Protection Paladin 7.3

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Protection Paladin guide for Legion.

[Guest Rip]

Versatility as no.1 priority? please expand

[Valks 2,373]

8 minutes ago, Guest Rip said:

Versatility as no.1 priority? please expand

Assuming that players wish to fill their roles as a tank, Versatility is reliably the best stat. It is a flat increase to the healing of the Paladin, their damage done and a reduction to their damage taken. There's no reason to prioritise another stat at the moment, unless you feel like trying to maximise your DPS as a tank. Even then, you're sacrificing plenty of survivability for a lot less damage gain.

This might change when we reach 110 or after further tuning changes, but for now, Vers is the way to go!

[Guest Philaster]

Does this mean that the Alchemy Trinket would suddenly become very useful for Prot Pallies? Static vers plus a strength proc.

[Picklzz 0]

The talent Hand of the Protector DOES update while standing in consecration just like Light of the Protector. It is true that in a previous patch this was not the case but it is now.

[Vlad 411]

4 hours ago, Picklzz said:

The talent Hand of the Protector DOES update while standing in consecration just like Light of the Protector. It is true that in a previous patch this was not the case but it is now.

Thanks for noticing this. I'm fixing the mention right now. Much appreciated.

[Guest Raelik]

Wouldn't our potion of choice be versatility rather than armor now that bonus armor does not exist?

[Guest 1stNoob]

On 19.7.2016 at 2:04 AM, Blainie said:

There's no reason to prioritise another stat at the moment, unless you feel like trying to maximise your DPS as a tank. Even then, you're sacrificing plenty of survivability for a lot less damage gain.

Versatility is passive.

With more Haste you get more SotR/J/AS out, that helps with your survivability and damage.

With more Crit you get more CD Reduction for SotR, that helps with your survivability and damage.

 

I disagree with the stat priority. I think for an experienced tank its more beneficial to push the active abilities.

 

[Audmundr 0]

Do you know if sacred duty will post up to date weak auras strings for prot paladins for 7.0.3?

You still have it referenced for this patch so wanted to know if you have been given a heads up or something.

I suck at weak auras and found their previous strings extremely helpful.

Edit: Theck just replied to me on the site and confirmed he doesnt play anymore and wont update it. He pointed me in the direction of Slootbags site, which currently arent updated for 7.0.3, is this a site you would also recommend? 

 

Can you recommend any others?

Edited July 20, 2016 by Audmundr
Realised sacred duty has been retired, new question.

[Vlad 411]

Thank you for all the comments, guys. I am pushing through an update soon that adds a separate DPS stat priority and fixes a few of the other concerns. Looking forward to more feedback :)

[Guest Zycó]

Hey everyone,

Since the SoTR and Consecration changes, I figured I'd need some new Weak Aura's. They can be found here for anyone interested in them. :) They monitor when you're stood in your Cons + how many charges you have left on SoTR. There's one in there for Blessed Hammer too!

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/17612781315

Please note that these were only created today, so if you have any suggestions/feedback then please let me know.

Regards,

Zycó

[Guest Dion, from Maintanka]

Light of the Protector should be used moment it comes from cooldown. 15 sec is extremely small cooldown (and is affected by haste). In six minute fight, you have 24 casts. Let's say that there is 1sec delay on use, so we have 23 LotP casts now. Those 23 can be delayed max 0,6sec until we drop 22 LotP casts. And so on. More you wait and game one cast of LotP, more likely you are going to shave opportunities to cast more LotPs. Note: For this calculation, I used rigid 15sec recharge time on LotP. With Righteous Protector it's even shorter recharge time. It's not about max one cast, it's about multitude of casts. It's part of our AM and should be used extremely often, not to be saved for special occasion.

[Vlad 411]

2 hours ago, Guest Dion, from Maintanka said:

Light of the Protector should be used moment it comes from cooldown. 15 sec is extremely small cooldown (and is affected by haste). In six minute fight, you have 24 casts. Let's say that there is 1sec delay on use, so we have 23 LotP casts now. Those 23 can be delayed max 0,6sec until we drop 22 LotP casts. And so on. More you wait and game one cast of LotP, more likely you are going to shave opportunities to cast more LotPs. Note: For this calculation, I used rigid 15sec recharge time on LotP. With Righteous Protector it's even shorter recharge time. It's not about max one cast, it's about multitude of casts. It's part of our AM and should be used extremely often, not to be saved for special occasion.

The problem is that with a 15-second cooldown, if you've just used it even though you didn't really need its healing (say you were at 80% health), you can't use it again when you might actually need it.

I mean sure, if it's a farm fight where you know already that you're never going to drop below 60% health ever because the fight is easy, then just use it on cooldown to max healing over the fight, but that's not the situation we're talking about here. We're talking about fights where at any moment you could find that you've suddenly dipped dangerously low and you need something to bail you and your healers out. And having it available is better there. Your goal isn't really to maximise your self-healing throughout the fight, your goal is not to die.

[Dion 0]

2 hours ago, Vlad said:

The problem is that with a 15-second cooldown, if you've just used it even though you didn't really need its healing (say you were at 80% health), you can't use it again when you might actually need it.

I mean sure, if it's a farm fight where you know already that you're never going to drop below 60% health ever because the fight is easy, then just use it on cooldown to max healing over the fight, but that's not the situation we're talking about here. We're talking about fights where at any moment you could find that you've suddenly dipped dangerously low and you need something to bail you and your healers out. And having it available is better there. Your goal isn't really to maximise your self-healing throughout the fight, your goal is not to die.

LotP cooldown is extremely short. You really aren't saying that ShotR should not be used as often it is possible because it has 12sec recharge time per charge. Also haste shortens cooldown and Righteous Protector makes it even more shorter. Lenght of the cooldown isn't issue, it encourages you to use it often.

30-40% your healers are franticly searching for those expensive heals and those "Oh shit, oh shit, don't die!" buttons. They also are making their best that you stay high health which makes it even longer to reach 30-40% health and waste even more time and more LotP casts. Boss keeps pummeling you with autoattacks and they are eating steadily your health, so even if you cast one LotP at 80%, next one might be 40% and third could be at 70%. Waiting ShotR is similar thing, in 6.2.4 you didn't want try to game it to prevent mega big chunck damage, you try reach max uptime to have smoother damage intake. Same with LotP, it's not Lay on Hands, it's similar to ShotR.

Most definately you want to max self healing because it maximizes your survivability and prevents you from dying. Saving it and delaying it more likely gets you to eat more damage, stress your healers and hold back their occasional damage spells.

[Vlad 411]

29 minutes ago, Dion said:

LotP cooldown is extremely short. You really aren't saying that ShotR should not be used as often it is possible because it has 12sec recharge time per charge. Also haste shortens cooldown and Righteous Protector makes it even more shorter. Lenght of the cooldown isn't issue, it encourages you to use it often.

30-40% your healers are franticly searching for those expensive heals and those "Oh shit, oh shit, don't die!" buttons. They also are making their best that you stay high health which makes it even longer to reach 30-40% health and waste even more time and more LotP casts. Boss keeps pummeling you with autoattacks and they are eating steadily your health, so even if you cast one LotP at 80%, next one might be 40% and third could be at 70%. Waiting ShotR is similar thing, in 6.2.4 you didn't want try to game it to prevent mega big chunck damage, you try reach max uptime to have smoother damage intake. Same with LotP, it's not Lay on Hands, it's similar to ShotR.

Most definately you want to max self healing because it maximizes your survivability and prevents you from dying. Saving it and delaying it more likely gets you to eat more damage, stress your healers and hold back their occasional damage spells.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I've spoken to Treckie about it as well and we're in agreement.

Maximising self-healing over the course of the fight does not maximise your survivability and it does not prevent you from dying. It pads the meters and possibly allows your healers to spend a little less Mana (if that's even a concern).

Consider the situation where you are at 80% health, and you use a Light of the Protector for a measly heal. Then you take a boss hit that puts you at 50% health, and the next will put you lower. Suddenly, having been able to use LotP then would have been much more useful, but it's on cooldown. Even with Haste and Righteous Protector, it will be on cooldown.

Yes, healers are going to heal you, and they'll panic when you drop low on health. But that's no reason for you not to contribute to your healing when you are low on health. So I just can't see a good justification for using LotP at high health just not to miss out on a bunch of casts over the course of the fight.

I will grant that if you are using Righteous Protector, you can be more liberal with its usage, though.

[Dion 0]

6 hours ago, Vlad said:

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I've spoken to Treckie about it as well and we're in agreement.

Maximising self-healing over the course of the fight does not maximise your survivability and it does not prevent you from dying. It pads the meters and possibly allows your healers to spend a little less Mana (if that's even a concern).

Consider the situation where you are at 80% health, and you use a Light of the Protector for a measly heal. Then you take a boss hit that puts you at 50% health, and the next will put you lower. Suddenly, having been able to use LotP then would have been much more useful, but it's on cooldown. Even with Haste and Righteous Protector, it will be on cooldown.

Yes, healers are going to heal you, and they'll panic when you drop low on health. But that's no reason for you not to contribute to your healing when you are low on health. So I just can't see a good justification for using LotP at high health just not to miss out on a bunch of casts over the course of the fight.

I will grant that if you are using Righteous Protector, you can be more liberal with its usage, though.

Yes, we disagree and here is why. You view LotP as a cooldown, used as when it's most effective. I view it as part of our AM, used as often as possible because smoothens damage intake. To ephasise, you use it to recover from tight spot and I use it to never get to that tight spot where you recovered with it.

Your scenario is possible one, but only in theory. We need to consider that Blizzard wants to tanks to have 60-70% uptime with ShotR, and that Tanks should slowly take damage, instead of wild HP pingpong. Also Blizzard has stateld that healers mana should matter and be part of their gameplay. 

What is likely outcome that during entire fight when you use it as often as possible is that you end up casting it all kinds of HP situations, high, low and middle because nobody can predict whole boss fight accurately. You aren't casting it on only high health, you are casting it all kinds of situations. 10%, 50% and say 80% to emphasise my point. Because you might cast it 80% doesn't mean you will be casting all other LotPs at 80%, that is just a single cast. Fight is probably going to last long, about six minutes. 

To drive this cooldown thing further, you aren't saying that ShotR should not be used only to special attacks to maximizise damage reducted from single attack but as often as possible to maximize damage reducted overall. Same thing with Lotp, you don't want to have more health after single attack, you want to have more health overall, during whole encounter.

Oh, I wouldn't call maximizing self-healing padding the meters, you would make DK tanks pretty pissed. Self-healing is part of EH and TMI, which should be maximized to maximize survivability. There is no reason why you shouldn't be casting self-heals as often as possible when cooldown is so low because there is no tradeoff like with WoG. There were reason why Seal of Insight was considered survival seal and Truth was DPS seal even when Insights heal was small.

[Guest Bluekiwi]

2 Questions.

Firstly.

          My math is no good. Does the "Consecration" effect of "Light of the Protector" add 20% on top of the 26% equaling a 46% heal, or does it add 20% of the 26% equaling 31.2% heal?

 

Secondly.

          On the Tier 5 Talents list you give "Final Stand" a big green tick and suggest that if we need a strong defensive cooldown then we should take "Final Stand". However all "Final Stand" really does is add an AoE taunt to "Divine Shield" and doesn't actually give us a defensive cooldown at all, therefore limiting it's usefulness to pulling mobs inside 15yrds but outside our "Consecration". Wouldn't "Hand of the Protector" be a more useful choice overall?

 

[Vlad 411]

20 hours ago, Dion said:

Yes, we disagree and here is why. You view LotP as a cooldown, used as when it's most effective. I view it as part of our AM, used as often as possible because smoothens damage intake. To ephasise, you use it to recover from tight spot and I use it to never get to that tight spot where you recovered with it.

Your scenario is possible one, but only in theory. We need to consider that Blizzard wants to tanks to have 60-70% uptime with ShotR, and that Tanks should slowly take damage, instead of wild HP pingpong. Also Blizzard has stateld that healers mana should matter and be part of their gameplay. 

What is likely outcome that during entire fight when you use it as often as possible is that you end up casting it all kinds of HP situations, high, low and middle because nobody can predict whole boss fight accurately. You aren't casting it on only high health, you are casting it all kinds of situations. 10%, 50% and say 80% to emphasise my point. Because you might cast it 80% doesn't mean you will be casting all other LotPs at 80%, that is just a single cast. Fight is probably going to last long, about six minutes. 

To drive this cooldown thing further, you aren't saying that ShotR should not be used only to special attacks to maximizise damage reducted from single attack but as often as possible to maximize damage reducted overall. Same thing with Lotp, you don't want to have more health after single attack, you want to have more health overall, during whole encounter.

Oh, I wouldn't call maximizing self-healing padding the meters, you would make DK tanks pretty pissed. Self-healing is part of EH and TMI, which should be maximized to maximize survivability. There is no reason why you shouldn't be casting self-heals as often as possible when cooldown is so low because there is no tradeoff like with WoG. There were reason why Seal of Insight was considered survival seal and Truth was DPS seal even when Insights heal was small.

I am absolutely not treating LotP as a cooldown. It is active mitigation, but unlike SotR, its efficiency varies. If the damage reduction offered by SotR would be tiny if used at high health, then I would probably also advise that you not use it then and save it for when it will actually be powerful. But that's now how sotr works, so really, keeping high uptime on it is good enough.

3 hours ago, Guest Bluekiwi said:

2 Questions.

Firstly.

          My math is no good. Does the "Consecration" effect of "Light of the Protector" add 20% on top of the 26% equaling a 46% heal, or does it add 20% of the 26% equaling 31.2% heal?

 

Secondly.

          On the Tier 5 Talents list you give "Final Stand" a big green tick and suggest that if we need a strong defensive cooldown then we should take "Final Stand". However all "Final Stand" really does is add an AoE taunt to "Divine Shield" and doesn't actually give us a defensive cooldown at all, therefore limiting it's usefulness to pulling mobs inside 15yrds but outside our "Consecration". Wouldn't "Hand of the Protector" be a more useful choice overall?

 

My understanding is that it is 20% of the heal that LotP would produce, so it will not heal you for 45% of your missing health, no.

 

Regarding Final Stand, it is not just a taunt. It forces the target(s) to attack you for the full duration of Divine Shield. Basically it's a 100% damage reduction cooldown that lasts 8 seconds.

[Finwickle 0]

I'm new at Prot paladin, so I might just misunderstand. The guide states about Consecration that "its duration is longer than its cooldown)" (Rotation section). However, I'm seeing the duration and cooldown going down equally with haste and always being the same. In what cases would the cooldown be lower than the duration?

[vyruss 0]

Sorry for my english but i have talents doubt : rotating usually can only click 2 times on hammer and then go to click on other icons , so my choice would be on holy shield because the damage reduction would be a 10 % chance yet . while blessed hammer does 15 % damage reduction , but should be filtered to dodge parry block so procs about half of the time . Of course it is more blessed damage but at this point the normal hammer damage is in addition to the return of holy damage -holy shield ..Please can study this for me?

[Guest mcsahin]

Hey guys. Since i love paladins so much lore wise, in every expansion I had prot/ret paladin as my main for a period of time but for Legion i have some worries regarding protection spec, especially after playing with all tanks except monks in prepatch:

-Shield of the righteous/consecration dynamic will force us to be stationary

-Shield of the Righteous is definitely a strong active mitigation spell but compared to other tanks' active mitigations, if my calculations are correct, it will be up the least amount of time in a mythic boss/raid boss fight, making our damage taken inconsistent.

-Hand/Light of the protector is weak

-Legendary Artifact Traits don't look like they will be much help regarding survivability either.

I'm not an expert but I don't want to invest time on a prot paladin if in legion end content especially in mythic+, people doesn't want us tanking. So I want to hear your feedback on this.

[Guest Zyn]

The enchant Mark of the Shadowmoon seems to have changed from Spirit to Versatility.  I am guessing this now makes it useful for us?

[Guest mclem]

There's no mention on the stat priority page of the cooldown bonusses from crit Judgements. I assume they don't make crit suddenly wonderful, but I'm curious if that means that a small amount of crit has interesting potential effects on ShOR uptime?

[Guest FluffybroJr]

There's an error for the Talent Choices, Holy Shield and Consecrated Hammer are in the level 15 section but are actually level 30, while First Avenger and Crusader's Judgment are in the level 30 section but are actually level 15. 

It's on this page: https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/protection-paladin-pve-tank-spec-builds-talents

[Guest Awesometaco]

I'm fairly new to being a prot pwlly and was finding it frustrating to deal with trying to tank since the new patch so I came looking for advice but I'm wondering about the section for level 30 talents why get bastion? The skill it utilizes you don't get for 8 more levels so why grab if then? It's literally not using the talent point.