Mandorall, my woefully under-equipped Paladin, tried tanking Stratholme a few weeks back, for the benefit of my friend Kithany, a 61 Paladin who wants her epic mount. There were 3 of us:
- Kithany, Level 61 Paladin
- Hamstav, Level 70 Rogue
- Mandorall, Level 70 Paladin
Now, the “Plan” was simple. I would Tank, Kithany would heal, and Hamstav would kill everything with his crazy Rogue DPS. It was a good plan. A simple plan. A straightforward plan. And we wiped twice in 10 minutes.
Mandorall, as the Official Tank of this particular endeavour, was singularly ill-equipped to deal even with the trash mobs, being a Retribution Paladin.
Needless to say, he was quite embarrassed. He IS level 70, after all! So he spent maybe 25g re-speccing to Protection, following the Talent build provided by WoWWiki. 49 Points in Protection, 12 Points in Retribution, mostly to get the Improved Judgement, which is totally worth it. (like, totally, dude)
Then came the challenge of finding decent gear. For that purpose, I called on Morevan, my Epic-wearing Warrior-Tank Extraordinaire friend, for his recommendations. Mandorall doesn’t really raid, so Epic drops are out of the question. He recommended:
I managed to acquire the set for about 210g, total. Mandorall is a lazy Blacksmith and he can’t make it himself. I spend another 10g for some gems for the sockets, and voila! I was ready to try out my new tanking abilities.
It was a dark, stormy and undead-filled night when Kithany, Hamstav & Mandorall returned to Stratholme. Despite one early wipe - we went in the back door, bad idea - it was one of the easiest instance runs I’d ever done. Keeping aggro was not a problem, and taking out groups of 10 or more mobs, including Elites, was child’s play.
Even after Kithany had gathered all her Stratholme Holy Water, we stayed around killing more mobs because it was just so easy.
Mandorall has finally discovered how gear really DOES make a difference, and through it, has been introduced to the Joys of Tanking. Incidently, he also discovered how everyone snickers behind the backs of Retribution Paladins, as they are so useless.
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Hamstav // Mar 9, 2008 at 1:56 pm
It’s all true! I was there! Now I hope we can do Dire Maul and Scholomance as easily. I upgraded my enchants… i now have Mongoose and Exceptional stats and I will have +12 agi on boots if i can find and Enchanter do to it.
2 Grimmy // Mar 13, 2008 at 10:31 am
I don’t think it was the gear that made the difference… Being correctly specd, as a paladin, is very important.. 3 pieces of gear don’t make a lot of difference.
3 Renei // Mar 13, 2008 at 10:58 am
I did notice my defense rating went WAY up, although you are most certainly right concerning the talent build.