[Archived] Protection Paladin 5.4

[Vladamyr 169]

I am switching between these 2 as my third glyph.

Glyph of Consecration & Glyph of Focused Shield

Can anyone think of situations where you would want both?

Edited October 17, 2012 by Vladamyr

[Whatcher 0]

Power Auras Classic is busted for me.

[Vlad 411]

Power Auras Classic is busted for me.

Indeed, it seems to be out of date. Someone is maintaining an unofficial version here, though. You can use that for now. We'll check more tomorrow and update our guides (probably with Weak Auras).

[Guest Blondiegirl]

Needs to be on selfless healer to get Word of Glory

[Vlad 411]

Needs to be on selfless healer to get Word of Glory

I do not understand what you are referring to.

[Guest Patrick]

I am probably dead wrong about this, but isn't Holy Prism a superior choice for the Tier 6 talent against a raid boss? According to the tooltip, it does around 14-17K damage (or healing) and 9-12K healing (or damage) and is on a 20-second cooldown. Assuming it's used on cooldown, that results in roughly 45-54K damage/healing and 27-36K healing/damage per minute.

Contrast that with Execution Sentence which only does 14K damage (or healing) per minute.

Maybe the problem lies in having to use 3 GCD's per minute instead of 1, when those GCDs might be better used for other spells?

[Vladamyr 169]

I am probably dead wrong about this, but isn't Holy Prism a superior choice for the Tier 6 talent against a raid boss? According to the tooltip, it does around 14-17K damage (or healing) and 9-12K healing (or damage) and is on a 20-second cooldown. Assuming it's used on cooldown, that results in roughly 45-54K damage/healing and 27-36K healing/damage per minute.

Contrast that with Execution Sentence which only does 14K damage (or healing) per minute.

Maybe the problem lies in having to use 3 GCD's per minute instead of 1, when those GCDs might be better used for other spells?

I don't know where you got the value of 14k for Execution Sentence? Even in dungeon gear mine is hitting for 60k(ish)? It scales way better with spellpower 593.6% vs 142.8% (Holy Prism) so it should always be a much better heal.

[Guest Beefy]

why does your BIS list show White Tiger Legguards as the BIS for hands and the Death knight tier legs Legguards of the Lost as BIS for legs?

[Guest Guest]

I don't know where you got the value of 14k for Execution Sentence? Even in dungeon gear mine is hitting for 60k(ish)? It scales way better with spellpower 593.6% vs 142.8% (Holy Prism) so it should always be a much better heal.

I knew something was off...I was just going by the tooltips on the WoW site. Being away from home I can't log in and check real values. Thanks!

[Vlad 411]

why does your BIS list show White Tiger Legguards as the BIS for hands and the Death knight tier legs Legguards of the Lost as BIS for legs?

Thanks, fixed it (should be up soon :))

[Guest Chill]

The gear guide for protection paladins needs updating. There are no haste items listed for example.

There are three gearing strategies at the moment:

Stam > Hit7.5 > Exp15 > Haste > Mastery > Parry=Dodge (highest DPS & HoPo generation giving steady, but higher incoming damage)

Stam > Hit7.5 > Exp15 > Mastery > Haste > Parry=Dodge (higher HoPo generation for SoTR uptime but better for damage mitigation due to mastery stacking)

Stam > Parry=Dodge > Mastery > * (Non-active mitigation build favouring damage avoidance and soaking, with mastery increasing block chance. Less SoTR uptime due to misses but arguments can be made to taking less overall damage, yet possible higher spikes)

[Jaelstorm 0]

I just wanted to point out that the Prot Paladin best in slot list hasn't been updated since Heart of Fear & Terrace have been released. It would be nice to have it updated.

[Guest Assasinaa]

Currently prot paly with battlehealer, seal of insight and Light's Hammer is like having additional healer in fight ,, with this combination i can sometimes do more healing than our 3rd healer..

but i found out my starting aggro is kinda low when doing aoe pulls (holy wrath -> hammer of right.. (with seal of right... up) concentration (even tho i use seal of righteousness at start of the fight)

also my DPS is relatively low too (not sure how to fully utilize vengeance buff (any guide about it?)

about the stat priority / reforging ... personaly i tried like all the possibilities and i found out 7,5 hit 15exp and haste > mastery is the best way for raiding prot paly (our dps war is not happy about it cuz i will steal his items) also my healers told me this stats are the best -- less dmg taken

but as prepaid paly it is impossible to reach hit and exp cap while having at least few points in other stats...

[Thels 0]

There's some odd suggestions with your gemming advise:

1) Since you suggest different gear build strategies, shouldn't each gear build strategy have it's own gem advise?

2) You recommend gemming for stamina, but enchanting gloves and boots with secondary stats. http://www.wowhead.com/item=85559 - Sha Armor Kit (150 Stamina) provides a better stamina:secondary stat ratio than gems do, so you should put the armor kit on both slots before even considering using stamina gems (except for green/purple gems in blue slots).

3) You recommend placing blue gems in yellow sockets, ignoring the socket bonus altogether. Unless the socket bonus provides crit chance, socket bonuses are universally worthwhile. You should use at least hybrid Haste, Mastery or Dodge gems, depending on your gear build strategy.

Control/Haste build:

Reforge and gem for Hit, then Expertise, then a mixture of Stamina and Haste, depending on how much health you need.

Blue sockets:

Need more hit: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76636 - Rigid River's Heart (320 Hit)

Need more expertise, can reforge hit away: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76681 - Accurate Imperial Amethyst (160 Hit, 160 Expertise)

Need more expertise and health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76688 - Guardian's Imperial Amethyst (120 Stamina, 160 Expertise)

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76639 - Solid River's Heart (240 Stamina)

Enough hit/expertise/health, can reforge hit away: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76642 - Lightning Wild Jade (160 Hit, 160 Haste)

Enough hit/expertise: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76654 - Forceful Wild Jade (120 Stamina, 160 Haste)

Red sockets:

Need more hit: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76681 - Accurate Imperial Amethyst (160 Hit, 160 Expertise)

Need more expertise: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76693 - Precise Promordial Ruby (320 Expertise)

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76688 - Guardian's Imperial Amethyst (120 Stamina, 160 Expertise)

Enough hit/expertise/health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76667 - Wicked Vermilion Onyx (160 Expertise, 160 Haste)

(Considering you need 15% expertise, it's unlikely that you are ending up with too much expertise, even after reforging it away, and only using hybrid gems in red slots. If you somehow do, use Strength hybrid gems if you need more DPS or Parry hybrid gems if you need more survivability.)

Yellow sockets:

Need more hit and health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76655 - Nimble Wild Jade (160 Hit, 120 Stamina)

Enough health, need more hit: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76642 - Lightning Wild Jade (160 Hit, 160 Haste)

Need more expertise: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76667 - Wicked Vermilion Onyx (160 Expertise, 160 Haste)

Enough hit/expertise/health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76699 - Quick Sun's Radiance (320 Haste)

Prismatic sockets:

Need more hit: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76636 - Rigid River's Heart (320 Hit)

Need more expertise: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76693 - Precise Promordial Ruby (320 Expertise)

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76639 - Solid River's Heart (240 Stamina)

Enough hit/expertise/health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76699 - Quick Sun's Radiance (320 Haste)

(Naturally, if you are close to the hit or expertise cap, you can use a hybrid gem instead.)

Control/Mastery build:

Reforge and gem for Hit, then Expertise, then a mixture of Stamina and Mastery, depending on how much health you need.

Blue sockets:

Need more hit: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76636 - Rigid River's Heart (320 Hit)

Need more expertise, can reforge hit away: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76681 - Accurate Imperial Amethyst (160 Hit, 160 Expertise)

Need more expertise and health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76688 - Guardian's Imperial Amethyst (120 Stamina, 160 Expertise)

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76639 - Solid River's Heart (240 Stamina)

Enough hit/expertise/health, can reforge hit away: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76643 - Seinsei's Wild Jade (160 Hit, 160 Mastery)

Enough hit/expertise: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76656 - Puissant Wild Jade (120 Stamina, 160 Mastery)

Red sockets:

Need more hit: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76681 - Accurate Imperial Amethyst (160 Hit, 160 Expertise)

Need more expertise: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76693 - Precise Promordial Ruby (320 Expertise)

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76688 - Guardian's Imperial Amethyst (120 Stamina, 160 Expertise)

Enough hit/expertise/health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76671 - Keen Vermilion Onyx (160 Expertise, 160 Mastery)

(Considering you need 15% expertise, it's unlikely that you are ending up with too much expertise, even after reforging it away, and only using hybrid gems in red slots. If you somehow do, use Strength hybrid gems if you need more DPS or Parry hybrid gems if you need more survivability.)

Yellow sockets:

Need more hit and health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76655 - Nimble Wild Jade (160 Hit, 120 Stamina)

Enough health, need more hit: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76643 - Seinsei's Wild Jade (160 Hit, 160 Mastery)

Need more expertise: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76671 - Keen Vermilion Onyx (160 Expertise, 160 Mastery)

Enough hit/expertise/health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76700 - Fractured Sun's Radiance (320 Mastery)

Prismatic sockets:

Need more hit: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76636 - Rigid River's Heart (320 Hit)

Need more expertise: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76693 - Precise Promordial Ruby (320 Expertise)

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76639 - Solid River's Heart (240 Stamina)

Enough hit/expertise/health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76700 - Fractured Sun's Radiance (320 Mastery)

(Naturally, if you are close to the hit or expertise cap, you can use a hybrid gem instead.)

Avoidance build:

Reforge and gem for a mixture of Stamina, Dodge and Parry, depending on how much health you need, and which of Dodge and Parry is on a lower DR.

Blue sockets:

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76639 - Solid River's Heart (240 Stamina)

Enough health, Dodge DR is lower than Parry DR: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76653 - Regal Wild Jade (120 Stamina, 160 Dodge)

Enough health, Parry DR is lower than Dodge DR: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76690 - Defender's Imperial Amethyst (120 Stamina, 160 Parry)

Red sockets:

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76690 - Defender's Imperial Amethyst (120 Stamina, 160 Parry)

Enough health, Dodge DR is lower than Parry DR: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76664 - Stalwart Vermilion Onyx (160 Parry, 160 Dodge)

Enough health, Parry DR is lower than Dodge DR: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76695 - Flashing Primordial Ruby (320 Parry)

Yellow sockets:

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76653 - Regal Wild Jade (120 Stamina, 160 Dodge)

Enough health, Dodge DR is lower than Parry DR:http://www.wowhead.com/item=76698 - Subtle Sun's Radiance (320 Dodge)

Enough health, Parry DR is lower than Dodge DR: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76664 - Stalwart Vermilion Onyx (160 Parry, 160 Dodge)

Prismatic sockets:

Need more health: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76639 - Solid River's Heart (240 Stamina)

Enough health, Dodge DR is lower than Parry DR:http://www.wowhead.com/item=76698 - Subtle Sun's Radiance (320 Dodge)

Enough health, Parry DR is lower than Dodge DR: http://www.wowhead.com/item=76695 - Flashing Primordial Ruby (320 Parry)

(Naturally, if your Dodge and Parry DR are even, you can use a hybrid gem instead.)

Edited January 1, 2013 by Thels

[Mutterkorn 8]

Isn't the Expertise Cap at 7,5% ? You wrote 15%

[MadMonk 154]

Isn't the Expertise Cap at 7,5% ? You wrote 15%

The expertise cap is 7.5% if you're standing behind the target. That is why melee DPS only need 7.5%. However, while standing in front of the target you do need to get 15% in order to hit all your attacks.

[Mutterkorn 8]

Ah! Thanks! 7.5% Is the cap on my enhancer.

[Guest Davideus]

Issue: Weapon Enchant // BIS guide.

As a long time prot paladin, with ranking on several fights via WOL I found your guide is not focused on the reforge strat that most of the high end paladin tanks use. That is hit7.5=exp15>Haste>Mastery. The BIS guide suggests pieces of gear that have dodge and parry as their sub stats. It seems to me that those would not be BIS considering we try to reforge out of those stats. I decided what my own BIS are based on common sense and following this stat prority.

Weapon Enchants: You only suggest collosus // River's song a small shield procc vs a procc of one of our wrost stats: dodge.

I was wondering why I don't see the windsong enchant that proccs 3 different stats two of them being our best stats: haste/mastery. Its also on the new ppm procc system so it is constantly procc and can procc two or even all three stats simultaneously. The main reason I can searching your guides is because I have always been a firm follower of Icy-veins.com and could not decide windsong vs dancing steel. Now I use the reforge strat mentioned earlier I wanted to know which would be the biggest dps increase? My surviability is amazing as is so I'm going for more dmg. Some might take a glance and say procc str is better, but I'm aware many of tanks abilities have very poor scaling w/ attack power because having 130k extra attack power on a fight is not unreasonable.

Any help would be much appreciated. Feel free to check my character out.

Toon name: Davideus, Server: Stormreaver Tauren Prot Paladin.

[Serdra 0]

Weapon enchants are marginal, i tend to run Colossus purely for the passive mitigation it offers... i havent bothered doing any testing on windsong purely because of the fact it procs 1 of 3 stats and at the current level of haste/mastery i have i dont feel it offers enough to benefit - at early levels of haste/mastery i could imagine it being of some use but the passive shield from colossus doesnt diminsh and is always just that - a passive flat reduction when it procs.

[Vlad 411]

I've completed a pretty significant revamp of the guide over the last few days. Everything should be pretty much super accurate now.

[Guest Deeg]

I'm just wondering if anyone can help me out with the mr robot stas weight I'm trying to build the prot tank at the top I the page with hit exp then mastery hit and crit but I'm not that clever I'm afraid some help would be awesome thanks

[Damien 1,514]

I'm just wondering if anyone can help me out with the mr robot stas weight I'm trying to build the prot tank at the top I the page with hit exp then mastery hit and crit but I'm not that clever I'm afraid some help would be awesome thanks

The thread is mostly about comments on the guide. If you want help, it is better to make an account on the forums and post in the Paladin sub-forum ;)

[Guest tanktank]

Legendary gems, I chose the capacitive to test it out, it's damage seems to scale with vengeance. Only tested with galleon so far, 12% of my damage. 1,193,713/10,025,575

[Guest Voltage]

I recently came back to wow after a couple month break. I've always been in the know about min/maxing and theorycrafting for my pally tank, but I admit that it was a bit of a struggle to figure out what I should be gemming/reforging to. Pretty much everyone in my raid was saying to go all out haste, but I kept reading that stamina was our best survival stat (ask mr robot recommends it, as does this guide and a number of others).

I finally found a post in Theck's blog about stam values where he gives an explaination for why raiding tanks tended to go haste, which is of course that they're making a survivability tradeoff for increased dps and healing (which can be really important in 10 mans especially). I now see that there is a sentence at the end of the stats page that mentions this, but it seems almost like an afterthought, where that ended up being the single most important piece of information to me when it came to determining how I needed to gear.

Just letting you know that perhaps this is something that could be given a bigger section or something. I know that heroic raiders aren't really the largest part of the people coming here, but even normal mode or LFR tanks should at least know about it so that they aren't confused like I was (and so that they know not to just copy what a heroic raiding guild's main tank is doing if they are still gearing up).

Also, I know you aren't the people responsible for ask mr robot, but it doesn't support gemming haste at all, I have to manually lock my gems because even in the control/haste settings it puts in solid stam gems, so maybe this could be passed along.

Thanks for your hard work.

[Guest CamelKnight]

Currently Ask Mr Robot actually focusses on gemming and reforging for haste, while this guide says nothing has changed for 5.3. Talk about confusing