So you want to take a beating, do you?  Well, you’ve come to the right place.  This guide will walk you through the basics of playing a protection based Paladin, or Tankadin as they are commonly called. 

Playing a Tankadin can be a lot of fun but can be quite challenging, so come into it prepared.  You do not have shouts, fast taunts, shield walls or any number of other amazing things a Warrior has.  Yet you are every bit as capable as a Warrior tanking, it just takes a little bit different play style. It has also become much more viable now that we have our 2.0 talents, that include many nice new additions. We were ok before, but we can make an even more capable tank now, especially since we now have a taunt! Better yet, since the release of patch 2.3 we now have a 10% stamina buff talent that allows us to approach warrior tank health levels.

Basics about Paladin Tanks and Off-Tanking

Paladins differ in tanking from warriors in that most of their aggro comes from the damage they cause, which is similar to druid tanks. However, much of the damage that you cause as a Paladin tank comes from being hit. Aura of Retribution, Blessing of Salvation, and Holy Shield are all prime examples of this.

A Tankadin gains aggro through the holy damage that you cause.  This means that to hold aggro on a target you need to cause as much holy damage as possible.  This means that you need to have a decent amount of +damage gear so that you can cause enough holy damage, luckily a very reasonable amount will suffice.  While doing this you also need to worry about your primary stats of Stamina and +defensive skill that your healer can actually keep you alive. 

Paladin tanks have slightly worse damage mitigation than a warrior or druid tank, especially when taking big slow hits. However, when taking many fast hits we are better than either of the other tanking classes. While we do not have a rage bar, we have a mana bar that gets used in much the same way, and gets replenished every time we get healed (10% of all healing returned as mana at level 70). While we only have one taunt, we have a backup in the form of Blessing of Protection, and a ranged pull back in the form of the Avengers shield. We also have a stun on a 30 second timer.

Because all of the Paladin abilities are on timers or act for very short time frames, tanking as a Paladin involves very close management of spell casting. You constantly have to manage seals, judgments, holy shield, stuns, consecration, and more. It can take some serious getting used to.

On the off-tanking issue, because much of the threat generated as a Paladin tank is from being hit, we do not make very good off tanks. It is possible, but more difficult than a warrior or druid off tanking. 

Talents

As a tankadin, realize that you will need to spend at least 41 points in the protection tree. You need to do this to grab the only real pulling ability you have against anything but undead and demons, the avengers shield.  This ability is a godsend to paladins, since it allows you to pull MOBs at a distance and to quickly get a head start on threat generation.

Of the big must have talents in this tree to me the most important is the improved righteous fury.  There are many that are important, but IRF is what a tankadin is all about.  It allows you to generate additional threat and to take less damage.  What more could a tank want?

The other critical abilities are: Redoubt, Toughness, Holy Shield, Avengers Shield and Anticipation.  I could add most of the other protection talents to the list as well, however those are the core.

This is the Tankadin Build I use for raid tanking - Tankadin Build. It proved itself over and over again in raids with very minor changes along the way. You can make minor changes to it as you see fit, a common change is to lose pursuit of justice in favor of reckoning. I found that reckoning was so little of my threat generation though, that I preferred the extra movement and chance to be missed by spells. In the end its your call. 

Building Threat

Ok, you have the gear, you have specced protection, now what?  Knowing that most of your threat generation comes from holy damage how do you cause as much as possible as quickly as possible.

To do this I prepare for every pull by making sure that you have Blessing of Sanctuary up (causes holy damage every time you are hit) and seal of the crusader up in preparation to judge it on the main target. If you are having initial hold issues on MOBs you can skip the seal of the crusader and have seal of righteousness up instead to judge and recast immediately.

Always pull with the MOBs that you want to tank.  Because you have only one taunt, it is best to save it for in the fight and pull the MOBs your self.  This is usually done with the avengers shield. Because of the random second and third target nature of the avenger's shield it is best to do all crowd control post pull. This may mean leaving the rogues sap out for many pulls.

Once the MOB is on the way, judge seal of the crusader on the one you want to hold the most so that they take additional holy damage from every blow.  Then cast seal of righteousness to cause additional holy damage on every hit you do. Then cast Consecration to assist in keeping all the other MOBS on you.  Now that everyone is on you you should cast holy shield so that your block rate rises and they start taking additional holy damage back every time you block.

Between your blessing of sanctuary, holy shield and consecration you are very unlikely to lose aggro to anyone that waits a few seconds for you to establish aggro before starting DPS.

At level 70, following an Avenger's Shield and Judgment of Righteousness pull, you can have a front load around 3,000 to 4,000 damage on the pulled MOB and 2,000ish on the other two hit by the shield. This converts to about 6,000 threat on the main target. This should give you plenty of lead on the DPS classes and you can build from there.

If anyone consistently is pulling aggro away from you, you should switch their blessing to the blessing of salvation and that should solve the problem.

Throughout the fight you can either continue to judge your seal of retribution on the MOBs or switch to seal of vengeance for longer fights. On longer fights seal of vengeance can provide a higher threat value, but takes longer to build, so it takes a little getting used to and you may still want to start with retribution. Either way you should continue to spam holy shield every single time its 10 second cooldown is complete and use consecration once in between each shield cast.

Your normal pre-fight sequence should be:

• Cast Seal of the Crusader
• Pull with Avengers Shield
• Consecration while the MOB is incoming
• Holy Shield
• Judge Seal of the Crusader
• Cast Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Vengeance (your choice)

Once the fight starts, everything is based around your 10 second holy shield rotation. In 5 man instances it is not as critical, but in raids where the bosses can land crushing blows it is critical, so you may as well practice and learn the correct rotation to start with. Therefore, your regular fight rotation should be:

• Holy Shield
• Judge your seal (either righteousness of vengeance)
• Recast your seal
• Consecrate
• Exorcism (if the target is a demon or undead and if you have mana available)

After 2-3 repeats you can drop consecration and potentially exorcism from the mix as you should have everyone firmly agro'ed to you by that point. If you have lots of mana or if your DPS players are catching up on threat keep using them as they will increase your threat output significantly.

Once you have the target attached firmly you can switch off to a judged seal of light or wisdom on the MOB. My preference is wisdom since it allows you to enter the next fight with more mana. If done correctly you can enter subsequent fights with near full mana, lowering your down time.

Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Vengeance

These are the two main seals you will use to generate threat while tanking. Which one should you use though? It really depends on two things: the situation (boss, trash, raid trash) and your +spell damage.

The first thing to look at is how the seals generate threat. Seal of righteousness generates a small amount of threat with every hit, and a larger amount every time it is judged. The threat generated is equal from the start of a fight to the end of a fight. Seal of righteousness gains roughly 10% of your +spell damage towards its damage per hit and 71% of your +spell damage per judgment.

Seal of Vengeance places a DOT on the enemy that stacks up to 5 times. This DOT causes damage and therefore threat over time. You can also judge the seal to cause additional damage and threat based on the number of times it is stacked on the enemy. This means that at the start of a fight it generates very little threat, but ramps up over the first 5-10 seconds of the fight until it is generating full threat. Seal of vengeance gains 17% of your +spell damage per tick of the DOT and 42% of your +spell damage per judgment.

What this means is that generally in short fight situations you will want to use seal of righteousness so that you are building full threat right from the start. It is normally used for all trash MOBs in normal instances, some heroic instances and even some of the easy to kill raid trash. However for anything that is going to stand up to your group for more than 15-20 seconds you will probably want to switch to seal of vengeance as it will generate more threat over time.

Even with the above, you need to factor in your +spell damage. If your +spell damage is low seal of righteousness will build more threat than seal of vengeance. However once you are over +400 spell damage you should be using seal of vengeance any chance you can as it will generate a significant extra amount of threat.