Mists of Pandaria Classic Protection Paladin Guide

Protection Paladin remains one of the most reliable tanks in Mists of Pandaria. Protection Paladin offers a unique play style that focuses around generating as much Holy Power as possible to maximize up time on active mitigation like Shield of the Righteous. This is a considerably more active play style than previous iterations of spec; your goal with gearing now focuses heavily on maximizing your Haste rating to allow more Holy Power generation thanks to Sanctity of Battle. With the changes made to Vengeance, it also allows you to be incredibly self-sufficient allowing your healers to focus on keeping the raid alive and you will be able to do massive amounts of damage on any encounter you are taking the majority of the damage.

Yes! Protection Paladin is one of the strongest tanks in Mists of Pandaria. It is worth noting that due to the emphasis placed on Sanctity of Battle when it comes to how the spec is balanced you will likely struggle at lower gear levels. As we progress through the expansion and gain more Haste rating, Protection Paladin becomes almost entirely self-sufficient and is able to deal tons of damage on any given encounter. Protection Paladin also offers some powerful utility in the form of hands like Hand of Protection and Hand of Freedom and powerful group buffs like Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Might.

Strengths

• High damage output.
• Incredibly self-sufficient thanks to Eternal Flame and Shield of the Righteous.
• Strong group utility in the form of hands like Hand of Freedom and blessings like Blessing of Kings.
• Powerful defensive cool downs in the form of Divine Shield, Guardian of Ancient Kings, and Ardent Defender.

Weaknesses

• Limited mobility outside of Speed of Light.
• Incredibly gear dependent due to reliance on Sanctity of Battle.
• No AoE taunt.

As Horde, you will have two choices for your Paladin; Blood Elf and Tauren. Tauren is a slight favorite here due to the added health from their Endurance racial, but your choice between Tauren and Blood Elf is almost entirely personal preference. Blood Elf has Arcane Torrent, which having access to this extra silence/interrupting effect can make grouping mobs considerably easier.

As Alliance, you will have three races to choose for your Paladin; Draenei, Human, and Dwarf. Each of these races has unique bonuses that can help you in almost any encounter so the choice is almost entirely personal preference. Dwarf has Stoneform which can act as as small personal defensive cool down should you find yourself needing one. Human has Will to Survive which gets us out of most crowd controlling effects as well as some bonus Expertise rating from Mace Specialization/ Sword Specialization. Draenei has Gift of the Naaru which is a small heal-over-time effect that can help you survive high periods of incoming damage as well as Heroic Presence which offers a little bit of Hit rating. We recommend Human as there are no real other means to get out of crowd controlling effects other than your Divine Shield and being able to break a stun can easily be the difference between living or dying, but again the difference between the three is incredibly minimal.

1. Engineering — Engineering is one of our go to profession as a Protection Paladin. Nitro Boosts are the primary reason for choosing Engineering, while we do have a considerable amount of ranged abilities to generate threat on targets as a Protection Paladin the added movement speed here can help us either kite an otherwise deadly enemy or just allow us to reposition a mob much faster than otherwise possible. Outside of Speed of Light our mobility can be a bit limited so its important to have options. Synapse Springs is also a considerable increase to our damage done especially when paired with other sources of increased damage like Avenging Wrath.
2. Blacksmithing — allows us to add extra sockets to our bracers and gloves, these extra sockets provide a considerable amount of extra stats. As a Tank these static stats will often times outweigh any kind of proc and especially in lower levels of gearing this will help smooth out incoming damage.

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