I recently read a guide on tankspot about how to gem, reforge, and specialize for protection paladins. As someone who has played a protection Paladin since the end of Vanilla I was a little bit disheartened by the two stratagies. I would like to explain a third strategy and give my reasoning behind it.
In regards to reforging tank spot says this:
Reforging
There are two schools for reforging:
"Total Damage Reduction.
Total Damage Reduction (TDR) is a way of saying "take the least amount of damage". In a scenario with an unlimited amount of melee hits made against you, this would make you take the least amount of damage. This setup will, however, mean that the spikiness of your damage intake is higher, which makes healers spend more mana on big and expensive spells. This means reforging to Parry, Dodge and Mastery.
Maximizing ShoR Uptime
Maximising ShoR Uptime ultimately means "maximizing Holy Power generation". The uptime of the ShoR buff is directly proportionate to the rate of Holy Power generation. 0.45 Holy Power per second (which is the approximate Holy Power generation when hit and expertise capped) gives a ShoR uptime of 45%. 1 Holy Power per second would mean 100% ShoR uptime. For this you reforge to Hit cap (7.5%), hard cap expertise (15%) and then stack mastery or haste, followed by parry and dodge. This is my preferred school of reforging and I will be changing my gear and reforging around to adapt to the new stat priority."
Let me start by saying these two stratagies ignore the core concepts of active mitigation, as well as the fact that being avoidance capped is no longer obtainable.
TDR operates on the assumption that I can stack enough dodge, parry, and block to effectively create the most efficient damage mitigation build available. However, block is no longer calculated on the same role as dodge and parry. This means we are now dealing with a multiplicative (not additive) rate of diminishing returns when I calculate block into my total avoidance. In other words the more dodge and parry I have the less effective block from mastery will be and vise versa. So I am no longer able to be 'avoidance capped' as I was in the previous expansion. The other problem being that we will run into 'spikey' damage with this build as SHoR is similar to avoidance in a way as it is 3 seconds of high dr then a drop, forgoing stamina for dodge and parry will also add to this spike effect when dealing with damage. This presses the healer to use high mana heals on your while tanking making him a less efficient healer. Spikey damage tank builds are not effective as we saw with the DK in cata mid late expansion.
Maximizing ShoR uptime seems like we have ignored the point of active mitigation. The point of active mitigation is to choose the most effective time to use our mitigation skills to get the best result. We have one proactive AM ability and one reactive AM ability. SHoR is a proactive AM ability as I can use it before or while I am tanking lots of physical damage, but it is trade off as I want the threat of the shield bash, but most of the time waiting for my 3 stacks of alabaster shield is the most effective way of using SHoR. I see no reason why we shouldnt sit on our holy power (maximum of 5) until the most effective time to use SHoR. We can use word of glory whenever necessary as a reactive ability to a period of heavy damage. The idea of maxing hit/expertise two generate as many SHoR's that I can doesent seem to be as effective as tankspot seems to describe.
My idea for an effective Protection Paladin build is to gem as much stamina as possible and to reforge to mastery. The Block will be useful for DR, and the well placed AM abilities will be more effective. Stamina will give us more of safety net when we take 'spikey' damage after SHoR falls off. Hit/expertise are important in this build (more so than dodge/parry) as we want to be able to build holy power quickly when we need to, but the idea isnt to keep SHoR up as long as possible. Its to sit on our Holy Power until we need SHoR. As talents and glyphs go I would deffinately take POJ for tier 1, FOJ tier 2 (as I beleive tanks should stun in PVE), Sacred Shield, Unbreakable Spirit, Holy Avenger for Initiate, and Prism last for a stronger reactive heal. Glyphs should be: Divine Protection, Alabaster Shield, and Battle Healer.