This is a guide for beginners, but there may be tidbits in there for people who are relatively experienced. It's also pretty lengthy, as I've included everything I can think of, from tactics, to talants to gear. I've also tried to explain WHY you want to use certain abilities and gear, without mind numbing math explaining everything. I also won't explain what some abilities do, due to the fact that this guide is already long enough. If you need to look something up, go to www.wowhead.com and search for it there.
So ok, why tank as a Paladin? The great thing about the tankadin is the large amount of AoE threat you can generate. Consecration and Hammer of the Righteous both generate good aggro on multiple targets, so unless some foolish DPS class isn't attacking the same thing you are, they can AoE all they like and not pull off of you. This makes Tankadins great for multi-target tanking. Geared well enough with some good healers and you can even be your own off tank. Also makes it really simple to pick up adds, or if need be, rescue a toon who gained an add or pulled. All you have to do is use Hand of Reckoning to get on top of their aggro and let them run into the consecration. But WAIT! There's more! They're also great for single target tanking with Shield of Righteousness. It's not uncommon for me to have 70% of the aggro on a raid boss the whole fight as long as the DPS gives me 1/2 second to gain aggro. The only class that I've seen out-threat me single target tanking is a Warrior. Keep in mind though, no tank is better than the other, just better at a certain role.
The goal of any tank is to build aggro and reduce the damage you take so that the damage is predictable and healers can better heal you. As a tank, your job is also to be the one that is really in any danger of dying. You're the first to go anywhere, you're the last one to go through a raid portal if things go sideways, you're the first to die if something goes really wrong. Truth is, you have to be willing to sacrifice yourself to save everyone else. If you can't think that way, play another role. Also, YOU ARE NOT WORRIED ABOUT YOUR DPS. If you're looking at damage meter addons as a tank, you might be playing the wrong class. I'm in full T10 tanking gear, my DPS is only around 2.5k max. It doesn't matter, not my job. Also remember that while you are protecting everyone else, your life is in the hands of your healer. Love them, they are your best friend. Buy them cake. Do it.
Ok, so here's the build and glyphs I use.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sVZV0...fzgsM0b:pNcczV
Keep in mind that this is NOT an end all be all build. The key thing to remember is that you ABSOLUTELY need Touched by the Light, Hammer of the Righteous, at least 1 point into Spiritual Attunement, one and ONLY ONE point into Improved Judgements (more on that in a second) anything that increases stamina and reduces the damage you take. Some people swear by Reckoning for a threat burst, but if you need one, you're not doing your job correctly. I prefer to take Seals of the pure for a solid across the board threat boost. Anything that reduces stun, fear, movement impairing effects sound nice, but in reality just take away from your threat talants. I also like Devine Sacrifice and it's buddy Devine Guardian because it can really help reduce raid wide damage, but at the cost of redirecting to you. Guardian also has the nice side effect of boosting your Sacred Shield, another damage mitigation spell. Combining Devine Guardian and Sacred Shield is a nice combo. Another is if a Ret pally also goes down the prot tree far enough to get Sacred Shield. They can pop SS AND BUBBLE absorbing large amounts of AoE dmg without taking any themselves. You'll have to talk your Ret pallies to do this, but most will agree if you explain yourself. Warn your healers before you use Devine Sacrifice, if you don't, they might not notice that you are taking large amounts of damage while they try to heal the whole raid. Communication is key.
Paladins gain threat through Righteous Fury, which gives you 80% more threat from spells. The only thing that is not holy damage, and therefore not counted as a spell, is your base auto attack. Then again, with a seal active, even that is adding Holy damage. The seal you want to use is Vengance/Corruption. Horde get one, Allies the other. You want to be using this because on every hit you make, it throws a DoT on the target. After 5 stacks, you start doing extra damage on hit PLUS the DoT damage. The beutiful thing is that Hammer of the Righteous counts as a melee hit on anything it lands. So every time you go through your rotation, your adding another DoT, generating a rather large amount of aggro on 3 targets, 4 if you've got Glyph of HotR.
Your rotation is vital and if done correctly, you can out aggro anything. Someone way better at math than all of us figured out the most effective tankadin rotation. The idea is that the 5 main tanking spells are either on 9 or 6 second cooldowns and are instant casts, that way, at any time the global cooldown is over, you'll have a spell to use and there's no time of inactivity. The two 6 second spells are Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous and the 9 second one are Judgement, Holy Shield and Consecration. If you put one and ONLY ONE point into improved judgements, that puts judgement on a 9 second cooldown. So start off with Hand of Reckoning to pull and then start alternating your 9 and 6 spells I like to start off with Shield of Righteousness because it's the spell that gives us the best threat. If you do that for about 30 seconds, you're geared well and the dumbass DPS in your raid lets you build aggro for even one second, you'll have so much aggro you won't know what to do with it.
Leave out exorcism altogether since the casting time will actually slow you down and the threat output isn't very high.
Avengers Shield is nice, but not really necessary. If you have to do something else and deviate from the rotation, that's ok as long as you have enough threat to not worry. Just pick up where you left off, or start over, it doesn't matter. The key is effeciancy when you are doing the rotation.
Also, make sure you have Touched by the Light at the bottom of the prot tree. It's VERY important since it increases your SP based on your strength. Paladin ablilites are ALL spells and are subject to SP.
The really nice thing about Tankadins is their damage mitigation talants. They have ALOT of dmg reduction by %. Shield of the Templar, Improved Righteous Fury, glyph of Devine Plea and Greater Blessing of Sanctuary all reduce damage for a combined 15% So any damage you take, chop 15% off the top, in addition to whatever your armor is reducing on a physical hit. Throw in Guarded by the Light, and your now reducing spell damage by 21%.
One thing to remember is DO NOT BUBBLE AS A TANK. It immediately drops your aggro...... and you can't get it back untill it's over or you manually dispell it.... very bad. Saving yourself is not a tanky thing to do.
Alot of people throw Blessing of Sanctuary out the window on this server because as of this post, it does not add 10% stamina and strength like it's supposed to. However this is irrelavent because it does NOT stack with kings. The damage reduction and mana back from doing tanky things does work. Damage mitigation and gaining back mana is more important than a little bit extra stamina and str. Not having the extra stats is most likely NOT going to make or break you as a tank. Besides, if your raiding it's very rare you won't have another pally in the group to give you kings, so no worries.
A big arguement seems to pop up about using Devotion or Retribution aura. Use Devotion right? No. The extra armor you get is a joke at best. Even with points into Improved Devotion Aura you only get a boost of 2k. A well geared tank is going to have 20-27k armor anyway...... so it's really a drop in the bucket. A better choice would be retribution since it will help you gain more aggro every time you take a hit. However, you still want to take Improved Devotion Aura because of the increase to the healing you receive. However, if you do have other paladins with you, pop on devotion aura and let someone else cover Ret, since your devo will be the best.
As you know, tankadin abilities are fueled by mana, and you probibly will not have alot. Do not fear, you have 3 tools at your disposal to gain mana back. Spritual Attunement which gives mana by % of heals you take, Devine Plea which gives you 25% of your total mana back over 15 seconds and Blessing of Sanctuaray which gives you mana back for dodging, blocking and parrying. Devine Plea is really only a sustainable ablility if you take the Guarded by the Light talant. You should be taking that anyway for the spell damage reduction.
Ok, now for stats. All the gear you gather should have these in as large amounts as you can manage.
Stam- For obvious reasons, Stamina is your primary stat. More health=good.
Stregnth- Adds to block and with Touched by the Light, also increases your spell power to generate more threat.
Defense-You want to make sure that you are defense capped. The number you're shooting for is 540 which ensures that you are immune to crits.
Avoidance-That's the combination of dodge, parry and block and the number you want is 102.4%. This ensures that you will at least block an attack. Remember that if you block, you still take a little bit of the dmg, but it's still better than nothing. Keep in mind that dodge from agaility is subject to diminishing returns, so your primary avoidance is block, due to Holy Shield and Redoubt. The Beutiful thing is that holy shield is also a threat ability since your blocks do holy damage back. It's not uncommon to have a block chance of 60-70% when redoubt and holy shield are both active.
Hit rating- A must because you can't gain threat if you cannot hit. The number you want here is 262.
Lastly, Expertise- Expertise keeps you from being parried, which is a very very BAD thing to have happen. Some sadistic bastard programed mobs to automatically reset their auto attack when they parry. In other words, they immediately counter attack. The goal of tanking is to keep the damage you take controllable, so this is very bad. You want to have 56 to eliminate parries.
STATS YOU SHOULD NOT GET ON GEAR
Spell anything- If your in pre-WotLK content, this can be ignored because up untill Northrend, pally tanking gear relied on spell power for aggro. Past level 70, not so much. Stamina and Intellect/SP gear is going to be healer gear. Not what you want.
Attack Power- Almost all of your abilities are spells and are subject to spell power. Both Prot and Ret pallys have talants that convert str/ap into sp.
Crit rate-sounds wierd, since more damage means more threat right? Truth is you don't need this at all to tank because you do holy damage, aka spell damage, which ignores armor. That fact combined with Righteous Fury means that every time you see some yellow colored damage on screen, your gaining large amounts of threat.
Agility- this just gives you dodge, nice, but since your main avoidance ability is block, you don't really want this.
That's it folks, thanks for sticking with me this long. Now get out of here. Go on, get.
So ok, why tank as a Paladin? The great thing about the tankadin is the large amount of AoE threat you can generate. Consecration and Hammer of the Righteous both generate good aggro on multiple targets, so unless some foolish DPS class isn't attacking the same thing you are, they can AoE all they like and not pull off of you. This makes Tankadins great for multi-target tanking. Geared well enough with some good healers and you can even be your own off tank. Also makes it really simple to pick up adds, or if need be, rescue a toon who gained an add or pulled. All you have to do is use Hand of Reckoning to get on top of their aggro and let them run into the consecration. But WAIT! There's more! They're also great for single target tanking with Shield of Righteousness. It's not uncommon for me to have 70% of the aggro on a raid boss the whole fight as long as the DPS gives me 1/2 second to gain aggro. The only class that I've seen out-threat me single target tanking is a Warrior. Keep in mind though, no tank is better than the other, just better at a certain role.
The goal of any tank is to build aggro and reduce the damage you take so that the damage is predictable and healers can better heal you. As a tank, your job is also to be the one that is really in any danger of dying. You're the first to go anywhere, you're the last one to go through a raid portal if things go sideways, you're the first to die if something goes really wrong. Truth is, you have to be willing to sacrifice yourself to save everyone else. If you can't think that way, play another role. Also, YOU ARE NOT WORRIED ABOUT YOUR DPS. If you're looking at damage meter addons as a tank, you might be playing the wrong class. I'm in full T10 tanking gear, my DPS is only around 2.5k max. It doesn't matter, not my job. Also remember that while you are protecting everyone else, your life is in the hands of your healer. Love them, they are your best friend. Buy them cake. Do it.
Ok, so here's the build and glyphs I use.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sVZV0...fzgsM0b:pNcczV
Keep in mind that this is NOT an end all be all build. The key thing to remember is that you ABSOLUTELY need Touched by the Light, Hammer of the Righteous, at least 1 point into Spiritual Attunement, one and ONLY ONE point into Improved Judgements (more on that in a second) anything that increases stamina and reduces the damage you take. Some people swear by Reckoning for a threat burst, but if you need one, you're not doing your job correctly. I prefer to take Seals of the pure for a solid across the board threat boost. Anything that reduces stun, fear, movement impairing effects sound nice, but in reality just take away from your threat talants. I also like Devine Sacrifice and it's buddy Devine Guardian because it can really help reduce raid wide damage, but at the cost of redirecting to you. Guardian also has the nice side effect of boosting your Sacred Shield, another damage mitigation spell. Combining Devine Guardian and Sacred Shield is a nice combo. Another is if a Ret pally also goes down the prot tree far enough to get Sacred Shield. They can pop SS AND BUBBLE absorbing large amounts of AoE dmg without taking any themselves. You'll have to talk your Ret pallies to do this, but most will agree if you explain yourself. Warn your healers before you use Devine Sacrifice, if you don't, they might not notice that you are taking large amounts of damage while they try to heal the whole raid. Communication is key.
Paladins gain threat through Righteous Fury, which gives you 80% more threat from spells. The only thing that is not holy damage, and therefore not counted as a spell, is your base auto attack. Then again, with a seal active, even that is adding Holy damage. The seal you want to use is Vengance/Corruption. Horde get one, Allies the other. You want to be using this because on every hit you make, it throws a DoT on the target. After 5 stacks, you start doing extra damage on hit PLUS the DoT damage. The beutiful thing is that Hammer of the Righteous counts as a melee hit on anything it lands. So every time you go through your rotation, your adding another DoT, generating a rather large amount of aggro on 3 targets, 4 if you've got Glyph of HotR.
Your rotation is vital and if done correctly, you can out aggro anything. Someone way better at math than all of us figured out the most effective tankadin rotation. The idea is that the 5 main tanking spells are either on 9 or 6 second cooldowns and are instant casts, that way, at any time the global cooldown is over, you'll have a spell to use and there's no time of inactivity. The two 6 second spells are Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of the Righteous and the 9 second one are Judgement, Holy Shield and Consecration. If you put one and ONLY ONE point into improved judgements, that puts judgement on a 9 second cooldown. So start off with Hand of Reckoning to pull and then start alternating your 9 and 6 spells I like to start off with Shield of Righteousness because it's the spell that gives us the best threat. If you do that for about 30 seconds, you're geared well and the dumbass DPS in your raid lets you build aggro for even one second, you'll have so much aggro you won't know what to do with it.
Leave out exorcism altogether since the casting time will actually slow you down and the threat output isn't very high.
Avengers Shield is nice, but not really necessary. If you have to do something else and deviate from the rotation, that's ok as long as you have enough threat to not worry. Just pick up where you left off, or start over, it doesn't matter. The key is effeciancy when you are doing the rotation.
Also, make sure you have Touched by the Light at the bottom of the prot tree. It's VERY important since it increases your SP based on your strength. Paladin ablilites are ALL spells and are subject to SP.
The really nice thing about Tankadins is their damage mitigation talants. They have ALOT of dmg reduction by %. Shield of the Templar, Improved Righteous Fury, glyph of Devine Plea and Greater Blessing of Sanctuary all reduce damage for a combined 15% So any damage you take, chop 15% off the top, in addition to whatever your armor is reducing on a physical hit. Throw in Guarded by the Light, and your now reducing spell damage by 21%.
One thing to remember is DO NOT BUBBLE AS A TANK. It immediately drops your aggro...... and you can't get it back untill it's over or you manually dispell it.... very bad. Saving yourself is not a tanky thing to do.
Alot of people throw Blessing of Sanctuary out the window on this server because as of this post, it does not add 10% stamina and strength like it's supposed to. However this is irrelavent because it does NOT stack with kings. The damage reduction and mana back from doing tanky things does work. Damage mitigation and gaining back mana is more important than a little bit extra stamina and str. Not having the extra stats is most likely NOT going to make or break you as a tank. Besides, if your raiding it's very rare you won't have another pally in the group to give you kings, so no worries.
A big arguement seems to pop up about using Devotion or Retribution aura. Use Devotion right? No. The extra armor you get is a joke at best. Even with points into Improved Devotion Aura you only get a boost of 2k. A well geared tank is going to have 20-27k armor anyway...... so it's really a drop in the bucket. A better choice would be retribution since it will help you gain more aggro every time you take a hit. However, you still want to take Improved Devotion Aura because of the increase to the healing you receive. However, if you do have other paladins with you, pop on devotion aura and let someone else cover Ret, since your devo will be the best.
As you know, tankadin abilities are fueled by mana, and you probibly will not have alot. Do not fear, you have 3 tools at your disposal to gain mana back. Spritual Attunement which gives mana by % of heals you take, Devine Plea which gives you 25% of your total mana back over 15 seconds and Blessing of Sanctuaray which gives you mana back for dodging, blocking and parrying. Devine Plea is really only a sustainable ablility if you take the Guarded by the Light talant. You should be taking that anyway for the spell damage reduction.
Ok, now for stats. All the gear you gather should have these in as large amounts as you can manage.
Stam- For obvious reasons, Stamina is your primary stat. More health=good.
Stregnth- Adds to block and with Touched by the Light, also increases your spell power to generate more threat.
Defense-You want to make sure that you are defense capped. The number you're shooting for is 540 which ensures that you are immune to crits.
Avoidance-That's the combination of dodge, parry and block and the number you want is 102.4%. This ensures that you will at least block an attack. Remember that if you block, you still take a little bit of the dmg, but it's still better than nothing. Keep in mind that dodge from agaility is subject to diminishing returns, so your primary avoidance is block, due to Holy Shield and Redoubt. The Beutiful thing is that holy shield is also a threat ability since your blocks do holy damage back. It's not uncommon to have a block chance of 60-70% when redoubt and holy shield are both active.
Hit rating- A must because you can't gain threat if you cannot hit. The number you want here is 262.
Lastly, Expertise- Expertise keeps you from being parried, which is a very very BAD thing to have happen. Some sadistic bastard programed mobs to automatically reset their auto attack when they parry. In other words, they immediately counter attack. The goal of tanking is to keep the damage you take controllable, so this is very bad. You want to have 56 to eliminate parries.
STATS YOU SHOULD NOT GET ON GEAR
Spell anything- If your in pre-WotLK content, this can be ignored because up untill Northrend, pally tanking gear relied on spell power for aggro. Past level 70, not so much. Stamina and Intellect/SP gear is going to be healer gear. Not what you want.
Attack Power- Almost all of your abilities are spells and are subject to spell power. Both Prot and Ret pallys have talants that convert str/ap into sp.
Crit rate-sounds wierd, since more damage means more threat right? Truth is you don't need this at all to tank because you do holy damage, aka spell damage, which ignores armor. That fact combined with Righteous Fury means that every time you see some yellow colored damage on screen, your gaining large amounts of threat.
Agility- this just gives you dodge, nice, but since your main avoidance ability is block, you don't really want this.
That's it folks, thanks for sticking with me this long. Now get out of here. Go on, get.