Tanking fun with Seals!

Over at Ardent Defender today there is a post about tanking, and the use of seals.

RAMBLING NOTES FOR YOU MY DEAR READERS: It’s come to my attention that though I raid holy in our guild 25s as my mainspec, I am also considered our 4th or 5th tank as far as pecking order goes. We have 3 that show up regularly (one being the GM) and they all out gear my tank set, but after that I may be the 4th best geared tank and in one of their absences I end up slapping on the sword and board to help lead the charge against bosses. Aside from this even, for the 10man group I put together a few months ago of good friends (who happen to be good players as well) I found healers who I actually can trust to keep an exceptionally high quality of play behind me, I end up tanking for our group frequently. (this makes our dps very happy as for some reason they claim I am one of the best at keeping them alive, no matter how hard they try to pull off of me =D)

This being said, I keep up to date with tank theory from EJ and Maintankadin enough to carry 3 sets of tank gear with me, many weapons, trinkets, shields, and the like. Because I am not a baddie (and if you are a tank asking yourself “why would he carry so much around?” then I’m just going to tell you now that you are doing it wrong) and want to perform at the highest level.

Back on target to the point: The use of SoCom as a tank. It’s something I never really thought about much, and to be honest on large trash pulls I do end up tanking 6+mobs. It’d be nice to rip out some great numbers to keep my dps all angry at (at the cost of threat from 1% crit). It’s not like I would be dumping utility (DS/DG), survivability, or necessary (PoJ, vindication) talents from my build to get this. I would simply become a more badass AoE tank monster. And it is more fun to play with! Think of HoR smashes that hit 3 targets, each one chaining to 2 other mobs with Seal of cleave. Add in Consecrate, Holy Shield, Ret aura, Thorns, and maybe a Shield Spike and you are looking at some AoE threat that is super high, and very fast. This also counters the one issue I used to randomly have with AoE tanking- Our unholy DK could rip threat off of me if we went at a pack of 6+ mobs at the same time, even if they were undead and I am opening with HW. Consecrate takes a bit to get going, and HS reflective threat really is a lot higher than most think. Building stacks of Vengeance on many little packs (spiders in naxx, lashers in Uld, many of the pulls in ICC) just takes so damn long. I could see this as being really nice in add tanking ToGC adds as well, as it gets constant damage on Anub for “free.”

At the very least, I know the warrior tank I run with who already gives up on trying to tank when I’m just AoE threating is going to hate me more for this. And being as I love him so much, my goal will be to cause him even more anger and rage.

Has anyone put this to good use yet seeing great results?

A little about me

Time for some explaining:

I started playing wow just before 2.4. I have 3 80s(Paladin, Priest, DK), 2 that I play with regularity(Pally/Priest). I progression raid on my paladin as holy/prot on an (overall) fail server in terms of progression, but enjoy my socializing with all the people I have met. The priest gets action in alt-runs and random PuGs. Lately I decided to try out dpsing on the priest as a caster (since it's actually viable now... I've wanted to be shadow for a while, but I refused to play a spec that didn't scale after 3.2k dps with gear)and have been enjoying it, yet my heart will always lie in the arms of my paladin.

I'm not a ridiculous theorycrafter, but I'd like to consider myself a "student of the game." (more on this to come) I pretty much know what I'm doing on my toons and why. Rare is the day I just throw talent points around without some sort of substantial testing and good reason to do so. I'd like to get some guides up on paladins specifically, as I am pretty well versed in Holy and Prot, and will always be shocked to see how few guides are written for the "layman" out there that are done correctly. Every time I have looked at someone's How To: Paladin I always have some sort of critique- They get it about 90% correct and overall I'm happy they made the information available, but it just irks me that they can't be 100%. It's so close!!!

I think from time to time I'll come here to make general posts about current frustrations I come upon and whatnot. But time will tell with those.

Finally, I would like you all to know how awesome I am. Rarely am I around people who I consider to be as awesome as I am (even rarer when they are MORE awesome) and it is just plain old fact!

P.S. If you continue to read on you may learn to appreciate my humor one day.