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.