[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Deleted]

Why are Lv100 prot talents so fucking boring?

One of them is reactive damage from our blocks though, isn't it? I've always found that so much fun. It's usually as weak as heck, so not a good choice, but somehow I love the concept. (I used to always pick up the Sporegar shield while leveling, until I noticed it only did 1% of my damage at best).

[trystero]

But lack of tanks was primarily a LFR/LFD issue, wasn't it?
Most guilds are in need of healers or warlocks around here afaik.

It's meh for me, but honestly... it's about time that I upgrade my system. It's dying slowly. : \

There's something to this. I don't know many raiding guilds that lack tanks. By design it's almost impossible for them to; if your guild doesn't have tanks, then you're not raiding.

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Why are Lv100 prot talents so fucking boring?

We;ve got a choice of nerfing our damage by 30% in exchange for some heals I guess, giving SoI a slight buff, or +10% block.

fuckin whoop de doooooo.

The other 4 tanks at least get SOMETHING interesting. Kinda want to reroll DK purely because with the addition of Necrotic plague and defile, they are basically Arthas at this point.

I'll be happy to make the transition more or less intact. I'm dreading an announcement like....."As fun as it was for paladins to enjoy the benefits of haste, we have decided to redact our previous stance of supporting it. Sanctity of Battle will now be for Retribution specialization only."

Or..."After some thought, we do not like where paladins are with SotR. It will now be on a 3 second cooldown."

[Deleted]

There's something to this. I don't know many raiding guilds that lack tanks. By design it's almost impossible for them to; if your guild doesn't have tanks, then you're not raiding.

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I'll be happy to make the transition more or less intact. I'm dreading an announcement like....."As fun as it was for paladins to enjoy the benefits of haste, we have decided to redact our previous stance of supporting it. Sanctity of Battle will now be for Retribution specialization only."

Or..."After some thought, we do not like where paladins are with SotR. It will now be on a 3 second cooldown."

I doubt that. What really bugs me is that we'll probably have another tier where we can cheese some mechanics through Bubble/AD and all the insane protadin recount logs will come up again and we'll get the nerfbat again. Just look at 5.4 and what they did to us and why they did it (they nerfed all to try and get to the solo-tanking cheese-tactics).

[trystero]

I don't think it'll happen either, I just dread it. Hell I look at every patch/hotfix/release nervously...

[MerinPally]

The question now, is will the +cleave cause threat... And how badly will we want the lifesteal. Obviously it'll be better than nothing but should we get uber lucky on drops (from what I understand this should be really quite rare) if we end up in a choice situation.... ooo... I can't wait. Is like another level of metagame. Will be a point where lifesteal isn't useful. Just like in Cata with the Mending enchant, due to a good chunk of it being overheal.

[Riemu2k3]

Hey Guys,

we had our first 15 Tries on Thok last week. Tonights our next shot and I wanted to get your input on our CD rotation and our healing.
Were going with 1 Tank (Pally) and 4 Healers (Pally, Druid, Shaman, Disc Priest). DPS are Warrior, Rogue, Mage, Mage, Hunter.

Lust at Pull, P1 gets Thok to about 65%, P2 starts with about 58% - DPS should be fine.
We kite him to about 15 Stacks.

Normal + Frost:

3 - Tree of Life + Spirit Shell
7 - Demo Banner + Vigilance on Tank + Healing Tide
10 - Bubble Paladin with CDs
13 - Devo 1 + Tranq
16 - Devo 2
18 - BoP Shaman + Ascendance/Guidance
20 - Personal CDs + Light's Hammer
23 - Barrier + Smokebomb + Sacrifice/Ironbark on Tank
28-29 - Phaseout

Green + Fire:

3 - Tree of Life + Spirit Shell
4 - Demo Banner + Vigilance on Tank + BoP Disc Priest
6 - Bubble Paladin with CDs
8 - Light's Hammer + Rallying Cry
11 - Personal CDs + Spirit Link
12-14 - Phaseout


Anything in there to improve?

Also, the Disc Priest and the Shaman are both "Offspecc Healers" with not ideal gearing. They both don't really know how to heal Thok / deliver the best output. At least they didn't know last week when we tried him. So I'm hoping you could go over our logs and give us some pointers.

Here are our 2 best tries while running 4 Healers:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=9137&e=9368 (29 Stacks Phaseout)
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=8611&e=8823 (18 Stacks Phaseout)

Thanks alot!

[Deleted]

Lust at Pull, P1 gets Thok to about 65%, P2 starts with about 58% - DPS should be fine.
We kite him to about 15 Stacks.

I do not know much about the CD rotation as honestly I dont care about that in my raid group

I can make a few words about the % though.

This is the spreadsheet that my guild used for progressing thok, at the time there was only 7 guilds with public logs and/or videos of the kill and we collected all of their %s

Should be noted that all this is with between 550-558 average group item level

P1: Acceleration 21/25/27/24/29/27/27 average: 26
Boss % 66%/69%/60%/70%/64%/66%/67% avg: 66%

Kite 1: Bloodfrenzy 15/15/13/13/15/16/15 avg: 15
Boss % 55%/57%/46%/61%/51%/55%/56% avg: 54%

P2: Acceleration 18/24/4/24/28/26/24 avg: 21
Boss % 42%/37%/42%/46%/31%/39%/40% avg: 40%

Kite 2: Bloodfrenzy 9/15/10/12/13/16/16 avg: 13
Boss % 36%/25%/35%/27%/21%/28%/29% avg: 29%

P3: Acceleration 12/9/17/12/13/19/15 avg: 14
Boss % 27%/18%/23%/29%/13%/13%/18% avg: 20%

Kite 3: Bloodfrenzy 13/14/10/12/16/15/10 avg: 13
Boss% 20%/11%/14%/20%/DEAD!!/2%/11% avg: 11%

P4: Acceleration 12/6/3/9/3/5 avg: 5
Boss % 8%/7%/11%/13%/-/3%/8% avg: 7%

Kite 4 - DEAD

There was a clear difference in when people used BL, some used BL in P1 and others P2.
Personally my guild used BL in P2 so no BL at pull, and pushing the boss to 71-68%~ before the first blood frenzy, we killed the boss 2 seconds after the enrage.

[Anteara]

Thanks for this.

[Wooting]

Okay so say Judgement is going to come off CD .4 seconds before CS. Do I hold for CS or just hit Judge and delay CS with a Global CD.

[Nillo]

At .4 seconds definitely use Judgement - heck I wouldn't even wait if it was .1

[Tehterokkar]

Been trying to browse through a few pages in this thread, but couldn't find exact info on Haste cap with Thok's N(2/2) trinket. I saw the post by Jellospally but does it assume you use the Haste Elixir regardless?

I just tank alt runs and I always use Stam Flask(because Shaman boxes give me so many of them) and Stam food because of guild feasts. Atm as I sit in game without any buffs(other than Seal), I have 19,447 Haste rating(45.76% Melee / 60.33% Spell) at 553 iLvl(Full Armory in signature below).

Been trying to find exact info on all of this haste cap nonsense but haven't been able to find any info on all possible combinations.

[celinamuna]

Been trying to browse through a few pages in this thread, but couldn't find exact info on Haste cap with Thok's N(2/2) trinket. I saw the post by Jellospally but does it assume you use the Haste Elixir regardless?

I just tank alt runs and I always use Stam Flask(because Shaman boxes give me so many of them) and Stam food because of guild feasts. Atm as I sit in game without any buffs(other than Seal), I have 19,447 Haste rating(45.76% Melee / 60.33% Spell) at 553 iLvl(Full Armory in signature below).

Been trying to find exact info on all of this haste cap nonsense but haven't been able to find any info on all possible combinations.

To simplify his comment

H WF Thoks: 19496---Haste Elixir+Food(18546) - without food(18746)
H Thoks: 19584---Haste Elixir+Food(18634) - without food(18834)
N WF Thoks: 19680---Haste Elixir+Food(18730) - without food(18930)
N Thoks: 19760---Haste Elixir+Food(18810) - without food(19010)
Flex Thoks: 19920---Haste Elixir+Food(18970) - without food(19170)
LFR Thoks: 20051---Haste Elixir+Food(19191) - without food(19391)

Bolded is how much you need.
Now it doesn't matter how you get it, gear/gems/elixir/food it's the same. The other numbers just show the amount of haste you need from gear+gems to reach it if you are using elixir or food.
(I can see a lot of people going for elixir one, not so much for using food).

[MorphexEU]

Good guide Merin!

[MerinPally]

Well fuck me, there's a name I've not seen since ever.

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Goooooood news everyone. As some of you might have noticed (doubt it) I've been pretty on and off playing this expansion hence updates have not been nearly as speedy as I would like (even then, not much changed so that was a blessing). Partially this was due to uni and being unable to access the game. For the past 2 months, although I'm at uni, I've been able to play again. Now that work is out of the way for the current moment I do plan to return, especially as WoD has rekindled the interest in the game that I didn't really lose to begin with. Even better, I let my guildys know about WoD (we all quit, whatsapp is amazingly useful) and they seem interested as well. With luck, my old gang may reform in some form which would definitely keep me around playing.

\o/

[Riemu2k3]

Welcome back Merin :-)

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Totally unrelated: Has anybody else wondered why it is so fucking hard to reach 50% haste!? I mean, I have an average itemlevel of 568 but only approx. 45% Haste. That's with 2/2 NHC thok and malkorok trinket. Not running that many non-haste items...

[Moussaka]

I guess the tank cloak is what's "holding" us from gaining 2-3% haste at the cost of the proc.

I took the BiS list from AMR (4pc HC: helm, shoulders, chest and gloves) all other pieces HC WF 2/2 (+2 JC haste gems) and it's just reaching 50% haste with the tank cloak.

I just consider it to be icing on the cake if I can reach this cap later.

[Dextar]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ombie/advanced

So I'm a bit confused, I've been playing my paladin as prot for a couple of weeks now (since I got the Heirloom shield) and I've been loving it but I still feel like I'm squishy, I don't have any logs (I keep forgetting to log) but I'm doing my best to keep up SotR but it's just not happening where it's up 80%+ of the time. That being said, I'm pretty sure it's just due to lack of haste (and gear) but I'm confused a little on the gear side, should I be trying for just ret gear in flex? What trinkets should I be using, at most I'd be tanking flex and I see some people are saying you don't need stam trinkets so should I be using Malkorok/Thok? I'm guessing if we're going full haste to ignore the 2/4pc?

[celinamuna]

Welcome back Merin :-)

---

Totally unrelated: Has anybody else wondered why it is so fucking hard to reach 50% haste!? I mean, I have an average itemlevel of 568 but only approx. 45% Haste. That's with 2/2 NHC thok and malkorok trinket. Not running that many non-haste items...

Seems like poor gear tbh, in 556 ilvl (aww yis) i'm running 47% haste (with the tank cloak)

[Dextar]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ombie/advanced

So I'm a bit confused, I've been playing my paladin as prot for a couple of weeks now (since I got the Heirloom shield) and I've been loving it but I still feel like I'm squishy, I don't have any logs (I keep forgetting to log) but I'm doing my best to keep up SotR but it's just not happening where it's up 80%+ of the time. That being said, I'm pretty sure it's just due to lack of haste (and gear) but I'm confused a little on the gear side, should I be trying for just ret gear in flex? What trinkets should I be using, at most I'd be tanking flex and I see some people are saying you don't need stam trinkets so should I be using Malkorok/Thok? I'm guessing if we're going full haste to ignore the 2/4pc?

[rhandric]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ombie/advanced

So I'm a bit confused, I've been playing my paladin as prot for a couple of weeks now (since I got the Heirloom shield) and I've been loving it but I still feel like I'm squishy, I don't have any logs (I keep forgetting to log) but I'm doing my best to keep up SotR but it's just not happening where it's up 80%+ of the time. That being said, I'm pretty sure it's just due to lack of haste (and gear) but I'm confused a little on the gear side, should I be trying for just ret gear in flex? What trinkets should I be using, at most I'd be tanking flex and I see some people are saying you don't need stam trinkets so should I be using Malkorok/Thok? I'm guessing if we're going full haste to ignore the 2/4pc?

Without logs, it's hard to know why you "feel" squishy. 22% haste in 533 gear seems a bit low, but sometimes there's nothing you can do about it (though I'd strongly suggest you replace one of your trinkets, probably Alacrity of Xuen since it doesn't have reforgable secondary stats, with the Brutal SPA trinket...hell, you might see more mileage out of replacing both trinkets, and getting yourself the Brutal SPA and the GID trinkets - you'd end up with a lot more useful stats, 1800 secondary stats from GID is nothing to laugh at when compared to the trinkets you've currently got).

In terms of what you should be shooting for, Malk and Thok's trinkets are what I'll be shooting for, and outside of very specific bosses (Malk and Nazgrim, possibly Siegecrafter for the weapon), you should be loot-speccing ret. Yes, they added haste gear to the prot tables, but for most bosses that means you've got a spattering of haste gear mixed in with d/p gear, cluttering the prot table and making your likelihood of getting something useful incredibly small.

Without logs, there's not really much other advice I can give you, assuming you've read the OP and know how to play the spec.