Protection Paladin Tank Stat Priority — Dragonflight 10.1
On this page, you will find out the optimal stat priority for your Protection Paladin. We first present the stat priority, before delving into more complex explanations. Our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.1.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Protection Paladin stat priority.
The Basics of Stats for Protection Paladin
Defensively, the stat priority for Protection Paladins are as follows:
- Haste;
- Mastery;
- Versatility;
- Critical Strike.
It is important to take into account that Haste, Mastery, and Versatility are all extremely close in terms of value, and item level is by far the most important aspect of gear upgrades. In most cases this stat priority is only really useful comparing when you have two items of the same item level.
Once you start to approach 30% Mastery you will want to consider balancing this stat budget out with more Versatility where possible to avoid Diminishing Returns.
Getting a Better Understanding of Protection Paladin Stats
Statistics Explanations
Haste reduces your global cooldown and the cooldowns of most of the
abilities that are part of your rotation. Haste's main task is to increase
Shield of the Righteous uptime, to generally smooth damage intake
and make you more predictable to heal. At ~20% Haste you will have more than
enough rotational Holy Power to achieve very high uptimes on
Shield of the Righteous. At ~25-30% Haste you will be able to cast
Word of Glory
without fear of dropping Shield of the Righteous uptime. Once you are this
level of Haste you will want to
start looking to maximise the benefits of other stats over Haste.
Mastery, thanks to Mastery: Divine Bulwark, increases your
chance to block attacks and your attack power, as well as increasing the
damage reduction you get from standing in your
Consecration. It works similar to Versatility since
it is straight up damage reduction but also increases damage and healing
done, but due to increased attack power. It simply outperforms Versatility
due to increasing block chance as well.
New to Dragonflight: Mastery now has the additional property to block
perodic spell damage at a rate equal to your block. This functionality was in
Holy Shield in Shadowlands, but has moved to Mastery in Dragonflight.
Versatility increases all damage and healing done as well as
reducing damage taken. Versatility gives you slightly more damage reduction
per point than Mastery and it will also be active outside of
Consecration. However, it is not as strong as
Mastery due to missing out on block chance as well.
Critical Strike increases your damage and healing output,
and also gives you Parry, as you get 1 Parry from for every 1 point of
Critical Strike. Critical Strike does very little for you defensively, outside
of the parry increasing which can increase the frequency at which
Grand Crusader can trigger.
Word of Glory is also able to
critically strike which almost guarantees a full heal, however this is
unreliable and just a nice bonus when it does occur.
Offensively, it is a great stat, however it is not something that should be
sought after as a priority.
Strength increases the Armor gained from
Shield of the Righteous, your attack power, and your parry chance
(by a small amount).
Against most encounters you need to have a decent amount of health, in order to give yourself the chance to be healed before a subsequent attack kills you. In addition to this minimum amount of Stamina, we feel that Stamina remains quite valuable for Protection Paladins. However, most of your Stamina is innately found on your gear, but it is always a good option to have additional Stamina available, should it temporarily be necessary through trinkets, enchants, and gemming (in that order). As you become more comfortable determining the amount of survivability needed for each encounter, you can shift some of that Stamina into other stats.
Changelog
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Paladin Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Panthea, who raids in Catalyst and is the author of TankNotes. He plays all tanks and is a Moderator for the Hammer of Wrath Paladin Discord. You can follow him on Twitter.
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