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Table of Contents
General Information
On this page, we present the viable talent choices for Protection Paladins in World of Warcraft Legion 7.3.5. We detail what each of the talents do and in which situations they should be taken.
The other pages of our Protection Paladin guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.
About Our Reviewer
This guide has been reviewed and approved by Treckie, who has been a long-time leading Protection Paladin who has competed for world first kills for 5 years. He is one of the casters for both last year's and this year's upcoming Mythic Dungeon invitational. You can watch his stream on Twitch and you can follow him on Twitter.
1. Talent Choices
| Level | Choices | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 |
✔
Holy Shield
|
✔
Blessed Hammer
|
✘
Consecrated Hammer
|
| 30 |
✔
First Avenger
|
?
Bastion of Light
|
✔
Crusader's Judgment
|
| 45 |
?
Fist of Justice
|
?
Repentance
|
?
Blinding Light
|
| 60 |
✔
Blessing of Spellwarding
|
✔
Cavalier
|
✘
Retribution Aura
|
| 75 |
✔
Hand of the Protector
|
?
Knight Templar
|
✘
Final Stand
|
| 90 |
✔
Aegis of Light
|
?
Consecrated Ground
|
✔
Judgment of Light
|
| 100 |
?
Righteous Protector
|
?
Seraphim
|
✘
Last Defender
|
Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area
(such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, 
Tome of the Tranquil Mind
and 
Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow
players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of
combat.
2. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Protection Paladins
|
✔
Holy Shield
|
✔
Blessed Hammer
|
✘
Consecrated Hammer
|
Holy Shield increases your block chance by 15%, allows you to block
spells, and causes your successful blocks to deal Holy damage to your
attacker.
Blessed Hammer replaces 
Hammer of the Righteous. It has
3 charges (up from Hammer of the Righteous' 2), and the hammer can hit all
targets it comes in contact with on its path, multiple times. Enemies that are hit take Holy
damage and deal 12% less damage to you on their next auto attack.
Consecrated Hammer removes the recharge time of
Hammer of the Righteous. Additionally, the talent always causes
Hammer of the Righteous, 
Shield of the Righteous, and
Hand of the Protector to always gain the benefit of you
standing in 
Consecration (regardless of whether
you are or are not).
We recommend taking Blessed Hammer in this tier. The hammers of this
ability will spiral outwards to damage and debuff the same target multiple
times (usually 2-3 times depending on the size of the mob and its position),
meaning that the uptime per cast on the 12% damage done debuff will be high
(but less, the faster the enemy hits), as
will the amount of damage that the ability deals. All of these factors make it
the best talent in this tier in terms of both survivability and damage
output.
Holy Shield adds a straight up 15% chance to block as well as making
abilities classified as spells blockable. Note that this does not
include all forms of damage, but rather only abilities that are normally
blockable, as well as abilities classified as spells; some abilities that deal
physical damage can be classified as spells as well. Holy Shield is great at
reducing overall damage intake, but is not something to be relied upon against
big nuke damage, as you will still have a fairly high chance of not blocking.
It is recommended on encounters that either have mainly threatening magic
damage/blockable non-auto-attacks (since Blessed Hammer will not do
anything against that) or where you have a lot of smaller hits per minute, as
in that case it will outshine Blessed Hammer.
Finally, Consecrated Hammer is not worth taking, given how strong
Blessed Hammer and Holy Shield are.
3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Protection Paladins
|
✔
First Avenger
|
?
Bastion of Light
|
✔
Crusader's Judgment
|
First Avenger causes 
Avenger's Shield to deal 50% increased
damage to the first target hit, and also increases the chance for
Grand Crusader to proc by 10%.
Bastion of Light is an active ability with a 2-minute cooldown.
It immediately grants you 3 charges of Shield of the Righteous.
Crusader's Judgment causes 
Judgment to have 2 charges,
and it causes Grand Crusader to also grant a charge of
Judgment.
First Avenger provides a big increase in 
Grand Crusader proc
frequency when it comes to AoE tanking. Since 
Avenger's Shield is one of
the strongest tools for AoE damage, this talent is an excellent choice for
damage output in both AoE and single target situations. More procs and slightly
more damage means a lot more shielding with the 
Bulwark of Order
Artifact trait.
Bastion of Light can be considered a form of a cooldown, if you want
a period of reliable 
Shield of the Righteous coverage. It pairs well with
Righteous Protector to be able to dish out a couple of
Hand of the Protector heals in a short amount of time, but due to the
fact that Shield of the Righteous can only stack up to 3 times its duration,
you are forced to pace this talent a bit more. That said, it can still help you
achieve about 40-50 seconds of straight Shield of the Righteous coverage,
which can be really strong on encounters that favor this timing.
Crusader's Judgment is the other side of the coin. Compared to
Bastion of Light, it instead gives you the Shield of the Righteous
charges spread out rather than all in one go. This is advantageous if the
damage intake changes a lot over the fight and you can choose when to use
Shield of the Righteous better and waste less. This talent plays well with the
Judgment of Light talent to boost its healing. Overall, Crusader's
Judgment is a solid passive go-to talent defensively. Make sure to always use
your Judgment stacks so you do not end up wasting any.
4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Protection Paladins
|
?
Fist of Justice
|
?
Repentance
|
?
Blinding Light
|
Fist of Justice causes your Judgment to reduce the remaining cooldown of
Hammer of Justice by 10 seconds.
Repentance is an active ability with a 15-second cooldown. It is a
form of crowd-control that incapacitates the target for up to 1 minute. Damage
done will break the effect. Repentance can only be used against Demons,
Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids, and Undead.
Blinding Light is an active ability with a 90-second cooldown.
It disorients all enemies within a 10-yard radius around you, and non-holy
damage done to them will break the disorient effect.
The choice in this tier is entirely up to you; Fist of Justice vastly
reduces the cooldown of 
Hammer of Justice. It does, however, suffer from
diminishing returns if your group likes randomly stunning constantly, and
unless used often, Hammer of Justice by itself might be enough without the
lowered cooldown. It is generally the go-to talent though, since you can just
throw it out every 15 seconds or so.
Blinding Light is a great AoE crowd control/interrupt for 5-man
content, and it does not suffer from diminishing returns. This means that if
the add is susceptible to crowd control, it can be interrupted no matter how
many other stuns it has already suffered. Its long cooldown means that using it
requires more planning.
Repentance has its uses, in cases where you want to crowd control
some important add in a trash pack, or maybe an important add on a boss
fight.
5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Protection Paladins
|
✔
Blessing of Spellwarding
|
✔
Cavalier
|
✘
Retribution Aura
|
- Blessing of Spellwarding replaces
Blessing of Protection.
It has a 3-minute cooldown (down from 5), and it protects against all magical
attacks, instead of against Physical damage. Otherwise, it functions exactly
like Blessing of Protection, but since you can still receive physical damage while it
is active, it does not prevent you from tanking a mob with it active. 
Cavalier causes your Divine Steed to have 2 charges.
Retribution Aura is an aura that is applied to all party or raid
members within 60 yards. Whenever yourself or an affected by Retribution
Aura receives a melee attack, the attacker takes a small amount of Holy
damage.
The first question you need to ask yourself when looking at these talents is
if you need 
Blessing of Protection. Since
Blessing of Spellwarding replaces Blessing of Protection, you first have
to make sure what you need the most; both can be used to cheese plenty of
mechanics and abilities, especially in raids. If you do not particularly feel
you need either, you get to choose.
Blessing of Spellwarding is an amazing tool for both dungeons and
raiding, for any situation that involves magic damage, giving you a
magic-damage immunity. Aside from that, it also prevents the application of
numerous debuffs (such as Necrotic), but does not remove them; this allows you to perform creative fight
strategies. Note that unlike Blessing of Protection, the bosses will still
target you while it is active. That said, they may choose to ignore you when it
comes to targeted spells (in the Antorus raid instance, this is particularly
problematic during Felhounds of Sargeras and Coven of Shivarra, as they will
turn and target someone else with their frontal cleaves if you have
Blessing of Spellwarding on yourself).
Cavalier is a great go-to talent for general use, and during
movement-heavy fights (and Mythic+ dungeons), or simply if
Blessing of Protection is needed.
Finally, Retribution Aura is incredibly weak. Considering that you
would need more than 10 Retribution Aura hits to make up for the damage of one
auto attack, it is hardly worth it even in large AoE pulls, and in most cases
it simply provides more DPS to use Cavalier in order to be able to
move around more.
6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Protection Paladins
|
✔
Hand of the Protector
|
?
Knight Templar
|
✘
Final Stand
|
- Hand of the Protector replaces
Light of the Protector. Its
cooldown is 10 seconds (down from Light of the Protector's 15 seconds),
and it can be used on any friendly target, not just yourself. It heals for
the same amount (30% of missing health) and also benefits from standing in
Consecration (causing its healing to be increased by
20%). 
Knight Templar reduces the cooldown of Divine Steed by 50%,
and reduces all damage you take by 20% while you are mounted on your Divine
Steed.
Final Stand causes your 
Divine Shield to also force all
targets within 15 yards to attack you for its 8-second duration.
The default choice in this tier should be Hand of the Protector. This
effectively lowers the cooldown of your only self-heal by 33%, making it a
lot more accessible to counter damage spikes. If you have the tier 7
Righteous Protector talent (which also affects
Light of the Protector), then you will have access to self-healing that
is far more controllable.
Knight Templar can be a great mobility tool, but the sacrifice you
make using this instead of Cavalier is too great. While you can use
both talents at the same time, it will hardly ever been necessary to obtain
that much mobility. The damage reduction it offers is nice, and can technically
be stacked with other abilities against heavy nukes, but since it is on the
global cooldown and only lasts 3 seconds, it is very annoying to use and halts
your rotation when you do so.
If you need another strong defensive cooldown, then you could take
Final Stand. It is an extremely powerful tanking cooldown, since it
actively makes you immune to all damage for its duration. That being said, it
is very hard to really justify using it over Hand of the Protector. On a
longer fight, where damage is steadily incoming, Hand of the Protector will be
a lot more useful than a strong cooldown every 5 minutes. There are also some
bosses where you might want to use 
Divine Shield to remove a debuff, or
soak a mechanic or ability; the boss will still target you for 3 seconds during
Divine Shield after you use taunt, and you would not need to run Final Stand.
All in all, this talent does not add a lot and we do not recommend taking it
outside of very fringe cases. Its greatest feature is that it can make some
Necrotic pulls in Mythic+ much easier, but we still do not feel that it is
necessary.
7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Protection Paladins
|
✔
Aegis of Light
|
?
Consecrated Ground
|
✔
Judgment of Light
|
Aegis of Light is an active ability with a 3-minute cooldown. It is
a channeled ability that, for 6 seconds, reduces the damage you and any allies
located within a 10-yard radius behind you take by 20%.
Consecrated Ground causes up to 6 allies who stand within your
Consecration to be healed every second, and also reduces the movement
speed of enemies in your Consecration by 50%.
Judgment of Light causes Judgment to apply a debuff with 40
charges to the target, called Judgment of Light. When the target is attacked,
the attacker is healed and one charge is consumed.
The default raiding choice in this tier should be Judgment of Light,
since it is easy to use and provides a steady amount of passive raid healing.
The healing itself is not high, but it can still make a difference and it is
generally a strong choice compared to the other talents in this tier.
Aegis of Light is a great choice of a talent to add a raid cooldown,
but given its positional requirement (reducing the damage of your allies behind
you), using it effectively while tanking can be difficult. It does also work as
a personal 20% damage reduction, but in most cases it is undesirable due to its
3-minute cooldown and the fact that you have to stand still channeling; it can
still be used against nukes if you make sure to have
Shield of the Righteous up beforehand, and then cancel the cast after the
hit has landed. There are multiple encounters where it can be used to help the
raid out however, tank-swapping encounters where there are moments during which
you are not actively tanking, this ability can be excellent for the raid.
Consecrated Ground is outclassed by Judgment of Light in
practically every raid situation, making Consecrated Ground an undesirable
raiding choice. However, Consecrated Ground is your default choice when it
comes to Mythic+ dungeons, where kiting enemies can potentially help deal with
some troublesome affixes, or just running away from mobs to give you a few
seconds of not taking damage.
8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Protection Paladins
|
?
Righteous Protector
|
?
Seraphim
|
✘
Last Defender
|
Righteous Protector causes your Shield of the Righteous casts
to reduce the remaining cooldown of Light of the Protector and
Avenging Wrath by 3 seconds.
Seraphim is an active ability with a 45-second cooldown. It
increases your Haste, Critical Strike, Mastery, and Versatility by 5500, and
it lasts 8 seconds per charge of Shield of the Righteous available when
using it, consuming the charges in the process. It can consume up to 2
charges.
Last Defender causes you to take 3% reduced damage and deal 3%
increased damage for each enemy within an 8-yard radius around you. The
effect has diminishing returns, however.
Righteous Protector increases the frequency with which you can use
Light of the Protector, and this should be your go-to single target
talent. It provides a good amount of flexibility to your kit, allowing you to
self-heal more often to recover from bursts of damage. You should also be using
the Tier 5 Hand of the Protector talent (if you do not need one of the
alternatives in that tier) to gain even more benefit. When using Righteous
Protector, you generally want to let yourself drop low on health, heal up, use
Shield of the Righteous, and this way your heal will be available again
before the Shield of the Righteous buff will expire, allowing you to use it
again. Another advantage of Righteous Protector is that it allows you to use
Avenging Wrath more often. All in all, this is the
go-to talent for personal survivability.
Seraphim does not exactly provide an increase in survivability,
since despite its bonuses, it consumes charges of
Shield of the Righteous, making it a great choice for increasing your
damage output but not for reducing incoming damage. With the importance of
Mythic+ in Legion, this is a very important talent to learn to use, as it
requires careful planning and you need to think ahead a bit more if you want to
use it safely. Generally, you will not use this for raids during progression,
unless the damage the boss does is pretty low, but in dungeons its effects are
strong, and can make Paladin tanks deal considerable amounts of damage in each
pack; it is good on both single target and AoE. Since it has a 45-second
cooldown, it does not line up nicely with
Avenging Wrath, which means you should be delaying
using Avenging Wrath until Seraphim is about to be ready.
Last Defender requires you to be able to consistently tank a lot of
mobs to really be worth taking over the other talents. It only has fringe
uses in raiding, and even in Mythic+ you cannot consistently have enough mobs
around for it to be useful over the other talents. It has weaker defensive
capabilities than Righteous Protector, and less damage output than
Seraphim.
9. ChangeLog
- 30 Jan. 2018: Updated the tier 1, 4, 5, and 6 discussions.
- 28 Aug. 2017: Updated most of the talent discussions considerably.
- 13 Jun. 2017: Made updates to tier 2, 3, and 5 talents.
- 28 Mar. 2017: Made updates to tier 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 talent evaluations.
- 10 Jan. 2017: Updated the talent descriptions to account for Patch 7.1.5, and changed some talent discussions (tiers 1, 4, 6, and 7).
- 14 Nov. 2016: Removed a mention about Blinding Light not damaging raid bosses.
- 25 Oct. 2016: Updated Bastion of Light, Crusader's Judgment, First Avenger, and Retribution Aura descriptions and discussions to account for Patch 7.1 changes.
- 17 Oct. 2016: Updated Consecrated Ground evaluation.
- 22 Sep. 2016: Updated Hand of the Protector and Light of the Protector healing percentage (now 30% of missing health).
- 19 Sep. 2016: Updated tier 1, 4, 5, and 7 talent sections to slightly re-evaluate our recommendations.
- 29 Aug. 2016: Updated for Legion's launch.
- 21 Aug. 2016: Updated Hand of the Protection description to account for a recent hotfix that changed the healing amount, and revamped Hand of the Protector, Seraphim, and Righteous Protector discussions.
- 04 Aug. 2016: Added Cavalier talent in place of Blessing of Salvation.
- 19 Jul. 2016: Removed a mention that Hand of the Protector's healing is not increased if you stand in Consecration, since this has been fixed.
- 18 Jul. 2016: Updated for the Legion pre-patch.
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