Last I heard, prot paladins were having mana issues in the beta. Has that improved, yet?
That is normal. Prot paladins before T5ish gear, have mana issues due to how small their mana pools are, IDK why all these people seem to think that paladins are and will be the best tanks at everything from the start of TBC till the end.
You will have mana issues, your groups will have a lot of down time because your spell power will be low and you will have to use higher rank Conc and other spells or you will lose aggro.
Once you have a decent amount of raid gear that has good spell power and good int on it, you will be able to down rank and sustain more. But if you listen to the paladin youtubers, Prot paladins are the best tanks ever in all situations. Even as they struggle in heroics.
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I played a Pally tank through a large portion of TBC and it is not a mana issue, it is a player issue. Done right, a Pally tank should have no issues tanking a raid, holding aggro or having to worry about mana. My guild never had to stop for my mana, if was healer mana we were waiting for.
And Aggro is no issue, a pally done right will have aggro to spare.
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I have heard this many times, then I watch streamers and youtubers struggle boat, then blame blizzard for having the game bugged in beta. They said the same exact things you did.
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I think it is just an experience thing. Pally were not good tanks in Classic and few people played them. Now streamers heard Pallys are the new hotness in TBC and are all busting out Pallys thinking they are Easy Mode tanking.
They are not, you need to know your gear, skills and rotations. But done right they are strong and mana should not be your issue.
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need more mana?
PULL EVERYTHING!
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the only peorblem would be some itemization traps
sometimes stacking block as hi as it goes hurts your mana
altho if you just want to go god mode get a spriest in your party
and no matter how hard you try you wont oom
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Yep! Decided to tank with my warrior instead 
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This could also be a gearing issue on beta. My understanding is that the template gear for the raid testing wasn’t even close to pre-Bis for paladins. Also, in T4 a paladin should be prioritizing block rating and especially block value. You want to be hit but mitigate as much of the hit damage as possible.
Another issue is related to the raid comps i’ve seen on the streams. Not having enough paladins to cover the right blessings, not maintaining judgement of wisdom on the boss, not having an enhance shammy for mana spring totem. Also, once close to pre-bis your spell damage is high enough to down rank consecration. Remember you should have a ret in raid to provide judgement of the crusader which gives 214 +holy damage.
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This is what Cauchy was fishing for.
Couchy
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If you trust your healers take your pants off. More damage taken=more incoming heals=more mana.
I found the opisite, ONce your avoidance gets high enough you stop taking substantial damage and your mana income dries up rapidly.
again the oppisite in my experience, the higher your gear gets the more you need to be using max rank to keep up with your dps. If a rogue is doing 1500 dps, you need to be doing 1600+. Again avoidance kicks in here, the less you block the less threat you generate which means you need to find otherways to build.
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Paladins are the best tanks for the previous tier and the best for tanking trash, because trash fights are shorter.
Paladins start to get a lot more spell power at T5, due to weapon and most of the gear they wear having spell power on it. You can down rank in lower dungeons and still maintain threat pretty easily in heroics and 10 mans because people are not nearly as raid buffed. There are only 3 25 man fights in T4 anyway, and with better gear the fights are shorter.
Here is the problem, prot paladins trying to main tank thinking they can easily do it. It is like putting an octagon peg in a round hole, can you do it? Yes, is it easy? NO. TBC is not Wrath of the Lich King. You are going to constantly be juggling gear around, constantly dealing with mana issues, constantly be dealing with survivability issues.
Go watch the Magtheridon raids, you can blame “bad itemization” or whatever you want but the fact of the matter is that paladins are going to struggle until they actually have the capacity to juggle their gear around, maintaining the required health and the required spell power/mana to maintain threat.
You really cant do that until T5.
Pre-raid you are trying to survive, you are stacking as much health as you can and trying to maintain 490 defense, and getting a bit of spell power on the side.
T4 you finally get gear that actually meets most of your requirements, but it is limited. T5 you easily have the gear to swap to a spell power trinket or rings, or put on some other threat piece while maintaining your health pool at a decent level and your crit/crush cap for the fights where you can get away with it, and you have the ability to go full mitigation and still generate decent threat, when you need to.
This is what I am talking about and these clowns are telling prot paladins that everything is sunshine and rainbows, while ignoring the facts, and leaving out key points about HOW they should gear and why pre-raid, they are going to struggle, and even into T4, they will struggle.
It is the same for warriors and druids, all tanks in TBC struggle at the start, yet I keep seeing these prot paladin defenders with chips on their shoulders about how they “main tanked everything in their guild” failing to tell people the actual reality of tanking in TBC.
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You do realise you’re talking to someone who did it right? Prot pallies can main tank most fights capably, they’re not always the optimal choice for it.
You don’t udnerstand how pallies work, I get it. They want to get hit, and stacking enough health is not going to be hard.
ALl i see is a warrior upset about losing the limelight. You had your time in the sun, time to move over for the glowybois.
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Something does not seem quite honest in your post.
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I never said that.
Actually Theres a heap of fights a pally and a bear can’t tank.
Is what I said.
Prot pallies will do just fine with the correct group stacking, You’re not going to MT everyboss but smart raiders understand how you pick the right tool for the job instead of “hurr durrr I warrior main tank everything cuz warrior”
You literally repeated what I said, after I said it, I just quoted something, from the post, you ignored, trying to get a quip in.
It made you look foolish, that is why I quoted myself, saying something before you said it.
I also, did not specifically say you when I used plural language, talking about multiple paladins that have told me they main tanked everything.
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Specifically on mana, here’s the standard mana consumption assuming no Imp Judgement and 5/5 Benediction:
- Rank 6 Consecration - 82.5 m/s (70.125 m/s with 4p dungeon set)
- Rank 2 Consecration - 25.625 m/s (21.781 m/s with 4p dungeon set) loss of 62.7 tps
- Judgement/SoR - 12.75 + 22.1 = 34.85 m/s
- Judgement/SoV - 12.75 + 21.25 = 34 m/s
- Holy Shield on cooldown - 28 m/s
Here’s the standard mana income sources outside of Spiritual Attunement assuming applicable talents like Imp Bless Wis:
- Blessing of Wisdom - 9.8 m/s
- Mana spring totem - 10 m/s
- Judgement of Wisdom - 74 m @ 1.8 as @ 50% proc = 20.5 m/s modified by miss/dodge/parry
- ~30 mp5 from gear/enchants - 6 m/s
Your maintenance rotation using down ranked consecration is roughly 84 m/s and your non SA income is roughly 35 m/s. This leaves a deficit of about 50 m/s. A prot pally in pre-raid gear should be sporting at least 6k mana buffed which gives a runway of 120 seconds before oom. This is BEFORE SA income. To tank infinitely he only needs to take 500 damage/s which is almost guaranteed on the average.
The full bore rotation increases the deficit to 107 m/s which takes 1070 damage per second to be canceled out by SA. This is also a common scenario and not even a dangerous level of damage intake. Mana should not be a problem.
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they were having mana issues in TBC when it was current. we used shadow priests to spam consecration on fights like Tidewalker.
Do you actually need to max rank and fill out very possible CD to hold threat or can things be a bit more chill? I noticed that on my paladin in Classic if I push hard it eats mana faster than I can wolf down a cheeseburger and French fries, but if I use lower (not lowest) ranks of spells and don’t fill every opportunity to press a button and just watch my threat only using judgement when needed to bolster threat I’m solid and never OOM.
Using the same technique I have found TBC Spiritual attunement a god send; it’s amazing.
I think the problem isn’t the class, it’s how people think they can just spam buttons without any problems; but in reality it’s kinda like energy management on a rogue, you can’t go ham full throttle and expect it to work out properly.
Just my observation, I’m a noob at paladin prot, but it seems good and solid.
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