What to do to survive

Hello all,

There is this feeling that started creeping up on me. I have the feeling that almost all I do while tanking is generating threat. The fact whether or not I survive has more to do with my healers and my gear then with the buttons I spam.

The things I do are:
Making sure that holyshield is up
Making sure I always have mana for holyshield
Using Moroes pocketwatch from time to time
Generating threat throu SoR, JoR (Belf), consecration and exorcism (when demon/undead)
I also try to use my AoE silence and stun when the occasion asks for it.
I sometimes do some aura dancing like on Aran.

Are there any other active things I can do to increase my survivability? Or are we really just relying on our gear, healer and keeping HS up?

Yes, you have to rely on a good healer, but there are several things you can do to help him.
You could stay in LoS (Line of Sight) of your healer at all times, and not moving too far away from him.
You can be ready to hit the lay on hands spell, incase your healer is for some reason unable to heal you.
Don't be afraid to pop a health potion or a health stone if you get too low.

Those are patching stuff... I mean something really consistant.

Ofc when I eat a crush I'll pot/Hs to counter it.
When Maggy throws a wall on me I'll be ready to use LoH's (if needed)
And ofc LoS is important althou I consider that their job since I have to watch the mobs positions so they don't instashot some DPS or healer.

But are there things I can do apart form HS to help my healers? Or is it really having that one button right every 10 seconds?

This works pretty well.
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Majiben

Get gear for your level. You shouldn't be wearing level 20 items (neck) or level 40 items. Low 50s are pushing it, too.
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You can always eat a crush inbetween 2 HS's....

Unless ofc you wanna aim for passive uncrushable and gimp your EH for it.
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Keeping up your max threat potential is key to your survival because it lets the dps kill things faster. During that time you also need to be refreshing holy shield or you will take more damage. The combination of you using all of your cooldowns effectively, dps killing things fast and healers not going oom is what will help you live.

I sometimes use nightmare seeds...pop trinkets...pots/healthstones...holyshield...rest is threat production which is as I said also very important to your survivability. Try SoL/JoL if your less concerned with threat than surviving.

oh and of course choosing the right gear for the situation is a big part of being a pally tank.
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I rarely have issues surviving. It is just that I feel like a DPS'er with holyshield once I got my gear sorted out.
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As far as character abilties tied to sruvival you've got it summed up. congratualtions, you've now figured out the basics of stayin' alive.

Now you need to start figuring out how to pronlong your life tactically. Research, proper preparation, communication, and focus. CD rotations are a good start, a relationship with your healer also is a sound idea. Knowing what is going to happen in each fight, before it happens, and how you intend to respond is useful beyond words.

If you're looking for more buttons to press to keep you alive, you're out of luck. I feel, however, that the paladin class lends itself to a certain amount of mental application more than the other current classes due to some of the difficulties we face categorically speaking. Not because our class is harder to tank with, or more mechanically challenging. Rather, because there are a large number of factors revolving around our itemization and the perception of the class.

Grats on having the rotations, the gear, and the will to look for more. Welcome to Pally tanking.
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As others have said, in different words:

- Study the fights ahead of time. The better you know them, the more you are able to anticipate what will happen and plan accordingly. Don't use AW if you think you'll need a bubble macro, for example
- Keep holy shield up vs l73 mobs so you don't get crushed.
- Have a cancel-bubble macro, so you can quickly bubble (to remove fears/debuffs) and then cancel with two keypresses. This can save you on things like Nightbane.
- Bring a PvP trinket. Some fights they are useful on.
- Know when popping bubble to stay alive long enough for some heals to land is worth the cost of having the boss paste the top DPS. (Clearly, this is something we'd prefer not to do, esp in a raid. Still, it's saved the group from wipes in heroics several times for me.)
- Tauntable enemies will attack you even while you're bubbled, if you bubble BEFORE you taunt.

- Know when popping trinket cooldowns will be handy.
- Come PREPARED. Flask if you need to, or bring elixirs. Ironshield potions and Nightmare Seeds are both excellent for boosting Effective Health in cases where the boss will be hitting extra hard, or heals are temporarily interrupted.

keep things in your frontal arc.
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"Why was there bacon in the soap?" -Zim
"I'm not saying stupidity should require capital punishment but can't we take the warning labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?" -Bash.org