Hey guys, with some help from this forum, I managed to prove to myself and others that paladins are viable off/main-tanks for any encounter that doesn't require stance dancing, but now I'm having some trouble deciding whether I should keep playing my pally past Karazhan or just retire him and play my rogue
There are enough competent warriors and feral druids in my guild to tank all the bosses and adds you could want, but I'm wondering if there are any situations in SSC/The Eye/etc where it would really be swell to have a paladin geared up for serious tanking. Like are there any packs of 8 elites that don't hit obscenely hard, but you have trouble keeping them under control? Or is there a boss that hits too quickly to keep from crushing with shield block?
Or anything like that gauntlet on the way to Heigan in Naxxramas?
Basically, I'm satisfied that paladins can indeed tank most encounters and it's practical, what I'm wondering now is if it's worth playing my paladin even though I like being a rogue better, so that I can help my guild later on
Play what you enjoy. So far I haven't heard of a lot of successful guilds using Paladin tanks late into the raiding game. But I am also interested in hearing success stories.
Hopefully the item buffs combined with the encounter nerfs in 2.1 will make the encounters not so "razor's edge" and there will be more room for experimentation with alternative tank classes.
I read the first 10 pages or so of that thread, I"m just wondering if you guys have found any niche for pally tanks, which it sounds most unfortunately like you haven't.. man, freakin blizzard
I guess that a prot paladin is more useful than a second or third or fourth prot warrior at least thanks to the extra blessing and keeping a judgement up, but if there aren't any massive aoe zergfests coming up then I may as well quit playing my paladin..
I could go holy again, but I really can't stand healing in the expansion pack. It was fun in Naxx, since I could flash heal spam and every 5 minutes or so pop my scrolls of blinding light/divine shield/divine illumination and top the raid off, but it seems like nowadays it's a real struggle because you have to use holy light all the time
Also it kills me to replace redemption with halloween lawbringer..
We have a prot pally, who is seriously considering just going holy in 2.1. In SSC, he's fine to tank most trash, and is a great asset on Morogrim and Lurker to tank adds in the fight. Other than that, he heals. We've tried him as a tank for the priest in the Karathress fight, but he just didn't have the raw HP and the spell interruption that was necessary. In TK, again, he can handle trash pretty well, but generally contributes more by healing.
The only fight I've done where having a prot pally is more benefiicial than another feral druid or warrior would be Morogrim, for tanking the murloc adds. Lurker is decent too, because he can pick up a loose add, or be assigned to one of the islands for that phase and stay alive just fine, and can then also help healing when Lurker isn't submerged. Other than those 2 fights though, you're better off with another warrior or feral druid.
I read the first 10 pages or so of that thread, I"m just wondering if you guys have found any niche for pally tanks, which it sounds most unfortunately like you haven't.. man, freakin blizzard
I guess that a prot paladin is more useful than a second or third or fourth prot warrior at least thanks to the extra blessing and keeping a judgement up, but if there aren't any massive aoe zergfests coming up then I may as well quit playing my paladin..
I could go holy again, but I really can't stand healing in the expansion pack. It was fun in Naxx, since I could flash heal spam and every 5 minutes or so pop my scrolls of blinding light/divine shield/divine illumination and top the raid off, but it seems like nowadays it's a real struggle because you have to use holy light all the time
I'm tired of healing too. Mind you, it's nice to be a non-holy spec, as I've learned to live without illumination while healing, so I'm not hit by the nerf. But tanking is what I really have enjoyed doing from 50-60 and then from 61-70.
But I don't see any particular attention being paid to paladin tanks. For instance, Blizzard itemizers feel the need to put spell damage on our tiered plate armor. So in my head, Blizzard figures pally plate armor is armor with defensive stats, and spell damage. Now there is 0 pieces of plate armor catalogued in wowhead with spell damage that come from raid instances. That, in my mind, tells me that Blizzard hasn't put in any gear they expect paladin tanks to use. Now since we only have a potential 5 pieces of tiered gear, what are we supposed to fill the other slots with.
Now if we Blizzard doesn't expect us to need the spell damage gear, why are they putting it on our tier set?
On the other hand there's spatterings of items throughout the place with both strength and defensive stats. These are fairly obviously warrior items. There are also lots of plate item drops with healing stats.
Everything I see points paladins back into the direction of healers only. And the further I go, the less likely I see it changing.
I'm retiring my paladin until such time as Blizzard starts actually designs instances/loot with them in mind
I had my fill of struggling to compete at something when I would come in right behind a couple of priests and some druid in healing in naxx every day, because I didn't have any HoTs
The thing with AE tanking is just that the only talents important for that can be taken by a 41 holy paladin. The whole deeper stuff hardly helps against AE Packs. Holy shield isn't required as AE packs are not 73, so they can't trash, Ardent defender shouldn't trigger as you shouldn't drop below 50% against AE packs and Reckoning just doesn't shine when you consecrate for 2k / sec
The Eye is terrible for Paladin tanking as alot of the adds have Silence, or require Spell Reflect to tank. :/
I find it funny to think that Blizzard seemed at some point in Vanilla WoW surprised to see paladins doing nothing but stand in the back and heal.
I find it funny to think that at some point developing TBC they decided to give paladins a dual role, hybrid tank/healer.
Then somewhere down the line when they are designing raid encounters, they make a large numbers that rely on warrior abilities. Hard hitters early in Karazhan that you need Shield Block to avoid a crush before a pally can easily get enough avoidance to stop them. Fear on Nightbane. Silence on Maiden. Even on Maulgar, Mages/Hunters/Warlocks/Moonkin get better tanking roles than us, though my guild's thankfully found a place for me in that.
I wonder if in a couple of months, blizzard will be surprised to see paladins doing nothing but staying in the back and healing again.
I'm a bit worried that they're starting to think that that's all we want to do. Which is part of the reason I'm staying so adamantly Prot.
If it comes to the point where I need to respec to continue, I'll either quit or play my mage.
I don't MT bosses, but I tank adds on basically every fight that has adds. I was also one of three tanks for our first Void Reaver kill. Frustrating at times, but I'm hopeful for the future.
Paladin's as tanks could potentially work in SSC and The Eye. This is all speculation, but I'll give it a go.
SSC -
Hydross: A Paladin could tank 1 or 2 of the adds
Lurker: Tank adds like any other tank
Morogrim: Tank all the murlocs
Karathress: Tank one of the adds like any of the other tanks
Leotheras: Not sure how this fight would go with a Paladin for a tank
Vashj: Same as Leotheras, the use of a Paladin tank here is very questionable
The Eye -
A'lar: Consecrate and ranged taunt would be great for picking up the adds
Void Reaver: A Paladin tank could tank Void Reaver just like any other tank
Solarian: Consecrate to pick up all the adds (we use an AoE taunt rotation, so I'm not certain consecrate will pick all the adds up due to their unique target locking behavior on spawn)
If you were short tanks, I could see giving it a go. It would be nice to have a protection paladin on hand for some encounters. As for the original poster, it seems like your guild has plenty of tanks. There is no need for a protection paladin, especially if you have plenty of protection warriors and feral druids.
I just wish it were possible to sit down with these developers and figure out what the fuck is going through their thick skulls
I mean it's obvious that they don't raid this stuff, if they gathered up 25 Blizzard employees, assigned them appropriate gear, and then tried to do a new 25 man raid with just that team before releasing it the encounters would be so much more polished
If one of the devs had his guild tell him "Well, sorry Billy Bob, but you can't do X after Y because your class just doesn't have Z" then maybe they'd actually work on fixing something
I just wish it were possible to sit down with these developers and figure out what the fuck is going through their thick skulls
I mean it's obvious that they don't raid this stuff, if they gathered up 25 Blizzard employees, assigned them appropriate gear, and then tried to do a new 25 man raid with just that team before releasing it the encounters would be so much more polished
If one of the devs had his guild tell him "Well, sorry Billy Bob, but you can't do X after Y because your class just doesn't have Z" then maybe they'd actually work on fixing something
Many employees actually do play the game, and the content is tested by their internal raid group, but the prevailing thought on the matter is either encounters don't feel as overly tuned due to their zero lag environment, or they have gotten so good from being a raider as a profession that the content does not feel as difficult to them.
Also, they don't have to farm, and are given the gear, etc. needed to perform in a given encounter.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell
hmm, I guess if they have a Nihilum-quality raid group that doesn't have to farm, reclear trash, leave early to go to bed for work/school, etc then maybe all this content is cake
Many employees actually do play the game, and the content is tested by their internal raid group, but the prevailing thought on the matter is either encounters don't feel as overly tuned due to their zero lag environment, or they have gotten so good from being a raider as a profession that the content does not feel as difficult to them.
Also, they don't have to farm, and are given the gear, etc. needed to perform in a given encounter.
That and 9 classes times 3 specs = 27 things to test with only 25 raid slots, so a minimum of 2 specs will never get tested in a raid. I suspect these are retribution paladin and discipline priest.
The Eye -
A'lar: Consecrate and ranged taunt would be great for picking up the adds
Void Reaver: A Paladin tank could tank Void Reaver just like any other tank
Solarian: Consecrate to pick up all the adds (we use an AoE taunt rotation, so I'm not certain consecrate will pick all the adds up due to their unique target locking behavior on spawn)
Morogrim doesn't require a Paladin Tank, just a Paladin with IRF - which most pvp minded Holy Paladins pick up.
The same goes for Al'ar and Solarian - Holy Paladins can and do fill-in for all of those duties.
And while I am sure Paladins can and do MT Void Reaver, they are far from ideal in that their threat generation when not being actively hit is *very* suboptimal, and a Feral Druid, or Prot Warrior is far superior for this role, specifically Feral Druid.
Matter of fact, Void Reaver is the best fight for Feral Druids imo - since when they get deaggro'd, the Feral can go CR, Innervate, and shift back and be ready to tank within moments. Our feral druid takes multiple knockbacks before VR shifts to another tank.
Stop the awful whining. There's constructive discussion to be had here.
We've been slacking in progression raids lately (hence the PvP spec, if you're looking at my armory), but so far my 25-man healing has been limited to Gruul on nights when our feral druid is around. Basically, a situation which calls for less tanks and desperately screams for more healers -- I heal. That's why I'm a hybrid. Any other situation, I tank something; that's why I'm Prot.
I'm expected to perform my job and if every mob in the room somehow requires more HP than I have, I'll ask to be fit in a group for more tank buffs. The only thing in SSC I'd shy away from for survival reasons is the Fathom Guard with Windfury. I find my abilities more often useful to the encounter than not.
That said, there are clearly situations (mentioned above) where it's better to just stack rage tanks or even more commonly, where it works just as well to have a paladin healing for aggro. This I think was a mistake in the conception of paladin tanking. Every time there's a bunch of mobs that spawn and run towards you, the first thing a Prot paladin wants to do is spam heal so they don't kill a priest. If it's a Holy pally they don't even need to tank, just keep healing and have the mobs dead before they get to you. There's something... off about Consecration not being the best aoe threat tool available.
I actually just posted a writeup on my personal feelings regarding Paladin tanking, with particular focus on my first experiences in The Eye, on the official forums: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1
The most pertinent details there is that the trash we've encountered thus far in The Eye is absolutely brutal to Paladin tanks. Every pull has either an AOE mana burn, an AOE silence, or a 14k arcane attack which can be reflected by Warrior tanks but must be eaten by Paladin or Druid tanks. Druids obviously have a large advantage over us there due to large HP pools, whereas we have to be careful to stack enough stamina to survive (I got 1-shot the first time I came up against it, as I don't have a particularly large of stamina in my normal gear).
We seem capable enough to function as well as we normally do in a tanking role for the boss fights, of what I've seen and read, it's the trash that's the biggest issue. Which begs the question, why bring along the Paladin tank and 24-man the trash? Granted, most of the pulls only require 2-3 tanks so it's not too big of an issue, but it does seem fairly indicative that Blizzard isn't paying too much attention to the needs of the Paladin tank in their raid design.
In SSC, I do the following for the fights we've cleared/attempted as of yet:
Hydross: Tank adds, or just put on healing gear
Morogrim: Murloc duty
Karathress: Put on spelldamage gear and frontload a ton of threat on the Shaman so the DPS can burn him down faster
Lurker: Tank adds
Morogrim doesn't require a Paladin Tank, just a Paladin with IRF - which most pvp minded Holy Paladins pick up.
The same goes for Al'ar and Solarian - Holy Paladins can and do fill-in for all of those duties.
And while I am sure Paladins can and do MT Void Reaver, they are far from ideal in that their threat generation when not being actively hit is *very* suboptimal, and a Feral Druid, or Prot Warrior is far superior for this role, specifically Feral Druid.
Matter of fact, Void Reaver is the best fight for Feral Druids imo - since when they get deaggro'd, the Feral can go CR, Innervate, and shift back and be ready to tank within moments. Our feral druid takes multiple knockbacks before VR shifts to another tank.
Yea, I'm aware that Holy Paladins work fine on Morogrim, Solarian and even A'lar. However, I think a Protection Paladin might be exceptional for controlling the Embers of A'lar. On the majority of encounters a Protection Paladin is far from needed, but there are some unique situations where they could be useful. That was the point of my post and what I was trying to get across.
That and 9 classes times 3 specs = 27 things to test with only 25 raid slots, so a minimum of 2 specs will never get tested in a raid. I suspect these are retribution paladin and discipline priest.
They've made it very clear that not all specs are intended to be raid viable. I believe this was stated in a blue post, though I don't have it on hand. (Either that or I've dreamed that up and it stuck because it makes sense with their design decisions >_>)
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell
They've made it very clear that not all specs are intended to be raid viable. I believe this was stated in a blue post, though I don't have it on hand. (Either that or I've dreamed that up and it stuck because it makes sense with their design decisions >_>)
Originally Posted by Kalgan
While trying to get each spec to be arena viable in the different formats is a noble goal, the reality is that it isn't an immediate goal for every spec to be optimized for every aspect of the game (arenas, battlegrounds, solo-ing, raiding, heroics, etc).
Is the closest thing I've found to that (http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/96961585.htm). Though the initial TBC changes did seem to indicate they were striving otherwise, it looks like it's not top priority to see that through.
However, there's also
Originally Posted by Tseric
While there may be a flavor distinction between tanks, we don't want to (or want the players to) find some rigid hierarchy by which classes are measured in their tanking potential to the third decimal point.
0.009 difference between the tanks would be a 3rd decimal point difference. Expressed as a percantage, that would be anything less than 1%
We're currently hovering at around 7% Less Health (More if you aren't getting Commanding Shout) 20% more damage taken from not having thundercalp up (Without a warrior also on our tanked mob), 6%ish more damage taken from IRF compared to Defensive Stance. More Damage taken from lack of Demo Shout.
Then you have to throw in things like a lack of Shield Bash (hi2u Magtheridon's Lair), Spell Reflect (Hi2u The Eye), Beserker Rage (Nightbane) (P.S. Fuck you Dwarf Priests).
So what exactly would I gain by speccing to protection that would benefit my raid. Anyways, this has already been prety much covered under the paladin Main Tank Viability thread already, so not sure why there is this extra thread already.
I haven't seen anything in 25-man raids that made me wish we had a tankadin. Like somebody said earlier, IRF in a 41 Holy spec is sufficient to deal with Morogim adds. And if you have a decently-sized Warrior crew, it doesn't make sense. Why would you have the best single-target healers in the game respec to a sub-optimal tanking spec while the best all-around tanks in the game twiddled their thumbs?
05/15/07, 2:47 PM
short end of the stick.
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