Ngl, been the most enjoyable thing ive played in a minute. Shame they dont have taunt, but ive been taking my time the past week or two now just chippin away and leveling. Pretty good at holding threat in dungeons. Main question, is there a reality where guilds would take me as a OT for raiding?
Never done a raid as prot pally really so
the short answer is no. taunt is necessary for threat drop mechanics and many raid bosses have mechanics that specifically hinder mana. Geddon mana burns for example. and later on their are holy immune mobs. like its been done as a gimmick but no one gets a permanent tank slot.
the only realities where you paladin tank is by waiting for tbc when they are perfectly viable or rerolling on SoD where theyve been made into actual tanks.
I mean you could probably find a guild somewhere that would use a pally tank as an OT. The problem is why take you over a Warrior…and there are a ton of Warriors.
About the only legit use is BOK spam on KT but you never or hope never to take any damage. You’re basically permanently pulling threat on the skele adds.
Prot pala could be useful on certain trash fights similar to dungeons where you don’t need a taunt or a typical taunt. Where consecrate and BOK spam is king; it makes insane threat but it’s not a proper taunt and if there is any criticism of “vanilla” is the lack of a proper taunt for Pala / Shama.
I say this is a criticism because in the early days of wow before official launch “Raids” weren’t a thing and there really was no official plans for them so the need for a taunt wasn’t a thing either.
Contrary to popular dogma, PVP and battlegrounds were planned out and discussed in Beta interviews long before raids were.
Early Blizzard’s idea if a Raid was open world raid bosses like Ony where taunt isn’t even a requirement to do the encounter.
My 2019 guild had a prot pala all the way until halfway through naxx when he quit for irl reasons. Here are my thoughts.
Prot paladin is never optimal, but can be a value asset to a raid that is more casual friendly because at the end of the day it’s only 1 raid slot.
Essentially there is only one thing a prot pala can do well in a raid, and that bok spam so that if any adds happen to leave their tank, they head straight for the prot pala. (Basically maintaining 2nd threat on every mob) Naxx has many encounters/pulls where this is relevant.
I would suggest having a holy set for fights like patchwerk where a prot pala is literally useless.
Also there are fights that do not require a taunt (like Nef) so once ur guild is comfortable with those fights you should advocate to let you try MTing them
Additionally, like any meme spec, you likely will want to use as many consumes as possible. I cant even begin to tell you how many demonic runes and crowd pummlers I farmed as a dps Druid, and a prot pala will also need absurd amounts of mana pots, demonic runes, etc
My guild has a prot pally and he does just fine. I’ve also main tanked every dungeon in the game except UBRS as a hybrid “pretadin” (google it) spec. A proper spec’d and geared prot paladin should have no problem. Every tank kinda has their own strengths and weaknesses… for a Paladin, their main strength is AoE threat. It’s useful on a fair number of fights.
A taunt would be helpful but it works without one.
Worth noting that this can be easily dispelled. There are other fights where a paladin tank would be a challenge though (ie, Heigan).
Not that hard to tank Patchwerk as a tankadin, you just need enough cushion to take hateful strikes. Each time you take a Hateful you get a tremendous amount of free threat.
Found a log below for a tankadin in Naxx just this past weekend lol.
https://vanilla.warcraftlogs.com/reports/7aHnCc3DthZNVYg2?fight=46&type=damage-taken
If you find a guild that isn’t full of sweaty people trying to speedrun a 20 year old game, yes.
My Pally’s guild on Deviate Delight had a Prot Pally MT and they even gave her Thunderfury. The rest of the raid guilds on the server flipped their wig when she got it.
People love to police how other people raid for some reason.
I’ve been playing prot paladin since 2017ish on pservers and briefly in 2020 classic. You absolutely can at least off-rank tank casual raids. I’ve never tried BoK spam, we had <10 of any given class on the pservers so i never attempted tanking any serious raid bosses (except ossirian).
Its hard to market yourself. You’re likely not going to join any hardcore guilds as prot. The strongest asset for prot paladins is the AoE threat. Those situations are rare, and warriors can lip and challenging shout.
I was an extra, mid healer with 14 points in holy. I would switch to tank gear for bosses with adds, packs with a lot of mobs, or aoe tanking. These were the days before dual spec so now you can go full heals or full dps as an off spec.
I recently was an tertiary tank in a MC raid. It went well. I’m specced as a prot/ret hybdrid with cons and seal of command. I didnt have any issues with holding threat of what i had to tank. Gaining threat on a loose mob relied on SoC procs which can be rough if unlucky. I was able to pull more dps and/or threat than the warrior tanks in some fights but they werent well geared by any means.
Paladins struggle once they lose threat, so tanking a mob that isn’t attacked immediately makes your job easier (2nd or third in the kill order). Manage your mana well because the worse scenario is tanking with no mana. Your threat generation will drop off drastically if you go oom. Bosses who must be taunted because of mechanics, i wouldnt recommend.
On bosses, your best bet is switching to a 2h if youre not actively tanking anything. But you’re a worse ret paladin at that point which is why i switched to heals for many fights where im not needed. Ive had leaders try to make me tank stuff that are harder/impossible for us to tank. Speak up if you think you cant do something.
You can join some guild pugs (both raids and dungeons). Get a decent heal set to maybe “put your foot in the door”. Feel the guilds out, there a ton of very casual guilds that would likely do a trial run with a prot pally. And try not make a bad name for the rest of us if you can.
Understandable, what about ret paladin, just straight up? I healed before and it was alright but not my favorite thing. I knowi wont get into some sweat guilds or anything, but surely there would be a spot somewhere for a ret paladin right? I know theyre not that good but still 