Re-activating your WoW account, or interested in "Trying Before You Buy"?Advancing The Lowbie Paladin
As a healer, I've grown to love the Pally Tank in my level 70 5-man instances. While they may be difficult to heal at times because of the sheer armount of healing they need as everything in the room beats on them, I'm happy being confident that unless people try REALLY HARD, they're not going to pull aggro and I'm not going to get healing aggro.
So, with that thought, I seek to level my Paladin to be one of those awesome tank-type people.
But, right now she's only level 25 and thus barely has the spellbook skills to be that awesome Pally Tank I know she'll be in the future. And of course, she hasn't had much in the way of tanking experience yet either.
But that's changing.
About My Pally
My Pally is actually spec'd mostly in the Retribution tree right now, but I'm gearing myself towards the "tank" end of the scale (favoring stamina and intellect for now) instead of the melee DPS (favoring agility and strength) end. I've also picked up a helpful tanking-specific addon to go with the fact that I'll have to lead the kill order and pacing of dungeon instances as a part of that "tanking" job.
For this toon, I've opted to attempt to completely avoid healing, having a Priest, Druid and Shammy already doing heals duties... but I HAVE healed a BFD run when the other Paladin in the group only had the mindset to tank and I wasn't interested in an argument of any type.
In time I'll get more points into the actual Protection tree, but right now from what I've read, Retribution is the way to go for my spec, despite the fact that I behave and gear like someone others might expect to be geared Protection.
I'm going on the thought, largely, that in Azeroth things have been nerfed so far and are so forgiving for quick leveling that it's more gearing and behavior than spec that determines how well one plays their role in a group situation.
Professional Aspirations
With my family of toons, I have all of the professions covered, so for now with this one I've just gone completely "Gathering": Mining and Skinning.
When the expansion comes out, one of my toons needs to take up Inscription, but I'm not sure whether it will be this Paladin or another of my toons, so for now I'm just gathering and processing and collecting.
Immediate Dungeon Goals
At 25, I'm not really high enough to properly tank an RFK run, so I guess that means I'll be doing a couple more in BFD.
Also, there's a mess of guildmates who have alts at the 18-20 level, so maybe I'll tank an SFK run or three for my friends so the clothies can get the Robes of Arugal, etc, and all look the same. ;)
While the number of instances I can tank and get benefit from are few right now, soon I'll be getting into a range with a number of choices and a lot of demand on the LFG channel. Sure, the groups may be chaotic, but there should be a lot of them.
I'll be sure to write about my tanking adventures as they happen!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related posts:
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So much easier to level a Paladin today much more easier than when I had to level my Protection Paladin from 0-70 as the same spec. But I did that for a reason I wanted to be good and well skilled, so I endured testing my skills and learning new tricks along the way just playing the spec. I guess that would be like most any class if you play a spec long enough day in day out.
However with greater XP earned all the way to 60. As well 60-70 XP earn rate will increase so say Blizzard it's just much easier. Having a mount at 30 vs old way at 40 makes things go even faster and saves lots of time. Yeah really lit easier now to level.
It's often easy to admire a good Protection Paladin in a 5 man Instance or Raid. But visible more so in a 5 man where each person pulls their weight through the instance. A good Skilled Paladin is fun to run with or even watch. It's even better when the other 3 DPS and Healer play or adjust to the way the Tanking Paladin plays to their advantage in a skilled way. It just makes things much smoother.
However having said that it does take great Skill, Confidence and Ability to Tank well as a Paladin that others admire. Often it's little tricks learned in doing things or ways to approach a pull that you learn from experience. All those little things make a Paladin Tank so much better. It's not always the gear, skills count allot. Yet it always help to have DPS that knows "Hey I have a Paladin Tanking" I need to adjust a bit to the way the tank tanks. As well the healer healing the Tank so he can go full throttle and not wait to heal when he drops below 50% or so. All those things make the Tank more effective to do what he needs to do to ensure a nice smooth fun run.
However in Beta it's even more fun to be a Tanking Paladin. Fun times and fun times learning new tricks in the spec I'm dedicated to playing. Protection Paladin 100% the time all the time.
I just recently got my pally tank to 70, but hit a hell of a brick wall. I'm to the point now where I've gotten all I can get out of the instance blue gear, but still not geared enough to do heroics. So I'm stuck farming kara for 3 hours once per week praying that something worthwhile drops. After 4 weeks, all I have is King's Defender (which actually blows for a pally tank) and 2 badge pieces.
Gearing up a tank is annoying as hell.
Matt @ http://www.ruggednerds.com
Matt, you must be doing something wrong.
I leveled my paladin from 30-70 as protection, then at 70, I put together an uncrittable, uncrushable set of gear with quest/rep/crafted blues and went right to tanking heroics. As soon as I got 15 badges for my libram, I started main tanking Kara.
I don't think getting pally tank gear at 70 is hard at all. Check out this guide:
http://www.tankadin.com/forum/gear/195-pre-kara-gear-guide/