New Member, New Tank - Many Questions

Hello all. I have been pouring over these forums for a few weeks now, and having been a little interested in paladin tanking, I decided to express my interest to my GM. Our official pally tank left the guild for one with RL friends, so I volunteered to fill the gap.

Situation - With the Hyjal Summit attunment removed, the guild is starting to farm trash, and hope to down Rage soon. Our first "organized" attempt saw him down to 65% with people in pvp gear and half the raid down in the first D&D (We're a pvp guild )So I know it can be done. Only one issue, we had to PuG a pally tank. After seeing him in action, I know its what I want to do for my guild now

Result - Going from holy to prot. I have priority for the t4 tokens. (Not like im taking them away from war or druid tanks) We farm all the bosses that drop them, and will start Loot Reaver soon. I have been running heroics non stop for badges, as well as the raids. Easy to get a group as holy. I wont respec till I have all the gear for prot, then Ill take a week to practice, I dont want to wipe my own guild learning how to tank.

And now

Question - Assuming I have all t4, what other gear should I get, I don't know what else I'm missing. Id rather ask other tanks if they see any gaps in my plan. At the moment, Im gathering other gear as well, I have the Crystalforged Sword, getting SSO shield, have the libram, Collosus trinket, the shield block rating cloak, and going for Jungle Stompers. Other than those though, I dont know what else to get. Im saving badges, but I dont know what to get with them. I also dont know any weapons that I could replace the blue with.

2nd Question - apart from gear help...is there any other advice that could be given to a new tank? Tricks and tidbits, things of that nature.

Last - I know its a long post, sorry if anyone's eyes are sore. But even one reply would be worth it if I get something out of it. I got the pally tank slot in a guild that has a ton of pallys who were volunteering for it. Id like to prove I can keep it, and that I can do well at my job.
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T4 legs aren't that good, they are a bit squishy. I would get one of the badge legs instead, any of the three will do but the 75badge one has lots of uncrushablility and BV which is good for hyjull. Or the paladin 100badge one has a lot of threat on it.
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The Unwavering Leggaurds, yeah I was looking at them, but I was hearing a lot of hype about the new badge vendor legs...I guess Ill wait till Im decently geared, then judge for uncrushability or threat. I think if I get a good weapon though (Maybe one off eagle boss in ZA, or the magus blade from gruul, i can go with the Unwavering for mitigation) i can hold the threat fine
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All you need for gearhelp is here. Written specifically for the rading paladin
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/viewtopic.php?t=2652

Question though, oddly, I see gear from sunwell, so I know its been updated since 2.4

Yet, I dont see any of the new badge loot...unless im skipping over it (Not wearing my glasses at the moment) If this IS right...saves me like 100 badges, but anyone else have to say anything bout that list?

Edit: Nevermind, I see the pants on the legs list. Weird though, that the 2.4 chest for 100 badges didnt make it on that list. I see how it isnt better, but I think blizz will probably fix that. No reason the 75 badge chest should be > 100 badge chest for pally tanks
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I haven't read the entire thread, but I quite certain it has been thoroughly discussed in the thread. Search and thou shall discover.

There's also a few separate threads discussing 2.4 loot in the gear forum.

I'm not sure of availability to you but one of the gear pieces that really are helping me out geting my pally alt tanked up was the SSC pally tanking belt. Its a pretty nice (with 2 stars) stam def BV and SD belt which will be pretty nice for aoe tanking the hyjall trash. I don't have any experience with Hyjall on my pally yet but when I aoe tank SH I tend to put on as much of my BV gear as I have (atumen bracers, devilshark, pal belt, tatias self correcting gloves) just because with 7+ mobs you redoubt alot and of course holyshield and the BV turns out very nice. The mats for the belt are not too bad

10x primal water
5x primal earth
5x hardened addy bar
2x nether vortex

As far as your question regarding tips, when AOE tanking I generaly swap off of using SoR and utilize SoW or SoL depending on how my HP is doing just because single target threat isn't a huge deal since well... its aoe. The procs from wis and light will spread agro to all the mobs which I find more valuable. Plus if you feel as though you are taking a bit of dmg SoL can really give you a nice boost in survivability its small heals but when taking mulitple small hits it helps.
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Shifttusk - 70 Hunter Executus 0/20/41
Easylay - 70 Paladin Anetheron 0/49/12

You mentioned running a ton of heroics, and *then* respeccing to prot. Nothing wrong with that of course, as the more badge loot you have the better off you will be, but in addition to the other excellent advice you've gotten in this thread, I'd encourage you to tank as many heroics as you can before you start tanking in a raid situation. The more comfortable you are with tanking, getting your rotation down, getting used to using all your tanking abilities, etc, the more you'll be able to focus on the task at hand when you step into Hyjal. Have fun and good luck! =)
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Thanks

Yeah, just for heroics though, i feel like I can get more groups more often as a good healer than a mediocre tank. Besides the issue that I want the tank gear from kara, gruul, ZA, and mag....and I wouldnt even get the OT slot with what I'm starting with. So, give me a week or two, and my sig below will say Protection instead of holy. I should probably go poke some more into the specs thread.
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I am/was in the same boat. Ive always been holy, but our guild could use another tank, to step in for 10man content, and an OT for 25man. Here's what I had to do:

1) I went thru days of spreadsheets and worksheets and forum threads to plan out my gear. Theres two main issues I had to consider:
1- What slots can I upgrade in current content easily (how many drop options do I have from 'trivial' content where the loot wont be contested for each slot), as I dont want to take gear away from other long time tanks.
2- What gear is best for me now, vs. best for me later? Its hard to build multi-sets at the same time, so I focused on a boss tanking set first. More than once Ive had to decide "well I can get the 100 badge X which will last me longer, but the 75badge Y will do more for my current stats, and the extra 25 badges can also upgrade Z." The problem you have to juggle is what is going to get you to a point where you can tank effectively, to whats not going to be upgraded in a week.

Its not easy. Im trying to take the 'easier' stuff now, to put me at a solid level, and then plan for the future after. If I can be sufficient now, I dont have to worry about speccing back to Holy just for groups and raids.

With that said, Ive found taking lower end badge gear (2.3) and prioritizing peices I cant get sidegrades for the same slot crafted is priority. In addition, items I can upgrade thru PvP (gavel is really the only reliable tanking piece for me) are taken off the badge list as well. So PvP -> Crafted -> Trivial Raid Drops/heroics -> Badges. I can do the first two in non-raid times, the third helps for both drops I can use, and gear I need via badges.

Im trying to upgrade to badge gear by priority of upgrade level as well. So staying uncrushable > Sta > threat (not a concern in our content, yet) > other. Im getting to the point where this is getting much harder to juggle. Id be much better off if certain slots I had very limited options for (wtb tank badge shoulders) and having issues getting them to also drop.

like a few above me have said, practice is everything...ive been tanking stuff since ZF and never looked back. but to this day there are little tips and tricks that i discover or am told of or stumble upon that i never thought of before.

ie...up until like 2 weeks ago i never used my wings...never crossed my mind, but now i love the damned things.

so all in all, holy may be a bit faster, but practice is invaluable. also with the massive amount of dodge rating available from badge gear heriocs become insanely easy, so at some midpoint it will prob become faster to farm badges as prot.

All great advice, and much of it I am considering very seriously.

Another question though. Like the wings mention in the post above, some skills people just dont think of. For me, its Seal of Vengeance...I have it, and some tanks I've talked to swear by it, and others stick with SoR...and yet others say open with SoR, hold with SoV. I just dont know. I tried playing with it as holy, it SEEMS SoV does more damage (if the mob lives long enough for 5 stacks, not a problem with bosses) but it takes longer. so what im personally thinking is SoR open, SoV hold aggro. Anyone else? I know that this is discussed in other posts, but I have it set where I get emailed replies to this thread as its advice directly to me so far, and it makes it easier to track information as i swim through this ocean of forumed information
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