Paladin tanking tips?

Classes Paladin
#1

I’ve been playing since wotlk but I’ve always played dps until literally a few months ago. I love tanking and I really love pally, I’m ok at it but I’ve only run base dungeons up until level 30 something.

I was wondering if I could get some general tips on what my opener should be and anything that seems helpful that I should know. I was in an accident in 2017 so my memory isn’t very good therefore videos and guides where I have to retain the information is hard for me, however, if I could just go back to this and see the basis of what I should be doing it’d be very helpful.

#2

I am not a prot paladin. I am holy doing 20/21’s in M+.

But I still want to pitch in a little, but this is mostly for 60 content though.

  • Make use of your Blessings. I use VuhDo panels to apply blessing easily. Biggest one would be Blessing of Protection. I see a lot of paladins who barely ever use it at their disposal.
  • For Tier 1 talent - afaik, Shield Block outperforms the spinny hammer things.
  • Paladins (in 60’s content) do need to self heal afaik. Healing them can be a nightmare sometimes, as unlike other tanks, they don’t seem to have same kind of damage mitigation.
  • you want to keep your Shield of Right armor buff.
  • Use your throwing shield ability ( Avenger’s Shield) off CD. Pair it with absorbs talent. Really strong in 60’s if you go Kyrian. It is also your opener, followed by Consecration.
  • You want to use your Hammer of the Righteous while you are standing on Consecration.
  • Keep Consecration up. It has no CD so maintaining 100% is very easy as you may have seen.

Talent’s wise, when I tank Torghast, I go
0-x-x
0-x-x
0-x-x
0-x-x
0-x-x
x-0-x
x-0-x

2 Likes
#3

Opener is typically a shield throw, but if you’re trying to be precise and just pull 1 thing use Judgement or taunt then judgement.

Judgement will be your strongest single target hitter use Hammer of Wrath when ever up and use SotR to maintain an armor buff and build toward free word of glory casts. always be standing in Consecration for the damage mitigation buff.

Crusaders Judgement will be your first choice talent unless youre Kryian and Tanking highend keys then you’ll switch to Avengers Shield for the Absorbation Shield it provides.

Defenses - Ardent defender should be up when ever possible, Guardian of Kings should be used in big pulls with high damage but remember its a 5 min Cooldown. lay on hands is an oh Sh*t button that heals you to full health instantly but again 6min cd. The trinket from De other side, bloodscale i think, but you want that it does damage and gives you a big shield. Word of glory can be used in a pinch but try not to let the SotR buff drop you want that up as much as possible. Divine Shield and BoP are nice but they drop threat, there are macros to double tap it to bring it up then drop it (useful to drop M+ DoTs)

go Kryian, why? because divine toll goes tong t-tong tong T-tong tong tong, and gives you a big shield if you have the avengers shield talent. Divine Resonance is a great legendary bonus interrupts and damage.

Stats -

  1. Strength is the single most influential stat (ilvl is king, except rings and amulets)
  2. Stack Haste to 20% after that haste has diminishing returns.
  3. Then stack Mastery, Vers is a close second
  4. Crit is last priority, provides an offensive buff and parry chance

And Have FUN! I love my pallies!

4 Likes
#4

Thank you for those numbers. I was wondering when DR kicked in. Now I have an idea.

#5

Small tip on Avenger’s Shield:

  • Once you get rank 3 (at Lv 44 according to Wowhead) the shield silences the first target it hits. So when you are pulling a pack of mobs, target a caster for the initial toss, that way it will be silenced and run into melee with you.
2 Likes
#6

my advice is don’t sleep on final stand, it’s definitely the lower skill talent and at higher skill levels is probably outperformed by righteous protector, but being immune and taunting everything around you is insanely good, especially paired with unbreakable spirit for shorter CD.

DR doesn’t actually kick in until 30%

as far as I’m aware you just keep stacking haste since it helps our holy power generation thus leading to better sotr uptime and thus better survivability.

I’d recommend checking out the hammer of wrath discord and asking questions over there since it’ll generally be more active than the wow forums.

#7

The tank’s number one job is to hold aggro.

Don’t stand in bad stuff.

Use your defensive CDs.

Know the dungeon, know the route you want to take and know the boss fight well. (I pug a lot. Much different if with friends)

And don’t forget: Hold aggro.

It’s the dps job to kill what you pull. If dps is pulling, they are bad dps. (mistakes happen, but there seems to be a joker every once in while)

It’s the healer’s job to keep you alive. You and your healer have a special relationship. If you die, more than likely, the group wipes. If the healer dies, more than likely the group wipes. If a dps dies, it will take longer to kill whatever you are fighting. DPS are expendable.

So, keep an eye on your healer. Keep an eye on his mana bar.

Tanking can be a hard job. It also can be a very rewarding job.

#8

Yep. Feel free to join up and ask questions! More than happy to help anyone who needs it.

#9

Haste soft cap is 20% according to Method, Icy Veins and several other sites.

icy veins “At ~20% haste you will have enough rotational holy power to achieve very high up times on SotR. Once you are this level of haste you will want to start looking to maximize the benefits of the other stats over haste”
So not DR, but none of the high-end paladin tanks take more than 20% haste. See Methods website, one of the best M+ guilds in wow.

#10

oh ok.

oh wow.

haste still doesn’t hit diminishing returns/softcap until 30%. Target value is different than softcap/DR. I was wrong about stacking haste though, been a while since I’ve consulted a guide.

#11

You are correct. Haste from rating (e.g. what’s on your gear) doesn’t DR until 30%. Haste is still the best stat and what you generally want first after item level. But Mastery/Vers are also good for Prot. Find a Haste number that makes you feel comfortable!

#12

true that

higher sotr uptime is never bad, especially with block chance being added to it with our tier set (I wonder if guides will shift to recommending stacking haste indefinitely because of it? keeping up 12% block chance seems really strong.)

#13

You’ll have enough Haste to have 100% uptime on the 12% block – Haste’s value is always in having more self-sustain through Word of Glory and cooldown reduction through talents/conduits.

#14

Yea I already find keeping sotr up pretty easy with the injection of holy power from divine toll with its extra procs and the kyrian lego atm. I think I have about 25% haste and I run an old worries soul trinket which I find to be plenty of haste for me.

#15

You’ve gotten lots of good advice already, but I just wanted to add a bit of clarity around Holy Shield vs Blessed Hammer.

Holy Shield is an amazing defensive option, but it depends on what you’re running overall in terms of legendary and other talents. It’s often paired with Crusader’s Judgement for the HP generation, and therefore you wouldn’t use this with the Divine Resonance legendary.

Blessed Hammer offers something different. It allows you to build HP while kiting and in between pulls so you can go in with SotR up and immediately be able to put it up again in a couple seconds. Because you get this extra HP generation from BH, you can forego Crusader’s Judgement and take First Avenger since you don’t need the extra judgements. Then you can use Divine Resonance legendary.

Both are good options and will likely be determined by your playstyle.

1 Like
#16

Crusader judgement should never be used in m+ unless you’re just trying to do as much single target damage as you can lol.

#17

I did Holy Shield for a long time. but put my Pally on hold as a tank until I got further on my druids and DK.

Finally a month or so ago I came back. Didn’t like the feel of HS and when Blessed Hammer.

For Mythics, I found BH far better to use. The effective mitigation is about the same. HS is around 15% and BH is around 13% on average of my self ‘healing’, so basically even. But for me, having an extra charge of BH is nice as it seems to smooth out my HP generation a bit and removes gaps in rotation if I don’t manage my abilities properly. I can also spam it before pulls to get HP up, or to maintain HP between pulls, kind of borrowing the concept of pooling resources like I do on my DK at the end of pulls. Plus for kiting, BH with consecration talent makes for fairly simple kiting while still getting damage and mitigation out.

The juicy part of HS is the ability to block magic damage. That can be really nice.

But like Virgil said, except for ST raid bosses, I’d miss first avenger too much in M+. That with Divine Toll + Divine Resonance + DT Conduits results in massive shields at the start of pulls when I’m usually most vulnerable. And with DR leggo, I get even more HP generation.

One thing that works for me is thinking of HP kind of like Runic Power for a DK. if I’m low on HP, means I’m vulnerable. I try to pool up to 5 before spending usually so if I do spend I just need one GCD to spend it again in case of a big hit or wanting to get a WoG off in addition to SoTR. Now I’m not saying to pool always. I don’t let SoTR fall off at the expense of getting to 5, but if I have 4s left on SoTR and 3 HP, I’m not spending on another SoTR until I get to 4 or 5. But if I have DT coming off CD and know I can get 5 HP from it, I’ll spend to 0 if I can before sending DT out. Just for me, its odd I didn’t really figure that stuff out until I played my DK again and realized RP was my life bar in reality and starting applying that to my Prot Pal.

With DT, Divine Resonance, and BH, I find my HP generation is pretty plentiful with very little, if any, downtime on mitigation.

1 Like
#18

Holy Shield’s listing on healing meters is deceptive. That’s only the magic block part and doesn’t account for the physical damage DR you gain from increased block chance.

#19

Interesting, didn’t know that.

#20

@Wooble actually your all wrong in regards to the DR and how it works, let me enlighten my fellow pally’s yes DR kicks in after 30% of which is based on equipped gear excluding trinkets with that said its quite simple take off all gear that give you secondary stat rating look at your static % and rating amounts and minus that after all ur gear is re-equipped and that will give you the amount of head room you have between ur sec stats and the DR…0% means no DR effect for that particular sec stat.