Hello this is my guide to the protection paladin. I can succesfully tank Heroics, and Kara, and I am starting on Gruul's. If you do not think this information is accurate please say so, and i am only doing this because of the lack of other paladin guides out thier.

Requirements:

Regular Instances: as soon as you hit level 70 you should be able to start doing regular instances, and besides black morass and shadow labs, you should be fine tanking anything.

Heroic Instances: tanking a heroic instance can be harder than off-tanking Kara, so do not think that because you can OT in Kara you can tank a heroic. This is a mistake i made, and you will realise that without the following your healers will find it very hard to keep you up.

Defense: 490+. this will make you uncrittable
Avoidance: 102.4%+. here is a macro to use to check your defense.

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combined avoidance. Currently at:",0.8,0.8,1)
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance() + GetParryChance() +5+(GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL) + 20)*0.04,1,0.5,0)

armor: around 15000 without dev aura on.
Health: 12,000 or more is a must, and even that is a bit low. Your healers will have a very hard time keeping you up at under that amount of health, thus it is very important that you get your health high.

Karazhan: Off tanking is karazhan is not very hard, and do not be convinced that you are not geared enough to go. When I did my first kara run, and cleared it, i was with a PUG and i had around 11970 health and 480 defense. however i recomend you have around 11000+ health and 490+defense to make it easier on your healers.

In this section of the guide i will tell you more about Paladin tanking so you will understand how to do it better.

Agro: paladins gain agro through spell damage, and there weapon should have a lot of it on it. do not be confused and take a warrior weapon, as you will never hold aggro, and it is a warrior weapon, not a pally one.

secondly you do not need a single bit of strength, just get stamina and a bit of intellect(not too much because pallys have nice ability where they get mana when healed).

when you attack a target you should cast avengers shild, turn on holy shild and judge them with seal of the crusader. then turn on seal of righteousness. this is because you get more holy damage that way and therefore more aggro. remember to turn on righteous fury and put blessing of salvation on your party, even if they say they do not need.

also remember to use righteous defense if you lose agro here is a nice taunt macro so you do not have to click the player being attacked.

#showtooltip Righteous Defense
/cast [help,nodead][target=targettarget,help,nodead]Righteous Defense

Download deadlyboss mods and Omen threat meter of Curse to help you tank better, deadly boss mods is only needed in raids.

Finally here is a bit where i will ask you not to give up on paladin tanking. it is a hard tanking spec to master, and we do not have as good single target tanking as bear tanks or warrior tanks, but we have great aoe tanking. Even though it is harder for us to tank, please go out into the world of warcraft world and show people that paladin tanks can be the best.

Remember, to gem your gear in +12 stam gems after youg et uncrittable and have fun!!