I get that people are going to balk at the idea of anything other than Warriors as tanks but lets be honest here, people know a lot more about the how the game works now compared to back then. All the theory crafting and strats have been worked out and everyone knows exactly how the fights and mechanics play.
And I get that main tanks, Warriors will always win out but if you needed an off tank and a Prot Pal was offering, would you take them?
I really want to play my beloved class in its Classic state and I really want to tank. Whats peoples thoughts on Paladin tanks?
I hear ya dude, but outside of a 5 piece blue set, the itemization isn’t there. Pallies regardless of spec rely on int. I remember tanking as a Pally and I had to constantly drink.
That isn’t the whole truth. There’s a ton of stuff we have long since forgotten that was relevant back in vanilla. More specifically the stats you had to micromanage to make sure you were crit capped. This is one of the hurdles paladins had to overcome to be tanks, finding defense gear for non warriors was challenging.
Another obstacle to overcome, and quite frankly its the biggest, is that paladins do not have a taunt. Any fight that has an aggro shed, which is super common in vanilla, end up with the paladin running around looking stupid while all the dps die.
I played a prot paladin in vanilla. It can be done, but it takes the collective effort of everyone in the raid/group to make it work .
they’re already clearly a good choice for 5 mans on beta. With today’s mindset, there will be more players trying to push for faster and more efficient use of their time. Players will value a paladin’s strength in multi target threat for AOE speed clearing 5 mans. I honestly think they’ll be in decent demand. Without a taunt, you’ll probably have to respec for raids. You can absolutely tank dungeon content very well.
I like them. It looks fun but also very challenging. And although I think that Prot Pally will be a strong dungeon farming tank as their gear gets better, I don’t want people to have this idea in their heads that Prot Pally is just pushing Concecrate and facerolling dungeons, it’s not that simple. There’s also a stigma, so if you are not on your A-game, players may hate on you, so have thick skin.
It’s certainly viable for some content and this time around I believe there are going to be a lot more Paladins willing to try Prot (and Ret). While people are more aware of what a class is capable of, or potentially capable of, so too are people who know the limitations and drawbacks of each class.
Mana is a limitation. Lack of a taunt is a limitation. It doesn’t bar them from tanking, but it’s something that has to be actively planned and thought about beforehand. If you can find the right group or guild with the right frame of mind who are collectively willing to work around those limitations then it’s certainly possible.
I don’t have high hopes that this time around will be much different from 2004-2007 however. We may know more about what a Paladin is capable of in terms of tanking because of years of theory crafting and testing but the mindset of players has evolved since then as well. How patient do you expect other players to be when you have to stop and drink frequently (a very slow process to get to full)? How will those other players feel when they pull aggro, and they will (hello crit heals!), but you lack a taunt and have to keep chipping away at threat while they get pounded in the face?
In short, being a Prot Paladin requires more patience and effort on the part of the people in your group/raid and that’s the biggest limitation of them all.
Correct me if I am wrong but this here, this is the vanilla experience that people have been crying out for over the years. Working together as a team to overcome an obstacle.
If people are already looking at playing Classic with todays “GO GO GO GO” attitude for clearing content as quick as possible, it will be DOA.
Dont get me wrong, I fully understand what you are saying and do not disagree for a second. I just can see how this is going to go, people will love it until the nostalgia wears off and they realise they actually have to work to accomplish something instead of waiting for next weeks emissary chest to give you raid quality gear.
I am not kidding my self in thinking that I should or will main tank as a prot pal but it would be nice for people to realise/ remember that Prot Pal was viable, even in raids, it just required that one thing that people have been wanting in WoW for a long time; teamwork and communication.
If I were in a raid and the tank needed to drink, I would happily wait because thats how it was and those little things are what made the game a unique experience in the first place. The weird little ways you had to work around each classes weaknesses, instead of how it is now where everyclass is self sufficient and doesnt require any thought in how to work together.
But thats just me and my 2 cents… but considering my $0.02aud is only worth $0.014USD… I guess my opinion isnt worth much XD
Main issue with it is going OOM. BC fixed with with whatever the ability was called (I want to say Spiritual Attunement, but don’t quote me). No mana meant no threat.
Paladin tanks will work in all the leveling 5 mans and pre-raid areas pretty well. In some cases even better. Just bring a lot of water for between pulls. But where paladin tanks fall short are in raids. Not to say a raid team couldn’t force one into a spot to make it work, but they would be sacrificing speed, efficiency, and most importantly time to do so. Or it would end up just as an OT that is used in only the most niche situations that the spot would likely be better used by someone else.
The first big thing is mana. Fights last longer and require pretty strong threat generation if they are to be shorter, but more threat means using more mana, using more mana means you run out faster.
Now the solution to the mana issue would be gearing. Here is the next problem. You don’t have a lot of gear that fits the paladin tanking needs. You need int, spell power, and spirit/mp5 to scale your mana pool, threat, and mana generation as everyone else in the groups threat rate grows with their gear. Top that off with needing armor, defense, and avoidance to help as well. These options don’t exist in good enough numbers to really make it practical in raiding and it only gets worse every tier you go up.
Then the final nail in the coffin is lack of a taunt. Some raid mechanics require you to swap bosses or adds. No taunt makes that hard. If the other tank dies for whatever reason you snapping the mob up is suddenly a lot harder. Again, this doesn’t make things impossible for a prot paladin but when you add up everything up it starts to look grim.
I don’t mean to be a downer about this either. I am sure a prot paladin can find a home if the individual really puts in the top tier effort, is willing to use a lot of consumes, and will be willing to accept being a “meme” spec by higher end players and taking that in good spirit. If you prove yourself with all of the above things and are good spirited it is a maybe. But I stress maybe. But don’t expect it to be easy.
Prot Paladins have really great tanking talents, issue is the taunt, but that can be worked around.
When we have Paladins that are geared out, we will have good enough tanks to raid with close to 40 Paladins. In Scholo there is a Plate +defense armor set with +MP5 stats. That will be really good throughout Classic.
You don’t always need to use consecration at max rank for threat and there’s always SoW and JoW to recover some mana. In raids, if you’re tanking a boss, consecration is even less necessary to use a max rank, you just need the threat. And isn’t there a threat component to JoL/JoW when you gain HP/mana?
If your raid or group wants to let you, then sure, you can tank as a prot pally.
All things being equal, you will never be as good as a warrior tank. Period. Its not skill, its just math and mechanics.
In raids for example, there is a thing called a “Crushing blow”, which will do serious damage to a tank. The only way to mitigate a crushing blow is to have your block, dodge, and parry pass a certain threshold. Only warriors can do this because they have shield slam. A pally can never get crushing blow immune, so its really not worth the risk.
In five mans no one cares, but if you’re pugging expect dps to pull agro off. Without a taunt, they’re hosed, and they’ll blame you. In a premade? Do whatever. Get two hunters and tank with their pets, lol.
If your dream is to offtank mobs the main tank can’t handle, then pally isn’t bad. Just understand that when you’re not needed, you’ll be expected to heal and cleanse. Vanilla “classes” are that, “classes” first. Specs aren’t huge changes. Pallys healed and cleansed in raids. Didn’t matter what spec you were.
When we are geared enough, we will clear a raid with 40 Paladins.
It will only take time to gear everyone. Then the time will come, when YouTube, will have 40M Paladin World First kills. THE PALADIN Guild - Welcome
These things do generate threat. But then it gets to the scaling issue. You need spell power to realistically increase threat combined with int on the gear to increase mana pool. Topped with needing armor (so leather / cloth items are no go) and defense. Block / parry doesn’t hurt either right. Just not enough gear with all these things to have all you need. In scholo their is a few examples of perfect pieces but that is basically admitting gear leveling out before stepping into raids and yes, in classic gear curves upward much slower, but a curve still exists. So in MC? Sure it might work. But then you hit BWL and (spit balling not actual numbers) DPS’s threat jumps by 10% and yours can only go up 5%. AQ40 theirs goes up another 10% and yours only goes up 5% again. This is also considering that in MC it was pretty close to begin with with the mana issues. Judging is effective to a degree in return of mana but it won’t be enough. You would have to chug mana pots. Again, not absolutely impossible but it just comes down to the brass tax.
A warrior will have a golden ticket called taunt. A warrior will have gear much more itemized for their needs with tanking. A warrior will have set bonuses that help them in tanking. Add these things up with equally skilled players and you got a warrior tank being just a whole lot better in almost all situations and that is what it boils down to.
So in a slower more causal environment a prot paladin can work. If you put in work you can prove yourself to be ok in a few situations. But a warrior will always be the better option unless you just outclass the hell out of the people you play with which would mean you are trading way down in skill to play a spec which of course always works.
Yes they do. And what they’ve discovered is that warriors, paladins and druids can all tank any 5 man dungeon no problem. When it comes to raiding paladins are not viable enough to be considered for guilds other than those who are pushing the envelope just to say that they did.
Warriors are overall the best raid tanks. Bear tanks are good for many encounters and also for speed runs. Paladins don’t really have a place in raids as tanks.
But realistically, how much threat do you really need? A paladin can pull 700+ threat without spell damage gear, or Thunderfury. A completely maxed out ignite should only be pulling ~1000 equivalent tps + the 250 equivalent tps from fireball. And that is if you pop all big spell damage trinkets at once. A 1500 dps warrior is only putting out a little over 750 equivalent tps.
If i was raid leader i wouldn’t mind having a prot paladin in my team as a “spot” tank for heavy AoE encounters and trash mobs. But i would expect you to rock your healing gear and heal outside of those moments. I also would give favour to the other tanks when it came to tabking gear.
This is all purely for the purposes of progression however… once stuff is on farm and your MT and OTs are looking pretty geared, it would be kind of fun to muck around with your prot paladin advocates.
“Then the time will come, when YouTube, will have 40M Paladin World First kills.”
No, that will never happen. Pallys have some of the worst DPS in classic but also the worst raid tanks. Not trying to be mean, but no, pallys are garbage at anything other than healing, and dungeon tanking.