Is it pointless to lvl Paladin?

[Jim_Berry]

*SNIP*

Any Pld using more Flash spams than a Drk using Unleash or even a War's Overpower is not rotating their Hate combo efficiently enough.

*SNIP*

What about, if, say, all your DPS is soloing their own mob, burning every CD, while being better-geared? Flash, my man, has helped me control that situation many times.

[fm_fenrir]

What about, if, say, all your DPS is soloing their own mob, burning every CD, while being better-geared? Flash, my man, has helped me control that situation many times.

Flash does a fraction of the threat management Halone or Circle of Scorn does, though. It's fine for suppressing a mob long enough to put Halone on it, but it absolutely won't hold off a SMN who's burning every CD on his bar during a trash pull. I only use Flash to hold stuff that isn't being actively focused, which suppresses healer and Shadow Flare threat, but if someone decides to actively target one of those mobs, Flash just isn't enough.

[AI_wass]

Flash does a fraction of the threat management...Circle of Scorn does

But that's dead wrong. Circle of Scorn is 300 potency enmity with another 150 potency over the next 15 seconds. Flash is straight-up 500 potency enmity.

[Februs]

What about, if, say, all your DPS is soloing their own mob, burning every CD, while being better-geared? Flash, my man, has helped me control that situation many times.

Any other horrible circumstances you want to throw in there? lol. There's still room for the healer to be over healing everyone in the party with medica II and cure III spams lol.

Jokes aside, in the case that literally everything that could be going wrong is going wrong, then yes, burning an additional Flash or two can keep control in an otherwise unruly situation. I'm not saying Flash is not useful or shouldn't be exploited. Obviously if the situation calls for it then you should use it, but Flash spams (a tired tradition in Pld mob tanking) is not the optimal way of Pld tanking in a mob pull... and honestly, in this kind of situation even a War or Drk might want to pop off an extra AoE to be on the safe side, so really it's not all that Pld specific of a problem.

I've had pulls exactly like this, and I still don't spam Flash to keep enmity. The only thing that might actually force an extra Flash or two is if the Dps out-gear you by a substantial amount, or if the pull is very large. If the number of mobs you are tanking exceed your ability to split enmity fast enough to hold aggro, then an extra Flash is definitely necessary (especially if you have an AoE spamming caster), but that still only means one additional Flash per maybe every two additional mobs over the Mob size by which a Pld can effectively split enmity on (which is roughly 5 for a Pld using a full enmity rotation, assuming each enmity granting move hits a new target).

This is a lot harder to do now that they have eliminated the Shield Swipe exploit by taking it off the GCD (adding a tiny bit to Boss Dps at the expense of Mob enmity and Mob Dps), but it's definitely doable. It just requires a lot more attention that Drk's and War's. You have to be conscious of how many (1)targets you have, (2)how many you can actually hit with an enmity strike in a single rotation, (3)how many peripheral targets will be missed thereby requiring CoS/Flash, (4)which targets require preferential treatment due to Dps actions, and then (5)making a judgment on whether or not you have enough enmity to start rotating GB instead of RoH. Tanking like this is means increasing your output, but constantly living at the edge of your own enmity. By comparison, rotating regular Flashes is a lot easier, but you wouldn't be optimizing your role by over-relying on it.