[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[MerinPally]

Anyone here try the proving grounds? I've not done it, but I'm annoyed that it scales us down to 463, back to the days of primitive haste.

Same as challenge modes though - the better gear you have, you still have an advantage albeit slight. More gem slots for a start. Even now, a very very very well geared (say BiS) protadin can have 20 gem slots each with 320 haste in. That's 6400 haste just from gems, and believe me that's more than you have in full 463 gear if you get hit and exp capped. Also, as hit and exp remain unchanged, higher gear = fewer items with hit and exp on as the numbers are higher. This leads to more items with other stats on, so whilst scaled down, you will still have more of them than the first time round.

Yeah your haste will tumble and it'll suck, but you'll still have more stats than if you actually had 463 gear, just due to item budgets and reforging and stuff. A noticeable amount but that's only because of how low they can actually be

[Nairobi]

Are there any demon trashpacks in SoO? Then make some warlocks enslave them and free them during the fight for more adds...
Btw: I don't like this whole cheating stuff like sit-tanking, trash-to-boss-pulling etc. neither. Maybe the animus-tactics with 2 rings and CDs is the maximum i would use. Everything beyond this just feels wrong...

This...this is genius. Though they'd likely just get cleaved to hell, but we have 2 locks in our 10m, could be a fun game. Also, sit-tanking is being broken in 5.4, and there have been hints at environmental damage not giving vengeance anymore also. Most fire doesn't now, but it's a very sporadic coding (shocking, I know!).

Feels wrong to myself as well but I can't say I wouldn't do it. Farm content can get extraordinarily boring, we were clearing DS hc 8/8 in 2 hours and that was with slacking and usually a 30minute break during which time we did strange shit like a Star Trek quiz over vent. It's at that point where you just try and spice it up a bit by getting that bit more dps without putting yourself in more danger because the time delay if you wipe, is relatively large.

Bolded the important part, since this is probably the biggest reason that I stop caring about pushing ranks on farm. Last night, for instance, we had to 8/9man most of our heroic clear since we're having mid-summer attendance issues. We had some mistakes from that (lol disc priest got EVERY. SINGLE. ICE TORRENT. on Meg) as well as just general poor play, so me trying something new to push a rank would've just added complexity or room for error. This didn't stop me from doing stupid shit (had ~24 stacks on Horridon and forgot to have a CD up going to a new door. DC/TP unmit to the face = lol), but you get my point.

Ugh, what a shit raid ><

Anyone here try the proving grounds? I've not done it, but I'm annoyed that it scales us down to 463, back to the days of primitive haste.

Same as challenge modes though - the better gear you have, you still have an advantage albeit slight. More gem slots for a start. Even now, a very very very well geared (say BiS) protadin can have 20 gem slots each with 320 haste in. That's 6400 haste just from gems, and believe me that's more than you have in full 463 gear if you get hit and exp capped. Also, as hit and exp remain unchanged, higher gear = fewer items with hit and exp on as the numbers are higher. This leads to more items with other stats on, so whilst scaled down, you will still have more of them than the first time round.

Yeah your haste will tumble and it'll suck, but you'll still have more stats than if you actually had 463 gear, just due to item budgets and reforging and stuff. A noticeable amount but that's only because of how low they can actually be

Based on the videos put up, they don't look difficult. At all. It's more of an attrition fight than an actual skill check. I couldn't tell from the DK if we could passively (or actively) heal the NPC as a tank, but if so, I'd see this as being laughable. Gear may help some on the DPS encounter, and maybe a bit on the heals one (for mana regen purely), but I didn't see any incoming damage that was threatening. Plus, keep in mind that they are tuning this stuff for Johnny Average IN De-scaled gear, so it's not going to be rocket surgery. I'd expect it to be about on the level of cata heroics pre-nerf, at worst.

[Nillo]

had ~24 stacks on Horridon and forgot to have a CD up going to a new door. DC/TP unmit to the face = lol

Reminds me of my first time trying no-reset. Ended up dying because my SS fell off right before I got a 3ple + shout + autohit in my face.

Still Horridon is such a nice target dummy for prot pallies.

[Drummerboy]

It's at that point where you just try and spice it up a bit by getting that bit more dps without putting yourself in more danger because the time delay if you wipe, is relatively large.

Bolded the important part, since this is probably the biggest reason that I stop caring about pushing ranks on farm.

And outside of my offtank issues this is another reason why I can't take too much of a risk with getting numbers. Raiding 2.5 hours*2 days (5 hours/week) is very limiting and any one mistake that causes a wipe on a farm boss could set us back another week with downing a progression boss. Every kill has to go down perfect if not as close to perfect as possible otherwise we're losing time. As a result we tend to use more conservative strategies. And again that limiting schedule also means we don't farm bosses unless gear is an issue, and it usually isn't. We won't even bother doing achieves that have a risky strategy because of this.

I don't think we lack too much in skill. When we compare time spent combined with progression we are usually in line with most teams. You'd be surprised though having an hour more of raiding a week can affect your progression. And considering we walked into ToT only 4/16H (again also limited by our raiding schedule) that also meant we didn't have the gear advantages that many had.

For SoO we're talking about adding a third night for a couple weeks just to try to get deeper faster. Considering though again we'll be walking in with minimal heroic gear I don't have the highest expectations. You can say what you what you want about whether gearing matters, I will say this. Last week after some minimal farming (due to attendance preventing progression) Tortos and Meg melted like trash mobs. I even pulled a couple shale spiders in with Meg just to try it out and my raidbot epeen was over the top but I did get a lot of "What the hell are you doing?"

[Promdates]

because the time delay if you wipe, is relatively large.

Bolded the important part, since this is probably the biggest reason that I stop caring about pushing ranks on farm.

I've noticed most of our wipes are due to dps/healers not paying attention and doing something derpy. Although, on Animus I have been know to just explode from trying to take too many Anima Orbs when chaining CD's. Decided to just go with the same 1 orb (350k veng) instead of trying to game 2 for 500k veng.

[Nairobi]

Reminds me of my first time trying no-reset. Ended up dying because my SS fell off right before I got a 3ple + shout + autohit in my face.

Still Horridon is such a nice target dummy for prot pallies.

Usually it's fine, but I've had to start drinking more/earlier since clearing is such a bore/chore now. Makes it interesting at times.

I actually forgot which head to go to on Meg last night, and wiped us when the green breathed all over us...all the while yelling at our monk about why he was on blue. Apparently he was supposed to be there, and some other tank should have been on green. Oops. I just yelled out YOLOSWAGBITCHES, and went on my way.

I've noticed most of our wipes are due to dps/healers not paying attention and doing something derpy. Although, on Animus I have been know to just explode from trying to take too many Anima Orbs when chaining CD's. Decided to just go with the same 1 orb (350k veng) instead of trying to game 2 for 500k veng.

Yeah a lot of the mistakes aren't from my end when we wipe, but I suppose that's to be expected given that there are 9/24 other people who can also space out. And yeah, I've definitely tried "creative" ways to keep veng on Animus; taking 4 adds at the start (not much to gain there, since I'm already sitting ~capped with 3), or taking 3, killing 2 and then taking 2 more to keep that 3-stack rolling(works well unless CD's drop or a healer gets swapped). See also my Horri story. Played ping-pong with the other tank on Primo to keep our boss-stack debuff high (finished fight with like 19 stacks), though that can get dicey too.

I dunno, anything to keep the magic. Or keep me awake.

[Deleted]

Everytime I get a PM (notification on MMO-Champ) my first thought is "Wtf did I get an infraction for now?"

Story of my life. I'm probably one of the most banned Paladins on this entire forum.

[Deleted]

Story of my life. I'm probably one of the most banned Paladins on this entire forum.

I say we hold a contest.

What should we compare? Bans or just infractions? Any exceptions?

[MerinPally]

Just noticed my old heroic Souldrinker in the bank. With higher haste values, it is playtime for me should the proc rate be decent like it used to. What did protection paladins need but more self healing?

[Deleted]

Just noticed my old heroic Souldrinker in the bank. With higher haste values, it is playtime for me should the proc rate be decent like it used to. What did protection paladins need but more self healing?

Wasn't there a nerf to souldrinker back in early MoP? It now uses a set health pool of about 200k (or something in that area...). So it isn't OP anymore.

[pkm]

Since prot uses haste, in lfr should i set my loot spec to ret so i get dps loot?

[Nillo]

Since prot uses haste, in lfr should i set my loot spec to ret so i get dps loot?

Pretty much everywhere except for maybe twins.

[Sunnydee]

Since prot uses haste, in lfr should i set my loot spec to ret so i get dps loot?

use prot specc on Iron qon and twins, if you ask me put holy on tortos for shield. rest on ret.

[Nairobi]

use prot specc on Iron qon and twins, if you ask me put holy on tortos for shield. rest on ret.

Qon I can see. Twins, meh, but it's not bad. Not a fan of Tortos; I'd rather go prot on Lei Shen for 1) shield, 2) trinket, 3) helmet. Legs aren't stellar, but still got lots of sockets and not as bad as Primo tank table (if you're going for a shield).

[MerinPally]

Wasn't there a nerf to souldrinker back in early MoP? It now uses a set health pool of about 200k (or something in that area...). So it isn't OP anymore.

Wasn't aware of that. Ah well. Haven't tried it yet anyway so no harm done.

For the "What spec do I use" I'd also recommend Prot for Lei Shen. Reason being that the hat drops for both specs, and also if you don't luck out on the shield from Tortos then having that gem socket is going to make your previous shield (probably the one from MSV) worse than it. It has Dodge/Mastery I think as well so it's not that dire, like a dodge/parry one.

The trinket and legs aren't great but aren't terrible, then you won't use either of the other drops for ret either so it's not that bad. I use Ret for everything except Tortos and the last 3.

[Nillo]

Qon I can see. Twins, meh, but it's not bad. Not a fan of Tortos; I'd rather go prot on Lei Shen for 1) shield, 2) trinket, 3) helmet. Legs aren't stellar, but still got lots of sockets and not as bad as Primo tank table (if you're going for a shield).

Well tortos doesn't drop anything useful anyway.

[Drummerboy]

To expand on the above

Prot for Jin until you get a 522 weapon
Prot for Prim until 522 shield
Prot for Iron Qon until a 522 weapon
Prot for Twins until 522 weapon
Prot for Lei Shen until 522 shield and if you want the Stam Trinket (though not really needed).

Some weapons may fit your stats better than others.

Man I didn't realize there were so many occasions for weapons yet the only thing I've seen is the damned one from Tortos that has crit and hit.

[Promdates]

Man I didn't realize there were so many occasions for weapons yet the only thing I've seen is the damned one from Tortos that has crit and haste.

With so much hit/experise on my current gear, I'm honestly considering picking up the next HTF one that drops and using it to tank with. Since I'm sitting over 8% hit at the moment, and my weapon isn't even HTF (I banked my HTF Worldbreaker because too much hit/exp as it is).

If you're going to go with shield, go for the Primordius one if you're going to take an actual tank shield. The difference between NTF+2 Primo vs LShen is 39 Mastery vs 5 Haste. The HTF version is 51 mastery vs 8 haste.

[Nillo]

Who cares about weapons °_°

[Drummerboy]

With so much hit/experise on my current gear, I'm honestly considering picking up the next HTF one that drops and using it to tank with. Since I'm sitting over 8% hit at the moment, and my weapon isn't even HTF (I banked my HTF Worldbreaker because too much hit/exp as it is).

I said crit and haste but later corrected my line to crit and hit which still wouldn't help your situation (unless you meant a different weapon).

Who cares about weapons °_°

You'd care if your still sitting on a tier 14 weapon going into the new 5.4 vengeance changes.