A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to try my hand at tanking.
Low level Pally tanking to be exact.
So I rolled myself a baby Pally and threw her some heirlooms.
Thus began my adventures in tanking my way to 80.
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So far the biggest thing I can say for it is the difference in the players from level 80 heroic groups boils down to this.
Heroic pug = “OMFG GOGOGOGO!!11!!! NEED MOAR BADGES FASTER!!!!1!!”
Low level pug = “OMFG That was FUN! Want to stay grouped and run another?”
Now it might just be my well documented horrid luck with pug heroics, but I am having an absolute blast running the low level stuff.
Five instances so far and not a single problem. All the folks I have run with have been decent and polite. Truly a joy to run with. So much so that Dechion the patient has not run a single out of guild heroic since the day I rolled my little Pally.
The most fun though had to have been a Stockades run from a few days ago. I zone in and look at my party frames to see what buffs to put up and what do my wondering eyes behold?
Paladins.
One Holy, one Prot, and three Ret.
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Much joking ensued as we buffed up. One of the others passed out vent info as we were getting ready to roll .
By roll, I mean steamroll.
We were pulling two rooms plus the pats in the hallway on purpose just to see how far we could take it.
The chatter on vent was a welcome change from the “silent pug” that I usually see in heroics. Much laughter and joking about was had. In short I had a blast.
We went on to run two back to back stockades runs, I think all of us leveled during one or the other. Not a wipe was had, in fact not a single death.
The only thing bad I have to say about the whole experience is I cannot add cross server folks to a friends list.
Based on my luck with most pugs thats saying something.
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Dechion's Place 
Nice article. I’ve always wondered how smooth 5-mans would be if loaded with pallies.
Hope all is well.
It was almost like cheating. The only time it got really interesting is when we tried three rooms plus a hallway at one time.
That one ended up with one of the Ret Pallys helping out on heals and me burning my lay on hands, but we still pulled it off.
I must agree, i recently leveled my pally to 80 but from about lvl 15 upwards I was always being asked to tank. So I did and yes running these lower levels is fun, the way the game should be. As for tanking, use that word losely as from my experience at the lower levels, everyone just pulls everything and tanking ins’t really used…its just a huge nuke fest 😉
Who needs the pressure of fast runs, must have gear when u can have gr8 fun doing this…!
A nuke fest it is, but so far I have managed to keep everything pounding on me for the most part.
As far as the fun goes, I am having a blast. 🙂
Wow, a group of five pallies in Strath? The Baron should have just handed over his reins and his loots and left.
It’s bad enough for a single Paladin to walk through there and own the whole dungeon, but five almost seems like it would be cheating. So much so that I can’t wait to give it a shot myself. 😉
I never thought of trying that in Strat….. Gimmee a few more levels and I’ll be giving that a shot.
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i have to say im getting the opposite effect with the lfd tool… most of my heroics have been either silent or fun runs… while my low lvl runs with my baby druids have been full of dbags that i stop tanking instance even tho im spec for bear…
*Jealous*. Most of my low level pug runs, while ok, have been more like “go go go go, need moar levels!!!1!!!1!”
When I’m tanking, at least I can attempt to control the chaos – pally’s are so OP :). On my shadow priest that I’m leveling simultaneously on horde side, I find myself off-healing because the tank can’t hold aggro off the healer, and then sitting down to drink while the tank runs off to pick up the next group.
It’s still fun though, especially with easy, short instances like SM. It’s nice to see “new” content, even if it is actually extremely old.
I wish we’d had that sort of luck in our low-level PuGs! The only one that sticks out in my mind was RFC with a hunter named “Arrowgance” who lived up to his name. We had a warrior tank, and the guy was arcane shotting right and left before the warrior could even get close enough to hit anything. He and the warrior died on a bad pull, and he called out the warrior for it. I got him right back, saying that maybe if he wasn’t dpsing before the warrior could even hit stuff, it wouldn’t have happened.
His response? A link of Recount and “why don’t you dps?” I was playing my mage, who was specced fire. In Rage FIRE Chasm. Then he laid into my hubby and called him a “fail rogue”. I’ve never seen a vote-kick pass so fast. Blech.
So, this leads right into a dilemma I have been thinking about for a little while. I would really like to learn to tank. I would probably like to learn on a paladin but am not stuck to the notion. I have an 80 paladin that I have spec’d for ret and some healing… “however” I honestly feel that in order to be the best possible tank and absolutely know the motions/rotations and have a good sense for tanking… I should start from level 1. So… 1) Do I re-spec my 2nd spec on my 80 pally as prot? 2) Create another pally…. sorry had to put it as an option? or 3) Re-visit that level 20 warrior alt I’ve had ‘parked’ in Orgrimmar for about a year?
Haha… thanks for any advice/experiences.
Ken
Well, given the choices I would just respec and try it out in a few normal instances. That way if you don’t like it you did not put in the time leveling.
I actually tried all four tanking classes at the low to mid twenties at least before deciding on the Pally (and a Druid come Cataclysm)
Yeah, I agree that respeccing your pally is probably the most efficient choice – if you don’t like it you can just respec back. Grab a friendly healer to come along with you into some normal instances (they can help save you if it takes you a bit to figure out the rotation and how to keep aggro).
The interesting thing about leveling as a tank is that your rotation will change a lot as you get new abilities. I’m not sure if that is better, or worse.
It makes you question just how well 5 man groups of single classes could really pull things off. Some thoughts come right to mind for Priests and Rogues to struggle a bit, where just about every other class could probably pull it off strictly from overload of dps, utilizing the various hybrid specs, or having a solid enough combination of heals and dps to outlast any encounter.
Priests could probably handle it after they got a bit higher in level and could do some decent dps other than wands, though actually with infinite bubbles and heals they could just as easily do it at 15 using only their wands even if it did take a while to kill things.
I think the Rogues would still struggle at least until Vanish became available.
Back to QuintuPally in Strath though, with Holy Wrath’s galore, Glyph of Sense Undead, and Consecrates to spare, that place would be blown into holy oblivion.
I also did the same thing and rolled a baby paladin who’s been prot and leveling almost exclusively with the dungeon finder since 20 (she’s 42 now). I’ve had (mostly) a great time, and had a couple groups I even stayed on with for about 4 instance runs. You’ll get the odd rogue-who-insists-he-can-tank-better-than-you, or the hunter-who-wants-to-pull-mobs-for-you, but mostly, it’s good fun all around.
Oh, and I had the all-paladin experience too, except it was Gnomer for me!
I’ve become so used to leveling alts through the old world ignoring dungeons except the occasional “guildie run through”, it’s almost like playing a whole new game. Even ran Mara for the very first time!
I agree completely. This LFG dungeon finder has got me hooked all over again. I’m currently working with 2 different dks and a 22 hunter just doing a dungeon or two with each and rotating toons. Also have a lvl 10 baby Druid who I can’t wait to get to 15 to start doing some “tanking”, maybe. All this focus on alts have led to me all but abandoning my main 80 warrior sitting in Dal. Engame content isn’t all that interesting suddenly. Or maybe the whole game is so much more interesting that the endgame stuff just seems less important. At any rate, it made me enjoy the game more overall and that can’t be a bad thing.