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that can be very annoying with suicidal DPSers (ofc it's not easy to watch your aggro (especially if the tank ain't got an aggro meter) but it's not impossible and any DPSer worth his/her mana/energy/rage should know how to do it, but...), especially if you're the healer and the tank ain't amazing as healing aggro is spread across all mobs and if tank has to focus on one due to DPSers being morons, lets just say that when you got 2 very angry coilscar naga on you (a tempest and an observer IIRC) pally armor is rather thin (this was at heroic slave pens, with an inexperienced but otherwise good druid tank).

and if you got warriors bad mouthing about pally/druid tanks, so this (ask a pally tank come with an alt DPSer) then have mister/(miss mouthy tank Magisters Terrace then when he fails have said 1 person bring his pally tank and finnish the instance and laugh at the noobness of the warrior .

for those who don't know best tanks for Magister's Terrace are prot pallies.

Broomstick wrote:Those DPS contests really piss me off. My main is a caster DPS shaman (elemental spec) and I'd much rather have a group with good teamwork who don't wipe often than one of those pissing-contest "ha-ha-I-do-the-most-damage" bullshit fests. Who the fuck CARES? Especially the hybrids who won't take a second to fire off a strategic back-up heal to keep the tank or main healer going in a tight spot. Oh no! Their damage rating is so much more important than keeping the group alive and moving.

and the funny thing is that those "omg look at my crits!, "heal me you noob!!!" actually do less DPS then those who watch their aggro and work with the tank rather then against him, as those people constantly need to run away from mobs they've pulled in their stupidy (I'd even call it zeal).

One of my more infuriating moments in Molten Core as my feral druid was when, on a boss fight, a particular rogue who consistently played "my DPS-peen is bigger than yours!" drew aggro on a boss fight (note to rogues: Feint is your friend, and you have no fucking excuse for pulling aggro from a decent prot-spec tank) and got himself killed...and started screaming at me on Vent to combat res him "because I'm going down on the DPS meters." And he kept doing it until the mob died, then he whined. He's damned lucky I wasn't a guild officer because I was ready to boot him out of the guild.

Shit like that was why I learned to dread raids with my guild. Some nice people but some utter idiots too.

DPSing is made a lot easier when your tank has a compatible threatmeter. If I'm running with a PUG and nobody else has Omen, I have no idea how capable the rest of the group is. I've gotten tanks where I can multi-DoT and shadowbolt away all I want and the mobs won't budge from the tank, and I've gotten tanks where a single shadowbolt (non-crit) following my DoTs was enough to pull a mob off the tank and onto me, despite giving the tank a second or two in melee before beginning my DoT rotation to build up threat.

No doubt, Omen is your friend. My guild requires that add-on along with vent for anything above Tempest Keep, and prefers for anything Outland and higher.

Broomstick wrote:No doubt, Omen is your friend. My guild requires that add-on along with vent for anything above Tempest Keep, and prefers for anything Outland and higher.

Yes, but don't trust it for everyhing, certain fights screw it. Springing to mind:

Bear in ZA, and any other fight that has lots of taunts.
Onyxia.

Basically use it as a guide, don't count on it 100%,

Agreed ^

Jaevric wrote:Not to mention giving you a chance to get used to all the incredibly stupid things your groupmates are likely to do and know how to react to them. Some of the shit people in pick-up groups do is just mindbogglingly stupid -- and unfortunately, some of it carries over into raids because they never learn any better. There will always be that one hunter or mage who cuts loose on the mob before the poor tank gets a chance to do more than pull it (Avenger's Shield as I recall is effective enough to negate that somewhat, but when my warrior was doing pulls with a gun and some idiot huntard starts shooting full-out right after I did...ARGH!). Or the idiots who get into a "Who can produce more DPS?" competition and disregard the fact that the poor tank has to try to hold aggro through that -- this is especially "fun" when they pick different targets to DPS.

Oh my god....the pugs... the horrible, horrible pugs.... *shivers*

Few months ago, I was healing reg SP with my holy pally with a guildie tanking (one of the best tanks I've ever worked with) and another guildie as a DPS. We pug'ed the additional two dps slots. We got a shadow priest who wasn't that bad, and a lvl 69 hunter.

Over the past few months that I've been playing, I've gained a sixth sense about groups. I can tell before we even enter the instance whether a pug will be good or bad. My spider sense was going nuts on the hunter, but we were trying to get a group for SP for the past hour, so i told it to shut up.

We get into the instance and it immediately went bad. He created a little game with the tank called "who got to shoot the mob first." Even after being told repeatedly not to, he still tried to tank the instance, to the extent of actually stealing mobs off the tank on purpose! It was only after being warned that if he did it one more time, he would be kicked out of the group. And even after that, I heard through Vent, that he was still whispering to the tank that he should be tanking instead.

What's more, his DPS was utterly horrible. Never knew why until one of the members went afk for two min, and he decided to entertain himself by showing off his epic bow. A blue who's only stat bonus was +15 stam. Inspected him, and he had like 300 stam, and 100 agi.... His spec was worse. It was something retarded like 26/24/10.

Anyway, we were just about to make an attempt on the second boss, when the shadow priest had to leave. Well, we had already put up with so much to do that damn instance, we didn't want to try to find another pugger to fill his spot, especially considering it was pretty late for the server. So we decided to try to four man the boss.

[edit] After the priest left, he asked if that was our healer. The priest had been in shadow form for the whole damn instance, and he still didn't know who the healer was. At this point, I understood why he never tried to get mobs off me.

Now, for those of you in the audience who don't know this boss, it's a very mana intensive fight for the healer. One of his abilities is a debuff he occasionally casts on the tank which deals 900 damage every two seconds. The only way to get rid of it is to overheal the tank. And just to piss off the holy pallies, he also has an AoE damage spell. Pallies are crappy with AoE damage. We only have single target heals, no group heals.

So we start the fight, and it doesn't go well. We just didn't have the DPS for it. I'm running out of mana, and my mana pots are on cool down. It's taking all my mana just to make sure the tank's health doesn't go down to zero. And as for me healing him to full to get rid of the debuff? Fat chance.

It was at this time the hunter started screaming at me to heal him. See, the whole group was taking damage from the AoE spell, but I didn't just didn't have the mana to throw them a heal. I took half a second I didn't really have to explain this, but he didn't give a shit.

Anyway, the group wipes. Then the hunter started bitching at me for healing the tank instead of him. His reasoning was that since he was doing the most dps, I should have been focusing on him insead of the tank. When we proceeded to laugh at him and try to tell him how a group works, he left the group. But not before calling me a crappy healer.

We cheered.


Sorry for going off on this tangent, but that was the worst pug I've ever been in (well, except for maybe that one group I was in that wiped seven times on the same trash pull, with me being the first one to die each time.), and I love telling people about it.

Jaevric wrote:Also, get used to some idiot Arms or Fury warrior who thinks the best way to keep aggro is to spam Taunt every time the cooldown is up telling you "lol paladins (or druids) can't tank, stfu and heal noob." Not saying that all Arms/Fury warriors are idiots who can't tank, but a lot of the really vocal ones are.

What really kills me about that is that an Arms/Fury is saying Paladins can't tank. A Protection Warrior saying that is arrogant. An Arms/Fury Warrior saying that has taken one too many blows to the head.

Particularly since a well-specced Protection Paladin can go a really long time without dying, especially when you compare how other classes deal with being swarmed by enemies. Hell, get two together (particularly two draenei, due to that lovely racial manaless HoT) and they can practically go on forever.

Though I tend to avoid PUGs. I tanked one PUG in Zul'Farrak, when a guildie asked me to run him through the instance. I was overlevelled (50s in a 42-46 instance). Everyone else was either underlevelled (lowest was a 40 warlock) or in the lower part of the level range. Being an overlevelled tank running an instance with underlevelled players in a nightmare. Though interestingly enough, we didn't lose a single person on the pyramid.

I also have a hunter alt that I've pretty badly neglected when my paladin hit Outland, but when I play hunter I would give good PUG vibes if I didn't avoid them. Just a bunch of little things like turning Growl off, keeping the pet on Defensive (or even Passive), always keeping as much of the party (especially the tank) between me and the mobs at all times, only rolling for gear I need, etc. I figure since Hunters have such a bad reputation when it comes to grouping, I'm beholden to going the extra mile when I play one, even when it is with a group of friends.

hunters have such a bad rep as there's alot (probably the majority) hunters who ain't worth their gear (which can also be chosen only because it's blue/epic and because it has good stats for hunters), loot everything that isn't nailed down and most that is, bad mouth everyone (or don't talk or do it so poorly no one understands them) and do shitty DPS, but still insist they're God's gift to WoW.

Hunter's are a hard class to master, but you can see when someone isn't even trying.

PS. I got a hunter alt and tbh I'm stellar at it but at least I try my best to avoid your typical noob mistakes (being guildless (by choice I've rejected all guild invs I've gotten) she has to do PuGs.(in case you're wondering while my pally is human, my hunter is blood elf, hence my pally is guilded and my hunter isn't)).

Lord Revan wrote:hunters have such a bad rep as there's alot (probably the majority) hunters who ain't worth their gear (which can also be chosen only because it's blue/epic and because it has good stats for hunters), loot everything that isn't nailed down and most that is, bad mouth everyone (or don't talk or do it so poorly no one understands them) and do shitty DPS, but still insist they're God's gift to WoW.

I've heard Hunter described as the most anti-social class in the game. You could probably say that they act that way because they are more concerned about keeping their pets happy. After all, the contents of my hunter's backpack pretty much consists of meat and bullets (dwarf with a bear). Even though I don't run on a roleplaying server, I try to go with a Teddy Roosevelt-esque flavor. Nature should be preserved so I have something to kill. Bully!

When I get around to playing him again, I plan on grinding Gnomeregan rep simply so I can get him a Mechanostrider and drive home the point that I'm going for a Safari-type Hunter as opposed to a Woodland Survivor-type Hunter (also, he doesn't have skinning. Why would he? He's a poacher).

Civil War Man wrote:Particularly since a well-specced Protection Paladin can go a really long time without dying, especially when you compare how other classes deal with being swarmed by enemies. Hell, get two together (particularly two draenei, due to that lovely racial manaless HoT) and they can practically go on forever.

Do you have an example of a "well-specced" Protection Paladin?

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

Civil War Man wrote:Particularly since a well-specced Protection Paladin can go a really long time without dying, especially when you compare how other classes deal with being swarmed by enemies. Hell, get two together (particularly two draenei, due to that lovely racial manaless HoT) and they can practically go on forever.

Do you have an example of a "well-specced" Protection Paladin?

For the most part, talents which include phrases like "increases your total stamina", "increases your chance to block", "reduces damage taken", "causes additional threat", or "deals Holy damage" is something you'd want as a Protection Paladin.

But again, Protection Paladins shine as PvE tanks versus multiple mobs. Since you are on a PvP server, speccing Protection may be counter-productive since it is not geared towards fighting other players.

Civil War Man wrote:For the most part, talents which include phrases like "increases your total stamina", "increases your chance to block", "reduces damage taken", "causes additional threat", or "deals Holy damage" is something you'd want as a Protection Paladin.

But again, Protection Paladins shine as PvE tanks versus multiple mobs. Since you are on a PvP server, speccing Protection may be counter-productive since it is not geared towards fighting other players.

Ok, but is a good idea to be a jack of all trades (Pro/Ret) or stick with Ret?

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Ok, but is a good idea to be a jack of all trades (Pro/Ret) or stick with Ret?

By all means, you don't have to put all of your talent points in one spec (my Paladin has several points in Retribution for the parry bonus, for example). Most builds I have seen for any class heavily favor one particular spec, since 41 talent points are required for any spec's top tier ability (51 when Wrath of the Lich King comes out), but even if you dig all the way down to the bottom of a talent tree, that still leaves another 20 points before end game.

Basically, find a spec that works for you. If it doesn't, money you will make from gathering will be able to keep you fairly well funded if you need to respec, so long as you don't do it too often.

At level 70, the money you make from running dailies will easily cover the cost to respec, even if you decide to respec every day.

So far the worst PUG experience I had was when some asshole (I don't even remember what class he was - I keep trying to block the memory anyhow) aggro'd a shitload of mobs onto us, I died, then he SCREAMED at me for not healing him -- never mind my designate role was DPS. I pointed out I couldn't heal people when I was dead. He didn't get it.

I don't think you can really play the Most Assholish race game in WoW. If you took race as a whole, the Eredar win hands down, since they are the top level management of a universe wide Kill Everything! demonic army. However, the Eredar that you can play, the Draenei, are actually all really decent, just with some of the shittiest luck ever.

First the great dark evil turns most of their people in to monsters who spend the next 25,000 years chasing them across the universe, till they finally settle down on a nice peacefully little planet where they can build some cities and not worry about the Burning Legion, and occasionally see those nice brown hunter gatherers... who OH SHIT! have started turning green and are convinced that their ancestral spirits really, really want them to kill every last one of the Draenei!

Whoo, the scant survivors have holed up in the Tempest Keep and most of their race are now corrupted mutants due to the demonic war plague the orcs keep spreading, at least most of the orcs have now left the planet or have died fighting some army coming through the portal they left in. We can even move back in our old capital city, which survived the planet exploding. OH CRAP! Some guy named Kael'thas and his army of dudes just rolled the Tempest Keep, butchered thousands, and we had to jump ship and crash land on another planet! Plus, the Naaru are now saying we have be nice to the latest army that tried to wipe us out, because A'dal gives people REALLY convincing dreams!

I'd say the most horrible race that you actually get to play is the Forsaken. I remember that one late 40s quest you get in the Undercity that there is a sick Tauren girl and you're sent on errands to Azshara to get ingredients for an alchemist in the Forsaken city. You eventually troop all over hell's half acre for all the stuff the guy wants, he gives the potion to the taurenne and she goes "What have you done to me?!" and drops dead. The Forsaken starts cackling that the potion was a great success and he'd report it to his superiors.

Here is the requested paladin tank spec, or at least the one I use. And yeah...I don't PuG. Pickups do such things as demand repeatedly that I mark targets for CC on a geared paladin tank in a nonheroic. And then I look at them funny, throw my shield, and that's that.

Civil War Man wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:hunters have such a bad rep as there's alot (probably the majority) hunters who ain't worth their gear (which can also be chosen only because it's blue/epic and because it has good stats for hunters), loot everything that isn't nailed down and most that is, bad mouth everyone (or don't talk or do it so poorly no one understands them) and do shitty DPS, but still insist they're God's gift to WoW.

I've heard Hunter described as the most anti-social class in the game. You could probably say that they act that way because they are more concerned about keeping their pets happy. After all, the contents of my hunter's backpack pretty much consists of meat and bullets (dwarf with a bear). Even though I don't run on a roleplaying server, I try to go with a Teddy Roosevelt-esque flavor. Nature should be preserved so I have something to kill. Bully!

When I get around to playing him again, I plan on grinding Gnomeregan rep simply so I can get him a Mechanostrider and drive home the point that I'm going for a Safari-type Hunter as opposed to a Woodland Survivor-type Hunter (also, he doesn't have skinning. Why would he? He's a poacher).

dunno maybe it's just a racial thing but Sunleaf (my hunter) doesn't need that much food to keep her pet happy and I try to social when playing her (granted she needs a full 1600 ammo to be able to do anything).

Lord Revan wrote:dunno maybe it's just a racial thing but Sunleaf (my hunter) doesn't need that much food to keep her pet happy and I try to social when playing her (granted she needs a full 1600 ammo to be able to do anything).

I don't need all that food. I just ended up spamming cooking and rather than sell it I just slowly feed it to the pet. I could probably keep my bear happy for months with what's in my backpack.

I don't feed him the Blood Sausage, though. That's just creepy (contains bear meat).

But yeah, I also chew through ammo really fast as a Hunter. I ended up taking engineering just because being able to make my own bullets is really convenient.

White Haven wrote:Here is the requested paladin tank spec, or at least the one I use.

This is a great spec for a prot paladin - I question Pursuit of Justice at level 70 and am amazed you skipped Reckoning and One Handed Spec (which would greatly improve threat output) but can't really fault it.

Jaevric wrote:One of my more infuriating moments in Molten Core as my feral druid was when, on a boss fight, a particular rogue who consistently played "my DPS-peen is bigger than yours!" drew aggro on a boss fight (note to rogues: Feint is your friend, and you have no fucking excuse for pulling aggro from a decent prot-spec tank)

That may have been true back in the old days, but now Feint is fucking worthless. I'll hit if I'm threat capped because it's better than not attacking at all, but realistically I'll just Vanish and start from zero. If I hit the threat cap again before five minutes are up, I know the tank is in trouble.

About the only times that occurs to me these days are when we're doing Bloodboil or Supremus, where you have to stay below every tank on the boss (and tanks that aren't being hit generate less threat).

I basically never PUG anymore. It's just too aggravating. I'm in a really good guild with a bunch of my RL friends and some intelligent, friendly Americans and Australians, so I don't have any need.

Prot Paladin 101, for any that want to learn more about the spec: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t21425-paladin_protection/

White Haven wrote:
Here is the requested paladin tank spec, or at least the one I use.

This is a great spec for a prot paladin - I question Pursuit of Justice at level 70 and am amazed you skipped Reckoning and One Handed Spec (which would greatly improve threat output) but can't really fault it.

Honestly, in my days as a paladin, pursuit of justice is just one of those things that really bonds with you. 15% might not sound like alot, but in conjunction with Cleanse, Blessing of Freedom and Repentance, it makes you un-kiteable.

Reckoning you can skip for some shenanigans that I totally forgot, though I remember it being decent until 25 mans. The 1-hand specialization is a must, though. Reread it if you don't think it is, you do 5% more damage OVERALL when wielding a 1 hander, not just with the sword itself, so its great, scaleable threat.

Overall yeah thats a pretty damn decent spec, I personally don't use Argent Defender, but thats just me. That talent kinda comes down to personal preference.

Pursuit of Justice: Forget the runspeed, it's all about the spell damage mitigation. Nothing kills tanks faster than damage that penetrates armor, and PoJ adds 3% to your base resist chance.

Reckoning kills. When a mob parries an attack, its next attack is hasted. Two attacks in a single frame of animation mean two parry chances, and an even greater chance for exploding like a blood sausage when a boss that melees tanking plate for 8k hits again in half a second.

One Handed Spec: No argument there, I wish I had the whole thing still, rather than 2/5. It's amazing for threat, but I tweaked my spec around for enhanced survivability, and something had to give somewhere. Basically it's those 3 points of 1h spec, or Shield Spec, or PoJ for the reasons stated earlier.

White Haven wrote: Reckoning kills. When a mob parries an attack, its next attack is hasted. Two attacks in a single frame of animation mean two parry chances, and an even greater chance for exploding like a blood sausage when a boss that melees tanking plate for 8k hits again in half a second.

Thats not a real problem. The main problem with reckoning is that when you get well geared you'll find it procs less due to avoidance. The points can be spent elsewhere.