Zhaw - Prot Paladin

IRL Information
Name: Leo Eckerman
Age: 20 years old
Gender: Male
Country of origin: Åland Islands, Finland
Languages spoken: Swedish and English spoken and written fluently. Can order a beer in quite many more languages than that.
Occupation: None atm

What do I do beside WoW: Beside the normal bullcrap "I like to socialize with my friends" (we all know those who only write that have no friends) I like to get around and enjoy life in whatever way I can. I am an adventurer, be it digital dragonslaying or sailing the sevens seas of the planet we got to play with. I am a sailor, and I like to sail traditional tallships. The heavier mass brought forth in higher speed by the forces of nature, the more awesome. I've recently spent 5 months in the alps snowboarding and drinking over the winter season.


In-game information
Character name: Zhaw
Class: Paladin
Specc: Protection, with possibility to alter if certain situations would require so.
Armory link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormscale&n=Zhaw
Gear summary if armory fail: 16k hp 23% dodge 450 spelldamage. Crit and Crush immunity. Other stats are pretty much irrelevant. (other threat stats are of minor value aswell as not common on tankadin gear. Parry sucks for a paladin and block is obsolete once crush immunity is obtained, if not multi tanking where holy shield runs out.)
I allso have quite a set of healadin gear including 3 t5, 4 venge(inc shoulders). Working on making my healgear more prot specc friendly, as it has been utilized for being specced holy before.
My retardin set (should it ever be desireable) is a bit bits and pieces, and atm lacking a weapon worthy of the specc (working on getting badges one when i'm 100% sure there's nothing else I need). Should it ever be needed then all gear purchaseable for honor can be attained.

Availability
Connection: Ålcom 8mbit ADSL2, rarely very good but its well enough and doesn't fail often enough to cause a problem.
Ventrilo: Got them all, all verisions of ventrilo, some TS and even skype.
Mic and useage of it: Got one, a bit sharp sound in it. I am never afraid to use it, alltho I do try to keep vocal spam down when it could be disturbing.

Previous experiences
Previous MMOs: DAoC

PRE TBC Raiding experiences:
All content up to C'thun in AQ40 and 9 bosses down in Naxx. Most of this content done on my mage, Gubbstrutt. Alot allso done on a druid, both as healer and as one of the few who tanked as feral pre tbc. Alltho not primari raid leader I have done alot of the content as a raidleader aswell which makes quite a difference to the raiding overview.

TBC Raiding experiences
MH Cleared and BT up to Gurtogg Bloodboil. 25 man content done as healadin mostly. ZA / Kara done as everything i got. Allso led some of the first lockout ZA guildruns.

Previous guilds: (Un)Decided since the very first Molten Core raids the guild did. Reason for wanting another guild is that Decided quit raiding after three years, and will never be able to start up as an active (at least not the same) guild again in this game.

Additional
The reason I am playing a paladin is that before TBC I felt that my role was too insignificant as a mage. I topped the damagemeters and I was very active during my raiding periods, but if a tank failed, the attempt failed. If he succeded and the healers failed, then the encounter failed. Only after that did my DPS count. I chose a paladin to be able to fill both the roles of a tank and a healer in order to fulfill the biggest needs and make a bigger difference.

Furthemore I really do see paladin tanks as not only a very viable tanking class, but in my oppinion they are better in many situations. I will post a little article I wrote, but to sum it up, the avoidance is the same as a warriors given crushing immunity. If a boss hits fast and the hits arent avoided but blocked instead, a paladins crushing immunity lasts longer. At an estimated point of 18k unbuffed hitpoints, a paladin starts to get more with equal stamina from gear + benefits from kings more. The paladins "oh shit" is passive reactive countrary to active proactive (warriors last stand shield wall), but with no cooldown. The downsides being no spell reflect and less proactive for a 20sec tank while boss enraged phase. Big fat wall of text comparision tankadin - warrior post incoming in this thread, might be interesting reading for someone.


//Zhaw / Gubb / Leo

Comparision Tankadin - Prot Warrior
A quick comparision between of a tankadin in comparision to a warrior tank. Written mostly straight from the top of my head, with no heavy theorycrafting nor millions of sources. Aimed at scepticals towards tankadins, but with intent to stay objective. Take in mind I haven't actually played a warrior tank in TBC, which on this sheet should be most likely to result in me not knowing difficoulties of playing the class.

Mechanics
Mana vs Rage
This doesn't actually make as much difference as one might think, due to the fact that mana is mostly regenerated through effective healing (10% is recieved as mana).
-There is a point where the damage input puts a healed tank into "endless mana" or "endless rage" state, where no matter how many buttons you spam you just can't deplete your mana or rage pool. Most 25man bosses puts the tank in this state, no matter what class.
-While a warrior can go into a fight with some rage, a paladin can go into a fight with a full mana pool, allowing for more time going full out threat without regening.
-Regeneration when not getting hit is gimped for both classes, but for a paladin it requires a different seal and judgement (can be given by a different paladin) than the usual threat building ones. If threatbuilding is required during that time other abilities can however be used.
-Manadrain can cause a problem for offtanking, however as main tank getting healed should often compensate enough.
Overall this makes little difference. On encounters that require tankswitching it might make the paladin better than a warrior as first tank and equal or worse as second in the rotation, depending on how often the switches are etc. If short time between switches then the initial manapool is often enough for the first phase before the paladins turn to tank.

Threat differences
Overall a paladin builds more threat and easier from the player point of view (yeah i admit, spamming consecrate + holy shield + judge aint hard...) However paladins have more differences in form of mechanics preventing them from building threat, contrary to a warrior that most often is straight forward global cooldown timing that always works, more or less.
-AOE threat from paladins is, supposedly, their main tanking feat. Since alot of threat comes from blocking and consecrate a large number of (preferably melee) mobs can have equal ammount of threat built on them.
-Single target threat is on a normal boss very much competable with a warrior, if not better even. This ofcourse depends alot on gear. This would have been a good point to spam alot of maths and statistics, but i have none and i'm to lazy to find any. I'll just point to Lave maintanking Illidan, which pretty much started the tankadin fad.
-Silencing and Mana Draining bosses or mobs can cause a problem, however shorter silences can be timed between holy shield/ consecrate refreshs, same with manadrain if regen fast is given (healing when tanking, should be fast) (example Kaz'Rogal is supposedly not an issue as a paladin tank)
-Resists and misses are an issue for all tanks. While hit and spellhit gear is a threatboost, it is far from required for a tankadin, contrary to a warrior or druid that ideally want to cap both hit and expertise. For a paladin only the first tick of consecrate can ever be resisted at all.
-Additional abilities versus undead or demons.
-Percentual damage increase scales a paladins threat, but not completely a warriors since certain abilities have a static ammount of threat atop the damage they do.
Overall a tankadin keeps aggro well, but lacks at building threat when he doesn't have aggro, or getting it back if lost.


Taunt Mechanics
The way the different taunts works can be at both great advantage or disadvantage. Big advantages of the paladin are the range and taunting numerous targets. Disadvantages are a longer cooldown (allthough seldomly used that often), lack of AOE taunt without target limitations and taunting several targets of a friendly target, rather than taunting the actual enemy target (can't pick just one of two mobs of another tank, unless he taunts back)



Talents, stats and skills
Group/raid beneficials
-Paladins provides: additional blessing, blessing of sanctuary for tanks, cleanse (doesn't reset swingtimer, can dispell when tanking), aura, judgement
-Warriors provides: Shout, Thunderclap, Sunder Armor.

Both beneficials are good, if not needed. A tankadin in raid however would allow for fewer healadins in the setup to give all buffs, and the higher up in content the less healadins perform in overall healing.

Self beneficial and offencive skills for tanking
-Holy Shield contra Shield Block: Shield block got higher block rating (75% contra 30%), but this becomes obsolete when you atain uncrushability, it just makes it easier for a warrior to do so. Holy shield on the other hand has more charges than shield block (8 blocks in 10 seconds contra 2 attacks every 5 seconds), minimizing the chanse that it will run out when tanking several targets or a really fast hitting target.
-Warrior has: Shield Bash, Spell Reflect, Last Stand, Shield Wall (or retaliation), Berserker Rage (fear braker when dancing), (Disarm), (Concussion Blow)
-Paladin has: Divine Shield (for dispelling undispellable or avoiding a spell, combined with a cancel macro), Ardent Defender (damage reduced by 30% below 35%), (Hammer of Justice)

This is the paladin's great flaw. Any encounter that is designed for a warrior tank only, that require for example spell reflect, are very hard for a tankadin to tank. Beside that the other skills like Ardent defender compared to Last Stand is a matter of taste and situation.

Health and avoidance
Health:
-Base health: Warrior has 5678hp (140 base sta) unbuffed with no talents, Paladin has 4377 (of which 118 is base sta). (Abit unsure about these figures as i have no acces to untalented characters to look them up on, aswell as on how the base numbers work really)
-Percentual talents give warriors 5% stamina, Paladins get 16%
This would mean that around 18k unbuffed hp paladins actually have more hp than warriors. (reservation for sucky maths)
Damage reduce:
-Raw damage reduction: From warriors defencive stance 10%, from paladins imp. Righteous Fury 6%. Allso paladins "Ardent Defender" talent reduces damage taken below 35% by 30%.
-(spell reduction; imp defencive stance 6% for warriors, spell warding 4% for paladins. Neither are talents that every tank specc.)
Avoidance:
-Uncritability attained same way, equal difficoulty. Option for talent giving +20 defence, rest through defence and/or resiliance.
-Uncrushability attained same way, earlier in gear levels due to 75% on shield block for warriors.
-Armor: Both wear plate, same item level gives same armor. Both got talents for 10% more.
-Dodge, Block and Parry. A full tank specc include 5% parrry from arms or retri trees. Warriors allso have 5% block to specc, but this becomes obsolete when uncrushability is allready attained (as long as shield block/holy shield doesn't run out, that is.) Talented paladins shield block value is increased by 30%.

Overall I would say the paladin's avoidance is greater, purely theoretical with the exact same avoidance values from gear, attaining uncrushability for both classes. The higher 4% higher raw damage reduce of a warrior is well balanced out with 30% shield block value.


Itemization
Some think paladins need to gear up towards spelldamage, and hence loose itemvalue of tanking stats, to build threat more than warriors, this is not the case. A Tankadin with low spelldamage can be compared to a warrior with low expertise/hit, both are not a verry significant part of the itemvalue of the gear. Most of a paladins spelldamage comes from the weapon, where the itemvalue to make up for that is taken from the DPS of the weapon, which a paladin doesn't need at all.
A paladin however has a libram instead of a rifle, which is basically an itemslot of normal stats lost for an unique on equip bonus.



My very personal oppinion is that a tankadin is more than just capable of tanking anything a like a warrior, it can become better. With the few exceptions where a warriors skills are needed to tank or where the paladins abilities can not be used, anything else is possible. Some few bosses might even be better tanked with a paladin, i would imagine illidan when hitting so fast for example.

//Zhaw

Some links to more theorycrafting:
http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t21425-paladin_protection/
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/viewforum.php?f=6&sid=2ca8613cb9c05e45d8978674dbfb378c