Introduction: “I’m A Prot Paladin And So Can You.”
A little bit about myself. I started playing WoW in 2005 and ended up playing a Warrior and at 17 with how few and far between information was, I didn’t really know what I was doing fully. I eventually rerolled a Priest and had raided through MC/ZG/AQ20 and some BWL.
I always loved the Paladin tank archetype. In Diablo 2, my main was Zeal+Holy Shield+Devo Aura Paladin. Didn’t do great damage, but I could stand there and burn down packs without dying.
A few friends wanted to try out Alliance so I rolled a Paladin of course. I told them I wanted to tank. This was back when Seal of Fury was a thing and Priests had attack power on their Inner Fire still. Didn’t really make it past 20, but as soon as Paladins came to the Horde, that was my main pretty much the entire time through Legion.
When Classic was announced, a few friends wanted to only play Horde and one was willing to go Alliance. That Alliance friend quickly bailed on me after about 15 levels and when I hit 20 I gave up on it for awhile. Eventually, I started reading into how people were starting to make Prot Paladin work. I decided to not let that dream die. By P3 I had reached level 60 and was ready to tank my first raid. The guild I was in, had some trepidation and the GM had a lot of questions. I explained how it worked and how I had tanked Onyxia in a PUG and felt ready to move into some real stuff.
My guild used a Wishlist (kind of a precursor to Soft Reserves) and I jokingly put Bindings down. I was told that wasn’t supposed to be on there and they would decide it by the Officers. Ironically, they did drop. I chose to pass them since I was new to raiding with the guild. Silly me, but it wasn’t necessary (I have Thunderfury on my Horde Warrior anyway).
My guild split up before AQ was released due to a lot of people not wanting to move into a Loot Council system. I chose to abandon my Paladin since I had friends I was playing with on the Horde and trying to balance raid consumes on two characters, on two factions, on two realms was getting to be impossible. Enough about me.
Heresy: Breaking the Meta?!
So let’s start by getting this out of the way. I’m sure the trolls will try to pick this guide apart. Their arguments are terribly cyclical. You provide and answer for one thing, they respond with another thing they believe is an issue, you respond to that, they return to the original argument. It’s boring. If you want to troll, please do it in another thread.
The biggest controversies about Prot Paladins are usually from people who believe that if you aren’t playing only the top classes or specs, you’re wasting your time. While that may be their opinion, there is a lot of misunderstandings, half truths, or just downright lies about Paladin tanking in Classic WoW.
The typical arguments are:
Paladins can’t taunt!
Paladins have no mana!
Paladins do no threat!
Paladins don’t have the gear!
So let’s walk through these usual claims. Here goes (we’ll go into much more detail later):
Paladins can’t taunt!
You are absolutely correct. We do not in fact, have a taunt. However, there are several ways around needing a taunt.
Paladins have no mana!
You again are very observant. Prot Paladins have notoriously low mana pools. With buffs, potions, and several other tools this isn’t as big of an issue as people think.
Paladins do no threat!
Well, here’s where this is just where people who do not understand WoW at a fundamental level are just wrong. We do incredible, if not the most threat in the game. Especially in a raid environment!
Paladins don’t have the gear!
We do indeed lack the necessary tier gear. Again, there is more to it than this.
I’m A Little Paladin; Short And Stout: The Early Years
Typically while leveling up, you should focus on the following stats:
Stamina, Defensive stats (dodge/block/parry/defense), Agility, Armor, Strength, and Intellect.
1 Stamina is 10 Health.
Defense is .04% dodge/block/parry
Agility (at 60) is 20 = 1% dodge/critical strike and 1 Agility is 2 Armor
Armor reduces Physical Damage received. You’ll never hit cap, but more is never really a bad thing.
Strength (at 60) is 20 = 1 Block. Your Block Value is how much damage each Block will reduce the incoming attack by. 1 Block is 1 less damage taken.
1 Intellect is 15 Mana and some Spell Crit
Stamina is going to be your most reliable stat as the more health you have, the more room the healer has to keep you alive. Don’t neglect other stats though. Taking less damage (Effective Health or EH) is also an important way to survive incoming damage. Our toolkit is built around big pulls, so make sure you have an adequate amount of EH to survive it too. Raw Defensive Stats are also a big plus. Fully avoiding damage (dodge/parry/miss) or reducing damage further (blocking) makes your healer happy. If you Parry an attack, you’ll swing 50% faster too.
For Professions, I recommend you have at least one be Engineering. Having Dynamite/Bombs for pulling is great. You can also get a little goofy with the candles that drop off low level Kobolds, but they aren’t exactly falling from the sky. EZ-Throw Dynamite is an option, but expensive and bag space is a commodity (especially as a Prot Paladin). Plus, having good Googles early is just good planning.
Alchemy is also a good profession as you’ll be using plenty of Elixirs, Flasks, and Potions. Otherwise, a money making profession is always solid.
Keep your Cooking, First Aid, and if you’re not lazy, Fishing maxed. Also, leveling up your Unarmed can be clutch. It’ll allow you to generate some threat still with Seal of the Righteous (SoR) even without a weapon.
Let’s talk about the first dungeon you’ll typically tank: Dead Mines. We’ll start with how to effectively tank that dungeon and what you need to keep in mind. The nice thing about this dungeon is a lot of mobs aren’t that dangerous, especially to start. The Miners have low health and aren’t elite. The elite melee mobs aren’t much of an issue either. It’s the casters who do big AOE Flamestrikes and Fireballs that can catch an inexperienced healer off guard. If you can ever toss a Dynamite and go behind a wall to pull a group back or Line of Sight (LOS) a caster mob, that is ideal. You can also use walls/pillars that LOS to interrupt a cast if you’re savvy, just don’t LOS your healer.
Never let mobs hit you from behind. You cannot parry or block from behind which will greatly increase the damage you take. Since you also have no additional Defense at this level (unless you grabbed an “Of Defense” item) you’ll risk being Dazed too. Never let melee attack a mob or boss from the front. Every time you or the melee swing at a mob, there is a chance they will Parry. If they Parry, their next swing takes half the time. This can be very dangerous. If you’re a caster reading this, keep in mind you gain threat reduction when you’re furthest from your target.
Bosses in Dead Mines typically have no abilities, but there are few things to note. Sneed is annoying because his robot dies and he’ll spawn a bit after so hitting him with a snap Judgement of the Righteous (JoR) is important. His Terrify ability is also really bad if someone gets feared and you didn’t clear the room properly. Gilnid is a caster, so clearing his room to make it so you don’t have things spiral out of control with the mini-harvesters (they do a lot of damage!) is ideal. Smite and Van Cleef can be deadly as they gain stacks of Thrash. Thrash is a mechanic that plenty of enemies (typically have the name “Thrash” in it) will gain. The longer they go without hitting something, the more stacks they gain. If they expend the stacks, you can go from 100% to really low or even dead in an instant. Greenskin has a poison you can dispel off yourself.
Some of the early game stuff will be the hardest part about being a Prot Paladin. We get access to Righteous Fury at level 16 and can talent Consecration at level 20. Due to the nature of Hardcore, this actually lines up with doing Dead Mines almost perfectly. This is also the first really good opportunity to try out tanking as a Prot Paladin as a lot of the mob archetypes in this dungeon will give you a good idea on what to do in later dungeons. Knowing the fights, spawns, what is linked, and the dungeon layout give you an advantage and increase other’s confidence in you as well.
The Light And How To Swing It: The Early Game Spells
Early on, our biggest threat generation will come from having Righteous Fury (RF) active. Untalented, you’ll be doing 60% or 1.6 more threat. Typically, every point of damage translates to 1 threat. There are some modified spells that will state, “this spell does increased additional threat” that will increase the amount of damage to threat conversion. Some spells reduce, temporarily reduce, or remove threat too. Since we’re in the business of doing threat, we’ll stick to that. Fully talented, your RF will increase all threat caused by 90% or 1.9. 100 Holy Damage will cause 190 threat. Things like Seal of the Righteous (SoR) will also cause some added threat due to the melee swing that triggers it.
Seal of the Righteous is your best threat generating Seal. SoR and JoR together will keep single target threat typically on anything you are swinging away at. JoR hits fairly hard early on so it’ll provide a good threat lead if you start with it. Keep in mind that Rank 3 will do as much damage as Rank 8 when you are at higher amounts of spell power and will save you mana!
Devotion Aura or Retribution Aura can be seen as your best two options generally. Devo Aura will increase your Party’s Armor reducing melee damage. While Ret Aura will deal fixed damage to anything physically attacking your Party members. Ret Aura has the additional bonus of causing threat that is modified by RF. You can use resistance auras later to help with certain bosses who deal high elemental damage.
Blessing of Wisdom is probably your best bet for a long time. Kings is better overall, but you won’t be getting that talent until at least 34. Might isn’t a bad option either, but Wisdom keeps us going a little bit longer. Sanctuary isn’t a bad option either. Damage reduction and some additional threat against melee mobs when you block.
Consecration will be your big passive threat dealer (well paladin is mostly passive threat until 60) but is also your most expensive spell. You’ll probably have to drink a few times. It’s part of the experience though. Late game you’ll want to use Max Rank to start and downrank to conserve mana!
Your Talented In The Light: Dazzle Them With The Right Talents
As stated, you’ll want to pick up Consecration as your first 11 Points. By the time you reach 33, which is when threat should start to become a lot easier due to 3/3 RF for that 90% or 1.9 threat modifier, you’ll start to really feel the difference in your threat generation. This should be your talent tree by 33:
After that, you can start to pick up the essential stuff. Early on Reckoning can be really good for threat, but like Redoubt, it’ll lose some of it’s splendor as you get more Avoidance.
My choice for final talents would be:
You can choose to take Improved Devotion Aura, Reckoning, or even Spiritual Focus for soloing. KEEP IN MIND THAT CASTING REDUCES YOUR AVOIDANCE TO 0%. The final talent choice I make is the more optimal balance between doing as much threat and defense without sacrificing one for the other.
This is my Hammer, This Is My Mount: The Late Game
Hopefully, you’re well on your way to 60 and you’ve managed to really impress the people along the way. The more minds that change, the better!
In the late game dungeon scene, you’ll really want to shift your focus to getting a decent amount of Spell Power while maintaining your Stamina and Defense. The example of armor here is going to be an ideal threat set (with a healthy amount of defense too):
I kept it to fairly balance between stamina and defense with a little bit of spell power. You can forsake spell power for more Stamina or Defense, but you’ll be less effective as an AOE tank until you move into raid gear, which if you want to move into raid tanking, you’ll want to do this anyways. Ideally, you’ll enter into Molten Core at around 4,500 HP and the closer to 440 defense you can get without giving up important stats elsewhere. Mark of the Chosen is one of the best trinkets in the game. Especially early on. It will be up nearly 100% of the time (it says 2%, but it feels like 98%) and will provide you with 25 of every stat. That’s 250 more health, 1% dodge, etc. Which is then further increased by things like King’s or the ZG World Buff!
meme classes with the best of them. You, sir, can tank any group I’m a part of and I will not only happily heal you, but I will also happily work with you to make the best out of our group composition. Keep onwards, Champion of the Light!
I appreciated your arguments made in that other thread where everyone wanted to jump down your throat for even suggesting a paladin is a viable tank. Yeah warriors are better, but a paladin can do the job too.