Secondary Aggro for Paladins

A lot of people, including me, have said paladins have problems with building second aggro on mobs. Check out this paladin keeping solid second aggro on Gruul.


Stats from the paladin in the video:
Base spell damage: 357
Gruul Flask: +23
Food buff: +23
Shaman Totem: +101
Superior Wisard Oil: +42
----------------------------
Total spell damage: 567

To get the kind of spell damage numbers show in the video while staying uncrushable, especially when only progressing up to Gruul, is rather difficult. Kara is easier because everything is undead, but Gruul's lair is a real hurdle for any paladin tank. On our first HKM/Gruul kills, I was in full heal mode. Now that I'm starting to get more tanking items from SSC and TK, I'm starting to see my threat really take off (it was already pretty good).

I've got a few items up-coming, including the paladin boots from SSC when I get my blacksmithing up, the merciless gladiators mace from the arena next week, a new pot for additional holy damage in the next patch, the threat enchant to gloves in the next patch, and just last night I got my head piece of Prince. The helm isn't as good as my goggles for mitigation, but it's a nice threat piece. It'll be scary.

Lore, from the maintankadin forums, had this to say on paladin off-tanking:
I see this a lot on these boards: "Paladins make very poor offtanks." It's just plain not true.

First, a definition of the term offtank, for the purposes of this thread: A tank whose job is to build secondary threat on a target, below the main tank but above other players, for the purposes of boss special abilities.

Alright, now to the meat. There are two "explanations" commonly given as to why Paladins supposedly generate poor secondary aggro: loss of Holy Shield, and OOM issues.

Myth: Paladin threat is severely nerfed when the Paladin is not the mob's primary target, as Holy Shield is a huge part of Paladin threat generation
Fact: Paladin threat gen is actually pretty spread out. On the average, "slow and heavy" boss encounter, Holy Shield, Consecrate, and Seal of Righteousness tend to be pretty even in total threat gen, with Judgement of Righteousness coming in just behind. So although it is a threat loss, it's not an enormous amount, and not nearly as much as the loss a Warrior tank feels without Revenge and reliable rage generation.

Myth: Paladins can't keep up offtank threat because they run out of mana.
Fact: Though possible, there are many methods a Paladin tank can use to keep a mana flow coming. Some of the more common tools are active use of mana potions, and being put in a group with a Shadow Priest. Our initial mana pool also lasts quite a while.

It's also important to note that by definition an offtank is going to take some sort of damage at some point (if they aren't, there's no need for an offtank), so our mana will be replenished a bit by that. The mana we get from healing goes a lot farther than the rage a Warrior or Druid tank gets from damage, as well. In fact, mana generally lasts a lot longer than rage by design in any situation.

Notes:
It's also a lot easier for a Paladin tank to ramp up threat generation. We have Avenging Wrath available to us, which is many times more effective than Misdirection for threat gen purposes. There are also a myriad of items that sacrifice tanking stats in favor of spell damage; this is the kind of thing that stuff is for. Warriors don't have that luxury - the best they can do is stack as much block value as possible for a minimal overall threat benefit, or put on some DPS gear at a much larger mitigation sacrifice.

Druids still win out in offtarget threat gen over Paladins. Much like Paladin gear, there is a lot of Druid tanking gear that sacrifices some tanking stats for threat (in their case, attack power). On top of that, there are no Druid threat abilities that require them to be in the MT position to use, so they have all their main tank abilities at their disposal. That doesn't make them the de facto best choice for an offtank, though. Every encounter is situational, and Druids function well in a flex role due to the dual nature of the Feral spec (that's a fancy way of saying "Feral Druid DPS > Prot Paladin Healing"). So if only two tanks are necessary (ie: Gruul), it's probably best to put the feral druid on DPS and have the Warrior MT and the Paladin OT.