I am playing both a Warrior and a Paladin on hardcore right now. The Paladin is 1,000x better prior to getting Whirlwind on the Warrior, which isn’t until level 36.
Once you get all your abilities on a Warrior, then yeah, Warriors are the best tanks… which is how it’s supposed to be. But even at higher levels, Holy Shock + Judgement is excellent snap threat for the primary target in dungeons and Consecration holds the rest of the mobs in a pull pretty easily. They can also do all of this while wearing a shield - Warriors need a two-hander for big AoE threat.
Paladins are not even particularly viable as tanks for some things, like any time you need to tank swap, like on Hakkar for example…
There’s nothing wrong with discouraging people from setting themselves up for disappointment. If you want to try, go ahead, but be warned, it’s probably not going to work out.
I had no issues tanking Scholo and Strat in a spec I used for raid healing, which was 30/21/0… something like this:
Is there a specific reason you want to play both paladin and tank?
I love paladins but I def avoid paladin tanks in hc unless there is absolutely no other option for that dungeon and I absolutely have to go there.
Nothing against the players, it just that the toolkit is very weak. Sure if works fine if the dps want to watch threat the entire time, everyone wants to chill for 15s every couple pulls for the tank to drink, and you want to do tiny pulls because there is little that can be done if stuff goes wrong.
Personally I’d much rather have a bear / warrior tank and the paladin heal (or even sit around as ret and act like they are doing dmg).
(Note: I’ve had paladin tanks in HC and it works fine - it is just insanely slow compared to a group using classes in their optimal specs)
Shamans can tank all the dungeons too… and you prob could do quite a few of them with a hunter / rogue tank if you push it… Just need to find a group that wants to move really really slowly and is ready to act instantly the second stuff goes wrong.
I thought it was a nice challenge.
My favorite is bear, and dont like much stance swap of war.
I thought paly was great for aoe tanking too.
I dont plan raiding at all.
Only did deadmines so far, and was great, rogue stole agro maybe 2 times
If you are having fun and enjoying the game, then by all means keep at it
As far as the talents go, I’ve heard most ppl say holy shield is pretty good if you are going down that road. If you are able to spare the gold when you get to that level, or have an alt on era, the best thing would be to test both and see which feels better.
Is Holy Shock better than Holy Shield? I thought having Holy Shield (rank 1) is pretty good for building threat. Going 31/20/0 means you will be missing out on Blessing of Sanctuary as well.
There are some limitations for Paladin tank. You have to be more mindful about your mana. I think Paladin tanks are fine until around lv45+ then I’d imagine most people are going to want a Warrior or Druid tank. Another thing is Paladin tank gears are hard to come by. You want Stamina/Intellect/Armor gear, but there arent too many of those for Mail / Plate. It’s going to be harder to find Plate Stamina/Intellect gear at lv40+. And it’s not going to be cheap to buy all those gears on AH. Unless you have a high level main that is funneling gold to your Paladin alt.
No paladin is not a good tank for dungeons. This isn’t TWoW, or Wrath, blizz hasn’t fixed paladins or it would be Classic+ hc. When you lose mana you lose aggro. A druid or warrior can pick up extra mobs if something goes wrong. Paladins can’t. Which means you will be drinking between every other mob pack even with gear well above what you are tanking for.
Worse is the threat output is low. That’s especially bad since every dps knows their bis and how to play. The only threat boost is holy damage. If the boss isn’t attacking the paladin then the paladin’s threat output is lowered again. There is no safety net of a taunt. For when a dps isn’t paying attention to threat meters.
Even when gearing there’s a % hit and % spell hit conflict since half of a paladin’s holy damage attacks register as melee and the other half as spells. Meaning tankadins require the best trinkets from raids to compesate. Blizzard was right to just combine everything to scale off strength and melee hit later on. Since just getting the stats to be viable in the role is so many more than other classes that tankadin becomes broken in other ways. That’s what other places deal with in balancing.
Maybe its a good thing the tank has to stop every couple pulls instead of warriors and bears who keep chain pulling not giving healer enough time to drink. How mamy waters have i wasted because i cant get the full duration use of them before the tank charges into another group and is now needing healing while im 50% mana drinking. Seems like having to slow down would actually be safer.
They’re great for dungeons but not for raiding. They have their niche role, but you might as well go warrior. I play Prot with consecration to tank or heal dungeons and I have always tanked since there are a shortage of tanks.
Nobody has once complained and have actually said the runs have gone smooth and quickly because I can AoE pull and kill.
My main goal with the pally is to solo dungeons lower than my lvl, i dont think i could achieve this with warrior.
Now for soloing, do you think holy shield is required or maybe imp ret aura might be better?
