Not quite sure what you meant. Holy doesn't have a partial resist as far as I'm aware ("binary element") as there is no resist category for it. It either hits or misses. If you're talking about US resisting, then disregard.

On another note: I'm in a guild that's 4/5 SSC, 3/4 TK, and 2/5 Hyjal. Including part of ZA, we've downed 8 new bosses in the last week and a half. This'd be great, except I'm a tank, who is in the navy and underway an excessive bit, so I fall behind fast. (I'm in a little more frequently than once a month, for about 2 days.) I'm looking for advice on what would be the best upgrades for me overall, piece by piece. As in, I know I need a shield, but [Aldori Legacy Defender], or [Bulwark of the Amani Empire]? Knowing where my guild is progression-wise, what would be the best for me in a short period of time? I have limited time in, so I'm looking to see what I should pursue first. I currently have 0 badges, so badge loot is a last in line for recommendation thing. My armory (lite is better IMHO) page:
Salidapali of <PETA> Firetree

Fake edit: I know the general rule is "Socket for stam, to hell with your socket bonuses," but right now that obscure gemming has me at 102.7% avoidance. so for the most part, it's non-negotiable.

I think the current theory is that bosses have some sort of global +resist that cannot be reduced via a warlock curse or spell penetration, and it is probable that this affects holy attacks as well.

How are other people handling the problem of going OOM?

I don't tank full time, but this of all things is becoming my main weakness as a tank as my gear improves.

Specifically, on ZA trash, during a bear run, when there is no time to drink, and very little scope to down-rank my threat output, I find myself going OOM even with 2 part T6, a spriest, and frequent mana potions! It's not game breaking, but it is annoying to go through 2 stacks of mana potions and still have threat dips due to mana starvation. If nothing else it's wasting a potion cooldown that should be saved for emergency health pots.

My tanking gear is a mix of paladin tanking items and more warrior orientated pieces, almost all of which is T6 quality. I use the spell damage mace from Hyjal as my main weapon.

In ZA I bless myself with BoK if I'm the only paladin, and BoW/BoK if there are 2 of us. I use spelldamage food for threat (though that could be sta/mp5), and elixir adepts/fortitude.

Is this a fundamental problem for paladin tanks? Or could I be doing something differently to make things go smoother? I don't feel I can risk down-grading my gear in a ZA run to take more damage and thus gain more regen. More importantly, I don't feel like I should have to do that, as none of the warriors I know suffer from rage starvation in the same content & gear-level.

Im typically holy but respec prot for the gimmick fights, or when we have a lack of warriors/feral druids online but by the sounds of it we are pretty similar on gear levels.

Once you have a decent level of gear so that survival or threat dont become too much of an issue I would say mana regen is probably the biggest problem we face. In BT I would typically be the 3rd tank so will only be tanking Bloodboil and on all others will switch to healing gear, unless the warriors decide they want to pew pew and we have planty of healers in.

On trash, mana is a complete nightmare and potting is unfortunately necessary unless you can grab mana breaks. On bosses such as Bloodboil unless I grab aggro reasonably quickly I will be oom after a couple of minutes and then my threat plummets.

Only real method we really have to mitigate this is if your threat isnt an issue, or your not tanking at a particular moment, then judge wisdom and seal wisdom as often as possible as long as the mobs are going to live long enough to see a benefit. Classic example is when Bloodboil enrages seal wisdom and swing away until hes about to resume normal phase.

The other situational method you can use is to tank more mobs at one so your getting more SA mana back.

From a purely ZA perspective I tend to run with Elixir of mastery over Adepts for the extra stam and int and MP5/stam food as I have over 500 Spell damage, and if the dps have to hold back slightly because of my threat its better than me going oom and them over aggroing/wiping us.

One final thing. Raid buffed I run at just over 7k mana and about 21k hp and have tended to sacrifice a bit of stam and mitigation for int to keep the mana up.

The last time I opened my mouth on this topic I was proven thoroughly wrong, so don't quote me on this, but I believe it's 8 points of resistance per level of difference, applying to all schools including Holy.

At that gear level, if you're running out of mana in ZA you need to pull more mobs. My OT is a bear, and he'll pick up one mob at most and will just stay in kitty form and DPS on a lot of pulls. I can take a severe beating having 5 pc T6 + Bulwark -- that also means I WANT to take a severe beating since I'm perfectly safe and that keeps the mana rolling in. Occasionally I will have to pot anyways during the Dragonhawk gauntlet if we get a favorable roll on the random scouts, and maybe pot during the lynx trash since they just don't hurt, but 2 pots per bear run is perfectly reasonable.

Also remember: You can always turn your back to mobs to force yourself to take damage. I use this trick occasionally.

Taking a seat works fine as well, tho a bit more risky.

I'd make BoW your first blessing, not your second. It'll help more than the Kings will. Also seal wisdom if you can, and try and have people go easy on the DPS or wait on AoE for a bit.

Downrank things as well. Consecrate rank 4 still gets most of your SD bonus and does a good amount of threat.

But the most important thing is to drink whenever you can. Drink immediately after each pull. Drink before each pull if there is any time. 5 seconds of restoration is better than nothing.

Well it all depends on your group composition...

this was our today's bear run, we had 5 minutes left when the lynx was down... when i tank ZA, I'm tanking all mobs besides the 2 double bear pulls before the bear lord, the 2 tempests and the adds on malacrass. And i need an offtank for bear, dragonhawk und lynx of course ;-)

Here is our WWS from today: Wow Web Stats.
I chugged 3 mana pots and of course judging wisdom on every boss helps alot.

I tank the bear run in ZA gear (something like 350 spell damage with weapon oil, less than 5k mana pool) and usually do the entire thing without drinking once. (Caveat: we use three healers, so I'm not wholly sure if some of these things would be wise with less healing power available.) Points of note:

- I tank all but one mob in every pull, and sometimes I simply tank everything. When a caster is being killed first I just generally hit it with my shield throw and then ignore it - it'll be dead before it does any meaningful damage to anyone.
- I judge wisdom (and sometimes seal it as well) on the second or third target to be killed, and hit that mob while spamming consecration and holy shield. Once two-ish mobs are dead I stop actively generating threat (since if I held the second mob against the DPS for the length of its health I must have enough aggro on the third and fourth mobs to not lose them while they're killed) and just regenerate mana with SoW/JoW.
- Almost everything is stunnable and tauntable, and almost nothing is going to one-shot your DPS. It's often not worth trying to keep ahead of the DPS, just stun the mob when someone pulls and then taunt it when the stun wears off. It'll probably be dead once those 9 seconds are up.

I'm new to ZA as a prot-paladin, but for trash it might be an idea to switch gear to get the 2-bonus of our dungeon 3-set (15% lower manacosts for consecration).
With this downgearing you'll get hit a little harder and therefor need to be healed a little more (=> more mana-regen).
And as Lookit said, we don't need to be crush-immun on trash-mobs.