I'm posting here on behalf of our own prot paladin...

I'm usually OTing along him during raids, but I recently healed 2 different ZA runs in a quick succession (Thursday and Friday). I noticed how much damage he was tanking on the bear boss versus how much damage the other 3 tanks I healed over those runs... Most of them have about the same general gear level, so that's not the problem.. He said he had a lot of problems with "hard-hitting" (or semi-hard, this is still the bear boss) mobs in general, and that he was always tanking a lot of damage.. He's not sure what he's doing wrong, or if he is doing anything wrong and we just have to get used to it and heal through it...

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The WWS is from Karathress, and we're killing the hunter + pet first (he tanks both)... over the course of the fight, I took as much damage as I did on the shaman, who died second... He knows I'm an avid reader of these boards and asked me to look for help...

Keep in mind his AoE tanking is fine (or I'd think so, we haven't had any problems with it yet) and his threat output seems quite nice when I happen to be in cat, I'm looking at the problem from a pure mitigation perspective...

Many thanks

A couple of notes:

1. On bosses that don't crush (kalatheras adds, bear boss, lynx boss, etc), you will take less damage than him in a lot of cases since his advantage in removing crushing blows is lost.

2. He doesn't have much of any avoidance, which would probably account for why yall took the same amount of overall damage.

In general, he took smaller hits than you did on average, but he took more of them, so it evened out in the overall damage department. You have a lot more avoidance than he does. It would be a guess, but I would be willing to be that would explain your bear boss as well. He probably has less avoidance than the other tanks (But that is merely a guess). Also, since the bear boss doesn't crush, he would probably be taking more damage than a bear tank (generalized statement which can be affected by gear levels obviously).

The short answer is if you are happy with his threat and can live with his damage intake for now, leave him be, but talk to him about building a tanking set with some more dodge/parry/miss in it for when he might need it.

Oh, his threat is fine... He's the one, after I made that remark last night that asked me to post here to see if he was missing something or it was just the class/spec difference...

It's largely a class difference. A paladin will (generally) take more damage than other tanks when tanking by him or herself. That's due to a simple combination of factors:

- Gearing is largely equal to what a Warrior can use. So lower armor than a feral druid.
- Paladins don't have an equivalent to Demoralizing Shout/Roar, also making it so you take a bit more damage. Though typically this will be kept up by a dps warrior or something along those lines in a main tanking situation, if you're tanking a mob away from everyone else by yourself that's not the case.
- Also despite having the same type of gear/avoidance that a warrior has, we don't have Thunder Clap. Which is also something that causes you to take more damage compared to a warrior (An exception would be a paladin with Thunderfury, but those are few and far between, and Thunderfury is a fairly significant threat downgrade).

So typically when you compare each tank a paladin will take more damage over time than a warrior or druid. There's a few exceptions, e.g. on a fast attacking mob that does low damage per hit our higher blocking reliability can possibly mean we take less damage. Also obviously if we're talking about tanking a mob that's being debuffed with Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Shout by a warrior than damage taken will be comparable to that of a warrior.

The debuffs are really the big reason, I'm personally a fan of giving Prot Paladins an attack speed debuff like Warriors, but make it weaker than Thunder Clap (15% as opposed to 20% or similar). But that's beside the point. That'd also mean that there's at least one other source than warriors for attack speed debuffs in raids (There's three separate sources for AP debuffs, but only Warriors for attack speed).

Just chiming in on this guy -- his gear/spec don't really throw out any red flags. His HP and avoidance are a little on the low side and he doesn't have BoK (which doesn't matter with other pallies in the raid), but nothing to really worry about. As mentioned earlier, the raw spell damage gem choice is part of the problem. It appears that he's focusing a bit too much on threat and not enough on survival with his gear choices; case in point would be the ruby serpent for a trinket instead of a more traditional tanking piece. His cloak is an obvious choice to upgrade, but he probably knows that already. He can use the badge chest item for a notable upgrade, and even though he'll lose the 2-pc T4 bonus in doing so, he has plenty of spell damage on his gear as-is and his threat generation should still be ample for the content you're facing. He shouldn't abandon his spell damage pieces entirely, but rather collect multiple gearsets to mix and match based on the current encounter (i.e. threat set for VR, survival set for FLK).

EDIT: Have him go with the agility glove enchant over the spell damage enchant when survivability is a concern.

As an aside, an often-overlooked stat when tanking multiple mobs and/or fast hitters is block value. I'm personally around 460 damage shaved off per block in my survival gearset, which is huge on fast hitters like bear and lynx in ZA, or when tanking multiple targets like FLK's hunter and AoE packs on Morogrim and Solarian.

Paladins take more damage than warriors or druids under most circumstances. This isn't the end of the world; they make up for this by being much harder to crush than warriors and taking less damage as their health drops further into the AD zone. And usually, they take less spiky damage than druids (no crushes) or warriors (less parry gibs/random crushes) so it ends up not being as much a problem.

But it's a weakness of a paladin, and if you believe that damage intake is the be-all, end all of tanking they're the worst tanking class. Keep in mind that the difference is not a huge one regardless.

The ZA gear in particular is very good for this purpose, as long as you can get the necessary defense elsewhere. I was able to tank FLK hunter + pet + priestess at the same time, by having the ZA shoulders/boots/helm/shield -- I had somewhere around 550 block value with a lot of stam. I certainly didn't have much spell damage but since the shaman was being killed first, it was unnecessary as I had plenty of time to build up threat.

Just throwing myself out there for scrutiny. Be gentle :P

For Akhtal. Tell you friend to come check out this thread. I learned a lot here. (thanks guys/gals) He just needs to gear like a warrior when it comes to tanking hard hitting mobs/bosses. There is a point when he gear is further improved, that things will swing for the better. My pally used to be the same way. Hit really freaking hard and seemed pointless to have me tank things. Few more upgrades here and there, I now have more mitigation and avoidance that the guild warriors. This will change of course, at least I hope it does. But. He's on the right track and will get there soon enough. I threw up my Armory if he'd like to check it out by all means. Here is also a paladin I compare myself with time to time to see what gear I will be rolling on.

My idol


Overall, my thought is gear like a warrior slap on a spell damage weapon and holy shield/consecrate to death add a seal here and there = Win\



I heard and seen this a lot. Agility in the long run, imo, seems like wasted materials. None, not a single piece of gear paladin do pick up has even one point of agility. No tier piece has it. No random trash loot from any 25 man raid has it. Agility is just not a stat Paladins have the luxury of stacking. 15 agi to gloves compared to 2% threat or 10 stam leather working kit. Just doesn't compare. This is also why a Warrior, who gets plenty of agi, would put agi on cloak. Where paladin should just go for the dodge it'll do more for your avoidance overall. Until they decide to add more stats to Pally tier gear that is. I wish they would change it. Until then, go with Stam or threat on them gloves don't waste mats. OR This is something I tend to do. Get multiple sets of gear, if able of course, Gem/chant them up in different fashions see what works best for you. It is possible to stack agi i suppose proper use of gem slots and all that. Heck as stated way in the beginning of this post. Having gear for +spell damage and mobs tanking and gear for bosses isn't a bad idea, For mobs you do not need 490 defense so you get a little slack in the gear chioces.


Overall Hardening up that shell, stack stamina, gem stamina. Find the right gear and you just get the avoidance you need. Nothing better than having a prot warrior jealous at you for having more hp. Which is quite a feat I have to add. enjoy

You don't need to stack agility for it to be useful. 15 agility is effectively 0.66% dodge, 33 armor, and a tiny amount of melee crit for a paladin after BoK. Compare that to 126 hp gained from 10 stamina, and agility is going to come out ahead the vast majority of the time. If they ever add a +dodge enchant for gloves I'll agree with you, but for now agility is king for glove enchants when it comes to survivability.

You're forgetting the 240 armor kit, which certainly is another valid option.

I would agree with +dodge to gloves, Let's hope we see that in the future. .66% to dodge is nothing compared to what actual dodge rating from gear would get you. If you need the dodge that much find an item with dodge rating on it. Horde paladins are short on HP, proven fact. Use your gear to get our survivability where you need it, Use the gems and chants to A: ensure being uncrushable B: stack hps. In all honesty if you need .66% to dodge in order to help you survive what is your gear looking like?

33 armor? really 33 armor I don't even wanna think about calculating what 33 armor gives you. 33 armor isn't gonna push you over to a new % of damage reduction, well I take that back it could, but really 33 armor.

And for melee crit. yup melee crit. If i had to rely on my weapon swings critting in order to help threat the raid would never dps.

Don't get me wrong. I understand what you are saying. It could indeed be very helpful if you happen to have heroic gear that has agi, str, and stam on them, hell throw that enchant on there. Paladin Tier gear though......nothing. It focuses on what is most important.

This of course is my opinion. In the long run it all comes down to what you need most. Being a Paladin you have the so many options available to you. Sometimes you just have to think about getting two different set to accomplish one goal. Raid boss you want avoidance throw that agi up there if it'll help ya out. Aoe tanking spell damage or stam is the way to go. or hell 2% base threat added to everything, I can't complain.