[Prot] Mythic HFC Guide

Deleted · 2015-12-08, 05:47 PM

[Prot] Mythic Hellfire Citadel Protection Guide
Updated for patch: 6.2.3
Last updated: 22^nd March 2016

In this guide, I’ll offer a brief overview of Protection Paladin-specific tips and advice for every fight in the Hellfire Citadel raid instance. This will include talent choices, trinket choices and other specific tips such as where to use Divine Shield effectively. The guide will be split into wings, and the bosses in each wing. To find a specific boss, simply hit ctrl + f to search for them. Please note, this guide is written specifically with progression in mind – there will be things mentioned in this guide that may not apply to farm due to the gear available. Again, this is for Mythic difficulty.

This is not a guide to replace Icy-Veins/Wowhead/Fatboss. This guide is written with the assumption that you already know the fights well enough from Heroic. This is purely for Protection Paladin tips.

Notes:

• This guide is for Mythic only.
• This guide assumes you have the legendary ring.
• This guide assumes you have the T18 4-piece and access to the 3 main trinkets – Warlord’s Unseeing Eye, Aznu’s Cursed Plume and Libram of Vindication (class trinket)
• This guide assumes you are haste capped or close to it. Haste cap (with raid buff) is 3858 on the character sheet.
• This guide is for progression only.
• Every guild is different. You might have amazing healers, in which case some talents/advice could potentially be ignored.
• This guide is not gospel. Some things may work out better for you, for your comp, for your gear etc. It's a baseline to work from.
• This guide may be updated in the future if anything changes. Refer back to this in the future for any patches/changes to Protection Paladin.

Acronyms:

• AS – Avenger’s Shield
• DP – Divine Protection
• Sac – Sacrifice
• CS – Crusader’s Strike
• HoTR – Hammer of the Righteous
• LH – Light’s Hammer
• Guardian/GAK – Guardian of Ancient Kings
• AD – Ardent Defender
• HA – Holy Avenger
• GCD – Global Cooldown
• BA – Bonus Armour
• SoL – Speed of Light
• HoPo – Holy Power
• WoG – World of Glory
• HoS/Sac – Hand of Sacrifice

Other Protection Paladin resources to note:

• MMO-Champion Protection Paladin Guide
• MMO-Champion Protection Paladin Discussion
• Icy-Veins Protection Paladin Section
• Sacred Duty (Note: hasn't been recently updated, but still has valuable information regarding stat weighting)
• Tank Discussion Discord

A note on Level 100 talents:

Holy Shield vs Seraphim is always debated, and it ultimately boils down to A) whether you can perform a perfect seraphim rotation with near to 50% uptime and B) 4-set RNG due to downtime on SoTR. Whilst this guide recommends Seraphim for multiple bosses, it is quite possible to run HS for everything except arguably Xhul, especially with inflated ilvls from the valor upgrades. As previously mentioned this guide is only a baseline build - you can tweak things here and there. Whilst 99% of the builds are set in stone, it's entirely possible you may feel more comfortable with a different Level 100 talent to what is written here.

Hellbreach

Spoiler:

Halls of Blood

Spoiler:

Bastion of Shadows

Spoiler:

Destructor's Rise

Spoiler:

The Black Gate

Spoiler:

Written By Veilyn.
Credit to: Athoman-NagrandEU, Liminara

**Lysozyme** · 2015-12-08, 06:12 PM

Why're you recommending Holy Shield on every boss?

Deleted · 2015-12-08, 06:15 PM

Originally Posted by Lysozyme

Why're you recommending Holy Shield on every boss?

Oversight in some copy and pasting, fixing now.

EDIT: Fixed

**celinamuna** · 2015-12-08, 06:31 PM

Originally Posted by Veilyn

Oversight in some copy and pasting, fixing now.

EDIT: Fixed

It's okay, sounds like a typical prot paladin design.
Huehuehue

**Bobblefet** · 2015-12-11, 02:38 AM

...I just realized I have no idea what glyphing flash of light does.

**bicycle** · 2015-12-11, 03:12 AM

Libram is the way to go on Reaver imo. It'll proc on artillery and save you holy power you might've otherwise spent on WOG. Ditto reactive bombs.

Clemency can relieve some of the healers' burden on Kilrogg by BoPing people who are bleeding. Without a BoP or visions to clear the bleed, often the person bleeding from the start ends up taking more total damage than the tanks do. Also on Kilrogg you mentioned Feast, which I assume is a copy/paste error.

Gorefiend your focused shield line is incomplete. Probably meant to specify the priority adds are the enrage/gorebound spirits.

On Socrethar, he casts Reverb every ~16 seconds, so you can actually solo 5 smashes in a row, just use taunt+DS third smash, then AD, then taunt+HoP since forbearance expires with a couple seconds to spare. (I haven't personally done this one Mythic yet, but I double checked some mythic logs to confirm the timing is the same as heroic, and it actually seems like he casts smash less frequently on mythic than heroic)

Deleted · 2015-12-11, 06:31 PM

Originally Posted by bicycle

Libram is the way to go on Reaver imo. It'll proc on artillery and save you holy power you might've otherwise spent on WOG. Ditto reactive bombs.

Clemency can relieve some of the healers' burden on Kilrogg by BoPing people who are bleeding. Without a BoP or visions to clear the bleed, often the person bleeding from the start ends up taking more total damage than the tanks do. Also on Kilrogg you mentioned Feast, which I assume is a copy/paste error.

Gorefiend your focused shield line is incomplete. Probably meant to specify the priority adds are the enrage/gorebound spirits.

On Socrethar, he casts Reverb every ~16 seconds, so you can actually solo 5 smashes in a row, just use taunt+DS third smash, then AD, then taunt+HoP since forbearance expires with a couple seconds to spare. (I haven't personally done this one Mythic yet, but I double checked some mythic logs to confirm the timing is the same as heroic, and it actually seems like he casts smash less frequently on mythic than heroic)

Thank you, I've edited these in.

**sexybeast** · 2015-12-13, 05:42 PM

I disagree with trinket and t100 for manno, running it with WuE/tanking loom trunk and sera makes the entire fight faceroll even during prog -

Get to 5 hp with norm/hc p1 when boss is in position (assuming stacking at pillar) pop ring/ha/sera and for your massive blast use trinket. Makes the entire fight absolutely faceroll if you are on boss duty.
Sera comes off cd 3/4 seconds after you land and you still have 3 holy power leading you into a perfect sera rotation.

Deleted · 2016-01-06, 12:06 AM

Updated:

Added prologue section briefly regarding HS vs Sera, and added some information on Archi for Sera & LoV vs Plume. Added a note on LoV vs Plume for Mannoroth too.

Originally Posted by sexybeast

I disagree with trinket and t100 for manno, running it with WuE/tanking loom trunk and sera makes the entire fight faceroll even during prog -

Get to 5 hp with norm/hc p1 when boss is in position (assuming stacking at pillar) pop ring/ha/sera and for your massive blast use trinket. Makes the entire fight absolutely faceroll if you are on boss duty.
Sera comes off cd 3/4 seconds after you land and you still have 3 holy power leading you into a perfect sera rotation.

I added your point on Seraphim into the general advice section for Manno. I opted to keep HS as the main advice here due to the usual HS vs Sera argument, it making the most sense as a baseline recommendation due to the whole HoPo needed for Glaive Combo. I didn't add the heirloom trinket because it's garbage compared to LoV/ACP. Mannoroth's melee swings aren't particularly dangerous, and during my testing LoV worked extremely well as it will proc off Glaive Combo, causing a considerable amount of damage damage and to top you back off after Massive Blast so you don't run into a case of dying from the falling damage or something silly like that if you're very low.

Deleted · 2016-01-06, 12:20 AM

Whilst this guide recommends Seraphim for multiple bosses, it is quite possible to run HS for everything except Xhul and Archi, especially with inflated ilvls from the valor upgrades.

I'm pretty sure this tidbit says literally the exact opposite of what you're trying to say, or something, especially given that you recommend Sera for Xhul and HS for Archi.

The only bosses where I'd say you strictly shouldn't play Seraphim for progress at this point are Tyrant, Mannoroth, and Archimonde, with Gorefiend as a special mention if your guild struggles to kill Gorebound Spirits in a timely fashion.

Deleted · 2016-01-06, 12:28 AM

Originally Posted by PraisetheSun

I'm pretty sure this tidbit says literally the exact opposite of what you're trying to say, or something, especially given that you recommend Sera for Xhul and HS for Archi.

The only bosses where I'd say you strictly shouldn't play Seraphim for progress at this point are Tyrant, Mannoroth, and Archimonde, with Gorefiend as a special mention if your guild struggles to kill Gorebound Spirits in a timely fashion.

Ah snap I didn't mean to have Archi there. I should probably edit these things during the day and not at 12:30AM.

I'd agree with the 4 you mentioned though, and I'd add Kilrogg to that if they're not quite comfortable with the Seraphim rotation. As much as I hate HS as a talent, there's no denying that it is good defensively and doesn't have any huge downsides aside from the whole RNG argument.

**sikith** · 2016-01-08, 12:29 AM

Hmmmmm I personally thing WoG is better than FW glyph for Archimonde. Considering you advise running LoV this can be a significant amount of damage during p2 if used correctly.

-Edit--

Just checked out logs, Sep who is our prot pally is using the WoG glyph. If you're going to suggest a DPS glyph this makes more sense IMO.

Deleted · 2016-01-08, 12:51 AM

Originally Posted by sikith

Hmmmmm I personally thing WoG is better than FW glyph for Archimonde. Considering you advise running LoV this can be a significant amount of damage during p2 if used correctly.

-Edit--

Just checked out logs, Sep who is our prot pally is using the WoG glyph. If you're going to suggest a DPS glyph this makes more sense IMO.

Using the WoG glyph is literally retarded unless you're in the 99.999999th percentile and completely committed to increasing your own DPS, not helping your raid kill the boss.

If you look at his SotR uptime relative to other paladins who kill the boss, I'd be impressed if it wasn't 50% of what it ought to be because he's pre-casting WoG before forcing a LoV proc. While this is something that's arguably advisable if you REALLY want to push your ranks (which honestly at this point in the tier is just pointless), advising it as a glyph to take in general would be pants-on-head level stuff.

FW has zero tradeoffs. Improper usage of glyph of WoG will not only kill you, but get other people killed because you run your SotR uptime into the ground and require a shit-ton of extra healer attention. It is not for the person reading a guide in the first place, and recommending it is doing people an abject disservice.

**sikith** · 2016-01-08, 03:25 AM

While you're tanking the Deathcaller I don't think your SotR uptime is overly important. You're not getting smacked in the face by Archi and the Deathcaller doesn't hit hard at all, the damage is all coming from the Death Brand/Shadow blast which can have personals/externals used for. Holy Wrath is a really underwhelming spell as is and a 50% increase is almost negligible.

The way I look at it the glyph is a <.3% dps increase and I feel like even if using your bastion stacks to heal yourself with a 1HP WoG you'll be getting more of a benefit than the Final Wrath glyph. It's better even if your not cheesing it with LoV.

Deleted · 2016-01-08, 04:03 AM

Originally Posted by sikith

While you're tanking the Deathcaller I don't think your SotR uptime is overly important. You're not getting smacked in the face by Archi and the Deathcaller doesn't hit hard at all, the damage is all coming from the Death Brand/Shadow blast which can have personals/externals used for. Holy Wrath is a really underwhelming spell as is and a 50% increase is almost negligible.

The way I look at it the glyph is a <.3% dps increase and I feel like even if using your bastion stacks to heal yourself with a 1HP WoG you'll be getting more of a benefit than the Final Wrath glyph. It's better even if your not cheesing it with LoV.

You're simply outright incorrect in stating that it's better even if you're not using it to augment LoV procs. Just to make GWoG break even, as in not be a DPS loss, every cast of WoG has to result in 60k (in 745ish gear, anyway) extra damage in the next 6 seconds to compensate for a lost SotR cast - you'd never cast it with less than 3 HoPo because the damage increase scales with HoPo spent. Given that it's a 9% DPS increase, this is simply never going to happen in a situation where you're not forcing a LoV proc at the same time, bar maybe a chain of Grand Crusader procs with Focused Shield or during HA + Sanctus.

It's also absurd to state that "you'll never be tanking the boss and the Deathcaller at the same time" when the strategy of choice for progression guilds is to have tanks soak fire, leaving one tank with the Deathcaller AND the boss for a non-negligible amount of time.

If this guide were recommending Seraphim for Archimonde (which you'll notice it isn't) because it was orientated towards people who want to improve their parses, I'd have no issue with you pointing players in the direction of GWoG as something to experiment with. The fact of the matter, however, is that this guide recommends Holy Shield and is styled towards players and guilds that are still working on a first kill. Given this set of circumstances, so much as bringing GWoG to mention is doing readers a disservice. It is not and will never be a sensible choice for anything other than cheesing DPS with LoV; instead it actively works against what the OP is looking to accomplish, and as such, while it may be an interesting subject of discussion, it has no place in this particular thread.

Deleted · 2016-01-09, 04:25 PM

Update: Adjusted some formatting for ease of reading. Also added a section for other notable Prot Pala resources. If you have any you think should be added to the list, please PM me!

**Krilik** · 2016-01-11, 06:54 PM

Originally Posted by PraisetheSun

...The only bosses where I'd say you strictly shouldn't play Seraphim for progress at this point are Tyrant, Mannoroth, and Archimonde, with Gorefiend as a special mention if your guild struggles to kill Gorebound Spirits in a timely fashion.

Progression wise, why do you recommend HS over Sera for Tyrant and Manno? With ~45%+ uptime and tank swap mechanics, is Seraphim not the best defensive+offensive choice anymore?

For Mythic progression, I've been running:

Assault: HS - Many adds, spell damage from fel casters and such, more mitigated hits?
Reaver: Sera - Single target, tank swap, mostly phys?
Kormrok: Sera - Majority is phys damage?
Kilrog: Sera - Usually on add duty,
Council (Dia): Sera - My rational was it lines up perfectly with nightmare visage, but I later learned the fight is almost 50/50 magic/physical and HS is better
Iskar: Sera - Usually only tanking iskar, other tank handles adds phases
Soc: Sera - Thinking about it, HS is better
Xhul: HS - Magic Dmg, multiple targets, constantly tanking
Fel Lord: Sera - Mostly physical damage
Tyrant: Sera - Tank swap, like 75% melee damage, works well with P3 tank swaps?
Manny: Sera - Tanking manny, usually taking entire glaive combo (Sera lines up perfectly), mostly (60%~70%+) physical dmg because using BOA tank trinket to negate glaive combo damage

Progression wise, I've been taking Sera on mostly single target fights where there is not a large amount of magic damage, and HS on fights with many mobs/adds (like assault) or high percentages of magic damage. I usually look at external healing required when I look at damage taken. I don't play fully defensively in that I rarely use Insight unless I really need the survivability such as if the other tank/healers die or P3 tyrant craziness. Is my line of thinking completely wrong? Sera was the king of progression back in early Highmaul, but I thought that it was still generally better that HS unless you can't keep up a good uptime % or if there's a lot of magic damage or if there's many adds?

Deleted · 2016-01-11, 10:16 PM

Originally Posted by Krilik

Progression wise, why do you recommend HS over Sera for Tyrant and Manno? With ~45%+ uptime and tank swap mechanics, is Seraphim not the best defensive+offensive choice anymore?

Bear in mind this is for progression:

Seraphim is not taken on Tyrant because the associated SoTR downtime, which will get you killed during progression. Tyrant hits like an absolute truck and with our already low EHP, missing out on big chunks of Physical DR from SOTR is a death sentence. HS is passive and the best option there, and EmpSeals is garbage. Manno I actually preferred Seraphim during progress as you can do a smooth rotation of it there due to the time tanking / offtanking works well with Seraphims CD, but he does hit fairly hard if you're a little low on gear, plus not everyone will realise that Seraphim works well when timed right with Manno and will miss the AM for Glaive Thrust.

In regards to your Mythic talents, I'd say just look at the guide itself as they offer the most appropriate baseline talents. The only things I'd say to reconsider for your current list is :

• Council (Dia) - HS would be better here as you said. The only time that the damage intake is scary is when Visage lines up with ghost phase - you can mitigate both with HS as the ghosts tick quickly and she hits quickly too.
• Soc - As you said, HS is the better option if you're taking the boss.
• Tyrant - Try using HS here and seeing if you feel more comfortable using it and compare the damage intake over a few different attempts with both talents.
• Mannoroth - The BoA tank trinket is pretty garbage. I much, much prefer WuE + LoV.

EDIT: Thought I'd explain a little more of some of the reasoning behind why we sometimes advise Sera > HS for those curious. RNG in general is pretty shit but when you're tanking on progression, RNG can cause you to die within a global. HS is inherently RNG: it's a chance to block. Whenever I've advised people to take Seraphim over Holy Shield for Xhul if they take Omnus they always ask me why and say that it's all magic damage and surely HS would be better there. The fact is that when you take Omnus, the add damage is next to nothing. It's so insignificant it's not worth thinking about. The only damage you need to worry about is from the Void Strike.

Now, Void Strike is a single, big hit. HS is a chance to block. When you're blocking lots of smaller hits a la Hellfire Assault, it averages out to be beneficial. However, when you're wanting to reduce the damage of single, sparse hits, you start to dabble with RNG. With Seraphim, it's a flat DR. Even Mastery and Bonus Armour work to give you magic DR as they grant AP. Sacred Shield scales directly off of AP. Furthermore, Seraphim gives Versatility which is a flat DR. Your heals will also have a higher crit chance and a higher chance to multistrike. Whilst it may not be a huge DR, it is 100% reliable and will always work. RNG in tanking is a bitch, and we want to remove it - especially from a class that has a large chunk of survivability based off of RNG in the form of our 4-set.

On the opposite side, one of the biggest reasons we advise Holy Shield > Seraphim for certain bosses is because of the SoTR downtime that comes with building 5HoPo, spending it and then having to build 3HoPo again afterwards. Whereas with HS, you just build 3-5HoPo, spend and repeat. Even with good RNG and back to back AS procs over and over, you will still only be using SoTR just as your buff falls off. A large chunk of our uptime comes from having a good Holy Avenger opener and keeping our SoTR buff up for a good minute plus until Holy Avenger comes off of cooldown. With Seraphim, you not only reduce the potential opener as you have to spend 2 extra GCDs to get Seraphim up, but you also have a higher chance of the buff falling off sooner as you have to build 5HoPo, spend and build again.

**Safyra** · 2016-01-24, 02:46 PM

Thanks for the tips and a personal bump to myself.

Deleted · 2016-02-04, 11:39 AM

Hi, you mention a good HA opener Veilyn, what would that opener look like (with and without using seraphim)?

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