I'm intrigued with the emergence of paladin and druid tanks in Burning Crusade, but as I was pondering the tanking abilities of a paladin, I realized I have no clue what skills a pally would be using while tanking. For example, would a paladin use seal of righteousness or would seal of command produce more aggro? And what aura and judgements to use? And for druids, how imperative would keeping bleeds up?

So I figure it'd be good to discuss what rotation of skills would generate the most aggro, either per second or per mana/rage for new the new tank classes (pallies and druids).

Without having access to Beta on my Druid, I think I can still tell you about when I would Lacerate primarily:

- Mobs that reset aggro often (Sartura, and post-Emps trash, Naxx trash)
- Bosses that fear you (I believe they will go after you even if you are feared then instead of ignoring you, but not 100% sure).

Since we already got this thread running, anyone got threat values and modifiers for Lacerate available?

Currently Bears hold aggro with a pretty simple "cycle" (it's more of a priority list, from most important to least important): Maul, Swipe (if you got the rage to spare), FFF (if you are running out of rage or need the rage to spam Maul).

You might want to rename this thread such that it reflects the feedback you want (bears/paladins).

For a Paladin, the spells seem to be:
Consecration
Seal of Vengeance (SoR for Horde)
With a Judged SoCrusader
And Judging and Resealing (using /castsequence ^^) for the aggro seal (which would be Seal of Vengeance / SoR)
And ofc, Holy Shield

Ofcourse the Horde for maximum dps (and tps) output, could use Seal of Blood, but seeing that causes damage to themselves, it's a bit of a choice to make.

Mana regen from Spiritual Attunement, was shown to easily cover the mana output of a Paladin with minimal regen on his gear, allowing him to focus purely on mitigation and threat increasing gear.

Basically, for a fully specced tankadin, a pull would look like:

Captain America's Shield
[
Seal of Crusader -> Judge
Holy Shield
Consecration
SoVengeance / Righteousness / Blood
]
Holy Shield
Consecration
Holy Shield
Judge/Re-Seal

And rinse repeat. Not much more they can do really. Alot less button mashing than a warrior, due to their "heroic strike" being automatic.

Druid: Switching between Mangle, Lacerate, using Maul as the primary rage dump, and Swipe if absolutely necessary. (ensuring Faerie Fire and Demo Roar are up, as well)
edit: I don't think now, with Mangel and Lacerate, a Druid could ever take enough inc. damage to have the Rage to Swipe. So Mangle / Lacerate when needed, and Maul in between. If rage is building, you can Mangle / Lacerate a bit early.

However in both cases, for both aggro and dps reasons, Sunder Armor (or if you have a Rogue happy to, Expose Armor) should definately be applied.

double post ftw

Honestly, the aggro generation of paladins isn't bad; that'd probably be a little unnecessary(except on, as you mentioned, a fight like vael). On live, my usual offtanking would go
Judge Crusader
Use SoR, Holy Shield
Judge every 10-20 seconds, depending on how long you have for the raid to mark your target.

If I am grabbing aggro from a squishy on a loose add, if the target is stunnable and I have SoC:
HoJ
SoC (use ZHC if you need to)
Consecrate
Holy Shield
SoR

Otherwise just open with a JoR. Consecrate is only sometimes necessary (if you have only a few seconds between establishing aggro and when the raid opens up dps). On beta the coefficients are so much better I can't imagine having aggro control problems as a paladin, especially considering your virtually unlimited mana pool.

Well it may not be needed of course, but the OP said maximising the aggro. So I think that'd be the best kind of opener.

Yeap, and add those to what we've said above, and you've got a pretty awesome aggro opener.

Misdirection Aimed-Multi-Auto coupled with Avenger's Shield-Judgment of Blood-Consecration-Holy Shield-seal of righteousness/autoattack, and DPS can go full blast from moment 1.

Yeah misdirection should help out a lot with initial aggro for all tanks. The beauty thing of it is that you know the hunter isn't going to miss, unlike the tank's moves which can be parried or dodged.

According to some hunters, the real beauty of misdirection is that you can cast it on a gnome and cause a big ugly monster to go run over and eat them.

Anway, I reckon we'll see misdirection playing a really important role in raiding going forwards, regardless of the class taking the actual hits. Hunters get to be involved in controlling the flow of the battle in a really important way - basically threat control becomes a little more of a collaborative activity.