Paladin Raid Tanking

[Machismo]

Threat is definitely the biggest part of tanking, or are you somehow unaware that Warriors are tanking raids while dual wielding? Do you think that's to eke out a little more DPS? The reason you don't see many Paladin tanks is that they have nothing to make up for their limitations. Their threat is weaker than Warriors normally, and everything else is too. Bump the threat to #1 of all tanks and suddenly it becomes interesting.

I'm aware that threat is a big deal. But, that was never really the biggest drawback for pallies. It was gear, taunts, and mana. Sure, one problem may be solved, at the expense of a not-so-trivial amount of gold. That very same problem can easily be nerfbatted, just like warrior threat was earlier in Classic.

Now, I'm not in the most hardcore of guilds, but threat really isn't an issue for the tanks. It's not a problem for fury warriors, prot warriors, or druids. What has long been a problem, is gear. There's a finite amount, and paladins are simply unable to tank some fights. It's not a matter of them not being optimal... they are completely useless in those fights. That puts you down a tank, and down all that gear.

[Coldfrostzero]

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.

The three things people say about Paladins is they can't taunt, they don't have a big defensive spell, and their threat is bad because they run OOM.

On a fight where taunt is irrelevant, they aren't any more or less functional.

They don't have a big defensive spell, but how tanking works also needs to be considered. Not sure how many people in here have ever actually tanked in Classic or a Mythic tank in retail. I've done both for a long time. If a Warrior can do it without even using tanking gear, it is at least worth discussing why a Paladin in full tank gear wouldn't be as good if they can produce MORE threat and potentially take less spiky damage.

The threat thing is now no longer an issue because they can create a threat ceiling faster and larger than a Warrior could in the same amount of time. Not to mention, the threat from Blessings cannot be dodged/parried/miss/glancing/resisted.

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.

People started off the thread by saying that it was a bug. That's outright lying.
That it was patched out. Also a lie.
Coming in and just saying "lol no" isn't a discussion.

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.

Tanking gear isn't finite at all. You can go an entire 2 months and have it rain from the sky or you can have none of it. The game doesn't have an end suddenly once you gear your Warriors it'll never drop again. As I've said, Warriors and Paladins wouldn't even share that much gear as Warriors use DPS gear and Paladins would use actual tank gear.

We're not even talking about trash. Again, you're focusing on just having a single paladin tank. In a raid, you have 3-4 tanks. One being a paladin tank doesn't completely remove the other 2-3 tanks from the group. Yet, I'm the one moving the goalposts?

Yes, Paladins will never be the best tanks overall. I'm not trying to push something crazy like they'll replace Warriors.

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.

I tanked BWL Sunday, Onyxia and MC on Monday on my Warrior. I have played this game for 15 years, I've tanked on every class in various expansions and recently when I was still playing BFA, I was a Monk tank into a Warrior tank into a Bear tank. I tanked Mythic bosses as far as my guild could progress. My monk has 90th and higher percentiles on some Ulduar fights (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/charact...9&difficulty=4) for Heroic and my lowest percentile was 79th. I switched to my Warrior after we downed the first boss in Mythic out of boredom for the Monk rotation.

So please, try to tell me how I don't know how to tank a raid or play a tank optimally it's pretty amusing.

Threat is definitely the biggest part of tanking, or are you somehow unaware that Warriors are tanking raids while dual wielding? Do you think that's to eke out a little more DPS? The reason you don't see many Paladin tanks is that they have nothing to make up for their limitations. Their threat is weaker than Warriors normally, and everything else is too. Bump the threat to #1 of all tanks and suddenly it becomes interesting.

See this is what I am talking about. The people in this thread don't seem have actually ever tanked on a Fury Warrior. I do it every single night I raid. The limitations of a Deep Prot Warrior or an Impale Prot Warrior is threat. So Fury tanking became the norm. Fury tanking has the limitation of taking a TON of damage to the point where they WANT to take a critical hit. A Warrior tank can be killed within 2-3 hits getting back to back critically hit.

Everyone saying I'm moving the goalposts ignores why Fury tanks are a thing. Why no serious guild would take a Deep Prot Warrior as their MT anymore. Guild I joined, both Warrior tanks are Fury and we have a Bear Druid. All of our Fury Warriors OT on trash or if the MT and me get gibbed.

[keldarepewpew]

Just make a paladin do it and post some videos this sub is way to small minded to try and argue with.

[Machismo]

The three things people say about Paladins is they can't taunt, they don't have a big defensive spell, and their threat is bad because they run OOM.

On a fight where taunt is irrelevant, they aren't any more or less functional.

They don't have a big defensive spell, but how tanking works also needs to be considered. Not sure how many people in here have ever actually tanked in Classic or a Mythic tank in retail. I've done both for a long time. If a Warrior can do it without even using tanking gear, it is at least worth discussing why a Paladin in full tank gear wouldn't be as good if they can produce MORE threat and potentially take less spiky damage.

The threat thing is now no longer an issue because they can create a threat ceiling faster and larger than a Warrior could in the same amount of time. Not to mention, the threat from Blessings cannot be dodged/parried/miss/glancing/resisted.



People started off the thread by saying that it was a bug. That's outright lying.
That it was patched out. Also a lie.
Coming in and just saying "lol no" isn't a discussion.



Tanking gear isn't finite at all. You can go an entire 2 months and have it rain from the sky or you can have none of it. The game doesn't have an end suddenly once you gear your Warriors it'll never drop again. As I've said, Warriors and Paladins wouldn't even share that much gear as Warriors use DPS gear and Paladins would use actual tank gear.

We're not even talking about trash. Again, you're focusing on just having a single paladin tank. In a raid, you have 3-4 tanks. One being a paladin tank doesn't completely remove the other 2-3 tanks from the group. Yet, I'm the one moving the goalposts?

Yes, Paladins will never be the best tanks overall. I'm not trying to push something crazy like they'll replace Warriors.



I tanked BWL Sunday, Onyxia and MC on Monday on my Warrior. I have played this game for 15 years, I've tanked on every class in various expansions and recently when I was still playing BFA, I was a Monk tank into a Warrior tank into a Bear tank. I tanked Mythic bosses as far as my guild could progress. My monk has 90th and higher percentiles on some Ulduar fights (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/charact...9&difficulty=4) for Heroic and my lowest percentile was 79th. I switched to my Warrior after we downed the first boss in Mythic out of boredom for the Monk rotation.

So please, try to tell me how I don't know how to tank a raid or play a tank optimally it's pretty amusing.

Yes, it is finite... only so much can drop off of each boss. It's also random. My guild had shit luck, and only had 4 pieces drop in the first four clears of MC and Ony.
What "actual tank gear" would paladins be using? Would it be the Might set? Nope. Even fury warriors will wear some Might and Wrath gear.

[Ryjax]

Lmao. Thanks for proving MMO-C is not the place to talk anything Classic-related. 95% of these people obviously have no-idea what they are talking about and probably don't even play.

Good laugh.

[Alydael]

Currently have a 60 warrior I tank on (Tauren) and rolled another for DPS (Orc). I also have a mid level Paladin I work on when I am bored or friends aren't available.

I am just asking if any guilds that raid seriously or semi seriously have looked into it since apparently buffing Greater Blessing of Kings on people generates insane amounts of threat (114 Threat per target) which any class that is stacked with more than 6 will provide the Paladin with more threat than a Warrior could dream of. While also doing regular threat from damage, and has better mitigation than a Fury warrior making them easier to heal, minus a big crit here and there. However, having a Paladin take 1 crit should nearly push subsequent crits off the table from Redoubt, since a partially blocked hit cannot be a critical.

Since threat is the #1 thing tanks worry about, I am curious if anyone who has written off Paladin tanking has given a second thought to it.

No one is disagreeing with you about the threat, they are just saying that the lack of a taunt is too much of a liability, even with the extra threat.

No taunt= any loss of aggro is basically a wipe.

War tanks will never have that problem, so why would you Pally > war for raid?

When classic was vanilla- no one ever really thought about pally main tanks. I think now there is more of a focus after that Hyjal patch in BC made pally and druids viable. Most people that play WoW now have always had viable druid and pally tanks available, so it seems strange to them that you can't use them. I think the original design of raids was that they "weren't for everyone-" only the most serious guilds, so Blizz didn't think they needed more tank options. Once raiding became more commonplace- Blizz realized that they needed more tank options for players, so they made the other tanks raid viable. All of that didn't happen until later in BC.

I am going to be honest though- those raids are so damn easy in vanilla (MC cleared first day, BWL within hours), a pally tank will probably not be an issue.

It's more of a perception thing, but perception can cause players not to join your team, to leave your team or can cause disquiet on the team. You won't get anything like that if you just go with the war tank, like Blizz wanted you to. So, why as a raid leader- would you open yourself up to all that when you can just go war and have no problems. Most people like to make life easier for themselves.

[Segus1992]

No one is disagreeing with you about the threat, they are just saying that the lack of a taunt is too much of a liability, even with the extra threat.

No taunt= any loss of aggro is basically a wipe.

War tanks will never have that problem, so why would you Pally > war for raid?

When classic was vanilla- no one ever really thought about pally main tanks. I think now there is more of a focus after that Hyjal patch in BC made pally and druids viable. Most people that play WoW now have always had viable druid and pally tanks available, so it seems strange to them that you can't use them. I think the original design of raids was that they "weren't for everyone-" only the most serious guilds, so Blizz didn't think they needed more tank options. Once raiding became more commonplace- Blizz realized that they needed more tank options for players, so they made the other tanks raid viable. All of that didn't happen until later in BC.

I am going to be honest though- those raids are so damn easy in vanilla (MC cleared first day, BWL within hours), a pally tank will probably not be an issue.

It's more of a perception thing, but perception can cause players not to join your team, to leave your team or can cause disquiet on the team. You won't get anything like that if you just go with the war tank, like Blizz wanted you to. So, why as a raid leader- would you open yourself up to all that when you can just go war and have no problems. Most people like to make life easier for themselves.

This really isn't the problem. Perception is only the problem of those who don't really think anyway, and just do what the big boys are doing. If APES used a Prot Paladin, suddenly every Alliance guild would.

What matters is actual performance. Does this "new discovery" allow Paladins to have a legitimate spot in raids? If the threat is as good as thought, then yes it would. You'd definitely have to jump through hoops to get to it though, and that might not be worth it.

No taunt definitely doesn't mean the wipe of a raid. That's a lot more true for Warriors than it is for Paladins. No aggro means no rage, and on bosses you can't taunt (they're pretty frequent in Vanilla), it's very hard for a Warrior to get aggro back. For a Paladin spamming GBoK, most of the threat is constant and doesn't improve by being attacked.
What no taunt does mean is that for fights where tank swaps are necessary, Paladins are worthless.

In other words, even if Paladins could only match a Fury Warrior on TPS, they'd still be a more secure pick for fights where threat is sensitive and the targets are taunt immune, just because they wouldn't stop generating threat because of lost aggro.

[dfinan]

So I choose the hard route, I made a prot pally in classic and currently raid with the guild Hounds of Tindalos on Myzrael. I did it because I wanted to do something difficult and because I wanted to better understand what the issues are. Now before everyone jumps on me and says how bad prot pallies are hear me out. First everything that has been said about the lack of a taunt is 100% true, missing that one tool makes it impossible for us to tank certain bosses (even with BoK spam), particularly since most bosses in BWL require some kind of tank swap mechanic. This is less of an issue in MC as I have tanked Lucifron, Gehennas, Shazrah, and Sulfuron, I also can tank Onyixia with no issues. I also get used to tank almost all the adds on the Gar fight. Prot pallies can work for tanking, but I wouldnt recommend it for progression. In order the biggest issues are

1. No Taunt (already discussed)
2. Gearing issues - there is limited or virtually no correctly itemized gear for prot pallies
3. Health Pool- Even under best of circumstances Prot pallies are anywhere from 1k-2k less in health then warriors which makes spike damage tricky

Keep in mind the above is based on MC. Our guild made its first foray into BWL last weekend and was able to clear it over saturday/ sunday. We are still working out strats and the best way to use a prot pally in there. For example we are looking at having me solo tank fire maw with 300+ fire resist using BoK spam, helping tank broodlord and other tricks where I can use my BoK spam to build up a huge amount of threat have a tank taunt off then I bubble, but this stuff we are still working out.

Overall I tell people who see my gear, and see me tanking in BWL and MC they can do it if they want, if the guild understands how prot pallies work and take advantage of it it but is not optimal, it is very expensive and requires the exact right set of gear and talents with little or no exceptions. Ret is (if properly geared) far more viable and of course healing is our bread and butter. this is coming from someone who got a 99% parse tanking shaz on my prot pally. Overall I would say I am the exception rather then the rule and there are more ways to get prot pally wrong then right. I am holding out hope we will be able to move these characters into TBC classic if they come out with it, once that happens we will be able to tank with near parity to warriors as we get a bunch of missing tools and gear.

- - - Updated - - -

Prot pallies definitely have a place in vanilla raids even if they arent the main tank, there are multiple fights where BoK spam allows them to gather and hold multiple mobs for AoE to kill. Or controll where packs of mobs go like Gar's adds or the adds in razorgore's room in BWL. They are also great on taunt immune bosses like Onyxia, since BoK spam is actual threat not a taunt it means if done correctly they can grab and pull onyxia when she lands in phase 3 much easier then other classes. All that said as mentioned in my previous post, it is exceedingly difficult to level, gear and pull off to the point that it is more of a novelty then the norm. I wouldnt recommend anyone go prot pally for raiding without knowing what they were getting into and understanding that they will have difficult time getting into raids unless they have discussed it with there guild do the unique way we have to play.

[Coldfrostzero]

This really isn't the problem. Perception is only the problem of those who don't really think anyway, and just do what the big boys are doing. If APES used a Prot Paladin, suddenly every Alliance guild would.

What matters is actual performance. Does this "new discovery" allow Paladins to have a legitimate spot in raids? If the threat is as good as thought, then yes it would. You'd definitely have to jump through hoops to get to it though, and that might not be worth it.

No taunt definitely doesn't mean the wipe of a raid. That's a lot more true for Warriors than it is for Paladins. No aggro means no rage, and on bosses you can't taunt (they're pretty frequent in Vanilla), it's very hard for a Warrior to get aggro back. For a Paladin spamming GBoK, most of the threat is constant and doesn't improve by being attacked.
What no taunt does mean is that for fights where tank swaps are necessary, Paladins are worthless.

In other words, even if Paladins could only match a Fury Warrior on TPS, they'd still be a more secure pick for fights where threat is sensitive and the targets are taunt immune, just because they wouldn't stop generating threat because of lost aggro.

To piggy back on this, their threat also can't be dodged/blocked/parried/missed/glancing/resisted. GBoK's spamming is only limited to GCD, time of fight, and mana management of the Paladin.

On my last Lucifron kill, my threat to the boss was just over the 50k mark. I'm not sure on length of the kill, we did it with less than 25 people and this new guild didn't log because it was an off night fun thing.

My last guild, in 1:12 second pull, I managed 23 Heroic Strikes, 12 Bloodthirst, and 5 Revenge on top of 105 melee swings and keeping Sunder and Demo Shout up. Plus whatever aggro was caused by Bloodrage, Thorns, and Strong Troll's Blood. I would imagine my threat was at about 35-40k over the course of the fight. DPS in that guild wasn't spectacular so I didn't have to push it very hard, so I can only use that as kind of a comparison.

In 15 GCDs on 14 targets, a Paladin will cause 23,940 threat from just BGoKs. Not including threat from Holy Shield, Thorns/Ret Aura, melee swing+seal, consecration, shield spike, reflective shield damage (if applicable), and Mighty Troll's Blood.

BGoK costs next to nothing in mana and can be spammed immediately at the start of a fight, rage has to be built up. As long as the fight ends before the paladin completely gasses out and someone finally catches up to them, but most fights are over well within a minute or two there isn't really a big problem with them gassing out at the very end. If the Paladin has such a large ceiling of threat, there's probably wiggle room for mana regen, and getting ~150 MP/5 would really make even the argument about running out of mana a lot less relevant if they are doing more threat in 1 spell every 5 seconds anyway.

[Alydael]

This really isn't the problem. Perception is only the problem of those who don't really think anyway, and just do what the big boys are doing. If APES used a Prot Paladin, suddenly every Alliance guild would.

What matters is actual performance. Does this "new discovery" allow Paladins to have a legitimate spot in raids? If the threat is as good as thought, then yes it would. You'd definitely have to jump through hoops to get to it though, and that might not be worth it.

No taunt definitely doesn't mean the wipe of a raid. That's a lot more true for Warriors than it is for Paladins. No aggro means no rage, and on bosses you can't taunt (they're pretty frequent in Vanilla), it's very hard for a Warrior to get aggro back. For a Paladin spamming GBoK, most of the threat is constant and doesn't improve by being attacked.
What no taunt does mean is that for fights where tank swaps are necessary, Paladins are worthless.

In other words, even if Paladins could only match a Fury Warrior on TPS, they'd still be a more secure pick for fights where threat is sensitive and the targets are taunt immune, just because they wouldn't stop generating threat because of lost aggro.

The problem is that it would be impossible to tell (before hand) if losing threat would = a wipe. If a wipe was developing- the Paladin tank would not be able to "taunt" back. You would have to hope that threat would get it back. That won't always work.

You can easily dismiss perceptions if you want, but a raid leader has to deal with a whole raid full of differing perceptions. You have to keep everyone on the team happy or all sorts of issues start popping up. I don't raid lead now, but I did for about 4 years or so. You will be dealing with perceptions all the time. I used a lot of analytical tools so I would know exactly why we wiped etc. Players on the team, without using analytics would occasionally challenge my findings based on their own perceptions (with no analytics). So dealing with people's perceptions, as a raid lead- can not just be dismissed.

The other side of this is that if you just go with war tanks- you avoid this whole discussion/ problem. Why would you invite a potential problem to the raid team when you can very easily avoid it all together?

I believe personally that a Paladin can tank these vanilla raids (Its not like its Mythic Ny'alotha- these classic raids are kind of easy). If I ran a team, I wouldn't be against trying it out. However, I wouldn't do it if the team was dead set against it- as raid lead you have to keep the peace if you want a happy and successful team. If I was thinking of bringing on the Pally tank- it would be something I discussed with my team first.

The easiest way to avoid all this is just to form your own team with your Paladin tank as the MT. I'm sure you will find people to join. You could even build your team around the Pally tank that way.

[clevin]

So I choose the hard route, I made a prot pally in classic and currently raid with the guild Hounds of Tindalos on Myzrael.

To give some context, Hounds is one of the better raiding guilds on Myzrael so this isn't some edge guild that doesn't know what they're doing.

[Segus1992]

The problem is that it would be impossible to tell (before hand) if losing threat would = a wipe. If a wipe was developing- the Paladin tank would not be able to "taunt" back. You would have to hope that threat would get it back. That won't always work.

You can easily dismiss perceptions if you want, but a raid leader has to deal with a whole raid full of differing perceptions. You have to keep everyone on the team happy or all sorts of issues start popping up. I don't raid lead now, but I did for about 4 years or so. You will be dealing with perceptions all the time. I used a lot of analytical tools so I would know exactly why we wiped etc. Players on the team, without using analytics would occasionally challenge my findings based on their own perceptions (with no analytics). So dealing with people's perceptions, as a raid lead- can not just be dismissed.

The other side of this is that if you just go with war tanks- you avoid this whole discussion/ problem. Why would you invite a potential problem to the raid team when you can very easily avoid it all together?

I believe personally that a Paladin can tank these vanilla raids (Its not like its Mythic Ny'alotha- these classic raids are kind of easy). If I ran a team, I wouldn't be against trying it out. However, I wouldn't do it if the team was dead set against it- as raid lead you have to keep the peace if you want a happy and successful team. If I was thinking of bringing on the Pally tank- it would be something I discussed with my team first.

The easiest way to avoid all this is just to form your own team with your Paladin tank as the MT. I'm sure you will find people to join. You could even build your team around the Pally tank that way.

I get where you're coming from, but what we're discussing isn't the casual level of play that you're discussing, but rather what a Paladin would be capable of in the perfect hands given the new GBoK spam tactic.

I'm not trying to make Prot Paladins a normal thing that everyone does, but rather discuss if it's potentially got a place in a high-end guild, where everyone is playing what's ideal.

It's not interesting to figure out whether or not playing as a Prot Paladin is 'possible', because we all know it is. You could easily clear all of MC and BWL with nothing but Paladins or Druids.

[clevin]

I get where you're coming from, but what we're discussing isn't the casual level of play that you're discussing, but rather what a Paladin would be capable of in the perfect hands given the new GBoK spam tactic.

I'm not trying to make Prot Paladins a normal thing that everyone does, but rather discuss if it's potentially got a place in a high-end guild, where everyone is playing what's ideal.

but if everyone was playing what's IDEAL, the tanks will be warriors. The only people having a Prot Pally MT are raids that a ) don't care or b) are willing to experiment and either can handle it when things go south or don't care if they wipe. But the point some of us are making is that paladins aren't ideal or optimal or whatever word you want to use and that, while it's probably possible, most raids aren't going to do it because it's just flat out easier to use warriors.

[Segus1992]

but if everyone was playing what's IDEAL, the tanks will be warriors. The only people having a Prot Pally MT are raids that a ) don't care or b) are willing to experiment and either can handle it when things go south or don't care if they wipe. But the point some of us are making is that paladins aren't ideal or optimal or whatever word you want to use and that, while it's probably possible, most raids aren't going to do it because it's just flat out easier to use warriors.

Which is why I'm talking about whether they have a place in an ideal raid group. If they do the most TPS of all tanks, they definitely do if their limitations can be overcome.

The discussion about whether or not Prot Paladins CAN be played in raids has been done to death for 15 years. Yes, they can, but poorly. End of story - until GBoK spam became a thing.

[clevin]

Which is why I'm talking about whether they have a place in an ideal raid group. If they do the most TPS of all tanks, they definitely do if their limitations can be overcome..

In an ideal one? No. TPS is not the only criterion for a tank. For example, look at their health pool in the same (or equivalent) gear. If it's 1-2k less, there's yet another risk factor.

Relax "ideal" a bit and say "in a progression raid" and my answer changes to "Maybe, but why?"

[Coldfrostzero]

but if everyone was playing what's IDEAL, the tanks will be warriors. The only people having a Prot Pally MT are raids that a ) don't care or b) are willing to experiment and either can handle it when things go south or don't care if they wipe. But the point some of us are making is that paladins aren't ideal or optimal or whatever word you want to use and that, while it's probably possible, most raids aren't going to do it because it's just flat out easier to use warriors.

I find it hard to write something off without giving it the proper trials. Dfinan is but one person. As he has said, he is the exception not the rule. You don't say something is a failed experiment with one or two trials. This is a fledgling idea and exploring it and discussing what could improve it, is something that isn't harmful. Look at cat druids, people found a level 30 mace in a dungeon makes them at least a competitive DPS if not compared to Warriors, Rogues, and Mages.

Just having people come in and say "not possible" is close-minded simple answer.

Nobody expects Paladins to replace Warriors at all as the overall tank on any fight. They will always be the niche tank in Classic and most of BC, but it's fun to push the envelope and see how far you can get with it.

In an ideal one? No. TPS is not the only criterion for a tank. For example, look at their health pool in the same (or equivalent) gear. If it's 1-2k less, there's yet another risk factor.

Relax "ideal" a bit and say "in a progression raid" and my answer changes to "Maybe, but why?"

Is it a limiting factor when a Fury Warrior takes back to back critical hits for 2,500+ when a Paladin will never take back to back crits due to Redoubt/Holy Shield? Effective Health Pool is a thing to consider as well. Not to mention, it's very possible for a Warrior with a shield on to be Rage starved (which is counterproductive anyway to the whole threat argument. Any time a Warrior throws on a shield they are no longer the "threat powerhouse") and they then cannot be crit immune, as long as a paladin has mana to cast Holy Shield, they are crit immune and can be crit immune longer since Holy Shield lasts 10 seconds and has 4 charges. Shield Block is 6 seconds at 2 charges.

[Segus1992]

In an ideal one? No. TPS is not the only criterion for a tank. For example, look at their health pool in the same (or equivalent) gear. If it's 1-2k less, there's yet another risk factor.

Relax "ideal" a bit and say "in a progression raid" and my answer changes to "Maybe, but why?"

In an ideal one, TPS is by FAR the main factor. Paladins do have worse gear for sure, but in BWL that should improve vs MC & Ony to the point where that 1-2k hp gap (which seems exaggerated) should be 0-1k.

Gear is an issue for sure, but if you compare Paladin tanks with the most prevalent tank in any good guild (Fury/Prot Warriors), their general survival should be higher, not lower. At that point, the question isn't "is the gain of TPS worth all the issues and limitations?" but rather "do we need the higher TPS enough to deal with swapping tanks between fights?".

[Mukind]

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 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.

But you only need mitigation buffs as paladin...?

Why would u put on spell power buffs or whatever pala tanks do it will do nothing for you, just press kings again lol

[Sting]

To give some context, Hounds is one of the better raiding guilds on Myzrael so this isn't some edge guild that doesn't know what they're doing.

For reference, I checked the logs, they don't seem that great to me even compared to my own semi-casual guild. With dps warriors like that, there's hardly a need to push hard for threat. You could probably play full mitigation gear deep prot and be fine.

As alliance, you can stay deep prot the whole game if you know how to properly gear for threat as warrior even if you have to fight good fury warriors for threat. Paladins aren't worth the handicap in classic.

[dfinan]

In an ideal one, TPS is by FAR the main factor. Paladins do have worse gear for sure, but in BWL that should improve vs MC & Ony to the point where that 1-2k hp gap (which seems exaggerated) should be 0-1k.

Gear is an issue for sure, but if you compare Paladin tanks with the most prevalent tank in any good guild (Fury/Prot Warriors), their general survival should be higher, not lower. At that point, the question isn't "is the gain of TPS worth all the issues and limitations?" but rather "do we need the higher TPS enough to deal with swapping tanks between fights?".

You doi bring up a valid point, as healers in our guild have said other then a shallow health pool making spike damage tricky, that IO am typically easier to heal then warriors because the incoming damage curve is more linear. particularly if the warrior tank is fury prot. Case point point I usually tank anywhere from 5-6 of gars adds while the raid downs Gar, then the warrior taunt adds off me one at a time to kill the adds.