Dont Paladins have some form of natural Shield Wall when below 20% HP however as an 'oh shit' function?

5 Druids could not do anything, however having 4 caster form Druids chain-cycloning would be some pretty mean CC if it manages to surpass the diminishing returns.

Done a rather large number of heroics with druid solohealers, and we have a protection paladin who does the heroics a fair bit as well, tough rarely in the same group as me since stacking tanks is not a good idea for most of them (tough it can work)
For a depressingly large number of fights druid solohealing is made much more viable by bringing a felhound along to deal with magical debuffs of death. Oh, and a Warlock to summon it >.-)

Paladin/Mage/Lock/Druid/Shadowpriest (optional, occasionally a 2nd mage or other dps).

My gear (http://www.ctprofiles.net/30606). Others are a mix of Kara and T3 gear (or crafted equivalents). Druid was quite well geared from Kara, having soaked up all the leather. While some heroic bosses hit pretty hard, I haven't encountered anything that really seems out of bounds for a paladin tank (I've tanked fairly far into Kara as well, but that seems increasingly common). To be fair, I have not tried heroic Morass or Arcatraz, so those may hold challenges I'm not yet capable of.

My only complaint is mobs with Fear. I can break 1 with PvP trinket (sacrificing an avoidance trinket), 1 with DS (this can be fairly sketchy), and I guess the blacksmithing trinket, though I haven't broken that thing out in awhile. After that, I'm out of options. This can get pretty frustrating, especially as its a pretty standard mechanic for a warrior tank. It also puts some bosses firmly out of reach for paladin tanks (Nightbane) without Fear ward, which obviously isn't available uniformly. Given how widespread the fear mechanic is, some repeatable method of fear breaking or prevention would be nice. I realize thats a pipe dream, just a pet peeve of mine.

My typical groups have so far been:

Myself(35/23/3 Arms/Fury PvP Warrior)
Paladin(Holy/Prot)
Warlock
Mage
Rogue

Myself(see above)
Paladin
Priest
Mage
Rogue

Myself
Paladin
Priest
Warlock
Rogue

Myself
Paladin
Priest
Rogue
Rogue

I've run almost all of the heroics with a combo of the above make-ups. I think the most painful one might be the double Rogue we try to get away with. But all of them are doable.

I'd be more interested to hear people's experiences running heroics with warriors that have a hybrid dps/prot spec. I'm 42/5/14 and just getting around to being revered with a few factions, but I often get tells from random people on the server asking me if I'm prot and if i want t go to some heroic. I really don't like the pigeon holing this represents, so I wonder that if a prot paladin can tank a heroic, can a 'hybrid' warrior, too?

I've done all of the coilfang heroics with a MS warrior, with very little incident (im not sure how all of his points were allocated, but he also had piercing howl which came in very handy). Those are widely considered the easiest heroics, so take that as you wish.

With good crowd control, it really doesn't matter. There are probably a handful of pulls in each instance that really test the tanks gear/healers HPS output. There are several bosses where I tell the feral druid I usually run with to put on his DPS gear (bear DPS is broken), because the tank's mitigation/avoidance is that much of a non-issue, and DPS is king. There are quite a few heroics I have yet to do, though.

Mortal strike comes in handy on several encounters, also. If you don't regularly run with a rogue (who is smart enough to carry wound poison), having that MS debuff is definitely an asset.

As a Paladin, as well as tanking everything up to Curator, I've thus far tanked heroic:

Slave Pens
Underbog
Steamvault
Ramparts
Blood Furnace

(Still working on my Revered rep for Lower City/Sha'Tar)

...and not once felt gimped by my paladin-ness. In fact, the group I regularly run with are non-guildies who seek me out (rather than any warrior) because they see me as a "good tank". My mitigation is fine, I'm uncrittable, nearly uncrushable with Holy Shield up, sitting on almost 12k unbuffed HP, and the frontloaded threat I can put out is wonderful, plus the massive healing needed to keep tanks up on the really tough stuff on heroics means I'm never short of mana.

On the subject of the added value bought by hybrids: I can do stuff like spam heals on people if there's a moment in the fight where there's no mob on me, save the healer from double mindflays on Skyriss. Plus self-healing, even if you are being hit, results in better mitigation than NOT healing, in the event a healer goes down early... I've saved a fair few would-be wipes when a healer dies early. And the ability to bubble to clear any debuff is great on some bosses... that hydra in Underbog f'rinstance.

Well we didn't do Bog last night, but we hit up heroic Blood Furnace.

http://home.comcast.net/~yarrr/furnace.jpg

Holy Pally, Prot Pally, Shadow Priest, pvp spec MS/Deathwish warrior, Rogue. It was a lot of fun running Furnace with limited CC, coming up with weird strategies to handle the various pulls was great. I didn't run into any problems keeping our prot pally MT up until the felguards near the end. Normal crushing attack + the uppercut or whatever it is they do at the same time is brutal.

I'm a bit tired atm so I didn't read through the post, nor am I a druid/paladin/shaman/x.

But, a few guildies of mine completed heroic steamvaults today with a group of:

Priest
Paladin
Druid
Druid
Shaman

I have no idea of their specs and that kind of thing, all I know is that all of them got Kalithresh's trident. I should also add it took a few hours and probably quite a few wipes to do it ^^

and.. today before going in and finally defeating the high king. (2nd raid night on him)
a very silly setup went into ramparts and crypts with the aim of laying paws on some plate that doesnt have "sucky" all over it..- Bear, Arms/fury, Full resto, Holy/Disc, hunter.

Somewhat more expensive than the usual heroic group in terms of repairs. but we won

Have only done 3 heroics so far, but my first 2 runs were pretty smooth - Prot paladin tank, Ret paladin healer (me), double shadow priest and frost mage. We did Auchenai Crypts and Sethekk Halls with this group, and the deathrate was pretty low.
(Better than some normal instance runs I've done)


Gear wise, I'm in mostly 70 blues, with quite a few pieces of L65~ pieces I haven't been able to replace yet. I was pretty happy that I was capable of keeping up with the healing requirements, though the shadow priests contributed quite a bit. (VE healing complements paladin single target healing, VE and VT make a huge impact on the longevity of a paladin without Illumination)


From that experience, I'd say that the specific class used doesn't matter too much - it's more the capabilities of the overall group. (Humanoid/Demon/Undead CC, Combat rezzes, stuns/fears, single target/AoE DPS, back up tank/healer, etc)