The Ironsong Tribe

Bloodbound Wrote:if im not mistaken their prot tree talents provide more natural damage migation that the warriors prot tree

Not quite true.
A warrior takes -10% damage for being in Defensive Stance, and does -10% damage.
A warriors talent to reduce spell damage taken is 3 points compared to a paladins 2, but is -2% more.
Warriors are generally considered to have more health and avoidance than a Prot pally for one reason really. Gearing. A Prot warriors gears for Health, Avoidance stats, Block Value, Expertise and Hit Rating. While a Prot paladin gears for all of the above(To a degree, not largely on some of them though) as well as Spell Damage and Mana. It makes a big difference.

Bloodbound Wrote:Just something that I've noticed about this thing that you were talking about a pally tank haveing a disadvantage I really don't agree with that

Please don't contribute to confusing people. My comments are based on being a level 70 paladin having tanked Zul'Aman. You don't have any experience whatsoever with tanking it, or even with the basics of paladin tanking. I understand what I'm talking about. :|

Eruadan Wrote:Warriors can go on and on, but when a paladin runs out of mana, they cant do very much. I may be wrong, just commenting with my limited knowledge.

To a certain degree, yes. As Elyana said, most of our mitigation is independent of it - the key exception there being Holy Shield. It's our threat that's mana-capped. The most common time when mana is an issue is when AoE tanking using Consecrate. For ZA, the only time a paladin tank is going to be hurting for mana is the eagle gauntlet. The rest of the time, unless you're needlessly spending mana, you'll be fine.

Bloodbound Wrote:Yes Paladin moves are mana dependant but there are ways to get around that Like mana regen buffs,Enchants, haveing a shadow priest, Judgeing seal of wisdom after you have an ample hold on agro and such can make the paladin a great endurence tanking class.

The only mana regen buff a paladin should ever have is BoW (if there's a third paladin in the raid, since he'll almost always be taking BoK and BoS first). Food buff is for stam. Weapon buff is for +spell damage. Guardian elixir is for defensive stats.

The only enchant that a paladin might have to contribute to mana is +6 to all stats, and with 2.4 out today, that's gone in favour of +15 defense.

SP is nice, but in a raid situation, I think I can count on a leper's hand the number of times I've gotten the SP instead of a healer/caster dps group. A properly geared paladin tank doesn't need a SP, or even benefit much from one, in a raid. In a 5-man, a SP is my absolute favorite DPSer by far.

JoW is correct, and you can often start using it, if your snap threat generation is up to snuff.

Elyana Wrote:Both tanks need healing and both tanks need to be smacked around in order to generate the threat they need.

Well, one difference is that a warrior still gains significant rage from hitting stuff. A paladin gains no mana from doing so. This is what makes Paladins the worst off-tanks - we can't keep up threat without taking a lot of damage.

Jivundus Wrote:A Prot warriors gears for Health, Avoidance stats, Block Value, Expertise and Hit Rating. While a Prot paladin gears for all of the above(To a degree, not largely on some of them though) as well as Spell Damage and Mana.

What Jiv said. Basically, we need everything a Prot warrior needs, plus spell hit and spell damage. We can live with a lesser amount of Expertise/Hit, but a good chunk of our threat comes from hitting stuff with SoR, so it's a valuable stat as well. Jiv and I have reasonably comparable gear - the best available ZA-level stuff, with some T5 worked in. He's quite a bit higher in health than I am (by around 2k last I checked), although I had a bit more avoidance.

All three types of tanks have a certain specialty you might say.

The Warrior is the best single target tank because he has good threat generation and is uncrushable (in most situations) and takes less spell damage than any other tank with improved defensive stance and spell reflect.

The Bear tank can cap his armor rating and has threat generation comparable to the warrior, and like the warrior can do significant threat even if he's not being hit (which is important in many fights). Spell damage is his weakness. Another advantage to the bear tank is he can switch gear and become one of the top dpsers if he's not needed to tank. VERY versatile.

The paladin tank does well with AOE tanking and main tanking (being the target) but is horrible at offtanking. They generally have less hp as has been stated but are uncrushable. Spell damage also is their bane.

All three have their place and all are good tanks. A warrior usually ends up main tanking only because of the spell damage thing though. There are just too many bosses that use it.

One ZA boss that I think would actually benefit from a paladin tank is Jan'Alai, because of his obscene attack rate and ability to crush the heck out of warriors. HS has more charges than SB. Unfortunately, if you've got a paladin to tank, you're way better off using them to tank the hatchlings. And tanking all of one side of those at once is good clean heart-stopping fun :o

Logros Wrote:One ZA boss that I think would actually benefit from a paladin tank is Jan'Alai, because of his obscene attack rate and ability to crush the heck out of warriors. HS has more charges than SB. Unfortunately, if you've got a paladin to tank, you're way better off using them to tank the hatchlings. And tanking all of one side of those at once is good clean heart-stopping fun :o

If I am not mistaken, Crushing Blows aren't a real problem in ZA. This makes bear tanks really shine.

only on certain bosses like the lynx boss. The dragonhawk boss crushes like a frat dude after a beer bash. He attacks so fast (2-6 physical attacks per second, and not small damage hits) that shield block effectively does nothing so he's crushing you every other hit. He is a tanks worst nightmare. I would recommend a bear tank for him actually having tanked him several times.

Gra'zak Wrote:If I am not mistaken, Crushing Blows aren't a real problem in ZA. This makes bear tanks really shine.

Nalorakk and Halazzi don't crush, the other four bosses do.

Logros Wrote:

Bloodbound Wrote:Just something that I've noticed about this thing that you were talking about a pally tank haveing a disadvantage I really don't agree with that

Please don't contribute to confusing people. My comments are based on being a level 70 paladin having tanked Zul'Aman. You don't have any experience whatsoever with tanking it, or even with the basics of paladin tanking. I understand what I'm talking about. :|

Thats a bit narrow minded of you to think that I don't know the basics of pally tanking when I actually have leveled a prot pally all the way to 65 and have read up on to how best to tank and I have been able to hold agro over a DPSer that was over 5 levels higher than me before so yes I DO know the basics of pally tanking and while yes while I don't know anything about tanking at 70 I do know general basics of tanking at 70 by asking questions and learning all I could about it and there are a few things with + mana regen that you can use for pally tanks that won't take the place of some other enchant that would be more important ie. A magister's armor kit. /endrant

Bloodbound, please don't take this stuff personal. Logros can come off a bit rough but that's just how he is. No one is attacking you and he DOES have a lot of experience and knowledge. Also remember that what we are talking about IS level 70 tanking in a specific place: Zul'Aman.

Also, I'm pretty sure that a pally tank at 70 doing raid tanking would rather take a stamina enchant on any of his gear rather than 3mp5 from the magister's armor kit. Chest: 150hp enchant, legs: the 40stam 12agi kit, feet: 12stam enchant or Vitality (4mp5, 4hp5), hands: 2% increased threat.

The thing is, as was said before, if you are tanking as a paladin in Zul'Aman, you won't be running out of mana any time soon. You take a lot of damage there.

What Logros is saying is that, no you are not the expert on this stuff, so please don't presume to be so :oops:

I'm not saying don't try to contribute, you just were making encompassing statements that were wrong contradicting one who is an expert(I can verify that) at paladin tanking. Paladins DO have certain disadvantages(just as warriors and bears) in certain encounters, and some of these for paladins are in Zul'Aman.

Bloodbound Wrote:while yes while I don't know anything about tanking at 70 I do know general basics of tanking at 70 by asking questions and learning all I could about it

BB, my goal here isn't to belittle or insult you (or anyone else), but you're wrong. You don't understand raid tanking. I know you probably feel your logic is sound, having extrapolated from your own experience and read some other opinions, but you're getting too many things wrong. I wouldn't care about that, other than wanting to help educate you (and if i didn't care about helping educate people, I wouldn't be covering 3 RCSL positions, helping lead raids, or typing this right now :p), except that you're disagreeing with me, and I don't want to see people believe what you're saying, and suffer for that. That's really all it comes down to. If you were disagreeing with me for good reasons, or with good counterpoints, that'd be awesome. I'd still think you were wrong, but I wouldn't be pouncing on everything like Tigger-on-bad-catnip. Lots of people have different opinions than I do, and as long as I know those opinions are based on good reasoning, I'll only very occasionally remind them how completely wrong they are, and why they should bask in my glorious radiance. And offer me cake. Or pie, I'm flexible. Cherry, for those wisely taking notes.

If you don't have the experience, then ask if something would work better, like Eruadan and Grazak did. If you don't have the experience, please make that clear so that people other than us can differentiate between opinions based on experience, and those based on theory. Do that, and I guarantee you'll never hear a cross word from me about it.

You're advocating using +mana gear over +mitigation gear, which is just about the absolute last thing a raiding paladin tank wants to do. +mana is not useful for a paladin tank in a raiding situation, compared to nearly any other option you have. Heck, I'd take +melee hit over +mana gear. The only things less useful to me would be +crit, +AP, and spirit. Maybe Str, but I'm fond of my shield block value :p

You're talking about the benefit of having a SP in your group, but in a raid, that's just not going to happen, unless you happen to have far too many shadow priests - they'll always be better off in the ranged caster group or a healer group. Your thought is one I've heard many other times - it seems like a good idea, since a paladin tank needs health and mana, but that's not how it actually works out. The +health returned is minimal compared to what's needed to keep you up, and the +mana is not really useful, since you're getting so much back from being healed. That's the difference between theory and having experience.

Things like that, and talking about how ZA isn't hard based on on PUG run of 2 bosses, are why I say you don't understand the topic. It's not just because I'm a jerk.

Tanking at 65, quite honestly, has very little in common with raid tanking at 70. It's going to teach you a few basic skills, but the gear requirements shift a lot for raiding (ie, you're no longer worrying about mana), and you need to look at a whole raid, instead of just 4 other people (ie, why using a Shadow Priest in a tank group is a bad idea). The experience you have at 65 just doesn't extrapolate well to raiding. Group compositions are totally different, you're gearing for different things, and your tanking cycle is very different in a raid than you are in a 5-man.

Quote:and there are a few things with + mana regen that you can use for pally tanks that won't take the place of some other enchant that would be more important ie. A magister's armor kit. /endrant

No. Anything you can slap a Magister's on, you can slap a Heavy Knothide kit on, which is +10 stamina. +Stamina gear scales amazingly well for a paladin, thanks to +14% health from talents, and BoK adding on another 10%. Heck, you can even get a HKK on a head or shoulder item Low health is the biggest problem a paladin has - we're by far the lowest health of the three tanking classes.

Effluvious Wrote:Logros can come off a bit rough but that's just how he is.

Heh, yes. Look, I know people think I'm a jerk most of the time. Frankly, I am. I'm not kept around for my scintillating personality or charming banter :p My background in education is based in training adult martial artists, and leading peer groups in a wide variety of stuff. I'm not one of the nice-guy coaches - if I think you're wrong, I'm going to say so, and I'll be blunt and honest about it. When I lead, I will drag your underwear up over your head and haul you behind me if I have to. But I'm not going to say you're wrong unless I have very good reasons for doing so, and when I give an opinion or observation out-of-game like on a forum here, it's because I've thought about it, researched it, and in nearly all likelyhood, experienced it. But people keep letting me lead, or keep asking me for advice, because fortunately, I'm reasonably good at it.

Well, unless it involves in-game movement, in which case go talk to someone else. My abilities at face-pulling are nigh legendary, as anyone who's raided with me for more than 10 minutes can attest to.

Ok Logros I just went on that little rant cause what you were saying did sound very insulting to what I do know and my posts about it not being too hard and my pally tank posts were just about theorys I had and to see what I could learn that I already didn't know. Though I do stick to my statement that ZA doesn't seem that hard when everyone knows what they should do in a fight.



PS. Bigwigs and DBM does help with knowing what to do also >.>

Logros Wrote:Well, unless it involves in-game movement, in which case go talk to someone else. My abilities at face-pulling are nigh legendary, as anyone who's raided with me for more than 10 minutes can attest to.

Or Righteous Fury. *shakes head*

:dontthinkso:

Logros Wrote::dontthinkso:

:lie:

:nono:
:nono:
:nono:
:nono:
:nono:

Elyana Wrote:

Logros Wrote:Well, unless it involves in-game movement, in which case go talk to someone else. My abilities at face-pulling are nigh legendary, as anyone who's raided with me for more than 10 minutes can attest to.

Or Righteous Fury. *shakes head*

How many of those Righteous Fury buttons do you have and how big were they again? :interesting: