Protection Paladin Tank Guide — 12.0.5

Midnight Season 1 has released, and with it came a lot of new content. It brought with it three new Raids, alongside heralding the start of Season 1 for both Mythic+ and PvP. With all the new things available, we've provided some dedicated hubs covering everything available!

There are no changes documented for Protection Paladins with Patch 12.0.5.

However, a variety of open world content releases worth checking out!

• The Voidforge Unlocks!
  The Voidforge is Midnight's take on Bonus Rolls and Turbo Boost, allowing you to target specific big ticket items through a new bonus roll system. You can also further empower trinkets and weapons, and we have recommendations on our Gear page.
• Void Assaults are Unleashed
  Eversong Woods and Zul'Aman are under siege from the forces of the Void. Thwarting their attacks provide a new way to acquire gear all the way up to Hero level, and you can check out more on our Void Assault hub.
• Disrupt Ritual Sites
  Sharing a similar reward structure to Void Assaults, Ritual Sites are instanced content similar to Delves. You can find out all about them on our Ritual Sites page.

Click for Previous Season 1 Hotfixes

For the Launch of Season 1 there have been no changes proposed for Protection Paladins. Blizzard has previously announced they will be keeping an eye on performance of every class and spec for the first few weeks of Season 1 and that there will be tuning for each of these weeks. If any changes are announced for Protection Paladins we will update the guides to reflect what the changes are and if they have impacted any major decisions that you will make such as Rotational Priority, Talent usage, Hero Talent usage, or Gear choices.

Midnight Class Tuning

When it comes to tuning adjustments, our next planned pass is expected to arrive with the Midnight Season 1 launch on March 17. Our next pass will follow immediately afterwards utilizing data gathered during the week Heroic difficulties are available; these changes will go live with the launch of Mythic raid difficulty and Mythic+ on March 24.

Beyond these dates, we will look to perform more tuning passes based on data gathered during the starting weeks of Mythic difficulty for Season 1 and the March on Quel’Danas available the week of March 31.For these two passes we err on the side of caution with the amount of tuning we do until their respective Mythic end-bosses die to avoid being overly disruptive to progression. After these key dates we will have several check-in passes planned roughly a month apart. Once players obtain higher item level and better optimized gear sets, the throughput of several specs will shift up or down relative to others and we feel it’s important to be diligent in looking at the current state of class balance as time goes on.

Midnight is here and with it comes a large amount of changes! Many talents have been removed with new talents being added to replace them, new Hero Talents have been added but the core rotation for Protection Paladins have not changed much. The main rotational piece you are likely to notice is that Hammer of Wrath is now a passive ability and will replace Judgment when you are in Avenging Wrath, Eye of Tyr has been removed, and Guardian of Ancient Kings is now a 3 minute cooldown.

The core Paladin Talent Tree looks very similar to how it was in The War Within. The Protection Talent Tree has had a bit of a shake up with the left side of the tree focusing more on Avenger's Shield and the right side focusing on Consecration. These changes complement the spells rather than changing how they function. The end result is that the rotation has not really changed, so you do not need to worry about learning how to play Protection Paladin all over again!

Apex Talents are new talents at the end of the Protection Talent Tree which you can unlock from Level 81 with points being awarded to you at Levels 81, 84, 87 and 90. These are all passive effects which for Protection Paladins will give you more rotational Holy Power to spend and increase damage.

Glory of the Vanguard (2nd and 3rd Point) specifically synergise well with Divine Toll as you can rotationally trigger the effects of Glory of the Vanguard (1st Point) through casting Judgment and the free casts of Avenger's Shield via Divine Resonance will trigger the Holy Power regenerative effects.

Finally Glory of the Vanguard (4th Point) will make every cast of Avenger's Shield benefit from the effects of Vanguard giving it bonus damage and Holy Power generation while Avenging Wrath is active. This in reality would essentially give you an endless supply of Holy Power during Avenging Wrath.

Lightsmith is functionally identical to how it played in The War Within however the Tier Set Bonus which made it a powerhouse in Season 3 has been removed and added in as a Hero Talent at a lower power level.

Templar has been made a bit stronger, it is now hooked to Divine Toll (as Eye of Tyr has been removed) which may not sound like a big change but Avenger's Shield now contributes to a larger potion of your total damage and the Templar Tree adds to that power even more!

There are a few changes in this department. A short cooldown defensive ability has been removed (Eye of Tyr), but two core changes have been added to make Protection Paladins defensively very powerful in Midnight.

• Mastery has changed to focus on Block and Spell Block. Very high levels of Mastery will be required to guarantee a Spell Block which will not be achievable until much later in the expansion.
• Guardian of Ancient Kings is now a 3 minute cooldown (down from 5) and has two charges!

Earlier it was mentioned that Avenger's Shield contributes more DPS. This is primarily though Refining Fire which adds a DoT to targets hit which has been significantly buffed from ~57% of the damage over 5 seconds to 100%. If we add that to Divine Toll being a core ability for Templar to activate Hammer of Light and Avenging Wrath having a fixed 1 minute cooldown (which matches Toll) you have a very clear burst DPS window. This is all before we mention Divine Exaction which is a new Hero Talent for Templars which makes Divine Toll cast two more times at 150% power. With all of these combined the DPS output of Protection Paladins should be in a better place than it was in The War Within.