Good day,

I recently respecced Protection from Holy due to a lack of tanks for a few weeks and that the current Paladin Tank is actually an alt of a mage and he is being asked to run with his mage as it normally out-dpses better geared mages all te time.

The MT in my guild is continuously banging the OT drum. He wants me to practice OTing as opposed to MTing Karazhan (for example). He says I need to master being able to keep up threat generation to complement the MT. I haven't studied strats for BT/MH but the only times I have seen a requirement for an OT is when we do Gruul (and we don't do that anymore hence I am still wearing Kara warrior shoulders )

I have tried to OT trash just to try and keep up with the warrior tanking the add (the robot pairs in TK on the way to VR or Solarian for example). So I try to offload as much holy damage as possible without 'taunting'. If I start with Avengine Wrath... I have a better chance at keeping up, but I am OTing on an add/boss that isn't hitting me, so no HS hits, and not taking enough damage to re-gain back mana from SA.

When I single target trash tank, or MT in Kara, I normally:
1- Prep HS
2- Put up SoR
3- Pull using AS (if I can without messing up the pull for the other tanks) or JoR (and reload SoR immediately)
4- Pull mob back out of range of CC and consecrate
5- HS again... Jor->SoR -> consecrate (throw in an Exorcism or AS if I have cool down time)

Some times I'll use AW at the start... depends if I remember

For OTing...
1- SoR
2- JoR - SoR
3 - Consecrate (if no CC around)
4 - AS (if no CC around)

Repeat... (Sometimes I hit AW to try and stay up with the MT)

I am really noob to tanking, this post and others at maintankadin have helped me figure out a great many thing. My armory is linked in my sig block, be gentle

Either use Judgement of the Crusader on the pull, or use it as your second judgement if you absolutely need some snap aggro on the pull. The damage lost from not judging righteousness is very quickly made up by the increased holy damage done.

Also, make a macro:

/cast Judgement
/cast Seal of Righteousness

To automatically seal after a judgement, so that you don't lose time on it.

Same deal, but while maintaining secondary aggro, putting up JotC is incredibly important, and you have no excuse for not putting it up immediately.

Consecration is mandatory while maintaining secondary aggro as well. If you can not consecrate due to CC, move the target. There will be no way, unless your DPS is very terrible, that you will keep up with secondary threat if you can't consecrate.

In fact, the next OT situation you will find yourself in is Void Reaver, which, incidentally is where the next tier of shoulders drop.

Maybe, I just wrote it without re-reading it. It does sound quite pathetic. My appologies. I have tried to read everything I can get my hands on but the real truth is that I have been doing this for 3 weeks. Never been anything but Ret or Holy all the way through to now. Been holy since hitting 70.

Sorry, I was actually responding to the KRIS's post with that, not yours.

Deleted!

As Zedrich pointed out, spelldamage consumables can provide quite a bit of threat on their own.

Also, as mentioned earlier in the thread, Stratholme Holy Water can provide a huge burst of instant AoE threat. What makes it great is that (a) it scales with spelldamage gear, (b) it's holy damage so gets the RF threat multiplier, and (c) it can crit. You'd have to farm up a ton of it if you want to use it for every pull (although you could do it, since it has a 1-minute cooldown), but if you alternate holy water with AW on pulls, you should be able to use one or the other every time.

To preface this, my pally is now my main, and I switched over from my mage that frequently topped the charts. Small world, eh?

I personally feel your MT is off the mark by asking you to OT Kara with the gear you have and the fact that you're working T5 content. Ultimately, your threat generation suffers a LOT by not getting attacked, so it's not realistic to expect that you'll be able to match his threat generation. Threat from Holy Shield + Retribution Aura + Thorns (etc) is non-trivial, and contributes a good chunk of threat along with receiving SA mana gains for you to sustain it. And besides, you don't need to match him, you need to provide "enough" threat for DPS to unload while not being a burden on your healing core. Your spell rotation looks fine, and your gear has ample spelldamage for the content you're up against. If anything, I'd say you might have too much spell damage given where your max HP is at.

On top of that, you're going to get more practice with the added stress of knowing that if you screw up a DPS will pull aggro -- sometimes it's good to have that pressure to keep you with your A game rather than just doing enough to get by. The best way to get you into the mix is to start you off as OT for a bit, then once you're comfortable with that take the reins for a bit as MT. Kara is a perfect place for that when you're in a guild at your progression level. Personally, the past few weeks we've only run Kara with 1 tank-specced person (me), and we just have a fury warrior put on tank gear for the very few spots you actually need 2 tanks. It's worked incredibly well, and I'm sure a feral druid would do even better in this situation.

PS - +12 stam gems are your friend, and you're well past the 490 defense benchmark

Well, our guild is pushing 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK hoping to at least down Vash and Kael just to say we did it, and do it before 2.4 We're a casual raiding guild so our progression isn't as accelerated as others.

I tank Kara with an arms/fury Warrior or Druid Bear OT too, been doing Kara since April and I continue to do it for badges. I like tanking it, it's fun and relatively easy instance to do it with my gear. And OTing VR... did that a week ago... my AS hit VR just before the MT hit it... ops . So I ended up staying on top of the meter until he was dead... FUN!... then we did Gruul... I wasn't the OT, but I was expected to maintain threat (like I did on VR), I am thinking so they can say: 'See? It's not as easy at it looks!'... Of course, I wasn't able to keep up with the DPS.

One thing though, TANKING ROCKS!! and this post was a great help to me!

This might be worth noting in regards to weapons starting or respecced protadins might be interested in, but 2.4 is bringing 2 new weapons (or rather 1 new and one heavily buffed). [Cudgel of Consecration] comes from Kael in the heroic mode of magister's terrace, and [Blade of Twisted Visions] is getting 12 spelldamage and 33 stamina added to it.

Has anyone happened to do some theorycrafting on the new metagem (defence + 10% increased block value) and determined if it might be worth it for tanking as a prot paladin?

A quick note on Paladin tanking auras since I didn't see it posted anywhere else, and it's a question that's come up.

Retribution aura is ideal for multi-mob tanking for an agro boost where you're not at a high risk of death, especially for really large aoe groups like the murloc packs on Morogrim.

Devotion is the way to go for single target boss tanking, even though the armor benefit reduction is only around 1-2% depending on your current armor it still adds up over the course of the fight.

Obviously resistance auras are the natural choice where applicable.

Concentration can be very nice if you happen to have casters, especially healers in your group where a relatively constant aoe source is going to effect their casting ie. Netherspite or Vashj, since them getting the heals off timely will be far more valuable than other factors auras might provide.

Crusader aura, it's kind of like leaving a riding crop on for the whole group, funny at first but people are just gonna laugh at you.

Sanctity is far too deep into the Ret tree to really be specced for without leaving major holes in your protection, but on the off chance your guild raids with both a Ret pally and a Prot pally the two of you should be inseparable.

Yes and Hrm.

Protection/Devotion

Hadn't noted the procs on blocked attacks, which just goes to show what a nice little bit of threat you can generate with retribution.