Tips for a main tank in a guild starting heroic raiding?

[Call Me Barrett]

Much appreciated in advance.

[4KhazModan]

First thing I noticed is that you are not at CTC cap yet. Get the valor trinket instead of the spine trinket. Also, you spec and glyphs are a little off.

The standard spec is 0/31/10
For prime you want: Crusader Strike, Shield, and Seal of Truth
for Major you want: Aesthetic Crusader, and depending on the fight- Divine Protection, Focused Shield, or Holy Wrath.

[underdogba]

First thing I noticed is that you are not at CTC cap yet. Get the valor trinket instead of the spine trinket. Also, you spec and glyphs are a little off.

The standard spec is 0/31/10
For prime you want: Crusader Strike, Shield, and Seal of Truth
for Major you want: Aesthetic Crusader, and depending on the fight- Divine Protection, Focused Shield, or Holy Wrath.

That spec advice is not correct.

The obligate set of talents is the following --

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZGMhcRkdRRucbh

The 1 point in Reckoning there is just to get to the next tier. Your optional points are Reckoning, Hallowed Ground, and Pursuit of Justice (and possibly Eye for an Eye but that is very arguable and situational).

Crusader Strike is a very weak threat glyph, so you're probably better off in general using Word of Glory.

If you want to maximize survivability, then it can be advisable on certain fights to actually go Seal of Insight, Word of Glory, and Shield of the Righteous.

Aesthetic Crusader is completely useless because you will never be in mana trouble with correct play. That glyph is for Ret paladins to be able to delay or eliminate needing to spend a GCD on Divine Plea.

Lay on Hands should be one of your majors simply because there are few majors that actually do anything for you. Personally, I support Lay on Hands and Holy Wrath as obligate, with the 3rd situationally being Divine Protection for most DS fights.

[Belletha]

"Also, ignore the gloves without an enchant... I'm hoping my tier gloves will drop at some point."


You are hoping you'll get a drop at some point, thus aren't chanting what you have now? By that logic, no one should bother chanting anything that isn't their BiS.
moving on...


Know the fights. Do your research. Admittedly, at this point, things are considerably easier than they were; however, 1 screw up by a tank can still wipe any fight. Look up the fights. Study the videos. Know your raid and adapt what you learn to your raid. Every boss has different ways to be killed. Find the way that works for your raid group. You should start with Morchok then Ultraxion for your 1st 2 heroics. If you easily defeat them, move on to another (most guilds hit skittles next - but as he is before Ultra, you'll have to wait til the next week). But whatever order you choose, Focus on that encounter. Don't dabble on zon'ozz then hagara then warmaster... pick one and stick with it. You are going to wipe (probably a lot). That's how you learn (videos can only teach so much).

[underdogba]

Also, ignore the gloves without an enchant... I'm hoping my tier gloves will drop at some point.

Put 50 Mastery instead of 65 Mastery. Not having an enchant at all looks really really bad.

Also I seriously question the judgement inherent to matching the socket color on Hand of Morchok with an epic purple gem no less, yet not matching on the crafted bracers, where you would be better off matching on the bracers and not in the weapon.

[nathanos01]

Best thing to do is read up on Elitist Jerks for accurate spec and glyphs for heroic raiding.

Second thing as mentioned above is to ensure that you're CTC capped. If you don't know what CTC is, it stands for Combat Table Coverage. In order to figure out your CTC you add your miss chance, dodge, parry, and block and ensure that they're at 102.4% or higher. If you're under 102.4% then that means you still have a chance to be hit with a full attack. Your goal is to push these regular attacks off the table so that you're at least blocking everything. Ensure you're fully buffed when checking these numbers.

When you start to hit a decent number of heroic pieces you generally start gemming for stamina - but still keep CTC capped.

Next thing is to ensure you have the Mirror of Broken Images trinket from Tol Barad. This has been the single most stand out tanking trinket for the entire expansion. For fights like Heroic Yor'sahj where you solo tank it, that trinket is extremely powerful as it'll allow you to mitigate a significant amount of dot damage. It's also very useable on Warmaster Blackhorn as another CD for soaking little purples, and on Madness to mitigate Tetanus in phase 2.

If you're the main tank, then you'll be solo tanking Yor'sahj, Zon'ozz, and Hagara. Expect to need to call for healer cooldowns and coordinate these with your own cooldowns. Pretty much this entire tier on heroic has required very careful execution of tank and healer cooldowns. If you aren't calling them, then you'll likely not survive.

The final piece of advice is if you get stuck on a specific fight, research it online. There's a plethora of information available out there and many of the issues you're facing others will have faced already and found solutions and workarounds.

Good luck with your progression

[Racthoh]

"But whatever order you choose, Focus on that encounter. Don't dabble on zon'ozz then hagara then warmaster... pick one and stick with it. You are going to wipe (probably a lot). That's how you learn (videos can only teach so much).

Quoted for truth.

And ask your guild to help with enchanting mats if you can't afford them.

[underdogba]

First thing I noticed is that you are not at CTC cap yet.

Also incorrect.

When stacked, the Spine trinket puts him at 103.9% with raid buffs (and dodge food even instead of mastery food), which is well over cap

[Téuntjûh]

What always helped me is to actually read up and know exactly what all abilities of the boss does, instead of only knowing "O i have to move away".
Understanding the bosses is 1.
Second, understand your class. It's written all over these forums how prot paladins work. Make sure you are ctc capped (dodge+parry+block+5%(bossmisschance) = 102.4)
If you are ctc capped it means you will parry/block/dodge/miss all boss attacks, and never will get a full hit. This makes the healing a lot easier.
If you reach ctc cap, go gem stamina. Every mastery above ctc cap is wasted.
Third, don't be a cheap ass. Get those enchants, get pots (armor pots are pro on some fights, or at least help a little) get elixirs and flasks and make sure you give everything you have to help your team.

[Racthoh]

If you reach ctc cap, go gem stamina. Every mastery above ctc cap is wasted.

Is this true? I was under the impression after ctc you wanted to move mastery into dodge/parry, as they avoid more damage than a block.

[Chargron]

Is this true? I was under the impression after ctc you wanted to move mastery into dodge/parry, as they avoid more damage than a block.

It is true, due to diminishing returns, after CTC cap stamina is the way to go.

[MerinPally]

Your spec is an abomination My one is a pretty decent alternative as it's the basic 31/8 and then 2 more points in prot as PoJ is probably only useful for Hagara and Blackhorn heroic, so it's not worth 2 talent points.

CTC -> Stamina stack, as others have said.

Also, get rid of Soulshifter Vortex as fast as humanly possible.

To quote myself from another thread:

Outside of 2 very specific circumstances, Soulshifter Vortex is equally as bad as Adolf Hitler.

[Mengucekli]

Here is an advice: Embrace the pain. It is the only way.

[Mehman]

after CtC cap you should aim to even out dodge and parry as much as you can, without gemming too much for it, the gems you "save" should be used for stam

[Vetti]

I have a very controversial advice
Stop reading this topic and figure it out for yourself - as you can clearly see everybody has slightly different playstyle, and gearing strategy. I personally adapted few tips from EJ, added own thoughts, and didn't care about others opinion, my healers are happy, we progress so it's fine
Just keep your ctc, experiment with glyphs, which suit you the most (but seriously Dazing Shield and Ascetic Crusader are a waste). Your gearing/spec/gemming strategy also depends on your healers and overall raid composition, so just log on, run few dungeons, check your playstyle and gear composition, and everything will be all right DS is fairly easy to tank so you'll be fine, gl

[Frylol]

Get Mirror of Broken Images if you plan on being the MT. Also maximize stamina after CTC cap, and vendor Soulshifter Vortex.

[Ticktac]

If you doubt the advice being given above stacking Stamina after reaching 102.4% CTC BUFFED which I typically see mis-communicated. Here is a blog posted by Theck who is widely considered the authority on Protection Paladins (Thecks Emberseal ring a bell). You might be able to argue opinions, but every conclusion is supported by math.

[niteline]

You have enough comments about your gear and spec;

The most fun i have in being a "good" pala tank is putting out a good rotation and doing compared to other player playing tank "insane" amounts of dps..
Your 397 gear wont start crushing untill hagara unless played flawlessly and assuming you take out Ultraxxion hc before hagara hc...

Back when i started serious raiding in Ulduar i read something about diffrent sets of gear;
The more gear i got and the more bosses we killed or farmed i started to use more threat/hit/exp gear and trying to see if i can pull more dps
In that way i had my own personal thing to look out for.

The tactics for the heroic bosses aren't hard to understand for tanks. And generally i say we have the easiest job but also the one with the most error possible.

Make sure you learn your cooldowns and master your glyphs,spec and rotation(for example for Ultraxxion divine protecion glyph is awesomë)
I play several tanks and if something throws me off my rotation i sometimes fail to press a cd right after that..

Raiding as a tank in progress and being serious about it is like a pc overclocker to put out that lil bit more then you think was possible
Sometimes you make sacrifices in surv to do abit more dps or you sacrifice threat/dps in order to gain surv

And my final tip; Ardent defender is NOT!!! a 20% dmg reduction cooldown, its a OH SHIT I WILL DIE, HAHAHA DIDNT DIE button!

[Zerdus]

You'll want to first of all grab Fire of the Deep and you should be good as far as CTC is concerned.

Then you'll want to fix up your Dodge/Parry. At the current values it looks like you'll be suffering from quite a bit of DR, seeing as unbuffed your Parry rating is ~800 more than your Dodge rating. What you'll want to do is change up some gems and do some reforging (straight Parry -> Dodge). A good amount of parry is ~100-200 less than your Dodge. This is because buffs increase Parry more than Dodge, and you'll want them as even as possible.

Then you want to stack as much Stamina as possible without going under the CTC.

Other than that, you look fine, just remember to watch videos or read some guides and be well prepared.

[Call Me Barrett]

Thanks all, the spec I had was an abomination, and I'm not entirely sure why I had it. (I switch between prot/holy/ret quite often and since WoW is so mindless now sometimes I just lose concentration)

With the Spine trinket proc'd (which it always is, I don't think I've ever had downtime), as well as food, I'm well over CTC capped, I already have the Mirror of Broken Images and the Fire of the Deep in my bags that I use for certain fights... I stick with double stam trinkets for magic based fights and rotate glyphs/etc.

I was mainly just looking for advice on certain fights... Could have worded that one better.

---------- Post added 2012-05-23 at 06:33 AM ----------

Also:

Professions: Do you, main tanks, prefer to use say BS/ENG or any other combination of professions that benefit to tanks (keep in mind I mean for MoP as well, I'd like to start quite early to hit 525 before people hike up prices)