New tankadin looking for guidance

Hey everyone, I just started a new draenei paladin and am aiming to make him a good tankadin. After reading a lot of the guides on this forum, I realize you're more focused on working with toons level 70-80, but I was wondering if I could get some advice for the earlier leveling phase.

I'm leveling with two friends; one's working on a resto druid, and the other is a dwarf hunter. This means I don't need to spec Retribution, and I want to work on my tanking skills from day one.

What talents should I research to be a great tank for early dungeons like DM and BFD? Are there specific things I can do now that will make me better when I hit 70?

Thanks. Great site, btw. I'll be here a lot over the next few months.
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At the early stage, your best bet would be to focus on getting a good set up on your UI. Practice keybinding and muscle memory. Get used to turning with your mouse and strafing with your keyboard. Then practice your speed with targetting and so on. The rotation wont matter so much when not on bosses but get used to grabbing threat on multiple mobs at once with your AoE abilities.
Your talents should follow the basic trees you will find here, you dont really need to do anything different for leveling especially if you have help. You might find benefit in talents like benediction if your having mana trouble or PoJ for speed...but I personally would drop those at later levels, at least benediction.
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Thanks for the advice. I'll especially work on keybinding... right now I have the bad habit of clicking to cast abilities, and that's a lot slower. How do you recommend increasing targeting speed?
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At the early levels, mana is much more of a problem than it is later on. Keep two stacks of water on you when you run instances, and get as much "of the eagle" mail stuff as you can. Once you get blessing of sanctuary, your issues will diminish, but probably the hardest part of prot paladin levelling is keeping your mana up.

If you can find a mage that plays at the same time as you, you'll save a fair amount of silver.

Just make sure righteous fury is up, use seal of righteousness until you get seal of vengeance, and go to town. Enjoy as many of the early instances as you can. Deadmines is a must, but Black Fathom Deeps and Wailing Caverns are really fun as well (wailing caverns is the first dungeon you should be doing, at level 18 or so). The 5 mans at level 80 are very short, and the vanilla 5 mans feel epic by comparison. Don't rush past them if you can help it.

I may have missed some patch notes that had Paladin rez as trainable, but just in case, don't forget about your class quests that reward you with the resurrection spell, and also the kick ass hammer quest.

Here's a spec that will take you to Blessing of Sanctuary at level 20/21.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html

One note about Blessing of Kings. It's going to be a base spell for all Paladins (probably) in patch 3.1. For the early levels, 10% of nothing is nothing, and you are better off using Might, Wisdom, or Santuary (when you get it) in pretty much any situation. Certainly your hunter friend will benefit more from might, and your druid friend more from wisdom. I would skip Kings until you get Sanctuary, then back fill into it if you wish.
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I hadn't had enough coffee, sorry. Also the spec will take you to about level 31, not 21. Damn caffeine defecit.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000000050053500310000000000000000000000000000000000000000
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Awesome, thanks.

And I appreciate the rest of your advice. Looking forward to becoming a good tankadin.
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I used to love Deadmines. Back in the day when you could land in Westfall and before you got out "LFG DM" someone would be inviting you...
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Bellic - 70
Greymane

It is a matter of personal taste, but I find macros very handy. in addition to having them separately on my cast bars for situational use, I have my "6" skills and "9" skills in two separate macros that form my usual rotation.

Fewer things that I have to click/push/think about mean more brain-time I can devote to situational awareness.

I am also a big fan of add-ons, and use many. One combination I really like is Xperl unit frames with Clique. I have assigned my right mouse button to Righteous Defense, so I can right-click a person to taunt off them. I have it set to in-combat only, so I can still right-click on their frame for options between fights.

I also run Healbot, because I occasionally heal or fill an off-healing role in raids. For general tanking, I use it as a cleansing tool. Anyone I can cleanse changes colour, and a simple middle-click casts cleanse on them. If you never heal, you can forget about Clique and use Healbot for your Righteous Defense as well.

Your levelling style should consist of taking on entire villages at a time. It's what you do better than anyone else out there. You should get your friends to get used to waiting on your consecrate, so you can round up a few mobs and AoE them down.

There is no subtlety to a pally tank.

As soon as you can afford it, get the blue leg armor (clefthide leg armor?) and put it on the best pair of pants you can find for your level (preferably with a bit of Int). You may need a higher level person to apply them to a pair of BoE pants, but it is worth it; Those pants will last you a very long time. 30 stam and 10 agility at lower level is pure win.

And as for having to use a BoE green instead of a lovely blue drop from Deadmines, keep in mind that no drop from there will come close to 30 stam and 10 agility. The other stats on the BoE are just gravy.

This is actually an alt... I have a level 70 rogue I leveled up last spring. Getting the clefthide armor shouldn't be an issue. Good tip, thanks.