Welcome to Askalon/Whataburger's MLG Protection Paladin guide!
This guide will cover optimal AoE off-tanking strategies, gear, and limitations as a Protection paladin in Vanilla WoW.*Note: Almost every single image or colored text in this guide will have a hyperlink or show VG database info if you hover your mouse cursor over them for your reading pleasure (Including this one).INTRO:
To start us off on the right foot here, the most important things that you should know before going protection as a paladin are the following:
1.
Vanilla Prot paladins will NEVER be able to suitably fill the role of a prot MT warrior. There are too few abilities and talents for protection paladins that can substitute for a warrior's Shield Wall, Defensive Stance, and other powerful tanking abilities.
2. 'With enough thrust, even a pig can fly fine'. Similarly, with enough heals, even a paladin/warlock/mage can tank, although you'll probably be making your healers sweat and curse your name under their breath since a warrior tank could easily do the job better than you.
3. There are extremely few items in Vanilla WoW specifically made for paladin tanking, and even then, you'll probably only be able to effectively tank as a paladin with raid gear from BWL+ raid instances.
Even if you are able to gear a protection paladin with off-set warrior tanking gear for MT'ing, you will have serious issues tanking as virtually no viable tanking gear has Spellpower for building threat, MP5 for sustaining mana regen, or intellect for having a higher mana pool and spell crit.
If for some reason you're still interested in thinking you can MT Chromaggus or Patchwerk as a Vanilla-era Prot paladin, here's a link for you wannabe-warriors/WotLK paladins:
http://www.wow-one.com/forum/topic/26602-cysthens-tankadin-guide/
You'll ultimately be limited to only being able to effectively tank up to 20-man instances such as ZG and AQ20, although that might just be pushing it. However, Prot paladin tanks shine and easily excel against Prot warriors in 5-man instances such as Scholomance, Stratholme, and even 20-man raids such as Zul Gurub (provided that you’re decently geared to tank), all of which have very dense mobs in which you can utilize a protection paladin's AoE tanking abilities to their full potential.
Fun fact: Prot pallies are great for 25-minute Scholo and 20-minute Strath full clear speedrunsTALENTS:Click the image if you want to look at the interactive talent tree on the VG Database.
Holy: Divine IntellectSince protection paladins are pretty big mana hogs because of spamming Consecration and Holy Shield, the extra mana you get from this talent is pretty useful to have.
Improved Seal of RighteousnessThis can be useful for improving your threat generation when attacking single targets using the Seal of Rigtheousness buff, along with the judgement.
ConsecrationThis is an essential talent to invest a point in in order to unlock the Consecration ability.
Protection:RedoubtThis is probably one of the more controversial talents to have since most people think it’s useless due to having to get crit by mobs in order to proc this ability, but in reality, this talent can synergize amazingly with tanking large mobs (albeit pretty useless to have for powerful single enemies such as bosses). I decided to invest points into this talent since it’ll be pretty much impossible to become defense capped as an AoE tankadin without gimping your other stats at the start so you’ll usually be hit for crits anyways. This can greatly optimize the use of your Holy Shield ability, Blessing of Sanctuary buff, and help land more Force Reactive Disk procs. I’ll elaborate more on how to utilize this talent to its full potential in the strategies section.
Shield SpecializationLike I said earlier, you’ll block a lot more using Redoubt passive procs and Holy Shield ability so you might as well spent points on this talent to dissipate more damage from blocks, improving survivability.
PrecisionPretty useful talent to invest points in to hit things better, especially high level enemies.
ToughnessWooo more extra armor. Required to be able to enter the Salty Spitoon, otherwise GTFO to Weenie Hot Jr.
Blessing Of SanctuaryYou need to unlock this in order to be able to use Holy Shield ability and Greater Blessing of Sanctuary.
Improved Righteous FuryThis is an essential talent to invest points in. Will greatly improve your ability to build threat from holy spells with the Righteous Fury ability.
AnticipationSome extra defense never hurts in order to avoid piling up those nasty crits.
Improved Devotion AuraMore armor, what’s not to love?
Retribution:Benediction Since paladins are huge mana hogs, it helps to conserve some mana on some of those seals that you use.
Improved Seal of the CrusaderOptional. I prefer to put full points into this talent since this means I can build more threat on single targets with the Judge of the Crusader debuff. Put those infidels in their place.
Deflection Optional. It doesn't hurt to invest 1 or 2 points into this talent since it can slightly improve survivability in the long-term, but it's ultimately up to what you want.
Improved JudgementOptional. If you like casting Judgements a bunch and don't like waiting the full 10 seconds, this is for you. I don't really put points into this talent personally because that'll just incentivize me to use Judgements more often for my seals which could make me use up more mana than I have to to keep aggro on mobs.
ABILITIES:
This is the arsenal of abilities at your disposal for tanking.
CONSECRATIONTHIS brings all the boys to the yard. THIS is what justifies the pathetic existence of tankadins. In conjunction with Righteous Fury, this generates an insane of threat to all targets around you and will make you #1 aggro whore in dungeons with large mobs that rivals that of a
Thunderfury warrior.
Righteous FuryThis is one of the cornerstone abilities of tankadins; it turns you into a threat and chick magnet. Improved Righteous Fury is an absolutely necessary talent to have to improve threat generation.
Holy ShieldSometimes your best offense is your best defense. This is useful to activate in large mobs since it'll improve your survivability while also being able to dish back some damage at them.
Seal of the CrusaderApply directly to infidels. Using this ability by itself isn't that useful, but the debuff that you apply on enemy using Judgement makes this a great tool in your arsenal for generating large amounts of threat on single targets. Use in sync with other holy abilities such as Seal of Rigtheousness, Consecrate, and Holy Shield.
Seal of RighteousnessContains Whataburger Seal of Approval. This is great as a buff for you in order to increase threat on targets, especially those with Judgement of the Crusader debuff, but this is also useful to use with Judgement as it can give a nice burst of holy damage on single targets, acting sort of like a taunt if you lose aggro on them.
Judgement
Greater Blessing of WisdomThis is a useful buff for YOU to cast on fellow mana hogs, as this ability helps generate consistent threat at all times, which can make the first 5 seconds of pulls very hassle-free since you'll usually get aggro instead of healers at the start and they'll come to you.
Greater Blessing of SanctuaryExcellent supplement for Holy Shield and similar mechanic. Will make your offensive defense even stronger, like a turtle with spikes. If I have more than one paladin in my group, I prefer to have them cast this bless on me.
Devotion AuraVery useful aura to have activated at all times for maximum longetivity when taking dozens of blows from mobs.
Retribution AuraSupplementary threat building if you use this talent, but only if you're willing to go without that extra armor from devotion aura.
Divine Shield Bubble boy time! This ability can be useful when you’re pulling mobs that deal lots of damage, like the Jindo trolls packs.
Holy Wrath Skeletons in your closet? Get back at them with this powerful skill that nukes all undead around you! Useful in Scholomance and Stratholme. Synergizes well with Divine Shield for snackbar pulls.
Exorcism Useful single target ability against the undead that can help you regain aggro of undead adds if you lose aggro. Useful in Scholomance and Stratholme.
Hammer of Wrath FINISH HIM! Useful to finish off any adds that run away from you at low health. Having some spellpower can improve your chances that you’ll take down your target.
Hammer of Justice This is a very useful ability to have for crowd control, in case an add breaks loose and starts attacking your healer or something like that. I’d recommend using a Judgement of Righteousness on the stunned add to try to regain aggro once the stun is done.