Paladin dungeon tanking guide

[Getplucked]

Note that this guide is specifically for leveling and 5mans, not raids.

While leveling my first character here (Hunter), I ran into many Paladin tanks that seemed to have no idea what they were doing. Some of them not using a seal while attacking, others just mindlessly spamming consecrate and OOMing themselves, struggling to hold threat...it was a nightmare. I thought maybe the class just wasn't good, but then I tried it myself and found it surprisingly easy to tank, so I figured I'd put together a quick guide to help others be less bad at the game.

The biggest mistake I saw people making is that they were just spamming threat abilities and burning through mana. I see Warrior tanks do this too, just going ham and ragestarving themselves even when they already have more than enough threat. You don't need to go ham on threat in 5mans, especially if you've got Blessing of Salvation on the DPS. (which you should lol) Often times you can hold threat just fine with Seal of Righteousness + Holy Strike. I only ever used Consecrate with 3+ mobs.

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TALENTS

Pretty straightforward, honestly. We don't need to spec 11 points into Holy for Consecrate anymore, so the standard build is 21 points into Prot for Holy Shield and then put the rest into Ret to eventually get Vengeance. The +15% physical/holy is just a thicc threat boost. Plus, since you're 30 points into Ret, you can throw on a 2h and be a decent DPS if needed.

Level 20: https://talents.turtle-wow.org/paladin/0-5IC1

Level 40: https://talents.turtle-wow.org/paladin/0-5IDL0J-5CI

Level 60: https://talents.turtle-wow.org/paladin/ ... J-5EUVCC6U


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GEAR

There's really not much spell damage gear while leveling, so just grab any Str/Stam gear you can find. Int is fine too. As for weapons, a slower 1h is good for larger Holy Strike damage, but it doesn't matter all that much. Just get whatever 1h has the highest dps number on it, and whatever shield has the most armor/block value.


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THE PULL

BEFORE YOU PULL:
-Is your healer in range?
-Does your healer have a decent amount of mana?
-Do paladin buffs have at least 1 minute remaining?

If you answered "no" to any of these, don't fucking pull you dingus. So many tanks just ignore healer mana and run off to pull more shit when I'm at 20% and drinking. It's obnoxious.


Anyway, here's how most pulls should go:

-Mark a skull
-Holy Shield while running in
-target skull and press Holy Strike so you hit it as soon as you're in range
-If there's more than 2 mobs, Consecrate, if not, then don't
-Judgement of Righteousness + Seal of Righteousness autoattack on 2nd mob
-Swap back and forth between autoattacking the two mobs, focusing more on skull

And from there you really just keep Holy Shield on cooldown and use holy strike / judgement as necessary.

This would hold threat perfectly fine 99% of the time in my experiences. I really only used Consecrate when there were more than 2 mobs, or if something suddenly pulled and I wanted that extra threat just to make complete sure that everything would be on me. This idea that you need to use Consecrate all the time is just wrong; you can hold threat just fine without it.

When it comes to Paladin tanking in 5mans, the goal is to use as little mana as possible while still holding threat. Nobody likes having to wait for the paladin tank to sit and drink every single pull. Just like how Warriors can save rage in between pulls, you should be trying to save as much mana as you can to minimize drinking time.

Thankfully, mana management is much easier on Turtle WoW, since we now have a talent that gives us 2% mana back on every single block, and with Holy Shield + Redoubt, your block chance is pretty fuckin' high. It gets even easier when you get Seal of Wisdom and at least 1 piece of "adds X damage to your attacks" gear. At that point you have effectively infinite mana and almost never need to drink. The less you need to drink, the faster the dungeon will go.

With Judgement of Wisdom and 1-2 pieces of "adds X damage to your melee attacks" gear, you can start racking up huge amounts of mana, allowing you to use Consecrate more often without worrying about draining your mana. At this point, you can start opening pulls by judging Wisdom on skull alongside Holy Strike, and then dropping a Consecrate. I had 0 threat issues during all of my tanking from 40-60 doing this. Even managed to hold threat off of DPS that were 5-6 levels higher than me. It was pretty nice.


The earliest "adds X damage to your melee" item you can get is this one:
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=80704
Technically you can get a pair of gloves at 24, but they're super expensive (only drops off a rare spawn) and you don't even get Seal of Wisdom until 38 anyways, and at 38 you can easily solo RFC for the chest piece. Just corpse-run your way into Orgrimmar and you can walk past 99% of the trash in RFC to get to the boss you need, Bazzalan, at the very back of the instance. He only drops 3 different items so it shouldn't take too many runs to get this.

The next one you can get isn't until 51, though it's a drop from Hateforge Quarry, so you'll wanna be at least 54 or 55 before heading in there.
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=60568

You can also pick up Fiery Plate Gauntlets at 54, cheap crafted item you can just get off the AH.
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=12631

These will all stack with each other. Wearing all three of them will effectively get you EIGHT chances to proc Judgement of Wisdom on every single melee swing. It's utterly broken. You don't need all three though, you can get more than enough mana regen just wearing two of them. Since chest armor tends to give the most stats, I swapped to a normal "Of the Bear" chestpiece and used the gauntlets/boots.




In closing, the biggest tips for Paladin 5man tanking are:

-Don't spam abilities, only put out as much threat as you need
-Consecrate is not needed unless you're tanking 3+ mobs, or if you have plenty of mana from Judgement of Wisdom
-Always put salv on the DPS (unless they're low threat or a hunter who knows how to feign)
-Download a threat meter so you can see how much threat you have and know if you need to pump more
-Best buff for yourself is Kings, if you don't have it, use Wisdom or Sanctuary depending on mana needs
-If a mob is close to dying, you can just let DPS kill it, as it will likely be dead by the time they pull threat.
-In general, there's no point in pumping more threat on a mob if it's going to die before the DPS will pull threat

[Ashwhole]

Why are there no replys to this guide !
It is soo useful for me !! Im lvl 23 atm.
Great guide and well done !
It should be stickied.

[Isvya]

Rank1 holy strike is usually just fine to keep threat, saves alot of mana
I would also recommend using eagle gear (stam int) over stam str for a higher mana pool and larger return from shield block talent.

[Jrobz]

There is some group awareness and adaptation here as well. My last run through leveling, we had a solid crew of guildies and we AoE burned everything, and we'd frequently purposefully double pull, so consecration was down early and often.

Question: Do the "adds X damage to your melee attacks" proc Seal of Righteousness? I'd assume no, but that'd sure be neat.

[Fred25]

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[Veeco]

Prot Paladin tanking video guide for turtlewow.