Originally Posted by
Phala
as someone who mained protection paladin back in the day i must say this to you:
- its potency is for some reason glorified now, but protection paladin were not especially great up until the wotlk content patch that hit in late sunwell times (nor were they as bad as their reputation was back then. but i have seen a lot of people now acting like its the GOAT of tbc. Its not. It's slightly inferiour to warriors on almost every boss and at some its actually great and noone knows about it.)
- you have to force yourself into MT position whereever you can - because protection is, like you found out yourself, a very bad 2nd-in-threat offtank (mana issues)
- you wont start shining in t5/t6 levels. whatever sitatuation you are in now will be the same at that point - there is nothing in particular special about paladins in higher gear that is not also true for warrior/druid.
right now you are perhaps in a pretty bad spot. your guild wants you to offtank bosses (which paladins are bad at) and perhaps at some point will want you to maintank some bosses which you mechanically straight up cant do well (nightbane for example). your bad performance will then make them think either your or the class is bad.
the only way out of this is to become an opportunist, read up on which boss is great to tank for paladins and straight up tell your raid "i will maintank that". success will then lead to trust, trust will lead to them not beeing confused when at the next boss you tell them "the warrior will maintank that".
If you let others make that decision for you you gonna have a bad experience. Chances are they have little to no idea how protections paladins work and make bad calls (the result is obviously blamed on you).
you are not a swiss army knive but a very good tool for specific jobs. Most people will think thats only AOE tanking and thats it. If you dont teach them otherwise you will have a very sad experience (again - not changing with t5/6 ilvls)