Help with Utgarde Keep and general Paladin tanking

[Frosty]

I’m having problems attempting even the trash mobs in Utgarde Keep. First, I am have no problems at all holding agro and I can tank 1-2 of the first guys with no problems at all. But when I get 3 my HP drops, and it drops FAST. My HP also drops fast when I tank even a single drake in the second room.

My Paladin is 71, and I’ve seen posts that people have cleared this instance at 70.
I know I can use CC and that does help/work, but I feel like I should be able to take these hits a little better than I am. I even lead off with Earth Shield and Power Word: Shield.
I have a nice set of crafted Cobalt armor, but can anyone see anything I could easily improve to help my tanking ability?
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...=Ysera&n=Lielu

It may also be that my healing rotation just sucks.
My basic, normal heal sequence goes like (Shaman is Resto): Riptide, Chain Heal, Lesser Heal, Lesser Heal.
BUT, I also have separate keys for greater heal, and yet another key for the Priest to break out of shadow and heal (not counting self heals).

At this point, I’m wondering if I should respec both Shaman and Priest and reverse their roles.

[Oatboat]

are you using holy shield on paladin? Also make sure to kill the Runecasters first.. they have a nasty fire dmg buff and a dmg absorption buff.

[Hachoo]

I don't even have a resto specced shaman and I cleared UK fairly easily with a 70 DK and 4 70 shamans.

First off, how is your pally geared? The only reason it was so easy for me is because I bought my DK the entire "cobalt" tanking set (level 70 crafted green plate) which is almost entirely str/stam/def. This gave me something like 470 def at level 70, 12.5k HP, and 14.5k armor. This is with neck/rings/cloak/etc from outland (greens and blues).

Sounds to me like your pally is undergeared. With 3 mobs my DK hardly had to be healed at all, with 4 I usually had to heal once and thats it. I just use 4x lesser healing waves to heal my DK, no dedicated healer.

[Frosty]

are you using holy shield on paladin? Also make sure to kill the Runecasters first.. they have a nasty fire dmg buff and a dmg absorption buff.

Yep, I start off with holy shield, and it's also in my rotation to keep it up.

First off, how is your pally geared? The only reason it was so easy for me is because I bought my DK the entire "cobalt" tanking set (level 70 crafted green plate) which is almost entirely str/stam/def. This gave me something like 470 def at level 70, 12.5k HP, and 14.5k armor. This is with neck/rings/cloak/etc from outland (greens and blues).

Sounds to me like your pally is undergeared. With 3 mobs my DK hardly had to be healed at all, with 4 I usually had to heal once and thats it. I just use 4x lesser healing waves to heal my DK, no dedicated healer.

I posted that I had the Cobalt set, and provided a link to my gear. :P

Unbuffed I have about 13k HP, 450 defense and 13224 armor. (according to wow armory). So it looks like you have a little more defense and about 1.5k more armor.. I may need to look into my gear.

[Frosty]

My basic, normal heal sequence goes like (Shaman is Resto): Riptide, Chain Heal, Lesser Heal, Lesser Heal.
BUT, I also have separate keys for greater heal, and yet another key for the Priest to break out of shadow and heal (not counting self heals).

I think you need to work on your healing methodology.

I use Riptide when heals ARE NOT needed. Its a pre-emptive thing. Planning ahead.....

The way deep resto talents work, you get a fast healing wave after a chain heal. So chain heal THEN healing wave (not lesser - I never use lesser). This how you get the big punchy heals that keep you alive.

How is your healer geared?

I'm sure that's the way I have it set using healing wave not lesser..I'm just going from memory here..and my memory sucks. :P
And that is just my junk heal.... but since you've said it..I'll double check anyway. I did the rotation to try and take advantage of the talents.
Riptide is usually cast at the beginning of the fight and refreshed as needed.

My healer gear? I would call it crap, but I'm sure that would be an insult to crap everywhere. But, I never have mana issues from healing either.
I've found very little healing-chain gear so far from quests though.

Ugghh...I just looked at my armory for it.. I do need to get some upgrades... :S
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...Ysera&n=Bassia

[Coltimar]

You are short on mitigation. Until further notice, especially while leveling, threat is out of balance. You won't need to stack much in the way of threat producing talents and equipment to get the job done. This will change as gear changes and characters change, via patches etc,.

I would ditch Guardian's Favor in lieu of more Divine Strength. Strength will help with mitigation.

I would also drop Benediction and max out deflection. At the moment, especially until you have lots of gear, should not worry about mana. If you are taking damage you will have mana. At this point (and prolly until the blue gear starts falling) you are going to need the mobs to miss you more. Blessing of Sanctuary too, if mana become a problem.

I would maybe replace the enchants on your bracers and shield with stamina and replace the stam on your chest with def and that will help a bit.

I don't know what your servers AH economy is like, but on Durotan you can snag an "of the champion" ring off the AH for 10-15g and pickup more def, str, and stam.

At this point in the game you should get close to def cap, than stack stamina. Those are the easiest stats to get with the green gear from Northrend.

This was on the WoW forums somewhere and I just stole it:

70 490
71 495
72 500
73 505
74 510
75 515
76 520
77 525
78 530
79 535
80 540

Def cap for each level.

[Frosty]

Thanks Coltimar and Fursphere.

I have the money to spend, but there are almost never any "of the champion" items in the AH (I search every day).
I'll check out those links for the healer too, thanks!

[puppychow]

Definitely increase your defense, 450 is way too low at level 71. A few crits every now and then are ok I guess, but at 450 you will be taking a lot more than a lot less. I pretty much gear my pally for defense first, then stamina, then stamina, then stamina, then other stuff (expertise, dodge, parry, etc). There are few tank items while leveling which sucks terribly, I've actually run my pally in single groups for hard instances (Violet Hold, Utgarde Pinnacle) because I wanted drops to make multiboxing easier.

Also I wouldn't put chain heal on your healing spam macro. Its very mana expensive and you will run oom. Also for many fights you want to have the tank at a decent distance from the group (avoid AOEs, cleaves, etc) so chain heal is not that useful there. You may want to consider having the priest heal and the shaman respec elemental, circle of healing is very powerful for the AOE times and the shaman can then drop a totem of wrath/air. Priests also are stupendous at mana regen and they have fade which can be a lifesaver. You will want at least 4 heal buttons:

1 = fast heal tank (lesser healing wave, flash heal, etc) == this should be mostly used
2 = slow heal tank (greater heal, healing wave, etc)
3 = heal group
4 = shield/hot tank

And imo you will also eventually need buttons for heal person1, person2, etc because some bosses target only a single person for a spike of damage, and you don't want to waste a ton of mana healing the entire group just to heal that person. But to be honest you probably won't need it until level 75 (Gundrak, Draktharon), I don't really remember ever having to in Nexus/UtK/AzN/AK, but I run a 3 shammy team so 3x chain heals pretty much tops everyone off as I need.

[Frosty]

And for your Pally - DITCH RECKONING! it gives mobs and bosses more chances to parry you, which means they get to hit you more. Its really a bad talent for tanks.

Ah hah! I wonder if this might be part of my problem with my health dropping so quickly when fighting more than 2 mobs..
I like your talent specs, I'll give those a shot tonight too.

And it looks like it may be time to upgrade the gear on all my toons after looking at those sites. 8|

[Frosty]

Also I wouldn't put chain heal on your healing spam macro. Its very mana expensive and you will run oom. Also for many fights you want to have the tank at a decent distance from the group (avoid AOEs, cleaves, etc) so chain heal is not that useful there. You may want to consider having the priest heal and the shaman respec elemental, circle of healing is very powerful for the AOE times and the shaman can then drop a totem of wrath/air. Priests also are stupendous at mana regen and they have fade which can be a lifesaver. You will want at least 4 heal buttons:

1 = fast heal tank (lesser healing wave, flash heal, etc) == this should be mostly used
2 = slow heal tank (greater heal, healing wave, etc)
3 = heal group
4 = shield/hot tank

And imo you will also eventually need buttons for heal person1, person2, etc because some bosses target only a single person for a spike of damage, and you don't want to waste a ton of mana healing the entire group just to heal that person. But to be honest you probably won't need it until level 75 (Gundrak, Draktharon), I don't really remember ever having to in Nexus/UtK/AzN/AK, but I run a 3 shammy team so 3x chain heals pretty much tops everyone off as I need.

Thanks for the tip on defense.
I pretty much have the rest of my macros/binds set up for the rest of this though. :thumbup: