Lowbie Pally Tanking

So, my WoW for the last week has almost exclusively been on Zydari, my Paladin. He dinged 22 last night and he really is fun to play. Level 20 brought me Consecration which makes my job so much easier. AoE threat is great and coupled with Retribution Aura makes it nearly impossible for me to lose aggro.

I did a test last night on Retribution Aura. Had my wife body pull a mob while I had RA up. The damage being dealt by the aura did not pull the mob back onto me, so I conclude that it generates hate from the person being hit, not the person who casts the Aura. While this does lessen the skill's worth a bit, it's not enough for me not to use it. My tanking routine generally consists of my wife pulling from behind me, as the mobs I approach I use RD on her to get them onto me then immediately open up with a Consecration. Now the mobs are receiving damage from Consecration, attacking me which generates damage from my Retribution Aura, proccing Redoubt which ups my block rate a lot and means they'll get damaged from my Shield Spike. All that damage, except the Shield Spike, is Holy and as such generating much more threat through Improved Righteousness. So, even though if in the rare event that my wife pulls aggro off me she'd be getting more from being hit, RD is enough to get them back onto me.

I spent several hours yesterday dual-boxing with my wifes toon. I set up some macros for here to auto-follow and target me. One to cast Lightning Bolt on my target, one to stomp totems, and one to heal me. Worked very well and I was able to very quickly get through a level and work on some preliminary AoE tanking (preliminary only as I don't have Blessing of Sanctuary/Reckoning/Holy Shield). Was a lot of fun and with mobs ~2-3 levels lower than me I could easily take 3 on with my wife's toon providing the occasional heal. I think that with her actually playing and being able to pay full attention to one toon we could do three equal level mobs at once. With the AoE/reflective threat I generate, she should be able to drop the Fire Nova Totem whenever it's available to quickly burn down groups. Good fun.

One thing that has surprised me in the last week is my complete and utter disinterest with my main, Sakuran. She's been sitting at 63 for over a week now. I think that part of my disinterest stems from how much more fun I have playing with my wife, and as she's been playing a lot more lately, I find myself playing solo much less. Additionally I think that learning new mechanics and play styles is a lot of what I enjoy about the game. Yes, DPS will always have a spot in my heart, but there is something appealing to playing a tank and not focusing on DPS. I think this is the same reason that I was so stoked about the Druid a month or so ago. It was new and different. I think that with the added bonus of playing with my wife, this Paladin may become a much more regular toon for me.

The guild forum has been acting up a great deal and our Guild Master has been out of town. Stupid thing won't let me delete posts unless I do them one by one (which is not going to happen). I'm hoping that the newer forum software will end up being more reliable and allow me (as one of the forum admins) to actually do some adminning with out it being such an irksome task.