[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Deleted]

In the enchanting section you mention River's Song as the go to option, but with the steeper DR curve on dodge vs. parry and the added AP/parry from Dancing steel, wouldn't that be the better option? (more healing, more absorbs, more damage, still plenty of avoidance)?

In regards to haste v. mastery , is it really that noticeable at just 5% haste? My plan was to go haste eventually, but I didn't feel like my gear level is quite there yet (sitting at 483 atm) I'm hardcapped expertise, hit capped and sitting at about 6000 mastery, 0 haste.

I'm very confident with the 'rotation' so would those of you who have success with the haste build suggest I swap out already? or should I wait till I reached a higher gearlvl (490-500) or start acquiring "dps" items with haste on them before going the haste way?

~Space

PS: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ubble/advanced armory

[Deleted]

I would stick with windsong over either of those enchants.

Think it is a matter of choice with haste. You definately have the gear required to pull haste build of. I do not understand the whole "is x% of haste going to do enough difference", hear that argument alot. Also people saying "Well, not like 100 rating is going to matter", it is not like that 100 rating or x% mastery is going to matter more.

[Deleted]

I would stick with windsong over either of those enchants.

Think it is a matter of choice with haste. You definately have the gear required to pull haste build of. I do not understand the whole "is x% of haste going to do enough difference", hear that argument alot. Also people saying "Well, not like 100 rating is going to matter", it is not like that 100 rating or x% mastery is going to matter more.

Rating matters, always. but what I mean with if x% is enough is sort of like with haste plateus for casters.

for instance, in 4.3 a resto druid wanted 2005 haste, anything below that after the previous tick was baseline worthless, (obviously it did have some sort of worth, but in the greater picture it was wasted stats that didn't really do anything).

So my question was whether the ~5% haste I could get through reforges would be enough to see an actual difference in the 'rotation' , like maybe you needed a certain % before the scaling shaved off enough of the CD/GCD for it to have an actual impact.

[Deleted]

Rating matters, always. but what I mean with if x% is enough is sort of like with haste plateus for casters.

for instance, in 4.3 a resto druid wanted 2005 haste, anything below that after the previous tick was baseline worthless, (obviously it did have some sort of worth, but in the greater picture it was wasted stats that didn't really do anything).

So my question was whether the ~5% haste I could get through reforges would be enough to see an actual difference in the 'rotation' , like maybe you needed a certain % before the scaling shaved off enough of the CD/GCD for it to have an actual impact.

Well, that is completely different things. For resto druids, and other classes with dots and hots, the value in haste lies in reaching certain plateus that gives them an extra tick on a hot or dot. We are not into haste for our hots and dots.

For paladins, there is no platue, each single point of haste reduces the gcd and cooldowns. There is nothing like "every point between 500 and 1000 gives nothing but once you reach 1000 you magically reduce cd with 0.1 sec" or anything like that, each point is valuable.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

The only "plateau" we can reach is an extra melee swing reduced, but they aren't exactly easy to time, and interrupted swings due to spells cast, moving out of melee range etc throw any regular timing out of the window. Every 1% haste increases our ShoR uptime. With "normal gearing" you can currently reach 10% haste (4500 haste rating) which is a ~5% absolute increase in ShoR uptime and ~10% relative increase in uptime.

[Deleted]

Regemmed/reforged

still expertise hardcapped & hitcapped, sitting at about 11% haste and 500k unbuffed health, 12.5 % Mastery

[Xothic]

I dont know about you guys, but I cant wait to give heroic will of the emp a try, I enjoy the devastating combo mechanic enough already, adding in 5 extra swings will make getting those opportunistic strikes even more rewarding. I would also think it would reduce our total damage taken by a fair bit in comparison with normal will, unless of course the boss hits twice as hard in heroic, which honestly wouldnt surprise me.

[Xs]

Gotta say, having tanked next to tanks using the Cata mindset (TDR is king, stack avoidance to the moon) I've seen huge bonuses going hit/exp, then evolving into the Haste build once I had those stats sorted, my god the difference between me and avoidance tanks is ridiculous, even just against regular hit/exp > avoidance tanks its insane, its even gone as far as to get me complimented by guildies, pugs and friends on how easy I am to heal. I knew TDR was always the way to go, but I've never seen it this extreme before.

Tanking only the first few bosses in vaults made me almost want to switch to tanking, specially with those fight mechanics, it feels like Prot went from being my unloved off spec, reserved for heroic achievements and slacking tank signings, to a totally different beast with a much more fluid rotation and vastly more interesting boss mechanics to deal with. Is it just me that feels like, at least compared to Cata, tanks (Pallies specifically) have received a much needed injection of fun?

Disclaimer: I am still Holy, that's probably never going to change

Also good work on the guide, MerinPally, specially like the little topic header images, adding a touch of class to the guide
Have a {◕ ◡ ◕} just for you

[Deleted]

Gotta say, having tanked next to tanks using the Cata mindset (TDR is king, stack avoidance to the moon) I've seen huge bonuses going hit/exp, then evolving into the Haste build once I had those stats sorted, my god the difference between me and avoidance tanks is ridiculous, even just against regular hit/exp > avoidance tanks its insane, its even gone as far as to get me complimented by guildies, pugs and friends on how easy I am to heal. I knew TDR was always the way to go, but I've never seen it this extreme before.

Tanking only the first few bosses in vaults made me almost want to switch to tanking, specially with those fight mechanics, it feels like Prot went from being my unloved off spec, reserved for heroic achievements and slacking tank signings, to a totally different beast with a much more fluid rotation and vastly more interesting boss mechanics to deal with. Is it just me that feels like, at least compared to Cata, tanks (Pallies specifically) have received a much needed injection of fun?

Be careful though, I have had several healers complain on me since there is nothing to heal.

But yeah, tanking really has become more fun, especially with haste since your rotation becomes faster. It just feels more alive with shorter GCD and CDs

[Deleted]

I can not totally agree here...
First of all the idea of active mitigation sounds nice. Back in TBC, WotLK and Cata tanking was like... Stand there, dodge some fires, maybe use your CDs. Avoidance, mitigation, maxHealth and Healers spamming kept you alive. The only interesting part was the pull and the retripala that maybe got some crits and got aggro.

I like the challenge of making decisions between active reduction of damage taken with maximum uptime of shor, or mixing in some WoGs or doing maximum damage with just following a priority from high dpet --> low dpet, or something in between for active mitigation for heavy damage spikes and dps/utility between them.

But somehow the bosses are not designed for this conception...
Speaking for the first 3 HCs:
Stoneguards --> very constant and predictable damage. No need to do something special with shor uptime. As i am OT and only have 1 guard all the time, i aim for max shor uptime and CDs mixed in between.
Feng --> constant damage taken. You need max shor uptime always you tank him untill 2 stacks of the debuff. But you can not cover the whole timeslot of tanking with either shor or own cd.
Gara'jal --> terrible encounter for non-warrior tanks. Warri gets 100% blockchance guaranteed and actively timed. For the active tanking phase a paladin can cover the attacks 1-2 with DP, then we can shift between goak and ad. But even at the best rotation we are not able to cover all shadowy attacks with an own CD. Furthermore our shor is kinda useless for this mechanic. Ofc i try to time the shor for the meleeswing before or after the shadowy, but if i get a shadowy attack with unmitigated 280k then even with shor up the next meleeswing will wipe any cloth-wearing non-warlock class. We ran a monk, shaman, holy, diszi healer-lineup, what is a pain without any holypala. A big issue is, that we are short on holypaladins. We did gara'jal without holypalas and without retri. For me it is a suicide squad as i would have needed those 4-6 HoS urgently to controll the damage intake.

But does active mitigation mean, that we always have to rely on external CDs? Of course, a raid is always an symbiosis between all participants, but i still keep feeling, that most of the actual bosses do not entirely fit into the concept of active mitigation. Neither does the need of getting DD-equip fit.

[Xs]

I can't fully agree with you there, although I do agree that compared to the perfection of other tanks, we can seem a little dry.

What I'm mostly enjoying though is that the bosses are actually engaging for tanks, not just stand there, tank and spank, that's great compared to all the tanking I've done from TBC to now on various chars. Its like what I always loved with DPS and healers when there's 'fire' spreading around, but for so long they were removing all the mechanics from the tank as a possibility and I all but gave up on them ever being something fun to play.

[Deleted]

I do not think we need to rely on external cds. We used the tactic this week on Feng HC to basically stack vengeance on me as a prot paladin.

I tanked him until 4-6 stacks every time, only using minor cds myself, was not a problem at all for healers to keep up.

If anything, a dodge and parry build would make you rely more on external cds since the damage taken is more spiky.

haste / mastery build requires the least external cds.

[soterya]

This guide was very helpful thank you.

[Deleted]

First to clarify, this post will be considered by most to be very over the top, require to much focus and in the end not be worth the hassle. This post is directly towards those that really want to maximize their performance, however if you are not pushing for heroic bosses, you should not really bother with this, since there is a great chance you will focus to much on it and instead fail up on other mechanics which in the end causes it not to be worth it.

So just gonna share some expert level tips for those players who have great awareness and want to push that extra step.



This is ofc patchwerk style taking and needs to be adapted for other fights.

1. Set up an addon to track when they next SS procs.
If required you can also get addons to track boss melee swing ( not sure if this exist, not using it myself )
Get your SS proc time low with haste, my SS currently procs roughly every 4 seconds ( slightly above but depends on procs and stuff ).
This will cause your SS to cover every third boss melee swing.
Use your SotR just before the swing AFTER this. This will ensure that SotR atleast covers the next 2 swings.
When you got 5 HoPo use SotR ofc.
This will ensure that every single boss melee swing is covered by either SotR or SS, and some are covered by both due to HoPo regen being faster
than required.

So it should look like this

Boss melee ( ss absorbs ) - Wait for next swing, use SotR right before - Boss melee ( SotR reduce damage ) - Boss melee ( SotR reduce damage )
Boss melee ( ss absorbs ) - Wait for next swing, use SotR right before - Boss melee ( SotR reduce damage ) - Boss melee ( SotR reduce damage )

etc etc. This will ensure a very non-spiky damage.

Sometimes there will only be 1 attack between each SS ticks due to SS ticking slightly faster than every 3rd attack, which means you can chose to pool up HP and soak that attack in between if you got the health for it.


2. In case you are not yet expertise capped. Set up an addon like powerauras or similar to show a proc when both your HoPo generating spells misses, but most importantly when your SotR misses, and be ready to cover those periods with a CD. Depending on fight that could be different CDs. Glyphed DProt is great for this, but only if you do not need it for any other boss mechanic to reduce damage. If I have Dprot on CD or want to use it for something else, I instead look towards using healthstones, stoneskin as I am a dwarf or similar smaller CDs.

Basically, set up addon for when you will have reduced up time on SotR due to misses and compensate with CDs.

This is the whole reason why me myself has chosen to go a Hit > Exp 7.5% > Haste > Exp 15% > Mastery > Stamina build. Since I do not feel like I need the exp cap since I can easily compensate with smaller CDs / reapplying SS.


3. ( Just a small P.S. ) It is my opinion that with haste SS becomes insanely over powered and is really worth bumping up in priority.
I currently priortize SS below all HoPo generatiing spells but over every filler.
Also, when not tanking, keeping SS up on the other tank is also very nice, I suggest to have a separate macro for SS on the other tank. It also works great to use on dps/healers if for some reason they maybe have a DoT on them or taking damage for some other reason. With vengeance up a single haste stacked SS absorbs about 300-600k depending on vengeance levels. That is a 300-600k absorb for a single GCD every 30 seconds if used on someone else. Usually adding an effective 15k damage absorbed per second +- to the target.

With raid buffs I am currently sitting on 7 ticks per SS, getting closer to 8 probably. During bloodlust it just goes bananas. Not sure exactly, gonna try out tomorrow but rather sure I am closer to 11 ticks during bl.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

In case you are not yet expertise capped. Set up an addon like powerauras or similar to show a proc when both your HoPo generating spells misses, but most importantly when your SotR misses,

If ShoR misses, you still get the damage reduction buff. All you lose is the damage from the ability.

[Deleted]

If ShoR misses, you still get the damage reduction buff. All you lose is the damage from the ability.

Very true. Guess it is mainly for missing HoPo generators then.

---------- Post added 2012-10-31 at 02:47 AM ----------

I had not really done testing with how many ticks of SS I am getting during bloodlust before, but just did some testing, man it is insane.

During bloodlust I am sitting on

92.16% spell haste without windsong proc
97.46% spell haste with windsong proc

Which does not really matter since both provide 10 ticks of SS.

With proc that is 3.04s between ticks and without proc it is 3.12 sec.

Getting another tick would require 106.25% spell haste. Which means that you gotta have roughly 15800-15900 haste ratings with 5% haste buff. 14300-14400 somewhere would give another tick with windsong active aswell.

So that seems like a long way to go.

A tank with 0 haste would almost exactly make the breakpoint for 8 ticks during BL.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

So Sacred Shield scales with Spell Haste auras like the Moonkin aura?

[Deleted]

Yes, and the wonderful thing is how the haste works together. They stack multiplicative.

So lets say you got 20% spell hast without buffs.

Then you will have 1.2*1.05*1.10=38.6% spell haste, not 35% with moonkin aura and SoI ( soi gives 10% spell haste, easy to forget )
During bloodlust that would increase to 80.18% spell haste, not 65%.

The breakpoints for SS comes when the time between the ticks are roughly ( a few decimals here and there, I am not expert at this )

Edit: Breakpoints are slightly off, they actually happen earlier then below. Much appreciated if some math expert can calculate exact break points 9,8,7 has been tested, rest is just hyptothetical.

2.6666667s - 12 ticks
2.9090909s - 11
3.2s - 10
70% spell haste - 9
50% spell haste - 8
30% spell haste - 7
5.3333333s - 6 ticks ( which is reached simply with SoI + Moonkin aura without any haste rating.


Quite sad that they removed wrath from us though, because it was very insane spamming wraths with 90% spell haste during bloodlust But the haste scaling was just insane together with vengeance scaling.



Melee haste works in the same way, which is why the value of haste is strongly increased when you have a haste buff presence on a boss fight / bloodlust

For example gara'jal, if your being healed properly you should get 24% haste buff.
Again lets presume 20% haste rating. Then you would recieve 1.2*1.1*1.24=1.6368, that is 63.68% melee haste.
If you would have bloodlust at the same time it would increase to 112.8%
Though you rarely use BL at that time window on Gara'Jal.
But lets say your on a regular boss. During bl it would still be 71.6% haste with only 20% from gear, 10% from buff and 30% from bl.

So what you can say is that haste buff increases the value of haste by 10%, and bloodlust increases it by 30%, together they increase it by 33%

So if you would reach 30% haste, it would actually give 33% haste due to 10% haste buff and 40% haste during bloodlust.

And on a fight like gara'jal, it is increased by 36.4% while you have the haste buff active from the shadow realm.

Now I make it sound like 30% is impossible to reach, but I am actuall sitting on 28% with only haste elixir, and 31.5% during windsong procs, and my loot luck has not been the best.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

So that is about 6000 haste rating (6037.41... to be more precise) for an extra two ticks of SS with SoI and the spell haste buff, and 9 ticks with bloodlust (71.6% haste).

[Deleted]

Yes, that sounds about right. Which I guess would make 4540 rating a bit of a soft cap if your using windsong and always reapply SS when your windsong procs.

On some second looks here, It seemed my initital thoughts of the sacred shield break points is a bit off, they seem to happen slightly faster. From first look, it appeared that the amount ticks you get is how many amount of ticks you get in a 32 second window.
Had a break point happen even earlier now by swapping out some gear, and noticed it break as early as 32.3 seconds
The numbers I posted earlier are probably not entirely correct for breakpoints but should be close.

Looks like the 7 ticks breakpoint is at 30% spell haste exactly ( I got it with 30.06%, it was as close as I could get with my gear )


Theck were art thou!