The Overview

Alrighty readers, time to give you an overview of the Tankadin. With the help of the wonderful Benefactus, the MTankadin of Sovereign, I am able to bring to you her thoughts and insight of the class of Paladins.

"If you tank only 1 mob, god kills a kitten. Don't you like kittens?!
I thought I'd write this up because most people, let's face it, are used to bears and warriors standing there getting beat on. But paladins make valuable and excellent tanks as well. This is going to explain the general strengths and weaknesses a Tankadin can offer a group or raid, and what we excel at. As well as some suggestions for how to group with your Tankadin.

Let's start out with.. Weaknesses.

Tankadins do not have "oh shit!" buttons. We do not have last stand, nor do we have shield wall. HOWEVER. We do have a talent that is like a mini shield wall. When we are at or below 35% health, we take 30% less damage. Useful, but can be leapfrogged by hard hitters. So Tankadins do not have good "oh shit!" buttons. (A/N: unless you count the Pally's LoH(lay on hands) Because that to me is a prefectly reasonable "Oh SHIT" button.)

We take more spell damage than warriors. Our talents only give us 6% reduction in damage, plus an additional 2% or a 3% spell resist.

We cannot spell reflect. Also, we have 1 interrupt (stun) on a 1 min cooldown.

Our taunt is both a weakness and a strength. The weakness of our taunt is.. it targets 3 mobs. We do not have a way to taunt a single mob off a target if there is more than 1. Also, if the mob is target switching rapidly.. we can hit it and.. well alot of times nothing will happen. We do not "taunt" the mob directly. We taunt off the player who is being targeted.

Going OOM = Being rage starved. Tankadins have to take damage to get mana returned through healing. And sometimes mana pots are not available. So yes, if you see your Tankadin without pants, or pulling entire hallways, it's their way of saying heal me, I need more GRR power.

Strengths.

Tankadins are AoE tanking gods. No, trust me on this. As long as you can keep a Tankadin alive through the damage, they can hold unlimited mobs. And do so very, very well. Consecrate, reflective threat with Holy Shield and other nifty tools allow Tankadins to put on the hurt when they got multitudes of baddies whacking them. This is a HUGE strength. It speeds up 5man runs, it allows DPS to AoE and focus fire becomes a bit more lax. (THOUGH YOU SHOULD ALWAYS FOLLOW KILL ORDER, THX )

Paladins give useful group buffs! Tankadins are just like their holy and retribution brethren in that they bring an aura and a blessing. They also can cleanse themselves and others if cooldowns allow. They also can tank, then rez the dead should that PoM Pyro mage have gotten a little crazy.

Paladins frontload a TON of threat. That means DPS can open up earlier, and things die faster. Their "blue rage" bar starts full and empties out. So the faster they load their threat, the more they can ride it out and keep it up.

Holy shield vs. Shield block. On fast hitting bosses (Prince anyone?) holy shield provides 8 charges of goodness over 10 seconds vs the warriors 2 over 5. Fast hitting bosses crush warriors. Fast hitting bosses crush Tankadins much, much less. Less crushes = much more happy living tank and more happy living healers.

Our taunt is ranged! No matter how far away those baddies are coming to eat the healer, as long as the healer is in range the baddies can be taunted. And not just 1, but up to 3!

Summary:

Each tank in the game has their strengths and weaknesses. Each class can main tank, but each fight is different. A fast hitting, demon melee boss is paladin tastic. A slow hitting spell casting mob is warrior preferred. And a giant crushing, drooling beast that hits like a truck is awesome for bears. All three can tank them, but each one is suited to something unique. But remember, your local Tankadin likes kittens. CC = Continuous Consecration. Please, think of the kittens."

And there you have it folks, the overview of the Prot Pally Power. I would like to thank Benefactus for the wonderful input towards the Tankadins of the future. Remember Pallys, do your tanking in bulk.

Alright Paladins! Listen up!

Alright boots, listen up. I know you could go to a more developed site and get all sorts of information there about being a protection spec paladin but, you should stick with me because I'm going to try and bring all that information to you!

I'm not the end all be all stop for paladins but, with a friend of mine, we'll have our arses covered. The thing you boots have to realize about pally tanks is that we are the Sam's Club of tanks... we do everything in bulk. You just raise your mitigation past uncrushable stat, work on some spell damage, raise your stam, and hope to god your healer can keep up.

Pallies are some of the best if not only real AoE tanks in the game. You chunk a shield at the mobs, toss down a Consecrate and keep up Holy shield. Easy as that! .... Honestly. Any way thats the gist of it as a Tankadin (prot spec). There are ... finer points you'll have to work out as you raise your skill as a tank. Remember, give credit to anyone you plays a Warrior tank, this crap is hard work against aggrotastic whores such as Mages and Warlocks. Tankadins are easy mode. Plain and simple. Doesn't mean you'll find it any easier to keep aggro, just easier than a Warrior.

Now, your free to look me up on the Armory to check out my gear and such. Gearing up as a Tankadin will be sort of hard until you hit the Outlands. You'll pick up tanking gear for Paladins hand over fist. It takes lots of practice, as does everything in life does...except taxes, those are hit and miss.... anyway don't get discouraged that you didn't keep aggro and you just wiped the entire party/raid/pvp group.... scratch that last one, we are just distractions or flag carriers in pvp.

I could just sit here and type out everything and anything it takes to be a decent Tankadin, but I'm a lazy bastard that won't do that. Instead, I'll opt to post everything into sections for the OCD people that have to have everything in order.... or maybe I'll just say screw it and write down the crap I can remember and add to it when I actually remember it. Yeah... that will work.

Also keep in mind that I leveled up the majority preBC as a Healadin (holy spec) and popped over to tanking near 70. From there it was off and on with what the guild needed mostly. Recently though, I've stuck to Tankadin. I'm tanking a midnight server time Kara raid as the MT. Some fights I can do it... others its just hard for a Tankadin. Meh. Anyway, if you are on the Elune server, Alliance side because I'll try to stomp you if your Horde... notice the word "try"... Anyway even if you are Horde, jump on a Alliance alt and I'd be glad to Give you a run down as a Tankadin. If your Paladin is high enough level, I'll heal while you tank, toss out advice on little things like wiping or not....

You may ask yourself "Yeah right, this guy can go get stuffed, he prolly doesn't even know what he's talking about", to which most of the time I'll just shrug and keep walking. I'm doing this in light of events that demanded attention. Some Paladins out there just suck... So bad. Some people are new, some are stubborn, some are just retarded. So if you fall under that last one... please just reroll or quit playing, the world will thank you later for it. I'm just trying to help the Paladin community keep from getting a tarnished rep like hunters. I know some really bad arse hunters, just the majority are played by people, again that fall under the latter.

The only thing I can think of is take advice, no matter how bad your pride or stubborn may be, just take it and try to learn from it. It should help with the tanking. Remember, there are still folks out there that know more than you, trust me, I'm still learning. And with Elune being one of the original servers, There are some folks that have been there and back again.

Well folks, thats it for now. Tonight or maybe later during this class if I'm bored out of my skull, I'll post some tips on surviving your tour of duty as a Tankadin.

-Goob