As a healer, I've grown to love the Pally Tank in my level 70 5-man instances. While they may be difficult to heal at times because of the sheer armount of healing they need as everything in the room beats on them, I'm happy being confident that unless people try REALLY HARD, they're not going to pull aggro and I'm not going to get healing aggro.
So, with that thought, I seek to level my Paladin to be one of those awesome tank-type people.
But, right now she's only level 25 and thus barely has the spellbook skills to be that awesome Pally Tank I know she'll be in the future. And of course, she hasn't had much in the way of tanking experience yet either.
But that's changing.
About My Pally
My Pally is actually spec'd mostly in the Retribution tree right now, but I'm gearing myself towards the "tank" end of the scale (favoring stamina and intellect for now) instead of the melee DPS (favoring agility and strength) end. I've also picked up a helpful tanking-specific addon to go with the fact that I'll have to lead the kill order and pacing of dungeon instances as a part of that "tanking" job.
For this toon, I've opted to attempt to completely avoid healing, having a Priest, Druid and Shammy already doing heals duties... but I HAVE healed a BFD run when the other Paladin in the group only had the mindset to tank and I wasn't interested in an argument of any type.
In time I'll get more points into the actual Protection tree, but right now from what I've read, Retribution is the way to go for my spec, despite the fact that I behave and gear like someone others might expect to be geared Protection.
I'm going on the thought, largely, that in Azeroth things have been nerfed so far and are so forgiving for quick leveling that it's more gearing and behavior than spec that determines how well one plays their role in a group situation.
Professional Aspirations
With my family of toons, I have all of the professions covered, so for now with this one I've just gone completely "Gathering": Mining and Skinning.
When the expansion comes out, one of my toons needs to take up Inscription, but I'm not sure whether it will be this Paladin or another of my toons, so for now I'm just gathering and processing and collecting.
Immediate Dungeon Goals
At 25, I'm not really high enough to properly tank an RFK run, so I guess that means I'll be doing a couple more in BFD.
Also, there's a mess of guildmates who have alts at the 18-20 level, so maybe I'll tank an SFK run or three for my friends so the clothies can get the Robes of Arugal, etc, and all look the same. ;)
While the number of instances I can tank and get benefit from are few right now, soon I'll be getting into a range with a number of choices and a lot of demand on the LFG channel. Sure, the groups may be chaotic, but there should be a lot of them.
I'll be sure to write about my tanking adventures as they happen!