What if.
If Paladins had taunt but nothing else changed, would they still be viable as raid tanks?
Just geeky curiosity.
Yes. That is really the only thing holding them back.
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They would need a way of not going oom.
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They would be better but no where near a warrior
No. They wouldn’t be viable. Most of the bosses in AQ40 and Naxx are taunt immune, and Prot Paladins still cannot tank them.
they still have itemization problems and mana issues
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My understanding is their mitigation isn’t good enough. No defensive stance hurts. They have a harder time avoiding crushing blows. Redoubt depends on getting crit and a crit from something like Grand Widow Faerlina is 8k on a paladin.
A warrior is a much better option for something like Patchwerk (10% more damage taken makes it much easier to be one shot by hateful), Loatheb (their heals are all put on a linked one minute cooldown), Sapphiron (base melee damage is 2.5x Nefarian), Kel’Thuzad (6-7k spikes from Guardians of Icecrown are 7-8k spikes on a paladin) etc. Even on Four Horsemen if they had a taunt they’re going to take more damage than a warrior so why bother?
They struggle to tank Heigan (mana drain) and Maexxna (no shield wall).
The only tauntable bosses in Naxxramas are Thaddius, Razuvious and Four Horsemen so that’s not really a big deal.
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Greater Blessing of Kings generates from what I have heard a ton of threat, like its kinda crazy how much threat they can make in short order.
Apparently its just a lack of the ability to taunt swap that truly makes them worse, in addition to the obvious lack of gear options.
A taunt won’t change things.
No decent tanking gear.
Threat is limited outside of a Gimmick that may or may not change in light of the recent ectoplasmic thing.
Too many stats required to tank effectively.
No mana once you’re oom and out of consumes.
Two major problems in classic for paladins to overcome are;
- Itemization
- Mana
You figure out how to solve these and then maybe a paladin can be viable as a raid tank, but good luck convincing other people.
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You must consider that 99% of people calling pally tank non viable are talking about speed clear, from my personal experience only 10% of people do speed clear raids.
Paladin as a tank is viable thanks to GBoK spam and the healing easiness of classic wow, some fights like Ragnaros have to be fought in a non conventional way, but all the fights in the game can be tanked as a pally which means they are viable.
Even for speed clearing some top alliance guilds use them for a couple single target encounters because they output more threat than other tanks if you stack many of a class like warriors.
It’s true that not having a taunt hold them back, taunt is not required for most encounters but it’s a safe meassure to not wipe when you screw up (which will happen a lot as a tank), I assume that with a taunt pallys would be on the same level as wars tho they probably keep specialising in aoe threat, instead of single target encounters.
BTW the Out of Mana thing is also only for speed clear where you don’t have time to drink each pull, on a typical raid you will find yourself out of Mana only against enemies that burn Mana like blue drakes in BWL or if something wrong happens and you have to use lay of hands on yourself or another tank.
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Tl;dr
Paladin tanks suck but here is a wall of text to tell you that you should accept them and also enjoy four hour BWL runs just to make people who play meme specs feel better.
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Mostly oom Paladins are really good for taunt immune fights tps.
If they had taunt it make very good. Even with oom issues.
Easiest fix would be create a relic that gives judgement taunt. The oom issue would have to stay so they are not op.
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Paladin tanks have multiple disadvantages. One of them is a lack of taunt, yes. But that’s not the whole story.
Compared to a warrior, paladins health pool I much lower, and their ability to mitigate damage is much lower. Even if you have 20 warriors and your paladin is spamming GBoK, and keeping ahead in threat, it’s guaranteed that the paladin tank is requiring more heals than the warrior tank or the bear tank.
Another limitation is mana. You have to find ways to stack Mp5 in order to tank as a paladin and that unfortunately lowers your ability to stack other mitigation stats.
All that said, yes paladins can tank in Classic. They can do it well, and a taunt would help. But it wouldn’t put them on par with warrior or bear tanks.
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idk we have a paladin tanking most of mc and bwl
Yeah, agree, this is the root of the loud echo that makes up this forum and reddit. Too many people get caught up in what their guides/discords say and take that as the only viable way to play the game.
My guild’s MT is a Pally and he doesn’t even do the GBoK spam nor does he have a TF yet. We clear all content just fine. Admittedly, we don’t min/max our raid, but lots of players in Classic needlessly do this. We’re not a speedrun guild, but we still get through BWL in 1.5 hours, which is plenty quick enough for me as I have plenty of time on Sunday afternoons.
Will this continue to work in AQ and Naxx? We’ll have to wait and see but it’s worked so far without any issues. Pally tank definitely isn’t optimal but it’s absolutely viable.
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Well, if they had a taunt they would still suffer from not having any kind of defensive stance to reduce incoming damage, or any defensive cooldowns for damage spikes (that don’t cause the boss to look elsewhere).
Prot pallys have a very incomplete kit in classic, although their threat gen is good.
They can work in raids, but you have to get creative here and there.
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prot suffers from it’s own strengths. so holy spells/damage increases threat - but to do more holy damage you need gear that has no defensive mitigation other than armor.
so to both generate enough threat and to mitigate you have to make compromises. and they are only good for x duration because of having a mana pool. A warrior can tank for as long as they are healed. As soon as a pally runs out of mana you are going to be in trouble.
a taunt would not fix the problems. Not to mention you need spell hit and melee hit if using SoR - which seems like a complete oversight. judgement is going to be one of your main threat generators. So you’d either have to seal of command for your judgements and only spec into melee hit and then switch back to SoR in between and hope for as little partial resists as possible. But, even then, SoC judges do less damage than SoR.
Literally compromises every step of the way.
best way is to cheese the entire thing, gear like a deep prot warrior with intellect and spam BoK.
Paladin tanks in Vanilla/Classic WoW are mostly confined to dungeon content. That doesn’t change until a future xpac. Original WoW sucks for most specs beyond the dungeon level in PvE. 40-man Raiding is a real pigeon-hole, with #$*$% gear itemization to boot.
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Warriors are the only class with tier set bonuses to tank. Every other class that can tank has healing tier set bonuses. The gear is a bigger reason than taunt.