buy a character.

My view is if they give me a few seconds of solo fighting to build aggro then attack what im attacking, unless theres a reason not too, I should be able to stick 3-5 mobs pretty good. Is there anything else i should be doing? I can take the beating, but thats not really that important next to holding threat.

Last question - What is a real good threat meter and how do i use it effectively?

you should be able to hold aggro on all the mobs. are you marking the targets and telling them the kill order? maybe you should consecrate first then judge and reseal. tell them they have to wait till after your 1st or even 2nd consecrate to aoe, until then they should be sticking to the assigned kill order.
you shouldn't really heal during a fight because you cannot block/parry/dodge while casting, but cleansing is fine, i usually keep my group cleansed.
if your guild leaders don't think you can hold aggro on multiple mobs you need to ask them why, since that's what pally's are great at. maybe they need to be replaced with a better guild especially if they won't listen to you.

as far as threat meters i use OMEN. i used KLH/KTM for awhile but OMEN is alot better IMO. as a tank it's just good to have a meter so everyone else can be sure they don't over aggro you, the only time you may need to watch your meter is to tell someone else to slow down some, or to know that you need to step threat up some.
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Ok, first of all I must admit that there are probably a million way more qualified people who could answer these questions (at this stage I only have a lvl 38 prot pally) , but I will do my best from my (currently) rather limited prot paladin experiences .

I have had very simliar experiences in instances as you. Most, but not all of the time I seem to end up in the low lvl instances with people who are currently playing their first WoW character. So, just like me when I was a budding hunter all those months ago, they don't usually have a clue about the finer points of the game dynamics. They just wanna kill things, plain and simple. This results in the two main problems you described, they attack before you do, making it rather difficult to regain aggro, or get enough aggro on the second - third mobs to hold them if they AOE.

What I can tell you though is I have lvled my pally mainly with a friend of mine who is a fire mage (also lvl 38.). And after many a lvl trying to hold aggro while he dps the $%^ outta everything we attack I can say that if he waits a second to allow me to get a judgement and a few hits in I almost never lose aggro before the end of the fight (unless he gets multiple huge crits, which is unlikely, but possible non the less) as long as I continue to use most of the prot skills available to increase aggro etc.

So I guess the best solution is to explain to your group what you need them to do (or rather not to do) when you begin a fight as you already do. Then if they are stubborn and don't listen to your good reasoning you don't have to feel guilty when they lie on the floor in a pool of blood . Eventually they will catch on and realise you were speaking some darn good sense and be all the better players afterwards.

Threat meeters are a tanks best friend, I currently use KLH, but I have heard many people now who suggest OMEN over it, so guess what im downloading right now .

Good luck with the taking! I hope your instancing experiences improve!

Pretty much what alel said

Make sure you are the group leader, mark the mobs for kill order

our guild normally just uses Skull --> Cross --> blue --> etc etc

tell them via a /rw what the kill order is and what sheeps/trap etc

If you go in with a decent judgement and lay down a concecrate your dps should be able to start (on the first target) without any problems and then after that is dead make sure you are ready to judge the next mob in the kill order.

I also use omen, as recommended by people on here
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Pallydin - LVL 70 Holy Paladin - Genjuros

Okies let's start from the top...

1)
Tell your group to wait a few seconds.

2)
Force the issue of you being leader and mark one mob Skull, one mob X.
Tell them to kill Skull then X.

3)
See #2

4)
Bullshit.
I was holding every single mob I pulled when people followed the kill order.
And now I can hold the 8 or 9 mob pulls in Shattered Halls without blinking iwth just one mob Skull and one X.
You get to the point a hunters pet can't taunt a mob off you that is only being held by holy shield/ret aura/consec.

ATM, it's the groups fault. It looks like you're doing the right things, Salving them, using RF at all times. Judging SoR(Known as JoR)


LastQ) Get omen, it'll tell you your threat per target.
Threat meters are limited by whether or not everyone else is also using one.


Side note, come level 50 you get Avengers Shield, that'll help a *lot* in pulling and geting the starting aggro. It dumps threat on your target and the next 2 clostest(so total 3 targets). On 4 pulls I'll JoR the 4th and boom, I own the mobs.

Basically, if DPS open up before you do, you're screwed in most cases.
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although most posters above me have already given some great advice i'd like to add that doing ULD at level 39 isn't a good idea since you'll be facing lvl 45 and higher mobs which will resist/dodge/parry many of your attacks. Not to mention the amount of attacks you will miss them
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Thanks for the help, I'll have a talk with them next time. I just wanted to make sure i wasnt talking out my... Holy shield will help a ton anyway probably.

Thanks again

Actually running istances at a lower level than requires has lots of downsides. Mobs will often resist your spells, making your threat fall down. Also you will take lots of crits and even crushings.

A strong suggestion if you plan to tank, is tanking at 1-2 level higher than the istance. For example, SM Cath is 37+, i'd suggest to be at least 38 or 39 before tanking him. I would never step place in Uldaman before level 42 or 43.
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As guys have said above, it seems like its the groups fault (and yours in a way) becuase lack of orginsation. Make sure you have leader and mark mobs up, thing i always forget is alot of people at leveling stage dont have a 70 raiding toon so maybe dont know how to do instances, got to think how you played when you 1st start (coming from a MMO background i was never *that* bad tho )

Also as said above I dont recommend Ulda at 39, i did it myseld (maybe 40?) and when I got to the last boss I was useless on him, resisted all my spells so got zero threat... I ended up on adds / healing while resto druid took over tanking

Keep at it, everything will fall into place eventually aggro life gets alot easier at 50 when you get your throwing sheild

Thanks for the advice. Ive done lots of instances on my Druid but I always just worked the marks, and back up healed and never really paid attantion to what the tank was doing since he got it done.

this was the first time I ever ran Uldaman, so i really didnt know much about it. You are right though without the 70 we would have been toast. I will try for SM this week since i want the shield anyway. We did the Lib, Cath, and Armory when i was 38 and ran pretty much into the same problems, it was just a bit easier fighting of course.

should hit 41 tonight no sweat so I can equip the rest of my entry plate set of plate and be ready for the weekend run.

Thanks for all the help:)

Depending on your situation, you will want to start running the first half of uldaman well before you're ready to finish it, because that place involves a bunch of quests for which you need to run in, run out and do something, and run back in again. To take archaedes You'll probably need a balanced group of 43+, I'd suggest 45 to make it not totally reliant on everyone doing it right.
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As much as I hate to say this you are at a pivotal point in Pally tanking. The lvl from about 39-49 are really tough as a prot pally trying to tank instances. One of the main reason is alot of the other "mana" classes are now finally starting to see some spell damage gear, whereas spell damage for a pally isnt coming into effect till after lvl 50.

There are ways around this though. First of all since you are a reactive dmg threat monger then get yourself a shield spike. Also another thing you can do is get yourself a +30 spell dmg chant on your tanking weapon. Its rather expensive but its well worth the gold if you want to show off your uber pally tanking skills. Also make sure you lead off with SoR on the target you want the group to DPS first. If they want to AoE everything then tell them to kill the first target that your judged SoR on THEN start their AoE after its dead.

I'm currently leveling Prot myself, since level 1.

I've found that, as long as the group starts with my first target before moving on, things stick to me like glue. Holy Shield helps, as does spamming Consecrate when I have the mana for it.

I've had times in SM where I tanked 5-6 mobs at a time, due to an unlucky runner - as long as nobody freaks out and starts running away, you'll be fine. It's just as easy to hold threat on five mobs as it is to hold threat on two. The only thing that screws with my aggro is when they pick a target I'm not focused on, or when they attack before the mobs actualy get to me.

As far as threat meters, I've got Omen and it works great.
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-Artos, BE Apprentice Tankadin

I leveled prot all the way to 70 and I found that I would encounter similar problems in the lower level instances. The problem I think is the low level, and the fact that the itemization at that level is horrible for a tankadin, or at least is almost guaranteed to be worse than your DPS's itemization at that level. The lack of any spell damage on the gear that you need makes it hard to produce threat on multiple targets well enough to hold aggro. Holy shield will help a ton though. Eventually you should be able to produce enough aggro with consecration/holy shield/ret aura to hold aggro on a target you aren't attacking, even if some idiot DPS decides they don't want to attack the right target.

Essentially thats your problem. At that level you don't have the kind of aggro-production to hold a solid amount of aggro on all targets, and the DPS are being problematic by attacking the wrong target. With Righteous Fury and some liberal amounts of Seal/Judgement of Righteouesness, you should be able to hold aggro on the DPS tarrget just fine.
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Golden Ring of Power http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29157

and

Gem Studded Band http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21753

are both solid choices for some extra threat in the 30's to 40's bracket.

They're relatively cheap crafted rings that when combined give +10 Stamina, +5 Intelligence, +5 Spirit and +22 Spell Damage.
You sacrifice some avoidance or health by taking them over rings with Stamina and Agility such as the ZF quest reward ring http://www.wowhead.com/?item=9533 but overall its probably worth it for the extra threat at that level.