Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 24 other people, obsessing over his hair (a blood elf racial!), and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense.

Perhaps you're a player new to WoW, attracted by the new free-to-play-ish 20 levels of the game, or just someone bored with your main and stable of alts looking to take the One True Tank (I kid, I kid -- I swear, I kid) out for a spin. Either way, you're going to be getting on at the ground floor of a very fun class and a very fun role.

The game needs more tanks, so I'll do my best in this column to get you off to a proper start. I'll go over the benefits of leveling as a tank, what race you should choose, what heirlooms you can arm yourself with if you have a main bankrolling the whole enterprise, what stats will be important for your new tank when gear drops, and the talenting and glyphing choices you should make on your way to the top.

Why level as a tank?

You know how you get to Carnegie Hall, don't ya? Practice.

Tanking can be a taxing role in dungeons and raids. A lot of responsibility will be put on your shoulders the first time you enter the instance, and as a new tank, you won't want to disappoint. As you make your way up the levels ladder, you'll pick up a host of skills that will allow you to hit the ground running. Mob wrangling, the ins and outs of your cooldowns, what distance a mob will aggro at, how to survive without a healer -- these are all skills that you can pick up slowly but surely (and reinforce!) through constant practice with your tank spec.

It's much harder for an otherwise ret paladin to put on a fresh suit of tanking gear at level 85 and try their hand at tanking for the first time than it is for someone to enter their first dungeon at 85 after spending the previous 84 levels mastering their tanking toolbox.

What race to choose

Each race offers something different to the paladin experience. Some offer a DPS boost through free expertise skill (and thus increasing how much damage you do, along with the extra threat that goes with that), some offer extra hit points, or some even offer new abilities which can save you from some extra damage while soloing or in a group.

Human

• Every Man for Himself You can use this ability to remove a debuff that causes a loss of control of your character -- a stun, Mind Control, etc. Can be very nice in certain situations.
• Mace/Sword Specialization Free damage done while wielding a mace or sword. Considering we often eschew the expertise stat at late game, this can be a nice treat that smooths out threat when tanking raid content.

Dwarf

• Mace Specialization Same as the Human specialization.
• Frost Resistance On its face it sounds awesome, but doesn't stack with other buffs that affect your resistances (i.e., Blessing of Kings). You'll often be overwriting your own racial.
• Stoneform Amazing ability -- a free cooldown! Easily the best racial Alliance-side.

Draenei

• Gift of the Naaru A free heal. It's OK.
• Heroic Presence Free hit chance, which makes you more likely to hit a target with your melee attacks. Gives you free threat in the endgame, which is nice, since (like expertise) we often avoid hit rating when possible.
• Shadow Resistance Like the Dwarfs' Frost Resistance, you'll often be overwriting this.

Blood Elf

• Arcane Resistance Again, you'll overwrite it on yourself.
• Arcane Torrent The only useful Blood Elf racial, an area of effect silence that will make tanking spellcasting mobs a little easier to move. Acts as an interrupt if the mob can't be silenced, so it even has a use up until endgame.

Tauren

• Nature Resistance Has the same deal as as all the other resistances covered previously.
• War Stomp Kind of like Arcane Torrent's less-handy cousin. An AOE stun that can hit up to five targets, but it has a .5-second cast time, which means it can (and will) suffer pushback while AOE tanking and in that cast time, you leave yourself unable to avoid anything. Cast time and being stuck to the GCD also makes it less than ideal for usage as an interrupt. Still, it has its uses situationally and while soloing.
• Endurance The single best mechanical reason to go Tauren. Though, it's not worth 5% more HP or 5% more stamina. It's 5% more base health. The racial is worth about 2.2k hit points, giving a naked Tauren paladin 47.1k HP at 85, as opposed to a naked Blood Elf's 44.9k. The king of the terribly depressing Horde paladin racials.

What heirlooms to acquire

Heirlooms can be a little tricky for a tank, because there are two options available to you for armor. You can either go for Burnished pieces, which are actually tank gear with tank stats, or for the Polished pieces, which are DPS gear. The Burnished set is best if you're leveling primarily through dungeons and want the survivability, while the Polished set is best if you're sticking to questing.

The third way is to mix and match and go about 50/50, so you're not swinging the pendulum too far in either direction. Nevertheless, since this is a guide to starting a tank, I'm going to go ahead and list the tank pieces for you. Just keep in mind there are DPS-focused alternatives that might make it a little easier to tear through mobs while soloing (or while coasting through an early 5-man).

• Helm Burnished Helm of Might, purchased from a guild vendor for 1,350 gold.
• Cloak Ripped Sandstorm Cloak, purchased from a guild vendor for 1,200 gold.
• Shoulders Burnished Pauldrons of Might costs 2,175 justice points or 60 Champion's Seals.
• Chest Burnished Breastplate of Might costs 2,175 justice points or 60 Champion's Seals.
• Ring Dread Pirate Ring from the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby
• Weapon Bloodsoaked Skullforge Reaver costs 2,175 justice points or 60 Champion's Seals.
• Trinket Swift Hand of Justice, because free healing is always nice even if haste is generally garbage for us.

Unfortunately, heirloom shields don't exist yet.

What stats to look out for

For those slots bereft of heirlooms (or if you don't have access to them), you'll be going for gear with the strength and stamina stats, primarily. Even though we have mana, ignore anything with intellect as a stat, along with spellpower. Perhaps deceptively, paladins these days have very little to do with our mana dependence from the old BC era.

What I'd especially recommend doing is hold onto any pieces you get from questing or dungeoneering that are either strength DPS pieces or tanking pieces, and depending on the situation, swap between the two. Soloing and doing some quests? Through on your heaviest damage gear. Running a 5-man? Throw on those parry and dodge pieces.

Mastery, our best stat at endgame, is non-existent until level 80. Don't worry about it until then. When you do hit 80 and finally can begin stacking block chance, though, grab any mastery pieces you can get your grubby mitts on.

What about holy power?

Holy power is supremely uninteresting for the leveling paladin. Your first ability that even interacts with it is Word of Glory, and you don't get that until level 9. Your next holy-power-consuming ability is Shield of the Righteous, which you can't talent into until level 39. So, you'll be self-healing for a long, long time -- and on a 20-second cooldown, at that.

Try not to let all that staring at a full holy power bar and nothing to do with it destroy you.

How to talent and glyph

Here's how I would recommend talenting your nascent paladin tank. Moreover, at levels 25, 50, and 75, you get access to new glyphs slots, so at those points in the list I recommend which glyphs you should consider for each. Also, just by speccing into protection to start, you gain the Avenger's Shield ability, along with the Vengeance, Touched by the Light, and Judgements of the Wise passives. Past that initial spec choice, you'll want to explore the tree as follows:

10-11 Seals of the Pure
13, 15, 17 Divinity
19, 21, 23 Toughness
25 Judgements of the Just (1/2); three glyph slots open

• Prime: Glyph of Crusader Strike
• Major: Glyph of the Ascetic Crusader
• Minor: Doesn't particularly matter. Our minors are crap.

27 Judgements of the Just (2/2)
29 Hammer of the Righteous
31, 33 Wrath of the Lightbringer
35, 37, 39 Sanctuary
41 Shield of the Righteous
43 Grand Crusader (1/2)
44 Swap your only prime glyph to Glyph of Seal of Truth
45 Grand Crusader 2/2
47, 49 Reckoning
50 Three glyph slots open

• Prime: Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous
• Major: Glyph of Holy Wrath
• Minor: Again, doesn't matter.

51 Vindication
53 Holy Shield (generally useless before mastery, but you need it for Sacred Duty)
55, 57 Hallowed Ground
59, 61 Sacred Duty
63, 65 Guarded by the Light
67 Improved HoJ (1/2)
69 Ardent Defender
71, 73, 75 Crusade; and at 75, the last three glyph slots open

• Prime: Glyph of Shield of the Righteous
• Major: Glyph of Lay on Hands
• Minor: Again, doesn't matter.

77, 79 Improved Judgement
81, 82 Pursuit of Justice
83, 84 Rule of Law (2/3)
85 Respec to a proper tanking spec.

Now get out there and tank something! Azeroth needs more holy warriors getting punched in the face on a daily basis. The world is your oyster, along with all the DPS abuse, bags of goodies, and short queue times that go with it. Revel in it, friends -- this is the big time.

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The Light and How to Swing It shows paladin tanks how to take on the dark times brought by Cataclysm. Try out our 4 tips for upping your combat table coverage, find out how to increase threat without sacrificing survivability, and learn how to manage the latest version of Holy Shield.

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