Hey i'm a prot warrrior and raid leader for a raid guild on nathrezim. We've downed maulgar and worked on gruul a bit... we're pretty deep into karazhan and are currently in the process of working on heroic mode quests for future keys etc. My question to all of you is what can protection paladins offer to the 25 / 10 man raid groups. We've got a prot pally thats been working hard on his gear but everytime their karazhan group gets into an encounter hes asked to spot heal rather than tank and only used every so often in the role that he really wants to play. I'm trying to learn more about the viability of this spec in end game raiding. Will he ever be able to tank raid bosses? Will he be PREFERRED in some situations (we found that prot pally tanking the banquet tables in moroes' room came in handy, but those pulls can be dealt with in a number of ways) for end-game tanking? Will he be healing more than he will be tanking or vice versa?

If anyone at all has any experience with a deep protection paladin and their viability in end-game or even some good conjecture about how they might be useful in the future please discuss it here. I want more insight into this class... i like the ret pally hybrid alot so far and i dont like the thought of not using one after seeing what one can do... but what about this other spec?

This depends too much on encounters to tell yet, although I will say that most raidgroups probably do want to stack a fair amount of tankspecs at the moment simply because heroics are so damm important, and.. One fifth of your raid group being prot warriors is really, massively unlikely.

What's he gear like?

If he has collected the best pre raid/5 man tanking gear, ie: he has high AC, big stm and over 490 defense why not let him tank some stuff in kara and see how it goes?

Maybe get him to tell you his unbuffed tanking stats (dodge, parry, total armor, unbuffed hp, block %, defense rating) because that's the most important thing really.

A prot paladin is about as good as a prot warrior regarding defensive stats. Usually slightly less HP, but other stats depend on gear. However, his real claim to fame, is multi mob tanking and aggro generation.

The former, due to how Redoubt works, ensures he has a 75%+ shield block right 100% of the time. Any trash packs that you want dealt with, without worrying about breaking sheep, or not enough room for fears, or a root breaking and having it one-shot the druid. It's much more simple, I've found, to just have the paladin hold multiple mobs rather than CC everything. At the least, he should have a steady 45-50% block chance, since he can keep holy shield up. When redoubt procs, that's an extra 30%, and it tends to proc often.

The latter, aggro generation, is his biggest bonus on raids. Paladins start with a full rage bar and their threat scales. They get 90% extra threat with holy damage, and they can pump out a lot of it. more +spell damage equals more threat. On fights where DPS is key and you need to burn down something fast, you can use a paladin. They can frontload their threat. In 5-mans, I've found that people can't pull mobs off me even when they lack blessing of salvation. Let the paladin pull with Avenger's shield. It hits 3 mobs for 500-600 holy damage a pop, and crits often at melee crit damage. I can't count the times I hit 3 mobs with 1100 crits right off the bat. With Righteous fury up, that's 2k+ threat on 3 mobs. By the time someone does peel something off me, it dies before it gets to the ranged DPS.

They can switch pieces of gear, to go for more spell damage which usually means less mitigation, but this can be decided on a case-by-case basis. My solo gear is a lot of spell damage, so I carry 2 sets around: Pure mitigation and spell damage. I mix and match depending on group setup and instance (our dungeon and tier sets have both mitigation *and* spell damage).

Retribution aura means they generate aggro passively just from things hitting them. Combined with Consecration, a paladin can easily hold things through AOEs. Consider the core hound packs in MC (even though that's history). You can have a warrior tank each one, and a healer assigned to each and have them all work to keep their hounds together. Or you can have a single paladin hold them all easily. I haven't been to Karazan, so I don't know if there is a core hound pack equivalent.

So let that paladin handle trash packs at the very least. Let him build aggro along with a prot warrior on a boss. If you lose the warrior, the paladin can easily pick it up. Even let him main tank to see what he can do. Remember, he can build more aggro, so DPS can open up more, and that equals a boss being dead faster. By virtue of the extra holy damage, he'll probably do more damage than a prot warrior as well.

I should put in a quick note for warriors who might get upset at this. A warrior will still most likely have slightly better mitigation and HP. On bosses that hit hard, and a DPS race isn't as important, a warrior will usually be better. Warriors mitigate more magic damage, so spell casting bosses are usually better tanked by a warrior (as well as ones that fear). Bosses that silence can be an issue for paladins, and usually better tanked by warriors, although a good paladin can handle it.

Last note: item stats tend to favor warriors a bit more, although good paladin tanking gear substitutes +spell damage for strength. Paladins can also make use of mana/5 on gear as well. Int isn't as needed, but Bliz seems to place it on all paladin gear anyway.

Hope this helps.

Nice and thanks for the input. I'll work with him and try to find situations to get him in for high aggro situations.

Paladin tanks also really shine on Fast attacking mobs because the more they get hit the better their mitigation gets and their threat rises. On the other hand they are at a dissadvantage when taking on a slow attacking mob. I think blizzard has really moved towards the idea of designing certain encounters for each tank class (druid, warrior, paladin) in a effort to force people to bring a variety of classes instead of stacking a 25 man raid with 5 warriors.

I think unfortunately that if your guild is chronically short on healers but good with tanks he's going to have to heal every time.

Of course there's some flexibility given how many hybrid classes there are, but that's that, isn't it?

Are there any guilds that aren't short on healers and with too much dps and tanks thesedays with everyone wanting to be pewpew or tanktank spec?

We're not short on healers. We have a bunch of druids and shamans that just prefer to be resto, and some of our priests are holy for the same reason.

Since i got level 60 and came in outland i tanked just about every 5 mans i did. The only one wich gave me a "harder" time was Mana tombs, but then it just meant more drinking. I haven't got issue losing aggro cause oom.

I put +stam and +def in about all the gem slots and my tanking gear and stats were comparable if not better than a bunch of warrior i encountered.

I don't think I've ever seen a tank looking for a group for more than a minute or two in guild chat, and even though I'm perfectly willing to heal, I usually end up dpsing in guild groups due to that there's another healer who wants to come. Pre-TBC we had well over twice as many healers as tanks (spent a long time stuck on 4HM due to needing every warrior in the guild online), so even if a third of the healers went to non-healing specs there'd be a bit of surplus for 5-mans.