Introduction

Paladins have come a long way since classic WoW.  The orignal Paladin was a hybrid support class that could neither MT a raid boss as well as a Warrior nor DPS as well as other DPS classes.  Even as healers they played a limited role as single point target (while useful in many situations, a Holy Paladin would never be seriously asked to group heal compared to other healers.)  Despite their original design limitations to excel in a specific role (due to their hybrid nature), Paladins did bring a lot of utility to raids in Classic WoW, with blessings and auras and back up healing.

These days, after the WotLK expansion, we see Paladins fulfiling all roles admirably and effectively. Paladins can main tank all raid bosses [including Vezax :P] (although they may need to rely on trinkets instead of abilities for a few [especially Vezax :P]).  They can also dish out amazing DPS in raid situtations, as evidenced by many of our fellow eraps.  And they still fulfil an important role as a single point healer (although they have some splash heals now available to them through glyphs and a talent.)

Despite Blizzard's redesign of the Paladin after WotLK, Blizzard did not nerf (to any considerable degree) the utility a Paladin can bring to raids.  So currently, not only do Paladins hold their own for their designated role in a raid, they can also bring tremendous support to the raid.

Here's a healing macro for Holy Light which can be adopted for Holy Shock and Flash of Light:

#showtooltip Holy Light
/cast [mod:alt] Divine Favor
/use 13
/use 14
/cast [mod:shift,target=player] Holy Light
/cast [help,target=target] Holy Light
/cast [nohelp,nodead,nomod:shift,target=targettarget,help,nodead] Holy Light
/cast Holy Light

Prerequisite:

- Set focus on your healing target.

Usage:

0) Automatic usage of trinkets.

1) Without key modifiers, and target is friendly, heal target.

2) Without key modifiers, and target is alive and hostile, and target's target is alive and friendly, heal target's target.

3) With key modifier ALT, cast Divine Favour and apply targeting rules (1) and (2).

4) With key modifier SHIFT, cast on heal self regardless of target.

5) With key modifers SHIFT + ALT, cast Divine Favour and heal self regardless of target.

Tweaks:

1) Replace every instance of "Holy Light" with another healing spell, like "Flash of Light" or "Holy Shock"

2) For none paladin healers, do (1) with your healing spells and replace every instance of "Divine Favour" with an equivalent meta spell with no Global Cooldown.  (E.g. "Nature's Swiftness" for Shamans or "Inner Focus" for priests.)

Please test this macro and understand it before using in a raid.

There are three types of generally accepted tanking methodologies for reducing damage taken:

1) Mitigation tanking: speccing talents and managing abilities and cooldowns and to reduce damage.

2) Soak tanking: having a lot of armor (and/or block) and health just to take damage and give healers a buffer.

3) Avoidance tanking: Having a high dodge and parry skill so as not to take as many hits.

Here is a macro to help calculate your abilitiy to avoidance tank:

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(strjoin("","Combined avoidance: ",GetDodgeChance() + GetParryChance() +5+math.floor(GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL))*.04,"\nBlock: ",GetBlockChance()),1,0.5,0)

The combined avoidance is the average amount of hits that will not land on you due to miss, dodge or parry on melee attacks and abilities.  This macro is useful so you don't have to do the math yourself.

Example: This macro reports combined avoidance of 53.35 for me, meaning, on average, for every 100 melee attacks or abilities made against me, about 53 will miss me completely.

Note: This macro also reports a stat for block skill.  This is not an avoidance stat, but it is included for shield weilding tanks.  This reported stat can easily be read from your character sheet.