[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[celinamuna]

Just got into an argument in a pug (paladin prot) about my gearing.

"parry is the best defensive stat"
"noxxic says so!"
"Are you saying that noxxic is wrong?"

I litterly got keyboard inprints on my forehead from all the deskbashing that followed.

He was like laughing at me and everything before the first boss (did MSV for the lulz).

For the rest of the raid after that he was asking me for advice on how to gear and how to play paladin... Some people...

Was fairly sure that even noxxic changed their builds to haste/mastery one.

Also, how exactly were you handling solo tanking on tort ? (Cooldown for bats / # of healers / external cd's ? )

[Rivin]

Was fairly sure that even noxxic changed their builds to haste/mastery one.

They added them, alongside the avoidance one, but they still put stamina as the highest priority in every build.

[Nairobi]

Solo tanking Tort normal is pretty cake. With Unglyphed DivProt and UbS you can manage bites and bats like a champ. If quake is upcoming soon, use of a larger CD OR Blinding Light also makes it really easy on the healers. If you do dip, WOG tops off instantly; besides, 1-2 heals on the bats isnt that bad.

Kick the shell through the bats and you chew through them with stupid high vengeance.

Obv this doesn't fly on heroic, but it's a fun solo tank on normal

[Firefly33]

Did not use any external cooldowns. Very simple. When tanking bats, I tried to use minor cooldowns like DP, Stoneform (dwarf yo), mastery use trinket, etc, just something minor. And if bats was still alive for the quake for some reason, I popped a major cooldown.

Save SotR for snaps, make sure you have SotR for all snaps + quake. Only use outside of snap/quake if you have 5 HoPo.

I intentionally did not use a SotR on the snap right before bats spawned. This would drop me low, to like 200-300ish. Which allowed me to heal myself more with SoI = I get 100% healing aggro on bats. By using SotR before the snap, I usually got aggro on bats. But it happened that a boomkin got aggro on 1-2 of the bats with his starfall, or a healer spam AoE healed and got aggro from some bats. So I just solved this by not SotRing on the last snap, giving me 100% aggro on all bats.

Doing so also gave me 5 HoPo always when the bats landed, giving me atleast 9 seconds of SotR from the start when the bats came down, which was kinda nice to have.
Sometimes I used minor CDs right when the bats landed aswell.

We first started by using 1 tank 3 healers, then we tried 2 tanks 3 healers, but we all agreed on that it was a worse strategy. Step 1 was that the bat tank had a hard time picking up the bats as the Tortos tank got healing aggro on them. So bats was harder to control with 2 tanks. Also healers had to split their healing to much.
So we went back to 1 tank 3 healers in the end. I know people are 2 healing this encounter but our healers was not geared nor experienced for that as 2 of them are recent rerolls, so it was not that we used 3 healers because we used 1 tank, we simply had to use 3 healers or peopel were dieng from shit.

With 1 tank 3 healers, the healers had an easier time healing the tank as they only had to focus 1 tank instead of 2.

---------- Post added 2013-03-18 at 07:53 PM ----------

Solo tanking Tort normal is pretty cake.

Wouldn't say it is cake with appropriate gear levels. The tactic is cake, yes, but 1 bad timed SotR and you are dead. Not that much room for error. Was for sure harder than WotE heroic.

[Nairobi]

Fair enough, I suppose I did outgear normal Tortos a good bit (510-512ish I think?). I didn't intend to downplay, just state that it is doable and quite easily doable with a bit more gear than the "average" raider has going in on weeks 1-3.

That said, I really enjoy Horridon and Tortos's big nuke and how it plays so well with ShotR. I guess they took a note from Sha of Fear, but those fights really show which protpal's understand AM and which are just spamming buttons.

[Grimord]

Have any of you guys tried solo-tanking Durumu? I'm thinking about trying that if the enrage proves tight but I'm not sure at how many stacks I should bubble up to remove'm and still have enough to last the entire fight (using clemency ofc).

[Firefly33]

Have any of you guys tried solo-tanking Durumu? I'm thinking about trying that if the enrage proves tight but I'm not sure at how many stacks I should bubble up to remove'm and still have enough to last the entire fight (using clemency ofc).

Just remove them every minute. I did the first BoP at around 5 stacks. ( shortly after the color beams started ).

Stacks should drop themselves during the maze phase.

[Felir]

Just remove them every minute. I did the first BoP at around 5 stacks. ( shortly after the color beams started ).

Stacks should drop themselves during the maze phase.

Have they finally rebuff BoP and Divine Shield to remove DOTS again? :O

[Firefly33]

They remove physical effects. Always have. Nothing changed. And DS removes magical effects aswell.

[Soloz]

can sit around 1-2 stacks of debuff on iron qon if you are a dwarf :P, I still didn't rest til 5 stacks each time though mmm vengeance

[britishbubba]

Just remove them every minute. I did the first BoP at around 5 stacks. ( shortly after the color beams started ).

Stacks should drop themselves during the maze phase.

I didn't get a chance to try solo tanking since our bear druid is stubborn on normals, if you take UBS will the CD on DS reset to let you drop with that or do you have to alternate DS and BoPs?

[Felir]

They remove physical effects. Always have. Nothing changed. And DS removes magical effects aswell.

I misunderstood that post before. I was thinking back to Protectors of the Endless and how I couldn't bubble off that debuff.

[Firefly33]

I didn't get a chance to try solo tanking since our bear druid is stubborn on normals, if you take UBS will the CD on DS reset to let you drop with that or do you have to alternate DS and BoPs?

You still need to alternate. Or, well it is easier if you alternate. To get full effect you are going to need external bops aswell.

Basically, you wanna use 2-3 bops per cycle of phases. Depending on how fast you deal with the red adds.

Usually you bop right after beams start. Then you just bop again whenever you can. It is optional to BoP during the maze phase, it is more like, if you have extra bops, just use them, don't hurt.

[trystero]

Megaera not even mechanically hard to solo tank. Just need a high health pool tank to be able to eat dual breaths, alternative a very special raid setup that have someone that is not a tank to range tank it. (Warlocks can range tank a head for example)

Though to be honest, had a rough plan for Iron Qon and Twins, just had not had time to test them yet, as I did not do those on PTR and didn't try 1 tank on live.



You can reset the stacks. Stacks fall off themselves during the beam phase and just BoP during the colorblind phase.

Armory link? Curious as to how you gear.

[Minaa]

in 5.0 i was using Holy wrath in my macro but after 5.1 and until now holy warth share the cd with all of our skills so i cant put it on macro

is anyone of u guys used it in 5.2 ?

[Firefly33]

Armory link? Curious as to how you gear.

Gems all haste, haste/exp red, haste/stam&hit in blue.

All enchants possible into haste.
Dancing steel
Mastery enchant on shield

Rest standard.

Often using 1 stamina trinket + ghost iron dragonling but that is because no trinket has dropped yet.

Sitting on 11.35 expertise atm, hit cap. 13800 haste, 0 parry, 0 dodge (285 dodge from enchants), 1800 mastery rating.

But not like I suggest anyone to gear like me. I gear like I do for a reason that I know myself. I think people should do the same. Tanking is not a guide that you follow this and get 1 on meters. You actually need to understand how tanking works, it is an art. There is no point to follow someones guide/gear if you do not understand why.

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 10:27 AM ----------

in 5.0 i was using Holy wrath in my macro but after 5.1 and until now holy warth share the cd with all of our skills so i cant put it on macro

is anyone of u guys used it in 5.2 ?

Ehr, holy wrath always shared CD?

[Nairobi]

in 5.0 i was using Holy wrath in my macro but after 5.1 and until now holy warth share the cd with all of our skills so i cant put it on macro

is anyone of u guys used it in 5.2 ?

What macro, or what are you trying to do? Castsequence/lazytank macro?

HW has been on the GCD for as long as I can remember, not sure what other shared CD you could be talking about. But yes, I have used it in 5.2 a time or 2

[Malthanis]

HW has been on the GCD for as long as I can remember, not sure what other shared CD you could be talking about. But yes, I have used it in 5.2 a time or 2

Hell, HW used to have a cast time on it for that matter. It's never been off the GCD though.

[Butler Log]

On Durumu (10) last night (went in after the 25 man raid was over to kill the *********) I solo tanked it. HoPur on the 4th stack, Bubble immediately after the 6th. Would stack to 5 and then the maze phase would begin, then the stack would drop normally. Next phase I BoP'd myself at 6 stacks, then let it stack up to 5 at which point the maze phase began again. Bubble was ready again when I reached my next 6 stacks. Gear is 508 equipped.

[Nairobi]

Hell, HW used to have a cast time on it for that matter. It's never been off the GCD though.

Oh yeahhhh...when it had the Fear Ward icon and only hit Undead/Demon. Good times.

On Durumu (10) last night (went in after the 25 man raid was over to kill the *********) I solo tanked it. HoPur on the 4th stack, Bubble immediately after the 6th. Would stack to 5 and then the maze phase would begin, then the stack would drop normally. Next phase I BoP'd myself at 6 stacks, then let it stack up to 5 at which point the maze phase began again. Bubble was ready again when I reached my next 6 stacks. Gear is 508 equipped.

I noticed that pattern as well, and am going to try using that on our next normal kill, just for funsies. Not sure it will be doable on Heroic for quite a while, but we don't even have pulls on him yet, so I suppose I should just be patient on that.