[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[zloitima]

the worst thing is that there are like 4-5 bosses dropping no loot I desire, it's whether dodge/parry or haste/crit. Only hope is for the shared loot.
on topic, is there any kind of haste soft cap? sometimes I find it hard to use all my abilities, especially if I take Holy Prism. sometimes I can't find GCD for Holy Wrath in the whole fight. sitting at around 9k atm, could get more by sacrificing some stamina.

[Deleted]

Nah, I am sitting on almost 14.5k.

Having more haste gives you more globals to use your abilities on, not less.

[Deleted]

Nah, I am sitting on almost 14.5k.

Having more haste gives you more globals to use your abilities on, not less.

Makes my poor clicky mouse finger ache though!

[MerinPally]

Makes my poor clicky mouse finger ache though!

Stop clicking then jesus christ oh my god this is a tragedy why would you click that's horrible I'm ashamed get off the thread holy tits what the hell man!

Learn to bind

[Deleted]

Makes my poor clicky mouse finger ache though!

What I found helped was to play without a keyboard. I inserted another mouse instead and used on mouse with each hand.
If I needed to type in-game I just opened the screen keyboard.

This improved my CPS (Clicks per second) and my rotation felt a lot smoother.

Then you might ask! How do I turn without A and D? Well, that is simple, I simply binded A to left mouse scroll button and D to the right mouse scroll button. So I can turn left and right just as easily as with A and D.

[Deleted]

What I found helped was to play without a keyboard. I inserted another mouse instead and used on mouse with each hand.
If I needed to type in-game I just opened the screen keyboard.

This improved my CPS (Clicks per second) and my rotation felt a lot smoother.

Then you might ask! How do I turn without A and D? Well, that is simple, I simply binded A to left mouse scroll button and D to the right mouse scroll button. So I can turn left and right just as easily as with A and D.

I don't have any macros, no dbm, and I keyboard turn too. In yer face!

Ranked on council again this week ftw!

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

What I found helped was to play without a keyboard. I inserted another mouse instead and used on mouse with each hand.
If I needed to type in-game I just opened the screen keyboard.

This improved my CPS (Clicks per second) and my rotation felt a lot smoother.

Then you might ask! How do I turn without A and D? Well, that is simple, I simply binded A to left mouse scroll button and D to the right mouse scroll button. So I can turn left and right just as easily as with A and D.

And both ways to turn your character are inferior to turning the camera and pressing both buttons

When I wanted to wean myself off keyboard turning, I unbound A and D, and the arrow keys. I learned pretty fast.

divine, justice.

[Deleted]

Stop clicking then jesus christ oh my god this is a tragedy why would you click that's horrible I'm ashamed get off the thread holy tits what the hell man!

Learn to bind

Mwahahahaa

[Deleted]

I don't have any macros, no dbm, and I keyboard turn too. In yer face!

Ranked on council again this week ftw!

Pff, it is not a rank unless it is orange!

[Nairobi]

Daily frustration:

Getting an upgrade from 497 to 528. Sounds like a success, right? Not when it is a dodge/parry belt :/ But over 500 stamina gained is so much

I know that feel Never have been so sad to get a 535 item til we got the terrible Dodge/Parry helm off Horridon last night. I mean, it was replacing my OLD Dodge/Parry 517 helm off Garalon, but just felt bad.

the worst thing is that there are like 4-5 bosses dropping no loot I desire, it's whether dodge/parry or haste/crit. Only hope is for the shared loot.
on topic, is there any kind of haste soft cap? sometimes I find it hard to use all my abilities, especially if I take Holy Prism. sometimes I can't find GCD for Holy Wrath in the whole fight. sitting at around 9k atm, could get more by sacrificing some stamina.

Yeah, this really sucks. I swap to ret to coinroll on JinRohk/Horridon, then it's pretty much crap loot off the next half-dozen bosses. Council trinket isn't too bad, but literally nothing on Tortos, Megaera, JiKun. Sad times.

I don't have any macros, no dbm, and I keyboard turn too. In yer face!

Ranked on council again this week ftw!

Just think how much better you'd rank if you like....bound abilities. I was on pace for a top 10 HC Horridon parse this week, but had to sacrifice myself around 15% to get the kill. Still ended up like 60th, but ugh. And I'm now back out of the top 10 on HC Jinrohk And all this "traditional tank gear" isn't helping!

[pld]

Just think how much better you'd rank if you like....bound abilities. I was on pace for a top 10 HC Horridon parse this week, but had to sacrifice myself around 15% to get the kill. Still ended up like 60th, but ugh. And I'm now back out of the top 10 on HC Jinrohk And all this "traditional tank gear" isn't helping!

I ranked 99.9% on Council this past week. Almost wish my friend didn't tell me, haha. So closeeeeee.

Also, it sucks having to swap to Ret for my extra rolls. I always forget to throw Righteous Fury back on after I switch back to prot. :|

[Rhag]

Also, it sucks having to swap to Ret for my extra rolls. I always forget to throw Righteous Fury back on after I switch back to prot. :|

Used to do this all the time, until i made a Weak aura that shows a huge righteous fury symbol in my screen when i dont have it on as prot spec : p

[Nairobi]

So, in looking over Horridon logs, I see that even with Focused Shield glyphed (and hitting a damn near 2.5mil AS HIT) that ShotR was my top damage ability.

This got me thinking...
In order to max DPS, would it be worth running 2pc t15 and Alabaster Shield glyph, and trying to cheese the set bonus to stack up AlabShield stacks, esp under Wings? Obviously, this is a ShotR uptime/mitigation hit (at least partially), but wondering how much we could squeeze out with 2pc.

[Deleted]

Ehr talking about prot 2pc? That is for sure a dps loss. If you wanna max dps, I suggest the pvp 4 piece. Not sure if the loss in stats are worth it though, but if you use DP, it should be a very decent dps boost.

In order for prot 2p to be dps increase, disregarding the loss of offensive stats on them.
You would require to recieve an average of 62.5 hits during the duration of the block buff to even break even. And that is assuming that you do not "overcap" on ASh stacks. Since it is quite easy to overcap on those stacks, I would say that recieving around 100-150 hits during the duration of the block buff if more reasonable to gain and sort of advantage of it. Basically, it is not even a dps buff on Tortos, and if it is one, then it is a very very small one. Especially considering the Prray and Dgode on the protection pieces.

[Nairobi]

Ehr talking about prot 2pc? That is for sure a dps loss. If you wanna max dps, I suggest the pvp 4 piece. Not sure if the loss in stats are worth it though, but if you use DP, it should be a very decent dps boost.

In order for prot 2p to be dps increase, disregarding the loss of offensive stats on them.
You would require to recieve an average of 62.5 hits during the duration of the block buff to even break even. And that is assuming that you do not "overcap" on ASh stacks. Since it is quite easy to overcap on those stacks, I would say that recieving around 100-150 hits during the duration of the block buff if more reasonable to gain and sort of advantage of it. Basically, it is not even a dps buff on Tortos, and if it is one, then it is a very very small one. Especially considering the Prray and Dgode on the protection pieces.

Yes talking about Prot t15 2pc, namely helm and shoulders (so as not to suffer from D/P gear on the rest of the tier set).

Not sure I'm following your math, though. Certainly not using DP, as I've yet to ever see a DPS or Mit increase over HA or SW with that. But, how did you get 62.5 hits?

Let's say we use a 3HoPo WOG to get 15 sec of the 40% block buff, just to keep things equal and round, since this would be equivalent to a ShotR cast. A 3-stack ASh ShotR is 160% ShotR, so, in order to "re-coup" the lost ShotR, you'd need to get a 3-stack and a 2-stack ShotR (for a total of 100% extra damage). That means you need 5 blocks in that 15sec period to break even, with anything at 6+ being increased (as long as you don't overcap).

But, we have innate/natural block that could/would be stacking the glyph to consider, so we need to look at exceeding the baseline amount by 40% for the calculations, to account for the actual "bonus" of the 2pc.

Let's say you have baseline 30% block, which is a fair value. In 15 seconds, you have 10 boss melee attacks (ignoring any specials, adds, etc). That means, on average, you'll block 3 of those attacks; ASh glyph gets 3 total stacks, and provides 60% of a ShotR as bonus baseline.

Now, adding in 40% to the 30%, as the bonus is additive, and we get 70% block. Now, we basically add in 4 blocked attacks, totalling 7 stacks of the buff. Let's be realistic and assume that one stack will get "munched" by clipping/stacking, and we can call it a flat 6 stacks, or 120% ShotR. This is 2x the baseline amount, but it does cost us one ShotR cast (at 100%), so it's looking like a DPS loss here if we ignore special attacks like Snapping Bite, Trip Punc, etc. Or any adds.

However, if we can roll this buff DURING HA, you have much faster re-casting on ShotR, allowing for no clipping of the stacks, as well as a lower opportunity cost on the initial ShotR cast (in terms of mitigation).

I dunno, you may be right that it's a DPS loss when looking at standard boss melee only, but I'd say that it breaks at least even in real world practice (aka special melees) and can be a moderate gain under HA.

But it's still probably more trouble than it's worth

[Deleted]

Im not entirely sure I follow my math either. I was counting on 20% chance on block to get a ABS stack, not 100% on block, just ignore what I said earlier.

Yeah, so you need to recieve a total of 5 blocks without wasting anything, 6 blocks to benefit from it.

So 6 blocks on 40% chance is 15 melee hits. But then we also need to remember the dual CT.

So it will be 15/(1-a) where a is your avoidance%.

So around 20 melee hits. Assuming that you won't overcap sometimes on the stacks seems like a bit of wishful thinking though.
So probably around 25-30 hits. Which would be 3 mobs on you.

[Promdates]

Not sure I'm following your math, though. Certainly not using DP, as I've yet to ever see a DPS or Mit increase over HA or SW with that. But, how did you get 62.5 hits?

DP, while random, can/will provide a higher SotR uptime with higher levels of haste than HA will. HA will effectively be a "mitigation cooldown" giving you a large chunk of time where you have the buff up. It might only be a 1-3% uptime increase, but it does happen.

All 3 of the talents are good choices to be honest. It mainly depends on your playstyle and your gearing. Look at Firefly, he's a huge banner carrier for SW. While SW gives you a lower SotR uptime compard to HA/DP, it makes up for it by giving you increased healing for the duration.

[Deleted]

I actually started to really love DP now when I got higher haste levels. I use DP for the fights where I do not really need another cooldown.
Both DP and HA is undervalued for most people. I do not really like the feel of DP though, it feels to clunky, I really really love SW. Popping SW is so satisfying, and so fun that your rotation actually changes in comparison do the other talents. J-CS-J-X rotation is very fun.
Still, again, DP is very good.

To sum up the tier 5 talents.

DP - Best when you do not need a strong cooldown for something specific, provides the highest SotR uptime and DPS increase over an entire fight.
SW - Strongest Cooldown vs magic damage, vs burst damage that lasts shorter than 15-25(arguably 30 seconds) seconds depending on your haste levels.
HA - Strongest Cooldown when you got a physical damage heavy phase that lasts longer than 40 seconds.

SW vs HA

Boss special melee attacks devalues HA
Boss magic attacks devalues HA.

Depending on fight duration / Time needed between cooldown usage, one can pull ahead.

I.e. if you need a cooldown every 2.5 minutes, then HA is obviously better because then you can cover every of those phases, though if you need a cooldown every 3-4 minutes then SW is better.

One fight that is perfect example of this is Durumu which is pretty much tailor made for SW as there is just slightly above 3 minutes betwen each of the beam phases.
One fight in the opposite was normal Emperors as the time between Titan Gas was 2.5? or 2? minutes. Cant think of any good example this tier.

[Promdates]

I would use SW on a fight like Lei Shi, where it's majorly magic damage and you need another cooldown to help out where HA/DP won't do shit. Sadly, I haven't really found a fight where I would prefer having HA over DP, even though HA is more controlled.

That's what I love about tanking this expansion... there's so much choice in abilities that changing options every fight is considerably more common place than ever thought before. There's no real "PICK THIS DO THIS" answer, it's mostly down to personal preference and fight choice.

fake edit: Actually, now that I think about it... I did use HA for Heroic Blade Lord. Pop Wings/Mastery Trinket/HA when the boss was taking increased damage and just laugh at the huge numbers.

[zloitima]

I'm using DP since 5.1 and love it. I just don't like to rely on a CD such as HA, especially considering it's only physical damage.
and with DP I can sometimes get SotR for nearly the same amount as with HA, 15-20 secs.