You can offtank in raids and tank 5man as paladins, especially in undead areas such as Strath or Scholo - you’ll shine there as prot. It’ll be harder than a warrior, but very much doable, as you have no “oh @#$@” buttons.
If you want to raid, find a dual prot/holy spec that lets you heal well and gives a good # of tank talents. And carry 2 sets of gear. That way you can offtank the adds when needed, and heal when needed. That’s what good hybrids do.
Yep, as was said before. Just find a guild that will take you. You will not be in a bleeding age progression guild clearing NAXX in a month, but you can still be in a very decent MC/BWL/AQ20/ZG guild. Which is in the end where most of the people will be.
I see a lot of people thinking Casual raiding will be a thing, for MC and maybe BWL it will be but once AQ40/Naxx40 pop up for going to need more than causal type players to down some of those bosses. A good Example with be Twin Emperors (how ever this one is late into AQ40), the gauntlet before Fankriss, and tanks are going to need to be up to par with Battleguard Sartura. Same kinda goes with Naxx40 with some of the bosses also.
If anyone that’s causal gets discouraged by this I don’t mean to do that, a know a lot of the dps back in Vanilla that did these raids were causal, but thats the thing most of them were dps. If you plan on tanking with a causal mind set you will most likely get replaced or moved to dps role because you will be under geared to tank the bosses.
If you think hardcore, min/max, no lifer guilds are the only ones who will deny spots to meme specs you are gonna be in for a rude awakening.
Most high end raiding guilds will not let you raid as ret or prot. It may take some time but a few guilds will be around to let you raid as ret but you might run into issues with gear drops and who the guild gives them to first. PvP ret is awesome, it plays way differently than live. You spec SoC and Vengeance, you wait for Vengeance to proc and then stun your target and then judge them, this hits like a rock and will easily take someone half way down on hp. It will be a long battle from their usually to get the other 50% down. You just repeat that step each time. For 5 mans you can easily play ret without any problems, people love the buffs and defensive cooldowns like LoH and BoP. Just remember, ret in vanilla had literally one direct attack spell and that is it, judgement, and you have to refresh your seal every time you judge a target and HoW when the target is below 20%.
^^^that^^^
plus offer to swing Nightfall for your guild and you will be rewarded with every 2handed weapon that drops ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
I’ll give you reassurance and reality, Valorhardt:
First off, yeah you can go prot or ret and be just fine. You’ll find guilds and friends that are inclusive and supportive of your play style. If you go really hard, you’ll actually be surprised at how good these viable specs can be. Also, in Classic, holy resists operate in your favor, so it’s possible we could see prots/rets pushing a much stronger meta game.
Now, you’ll also come across players that won’t stand for it - either they don’t have time for viable specs or they are straight up haters. You’ll need thick skin, because these players may treat you like a punching bag. You know, like, “u’r dps sux, you die so fast, why are you always out of mana, hurry and drink, so slow, why do I have to pull for you” etc.
Light be with you!
Do it. Fight the power and break the paradigm. Push that boulder up the hill, and keep pushing when it rolls back down on you.
How boring would the game be if everybody played each class the same? That’s the gameplay we have in modern WoW, where there is almost no customization of how you build your class. Do you want to repeat that? Didn’t think so, now get in there and go for it. Stand up and fight.
When I was a Priest in vanilla the group I ran with had no warrior tank, we always had to find one. As you can imagine that got old, so our pally friend spent the gold to prot tank for us (lasted a week). What I can say is pallys have a very hard time keeping threat, dps was always being plumited, my fade was on contant cooldown. Compared to a warrior, pallys are a nightmare.
Maybe, if you have very very very patient friends to group with, pally tanking can kina sorta work.
All that being said, we are not the same gamers that just picked this game up 15 years ago. So who knows?
Did your paladin friend gear like a warrior, or gear more for spellpower? That’s where their threat comes from.
So you’re saying someone who didn’t have experience tanking as a paladin had a hard time tanking?
No, not really. He had a few pieces from 5 mans.
Minmax, doing it to em, since 2005.
Not a lot. He had access to a friends account and tanked with his warrior for a brief time.
Something to consider, though. We did all the 5 mans at lvl cap a TON of times, we all got our .05 dungeon set. Even me, the healer knew what the tank should do on every pull in every dungeon.
And if you play a paladin tank like a warrior, you’re not going to do nearly as well. But yes, they won’t do the same threat as a warrior.
False… we had a heavy prot, light holy Paladin offtank in my guild who would off tank some fights and heal some. Our guild cleared most of Naxx and he was there, still rolling as prot…
Can’t main tank though, mana problems…
You can DPS and some people might not let you into their groups but it honestly won’t be too bad. Don’t expect to join a serious guild tho.
Tanking is fine in preraid stuff but once you get to MC there is just no chance.
You said you never healed well get ready because even if you are Ret you will heal. Hybrids are actually Hybrids in vanilla. You need to support your group with heals, bop, freedom, sac, and dispels.
Yep, if you play a hybrid, your job is to be flexible - and that includes offhealing. Ret is also really bad as DPS if you play traditional AP-based, Theloras and other Paladin enthusiasts have come up with the Spelladin build and time will tell if it works in vanilla.
It takes major work to make Ret work. Look up Spelladins and be prepared to farm bunches of Manual Crowd Pummelers.
It takes less work to pull off a Protection paladin, oddly enough. You just have to learn mana management and how to pull off creative bubbling for any problems.
Just part of the wild interpretations of “viable”
Guardian and Vengence are considered “unviable” right now and both have tanked +22 keys and tanked full mythic BoD clears.