Paladin Raid Tanking

[ZazuuPriest]

Providing inaccurate or outdated information doesn't answer my question. I asked, given the new information about how Paladin threat works, their ability to maintain mitigation while being able to create insane amounts of threat, should Paladins be reconsidered?

We all know they can't taunt. Not every fight needs a taunt.



Paladin can continue to use GBoK even when out of range. They would be generating threat when they aren't even in range of the boss. If you are generating so much threat that no one else can come close, taunt becomes irrelevant on fights that don't require a taunt swap.

Other tanks in the raid also don't cease to exist because you have a Paladin main tank a fight. If something goes awry, you have off tanks for a reason.

Ths issue will become how long can they use that blessing to generate threat before they run out of mana. The answer is: not very long.

[Coldfrostzero]

No, the most important thing as a tank, is to hold aggro, and not fucking die. a warrior can do that in every single fight. any gear that goes to a warrior can be used in more fights, and will simply be more beneficial to a raid and guild, overall.

A warlock can spam searing pain all damn day, that doesn't make them better than a warrior. They can also spam hellfire, but that doesn't make them a better aoe tank.

As I've stated again and again and again...a paladin tank can be in actual tanking gear while doing this. Having Holy Shield up is 30% block, if they take a crit, which warriors will be crit too, but a paladin can actually wear gear to make them uncrushable where a Warrior tank will be in DPS gear, they will get another 30% from Redoubt which puts them at 60% block not including base block from Defense and gear. A partially blocked attack cannot be a critical hit. Warriors can only be uncritable Shield Block up which a Fury Warrior doesn't put on unless they get a string of big hits on them.

Again, if all things were equal. Let's just put it on even playing field here (any other scenario a Bear or Warrior is the only answer):

Boss can be taunt. Boss does not break aggro. There is no taunt swap required. Both Warrior and Paladin are in their BIS tanking gear. Fully raid buffed.

The only way the Paladin doesn't create more threat is if there isn't at least 3 of a single class which would be impossible. The paladin cannot be crushed and if he is crit, he becomes immune to crits for the next 10 seconds minimum. Holy Shield can be used in place of when Redoubt isn't up, extending crit immunity theoretically forever.

On the other hand, a Fury Warrior cannot block an attack unless they throw on a shield, thus gimping their threat anyway. They aren't wearing tank gear, so they aren't avoiding as much damage and the only way they can become crush and crit immune is the 6 seconds they have with Shield Block up.

This is also ignoring Diminishing Returns which will have a bigger reduction on the Paladin's overall defenses, but theoretically, they are already mitigating more damage since they're more likely to reduce the damage in some way where a Warrior won't be.

The literal only three advantages a Warrior has, Taunt, Shield Wall and Last Stand. Taunt would have absolutely no bearing on this scenario since you wouldn't need to ping-pong the boss. As I've stated before, the macro for putting on a shield triggers the GCD. So you have to spam the macro to get Shield Wall up in the hopes that your healers have been keeping your yo-yoing health from reaching 0 in the 2 seconds you have to spend to pop the life saving CD. Last Stand is in kind of a funny place, if you use it preemptively, you can make sure your healers have the cushion they need to keep you alive. If you use it reactionary, you might be gibbed by a string of crits and crushes that make it not matter anyway.

Another fun thing, as a Fury/Prot Warrior, you WANT to be crit to trigger Enrage to help with threat. So putting on a shield is counterproductive to the whole Fury Tank anyway.

Unlike 99% of the posts here you are not getting the point. This is about main tanking. You cannot be the main tank if you can't tank all of the fights. You would be infact an offtank. Plenty of guilds have paladin offtanks but almost no guilds have a paladin main tank. If you sit there and actually think about it like everyone else then you would come to the same conclusion.

The discussion is Main Tanking fights a Paladin can tank. We can all agree there are simply some fights you would be a moron to have a Paladin tank, unless it was a one time swap, like Vael for example.

My previous guild had an OT tank Onyxia P1. I sat and just shot her with arrows and before she landed in P3 I would go off on her generating as much threat as possible. If I didn't get Fireball in P2, I would usually have threat on her immediately in P3.

Ths issue will become how long can they use that blessing to generate threat before they run out of mana. The answer is: not very long.

Fights don't last that long. GBoK costs 150 mana to cast. My level 35 paladin has 2500 mana with only a couple of int items on. With that little mana, that's almost 17 casts. Per example above, on 14 mages that would be 1,938 threat per cast with a tiny mana pool. A 60 prot paladin is going to have a lot more mana. Once the prot paladin has a significant threat lead, they can chill for a little bit and regenerate mana.

[Mukind]

When you are so triggered you reply to the same post twice without even noticing. Just relax, it will be ok, your ego will recover.

No i was just rubbing it in lul

It was so perfect

You call dunning kruegger yet here you are, the pleb who has no idea what he's talking about. P server reject at best.

That's the epitome of irony

Triggered lul, more like gleeful. Who are you sir? You can't make this shit up hahaahhaha

The fact you didn't spam ur username says it all, seethe pleb seeeeeethe lol

edit - did u really think i didn't notice?

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Unlike 99% of the posts here you are not getting the point. This is about main tanking. You cannot be the main tank if you can't tank all of the fights. You would be infact an offtank. Plenty of guilds have paladin offtanks but almost no guilds have a paladin main tank. If you sit there and actually think about it like everyone else then you would come to the same conclusion.

Wut lul

MT is an assignment specific to an encounter. MT for "raid" is a meaningless assign. It's just an abbreviated way of saying you're MT for ever fight so you don't have to repeat yourself on the sheet lol.

Yes you can swap MT's throughout a raid for any number of reasons.....Like one got piss drunk as you went along

[Coldfrostzero]

Looking at it, it proves my point of it being costly and not optimal. The onyxia kill video posted the dude casted kings 69 times. That's almost 20 gold dumped down the drain a fight. 20 gold that a warrior wouldn't have to spend. You still have to prove that it is more optimal to bring a paladin over a warrior, cause even with the wowhead article I'm not seeing it.

The cost is irrelevant and the casts are irrelevant to the discussion. If I could hit Heroic Strike that many times in a fight and generate halfthe threat, it would be insane.

I posted above on how I think on even playing field where Paladin would have be better in general in my mind considering everything that happens when you're tanking.

[arkanon]

The cost is irrelevant and the casts are irrelevant to the discussion. If I could hit Heroic Strike that many times in a fight and generate halfthe threat, it would be insane.

I posted above on how I think on even playing field where Paladin would have be better in general in my mind considering everything that happens when you're tanking.

Does "everything that happens when you're tanking" conveniently exclude Taunting?

[AwkwardSquirtle]

I think the issue that you're running into is that most guilds don't have the luxury of having a spare tank for the fights that require taunt, because classic loot is so scarce. You can't justify funneling gear to a prot paladin because there are fights that they can't tank, while a warrior can tank every fight. If you have everything on farm and you're so deep into the tier that you can run a paladin tank, then it's of course possible to gear them up, maybe even better in some cases , but then again is it worth the effort when you know that you need to get your warriors ready for 4 horsemen when that drops?

[Coldfrostzero]

Does "everything that happens when you're tanking" conveniently exclude Taunting?

It does when certain fights make Taunt irrelevant. Keep ignoring the discussion at hand and living in your fantasy world where I am disputing the fact that some fights make Paladins literally unable to tank. It must be nice to live outside of reality.

I think the issue that you're running into is that most guilds don't have the luxury of having a spare tank for the fights that require taunt, because classic loot is so scarce. You can't justify funneling gear to a prot paladin because there are fights that they can't tank, while a warrior can tank every fight. If you have everything on farm and you're so deep into the tier that you can run a paladin tank, then it's of course possible to gear them up, maybe even better in some cases , but then again is it worth the effort when you know that you need to get your warriors ready for 4 horsemen when that drops?

Depends on your drops. My guild had 8 Band of Accuria drop in back to back weeks. After a ton of drama from me getting the first one (as the MT) it became a huge moot point when the second, third, fifth, and so on dropped.

Which again, a warrior tank is more likely to compete with the DPS warriors for most gear as wearing +defense gear is generally a bad idea. A Paladin doesn't suffer from that at all. They also don't share tier gear and Paladin t2 and t2.5 are fairly good for tanking. The latter being the tank set.

Four Horsemen requires your warriors to have T3 for the Taunt hit rating. Since taunt is effected by Spell Hit, they all need to have the set bonus to make 4 Horsemen smooth. This isn't really a fight you'd want a Paladin spamming GBoKs as they would pull threat on ALL the Horsemen. Again, certain fights, a Paladin cannot tank.

[Kithelle]

Providing inaccurate or outdated information doesn't answer my question. I asked, given the new information about how Paladin threat works, their ability to maintain mitigation while being able to create insane amounts of threat, should Paladins be reconsidered?

We all know they can't taunt. Not every fight needs a taunt.



Paladin can continue to use GBoK even when out of range. They would be generating threat when they aren't even in range of the boss. If you are generating so much threat that no one else can come close, taunt becomes irrelevant on fights that don't require a taunt swap.

Other tanks in the raid also don't cease to exist because you have a Paladin main tank a fight. If something goes awry, you have off tanks for a reason.

Lets say what you said is 100% correct...then what will you do on fights which require taunt? Gonna go healer...but your group has enough healers. Gonna go DPS? LOL

You literally came here asking for opinions and when someone gives you something you don't like you tell them they're wrong.

Who really cares if you spam GBoK...why waste all the gold when you can just play a class that can actually tank efficiently? If you're spamming that you aren't doing any damage...all you're doing is being a meat shield, why take you over a Warrior that does more damage and can taunt? Warrior can switch from tank to fury and do decent DPS...Paladin can...well refer to my LOL

[Coldfrostzero]

Lets say what you said is 100% correct...then what will you do on fights which require taunt? Gonna go healer...but your group has enough healers. Gonna go DPS? LOL

You literally came here asking for opinions and when someone gives you something you don't like you tell them they're wrong.

Who really cares if you spam GBoK...why waste all the gold when you can just play a class that can actually tank efficiently? If you're spamming that you aren't doing any damage...all you're doing is being a meat shield, why take you over a Warrior that does more damage and can taunt? Warrior can switch from tank to fury and do decent DPS...Paladin can...well refer to my LOL

I've answered the taunt question a billion times. Paladins can heal just fine as Prot or Ret and did so in Vanilla. They just don't have unlimited mana like a real Holy Paladin. Go figure?

I've responded already to both these statements. Read the thread and look at the guide and we can talk more.

[munkeyinorbit]

As I've stated again and again and again...a paladin tank can be in actual tanking gear while doing this. Having Holy Shield up is 30% block, if they take a crit, which warriors will be crit too, but a paladin can actually wear gear to make them uncrushable where a Warrior tank will be in DPS gear, they will get another 30% from Redoubt which puts them at 60% block not including base block from Defense and gear. A partially blocked attack cannot be a critical hit. Warriors can only be uncritable Shield Block up which a Fury Warrior doesn't put on unless they get a string of big hits on them.

Again, if all things were equal. Let's just put it on even playing field here (any other scenario a Bear or Warrior is the only answer):

Boss can be taunt. Boss does not break aggro. There is no taunt swap required. Both Warrior and Paladin are in their BIS tanking gear. Fully raid buffed.

The only way the Paladin doesn't create more threat is if there isn't at least 3 of a single class which would be impossible. The paladin cannot be crushed and if he is crit, he becomes immune to crits for the next 10 seconds minimum. Holy Shield can be used in place of when Redoubt isn't up, extending crit immunity theoretically forever.

On the other hand, a Fury Warrior cannot block an attack unless they throw on a shield, thus gimping their threat anyway. They aren't wearing tank gear, so they aren't avoiding as much damage and the only way they can become crush and crit immune is the 6 seconds they have with Shield Block up.

This is also ignoring Diminishing Returns which will have a bigger reduction on the Paladin's overall defenses, but theoretically, they are already mitigating more damage since they're more likely to reduce the damage in some way where a Warrior won't be.

The literal only three advantages a Warrior has, Taunt, Shield Wall and Last Stand. Taunt would have absolutely no bearing on this scenario since you wouldn't need to ping-pong the boss. As I've stated before, the macro for putting on a shield triggers the GCD. So you have to spam the macro to get Shield Wall up in the hopes that your healers have been keeping your yo-yoing health from reaching 0 in the 2 seconds you have to spend to pop the life saving CD. Last Stand is in kind of a funny place, if you use it preemptively, you can make sure your healers have the cushion they need to keep you alive. If you use it reactionary, you might be gibbed by a string of crits and crushes that make it not matter anyway.

Another fun thing, as a Fury/Prot Warrior, you WANT to be crit to trigger Enrage to help with threat. So putting on a shield is counterproductive to the whole Fury Tank anyway.



The discussion is Main Tanking fights a Paladin can tank. We can all agree there are simply some fights you would be a moron to have a Paladin tank, unless it was a one time swap, like Vael for example.

My previous guild had an OT tank Onyxia P1. I sat and just shot her with arrows and before she landed in P3 I would go off on her generating as much threat as possible. If I didn't get Fireball in P2, I would usually have threat on her immediately in P3.



Fights don't last that long. GBoK costs 150 mana to cast. My level 35 paladin has 2500 mana with only a couple of int items on. With that little mana, that's almost 17 casts. Per example above, on 14 mages that would be 1,938 threat per cast with a tiny mana pool. A 60 prot paladin is going to have a lot more mana. Once the prot paladin has a significant threat lead, they can chill for a little bit and regenerate mana.

Moving goalposts does not reframe a discussion
You asked. You got told. You got defensive. You got reasons. You moved the goalposts.

The answer to this thread as everyone has answered is no. A paladin cannot main tank.

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No i was just rubbing it in lul

It was so perfect

You call dunning kruegger yet here you are, the pleb who has no idea what he's talking about. P server reject at best.

That's the epitome of irony

Triggered lul, more like gleeful. Who are you sir? You can't make this shit up hahaahhaha

The fact you didn't spam ur username says it all, seethe pleb seeeeeethe lol

edit - did u really think i didn't notice?

- - - Updated - - -



Wut lul

MT is an assignment specific to an encounter. MT for "raid" is a meaningless assign. It's just an abbreviated way of saying you're MT for ever fight so you don't have to repeat yourself on the sheet lol.

Yes you can swap MT's throughout a raid for any number of reasons.....Like one got piss drunk as you went along

I see you haven't raided before. Thank you for that clarification.

[arkanon]

When you start a thread asking for peoples opinion, and then instantly say that anyone who doesn't agree with you is wrong, and ill informed, the thread is going nowhere. My guess is you only just discovered the thread on official forums, even though most / many have known about this for quite some time, and you wanted to try and "educate" everyone.

You are aggressively attacking anyone who tells you, very honestly, why the community as a whole would not and does not support or encourage this playstlye, why guilds are unlikely to back a pally raid tank (for any reason other than him being a friend etc), and why a warrior is superior in every single way for a raid boss. The only reality where this would be an interesting concept is one where warrior tanks are really struggling to maintain threat and the majority of guilds are struggling to progress - suddenly the idea of a tank that can produce "more" threat would be interesting. This is not the reality for classic.

You have continually refused to acknowledge that although they are perfectly viable and decent on certain encounters, the likelihood of any guild supporting a tank who can only effectively tank SOME encounters, and would need to be benched or carried for other encounters, while actively continuing to gear said player - is infinitesimally small. Saying "i know they can only tank some fights" does not acknowledge WHY thats such a major issue.

Its not one or two people saying this, its anyone and everyone who has had anything to do with vanilla raiding, classic raiding, or just raiding in general.

[Machismo]

As I've stated again and again and again...a paladin tank can be in actual tanking gear while doing this. Having Holy Shield up is 30% block, if they take a crit, which warriors will be crit too, but a paladin can actually wear gear to make them uncrushable where a Warrior tank will be in DPS gear, they will get another 30% from Redoubt which puts them at 60% block not including base block from Defense and gear. A partially blocked attack cannot be a critical hit. Warriors can only be uncritable Shield Block up which a Fury Warrior doesn't put on unless they get a string of big hits on them.

Again, if all things were equal. Let's just put it on even playing field here (any other scenario a Bear or Warrior is the only answer):

Boss can be taunt. Boss does not break aggro. There is no taunt swap required. Both Warrior and Paladin are in their BIS tanking gear. Fully raid buffed.

The only way the Paladin doesn't create more threat is if there isn't at least 3 of a single class which would be impossible. The paladin cannot be crushed and if he is crit, he becomes immune to crits for the next 10 seconds minimum. Holy Shield can be used in place of when Redoubt isn't up, extending crit immunity theoretically forever.

On the other hand, a Fury Warrior cannot block an attack unless they throw on a shield, thus gimping their threat anyway. They aren't wearing tank gear, so they aren't avoiding as much damage and the only way they can become crush and crit immune is the 6 seconds they have with Shield Block up.

This is also ignoring Diminishing Returns which will have a bigger reduction on the Paladin's overall defenses, but theoretically, they are already mitigating more damage since they're more likely to reduce the damage in some way where a Warrior won't be.

The literal only three advantages a Warrior has, Taunt, Shield Wall and Last Stand. Taunt would have absolutely no bearing on this scenario since you wouldn't need to ping-pong the boss. As I've stated before, the macro for putting on a shield triggers the GCD. So you have to spam the macro to get Shield Wall up in the hopes that your healers have been keeping your yo-yoing health from reaching 0 in the 2 seconds you have to spend to pop the life saving CD. Last Stand is in kind of a funny place, if you use it preemptively, you can make sure your healers have the cushion they need to keep you alive. If you use it reactionary, you might be gibbed by a string of crits and crushes that make it not matter anyway.

Another fun thing, as a Fury/Prot Warrior, you WANT to be crit to trigger Enrage to help with threat. So putting on a shield is counterproductive to the whole Fury Tank anyway.



The discussion is Main Tanking fights a Paladin can tank. We can all agree there are simply some fights you would be a moron to have a Paladin tank, unless it was a one time swap, like Vael for example.

My previous guild had an OT tank Onyxia P1. I sat and just shot her with arrows and before she landed in P3 I would go off on her generating as much threat as possible. If I didn't get Fireball in P2, I would usually have threat on her immediately in P3.



Fights don't last that long. GBoK costs 150 mana to cast. My level 35 paladin has 2500 mana with only a couple of int items on. With that little mana, that's almost 17 casts. Per example above, on 14 mages that would be 1,938 threat per cast with a tiny mana pool. A 60 prot paladin is going to have a lot more mana. Once the prot paladin has a significant threat lead, they can chill for a little bit and regenerate mana.

And you don't get it... tanking gear is finite. Putting it in the hands of a 40% tank is a waste. That same tank will need to stop more during trash to refill mana. That same tank doesn't have "oh shit" buttons.

It's choosing to purposefully handicap your self, just for the sake of saying you did it.

[Kithelle]

I've answered the taunt question a billion times. Paladins can heal just fine as Prot or Ret and did so in Vanilla. They just don't have unlimited mana like a real Holy Paladin. Go figure?

I've responded already to both these statements. Read the thread and look at the guide and we can talk more.

Yet you've ignored every point that doesn't involve the taunt....kudos

Once again you come here for a "opinion" and you basically tell everyone what they say is wrong. If you just wanted to start a argument then why not go to social media?

[last1214]

Im sure it possible to do. But i sure wouldn't want to do it myself. The playsyle seems awful, it still needs alot of gear to be viable, and the only real benifit would be aoe tanking, which isnt a big deal for warrior or druids to do in a raid.

[Multitorix Davlen]

edit a stack is 1.12g....SO it was ~75 silver....And he needed 0 damage buffs if he didn't want them...I highly doubt the warrior tank comes away as cheaper in the context of Onixia. Not enough global to make up for the cost of buffing the war with things like mongoose.

Taking into consideration that both tanks are using the same costs of consumables to put them on the same playing field. The only difference is the added cost of symbols for paladins - the paladin comes out as the more expensive venture. Also I made mistakes in the math cause lol not looking at the straight up vendor in game, i'll edit that.

The cost is irrelevant and the casts are irrelevant to the discussion. If I could hit Heroic Strike that many times in a fight and generate halfthe threat, it would be insane.

I posted above on how I think on even playing field where Paladin would have be better in general in my mind considering everything that happens when you're tanking.

The cost is 100% relevant. What is the paladin having to spend over the warrior is not an insignificant question to ask in terms of optimal. It doesn't matter how small that cost is, the fact that there IS a cost matters. Is it more optimal to spend the money here on A when it costs more and eventually doesn't scale nearly as well into naxx or spend it here on B where it wont ever have that issue.

[gaymer77]

Not playing a Paladin in a guild right now. I know how tanking works, I am a Warrior tank. Yes taunt happens to be great in that capacity but you're a fucking moron if you're just randomly taunting off another tank for no reason. Fights like Onyxia and Nefarian where you only need 1 tank and don't need to taunt, a Paladin generating threat so high that no one can come close would be optimal.

So your answer to the question is giving an example of a fight where sunders are required to get initial aggro, has adds that require an AOE taunt, and can easily wipe your raid if/when you lose aggro and the boss runs to the raid and/or turns and tail whips everyone. It is obvious you don't know about how bad a pally tank is in vanilla and obvious you don't tank raids too. Pally tanks are ok in a 5 man but in terms of raiding, healer or meh dps as ret is how you play a pally until BC comes out.

[AeneasBK]

I thought the funniest comment was "If your raid had 40 paladins then GBoK will make so much threat no one can come close" forgetting to mention that a level 40 hunter wearing greys could probably outthreat a raid of 39 ret paladins.

I mean, sure I'm exaggerating but still. Lol.

[Devilyaki]

Doesn’t spamming that cost a good amount of mana and requires a reagent? Sure it might work for a bit but drain your mana and gold fast..

[Vilendor]

I love how the instant answer from the classic pros is always "Naaaaaah paladins don't have taunt"
(see first 2 pages)

You guys realize 6 out of 8 bosses in BWL are taunt immune, right?

lol

[Nite92]

Not really helpful at all, but yeah this is sadly where people go with actual discussion. New evidence that proves the norm wrong? Pshh, can't have that.



Lack of taunt is a big deal on fights that require a taunt. As I have stated above, with spamming GBoK, they can out threat any Warrior going full tilt. The "bad at single target" isn't a viable answer anymore. So a Paladin tanking on a fight that doesn't require taunt is theoretically better than a Warrior in every single way.

How long can a paladin last doing that? What happens if he goes oom? Warrior tanks can deal significant amounts of damage while tanking. Paladin can't taunt, which is an issue, because once something goes wrong threat wise, they dont have an oh shit button.

Currently, threat isn't really an issue, so why bring a tank with all these disadvantages, and now having to gear 1 more tank, because e.g. horse man cant be done on a pala.