Okay, since a couple people pointed out the lack of Tankadins in the previous post, let me address them.
They are exactly the opposite of what I said before.
Tankadins start with full mana, like you. Unlike you, they don't have a huge honkin' pool of blue to burn through. They do, however, have abilities that let them regain mana - by being healed, hit, and hitting back. That being said, Pally tanks can have Oom issues. And that's where the fun begins. And by fun, I mean mobs flying everywhere and wiping you.
A pally tank has a much more difficult balancing act than a bear or warrior tank. Bears probably have it easiest - armor, stam, dodge. Strength/AP to do more damage and thus more aggro. That's about it. Warriors have to incorporate block/parry into that, but are otherwise much the same. A pally tank has to balance everything a warrior does, plus int, spell damage, and mana/5. That's a TON of stats to be concerned about. And thus, it means there can be a few different things that you need to be concerned about.
If the pally is well balanced, you should be fine except possibly in long fights. Once you're partway through a long fight, make sure you start paying attention not just to the amount of threat on the pally tank, but the RATE of threat. If that drops sharply, your tank is OOM, and you should be ready to back off. If you can, toss a HoT or two on the tank - this will save your healers some mana, but it will also provide a steady stream of mana back to the tank, which is in general more valuable than a large chunk at irregular intervals. Of course, if a fellow druid is healing the tank, he's probably got this going on already. :D In a worst case scenario, you could innervate, but Paladins are one of the classes which benefit least from this, and hopefully your tank has done his job and balanced his equipment, making this unneeded.
Paladins also generate a lot of their aggro by BEING hit. So, if your paladin tank is having aggro issues but is taking the hits fine, skip insect swarm. More hits = more aggro for the pally.
Also, AOE tanking is where the Paladin's ultimate strength lies. They completely outstrip warriors and druids for holding AOE aggro. This is especially good for healing them while they tank two or three or nineteen mobs. For fun, a Pally friend who was a Tankadin at the time and I cleared the entire lower platform of blood elves on the south platform of Black Temple (after we killed the elite). It was great fun.
Apart from that, the rest of the advice still applies - early on, be conservative, although the tank will probably be generating enough aggro so that you can go a lot quicker at first. Later on, ride the 110%-120% line. And again, to reiterate, talk to your tank! Paladin tanks are perhaps the most complex tanks in the game, but they definitely hold their own.
4 comments:
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Glad to have you aboard, I'll have to catch up on your blog.
Nice writeup.
As a Protection Paladin and a Tank i would say first off what most people needs to know is the difference between the 3 Tanks. Not only that but which of those Tanks is tanking for your group and how they are all different in their mechanics in how they function to hold aggro and work with that groupwise.
Warriors build up their rage slowly and with sunders and Paladins front loads all their blue bar rage faster making a transition to faster group DPS as a result. All depends on how that Paladin play.
As a Paladin I've never had a aggro issue holding aggro. The only issue i have is when someone don't understand what aggro means and hit the mob first or before i even have aggro on it.
Tanking Paladins do have less mana usually than our Holy counterbarts. But a Paladin make no question wants to get hit physically and getting hit generates a lot of our aggro we do to mobs. As long as we taking damage which is good and getting healed we're fine. Your getting lots of mana back from Spiritual Attunment. Healing for us generate aggro even though its smaller treshold. And if the healer is doing a good job often the Paladin Tank have more than enough mana to keep going all out on a mob if he or she has to thus even more sustained threat.
A good Pally Tank that knows how to play their class should know how to manage their mana and seal if they need to seal and Judge Wisdom for mana while having a threat lead in a group. A Paladin with no mana is almost as close to a dead paladin.
A good healer that has a Paladin for a Tank that understands how they operate can do no better thing for that tank than to keep them fully healed up. More heal is more mana to them. More mana is more threat damage loaded to mob. We have different mechanics to our taunt than a warrior does but yet it works similiar. However as Tanks we can generate lots of threat for a group to hold mobs as long as the paladin thats tanking knows what their doing.
Anyway nice blog!
www.ardentdefender.blogspot.com
Just a quick mention, we don't need or use mp/5, and int isn't a huge priority. My mana pool is usually around 4K and I rarely if ever run out of mana.
We don't look for strength at all either.
We need Def, armour, stam, and spell damage the most.
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