[BRF] Prot Paladin Tips and Tricks

[Kynes]

Rather than making a guide, (which already exists; albeit out of date) I figured I could foster a thread that is reliant on the exchange of information between Protadins from all walks of raid difficulties. Inspired from Maintankadin's "Mists of Pandaria Raids" subforum, I am hoping we can use this thread as a resource for each boss in the current tier.

I am hoping we can crowdsource this list from new and experienced tanks alike. A lot of this information is a combination of personal experience, WarcraftLogs, the "Prot WoD Discussion" megathread, and other tidbits from the interwebs.

All Bosses
- All BRF encounters (with one exception) use Glyph of Divine Protection by default. When faced with reducing burst spell damage, pick Holy Shield rather than removing the Glyph of Divine Protection.
- Seraphim is always used in conjunction with picking Holy Avenger.
-- Execution Sentence does a significant portion of damage during Seraphim, and the 3 abilities line up well. Every 2nd Seraphim will be up while Execution Sentence is ticking down on an enemy. When planning ahead for the next Seraphim/Execution Sentence combo, pre-cast Execution Sentence while continuing to prioritize HoPo generators. Seraphim is not on the GCD and does not have the same limitation.
- Example: [Seraphim CD<10s] CS -> Judg -> GrandCrusaderAS -> CS -> Judg -> GCAS/Cons/HW/ -> SS -> Execution Sentence + Seraphim -> CS -> Judg ...
- Empowered Seals prefers being paired with Divine Purpose.
- It has been simulated that refreshing Liadrin's Righteousness (the haste buff) after it has expired is not a survivability loss. However, refreshing Uther's Insight (the HoT) before it expires benefits from the "Pandemic" mechanic that was broadened from Warlocks. As a result, always aim for refreshing Uther's Insight before it expires. Alternatively, refreshing Liadrin's Righteousness should be done after prioriziting HoPo generators.


Gruul
- Preferred lvl100: Seraphim = Empowered Seals > Holy Shield
- Focused Shield Glyph is used.
- Long Arm of the Law is a guaranteed speed increase when moving to soaker groups.
- LFR/Normal/Heroic: Inferno Slice can be solo soaked with Divine Shield Taunt, or Ardent Defender. On Mythic, Gruul instantly regains energy to Slice again so this is ill-advised.
- Mythic: Gruul challenges the raid with consistently high tank damage. The on/off nature of Seraphim works well because of the tank swap mechanics, but there is a very real danger of tank death on even the slightest misplay, especially if your raid is using 2 tanks. For this reason, many tanks opt in to Empowered Seals + Divine Purpose.


Oregorger
- Preferred lvl100: Seraphim > Empowered Seals > Holy Shield
- Focused Shield Glyph is used.
- Use Active Mitigation for each Acid Torrent cast.
- Divine Shield and Hand of Protection can be used when its your turn to soak Acid Torrent. The Torrent will still do damage to the ranged stack, but it will be the bare minimum amount.


Blast Furnace
- Preferred lvl100: Seraphim = Holy Shield > Empowered Seals.
- If you are assigned to tank Foreman Feldspar, Holy Shield pulls ahead.
- Mythic mode prefers the use of Holy Shield - it provides a consistently high defensive value in Phase 1, unlike the on/off nature of Seraphim, and trivializes tank damage in Phase 3.
- Use Fist of Justice liberally on adds. It is one of the longest stuns in the game, and comes at only a GCD cost. Furnace Engineer, Security Guard, and Firecaller can be stunned.
- LFR: Fist of Justice interrupts Security Guard cast.


Hans'gar and Franzok
- Preferred lvl100: Seraphim = Empowered Seals > Holy Shield
- Although you can perform no offensive actions when grabbed for Crippling Suplex, you can spend a GCD refreshing Sacred Shield.
- Always use a personal cooldown for each Suplex. Ask for externals as neccessary. Ask your Disc Priest to always have a Clarity of Will shield on you, if they aren't already doing that.
- A very unfortunate tank death can happen when the boss throws the tank out of a Crippling Suplex into a stamper. Fortunately, physical immunities (Divine Shield, Hand of Protection) reduce the damage of stampers to 0. Keep in mind, these same immunities do not work on the damage from the Suplex itself.


Flamebender Ka'graz
- Preferred lvl100: Holy Shield = Seraphim > Empowered Seals
- Spell damage taken is quite high on this fight. Holy Shield is a great alternative to Seraphim because you can literally block everything, especially when learning this fight.
- Consider unglyphing Divine Protection for this fight. The most likely situation of a tank death is the add's breath, where -40% Spell Damage reduction shines. It also has the side benefits of reducing damage from the boss-applied DoT and Firestorm as well.
- Standing in lines applies a stacking debuff. During moments of positioning, it can be unavoidable. If the debuff is 2 stacks or higher, use Divine Shield to remove it. (use a /cancelaura Divine Shield macro)
- Mythic: The strategy for killing adds involves stacking them loosely near the melee stack. The timer for add spawns and subsequent Firestorms is very consistent with the cooldown of Light's Hammer. Drop Light's Hammer in melee so it hits all the adds for maximum damage and healing.


Kromog, Legend of the Mountain
- Preferred lvl100: Empowered Seals = Seraphim > Holy Shield
- Hand of Freedom doesn't work on the snare the boss applies. Use Active Mitigation + Divine Protection on every Slam.
- Slam does less damage the further you are from Kromog. Long Arm of the Law's speed increase will be always available to use on Slam.
- Getting in a hand is optional - when the boss begins his Thundering Blows cast, use Divine Shield or Hand of Protection to avoid the damage and the subsequent fall damage as well.
- Light's Hammer can be positioned to deal maximum damage to all hands. Execution Sentence is also a valid choice on the boss, considering your Light's Hammer will do -50% damage during the times you Divine Shield yourself.
- Kromog does more damage <30%. Protadins are one of the weaker tanks on this fight, and active mitigation alone may not be enough to survive his melee + ability combo. Use externals and cooldowns liberally during the final stretch.


Beastlord Darmac
- Preferred lvl100: Seraphim > Empowered Seals > Holy Shield
- Divine Shield and Hand of Protection removes Rend and Tear and Crush Armor stacks. (Wolf and Elekk)
- Hand of Freedom removes snare from Epicenter (Mythic only)


Operator Thogar
- Preferred lvl100: Holy Shield = Seraphim > Empowered Seals


Iron Maidens
- Preferred lvl100: Seraphim > Empowered Seals > Holy Shield
- Hand of Protection can be used on Blood Ritual and Penetrating Shot targets. (preferred usage <20% phase)


Blackhand
- Preferred lvl100: Empowered Seals > Seraphim > Holy Shield
- Blackhand hits very hard. A combination of the Haste received from Empowered Seals and high mastery provides high uptime on Shield of the Righteous, mitigating a large portion of boss melee damage.
- Focused Shield Glyph is used.
- Divine Shield on a Shattering Smash (after the cast begins) in Phase 1 mitigates damage to 0. You are still knocked back but take no damage from the Smash and the fire.

[tsuro]

Thanks for this

[Snakaso]

Great idea, shame no one did this earlier (all that lurking in the WoD thread >.>)

My thoughts on your list / a couple of additions:

Blast Furnace: IIRC the Security Guards drop their shield in Normal too (been a while since I last did it on Normal), so stunning them really only works in LFR. Nonetheless, good tip.

Hans'gar & Franzok: Make sure to use Active Mitigation before each Crippling Suplex (if they aren't running around the room like crazy, it's not often I'm able to get a SotR cast in before Suplex, but if you can do it, it certainly helps). Also, you probably want a CD for each Suplex (unless you're very overgeared), which means you'll probably need an external for the third one (GAnK and AD respectively on the first two, not sure if DivProt is enough) since the cooldown used on the first Suplex won't be up by then. Not 100% sure about that last one, though.

Flamebender Ka'graz: I use Light's Hammer here since it lines up pretty well with doges and Firestorm. It doesn't heal the raid that much, but every bit helps, especially if you don't have a strong AoE cooldown like Tranq, Healing Tide or Hymn.

Kromog: I actually use full single target here, since if you bubble/BoP the Thundering Blows you actually don't get that much uptime on the hands (at least in Normal/Heroic, don't know about Mythic, but even then I'd probably go full ST for the Pillars). This means Focused Shield and Execution Sentence. Glyph of Sacrifice is pretty good here, imo, since this boss hits like a fucking truck and an extra external is always good. Long Arm of the Law is awesome for getting away from Slam, since Speed of Light won't be up for every slam, but LAotL will be (albeit perhaps a tiny bit later than you'd want to have it). I also run Seraphim here, but that's just personal preference. Although, I do recommend using Holy Avenger (even if not running Seraphim), since it gives you such a long cooldown (constant SotR uptime for the last 30%? Yes please! (no, it's not constant, but it lasts for 20-30 secs, and then you have your own cooldowns plus a couple of externals)). Also, you can bypass a total of 3 Thundering Blows if you're using Unbreakable Spirit (which you should if you're using Seraphim) and 3 or 4 if you're using Clemency (I can't remember which, I've always run UB on Kromog, lol), which may or may not be enough to cover all of the Thundering Blows. The first time my guild killed him, I had to get into a hand once, but since then (and in most PUGs) we only get 3 Thundering Blows.

Operator Thogar: With the ammount of AoE here, I'd recommend HA or DP over SW, since they both scale with AoE and SW doesn't.

Iron Maidens: Just as with Kromog, I recommend Holy Avenger. The last 20% can get pretty scary, so paring HA up with Sera and an armor potion (bonus points if you're using Pol's or Tablet!) makes for some pretty retarded DPS (if the boats get done in a timely fashion so they line up with my CD's I can get top 5 in my guild runs). I'm actually a bit conflicted if Light's Hammer or Execution Sentence is better here. If your guild is having problems with healers going OOM or something, LH is probably better, but if you aren't making the DPS check of the last 20%, ES is probably better. I personally run LH (because farm, loldps, and the DPS in my guild is pretty good, so we didn't really have any problems making the sub-20% DPS check in the first place, just people being silly and standing in the balls of fire (fire hurts, god damn it! When will people learn?!)). Also, BoP is pretty cash for Penetrating Shot on Bomb-phases, since it can be a bit tricky stacking with bombs going off left and right. This should also be even more true since they hotfixed it so Gar'an has a 3-sec CD on all abilities after using Turret, so you should no longer have to run halfway across the room to stack during <20%. If your healers are having trouble after 20%, though, using BoP then is a solid tactic.

Blackhand: If you're going up in phase 2, I'd recommend Seraphim. You don't really tank him much in phase one, except during Sera (if you start tanking, that is), and during phase 3, no-one tanks him that much, he just smacks you around and runs to you, so phase 2 is only the real issue here. If you run Sera, it means you essentially won't be able to tank him without Seraphim up (at least on HC), but since you're up on the balcony half the time, that's not really an issue. Use Focused Wrath if you're going up in phase 2 so you don't spread out your damage. Also, just like Kromog and Maidens, HA for loldps. Remember that you can solo-soak a Smash in phase 3 if you're running out of space. This is preferably done with him facing the middle, and you bubble-taunting (not sure if you have to taunt, you can probably just bubble during the cast of smash, haven't tested it thoroughly, though), so you don't fall off. Solo-soaking a smash (with or without bubble doesn't matter) is really only a good idea on the last couple of percent, since he will do another Smash just a couple of seconds later, since he didn't hit enough people (he needs to hit 4 to not get any energy, IIRC). This will buy you those extra few seconds, but it won't give you a kill if you're wiping on 10%.

Note: This is all from my personal experience in Heroic and Normal (I have only killed Darmac on Mythic so far), plus some from the WoD prot pala thread. There may be some mistakes (grammatical and/or mechanical), and if there are, I'm sorry - I'm only human. If anyone has any questions about what I meant with something or other, don't hesitate to ask!

- - - Updated - - -

Just realized I should probably add this: I am a DPS-whore. I run Sera on every humanly imaginable boss. So yeah, my lvl100 talent choices might be a bit biased towards that. Also, I'd say 50% of what I said in my post was towards more survivability, 50% was towards more DPS, and something like 1% was raid utility, etc. (with a margin of error of ~1%).

[Edit:] Forgot to mention, if I didn't talk about something, I agree with OP on it.

[aGit]

atleast on mythic flamebender, not using the glyph of DP is an option.

[Kanadei]

This is kind of obvious but probably worth mentioning anyway - for Heroic Beastlord (and normal, not sure about Mythic) Seraphim times perfectly with the Call of the Pack adds. In fact, I have a Monk OT who can roll out of the rend so he generally tanks the boss for 70-80% of the fight and I purely handle the adds for that very reason.

- - - Updated - - -

G
1. Kromog: I actually use full single target here, since if you bubble/BoP the Thundering Blows you actually don't get that much uptime on the hands (at least in Normal/Heroic, don't know about Mythic, but even then I'd probably go full ST for the Pillars).

2. Also, you can bypass a total of 3 Thundering Blows if you're using Unbreakable Spirit (which you should if you're using Seraphim) and 3 or 4 if you're using Clemency (I can't remember which, I've always run UB on Kromog, lol), which may or may not be enough to cover all of the Thundering Blows. The first time my guild killed him, I had to get into a hand once, but since then (and in most PUGs) we only get 3 Thundering Blows.

3. Iron Maidens: I'm actually a bit conflicted if Light's Hammer or Execution Sentence is better here. If your guild is having problems with healers going OOM or something, LH is probably better, but if you aren't making the DPS check of the last 20%, ES is probably better.

Just some quick input here.

1. For heroic at least, Light's Hammer times pretty well with the hand phases. If you pop it on pull its up for the first set of hands (unless your raids dps far exceeds mine) and you can just drop it in the middle of everyone before you divine shield/HoP the Thundering Blows. It works specifically because you don't get much uptime on the hands (it's all the damage I do to them personally) but it does so much that it really shouldn't be a huge issue in my experience.

2. From memory it's 3 for Unbreakable Spirit and infinite for Clemency (as by the time you are out of Shield/Hop shield is back up again, and then HoP is back up again and rinse repeat). Haven't tested Clemency past 4-5 but I think my math checks out.

3. I think it's a bit misleading to say that you would use Light's Hammer if your healers were struggling but otherwise ES is better. Considering 75% of the fight is 2-3 targets, the aoe dps it brings should outstrip the gain you get from ES in most situations - especially since you want to be splitting dps anyway due to the non-shared health pools. Pretty sure it's more dps anyway, if not someone can correct with numbers.

[Deleted]

Hans'gar & Franzok: When you are grabbed for supplex and thrown on the other tank, make sure to be prepared for using bubble. In some cases you are thrown onto a stamp and bubble will prevent the damage and doesn't make you fail the acm. However, bubble will not prevent damage from supplex or being knockbacked by stamps.

Flamebender Ka'graz: I strongly suggest unglyphed DP here when tanking the dogs, physical damage is nearly non-existent. Breath is on a 6.2sec CD. 1st: no cd, right before the 2nd: DP and for the 3rd: DP (still up) + sac/vigi.

[Snakaso]

1. This is kind of obvious but probably worth mentioning anyway - for Heroic Beastlord (and normal, not sure about Mythic) Seraphim times perfectly with the Call of the Pack adds.

2. For heroic at least, Light's Hammer times pretty well with the hand phases. If you pop it on pull its up for the first set of hands (unless your raids dps far exceeds mine) and you can just drop it in the middle of everyone before you divine shield/HoP the Thundering Blows. It works specifically because you don't get much uptime on the hands (it's all the damage I do to them personally) but it does so much that it really shouldn't be a huge issue in my experience.

3. From memory it's 3 for Unbreakable Spirit and infinite for Clemency (as by the time you are out of Shield/Hop shield is back up again, and then HoP is back up again and rinse repeat). Haven't tested Clemency past 4-5 but I think my math checks out.

4. I think it's a bit misleading to say that you would use Light's Hammer if your healers were struggling but otherwise ES is better. Considering 75% of the fight is 2-3 targets, the aoe dps it brings should outstrip the gain you get from ES in most situations - especially since you want to be splitting dps anyway due to the non-shared health pools. Pretty sure it's more dps anyway, if not someone can correct with numbers.

1. I forgot to mention this in my first post, but this is a very valuable advice. It's also true for mythic (although the timers can get delayed a bit sometimes (I think when he jumps on a beast, or when a beast dies and he "absorbs its powers"), so you might have to delay Sera ~10 secs once or twice (at least in mythic, I did' worry too much about lining Sera up with Pack Beasts in Heroic and Normal)).

2. Isn't that affected by the -50% damage dealt during bubble, though? I normally just delay my ES and Sera cast until I've landed and cancelled my bubble so I can get the full damage from them. Solid advice if you're having trouble with getting people out of the hands quick enough, though.

3. If I remember correctly, not using Unbreakable Spirit causes your bubble to not be up by Thundering Blows #4 - but if you're speaking from experience, I guess I'll trust you :P

4. That's exactly why I'm conflicted about what is best. LH is easily more DPS throughout the fight, but ES gives focused DPS for the last 20%. Because let's be honest, the first 80% are a joke (assuming people aren't standing in bombs, stacking in Blood Ritual and Blood-soaked Heartseeker, and not stacking on Penetrating Shot), unless your healers are just plain and simple running OOM during that time. On the other hand, the last 20% can get a bit hectic (even when my guild clears it on farm), and any DPS towards getting the boss you're focusing down first is good. So I don't know, if your healers are running OOM during the fight (not the last 20%), I'd run with LH; if your raid has no problem at all killing the boss (not sure why you'd be here if that's the case, but whatever), I'd also recommend LH; if your raid is having trouble killing one of the bosses during the last 20% (this includes wiping to stupid mistakes made in execute phase (like standing in fire, not standing in Penetrating Shot, staying in the group when you have Blood Ritual, etc.), which is most likely, I'd recommend ES. On the other hand, if you kill of Marak quick enough (or Gar'an if you decide to start with her), but can't take down the other two before the Iron Will stacks get high enough, I'd probably recommend LH.

Like I said in my first post, though, I use LH on Maidens, and have been since always.

[Rawrzillasor]

Like I said in my first post, though, I use LH on Maidens, and have been since always.

ialso passive healing when you throw it on the melee group. not much of a help but hey, every little bit counts. i go up on the boats for heroic but our other ret pally for a kill a week ago had 676k healing from arcing light averaging 1.6k per tick which is nice while also being higher damage to help push bosses faster ie we skip third boat every week.

looked at another log where i went on the boat and i did 903k healing with it. 1m healing aint nothing

[Snakaso]

ialso passive healing when you throw it on the melee group. not much of a help but hey, every little bit counts. i go up on the boats for heroic but our other ret pally for a kill a week ago had 676k healing from arcing light averaging 1.6k per tick which is nice while also being higher damage to help push bosses faster ie we skip third boat every week.

looked at another log where i went on the boat and i did 903k healing with it. 1m healing aint nothing

Just took a look at my best log from Maidens (highest DPS), and on that kill I had 2.38 million healing from Arcing Light. I had 70.79% overhealing from it. 45.52% of the healing was to myself, 21.12% was to my co-tank. I had 15k HPS, and LH made up 20% of my overall healing, giving it an effective HPS of 3k. I don't know if that qualifies as "good healing", I don't think so at least. Even so, I still use it, just for the pure DPS gain.

Should also mention, I don't go on the boats in my guild-raids, so any advice I'm giving is from that perspective.

[Kynes]

Thanks guys, loving the responses so far and have updated the post with your suggestions.

[buffguy]

I love your guide. Can you make a similar guide for HFC?