It takes a bit of getting used to, but in a fight like that one you really don’t have to hit the guys you’re kiting that often - an initial hand of reckoning (that’s the taunt plus damage thing right?), hit target A a couple times and continue to zap him with judgments, and then once target B (and C, D, etc) comes on the scene your consecrates should be enough to keep the pack’s aggro ahead of healer aggro, since you don’t need to worry about dps pulling them off of you. (I did this as a DK tank but the theory remains the same).
I think that might be the only fight in the 5-man instances where the DPS aren’t attacking the guys you’re tanking at all; not sure. (There’s the adds in Blackrock Cavern but the tank doesn’t kite them.)
Eh, no biggie - I had fun, and that’s what matters.
I think the only thing that’s the same (relatively speaking) between my Ret and Prot setups is the “=” key, and that’s because I always put racial abilities on that key on every toon I have. So on my human “=” is “Every Man For Himself” and on my belf it’s that silence ability I can’t think of the name for. Also, my Judgement is bound to “4” on both paladins, and I think both have Holy Wrath on the “-” key and Exorcism on the “0” key. Though I should put something else on the “0” for Prot, since Exorcism doesn’t really come into play.
The most significant difference between the two is where Crusader Strike is bound. In Ret spec it’s on my 7 key, but in Prot it’s on my 3 key. That’s entirely due to the fact that until they overhauled the class for Cata, paladins didn’t get CS until a fairly high level, so by the time my human ret paladin (who happened to be my very first character) learned that ability, keys 1-6 were already assigned to other abilities and I was used to having them where they were, and so CS got the 7 key. Now we get CS almost immediately, and since I didn’t seriously fool with Prot spec until after Cata launched, and decided to start another paladin as Prot from level 1, it was natural to put that toon’s CS on the “3” key as soon as he learned it, since on most of my non-paladin toons the “3” key is where I put my “primary” attack. Then, once I was comfortable playing as Prot on the lower-level paladins (I have a draenei at level 61 and a tauren at 40-something), I applied their key setups to Keliraeda when I switched her from Ret to Prot.
I took some time yesterday to read Elitist Jerks’ paladin tank guide, and was extremely surprised to learn that the basic rotation/priority queue I figured out on my own is more or less the same one they recommend:
CS > X >CS > X > CS > Shield of the Righteous
… where “X” is either Judgement or Avenger’s Shield
That’s for single-target situations. For multiple-target situations, just replace CS with Hammer of the Righteous. In either case, using SotR at the end is contingent on having built up 3 charges of Holy Power.
On the downside, I also learned from EJ that my professions, Skinning and Herbalism, aren’t ideal for tanks. About the only worse profession is Tailoring. Apparently the ideal professions these days for a paladin tank are Leatherworking (for the +STA wrist things) and Alchemy (for the trinket and for elixir boosts). But I make so much money from my current professions I don’t know if I have the heart to change them.
HoR is just a plain old taunt now - they removed the damage component
Okay, logged in my paladins to contrast their primary keybinds:
Prot (Keliraeda, blood elf):
1: Hammer of Wrath; 2: Divine Shield; 3: Crusader Strike; 4: Judgement; 5: Avenger’s Shield; 6: Hammer of the Righteous; 7: Shield of the Righteous; 8: Hand of Reckoning; 9: Consecration; 0: Exorcism; -: Holy Wrath; =: Arcane Torrent (racial)
So against a single target, my left hand has its ring, middle, and index fingers resting on 3, 4, and 5, respectively, and the rotation goes (ideally) 3 4 3 5 3 7. Against multiple targets, I just slide one key to the right, and the rotation becomes 6 4 6 5 6 7.
Ret (Eilyssana, human):
1: Divine Shield; 2: Templar’s Verdict; 3: Hammer of Wrath; 4: Judgement; 5: Holy Light; 6: Divine Storm; 7: Crusader Strike; 8: Inquisition; 9 thru =: same as above.
My left pinky gets a lot more work in Ret spec. Here, my index finger is on 7, and my pinky is on 3, and the “rotation” isn’t really a rotation. My index finger hits CS each time it comes off cooldown, and slides one key right to hit Inquisition each time I have 3 Holy Power, or one key left if I need Divine Storm (extremely rare in single-target combat, since it shares a CD with CS and doesn’t generate HP unless it hits 4 targets). My pinky hovers over HoW, ready to hit that “finishing move” the instant its available, moves one key right each time I need to cast Judgement, or one key left when TV procs. The odd key is 5, with Holy Light sitting there. That’s where it’s been since I put it there the day I learned it over 2 years ago, and I’m just used to it being there. Divine Shield is over on the 1 key where I can easily get to it if needed, but where I’m not accidentally hitting it all the time when I don’t. Exorcism is only used when Art of War procs, so it sits on the 0 key where I can easily reach it with either my left or right hand, as the situation requires.
My Ret setup could really use some optimizing, but it suffers from the inertia of being the same basic key setup I’ve had for 2-1/2 years, and muscle memory is such that I hardly have to think about it, making me less inclined to fool with it.
If you’re already maxed out (or nearly) in herbalism, it won’t take you very long to level through Alchemy. The question is do you want two crafting profs (and have to buy all your mats), or go with skinning/LW or herbalism/alchemy. I guess it depends on how much crafting you plan to do or how much money you want to make once you have the BiS enchant/trinket.
Speaking as a pally who leveled up skinning/LW and then switched to herbs/alchy at 85, I found alchemy much easier to level than leatherworking ever was.
If you decide you want to go LW/Alchemy, I’d get a levelling guide for each and then use your current profs to gather as many of the mats as you can first, then drop them for the crafting profs – unless you have thousands of gold you don’t mind spending. And even then, some stuff might not be readily available on the AH.
My human paladin powerleveled alchemy at level 80, and I remember it was pretty easy. My draenei mage, a max-level herbalist, provided most of the mats for her. But leatherworking … ugh. My nelf hunter is a skinner/LW and yeah, what a pain.
I do have a couple level 1 toons on Cairne I could set up with bank bags to hold all the mats.
We had a nice turnout last night, but still not quite enough folks to try a 10-man. I saw that the five-man group that formed had some success. Yeti and I pugged ZG and got off to a very rough start, but finally got a really good DK tank and were pretty successful after that. Unfortunately I had to drop out at the next-to-last boss because it was already 11:30 pm here and my wife was giving me the stink-eye.
I hope folks who needed them got some nice loot. And Yeti I hope you guys were able to finish with a new healer…
The Heroic group was very smooth. Knocked two out with no difficulties. And I think Jsor managed to get at least one good upgrade. Yeti mentioned on his late return that his group did not finish.
Aw, on the one hand I feel bad that I bailed on Yeti’s group and they didn’t finish. I’m kinda surprised; the group was doing pretty well and the tank had a good attitude.
On the other hand, it means that either I saved myself a lot of time and frustation when the group hit a wall, or that I’m such a good healer that I made the difference between success and failure. Probably the former though.
The 5-man guild run went very well. I know it was myself (Kalathan), Jsor, Kahmu, and Krueler, but I can’t for the life of me remember who our fifth was. I screwed my courage to the sticking post, and volunteered to tank - the first time I’d done so since a WotLK heroic guild run. So we had a newbie tank (me - Kalathan) and a healer who admitted he was rusty, but still made it through all of Heroic Vortex Pinnacle with just two wipes; both against trash mobs.
The first wipe was at the spot where there are six elementals - three on each of the rising staircases - all of whom rush you when you pull the first one. There was just too much AOE damage going on I guess. Still, we killed 3 before the wipe, which made the second try go much more smoothly.
The second wipe was against one of the groups of 5 “cat-taurs”. It was the group that’s at the bottom of the staircase, and I pulled badly the first time. I needed to pull them to the top of the staircase and break line-of-sight to the non-CC’d caster, and didn’t do so. The second time it went much better, and then we rinsed and repeated for the second group of five on that platform.
We were hampered a bit by only having Krueler for CC; and his Sap doesn’t work on elementals, so that made some of the fights hairier than they might have been with more CC, but we managed.
We didn’t have any trouble with the bosses – it helps that all those boss fights are fairly straightforward – and I was feeling pretty comformtable with my Protection rotation by the time we reached the end. I think it helped that I’d spent a fair amount of time reading up on Paladin tanking on Elitist Jerks and a couple of other sites before trying.
I hope you guys were able to pick up another tank - or Moobird was willing to tank - after I had to drop group after the first heroic. As Skammer says, it was getting a bit late (11:00+) for me to feel comfortable with starting another heroic.
So Moobird wasn’t with you guys? And didn’t Rahuul heal?
My pally Keyne doesn’t have many more upgrades available outside raids, so I might start bringing my priest Kene along guild runs if we have another healer. That would add more CC options too (Mind Control and Shackle).
Actually Rahuul was our healer, and I was there (Moobird). No Kahmu. I also took over afterwards and we picked up a raid-lvl mage for Lost City. Only a couple wipes there. I hadn’t been there in so long and possibly never as a tank that I needed help with strats.
If we do a couple during the week, we can easily complete the dungeon achievement of the weekly and get a bunch of xp/gold.
Hmm, do we need a healer? If I can get some tutoring, maybe I’ll turn Moo back into a tank/healer (his original specs before I gave up healing) Assuming resto gear is the same as balance. Is it? Is it close?
It’s more or less the same gear (minus the tier ability bonuses) – the difference is in reforging/gemming priorities and even then, it won’t make or break your spec if you’re reforged for one spec and play in the other (as opposed to, say, feral tank vs feral dps, which are obnoxiously disparate). Back when I was mainly resto, I’d still do very well swapping out the spirit trinkets and pew pewing things as a chicken. It also depends on the content you’re exploring (the hit cap for raiding vs heroics, for instance, is vastly different – but personally I don’t bother differentiating; keeping all that excess spirit hurts my dps only a little, while still keeping me viable as resto – no need to optimize that much just for heroics).
I think Rahuul and I are the only top-level healers right now (but I always forget if Kahmu has a healing spec or not). My shammy is getting there (level 81!) but obviously I can only play one at a time anyway.
Yeah, it kinda fell apart after 3 more wipes on the arena fight with the dino-fossil pet…the first wipe was that someone engaged the boss (before everyone was there and buffed up), and the second time someone engaged the 2 warmongers guarding the front of the arena (I actually think it was that tank who did that). The third time was a legitimate wipe. Then when we rezzed and went back a fourth time, the tank somehow was unable to release and no-one could find him and another player DC’d; the other 2 dropped after that leaving me and the DC’d player in the group. So I thought…“OK, just vote-kick the DC’d player and regroup so maybe we can finish these last two bosses…”.
Ooops. All of a sudden I got grouped into the same instance, but with 0/6 boss kills listed in the instance. “Fuuuuu…well, start all over again, I guess.” But I couldn’t teleport to their dungeon, so I had to Leave Group.
That’s when I grouped up with Kruler and Jsor and we ran a couple of heroic dungeons (SK and HoO) that went pretty smoothly until Grim Batol…Throngus…Why was that dude’s fire shield running over 30 seconds straight???
Did we get the 7/7 Dungeons for the guild achievement/rewards? I found out recently that those don’t have to be Wrath dungeons, they can be any RDF dungeons (to use rdf, you have to be at-level in a guild group)
Good news, by the time we’re ready for some raids, they will be ready for us! 4.2 - tier 11 nerfed
We’re still hurting on the roster, though we’re getting close.
Nah, we got 6/7, since Yeti (understandably) had to drop after a tank quit in H GB.
ETA: Also, if we want to do a guild run of H Stonecore specifically sometime we can get the banner, not the best for me since I don’t really have much that drops there, but acheives are nice.
Probably the former though.