Low level paladin tanking?

almost 30 went just enough into holy to pickup consecration for area pulls and then enough into prot to pickup the first shield talent and some of the increased armor.

tanked 2 dungeons and well feeling kind of squishy, my hp is spiking lots but suspect that is due to lack of block/defense at lower levels.

I had a spike fitted I have ret aura up, i have fury up, might and am judging mostly improved SoR but some paladin or warrior is always pulling aggro (even with salvation) and it is impossible to get back!

it has me feeling a little burnt out, the amount of standing and doing nothing but auto attack waiting for mana, taking damage and having the only role I am supposed to be doing (holding aggro) not working!

will it get better ? suggestions ? starting to feel burnt out on pally

ps:does Righteous fury only effect your own ret aura?

thanks

Replace ret aura with your armor aura and your HP wont spike so hard.

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Let the Priest know they can use shield on you. They’re usually scolded so often by Wars they forget it’s quite useful on Pallies.

Also, bring tons of drinks/mana pots … and patience.

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Ask the dps to give you 3-5 seconds for consecrate to tick. Usually thats enough for the mobs to stick to you pretty good, unless you have a low rank of consecrate still.

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I tanked all through vanilla as various specs, and was always pretty spiky. Got a little better at level 70 :wink: but even then could be spiky. Trick is to run with healers without a heart condition (i’ve also healed pally tanks throughout so can relate to both sides, less stressful as an overhealing druid)

Hey!

Righteous Fury (RF) only makes your own holy damage cause threat, including ret aura. That said, I strongly prefer devotion (you’ll be less squishy).

As for threat, it gets considerably easier once you spec improved RF 3/3. Until then, I recommend binding the skull marker to a key so you can focus holy dmg on one enemy. That said, give other mobs some love with seal of righteous swings. Things dying one at a time means less dmg on you and focused threat.

Things die too fast (except bosses) to really bother judging crusader. So make sure you open judging righteousness for big holy dmg (threat) up front.

If you lose agro, you do have some tools. Stunning buys time for you to land more holy dmg. In a pinch you can also press your target of target key to find who pulled agro and blessing of protection them. They’ll lose agro instantly; it’s effectively a form of taunting.

Paladin is an incredible yet often misunderstood class. Don’t lose faith in the light.

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Ah ha! I knew it ( well suspected ) because he had ret aura so I just changed to devo so we could have two, that may have made the difference.

Making a macro that marks what you are attacking also helps, if everyone is burning your targeted mob there’s less of a chance any additional mobs will break away.

I use shield spikes, ask druids for thorn buffs, etc… passive damage output also helps hold aggro. Add in consecrate with max righteous fury and it’s very noticeable.

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Gear is more important for tanks generally speaking. Try to keep it within 8 levels, and jump to full plate at 40. Spell damage enchant to your weapon if possible. Without speccing into improved righteous fury though it’s tough. I did deadmines at 19-20, and that was easy, but stockades was a shiiit show without improved rf. I’m not tanking again until I’m 36 with improved rf fully specced and redoubt and the block damage fully specced.

Also just run wisdom over might. Once you get higher you can judge seal of wisdom on your none 1st in kill order mobs.

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I never use devotion aura. The mitigation is not worth the loss of dps from ret.

BoP is not a taunt and it’s best to recognize what it does: it removes the target from the threat table. By contrast, taunt replaces someone on the threat table. The difference is after the bubble fades the target goes right back on the threat table and, if they or you didn’t do something to move them down the table the mob will just right back at them.

It’s our best taunt, but you have to build threat on the mob before the bubble fades for it to work like one.

Just gotta focus fire

If someone pulls a mob you’re not attacking it’s on them. Let them tank it their self.

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Right. It’s important to distinguish it from normal taunts. Like stunning, it only buys time to get agro back in emergencies. To go further in depth, it also makes it so they can’t attack or use physical abilities. That forces them to stop dps’ing so you can catch up on threat. A good judgement and a swing or two is usually enough.

Also, being a blessing, they’ll need a rebuff afterwards.

As for ret/devo, this is kind of preference imo. I’ve never had trouble holding agro with devo, so I opt for the extra safety.

It is amazing how different groups can be.

I ran a BFD @lvl 27 last night on my pally with a 26 mage, 28 & 30 hunter. One of the hunters did most of the pulling, and on the rare occurrence I didn’t snag agro on something he’d pet tank it. Otherwise dps cycled through burn targets and it was a super easy run in which we rarely stopped to drink.

Hit 28 and went to Stocks with a lower level mage that AE or Blizzard everything while complaining how slow we were going, and 2 rogues who had apparently taken a solemn oath to ignore all skull marked targets and find some add to open up on while I was still drinking and then attempt to solo.

Heals and myself were oom after every pull and I just ignored the groans about me not keeping agro.

Still got the place done np, and was an enjoyable enough time, but my goodness people can make our jobs difficult, or incredibly easy.

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I was going to suggest OP keep careful track of who they run with and note good players.

When I tanked in Wrath I would only tank for people on my approved list unless someone else vouched for them.

It is really hard to tank well when DPS won’t give you two seconds.

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hey there ive read all the above and to be honest i stopped tanking on ma drood at 70 because dps just dont care honestly its all about padding the metre everyone has to be top, instead of allowing a tank threat time, which no matter warrior , pally , drood all require some time especially with the dps toons put out, im rolling a pally tank now, and i wouldnt beat urself up on threat, good players know to wait and have threat metres, if they choose to top ur threat let them die, its not worth stressing yourself, tanking is very enjoyable on any tank if dps allows threat time u can focus better ur not spending entire run just taunting steady