Can someone explain to me the Protection Paladin active mitigation system to me?

[Deleted]

Hello everyone,
My main is a protection paladin since the 4.2 launch(which is when I started playing wow) and I am in love with the way protection paladin tanking works on live. Last night I was on PTR testing the new way of Paladin tanking and while I think I understood it, I've encountered a lot of problems that make me worry about my class/specc. The test happened in LFR, Morchok and Warlord were easy to tank but then I reached Yor'sahj... I've done this boss on HC a lot of times on live and I had no problem tanking it even on HC, it's a really easy fight I must say with all these dmg reduction cooldowns (especially the magical ones coupled with Mirror of the Broken Images).

So I went ahead and tried Yor'Sahj on Raid finder... and the dmg I was taking was insane, after 3-4 bolts I couldn't handle it, even with dmg reduction cooldowns, my health was jumping up and down taking 100k per few secs and the healers didn't seem to be able to heal it. I ran out of dmg reduction cds and died 2 times and my healers claimed I was dying too fast while I used everything in my power to handle it. Maybe it was the healers that were the problem BUT on live I can even take like 5-6 void bolts and handle them relatively easy with a glyphed Divine protection. Was it a bug from Yor'sahj? I don't think so since the Dk could handle the dmg (he was still getting huge dmg spikes but he survived). So I'm really worried about all this spiky dmg I am getting, it never happened on live... I never had a problem tanking anything on live and most of the time without even the tiniest mistake but now I can't even handle the dmg of a raid finder boss...

So I'm asking, can anyone please explain what I'm doing something wrong? What do I do is keeping conc up while using my HP generation abilities on cd and SotR always when it's up, a 5* Wog when I'm getting way too low, using Sacred Shield for the absorbation bonus and dmg reduction cds as the fight demands. Is it bad to use WoG because I'm getting unmitigated hits for some seconds? Should I keep SotR for when I'm taking dmg only and not spent my HP? One more thing I would like to add is that Protection Paladin threat generation seems ridiculous... I'm bashing my head with avenging wrath and SotR and everything I have yet the dk gets the aggro back after my taunt effect expires... it's just ridiculous, maybe I should change my gear to have an offensive and defensive balance (like getting hit/exp/str) instead of a pure defensive one like my current live one?

Please share your thoughts with me and sorry if this thread was posted before, I've searched and didn't find anything about my situation that could help me. Sorry about any Grammar/Vocabulary mistakes btw, english is not my native language. Last but not least, keep the discussion constructive. And yeah I know, fail title x_x! Thank you in advance!

[MerinPally]

Unlike warriors who have both an obvious spell and physical damage stopper for active mitigation, we only have one which is the physical damage reduction side from SHOTR. For spell damage, we don't have prevention but we have to find a way to recover from it.

Also, maybe it was just you didn't notice but Divine Protection has changed so it's 40% magical damage unmitigated so if you had it glyphed (unlike on live) you'd actually be taking more damage. In all fairness I would have thought it's a healer issue because I think they've got rid of resistances or something on the PTR/Beta? Which means no Resistance Aura for yorsahj meaning that we're on our own. So you're taking more damage anyway, and on live on my 404 paladin, healers seem incapable to keep me alive through 5-6 bolts on LFR because they're terrible. Should be swapping at 4 to be honest.

If you were stacking cooldowns you were probably making your life hard anyway as they're multiplicative rather than additive so chaining them one after the other would have been better as GoaK + Divine Protection one after the other would provide 50% damage and 40% reduction, and that would be enough for 4 void bolts there abouts, especially if you were WoGging. All I'd say is make sure you SHOTR when you can to build up Bastion of Glory stacks for a bigger WoG. Building Holy Power is fast now so if you don't need the healing currently then get a SHOTR out so when you do need that next WoG, it's bigger.

Aggro I can't comment on however.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Raid finder has similar damage from void bolts as 25 man, you shouldn't have 6 stacks ever in lfr unless the other tank is being bad. It really seems like a healer problem to me. You probably are also noticing the difference now that spell resist is out of the game, DS was tuned with people having 195 resistance in mind it seems. Also check recount (download it if you haven't already) to see exactly how much dmg you are taking in a specific period of time then compare that to live.

[Deleted]

Unlike warriors who have both an obvious spell and physical damage stopper for active mitigation, we only have one which is the physical damage reduction side from SHOTR. For spell damage, we don't have prevention but we have to find a way to recover from it.

Also, maybe it was just you didn't notice but Divine Protection has changed so it's 40% magical damage unmitigated so if you had it glyphed (unlike on live) you'd actually be taking more damage. In all fairness I would have thought it's a healer issue because I think they've got rid of resistances or something on the PTR/Beta? Which means no Resistance Aura for yorsahj meaning that we're on our own. So you're taking more damage anyway, and on live on my 404 paladin, healers seem incapable to keep me alive through 5-6 bolts on LFR because they're terrible. Should be swapping at 4 to be honest.

If you were stacking cooldowns you were probably making your life hard anyway as they're multiplicative rather than additive so chaining them one after the other would have been better as GoaK + Divine Protection one after the other would provide 50% damage and 40% reduction, and that would be enough for 4 void bolts there abouts, especially if you were WoGging. All I'd say is make sure you SHOTR when you can to build up Bastion of Glory stacks for a bigger WoG. Building Holy Power is fast now so if you don't need the healing currently then get a SHOTR out so when you do need that next WoG, it's bigger.

Aggro I can't comment on however.

Oh indeed I didn't take into account that I had no resistances, and no I don't chain the cds on top of each other, I'm using one cd for everytime I'm getting too low (except for really extreme situations). I mentioned that I had divine protection glyphed on live since I wanted to make sure it was clear that I tested it on both with 40% spell dmg reduction (since the PTR/beta one doesn't need glyph for 40% magic resist). Thank you very much for the answer, it kinda cleared why I'm taking so much spell dmg... now I hope someone can answer if this aggro issue is intended or if just prot paladin is badly tuned.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Threat issue is caused by the new vengeance model, DK is probably sitting at 50k or so bonus attack power while you have 0. I would recommend capping hit/expertise though.

[MerinPally]

Your threat is more likely to be because you don't have a full toolkit. You're playing at lvl 85 with everything tuned for level 90. It's no wonder things are broken and not working perfectly, you don't even have access to your last talents and tuning isn't done for this section Also, one thing I didn't add and you didn't mention so I don't know whether you used it - Devotion Aura. 20% reduced magic damage to everyone for 6 seconds. Would have helped you somewhat Also, what TEHPALLYTANK said, as it's done by an "average dps of the boss" so at lvl 90 with proper tuning, when stats are sorted more, the new vengeance will work as it's 2% of UNMITIGATED damage so when stats alter, things will slot into place.

[Deleted]

@ TEHPALLYTANK
Yeah, I will go and reforge some stats into hit and exp (although my heart cries everytime I get farther away from the now unreachable ctc cap QQ).
@ MerinPally
I'm using Devotion Aura yes! It's better than nothing for sure and I try to use it when it's needed the most and I hope you are right about the tuning!
Thank you both for the help and the answers, really appreciated!!!
I think I can now stop worrying!!! ^_^

[MerinPally]

Never bother worrying, not worth the effort. And I know I'm right about the tuning because that's just how the game works - incase you remember the patch -> launch thingy for cata, Rogues were so unbelievably useless that HUGE backlash happened. Rogues were seriously bloody awful and arcane mages were overpowered. Same thing will happen here with people being over/underpowered ^^