And by “long-awaited” I mean that I mentioned writing something dealing with Paladins waaaayyyy back when I first started blogging, but never got around to doing it. Of course at the time it was going to be about level 30 healing – but never mind that! Tanking’s more fun anyway. 
I’m sure a lot of people have heard of the Paladin “96969″ tanking rotation, but I find that a lot of players don’t quite know what that means. To clarify:
Protection paladins have 5 abilities that they use in rotation to build threat. 3 of them are on 9-second cooldowns (Judgement, Holy Shield, Consecration) and 2 are on 6-second cooldowns (Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous). The “96969″ rotation is built around alternating using a 9-second cooldown, followed by a 6-second cooldown, and so forth. Therefore, a typical Paladin rotation might look like:
- Judgement of Wisdom
- Shield of Righteousness
- Holy Shield
- Hammer of the Righteous
- Consecration
- Shield of Righteousness
- Judgement of Wisdom
- Hammer of the Righteous
- Holy Shield
- Shield of Righteousness
- Consecration
- Hammer of the Righteous
- (repeat)
The cool thing about this is that you can adjust your cooldown order on any specific fight as needed. The reason I use Judgement first is to proc my Libram of Obstruction, which gives extra block value on using Judgement. Since Shield of Righteousness is affected by block value, it hits harder when I Judge before using it. After that, I throw up Holy Shield to help mitigation, and from there I finally start using my AoE threat abilities. Granted, this could be changed based on what libram you have, or whether you value instant mitigation (Holy Shield first) or slightly more early AoE threat (start with Consecrate, Hammer of the Righteous) – although the highest single-target threat is the listed rotation, as far as I’m aware.
I actually use macros to set my rotation up; if you macro your 9-second cooldowns in a /castsequence macro to one button, and your 6-second cooldowns to another button, you can alternate the two buttons and do your rotation that way.
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=9 Judgement of Wisdom, Holy Shield, Consecration
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous
Works out pretty nicely.
Some final notes: As far as speccing, there are a few things you can do. Taking the 5 points early in the Holy tree for Seals of the Pure is a viable option due to how good Seal of Corruption is right now, but I personally prefer taking Crusade (in Ret) instead, giving me a 0/53/18 spec. Make sure you glyph Divine Plea as it’s another 3% damage reduction (stacking with Blessing of Sanctuary), and keep that up as close to 100% uptime as you can. (e.g. always be hitting things).
I hope this mini-guide to Paladin tanking has helped you out! If I left out some stuff, please let me know. =)
Omagawd. Happy Birthday!!!
Have a great one!!
And remember to live everyday like there’s no tomorrow!!
~big hug~
I’ll get something together for ya, get your Aion working!
(Maybe this will help)
http://www.aionsource.com/forum/aion-discussion/47182-openbeta-common-issues-possible-fixes.html
-Benji
I prefer my 0/56/15 spec. Along with Seal of Corruption, I scale threat extremely fast and therefore can have DPS almost immediately beging their cycles.
Here is my spec: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Exodar&cn=Cappadocius&gn=The+Dark+Exalted
Hey Capp, thanks for your response. The only thing I would say about it is that by not picking up Judgments of the Just, you end up taking a lot more damage because the boss is attacking 20% faster. In essence, you’re sacrificing mitigation and avoidance for threat.
In a sense, you are correct Vel, but my other avoidance and mitigation are high enough that I can sacrifice that little bit. With the trinkets, librams and other gear available to add to dodge, block and/or parry, getting those numbers pretty high. Plus, from what I read, the slowing of boss melee only affects their base melee attacks and not any special attacks and it’s usually not the base-attack set you need to be worried about. I have seen tanks specced for more avoidance/mitigation consistently lose mobs to DPS and I don’t buy that whole “DPS should watch their DBM at all times.” You’ll down a boss alot faster with full out DPS and a tank that can hold a mob through all of it than you will with a tank with less threat and DPS who are forced to pussyfoot their way through the fight. Know what I mean?
This is a good point. However, look at stuff like hardmode Iron Council, where Steelbreaker does INSANE damage to tanks. Heck even regular mode Council, a melee hit plus Fusion Punch will almost kill a tank.
(edit: I’m not making a very good point here; a better point would be something like Ignis, with a higher attack speed and slightly less attack power. A 20% haste debuff on the boss can’t help but be a very, very good thing.)
That said – threat is somewhat gear-dependent, and I think that the spec listed in the guide does a good job of balancing threat and mitigation. And yes, DPS does need to watch their Omen. Because if they pull threat – it’s their fault for not paying enough attention. When you’re trying to do progression kills, it’s in the raid’s best interest that the tank stay alive, and everything you can put into that helps – even if that means that the DPS has to slow down a bit. If the tank dies, the encounter is probably a wipe. (That said, once you reach a certain gear level the point is moot; where I am right now, I can build threat pretty insanely with my current spec, while still maintaining mitigation – e.g. DPS can still start their DPS immediately.)
All this aside, there are a few different viable tanking specs available to protection paladins, including mine, yours, and even other stuff like a 5/54/12 build for SotP, or a 12/53/6 Improved Lay On Hands build for the 50% armor bonus.
I’m using the Crusade spec from the Maintankadin forums atm -I find them to be the most reliable source of Protection Paladin info right now. http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22679
Well, I have tanked 25-man Ulduar and 25-man ToC with my spec so far and it has gotten the job done. Hard modes are soon to follow, so I will let you know. LOL
Yeah, I read Maintankadin and Tankspot primarily, and then Elitist Jerks as a 3rd source.
I constantly play around with my spec (yes, I’m one of those people. lol), but I am pretty successful in my current spec. Can’t say it won’t change tomorrow, and lately I have been romanced by my Ret off-spec, so only time will tell.
Anyway, nice article. Keep up the good work.
Hehe, thanks Capp. Definitely let me know how hard-modes go for ya; just starting those this week myself, and looking forward to them.
Hey, Vel. Wdell, I tanked Sarth (10) 3-D and we got him down to 2% before he went immune. We know what the weak link was and we’ll get him this week for sure. Anyway, I tanked him with the spec I showed you and we had 1 tank (me), 1 Healer (Shammy chain heal) and 8 DPS. We had a hunter in group who, though they brought expose weakness, just wasn’t putting out enough DPS. The other 7 were 4K and above and the hunter was sitting at or below 3100. BIG difference. So, I am confident we will get him this week.