What Happened to Paladin Tanks?

Throughout Firelands, I never felt like I had a problem as a Paladin tank, I could handle every single encounter, even heroics, just okay, I didn't feel like I was holding the raid back. Dragon Soul on normal mode was also the same, in that I thought we were just fine and I solo-tanked almost every boss in here except for Ultraxion and Warmaster. We might have been a bit overpowered in Tier 11 (remember all the add-tanking fights where we basically put up Holy Shield and giggled? Paladins were gods on Nefarian, arguably the toughest normal-mode boss in T11 which was full of tough, tough fights.)

So, going into Dragon Soul heroics I felt confident of my ability to continue to lead the tank-team as my co-tank puts out amazing 40k+ DPS in her beloved Frost spec anyway, we were both happy. Then we ran into two nights of wipes with Heroic Yor'sahj.

World of Glory just wan't enough to keep things going during Purple phase and if I ran out of cool-downs, I was dead. Lay on Hands was an uber-powerful tool but I really only got to use it once during the entire fight. After trying many, many, many strategies, we swapped me out for the DK. He died in 4 pulls.

I shrugged it off, I didn't think it was going to be indicative of a long-term problem, and my ego is strong enough to handle the fact that I don't get to tank EVERY fight in the entire expansion, that's okay. So we get to Heroic Hagara and every time she puts up Focused Assault, I get gibbed unless I'm hitting so many cooldowns that I have nothing left to go for the second cast of Focused Assault.

After the fourth or fifth time I was gibbed right out of the gate, I frowned and looked through my combat log looking at the damage done, whether I had Holy Shield up or not and... it didn't seem to be making a difference. I check my block-macro and it shows me a big, happy 102.7% coverage number which is 0.3% over where I need to be. Curiously, I do a couple of searches for Holy Shield and Hagara and, sure enough, Focused Assault is unblockable.

From the description of the Mastery, the Protection Paladin class is build around being able to soak through some of the incoming damage on their shields. There is a reason block-capping was not removed and Mastery was not nerfed throughout the expansion - because it became an easy metric to balance encounters around shield-tanks. Ferals had their physical damage shields and DKs had Death Strike.

The model worked - tanks were generally balanced enough that using shield-tanks didn't stone-wall raid groups. Until we get into a fight where the primary point of execution for a tank is to survive a narrow band of burst damage... using tools that are ineffective against the source of damage.

Now, there are ways around it, but none of them are pleasant or reliable.

• Kiting is unreliable at best, and risky given the stacks built from Shards.
• Bubble/Taunt is a weak, weak solution prone to its own problems
• Taunt/juggle only works if you have a Paladin healer

So, rather than try all of that, we had our Boomkin go Feral just to see how it handles, and he is gear a little bit better than Firelands - 380something while I am at iLevel 397 in my tanking set. The healers never lost him to a Focused Assault.

It was jaw-dropping to see the difference in damage intake - and depressing.

Am I going to be able to tank Heroic Zon'ozz or do we have to let the DK handle it as well due to the amount of Magic AoE damage in phase 2? That would be three fights that I'm useless for as a tank, and if I didn't keep a set of DPS gear and play the spec at a reasonable level of competence, I would have to be benched because my class cannot do these fights, or at least not without making things unnecessarily difficult.

It isn't all doom and gloom - this week, our DK was missing and I was able to tank Heroic Yor'sahj with very, very twitchy fingers over my cool-downs and I was in constant communication with the healers. It felt more difficult than it needed to be, but I'm not concerned with that - I will always, always take the most difficult job whenever I can. What botherse me when I feel like I'm holding up the progression and making life hell for the healers by insisting I tank through mechanics that are not ideal for me. This is the second boss Paladins should be benched from tanking in Dragon Soul.

For the first time in this expansion, I'm feeling weak as a tank-class. And it feels like crap.

Now what?

The nerf lists finally made an appearance today and man, they're taking the entire tier out at the knees. It's tremendously disappointing to me that we didn't clear Ragnaros, though things weren't helped by all the other crap that hit us in the meantime.

We lost our third healer two weeks ago and haven't had a third healer in that time other than our top DPS respecing to fill the slot really, really, really set us back. The last two weeks let us barely squeak past Domo on the second night let alone get 6-kill nights like I was expecting to after we cleared through Domo the first time and realized how simple things should be getting. Our third healer situation got so bad we wound up 2-healing Alysrazor just to make it go faster and it actually worked out just fine.

Though starting tonight I imagine it really won't be necessary to three-heal anything but maybe Baleroc, Beth'tilac and Domo. Or maybe we'll just do everything with three so that the night has that much allowance for mistakes...

I'll be frank, this has really taken the wind out of my sails. Even two weeks ago, I was dedicated to achievements, kills and getting a few hard-modes down before 4.3 but now it all feels worthless and pointless and I'm spending less and less time logging in or playing other games instead.

It's not even a hardcore/casuals thing honestly, it's a disappointment in myself and not achieving the goal I set out for myself a few weeks ago. A lot of my guildies seem to see this as me being upset with them, or with their performance, or me being critical of them, or of our server ranking, or whatever else, but it has nothing to do with any of that.

I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to achieve what I wanted to in the game, and now I'm looking at months of farming nerfed content with Heroic Ragnaros being the exception, and he's the other end of the pendulum in terms of difficulty - the Heroic Lich King of this tier that guilds will throw themselves at for months just to squeeze out that one kill.

A lot will depend on the raid tonight - if it feels like T11 and is just a faceroll as I'm expecting, then we'd better at least get Rag down, so I can, with my tail between my legs, go into Heroics next week and never look back.


But right now, I don't know. I don't know. Raiding is why I play this game. If I don't enjoy the one raid left to me, why am I logging in?

4.2 Nerf and the bitter taste of failure

When the nerf hits next week, it will be the first time in a long time that we will have missed the end-boss of a raid pre-nerf. And it's killing me.

I've always taken pride in killing bosses in their normal incarnation and we've only had a little bit of time on Ragnaros this time around, we had a slow, slow start, it took a while for a raid-team to fall into place, and we're dancing around a million issues with the roster but I was confident we would get through it.

And then this news comes along and it's just crushing my motivation. Unless I push for an extension this week and just spend two nights straight on Rag with maybe a third night added for progression, I think we're going to miss killing this guy pre-nerf.

My pride is tied up into it, and I won't deny it, but that doesn't make the experience any less frustrating. We've always raided on the lower end of serious progression, but I've never let that check my ambition. When I play the game, I want to play it with some level of competitive end in mind - not competing against other people, but against our own expectations of what we can achieve.

A lot of folks in my own guild seem less disturbed by this than I am, and I guess that's good - I'm sure I'll get over it myself, but right now, it smacks of failure.

Holy Shield in 4.2

I'm a patient man, I think. I don't panic when patch notes drop, I don't freak out about nerfs, I don't chew my nails thinking about how Ghostcrawler is going to nerf my class to the ground. Generally, I am of the opinion that the developers will keep the various classes competitive, roughly equivalent and productive to be able to accomplish what we want in game.

That said. Man, am I getting tired of being jerked around just because I play a Paladin.

UPDATE: Changed my mind. Love the change. Sorry.