Reality of paladin tanking challenges (C) {You} 9000+

Well, tonight, I just MT/OT kara. Downed everything but the dragons, and prince. We wiped 3 times on prince. The 4th try the servers crashed on us, and wouldn't let us back in to finish our try. (2 purples, everything else blues) I didn't check the gear of the war that was MT/OT with me. But I do know he's in mostly blues.(with the palidan shoulders lol)

After the third try, I was informed that I wasn't as crunchy as our main tank (15k health base, only a couple blues left to replace). But the healers believed they could keep me up.

I brought up recount, and announced over vent what happened... Being in the mix 1 crushing blow... (101.34 total) I wasn't bragging, I came off realy annoyed that I had suffered just that one.

I was then reminded our main tank takes several crushing blows in that fight as a matter of course.

I think that more than anything proved that I could tank kara at least. And that in blues. Along with the 0 mobs from AOE groups going for the casters.

This is of course... with experianced raiders that have downed prince several times. One does not go with everyone in blues =-P thats a good way to wipe on curator.

I run with a bunch of people that havn't realy heard "Palies can't tank". And those that have... either keep their opinion to them selves, or don't believe it.

I've infected a new guild that has yet to down curator, and barly has hunstman on farm with my tankidan ways. I was auctualy offered the MT position for their guild. (I turned them down because I need a mentor, not become a mentor)

Psiven
My statement "not fully raid buffed" was fairly vague. I had MotW, Fort, and Kings. I did not have any buffs that would lower combat effectiveness (commanding shout or blood pact.) It is also worth noting that I was constantly potted with Elixer of Agility and Elixer of Major Fortitude. Rumsey Rum up as well. This put me at about 13k

Crushability
Using the tank points calculator, I am uncrushable with raid buffs. (For my mitigation set I only need kings, for my threat set I need MotW as well.)

Reactive Healing (Thoughts after returning to Kara tonight.)

I payed close attention to my health this time around, as well as the time between heals. I am most definitely not receiving heals in anything even remotely resembling a timely fashion. I am often taking three to four hits before receiving a heal, not including some parries and dodges. Even our druid MT died or nearly died multiple times because of it. (On one pull, he received no heals until he was at 2k life, and the heal he got was my Lay on Hands.)

Telling the healers to start chain healing me over vent helped things greatly. On one "pull" our druid got taken to 0 without receiving more than a heal or two. My voice on vent telling them to all start hitting me with their big heals allowed me to down the two mobs that downed our druid with relative ease. I also payed special attention to our Holy Paladin, and his healing was completely reactionary- if any reaction was taken at all. I'm not a Holy Paladin, but I know how to queue up a spell and cancel it at the last second if you don't need it. I'm not sure he does.

This no doubt is part of the difficulty.

-Kitsuna

Bonus Insight: If you have to tell the healers to heal you nearly every pull when you start taking damage, that is not a good sign. The assumption that they "would if they could" when only you and possibly one other person needs it might be foolishly optimistic.
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Your. Healers. Suck.


//edit//
Seriously, tell them to l2p. You should be getting a heal within 1.5-2.5 seconds of a pull and every 1-3 seconds after that. (Rough guide)

just wanted to chime in again, uncrushability and blue jems are not needed so long as your healers are on the ball. I'd like to add my vote to the your healers sucks motion thats going on, it soundslke the only reason why bear tanks are making it look like your no good is because your heaers are lazy and not doing a good enough job.

it's the bears hps and armour thats letting them get away with it. later fights won't let them do that so they should buck there ideas up

When I first started reading this thread I was going to go with the blue gems, max enchants response but honestly for kara 9 stam gems really should be enough. When I was starting out I had already cleared kara many times on my priest, and I completely twinked my pally out because I was out to prove to my guild that pallys can tank.

Getting max enchants though in my opinion isn't that expensive compared to blue gems, but then I have a enchanter, so 20 arcane dusts, 10 greater planar and 1 large prismatic does not register as expensive, especially if its something you wont be replacing for a long time, like Bracers of the Green Fortress. Also, why the armor enchant over agi or dodge rating on the cloak?

So mostly I will echo the others here and say your healers need to l2p. Especially the pally, he is specced holy right? There is no reason for him to be stringy with his heals on mobs that hit hard. Every other healing class has preemptive heals, druids hot someone up, priests PoM and shield, shammys earth shield. Pallys just never run out of mana, so they can be chain casting heals.

Aurica

The mobs that downed me after the Opera event were on the broken stairs- so either the ghostly haunt or trapped soul (I died the first two pulls, so if you remember what order they come in, there you go.)


Conclussion
From what I have gathered, I think I just have to get through to the healers to pay attention and heal me. The Holy paladin was capable of keeping me up against a heroic boglord last night after being convinced to spam Holy Light 24/7, so obviously he can do it.

It is worth noting that our holy paladin has +1500 healing, our holy priest has +1200, and our Resto Shaman +1000. So I'm guessing that actually pressing the heal button is the only thing that might be getting in the way.

-Kitsuna
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