This is just a brief 101 look at Paladin Tanking in order to cover the basics–speccing, glyphing, rotations, etc. This guide was last updated for Patch 4.2 and level 85.

How should I spec?

The base spec is 0/31/8 with two points left over to use as you see fit. I prefer Pursuit of Justice, personally.

How should I glyph?

For Primes I’d recommend Glyph of Seal of Truth, Glyph of Word of Glory, and then Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous or Shield of the Righteous (depending on if you’re doing more AOE or single-target threat).

For Majors, I like Ascetic Crusader, and the rest are situational depending on what fight you’re going up against. See list below.

Your choices overall are:

Prime

• Glyph of Crusader Strike — The fourth-best single target dps glyph, which means it just misses the cut. Only worth using once hard-capped for expertise, really.
• Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous — Great for your AOE spec, boosts the damage on an already powerful AOE spell.
• Glyph of Judgement — Our third best single target dps glyph. Great choice to round out your arsenal in a boss spec.
• Glyph of Seal of Truth — The absolute best single target dps glyph. This should be your first choice in all specs (hell, even AOE) until expertise hard-capped.
• Glyph of Shield of the Righteous — Awesome choice for single target specs. Not as good for an AOE spec, since you’ll be using Inquisition on trash past level 81.
• Glyph of Word of Glory — Great choice for a survivability spec.

Major

• Glyph of Consecration — Great glyph for AOE, a must have for a dedicated AOE spec.
• Glyph of Dazing Shield — Situational: good for pvp or for fights requiring slows (Lich King Valks, for example.)
• Glyph of Divine Protection — Situational: great for fights with heavy damage magical burst, like Sindragosa.
• Glyph of Focused Shield — A must have for single target-only specs.
• Glyph of Holy Wrath — Good choice for Cata content since almost everything is an elemental or dragonkin.
• Glyph of Lay on Hands — Was more useful when we could self-cast. Still better than other minor glyphs.
• Glyph of Salvation — Situational: can be useful for fights in the future requiring a tight tank swap.
• Glyph of Turn Evil — Useful for Heroic SFK. It’s fun to provide a CC, though watch out for extra pulls.
• Glyph of the Ascetic Crusader — Excellent choice for a single-target spec to save mana on a spell we’re hitting every three seconds.

Minor
Our minor glyphs still suck.

• Glyph of Truth — Saves mana on a spell we’ll be buffing ourselves with a lot.
• Glyph of Blessing of Kings — I cast this on people in heroics. Honestly, I could have only two minor glyph spots and I wouldn’t notice.
• Glyph of Blessing of Might — Ditto.

What seal(s) should I use?

Use Seal of Truth for everything.

Seal of Insight can be used for heroics or for progression content when threat doesn’t matter but you really need to take the edge off of your incoming damage, for the benefit of healers. Can provide a lot of self-healing over the course of a fight.

What aura should I use?

Devotion Aura for most raid situations. For heroics and raids you significantly outgear (and lack a Ret Pally), you can put up Retribution Aura for more AOE threat.

What blessing should I use?

Kings (or Mark of the Wild) is your first priority for the extra health and avoidance (and threat). Might is the second priority. Of course, with only two blessings, you’ll probably end up with both. If you have to choose, get Kings unless you overgear the situation.

If there’s a druid in group, they’re giving you Kings. You can do Might.

What’s my threat rotation?

For single target, the old 969 is dead, and in its place we have a priority system where every other button press is a Crusader Strike. ShoR when you have three Holy Power (or use Inquisition if there isn’t a Sacred Duty proc, that’ll give you a sliver more dps overall). Use your Grand Crusader/AS procs outside of Crusader Strikes to stack Holy Power faster. Judgement is important as well, and Consecration/HW can be used as a filler. Basically, something like:

3HP SHoR > CS > AS > Judgement > filler

As for Hammer of Wrath, with a 6 second cooldown and a huge amount of damage (can crit for at least 14k damage with no Vengeance), you probably want to fill the Judgement/filler slot with this spell.

It’s a threat loss to push back Crusader Strike/ShoR or to use Shield of the Righteous with anything other than 3 Holy Power.

Consecration with 2/2 Hallowed Ground is more damage over time than Holy Wrath, and can be substituted for HW if you have the mana.

For AOE, there’s no set rotation outside of the spaghetti strategy: throwing whatever AOE you have at the wall and see what sticks. Use Hammer of the Righteous, Consecration, Avenger’s Shield, Grand Crusader procs, and Holy Wrath with wild abandon. Definitely make sure to mash HotR every 3 seconds, as it accumulates Holy Power. Use your Holy Power on Inquisition.

I’m going oom, how do I fix that?

Judge more, consecrate less. Consecrate should not be used for single target except to replace HW once every 30 seconds, mana allowing.

Divine Plea is a valid option as well, if blowing the free 3HP isn’t going to negatively affect you.

How should I enchant my gear?

Head

• Arcanum of the Earthen Ring, from Earthen Ring revered.

Cloak

• Enchant Cloak – Protection
• Flexweave Underlay if engineer. (Stacks with the enchant.)

Shoulders

• Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz is the superior shoulder enchant from Therazane when exalted.
• Lesser Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz is the lesser shoulder enchant from Therazane when honored.
• Inscription of the Earth Prince is the best choice, if you’re a scribe.

Chest

• Enchant Chest – Greater Stamina

Waist

• Ebonsteel Belt Buckle is the baseline choice for everyone, regardless of professions.

Wrist

• Enchant Bracers – Dodge is probably the best overall survival enchant. There’s also Enchant Bracers – Major Stamina, but in terms of ROI dodge is probably better, especially with any avoidance that pushes you towards block capping being so powerful.
• Draconic Embossment – Stamina if you’re a leatherworker. This is the clear winner.
• Socket Bracer if you’re a blacksmith.

Hands

• Enchant Gloves – Mastery is the best choice for survivability. The Glove Reinforcements from TBC are nice too, but Mastery gives a much larger benefit than what the amount of armor brings to the table.
• Socket Gloves for blacksmiths.
• Quickflip Deflection Plates for engineers. Macro this (/use 10) to Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous so you just use it off cooldown for a rolling average of damage reduction of the course of a fight.

Legs

• Drakehide Leg Armor
• Drakehide Leg Reinforcements if you’re a leatherworker. Same as the other one, but cheaper to make.

Feet

• Enchant Boots – Mastery if you are specced into Pursuit of Justice.
• Enchant Boots – Lavawalker if not.

Weapon

• Enchant Weapon – Windwalk. Sidenote: the proc‘s speed increase currently stacks with Pursuit of Justice (or so I hear).

Shield

• Enchant Shield – Block is worth about .45% block, and with block capping is as desirable as it is, anything that gets us towards that goal is very, very welcome.
• The alternative is Enchant Shield – Protection when over the block cap.

How should I gem my gear?

Consult this flowchart.

Very straightforward: mastery/stam for blue, mastery for yellow, and parry/mastery for red. The dodge/stam gems are also yellow, but we’ll be getting more value out of mastery (until block capped), so stick with Puissants before Regals.

As for the meta, the Austere is a better choice earlier on when you don’t have much block chance. However, as you stack more mastery and approach the blockcap, you want to swap to the Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond.

Jewelcrafters want to use the mastery version of their exclusive gems, Fractured Chimera’s Eyes, in yellow sockets.

Lastly, for Engineers, you want to use a Fractured Cogwheel and then either the Subtle or Flashing Cogwheel–whichever avoidance stat is lower–to ward off diminishing returns as long as possible.

How should I reforge my gear?

Reforge the highest secondary stat on any of your pieces to Mastery. Hit, expertise, dodge, or parry, whatever. If the piece already has Mastery, you can avoid reforging. Yes, Mastery is that good. We want to get block chance as high as we can.

How much defense do I need to tank?

Zero! Unlike the before 4.0, defense no longer exists. Our uncritability comes from maxing out the Sanctuary talent now.

How much hit/expertise do I need?

Well, the caps for the two are 961 hit rating (or 8%), along with 26 expertise skill (not rating, skill) the soft cap where your attacks can’t be dodged anymore, and 56 expertise skill where your attacks can’t be parried anymore.

At the moment you don’t need much of either, thanks to Vengeance. However, it’s probably wise to run with whatever hit and expertise your gear gives you but not to gem or reforge for it.

Taunts cannot miss on raid bosses anymore, so don’t concern yourself with hit for that purpose. Likewise, we get free 8% spell hit from our Touched by the Light passive.

What consumables should I use?

Flasks

For survivability, go with Flask of Steelskin. The only choice for tanking.

For threat, or farm content, you can chug a Flask of Titanic Strength.

Elixirs

We have a few good options for guardian elixirs:

• Elixir of Deep Earth — A good, all-around elixir for most fights if you decide to forgo flasks
• Prismatic Elixir — Amazing for Sindragosa-style fights with a large portion of incoming damage being magical

As for battle, we have:

• Elixir of the Master — Best choice for survivability
• Elixir of the Naga — Best choice for threat
• Elixir of Impossible Accuracy — Best choice for threat if you’re expertise soft-capped

Potions

One choice is the Earthen Potion. However, for an avoidance and threat boost, you can chug a Golemblood Potion. Golemblood is probably the better choice, overall.

Food

(Please note I’m only listing the 90-stat food. Don’t cheap out for the 60-stat kind!)

For survival food, you have a few good options:

• Blackbelly Sushi
• Lavascale Minestrone
• Mushroom Sauce Mudfish

Generally, you want to eat the Lavascale Minestrone for the mastery rating. If block capped (and that’ll not be for a while), then go for either Blackbelly Sushi or Mushroom Sauce Mudfish, depending on whichever avoidance stat is lower.

As for threat food, the standard priority order persists: expertise to soft-cap > hit to cap > expertise to hard-cap > strength. So, go with Crocolisk Au Gratin until you reach 26 expertise, then Grilled Dragon until hit capped, and then back to Crocolisk, and then (if by some miracle you are hit and expertise capped) you can have the Beer-Basted Crocolisk.

• Beer-Basted Crocolisk
• Crocolisk Au Gratin
• Grilled Dragon

Lastly, if you want to be cheap (or are working on farm content) you can go with the latest version of the fish feast:

• Seafood Magnifique Feast

But don’t use this for progression content!

What professions are best for tanking?

Coming soon.

Any helpful macros that can make my job easier?

Coming soon.