Main Tank

A prot paladin from my server recently transfered off to a new guild. A day later, he posted on our relam forum complaining that he wasn't the main tank in his new guild and that he was mainly tanking trash

As a paladin tank in Hyjal and Black Temple, I dealt with the whole 'not main tanking' issue a long time ago. It's something any paladin tank will have to figure out for themselves at some point or another. I came to the conclusion that add tanking is a lot more fun and challenging then main tanking for me.

What does a main tank do on most bosses? Mostly, they stand in one place going through threat cycles and just try and hold aggro while staying alive. If they're lucky, they get to kite the boss around some. Meanwhile, the add tank gets to run all over the place, pull adds off people, and generally interact with a lot more then the boss's ankles. The warriors can have that as far as I'm concerned. Sure, I may be capable of tanking most things in the game, but we try and play to our strengths. Simply put, what do you enjoy tanking more in ZA, the hatchery boss, or all of the hatchlings? If you said the boss, you just might have rolled the wrong tanking class.

Honestly, in a raid, all I want are to 1) have fun, 2) be useful/carry my own weight, and 3) clear all the content. I knew I would be useful in Hyjal on the trash, but found I'm good on the adds from a couple of bosses in there as well because I can pull them quickly at range with my exorcism. On Archimonde, I end up healing (and may end up sitting out some). While I don't normally like healing that much, Archimonde is a blast as a healer and you have the added bonus of getting air bursted once in a while.

I was a little more worried about Black Temple because I've heard it's a lot of one-tank fights and, being the newest tank in the guild, wasn't sure how much tanking I would be doing (boss or otherwise). I've found my versatility makes me valuable. Extra healing on Naj'entus comes in handy. I can take the hateful strikes from Supremus, and tank a full side of adds on Akama w/out CC. On Gorefiend, I spot heal and cleans the crap out of everyone letting the spec'd healers do the heavy healing (not to mention that the main tank never gets to play with the ghosts). I'm one of three tanks on Bloodboil where divine shield and blessing of protection are very useful. While we haven't tried RoS yet, we're good in phase 1 with our block value, and are supposed to excel in phase 3.

I have my place, I get to tank, and I'm good at what I do. It's true that in the high end game, warriors with high expertise will start out-threating paladins in most fights and they will take slightly less damage in similar gear. Overall, however, while it may not make a ton of difference which tank we use on most fights, if I'm better at tanking the adds then the boss, that's where I want to be. There are paladins who have main tanked most bosses in the game, so I know it's doable. My goal, however, isn't to main tank every boss, just to beat them all.

Tier 6

Vashj Down - Check
Keal'thas down - Check

Hyjal, here we come. Well, after we go back to Vashj and Kael to finish gearing those who we couldn't fit into the raid, but 25 of us are keyed and ready for Hyjal. We killed Keal late and only got one stab at the Hyjal trash. We lost control on wave 7 and Jaina Proudmore died before Winterchill showed up. We probably won't get another shot until Sunday, as we'll be keying others for fight over our next 2 raid nights.

Quick Update

Things are going well in Apples. I made full member status the other day, along with Hooray who also came over from Bloodmoon. We had a second Vashj kill and got 10 more vials (8 new people, the other 2 didn't have the quest the first time). We 2-shotted her the second time and it was pretty easy. It's nice to be in a guild where all the raiders care about and work towards progression, and are a friendly group on top of that.

We've had 9 pulls on Kael so far, 7 Sunday night and then the guild had 2 more on Tuesday after clearing TK and setting us up for the rest of the week. I missed the Tuesday night, but Sunday looked really good. We saw phase 4 on our 4th pull with only one adviser up, although we had a lot of dead already. My job the first night was mainly tanking the sword and dagger. I'm hopeful that we'll kill Keal soon.

I got my ZA shield last night and am playing with different gear sets. I had to start leaving all my healing gear in the bank except the S2 healing mace, healing shield and a libram just to have room for everything, especially all the consumables I'm now carrying.

We also did a quick Kara run. It was my first full run completed in under 3 hours, which was kind of cool, especially considering we had alts on the run.

Vashj Down

Title says it all. It took Apples 3 nights to learn and kill Vashj. On the third night, we killed her on the second attempt, with only one death and everyone up at the end of the fight. It was fairly impressive. Several hours later, Dark Favor killed Keal, so they are still ahead on the progression charts.

Here's a video of our Vashj kill.

Vashj-2008-01-13.avi

It mainly shows killing the elementals. I was off tank on the Nagas and ended up picking up Vashj towards the very end of the fight. The guild did an awesome job.

After Vashj, we went into The Eye and did everything but Keal.

It was my first Al'ar kill, which was kinda nice, and apparently the guilds second. It wasn't too smooth (we killed him on the 3rd attempt), but we got it done. I had some major mana issues on the first part, but that got solved when they had me tanking all the adds in phase 2 (we just killed the adds in phase 1). We just left the adds on me without killing them and had a druid picking them up new ones and me taunting them off. DPS stayed focused on Al'ar. They must have changed the fight slightly so that when Al'ar dies, the adds now despawn, which was nice. As a side note, when I tried tanking the adds with my back against a wall, every time one blew up, they would go into evasion mode and their health would reset. If it wasn't for that, we would have had him on the second attempt. I was blocking the adds for 708, so on blocked shots I was hit for about 250-550 and non blocked for around 1100. I'm surprised I had as many unblocked hits as I did with redoubt, and wonder if a few got behind me. I'll pay more attention in the next run. Regardless, the healers managed to keep me up, although I know it took at least 2 when a lot were on me.

My first run on Solorian was a joke, it was so easy. I'm not sure how many times Apples has killed him, but I know it was at least one or two. Void Reaver went smooth, of course. His biggest problem is still the trash in his room.

With luck, we'll be hitting Kael on Sunday night. We have 10-12 people that still need a Vashj kill, but if we can get her in the first 2 nights and a good start on TK, we'll be in good shape for a Kael attempt on Sunday.

One and a half months later

Wow, a month and a half since I last posted. A lot has changed since then, and a lot hasn't. No real raid progression for my guild, Bloodmoon Rising. We did get Eagle and Hex Lord in ZA, but we haven't actually been able to get more then 2 pulls on Zul'jin. That's been it for raiding. I don't think I've even seen the inside of a 25 man instance since my last post.

Last night, I finally left my guild and joined a new one, Apples. More on that later. Apples is a few bosses ahead of where we were, with Fathom Lord, Al'ar, Solaran, Doomwalker, Kazzak and Zul'jin all down. Nothing there I would consider huge advances over where were were, and honestly, all bosses we should have had down by now. Apples is the second most progressed guild on the server, only one boss behind the lead guild, who have Vashj down (but not the world bosses or Zul'jin). Apples raids 3 nights a week, the same as Bloodmoon. Wish me luck. I'm excited to get back into raiding.

Here's a post from Blutreich from the maintankadin forums showing what abilities are effected by spell hit and melee hit. Nice, useful info.

spell hit
judgments
exorcism
holy shield
1st tick of consecrate
blessing of sanctuary
damage shields
mana tap/arcane torrent if ur a BE

melee hit
judgment of command
hammer of wrath
hammer of justice
avengers shield
taunts
melee (allows more seal procs)
seal of blood

basically guaranteed*
judgment of blood
subsequent tics consecrate
seal of righteousness (javascript:void(0)
Publish Postif your melee swing hits)
judgment of light/wis
seal of light/wis (if your melee swing hits)

not sure
seal of vengeance

More Progression

Killed Bear, Eagle and Lynx in ZA. We were just too tired when we attempted eagle, but he should go down tonight.

More exciting is we killed Leotheras for our first time last night and I was the main tank. It wasn't pretty as we only had one person standing at the end of the fight, a druid at that. His battle rez was down and we had respawns behind us, so we ended up waiting 15 minutes until he could rez us. Fun times.

2200 more health

2200 more Health. That's what I'll have after the patch. About 1k comes from the talent change and the rest from the leggings and chest piece badge upgrades. Speaking of leggings, after all this time, I finally got the Wyrnn Dynesty leggings to drop for me Sunday night. Of course, 2 days later I'll get my badge leggings (along with the chest) so it doesn't matter too much. I'll keep them around for a dodge set but it was a big let down to get them so close to patch.