Domilias wrote about stunlocking in instances with a warrior tank, and Karthis doubled up by expanding the point to druid tanking.
To round up all tanking classes, Paladins to require to get hit in order to generate threat. In our case a sizeable chunk of our aggro stems from direct spell damage dealt by having our target hitting our Shield and our Aura.
As the notion of spell damage implies, our currency for aggro isn’t rage like our warrior and druid peers, it is mana, and due to itemization issues, our mana pool is pretty shallow. In practice your normal tankadin won’t have much mana to spare to deal direct spell damage to compensate aggro lost by a stunned mob not hitting our shield, our taunt is on a longer cooldown than either warrior or druid’s version, and we have little to no snap aggro tools at all.
Tankadins however have their Captain America shield which frontloads a sizeable chunk of aggro at the beginning of a fight and leaves some leeway to pull off some crazy stuff other tanks wouldn’t be able to support without a hunter’s misdirection.
Therefore, a few rules:
- Don’t stunlock completely, when you run out of energy and tricks, the mob will go for you and the tankadins may simply not have the resource (mana or cooldown-wise) to save your butt
- If you must stun at all, do staggered stuns on the current DPS target
- Contrary to druids and warriors, pallies will also hold the second target. And the third, possibly the fourth and, in non-heroics, could even hold two-three more. Focus on the primary target like the other DPS do, please.
- Remember that if you keep your stuns to a minimum, the threat ceiling especially at the beginning of the fight is a lot higher than with other tanks, use this to your advantage.
Yes, it’s probably more boring for a rogue when a pallie tanks. No room for stunlocking, and sap isn’t really needed either. Sorry about that. On the other hand, proper cooperation with a tankadin will make the run faster than ever, decrease your average repair bills, and if you’re missing roguelike action, don’t hesitate to pick pockets 
BTW, time to build up the Rogue links section. Doomilias’ A View from Behind definitely is a must read for all things stealthy and stabby.
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5 Responses to “Stunlocking and Tankadins”
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Its ok to Stun that Caster mob can’t block spells anyway.
Common DPS ‘mistake’ I am seeing when tanking on my pally is that right after the Avenger’s Shield pull, DPS picks a mob and opens up - immediately drawing their aggro and usually beyond the boundaries of my consecrate.
DPS needs to hold off - perhaps even wait until the second Seal gets dropped then they can play catch up to their heart’s delight!
Devotion Aura, Blessing of Sanctuary, Avenger’s Shield, Consecrate, Holy Shield, Seal of Light, Judgement, Seal of Light, [THEN DPS], Consecrate, Holy Shield…
Oh yes, that one’s another pet peeve of mine. Caused me more sweat than many other mistakes.
I personally find that with any decent group, I prefer the dps to go balls to the walls on the kill target (which will general be first hit by shield toss, and then JoR. After that initial threat I let them try pull agro and kill it roughly as they do - having stun / taunt ready. This is with max rank consec ticking on everything the whole up till at least most mobs are dead. Meanwhile I set up JoW and SoW on the next mob to get mana ready for the next pull immediately after the group is dead.
This tactic is particularly useful for chain pulling instances that you as a prot tank as slightly overgeared for, and works very well for farming heroics with a group taht doesnt run on much mana (think 2x fury warr + enh shammy etc).
Just to clarify - what I mean is after the intial few seconds I prefer if they use any stuns on the kill target, because i’ll generally have mostly stopped caring about it at that stage.