Last time we took a quick look at some talent build, and touched on the basic skill rotation of a paladin. Today we will take a look at the other items that can be found in our toolbox.

Tanking Seals

Seal of Righteousness – This is your first Tanking seal. It generates good consistent threat at your lower levels. Once you reach level 50, this seal will proc off “Hammer of the Righteous” supplying extra threat on your off-targets.

Seal of Vengeance – This seal is a direct upgrade for Seal of Righteousness. It applies a stacking 15 second DOT to you target. This DOT is also applied to any targets hit by “Hammer of the Righteous” supplying significant extra threat on these mobs. Even in single target situations Seal of Vengeance generates more threat per second then Seal of Righteousness.

Seal of Wisdom – This seal is inferior for tanking, but it has its uses. When engaging a caster boss, Seal of Wisdom can be very useful. Because often time Caster boss’ will refuse or be reluctant to engage you in melee combat, you will quickly find yourself mana starved. Seal of Wisdom is one way to solve that problem. I also tend to use this when I significantly out gear something. For example when running a guildy through a lower level, or non-heroic instance.

Seal of Light – This is also a inferior tanking seal. It is very very rare that I ever use Seal of Light while tanking. The biggest exception is on Patchwerk. I use Seal of Light on that fight in order to help me healers in every way passable. I currently do not threat cap my DPS so this is not a problem for my guild. If you threat cap you DPS you should probably not do this. If you don't know what threat capping is, you should probably not do this. I will explain “Threat Capping” and other tanking jargon in a future post.

Blessings and Buffs

I already talked about buffs in a previous post, but I am going to cover them again in more detail now.

Blessing of Sanctuary – You want this buff up all the time. The mana returned from this Blessing by far our best source of mana regen. If you are the only Paladin in your group/raid, have this Blessing on yourself.

If you have more then 1 Paladin, you want Sanctuary first, then Kings, followed by Might, and finally with 4 or more paladins, Wisdom.

Righteous Fury – This buff is what makes you a tank. It increases your threat generation significantly, allowing you to hold agro on whatever your group is fighting. Without this buff, you are an over armored, underperforming DPS. Learn quickly to keep this buff up at all times. If I go down and get thrown a combat rez by my faithful Tree, the first thing I do is pop Righteous Fury, then taunt. As soon as I have the mobs attention, I begin getting my other buffs back in place.

Auras – Aura’s are pretty obvious. I don't think we need to spend a lot of time on them. Use the one that is most appropriate to what you are fighting, or your personal style. If you have two or more paladins in the group, one (likely the Tankadin) should have Devotion Aura up at all times, while the others rotate their aura as needed.

Sacred Shield – This is a nice mitigation buff. It lasts 30 seconds (1 minute if fully talented) and absorbs quite a bit of damage. I tend to keep this up on large pulls, or on boss’ that hit harder then normal.

Divine Protection – Another mitigation buff. This will reduce all incoming damage by 50% for 12 seconds. When used with Sacred Shield, this can at time reduce incoming damage to almost nothing. This is especially useful during enrage phases of boss fights. This CAN NOT be used within 30 seconds of Avenging Wrath.

Avenging Wrath – This is a fun ability. I like to use it while under the effect of heroism. Some Tankadins use it when they pull for a faster threat lead. I have found that i have enough burst threat that I do not need to. This CAN NOT be used within 30 seconds of Divine Protection or Divine Shield.

Divine Shield – While this can be used to clear debuffs, I do not suggest doing so unless you have a macro that will immediately cancel it. You will temporarily lose all agro while this buff is active. Having it active for more then 2 seconds can cause a group wipe. This is a very dangerous spell to use. I will post the macro I personally use for it later with a better explanation.

Taunts and Interrupts

Hand of Reckoning – I love this spell. It is just so useful. Hand of Reckoning is a 30 yard range single target taunt. This is a true taunt, giving you 3 seconds to re-establish control of the mob.

Righteous Defense – This spell is kind of weird. Its a practical taunt. Effectively this is what it does… Righteous Defense places a Debuff on a player causing them to become un-attackable to up to three mobs for three seconds and raises the paladins threat on those three mobs to be equal to that of the player being debuffed. Hopefully that makes sense.

The worst part about Righteous Defense is that it can be “skipped” or “leapfrogged.” A normal taunt forces the mob to attack you (the taunter) for 3 seconds. Righteous Defense simply makes the targeted player “un-attackable” for three seconds. This means that if circumstances are right, you may press “Righteous Defense” only to watch the mobs peal off for another DPSer or healer who was higher on the threat list. You may not totally understand this until you see it happen, and happen it will.

Hammer of Justice – This is a great spell. On most non-boss mobs it works as a stun allowing for some temporary crowd control. Against boss mobs, and things that are immune to stuns, it works as a spell interrupt, similar to a rouge’s kick.

Avenger’s Shield – This is really an opener, or a ranged pull. I, however, include it here because when talented, it now also silences caster mobs for 3 seconds. This is very nice because it allows you to pull a caster back to the group, without having to break line of sight. It can also be used mid combat to interrupt a heal.

Circumstantial Spells

Holy Wrath – This spell is amazing for one thing and one thing only… Large groups of undead. This spell especially shines in Culling of Stratholme, but can be used all through Naxxramas, and in many other wrath 5-man/heroics. It doesn't really fit into the rotation, but it is worth using anyway when circumstance permits.

Exorcism – This will always crit against undead. Because of that, when fighting undead boss’ I like to mix it into my rotation when it is off cooldown. Basically I replace every 3rd Hammer of the Righteous with Exorcism.

Hammer of Wrath – This has a 6 second cooldown and is useable after the mob drops below 20% health. In boss and single target fights, I replace Hammer of the Righteous with Hammer of Wrath in my rotation (when it becomes available) as it provides slightly better single target damage.

In Close

So there is the toolbox. There are other spells available to us, but the ones listed above and in my previous post will cover all our tanking needs. So get out there and practice. Keep working on your rotation. Remember to keep your buffs up. And try to mix in some of the situational stuff from time to time. Ill see you back here next time.

Light be with You,

~Bloodgarde

Hail Lords and Ladies,

Tis I, Bloodgarde, returning once again from my adventures in the frozen north...

Ok so no, I am not going to write a whole post in a roleplay style... yet. Some may have noticed that I have been absent the last two weeks. Id honestly like to tell you about the great reason for my absence, but truth be told Ive just been lazy. Now that that is out of the way, let me give you a quick run down of what I have been up to in the last two weeks.

Nax - My Guild has gone from 5/15 to 8/15. We have spider down, plague down, Patch in 3.06, and Grob. We ran out of time during our last run and didn't get any further. Our Huntress will be home from collage in time for this weeks raid (she has heavy lag at school causing problems at times) and our raid group is already full. Our hope is to hit it fast and hard. Based on our last run, I think we have the brute force to push though to the end, its just a matter of learning the fights now. Id like to publicly thank the mercenaries that choose to join us week after week. You guys are great.

OS - Downed no drakes in just over 3 minutes. We managed to get through the whole encounter without taking a flame wall. The question now is do we try 1 drake, or do we move on to using Flameleviathan for a loot bag?

Vault - 9 maned Archy in 2 minutes. That's a new record for us. One of our newest members did manage to aggro one of the wind pats while we where fighting 2 rock pats... That was rather interesting.

I did get my [Claymore of the Prophet] from the Argent Tournament. I really love this sword. Not only does it look cool (if purple) but its got decent stats, and hits fairly hard. I'm now sitting at 46 seals (Not sure where the extra came from) and am looking forward to getting my [Stormwind Tabard] to go with my "of Stormwind" title.

I finished building my frost resist set yesterday. I don't know if we will need them or not, but I am prepared if we do. So I am sitting at 417 Frost Resist, and am still defense capped thanks to a few [Thick Autumn's Glow] gems. This of course is being added to my other sets of gear in my bank until it is needed.

Finally in the last two weeks, I went deep into debt with one of my rich guild members, and finally got myself an epic flyer. It amazes me how much faster I am earning money to pay her back now. When you consider the amount of time you spend flying to and from daily quests though... Anyway yes, it is real enjoyable for me. At the rate I am going, I should have her paid back in a couple weeks. Then I may start saving for one for my mage.

So that's pretty much my last two weeks in a nutshell.

Light be with You,
~Bloodgarde