[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Nairobi]

Another week and still no drops or coin roll conq chest. Or any (useful) plate off of RaDen. That's ~4 weeks of roll protection for me, and nada.

We couldn't even field 10 raiders, so we brought in a casual and cleared 13/13 in ~3.5 hours. He got like 8 coin items (plus all the other DE fodder).

I hate this game/10m loot.

I DID pick up a 535 stam trinket, in case they don't adjust/fix the Feather proc stack time issues.

[Nuttypoolog]

I have a couple quick gear questions. I Just coined the heroic feather last night, wondering with its nerf is it still better than the brutal talisman? My other question is I basically have bis non tier normal mode gear going into next tier, I have 3 tier peices in the bank. Is it worth my time to try to coin a helm or chest or should it not really matter for me to have normal upgraded 4 set for next tier doing normal modes??

[Deleted]

I have a couple quick gear questions. I Just coined the heroic feather last night, wondering with its nerf is it still better than the brutal talisman? My other question is I basically have bis non tier normal mode gear going into next tier, I have 3 tier peices in the bank. Is it worth my time to try to coin a helm or chest or should it not really matter for me to have normal upgraded 4 set for next tier doing normal modes??

We have to see the final numbers for the trinkets, right now it is unknown how many stacks it will have, and how much it's uptime will be.

For normal mode I wouldn't recommend the 4P, even if you could coin a chest or helm, you could end up better with the ret chest or helm. (Especially with the chest piece.)

[Nuttypoolog]

Ok yeah I actually have the heroic Jin rokh chest so I had stopped going for the ret tier chest, thanks for the quick reply. That does help tho, I suppose if it falls in my lap ill try it out and if not I won't worry about it

[pld]

Guys, dont try to do viscidus as prot with a 2.6 speed 2 hander and no item that spawns minions that help you with physical attacks, you will just spend 22 minutes, get frustrated, throw your cat out the window, shout some terrible things about viscidus mother, have him multiple times on between 1-4 attacks from shattering, only to respec ret and kill him in 20 seconds.

Alternatively, you can buy a Brunnhildar Great Axe from an NPC out in Storm Peaks. I found this out after I threw my cat out the window.

RIP Socks.

[Promdates]

@promdate
I think you misunderstood me, I am in no way suggesting that we should go for avoidance, obviously damage smoothing through higher SoTR uptime is superior.

Obviously, that's what we're all saying.

What I was trying to say was that a total damage reduced gives more vengeance model might encourage people to gear avoidance over smoothing because afaik avoidance still gives higher TDR than smoothing.

That would be a 100% stupid vengeance model. Not every class mitigates damage the same way, and you could theoretically abuse it by stacking mitigation cooldowns for a really large hit to gain insane levels of vengeance. The way it currently works, vengeance based on unmitigated damage incoming, is easier to balance across all classes as you know every class will take x-y damage from an ability because that's what the boss hits for. Yes, according to Theck's old TDR spreadsheet, it lists Mastery>Armor>Hit>Exp>Dodge>Parry>Str>Haste.

I was trying to say that would be one more reason why the "damage reduced" vengeance model would be a bad idea. Maybe I'm wrong about avoidance (in theory at least) giving you more TDR though, I don't pay too much attention to that since I could care less about uncontrollable avoidance.

Dodge/Parry, while not terrible stats, aren't our "best" stat. TDR is a metric that we do not care about anymore. This isn't cataclysm, this is MoP. Active Mitigation is the new way to tank, which is why people don't care about D/P anymore. It's hard to know when you will D/P an ability, and it's something you can NOT rely on for specific things. There's fight that I can think of that having a high D/P rate will be good... that's General Nazgrim since on PTR you can D/P his sunder stack. Haste allows you to have a better reliable method of reducing damage via SotR. The more haste you have, the more you can cast it, so the more damage you will smooth out.

[Deleted]

Alternatively, you can buy a Brunnhildar Great Axe from an NPC out in Storm Peaks. I found this out after I threw my cat out the window.

RIP Socks.

Freezing him over was not the issue, you can just use the elemental force enchant from mop, costs like 40g, it was the physical attacks

Gah, still bad memories from that.

[Promdates]

I have a couple quick gear questions. I Just coined the heroic feather last night, wondering with its nerf is it still better than the brutal talisman? My other question is I basically have bis non tier normal mode gear going into next tier, I have 3 tier peices in the bank. Is it worth my time to try to coin a helm or chest or should it not really matter for me to have normal upgraded 4 set for next tier doing normal modes??

If you do not have 4p Heroic tier with 2/2 upgrades, using 4p tier gear would not be beneficial in T16. The reason why Heroic 2/2 would be worth it, is because the difference in item level between that and normal SoO is smaller than normal mode to normal mode.

- - - Updated - - -

I hate this game/10m loot.

My old HDD pooped itself early monday night, so I haven't been able to get on at all

[Nuttypoolog]

Ok that makes sense, basically any upgrade I get will be worth equipping right away, thank you. So bummed I been trying for the feather for for so long finally get it heroic even and it will be nerfed with the next tier lol.

Off topic, I may not post all that much but, I lurk like all the time. Just want to say that the prot pally community rocks and all you guys are so helpfull it is awesome. Thanks

[Nairobi]

If you do not have 4p Heroic tier with 2/2 upgrades, using 4p tier gear would not be beneficial in T16. The reason why Heroic 2/2 would be worth it, is because the difference in item level between that and normal SoO is smaller than normal mode to normal mode.

Not really directed at you, but I know you're familiar:

Do we have a finalized loot table for SoO? I'm just trying to plan things like coin rolls, upgrade paths, etc. I know there was a (VERY) rudimentary one early on, and I may have missed the updates.

Specifically - Looking for chest options, since it's clear I won't see a tier chest in t15 now, and I need to unload this POS HC JinRohk one. I believe that Sha drops the tier token (odd, since he's the 4th boss), which would be ups, but I recall there was an off-set piece as well.

That, and I need to re-evaluate my trinkets.

My old HDD pooped itself early monday night, so I haven't been able to get on at all

Go SSD! Did you manage to save any of your WTF/WDB, addons, etc? Else that's gonna REALLY suck Got 2 weeks to get it sorted at least.

[Promdates]

Do we have a finalized loot table for SoO? I'm just trying to plan things like coin rolls, upgrade paths, etc. I know there was a (VERY) rudimentary one early on, and I may have missed the updates.

Yes, somewhat. I know I linked a spreadsheet with all of the plate tanking (and dps) gear and all of the agi gear for brewmasters. I'm also going to assume this is correct for boss drops.

Go SSD! Did you manage to save any of your WTF/WDB, addons, etc? Else that's gonna REALLY suck Got 2 weeks to get it sorted at least.

You'll be happy to know that a new SSD and my new WD Caviar Black 2TB literally just walked in the door via UPS. Hopefully my other WD CB 2TB is good, since that has all of my tv shows, movies, music on it. I should have a few copies of my wtf/wdb folders (I had wow installed on two separate HDD with the same configs. I'll find out later today I guess.

[Nairobi]

Thanks, that's what I was looking for. Edit: HOLY SHIT those are huge tables... ugh.

Well played. Which SSD did you end up getting?

Best of luck with the restore, always sucks when stuff like that happens

[Promdates]

The Samsung 840 2.5in 120GB SSD. Yeah, the tables are huge. You could probably just go through wowhead and sort by boss and then sort by spec since they added that feature recently.

[pld]

Hello massive loot tables. Found an interesting trinket from Garrosh: http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=102307

It's a generic stam trinket with a hint of DPS spice. Think it'll be useful for early heroic progression?

[Promdates]

That's gonna be more beneficial for Warriors, Druids, and maybe DK's and Monks. I wouldn't know how often you'd want a stamina trinket as a paladin now, I guess you could use one... but no one uses the one that drops from LS now as it is!

edit: there is also http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=102296

[Deleted]

I would honestly not want a stamina trinket with crit use a paladin. If I am using a stamina trinket as a paladin (10 man), it means something in that fight scares the shit out of me. If that is the case, I would much rather want a defensive use than an offensive one. A crit use on a trinket that gives haste (daydreaming) would be great, but not on a stamina trinket.

That is however good for the tank classes that scale with crit.

My favourite options for a stamina trinket would be

1. On-use increased health ala battlemaster
2. On-use magical damage reduction
2. On-use mastery
3. On-use absorb shield

[Promdates]

http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=102306 is the only stamina trinket I would consider honestly. Because it reduces the CD of:

Guardian of Ancient Kings
Avenging Wrath
Ardent Defender
Devotion Aura
Ardent Defender
Divine Protection
Divine Shield

Granted, the trinket itself says 18%, but the spell proc only says 8%.

[Deleted]

The spell proc says 8% for every version from LFR to Heroic Warforged, I would go with what says on the trinket is accurate.

[Nairobi]

http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=102306 is the only stamina trinket I would consider honestly. Because it reduces the CD of:

Guardian of Ancient Kings
Avenging Wrath
Ardent Defender
Devotion Aura
Ardent Defender
Divine Protection
Divine Shield

Granted, the trinket itself says 18%, but the spell proc only says 8%.

Yeah, you beat me to that.

This is def worth using, and I foresee using it with Thok's Tail for the %haste/heal scaling as well.

We'll def lose some bolus of stats that we have now (1700ish x2 on mine, for example), but that may not be a huge deal with the lolflation we're seeing.

Still trying to decide on which boots, neck, chest I need to go after first.

Also, WHY ARE THERE STILL CAPES?!?!!! FFS.

Sure, there's not a ton, but c'mon man.



Edit: was wondering why it said "6 of your abilities" but listed 7. Then I saw AD is on there twice... lulz.

[Deleted]

It no longer affects raid cooldowns, so it won't affect Devotion Aura.
That would have made it tooo mandatory.

Although it is still one of the best trinkets.

PS:

It currently affects:

Guardian of Ancient Kings
Avenging Wrath
Ardent Defender
Divine Protection
Divine Shield
Hand of Protection

http://ptr.wowhead.com/spell=145992