I have come from playing FF, and in there I was thoroughly enjoying my tanking role in parties. I even had a couple people sing my praises, but now I am a little worried. Since before I had only played a Damage Dealing class (eg. archer in Shadowbane) I dont understand the mechanics of how to keep a particular mob on me, and away from the healers and nukers. If somone could either spell it out for me, or provide a link, that would be fantastic. I am hoping for some kind of "Provoke" ability as in FF. It was extremely effective when used correctly, and not many did use it right. In a field where your job is to die first, knowing these things will be key,

the mob would first attack the first player that enters it's aggro radius, so the obvious thing to do would be to be the one to aggro them. after that, during battle if a player's 'threat' is a certain ammount, the mob will start hitting that player, so basically as a tank you would want to have your threat as high as possible.

there are several ways to do that. the first one is do deal out a lot of damage, and paladins are fairly good doing that if they use 2h weapons (forget the shield, you would be better off with a 2h weapon, trust me). second way is to increase your threat by placing a blessing on you that increases the threat generated by your attacks. the third way is to place a blessing on the party member that does a lot of damage that would lower his threat.

hope this helps =)

in WoW paladins dont really play the tank like they do in FFXI, if thats what you mean by FF, they are good at soloing, but i no in FFXI most of the time you always party, i know this because i used to play it. the point is if you want to tank be a warrior.

I half agree with guitar...
I would still go with 1h and sheild though. The best way to do it is to spec in protection and when tanking turn on Righteous Fury, with that use Seal of Righteousness and BoM and be prepared to fire off judgement should you lose aggro. It typically goes by whoever has the most dmg dealt will make the mob attack it but if you use holy attacks with Righteous Fury they will likely stay on you.