Prot Paladin - T4 - pre-bis tanking

[Mister K]

Went to Kara last night (cleared all but Nightbane due to pre-quest). Now I was the "backup" tank tagging along, half the times on the cleanse duty and feeling useless.

During fights I just find myself going oom so keeping 2nd on the agro was problematic. I was popping Super Mana Potions left-right and centre but because I am not getting hit, I am not getting any mana.

Threat was iffy at times but generally fine IF I am getting hit on the trash although consecration bug did not do me any favours. Main concerns were really just lacking mana, not being able to do shit if I am not MTing due to poor threat.

Question:
Should I be pushing to MT undead/demon bosses or just sit back, quite and let the "big boys tank" while I get carried to T5/T6 and start shining?

PS: I played Holy in Wrath, RET in modern expansions and mastered them both. Now trying out prot so a relatively new tank but had decent feedback in 5 mans / heroics.

[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)

[C20]

The mana regen they get is from being healed. On packs which aren't hurting you, this can be problematic as no damage taken = no healing needed = no mana regen = potential aggro issues. On hard hitting bosses, assuming you're uncrushable, mana won't be a huge problem as long as you're taking some damage, whether it's as MT or as OT. In addition, you get 50% of the amount healed as threat directed to you. In any case, you only get 10% of the amount healed as regen.

Mana regen tended to be an issue on lower content, unless you were extremely undergeared, but things became significantly more manageable if you were MT. Trash packs are almost always a case of pull more as massive amounts of blocks typically mean you won't need to worry about getting slaughtered. The only thing to do as an OT prot pala in TBC was to sit there and wait your turn. Try not to burn through mana, but if you want to feel like you're helping, switch to Seal of Wisdom until it's your turn to MT and do a slower rotation.

[Nite92]

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)

What are you on about? Paladins are BiS for kara. If you have two equally geared tanks and not pick the pala to MT Kara, you are doing it wrong. Also, you need enough threat, not maximum threat, and paladins are pretty good as MT, e.g. ,on Gruul and very good on demons/UD. I kept easily 30% ahead of one r1 and multiple top 10 dps parses.