Protection Paladin Tank Mythic+ Tips — Shadowlands 9.1.5

Protection Paladins are very strong in Mythic+ due to their self-and group healing, dispels, utility, and with their ability to lock down caster mobs with Avenger's Shield. While we are lacking the ability to force move enemies around, we make up for it in utility.

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our Shadowlands Mythic+ Season 2 page below.

With Patch 9.1.5 you are now able to swap Covenants as needed for your group. Protection Paladin is able to play with all 4 Covenants to varying degrees of success in Mythic+, with Venthyr being the most challenging to play around.

1. Kyrian — Divine Toll should generally be used off cooldown for Holy Power generation. You can also opt to save it as an AoE interrupt.
2. Venthyr — Ashen Hallow is another that should generally be used on cooldown ability. The only exception to this is if you are going to engage a trivial pack of enemies to save it for a more challenging group.
3. Night Fae — Blessing of the Seasons should generally be placed on your group rather than yourself. They will be able to provide more utility throughout the dungeon from your blessings which facilitate a faster key time. A key example of this would be Blessing of Autumn on a Fire Mage to allow them to use Combustion more frequently, which in turn means you can pull bigger more often.
4. Necrolord — Vanquisher's Hammer should just be used on cooldown. The impact of this covenant ability does not change how you approach any dungeon.

Kyrian and Venthyr are both great choices for Mythic+.

• Kyrian will provide you with more control of your Holy Power throughout the key and give you AoE interrupt utility.
• Venthyr will provide you with more DPS, however it requires for each use to be more planned than Kyrian due to the longer cooldown. Any situations where you have an ineffective cast of Ashen Hallow means a lot of potential lost DPS and Holy Power.

If you wish to know more about Covenants, take a look at our Covenant guide. It will go over all 4 of them explaining their strengths and weaknesses.

• Avenger's Shield is one of our strongest abilities in our toolkit for Mythic+. Not only does it interrupt, it will also silence enemies that can be silenced for 3 seconds. This allows you to almost fully lock down any caster by yourself, especially if they can be stunned by Hammer of Justice as well, and let the rest of the group deal with another caster.
• Hammer of Justice is a long single target stun that can be used often with the Fist of Justice talent. This can be used to make enemies non threatening for a couple of seconds or prevent them from moving if they may want to.
• Consecrated Ground is a very important tool to allow you to kite enemies, it easily has a 100% uptime and the cooldown of Consecration is so short that you can easily drop another Consecration down once they exit the first one.
• Blessing of Protection/ Blessing of Spellwarding and Blessing of Sacrifice are amazing tools in dungeons to help your group survive both dangerous affixes as well as abilities.
• Word of Glory and Lay on Hands are not only self-heal abilities, but can be used on group members to great effect as well to help the healer.

For more information about Protection Paladin abilities and how to use them, please refer to our rotation and cooldown page:

Bulwark of Righteous Fury is the strongest option for Mythic+ as it allows you to deal more AoE damage, which is the majority of your damage in dungeons.

An alternate Legendary option would be Holy Avenger's Engraved Sigil. The resets of Avenger's Shield will facilitate higher AoE DPS, and more single-target damage on boss encounters.

While the two above are preferable Legendaries for Mythic+ there are plenty of other effects out there. For more in-depth information about Legendaries take a look at our Legendary page.

Trinkets specifically for Mythic+ are primarily dictated by the key level you are engaging with. If its a key level that does not punish you and you can survive with your and your groups basic toolkits then offensive trinkets are the go-to here. If you require additional tools then trinkets are the answer!

For an in-depth analysis of the best gear for the right situations, check out our Gear page below.

Some dungeons may require a different set of talents, but in general, you should start with the following talents and only make changes if you know that you will need a different talent for a specific reason in a dungeon. For description of all talents, please refer to our Protection Paladin talents page.

Level	Choices
15	✓ Holy Shield	✗ Redoubt	✗ Blessed Hammer
25	✓ First Avenger	? Crusader's Judgment	✗ Moment of Glory
30	✓ Fist of Justice	✓ Repentance	✓ Blinding Light
35	✓ Unbreakable Spirit	✗ Cavalier	✓ Blessing of Spellwarding
40	✓ Divine Purpose	✗ Holy Avenger	✗ Seraphim
45	✗ Hand of the Protector	✓ Consecrated Ground	✗ Judgment of Light
50	? Sanctified Wrath	✓ Righteous Protector	? Final Stand

Blessed Hammer excels at allowing you to cast while kiting to proc Avenger's Shield, a huge quality of life improvement but not always the best defensively. While you could use Redoubt for more sustained survivability, it will generally fall off between packs and take too long to build up to be worth a lot. Meanwhile, Holy Shield is great against blockable attacks, but mainly also against spells that you would otherwise not be reducing too much, as your active mitigation does not work against magic. It is a very stable and effective talent for survivability.

First Avenger provides a lot of absorbs when AoE tanking, and is generally the best talent against big groups of mobs. First Avenger falls off rather quickly when you are up against bosses in the dungeons.

Crusader's Judgment really picks up on the weakness of First Avenger against single target. It also provides more Holy Power which means more physical survivability as well as the fair amount of single target damage in dungeons.

Moment of Glory only serves as a big 3 target AoE burst ability, if you know you may need to chain interrupt or interrupt multiple mobs quickly after each other it gives you the ability to do so, but at a rather high cost compared to the other talents.

Both Fist of Justice as well as Blinding Light have their uses. We feel Fist of Justice has generally more use due to being able to lock down a target every 25seconds instead of 60seconds, but Blinding Light gives you the ability to do something extra, and can be very efficient at mass interrupting enemies if they have been stunned too many times. Repentance can be used, should your group seriously lack crowd control.

Blessing of Spellwarding can be used to great effect in most dungeons, not only on yourself but also on others to make them immune to magic abilities.

Should you rather want Blessing of Protection, you should use Unbreakable Spirit. Unbreakable Spirit is also strong by itself with allowing you to use Ardent Defender a bit more often, but Mythic+ is also long enough for the cooldown reduction of Lay on Hands and Divine Shield to make a difference as well.

Cavalier is the lazy option for dungeons to get more movement speed.

For the most part, you will want to run with Divine Purpose, as it gives a smoother damage intake than the other options over the whole dungeon. Holy Avenger creates a lot of burst potential against AoE pulls with allowing you to cast a lot of Shield of the Righteous that do AoE damage after one another. The Armor buff from Shield of the Righteous caps at 13.5 seconds, however, so you will definitely waste some uptime.

Seraphim is mainly an offensive option, however it is not always stronger than Divine Purpose, and it costs Holy Power to use as well. It provides a tiny damage dealing ability on a rather short cooldown.

Few classes have the ability to slow enemies as reliably as Paladins, thus Consecrated Ground is almost a necessity to have if you want to start to kite. Seeing as the other talents both perform very poorly in dungeons, it is an easy choice.

Righteous Protector will generally be your go-to talent as it gives quite the cooldown reduction to both Avenging Wrath as well as Guardian of Ancient Kings. This talent can bring Avenging Wrath down to a 1-minute cooldown and Guardian of Ancient Kings to a 3.5-minute cooldown in typical play. This would mean that you would typically have Avenging Wrath available for each pull and Guardian of Ancient Kings for every third pull making planning your defensive utility much easier.

Final Stand can be a great tool in Mythic+ to allow you to survive otherwise impossible pulls, and it is good as an emergency cooldown, but best used to allow you to pull off incredible pulls; this, however, requires a game plan of where to use it and may go wasted a lot if you do not know when to use it.

Sanctified Wrath will primarily be used when you are not geared or require the additional burst of Holy Power to sustain your Shield of the Righteous.

For general information about affixes, see our general Mythic+ guide. Below we will mention some of the affixes where a Paladins utility can really help out.

• Sanguine places a pool of blood on the ground when an enemy dies. This pool will heal enemies who stay inside the zone, while damaging players. It can be wise to un-talent Consecrated Ground to easier move mobs out of Sanguine pools.
• Bursting causes enemies to detonate when slain, afflicting the group with a stacking debuff that causes players to suffer 10% of their maximum health in damage every four seconds. When handling the Bursting affix, make sure to help the rest of the group with Blessing of Spellwarding and Blessing of Sacrifice if you end up killing off a lot of enemies quickly after each other, and consider using Divine Shield for yourself. You can also spec into Hand of the Protector should more effective off-healing be needed.

• Grievous afflicts players with a stacking damage over time effect when they fall below 90%. Make sure to help your healer with Word of Glory heals on the group or talent it into Hand of the Protector should stronger off-healing be needed, each cast of Word of Glory will remove 1 stack of Grievous. It is also a good affix to make sure you have Blessing of Protection available to help your healer out, as Grievous is physical and can be removed with Blessing of Protection.
• Quaking will periodically attempt to interrupt casters by creating a damaging zone around each player. About 3 seconds after the zone forms, it will deal 20% maximum health in damage to each player caught in the zone and interrupt any casts being finished during the shockwave. Blessing of Protection will make you immune to the interrupt effect as well as the damage. This is a great tool if you have a bad timed Quaking (if, for example, the healer really needs to heal during it).
• Explosive will occasionally spawn Explosive Orbs that need to be targeted and burned down within a short period of time or they will deal significant damage to the party. Explosive Orbs are not cleaveable and the amount of orbs that spawn scales with the amount of enemies pulled. Should you be running with Crusader's Judgment you have a great tool against this affix as Judgment deals with the orbs very well. Explosive Orbs can be killed with Avenger's Shield as well, as long as you target the orb when casting.
• Necrotic debuffs the target of enemy melee swings with stacking healing reduction bleed and a minor damage over time effect. Blessing of Protection and Divine Shield are great tools to remove all your debuffs, coupled with a cancelaura macro. Final Stand can easily help set up a good pull to enable you to get control of the first part of an engagement.

The second seasonal affix of Shadowlands is Tormented. No longer are your routes planned around trash % for optimality. However, you will now be seeking out four lieutenants in fixed locations in each dungeon. These lieutenants are each a mini-boss and have an aura that they apply the moment they are active, along with a handful of distinct abilities.

Once you kill a lieutenant, they drop an Anima Orb that you can pick up to gain access to one of three pre-determined Anima Powers which will remain active for the rest of the key.

Similar to the previous seasonal affix if you wipe whilst fighting a lieutenant it will return to where it spawned from, and it will NOT regenerate any health.

If you deplete your key there will be an NPC will spawn at the location of the final boss who reset your cooldowns and clear your Heroism / Bloodlust debuff.

The four lieutenants are detailed below along with which powers to obtain:

This mini boss applies the Thanatophobia aura.

Executioner Varruth is a fairly basic Lieutenant, however while he is engaged, all healing received is reduced by 50%, so you will need to not take unnecessary damage.

Outside of that, he has three abilities:

• Wave of Terror causes anybody not near a partner to get feared for 5 seconds. If you are by yourself it can be immuned with Blessing of Spellwarding or Divine Shield, however it is simpler to just sit on somebody.
• Sever is a heavy upfront hit with a relatively large bleed on you. Use a defensive and just heal through it.
• Finally, Carnage targets somebody and applies a bleed to anybody in the circle after charging to them. Do not be in it.

After slaying this lieutenant, you will always pick The Stygian King's Barbs, purely because of its amazing throughput and on-pull threat burst potential.

This mini boss applies the Intimidation aura.

Soggodon is a another simple Lieutenant with one core mechanic: you are unable to leave his melee range. If you are out of range of him when he casts his tank mechanic he will grip you back in.

He has no important abilities that are not choreographed — if you see a swirly, get out of it.

His Aura makes it difficult to pull anything with him, so make sure to pull him separately unless you know what you are doing and have tried the pull before on a key you do not mind depleting!

When you are done with him, on 7 out of the 8 dungeons, you will be picking The Stone Ward, thanks to its passive, always-there survival gain. In Halls of Atonement specifically, due to his location — he is right before the third boss — Pick Broken Mirror instead, as the rest of the instance has very little generic damage, and high unavoidable magic damage.

This mini boss applies the Soulforge Flames aura.

Arkolath behaves very similarly to Manifestation of Pride, in that he radiates damage every 3 seconds on the entire group. Outside of that, Inferno needs to be kicked, and you should not stand in the (very evident) large red circle of doom.

Your interrupts are very helpful here as you can solo interrupt this Lieutenant in pugs, where coordinated interrupts may not be present.

When you are done with him, you will pick Crumbling Bulwark for some simple damage reduction.

This mini boss applies the Chilling Presence aura.

Oros is annoying to move around and pull because of his very heavy cast count — when he is not casting his very telegraphed frontal Frost Lance or swirlies the entire group has to dodge, he is applying a hard-hitting DoT on a random player.

If someone looks to be at risk you can save them with Blessing of Freedom to allow them to move at full speed.

You will be picking either Pendant of the Martyr or Huntsman's Horn, this choice is entirely up to you!

During Legion Timewalking Events introduced in Patch 9.1.5, you will have the possibility of re-experiencing some of the most memorable dungeons from Legion in a Mythic+ — but not quite Mythic+ — format. With it comes a new, Legion Timewalking-specific seasonal affix: Infernal.

Very reminiscent of Awakened (but without the upsides), three Legion beacons are placed near specific bosses in each dungeon. These spawn a commander and some demons that you have to kill.

These beacons automatically activate if not cleared when the nearest boss is pulled, and since the mobs that come out of it are not particularly friendly ( Observe Weakness from one of the lieutenants, for instance), we strongly recommend to just clear it first unless you have practised the affix and know what you are doing.

We'll detail the abilities of the lieutenants when the patch is finalized, goes live and Legion Timewalking goes around for its first rotation. But, essentially, do the portal, then do the nearby boss.

As playing around these seasonal affixes applies to more than just Protection Paladin, please feel free to consult our larger guides about Mythic+ and its affixes below. Within are also discussions about changes to how loot is acquired, changes to existing affixes, and even a few other new surprises.