1.0 - Introduction
2.0 - Protection Talents
3.0 - Tankadin Abilities
4.0 - PvE Gear

This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out this guide here.

1.0 - The Protection Paladin

Protection paladin's represent the advent of variety in all manner of positions that started with burning crusade and was only more recently fleshed out to truly encompass the multitude of specialized builds throughout each talent tree.

Paladin's gained the massive increase of becoming viable tanks, a far cry from our previous status as dedicated heal-bots for the entire end-game. Heck, even retribution became viable, and that's a very large change from Pre-BC.

2.0 - Talent Builds

0/49/12 Raid Tanking Build

2.1 - Threat Rotation

Opener:

Seal of Righteousness - Avenger's Shield - Judgement - Consecrate - Holy Shield

Steady Threat:

Refresh Seal of Righteousness(Judge at one second remaining) - Maintain Holy Shield - Consecrate Rank 1 for mana intensive fights, otherwise rank 6 - Judge Crusader for longer fights if you're the sole paladin or Wisdom if you need mana

2.2 - Leveling Protection Build

11/50/0

10 - 14 Redoubt
15 - 17 Precision
18 - 19 Toughness (2/5)
20 - Blessing of Kings
21 - 23 Shield Specialization
24 - 26 Toughness (5/5)
27 - 29 Improved Righteous Fury
30 - 34 Reckoning
35 - Blessing of Sanctuary
36 - 39 One-handed Weapon Specialization (4/5)
40 - Holy Shield
41 - 42 Sacred Duty
43 - One-handed Weapon Specialization (5/5)
44 - Improved Holy Shield (1/2)
45 - 49 Combat Expertise
50 - Avenger's Shield

3.0 Tankadin Abilities

A large part of what creates the paladin’s overall tanking capabilities is the sheer number of abilities in his arsenal, at any given time you can have holy shield going, mana returning via Spiritual Attunement/Heals, and be busting out a judgement on one of the targets.
With that in mind let’s cover the core abilities of a paladin tank:

Spiritual Attunement

This is an inherent/passive ability giving 8% of all healing received in the form of mana, this being a large part of how paladin tanks are capable of sustaining their mana pool for the extended duration required to defeat a boss.

Avenging Wrath

Avenging wrath is an awesome 3 minute cooldowns spell that increases all damage dealt by 30% for 20 seconds, this is great for massively boosting your starting threat levels from Holy Shield, Consecrate, Blessing of Sanctuary, etc.

Righteous Defense

Righteous defense is a slightly tweaked taunt ability, if acts on the same mechanics of bringing your threat to the exact level of the currently aggroed player, however this is useable from a range, allowing you to hold position and force the loose monsters to return to you as opposed to chasing them down.

Consecration

Consecration is one of our primary threat sources when dealing with mob packs, throw it down and watch the threat build as it ticks away, the only problem is that it’s something of a high mana cost spell – Fortunately it benefits enough to +spell damage to even this factor out.

Cleanse

Nothing better than a tank who can cleanse himself, it removes a lot of the hassle when healers are busy… healing, and you’re left to deal with the debuffs yourself.

Seals

Seals present yet another method of build threat, restoring mana, health, and numerous other effects that can all directly benefit both you, the tank, and the rest of the party as well – This enhances our utility dramatically.

Seal/Judgement of Righteousness

This seal comes in handy as a standard threat builder, if you’re looking for some quick aggro judge it everytime the cooldown’s up and this combined with the other abilities should guarantee you hold the mob.  In more relaxed circumstances, judge when the seal has 1 second left to save mana.

Judgement of Justice

In this case the seal of justice is quite frankly much too worthless to talk about, instead it’s the judgement, as massive wipe-preventer in-fact.  What this does is completely remove the mob’s fleeing feature, meaning that as long as it lasts the target will never run from combat thus preventing them from pulling additional mobs and wiping the group

On that note, this will be far more useful in random pick-up groups as opposed to organized guild teams.

Seal/Judgement of Light

This is probably the biggest example of group utility a paladin brings unless you happen to be mana-heavy DPSer’s whereupon wisdom might prevail.  Either way, this provides steady health to you as a seal and a large amount of overall healing to the entire team/raid when judged.

One tip is to combine this by judging light on a given boss/mob to give Melee the added health regeneration while you personally use wisdom to gain a combined amount of health and mana.

Seal/Judgement of Wisdom

Much like light in that is can provide returns for either just you or the entire raid/team, either way it’s very useful for a mana-intensive tank like our class, use it early and often to prevent ever running out of mana at crucial moments.

Blessings

Blessings are another 1/4 of our utility, allowing us to yet again boost the entire party/raid while individually making it easier to tank for ourselves with either mana regeneration (Blessing of Wisdom) or reducing DPSer’s threat (Salvation.)

Blessing of Protection

This one’s a lifesaver in fights that go right to the edge, it allows you to temporarily save any crucial member of the party, generally a healer, and give yourself time to pull aggro while the protected player is still able to heal from within the ‘bubble.’

Blessing of Salvation

A straight up 30% reduction in the threat generated by a player, highly useful for all DPS but even more so melee such as Fury Warriors who are otherwise incapable of dropping threat, allowing them to go full-out for a longer period of time.

Blessing of Freedom

A simple reason for using this one, it destroys anything stopping you from picking up mobs running rampant through the group, a major deficiency of the warrior tank without a proper trinket/root breaker.

Auras

This is the last piece of the puzzle concerning our viability as tanks, less important than the above abilities but still another buff on top of an already immense spell library.

Retribution Aura

This one dramatically improves AoE threat generation and damage, the great thing about it being that so long as the mobs beat on you and you alone you’re gaining free threat constantly, somewhat like a secondary passive consecration effect.

Devotion Aura

Fairly weak, especially at the higher end tanking situations, but it can’t hurt to have slightly more armor in some fights and difficult situations.

Resistance Auras

These bring amazing amounts of improve damage reduction when fighting elemental-damage heavy bosses that appear throughout the raid dungeons.  Sometimes these fights happen frequently, sometimes not much at all, but it’s almost like carrying around a few pieces of +resist gear for the entire team just without the lost inventory space.

4.0 - Number Crunching

Defense Rating – 2.4 = 1 Defense - +0.04% Chance to be Missed
Dodge – 18.9 = 1% Increase
Parry – 22.4 = 1%
Block – 7.9 = 1%
Resilience – 39.4 = 1%

Hit – 15.8 = 1%
Critical – 23.6 = 1%
Haste – 10.5 = 1%
Weapon Expertise – 3.9 = 1% lower chance for enemy to dodge/parry

Defense – 1 Point = +0.04% Parry, Dodge, block, Miss Chance, -Critical Chance

4.1 - The Combat Table/Becoming Uncrushable

Miss:
Dodge:
Parry:
Block:
Critical:
Crushing Blow
Normal Hit:

What this table does is outline the possible resutls of an attempted attack upon a player, namely us - the tank. Now, look at the second chart to get a better understanding of the attack table.

Miss: 0.1 - 5.00 (5%)
Dodge: 5.01 - 20.00 (15%)
Parry: 20.01 - 38.25 (18.25%)
Block: 38.26 - 70.25 (31.99%)
Critical: 70.26 - 80.26 (10%)
Crushing Blow: 80.27 - 90.27 (10%)
Hit: 90.28 - 100 (9.72%)

Obviously this attack table is merely an example, nevertheless it properly illustrates the RNG(Random Number Generator) method of determining attacks sucess, failure, and resulting damage if succesful.

The way that we become uncrushable, a necessary trait for beginning the job of tank in any raid dungeon such as the beginner's Karazhan, is to literally shove crushing blows off the table, removing them from the equation entirely.

How is this done you ask? well let's take a look at one final chart:

Miss: 0.01 - 10.00 (10%)
Dodge: 10.01 - 20.00 (10%)
Parry: 20.01 - 30.00 (10%)
Block: 30.01 - 100.00 (70%)
Critical: 0%
Crushing Blow: 0%
Normal Hit: 0%

How does this work exactly? Well look at the table, by massively increasing the chance to block we successively fill the attack table, forcing the values of critical, crushing blows, and even normal hits off the chart.

However, to truly factor this against level 73 Bosses, as all raid bosses are 3 levels higher than the maximum player level, we'll have to factor for reduced chance of block/parry/dodge against higher levels. An decrease of 2.4% total.

Thusly, to achieve absolute un-crushable nor crittable status we'll require a total of 102.4% mitigation when combining the values of Miss, Dodge, Block, and Parry.

However, to truly factor this with a tanking paladin, holy shield makes up about a 30% block rate increase, boosted by a specific item The Libram of Repenetance it adds up to around 35%.

So, pop holy shield while attempting to determine you're current status of uncrushable or not, as it'll always be active during boss fights due to the amount of charges being undepletable within the spells refresh duration.

4.2 - Gems

Green:

Thick Golden Draenite
Solid Azure Moonstone

Blue:

Solid Star of Elune
Enduring Talasite
Thick Dawnstone

4.3 Enchantments

Head: Glyph of the Defender
Shoulders: Aldor/Scryer Inscription
Back: Dodge
Chest: Exceptional Health
Wrist: Fortitude
Hands: Superior Agility
Legs: Clefthide Leg Armor OR Nethercleft Leg Armor
Feet: Fortitude OR Boar's Speed
Weapon: Major Spellpower
Shield: Major Stamina

4.4 - Consumables

Superior Healing Potion
Elixir of Mastery
Elixir of Major Fortitude
Elixir of Major Agility
Flask of Fortification

Food:

Spicy Hot Talbuk - +20 Hit Rating & Spirit
Warp Burger - +20 Agility & Spirit

4.5 - PvE Gear Guide

Note: As this is a PvE gear guide I'll only list the PvP rewards capable of being obtained via Honor, arena rewards are however viable alternatives to many pieces of gear.

Head:

[Tankatronic Goggles] - Crafted
[Faceguard of Determination] - (50) Badges of Justice
[Helm of the Stalwart Defender] - Crafted
[Felsteel Helm] - Crafted

Neck:

[Mark of the Ravenguard] - Quest Reward
[Strength of the Untamed] - Reputation Reward(Cenarion Circle Revered)
[Steam-hinge Chain of Valor] - Steamvault

Shoulders:

[Fanblade Pauldrons] - Heroic Auchenai Crypts
[Spaulders of the Righteous] - Botanica
[Kaylaan's Spaulders] - Quest Reward

Back:

[Devilshark Cape] - Steamvault
[Cloak of Eternity] - Crafted
[Burnoose of Shifting Ages] - Black Morass

Chest:

[Vindicator's Hauberk] - Reputation Reward
[Jade-Skull Breastplate] - Mechanar
[Breastplate of the Righteous] - Steamvault

Wrist:

[Bracers of the Green Fortress] - Crafted
[Vambraces of Daring] - Heroic Hellfire Ramparts
[Sha'tari Wrought Armguards] - Quest Reward

Hands:

[Felsteel Gloves] - Crafted
[Gauntlets of the Bold] - Steamvault
[Gauntlets of the Righteous] - Shattered Halls
[Thatia's Self-Correcting Gauntlets] - Arcatraz

Belt:

[Belt of the Guardian] - Crafted
[Girdle of Valorous Deeds] - Heroic Black Morass
[Girdle of the Immovable] - Heroic Slave Pens
[Sha'tari Vindicator's Waistguard] - Quest Reward

Legs:

[Timewarden's Leggings] - Reputation Reward
[Legguards of the Resolute Defender] - Quest Reward
[Legplates of the Righteous] - Black Morass

Boots:

[Flesh Beast's Metal Greaves] - Quest Reward
[Golden Cenarion Greaves] - Quest Reward
[Boots of the Righteous Path] - Heroic Shattered Halls
[Bloodguard's Greaves] - Quest Reward
[Boots of the Protector] - Crafted
[Red Havoc Boots] - Crafted

Rings:

[Protector's Mark of the Redemption] - Quest Reward
[Wind Trader's Band] - Quest Reward
[Iron Band of the Unbreakable] - Old Hillsbrad

Trinkets:

[Figurine of the Colossus] - Shattered Halls
[Dabiri's Enigma] - Quest Reward
[Darkmoon Card: Vengeance] - Darkmoon Faire Deck
[Argussian Compass] - Heroic Underbog
[Adamantine Figurine] - Shadow Laybrinth
[Regal Protectorate] - Quest Reward

Main-Hand:

[Continuum Blade] - Reputation Reward
[Gavel of Unearthed Secrets] - Reputation Reward
[Greatsword of Horrid Dreams] - Shadow Laybrinth

Shield:

[Crest of the Sha'tar] - Reputation Reward
[Silvermoon Crest Shield] - Shadow Laybrinth
[Netherwing Defender's Shield] - Quest Reward

Libram:

[Libram of Repenetance] - (15) Badges of Justice
[Libram of the Eternal Rest] - Sethekk Halls
[Libram of Saints Departed] - Normal Blood Furnace