How to gear a Pally Tank ...

[Feider]

It is time to level my mixed group past 60. The problem is that the group's pally tank was gifted to 60 and is wearing some level 20 quest rewards.

What should I do about this? I already grabbed at shield and mace off the AH but the other gear is scary. The Fel Iron crafted set is all strength and stam. Will this get me through?

My solo main is a prot warrior so I'm not new to tanking but pally tank stats are new to me. (spell power, int ...) Does most pally threat some from weapon damage or spells? (strength vs spell power)

Any advice would be great thank you.

[Bigfish]

Pally tanks have more or less been set to be itemized like warrior tanks, so Strength, Stamina, and Defense.

[Mooni]

You'll find this happening when you first hit Outland, and when you first hit Northrend. The gear is just set up to please ret pallies and enhancement shamans (not that you have any shamans, but just as an example) so it's all this goofy stuff like ATTACK POWER and STRENGTH.
Strength has become immensely useful for paladins since 3.0 . They've made it something that even those 34k HP tanks need to help with threat and mitigation. So don't worry about that; it sucks that you can't find defense gear right at 60, but the idea is you don't need it until you're closer to 70.
I gift levelled my paladin to 60 also (I was a 5-shaman team before but got frustrated without a tank) so I know exactly what you mean about scary gear! Luckily, THRALLMAR TO THE RESCUUUUUUE
It'll take you less than a few hours to go from wearing your grey starter gear to being equipped in the ugliest purple-and-lime-green shockadin gear ever.
This link has a good itemization guide at the bottom of the page: http://www.gotwarcraft.com/guides/classguides/paladin.php . I like Maintankadin too, but I don't know if they kept their outlands guides up.
As for the macros(not that you asked) I've got three buttons I hit. One is my Seal button (Seal of Corruption, but you don't get that till 66. I forget what the good one was from 60-70 though). Hit that between fights, and probably put your mixed team's Self-Buffs on that button (Like a mage would cast frost shield, a shaman would cast water shield, a warlock would cast demon skin, etc)
The second button is consecration. I have this linked to the shaman Chain Lightning button, but your results may vary.
The third button is my "OTT" or One-Touch Tanking button. That's something like /castsequence reset=9 judgement of wisdom, holy shield, Hammer of Wrath (again I forget what else, but whatever threat abilities you have at that level)

This next link may be a lot to take in, but Manylines has boldly gone where we are trying to go now: Manylines ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=103350&highlight=manylines#post103350')
s/he doesn't seem to be playing anymore but the knowledge they left behind is priceless.
Have fun!

[HPB]

For the most part you will find gear that Blizzard has determined to be viable for leveling from your quest rewards. Ret Pally gear outnumbers Prot gear at the start of outland. Enchancement Shamen have more gear available than Elemental. For a prime example, check out the level 70 gear that came from the Invasion Event. All the shamen gear was for Enchancement. You can level a pally holy or prot, but Blizzard seems to think that takes longer, so they don't provide much gear for that. Apparently we're supposed to level up ret and then respec at 80. It just doesn't work that way though. Many folks level their priests holy, their warriors as prot, their paladins as prot, their shamen as elemental, their druids as balance, ect...

At the start of Outlands, you may want to just pick up as much plate as you can from Hellfire. A lot of it is going to be for Ret paladins though. Some enhancement shamen mail gear could give you the strength and AP you need to level. You will have a hard time getting some defense gear though, if you are going to try to instance level. It may be easier to level Ret, if you're going to be questing to level up your team instead of instance boosting.

I did not switch my main pally to prot until northrend, where the easily obtained crafted defense cobalt set makes getting instance ready a breeze.

[elsegundo]

as prot in outland, and going on into northrend, make sure you can mitigate 5% crit. thats all you really need for most encounters... if you fight bosses.
remaining goes into stamina.
more important is your talents. make sure you have basics like anticipation, imp righteous fury, imp hammer of justice, BLESSING OF SANCTUARY, sacred duty, HOLY SHIELD, 1hander spec, ardent defender, redoubt, TOUCHED BY THE LIGHT, guarded by the light, AVENGER SHIELD, HAMMER OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

the ones in caps are the ones you cannot be without. the only reason why people who play prot pallys say to stack stamina is because of the talent Touched by the Light. this rocks your socks basically. strength is not your primary concern with this talent. str is a retribution priority. you get Blessing of Sanctuary because you have anticipation. these things kinda go hand in hand.

at 60 you should be able to get all of the talents above. the rest of the points are yours to choose really. i opted to not have blessing of kings. i chose to have reckoning, but who knows if thats really useful for the 5 talent points it costs. anyway...

use the quest reward shield and the quest reward swords. your damage will mainly come from SPELLS. so anything with attack power should be tossed and opt for STR. for grinding i just use seal of light, but for instances i use seal of wisdom since i'll be getting healed by a healer, plus i need the mana to do spells to retain aggro dominance. this is necessary now especially, since a lot of groups ive been in always have a DK "accidentally" pressing death grip on everything. anyway, you need blessing of the sanctuary. you do not need blessing of might. you do not need blessing of wisdom. you NEED blessing of SANCTUARY. im tempted to say that again...

if you do come across two weapons, one with spell power and one with str/stam. go for the str/stam. this will give you spell power through talents. but you can go either way and no one really cares. but i'd prefer str/stam over something with spellpwer, even if you're using spells, since most spells are calculated by str/stam/ap anyway. something with spell power only adds to... spellpower. but str/stam will add to more stats overall.

ok hope this helps you out on your prot tanking journey. =]

[Bollwerk]

Read this ... It is by FAR the best collection of prot pally info I've seen (so far). All it is missing is Glyph info.

http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t37172-protection_paladin_field_manual_wow_3_0_wotlk/

Learn it, live it!

[elsegundo]

i was thinking about my last post and i think i should at least tell you what you should do in a fight, especially since you RAF'ed the pally. i guess you dont have a clue what skills to use and all that as well as not knowing the stats and talents. so... here's what i did... AT 60-ish.

equip quest rewards (STAM and STR stats the priority. dont worry about the plate sets with INT or MP5 or any of that other stuff aimed at holy).
shield from quest reward is fine. 1hander, any kind, sword, axe, mace.

pre-battle:
ret aura or devotion aura. either works.
have shield spike on.
blessing of sanctuary.
seal of anything. vengeance/corruption on bosses only.
always fight vs. 3+ mobs. any less and your mana regen will suck. four is optimal for solo, 5+ with healer or dps of any kind.

battle:
start battles one of two ways... leave your team in a spot. mount up. run around and gather mobs to bring back to the group. or... use avenger shield. either one works.
consecrate ground.
holy shield (reflective holy damage)
Hammer of the righteous (based on dps of your weapon convered into holy damage, hitting 3 guys)
These are your bread and butter AoE attacks.

micro manage the mobs:
pick one mob. hammer of justice it. one stunned mob = one less mob dealing damage. use it whenever its off cooldown.
pick any mob. judge light/wisdom/whatever. your choice. make sure this mob is the one you and your dps are concentrating on. once he's down in health and will die soon, you can either finish him off with Hammer of Wrath, or... switch targets and Judge another mob with higher health and let the previous mob die from consecrate/holyshield/spikes.

if a mob runs, it means he's dying. use hammer of wrath.
if you're full on mana, use avenger shield at close range. works wonderfully... IF you have enough mana to spare.
if you need to use your taunt on a mob.... here's a great macro:
/cast [help] [target=targettarget, help] Righteous Defense
either target the slave that's being attacked, or better yet, target the mob that's attacking said slave.

if you're running low on mana, there's two things you need to check. one, you dont have enough mobs. two, make sure your blessing of sanc is on. in fact, go to the reagent vendor and buy 100 symbol of kings so you can cast Greater Blessing of Sanc/might/wisdom.

ok... try that out. and tweak your attack sequence to your liking. this will last you alll the way til you get shield of rightesouness. then you'll just need to add that into the mix. but thats way later on.

[flashlight]

Lots of stuff could be found here : http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/viewtopic.php?t=14979

Glyphe : http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/viewtopic.php?t=18982

[Tonuss]

if a mob runs, it means he's dying. use hammer of wrath.That depends. Since you are multiboxing, there are a number of ways to deal with a runner. Personally, I just let the warlock/priest DoTs finish it off. If that doesn't do it, then the incoming Shadowbolt/Fireball/Mindblast combo should do the trick. :)

PS- thanks to all who have contributed info and links. I'm just starting to quest in Northrend with an eye towards instances (both Outland and Northrend) and this will help immensely.

[Los]

Basicly, spec retri, and roll off spec for anything prot warriors roll for! ;)

[elsegundo]

if a mob runs, it means he's dying. use hammer of wrath.That depends. Since you are multiboxing, there are a number of ways to deal with a runner. Personally, I just let the warlock/priest DoTs finish it off. If that doesn't do it, then the incoming Shadowbolt/Fireball/Mindblast combo should do the trick. :)

PS- thanks to all who have contributed info and links. I'm just starting to quest in Northrend with an eye towards instances (both Outland and Northrend) and this will help immensely.but of course.
thats if he's dotted up.
but if he's not, then three, or four of any spell from slaves would be overkill.
or he could just wait til the mob comes to realize, wtf why am i running? let me run back and die. then finish him off.

but i do find it very annoying to have a runner with 10% health, running away... and having my dps all attack, each doing well over 10% of the necessary damage. but hey... its only mana. maybe if i have a key just for runners... on round robin. that would rock. or yes, as you say, have a priest or warlock on the team.

[Feider]

(Thanks for all the info everyone.)

[MaltheMM]

try looking at www.maintankadin.failsafedesign.com

[pinotnoir]

try looking at www.maintankadin.failsafedesign.com

I second this post. This website has the best information I have found on pally tanking. Many threads on what gear to choose.

Like this Boss Tanking Gear Guide
http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/viewtopic.php?t=18989&sid=31c196df429e7271c1efdf6608ecedd4