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

I am really in love with Duel Spec. Frankly I wish I could Tri Spec. That said, I feel like super man. All I need is 5 seconds and a phone booth, and I can become a completely different person.

So I was in 25man Nax over the weekend. It was great. I was part time off tank, part time DPS depending on what was needed at the time. We did most of military, and all of plague. I really enjoyed myself. I was by no means topping the DPS meters, but on Heigan and Loatheb it felt really good to be productive instead of a well meaning offtank who cant really help much.

So how did I do? So/So. I was in with a pretty good group. I was pulling about 2.2K, but most everyone around me was pulling closer to or over 3. I was brought in though to tank. My DPSing was just a bonus. As a tank I felt I was really competitive with the other two tanks present.

I’m not sure how much more to say then that. I did end up breaking down and buying the [Runeblade of Demonstrable Power] off the Knights of the Ebon Blade. Its suiting me well for the moment. In another 3 or 4 days I should be able to replace it with the epic from the Argent Tournament.



Light be With You,
~Bloodgarde

I want to talk just a little about Gemming as a Tankadin, or any tank for that matter. Forgive me for changing from my planned “Talents and Skills” post. That is still coming sometime next week.

There are two overall types of tanks in WOW. The Main Tank, and the Off Tank. Now the rules I am about to lay out are not always true, and infact have many excptions. That disclaimer stated, let me describe the two, and how they relate to Gemming.

Main Tanks stack two things above all else; Avoidance/Mitigation and stamina. Before you tell me that is three things let me clarify. The Main tank tries to reduce the damage he takes by the maximum amount possible. This is done by having large sums of avoidance and by mitigating as much as possible through block and armor. Likewise they want to have as many hit points as possible in order to better survive the damage that comes through.

Off Tanks stack a bit of everything. These guys generally are picking up adds, running around protecting healers, all kinds of things. Off Tanks stack stamina, avoidance and mitigation as well, but they also try to maximize threat. They give up some survivability to do that, but it’s necessary for “snap agro.”

So what’s the difference in gemming... Well it comes down to min/maxing.

The main tank will have the best stamina gems on the market in every single socket. The only exception will be a defense or defense/stamina gem in order to keep defense cap.

Off tanks are going to try to match a few useful socket bonus’. They may have any combination of stam, strength, and defense in there gems.

Whats the difference? Well lets look at....

Bolstered Legplates!

Now I am currently (at the time of writing) wearing these. They have 1961 armor, 68 strength, 123 stamina, 81 defense rating, 45 hit rating, a red socket, and a 6 stamina socket bonus. (These drop off Cyanigosa in Heroic Violet Hold by the way).

So the stats we are concerned with...

1 Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina

The Main Tank sees 1 Socket. They put in 1 blue stamina gem to simply maximize their hit points. (Best in game is 24).

The Off Tank sees, 1 Red Socket, + 6 Stamina for matching. They put in a Stamina/Strength gem. This gems gets them 8 Strength, 12 Stamina, and 6 Stamina for the socket bonus. That’s 18 Stamina. While this does not maximize health, it will boost their threat output.

At the end of the day, all other things being equal, the main tank will take just a bit more damage, and the off tank will produce just a bit more threat. If you multiply this across 14 to 16 pieces of gear, some with 2 or more sockets, this difference begins to build. The end result can be a difference of 1500 – 2000 hit points, and 350 - 500 attack power.

Neither of these methods of gearing are wrong. Quite often a main tank will have a threat set, and an off tank will have a stamina set.

There is one more type of gemming that can be done. It is very very rare however. Gemming for Avoidance is unusual but not unheard of. There are times when a highly specialized avoidance set can make an encounter much easier. This is rare however because of the amount of rating needed to make 1% of avoidance. Do to stat budgets, 1 point of stamina, strength of defense is worth significantly more then 1 point of avoidance. This type of gear set should only be built if you already have a stamina and threat set and have encountered a fight where this is needed.

So that’s my take on gemming. There is no wrong way to go about it, however what you do, will help to determine what roll you are best suited for.

Light be with You
~Bloodgarde

Ok this is my last post for today... Honest it is. I just want to explain a bit more about how I plan to run this blog.

First things first, it is very unlikely you will see another “4 post day.” You don’t want that much of me rambling, I don’t get any work done at... work... it just isn’t going to happen.

That said I started 3 different categories of posts today, and one Monday. Those will be staple categories. Look for 2 posts per week to each category. Sometimes there might be more, sometimes there might be less.

“Hail in the Camp” is effectively my version of “Letter from the Editor.” It’s just a general post with no specific bearing on anything.

“The Binding Light” will be my holy paladin column. Look for ramblings, guides and general information about healing there.

“The Immovable Object” will be my tanking column. As I am primarily a tank, expect a lot of deeper concepts, and game mechanic based posts here. Likewise I will be actively using the column as a teaching tool for upcoming Tankadins I know.

“The Unstoppable Force” is my adventure in the world of DPS. I have never played my paladin as DPS in the past, and find myself enjoying it. At some point I will be going back to my Prot/Holy setup, but I don’t see myself abandoning Ret anytime soon. WTB Tri-Spec, Will Pay 10000 gold.

As I go on and get into the swing of things, I will start adding more links and some art to the blog, but this will take time. Feel free to ask question in the comment section. I will try to answer them as I can.

I will be attempting to update this blog daily in one of those three areas. Some days may see two posts, some may see none. I will also create other categories for gear guides, FAQs, and other ramblings as needed. In general I hope you enjoy the blog. See you tomorrow.

For the Light
~Bloodgarde

Playing a Holy Paladin can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it. Some people like to use addons like Healbot, or Grid to fill all there needs. While this is all well and good, I highly suggest learning to heal without these tools first. A day may come when these addons no longer function. Then where will you be? I personally wont be left in the dark.

So I wont lie. I use healbot. Its an amazingly useful tool, especially in the raid environment. That said; let me tell you how I learned to heal.

Healing 5 mans is an interesting juggling act for the paladin. Its simple in raids. The raid leader will point you at the main tank, and say go to it. In 5 mans however, you not only have to keep the main tank up, but you have to keep the group up as well. Beacon of Light, our bottom tier talent, makes this easier then it use to be. Cast beacon on the tank, heal the group. Allow me to suggest a few practices that will make your life easier though.

Creat Focus Macros for Flash of Light, Holy Light, and Beacon of Light; make additional macros for anything else you think may need this functionality.

Beacon of Light Macro
/cast [target=focus] Beacon of Light
/sw 59
/script Stopwatch_Play()

This macro will case Beacon of Light on you focus, and start an on screen countdown timer to tell you how long before you need to recast it.

Other Spells
/cast [target=focus]

This macro simply cast spells on your focus.

Now the above two macros can be written such that holding a modifier key (ctrl, alt, shift) will cast on your focus, and no modifier will cast on your target. If you want that option though, you will have to find someone smarter then me.

So set up your UI to show two bars, one above the other. Put all your “Focus” macros on one, and all your other skills on the other. Now when you go into an instance, remember to /focus the tank. Once that is done you are ready to heal. Anytime the tank needs healing hit that focus macro. It doesn’t matter who or what you currently have targeted, the heal will go to the tank. While a bit complicated to set up, this is about as close to healbot you can get with the base UI, and a standard mouse and keyboard.

I personally used this method of healing through most of Burning Crusade. It was only in the final months that I switched to healbot and believe it or not, I do look back.

Healing is about the only thing I don’t use a ton of keybinds for. Because of this it is a bit alien to me. I Tank and DPS with a mouse a finger board with a Thumb D-Pad. I heal with nothing but the mouse. I don’t even need the keyboard. It just feels strange. In another post I will talk about how to set up the n52Te and other Similar Devices for healing.

I challenge you though. Run with your guild, turn healbot off, and try healing the old fashion way. Youll be a better healer for it.

Light be With You
~Bloodgarde

So the whole point of this blog is to help up and coming paladins learn the ropes. While I will do the best I can with Holy and Ret, Tanking is my specialty and I will probably spend a lot of time on the subject.

So where to start? Paladin tanking has come such a long way since I started playing. Back in that day being speced anything other then Holy would be met with ridicule. WoW first expansion, The Burning Crusade, changed all that. Paladins became viable tanks, ok (good at higher gear levels) PvE DPS, and continued their tradition of strong healing. It was amazing to watch the paladin evolve over the course of the expansion; suddenly we where in demand, it felt good.

Then Wrath came along. WOW. The class got a complete overhaul to several of its main mechanics. Ret came into its own as a DPS spec, and Prot truly began to feel comfortable. The boots finally fit so-to-speak. So lets take a look at the basics of paladin tanking in the current game world...

Buffs...
There are 4 things you should ALWAYS have on your buff bar as a Tankadin.

(Greater) Blessing of Sanctuary
I use greater because my other buffs all last 30 minutes. It is therefore convenient to use my greater blessing and have everything go out at once. Why do we use this blessing? The mana return in vital to keeping us running. If you are solo, a paladin without mana is a dead paladin. Likewise, in a group without mana you generate zero threat, this can, and probably will, cause a wipe.

Righteous Fury
This is your second most important buff. As a tank your job is to hold the attention of MOBs. This is done by generating more threat then anyone else in the group. Righteous Fury increases your threat from holy damage by 90%. As a Tankadin, almost everything we do causes holy damage in some way.

Your Aura
Your Aura is important. You should always have one up. Which one will depend on your situation. If you find yourself having trouble holding threat, use Retribution Aura. If you are in a magic heavy fight, use the appropriate spell resistance aura. I generally default to Devotion aura if nothing else fits.

Your Seal
This like your aura is somewhat dependant on what you are doing. When tanking I use Seal of Vengeance (Corruption) almost exclusively. The only exception is that in a fight where I am significantly mana starved, I will switch to seal of wisdom after establishing threat. This is a common problem for me in non-heroics as I out gear them.

So these buffs should never go down. They all last 30 minutes, and your aura should never go down. Personally I buff as soon as I log on, and keep myself buffed until I log off. It doesn’t matter what I do in-between.

The thing I see new paladins struggle with the most, and admittedly I had a problem with myself is keeping Righteous Fury up. I can not stress enough how important this is. Without Righteous Fury, you are over armored underperforming DPS. Teach yourself early to rebuff it and rebuff it often. Even when soloing, train yourself to keep this buff up.


Gear Stats...

I will at some point, check/update my starting gear list, and post it here. For now however, let me just run down the stats your looking for...

The Good...
Defense Rating – Cap is 540 Skill. Do NOT confuse Skill with Rating.
Stamina – Once you reach Defense Cap, stack stamina for hit points.
Strength – General comes with Stamina on plate. 2 Strength = 4 Attack Power (Threat) and 1 Block Value (Avoidance/Threat)
Avoidance (Shield Block Rating, Dodge Rating, Parry Rating) – Try to stack Dodge/Parry somewhat evenly. Take Block wherever you find it.
Expertise – Good stat, low on the totem pole. Stack it where you can get it, but not at the expense of anything above.
Block Value – Nice Stat, Stack it if you can. Keep in mind 2 Strength = 1 Block Value

The OK...
Hit – Not supper important, 3-5% is good, more then 8% is wasted.
Agility – OK state, Rare on Plate.

The Bad...
Haste/Crit – Generally come on DPS plate. If you get them fine, don’t go out of your way to stack them.
Intellect – If you get some that’s great, don’t go out of your way to find it. You will be relying on your mana regen to keep going, not your mana pool.
Attack Power – Typically a DPS stat, you should get all you need from Strength. Don’t go out of your way for this.

The Ugly...
Spell Power – Avoid this stat. If a piece of plate has spell power, give it to a holy paladin.
Sprit – Avoid this stat. It does NOTHING for you.
Armor Pen – Avoid this stat. This is a waste of item budget. DPS warriors and PvP rogues are about the only ones that like this stuff.

In short,
Defense (to 540 Skill) > Stamina > Strength > Avoidance > Expertise ~ Block Value

Anything beyond that is Icing. If you find Hit with 2 or 3 of the above stats, take it, you can use a little. If you only find 2 of that list on a piece of gear (Especially Stamina + Strength only) look real close, its probably DPS plate.


So that’s the down and dirty summery. Next time we will look at talents and skills to find out just what is in the Tankadins toolkit. After that we will do a basic sum up and move on to applying all this information to the... “real” world.

For the Light
~Bloodgarde

So, Patch 3.1 hit this week, the servers are not sure wither to be broken or not, and we have new content to explore. I would give you a complete review of the changes, however that has been covered by everyone else in the blog-o-sphere.

So I did something that surprised my guild this week. As soon as my server came up, I made my way to Ironforge to duel-spec Ret and Prot.

Now I have a full Prot set already. I have tanked in both Nax 10 and 25 thought I have never completed either. I have tanked OS 10 and 25 and have kills in both. In my tanking kit I have just shy of 30k health 30k armor, defense cap. I’m not the best geared tank on the server, but I hold my own just fine.

Likewise I have a full set of Holy Gear. I’m sitting at about 1600SP and 35% crit with no enchants. The set isn’t quite as nice as my Prot gear, but it more then gets the job done. I have a few more epics to pick up, and plan to start working on getting it enchanted in the near future.

So when 3.1 hit what did my Ret set look like? Well... does the Helm of the headless horsemen count as a set? Well then I didn’t have one. As I said in my introduction post, I have no experience with Ret. This resulted in surprise for several of my guild members when I picked it up as my offspec.

Now I don’t want to give anyone the idea that I have converted. I will be offspecing Holy at some point down the road. This however gave me a prime opportunity to experiment in depth without giving up my ability to be the on call main tank for my guild.

So I set up a probably poor inferior talent build and off I went. My level 75 warrior had a full set of savage saronite banked that he not so happily donated to the cause. He was also able to toss in a level 72 blue 2H Axe without to much trouble. Of course upon receiving the axe my paladin said “What am I suppose to do with this?” and headed off to begin leveling the new weapon.

Last night I visited all my favorite quartermasters. I was able to collect a epic chest from the Argent Crusade, as well as epic leather boots. The Sons of Hodir where kind enough to provide me with a nice rare belt and shoulder upgrade as well as a glyph for said shoulders. The Knights of the Ebon Blade let me purchases a nice head glyph. I was also eyeing a nice 2H sword there, but decided to hold off on that for now. Finally the Wyrmrest Accord had nice epic pants for sale when I dropped by. I quickly snatched these up.

My warrior today was able to craft me an Epic helm and a rare bracer upgrade. Finally using jewelcrafting, I pulled together 2 nice trinkets and a ring. For now I am going to continue using my old tanking gloves. They are better then anything I can buy or make at the moment and I have a cloak, a neck and a ring I will be replacing in the near future with crafted epics and rares. I am also lucky enough to have an enchanter in my guild that is supplying me with all my attack power and crit needs.

So as of this posting I am sitting at 21.5% crit, 5.5% hit, 4.5% haste, and 3300 attack power self buffed. Rearmed, I headed off to the target dummies in Ironforge. I quickly found myself putting out somewhere in the 1400 DPS range. Kind of low, but respectable considering I had done all this in two days. I also believe my addon is lying to me. Later, without any changes in rotation, gear or talents, I was killing fire dudes behind the Sons of Hodir area (for epic cloak mats) in about 5 global cooldowns. That’s about 12000 hit points in 7.5 seconds putting me closer to 1600 DPS.

I am really looking forward to seeing my performance after my last four gear upgrades. O yes, my weapon. I will be going after the 2H Sword from the Argent Tournament. Im about 7 days away currently (I think), it might be 9.

So yes, in close, I will keep you apprised as I adventure into the realm of Ret. It should be an interesting adventure.

May the Light Bless You,
~Bloodgarde

P.S. I will not be posting my starting gear list. It is heavily reliant on Jewelcrafting and Rep, and isn’t practical for a "new" 80.