World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

So you want to take a beating, do you?  Well, you’ve come to the right place.  This guide will walk you through the basics of playing a protection based Paladin, or Tankadin as they are commonly called. 

Playing a Tankadin can be a lot of fun but can be quite challenging, so you should enter into tanking prepared. Many players still have preconceived ideas about tanks and only consider a warrior as a proper tank in the game. Overcoming that prejudice can sometimes take some effort, however since patch 2.4 provided many warrior like abilities and patch 3.0.2 further boosted our abilities that prejudice is far less than it was before. The biggest difficulty now is actually learning how to tank and doing it well. That's where this guide attempts to help.

Basics about Paladin Tanks and Off-Tanking

Paladins differ in tanking from warriors who generate most of their threat (aggro) from the damage they cause, which is similar to druid tanks. However, much of the threat that you cause as a Paladin tank comes from being hit or from causing holy damage. Aura of Retribution, Blessing of Sanctuary, and Holy Shield are all prime examples of this.

A Tankadin gains aggro through the holy damage that you cause.  This means that to hold aggro on a target you need to cause as much holy damage as possible.  This means that you need to have a decent amount of +damage so that you can cause enough holy damage, luckily a very reasonable amount will suffice.  While doing this you also need to worry about your primary stats of Stamina and +defensive skill that your healer can actually keep you alive. 

Paladin tanks have slightly worse damage mitigation than a warrior or druid tank, especially when taking big slow hits. However, when taking many fast hits we are better than either of the other tanking classes. While we do not have a rage bar, we have a mana bar that gets used in much the same way, and gets replenished every time we get healed (10% of all healing returned as mana at level 70) or as we block or dodge attacks if using Blessing of Sanctuary. While we only have one taunt, we have a backup in the form of Blessing of Protection, and a ranged pull back in the form of the Avengers shield. We also have a stun on a 30 second timer.

Because all of the Paladin abilities are on timers or act for very short time frames, tanking as a Paladin involves very close management of spell casting. You constantly have to manage seals, judgments, holy shield, stuns, consecration, and more. It can take some serious getting used to.

On the off-tanking issue, because much of the threat generated as a Paladin tank is from being hit, we do not make very good off tanks. It is possible, but more difficult than a warrior or druid off tanking.

Item Stats and Bonuses

While a more detailed section on raid gear will follow later in the guide it is important to understand the stats and bonuses that items provide to you as a Paladin. It is critical to understand which stats and bonuses are good for you and why. For the basic numbers for all stats you can refer back to the Paladin - Basics section. However a few more details are needed for tanking on several of the stats and bonuses.

As a protection based Paladin you will be focusing on Stamina and Strength as your two core stats. For item bonuses you need to focus on: Defence, Dodge, Parry, and Block.

The most important stat or bonus, is Defence. Your goal with defence is to get to a rating of 540 at level 80 so that you can tank raid bosses. It is important at this point to understand that the numbers shown on items are the bonus to defence and not the actual defence rating. This is true for all bonuses. The amount that the item bonus adds to your ability varies based on your level. For defence at level 80 you need roughly 4.9 defence on an item to gain a single point towards your 540 number. This means that at level 80 in addition to your base defence, you will need to collect almost 700 defence as bonuses on items to reach the 540 rating. Once you are at this rating then raid bosses will not be able to critically hit you and you can start focusing on other defence skills and stats.

Stat wise it is easy to see why Stamina is important, every point provides you with 10 extra health base, which turns into more after your talents and Kings. When you factor in the 12% boost through talents and 10% from Blessing of Kings, a simple investment of 10 stamina that would grant 100 health becomes a 122 health boots. Obviously the more health you can have as a tank the better, however a balancing act comes into play as you need to ensure defensive abilities as well or you will be too hard to heal no matter the amount of health you have. Stamina also acts as a threat boost if you have points in the Touched by the Light talent that provides 30% of your Stamina as spell power. Strength is the other tanking stat as it provides both threat, through increased attack power and damage, and mitigation, through increased block value. Every two points of strength adds a point of block value reducing the incoming damage.

Item bonuses are a bit more complicated than stats and defence. The three you are looking for should all be balanced, however dodge and parry are better than block as they completely mitigate (avoid) incoming damage, where as block only mitigates a portion of the incoming damage up to your block value. The bonus numbers on the items again go through a conversion process that is based on level to determine how much they affect the actual percentage change to dodge, parry or block. At level 80 the numbers required to generate a 1% chance of each ability are roughly: Dodge = 39.3, Parry = 49.2, and Block = 16.4.

Since dodge avoids all damage and has the lower conversion number when compared to parry, many tanks have just focused on dodge. To counter this Blizzard has implemented a diminishing return system on all of these avoidance stats to promote balancing them. The amount dropped off due to diminishing returns increases as you stack any given stat. When compared to the old percentages (Pre-WotLK) the same amount of dodge that would earn you a 25% chance to dodge now earns just over 20%. An old 30% chance to dodge drops to a roughly 23% dodge chance. As you can see this makes balancing the three bonuses critical.

In addition to the above core stats and bonuses, many items will have additional stats and bonuses. The ones that are also good for a protection based Paladin are: Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Block Value. However you should not give up any of the previous core stats or bonuses to get them.

Talents

As a tankadin, realize that you will need to almost all of your points in the protection tree. You need to do this to grab two key tanking abilities that are found deep in the tree. The first is the only real ranged pulling ability you have against anything but undead and demons, the avengers shield at the 41 point talent level..  This ability is a godsend to paladins, since it allows you to pull MOBs at a distance and to quickly get a head start on threat generation. The second ability is the Hammer of the Righteous gained as your 51 point talent. This talent produces a ton of threat on up to 3 targets that you are engaged with and really ramps up your damage and threat output once you get it.

There are many critical abilities in the protection talent tree, in fact there are more good talents than most players can reasonably take. Just a few of the key ones are Anticipation for a 5% boost to dodge, Toughness for 10% extra armour, Sacred Duty and Combat Expertise for 6% additional stamina from each, One-handed weapon specialization for a 10% boost to all damage while holding a one-handed weapon, and many more.

This is the Tankadin Build many players are currently using for raid tanking at level 70 - Tankadin Build. 

Comments or questions? Email me (Messiah@TenTonHammer.com) or post in our Paladin forums!

Note from the Author: While I try to cover off everything I have learned about tanking while playing my Paladin and main tanking for my guild in this guide, I would be remiss to not mention the excellent sites that have helped me learn to be a Paladin Tank. The two main forums I read on a constant basis to uncover all the best tricks, tips, tactics and math behind the game are Maintankadin and Tankspot. In game I use the addons Tankadin and RatingBuster and out of game I use WoWwebstats to figure out math, rotations, and mechanics. If you really want to be the best Paladin tank you can be, I strongly suggest referanceing all the great material out there.