Protection Paladin Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

1. Before pull: Pre-place Consecration where you will be fighting
2. Before pull: Pull the enemy with Hand of Reckoning
3. Before pull: Blessed Hammer on the way in for Holy Power
4. Avenging Wrath
5. Divine Toll
6. Hammer of Wrath
7. Hammer of Light
8. Shield of the Righteous
9. Hammer of Wrath
10. Shield of the Righteous
11. Avenger's Shield
12. Blessed Hammer
13. Shield of the Righteous
14. Arcane Torrent

1. Avenging Wrath
2. Sacred Weapon if you do not have Avenging Wrath active
3. Divine Toll
4. Hammer of Light
5. Consecration (if you are not standing in it)
6. Shield of the Righteous when you are at 3-5 Holy Power to prevent overcapping on Holy Power.
7. Hammer of Wrath / Judgment
8. Hammer of the Righteous / Blessed Hammer
9. Avenger's Shield
10. Arcane Torrent
11. Word of Glory if you have a charge of Shining Light and are below 50% Health
12. Consecration if everything else is on cooldown to refresh the duration

1. Avenging Wrath
2. Sacred Weapon if you do not have Avenging Wrath active
3. Divine Toll
4. Hammer of Light
5. Consecration (if you are not standing in it)
6. Shield of the Righteous when you are at 3-5 Holy Power to prevent overcapping on Holy Power.
7. Avenger's Shield
8. Hammer of Wrath / Judgment
9. Hammer of the Righteous / Blessed Hammer
10. Arcane Torrent
11. Word of Glory if you have a charge of Shining Light and are below 50% Health
12. Consecration if everything else is on cooldown to refresh the duration

Threat is the basis of how you keep enemies attacking you. This is achieved through a function of damaging enemies to make yourself the most threatening target to them.

Attacks will generate 1 point of threat per point of damage. For tanks this is increased to 10.5 points of threat per point of damage. This in reality means that as long as your DPS are not doing more than 9.5 times your damage you will keep threat away from them. This sounds pretty high (and it is) but some DPS specs can do egregious amounts of burst DPS in their cooldown windows and grab threat instead of you. In scenarios like this you will want to use your own cooldowns to keep up!

Each individual enemy has their own threat table based on damage they have taken from individual players.

So how do we generate threat effectively as a tank? This is quite simple, just do DPS. Play your rotation as you are expected to and you should not have many difficulties outside of the rare scenario of a DPS doing very high amounts of burst damage. In these scenarios we also have Taunt Abilities to help us out.

Hand of Reckoning is your taunting ability. It only works on a single target and has an 8-second cooldown, forcing the target to attack you for 3 seconds (even if you currently have an immunity effect active), putting you on top of the mob's threat table, and causing you to generate 8 times more threat for 3 seconds (this is multiplied on the original modifier of 9.5x).

Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory are your two active mitigation abilities (though Word of Glory is a heal, so it does not really mitigate damage).

Shield of the Righteous is your main damage mitigation ability. It costs 3 Holy Power, and each cast grants you a 4.5-second buff that increases your Armor (the amount of Armor is increased by your Strength). Shield of the Righteous deals damage to all enemies directly in front of you and does not require a target to cast.

Shield of the Righteous is off the global cooldown, so you can easily fit it in together with your normal rotation. The exact timing for when to use it depends greatly on your circumstances, but in general, you should aim to have it active nearly all of the time in combat and when that is not possible you should utilise downtime in combat to your advantage to pool Holy Power for example when you are tanking in a raid and do not have threat of the boss.

You want to never cap out at 5 Holy Power while using a Holy Power generating ability, but you also want to avoid using Shield of the Righteous when at 3 Holy Power, as you may not have time to build up the Holy Power again should you need it right after each other.

Word of Glory costs 3 Holy Power and is a small heal which is increased by your missing health.

Given its cost of Holy Power, you should wait to use Word of Glory until your health is at a comfortably low level (around 30-50% health) to gain the highest possible benefit from it without dying. Every 3 casts of Shield of the Righteous will give you a charge of Shining Light that makes your next Word of Glory free to cast. You can have a maximum of two Shining Light charges at a time.

Your general aim should be to only use Word of Glory when it is free with Shining Light.

If you are playing Lightsmith you will want to use your Shining Light charges a bit more liberally as they give cooldown reduction to your Hero Talent ability.

Optional: Hand of the Protector can be used in scenarios where you need to help your healer(s) and you will effectively become another healer to support them. It will allow you to gain the scaling buff to the heal based on missing HP on other players but comes at a cost of not being able to use Shield of the Righteous for damage instead. This also poses an additional risk of running out of mana as if you heal other players too much you will not have the mana to do your standard rotation and may die as a result.

There are three auras available to use, and only one can be active at a time for your entire group. They will not stack with each other. If you have multiple Paladins in the group it can be beneficial for you to use a different aura each. In general this will be a Priority system of:

• Holy Paladin will want to use Devotion Aura.
• The second Paladin will use Crusader Aura (this makes Divine Steed faster).
• If there is a silence effect you cannot negate then the second/third paladin should use Concentration Aura.

What do the auras do?:

• Devotion Aura: When active, this Aura will reduce the damage everyone in range takes by 3%. This Aura will be used by default, the only exceptions to this are when you have multiple Paladins in the group, where one will use another Aura to ensure you all benefit from multiple Auras. In the scenario you have a Holy Paladin in the group, they should use Devotion Aura as their Aura Mastery will empower it to make it stronger.
• Crusader Aura: When active, this will increase all mounted speed by 20% for all players in range. Interestingly, this also applies to Divine Steed. This Aura will primarily be used when you are mounted.
• Concentration Aura will reduce the duration of interrupt and silence effects by 30%.

Divine Shield is one of the most powerful defensive cooldowns in the game as it makes you immune to nearly everything (there are a select few boss abilities which ignore immunity effects). However it has one major drawback.

If you are under the effects of an immunity effect you will be ignored by enemies until the effect is over. However there are ways around this.

• The Final Stand talent will force a taunt effect on every enemy around you for the duration of Divine Shield.
• You can use Hand of Reckoning to force the enemy to attack you for the short fixate period while the taunt is active. (You will need to cancel the Divine Shield before this effect ends to ensure they do not attack someone else briefly using a macro such as this one).
• If the effect you are trying to negate is being casted directly on you and the cast has started it will finish on you. Apply Divine Shield when the cast has started and remove Divine Shield once it has resolved.
• You can also just use Divine Shield to remove harmful debuffs that are on you by applying and removing Divine Shield instantly with a cancelaura macro (linked above).

One final note about Divine Shield is that if there is a mechanic which targets a random player. If you are immune to the effect before the target picking process begins you will be completely ignored as a potential target. This can be beneficial in some scenarios but in others it can be harmful as it will go to another player instead.

Blessing of Protection lets you pull many of the same tricks on other players (since you can cast it on any raid member). It removes many Physical DoTs and bleeds. In a raid team with several Paladins, this can eliminate the danger from an otherwise complicated mechanic.

In addition, mobs that fixate on a random player often ignore that the target is in fact immune from Blessing of Protection. This is particularly helpful when the mob targets a caster or healer, as it can allow them to skip kiting a mob and maintain their full DPS/HPS output.

Finally, Blessing of Protection frequently bypasses the target-selection mechanics the same way Divine Shield does. Casting Blessing of Protection on a player before the target-selection process can ensure that they do not get chosen. This can allow them to move to locations that would otherwise be dangerous to themselves or the raid.

Blessing of Spellwarding is functionally the same as Blessing of Protection but for magical abilities. It shares the same cooldown as Blessing of Protection. It does not remove debuffs like Divine Shield (Physical/Magical) or Blessing of Protection (Physical only) does.

Lay on Hands is essentially a massive heal with a very long cooldown. It will heal you (or a targeted ally) for your maximum health, with a 10-minute cooldown. It is best used as an emergency heal, either for yourself or another raid member

You should prefer to use Word of Glory to heal yourself in these scenaios , but if it is for another player you should use Lay on Hands to save their life.

Avenging Wrath increases both damage done and healing done by 20%. This also changes Judgment into Hammer of Wrath, giving you even more damage. When talented you will also gain 20% critical strike chance to all Paladin abilities.

Sentinel replaces Avenging Wrath. Sentinel will start with 15 stacks of Divine Resolve. Each stack gives you 2% maximum health and reduces your damage taken by 2% for 20 seconds. After 5 seconds, you will lose 1 stack per second, but spending 3 Holy Power will prevent a stack from being lost. You retain the other bonuses of Avenging Wrath with Sentinel (increased damage and changing Judgment into Hammer of Wrath, but not the 20% critical strike bonus).

Protection Paladins have access to two damage mitigation cooldowns with Ardent Defender (short cooldown) and Guardian of Ancient Kings (longer cooldown).

• Guardian of Ancient Kings provides you with a 50% damage reduction for 8 seconds on a 3-minute cooldown. You should use this before a period of large damage.
• Ardent Defender is another powerful defensive ability with a 1.5-minute cooldown and an 8-second duration. It reduces all damage taken by 20% while it is active, and it causes the first killing blow against you to heal you up to 12% of your maximum health instead of killing you (the latter effect consumes the Ardent Defender). This ability is best used to bypass deadly encounter mechanics or to save your life in critical moments. It also allows you to play at low health and still be safe.

You should not be afraid to use Ardent Defender as it is regularly available, however your usage of Guardian of Ancient Kings should be a bit more planned out as it is not as readily available. You can gain a second charge of Guardian of Ancient Kings with Empyrean Authority making it more readily available.