[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[trystero]

The value of the 4p increases the more insecure you are about the encounters and paladin tanking so its real value for you is best answered by you yourself.

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I couldn't disagree more about this blanket statement. I'm very secure about paladin tanking and love the 4P. On what are you basing this claim?

[Nillo]

Yeah really don't see why firefly is so hung up on talking down the value of 4p.
With 4p you get mostly well itemized items with some that are only marginally less useful than their offset pieces.
The 4p has a lot of synergy with DP (I've had lucky streaks with EF at 3 stacks giving me as much as 1 min uptime on ShoR outside of heroism), Glyph of WoG and removing the opportunity cost on WoG in itself is useful in some situations.

The only downside I agree with is that there are just no conqueror drops (haven't had a single Garrosh/Paragon token yet) and others may gain more from it, but by now there shouldn't be a reason not to have 4p.

[Deleted]

Same here.... 4p has nothing to do with confidence... it has to do with fun gameplay with DP and WoG glyph And yes, with spark and thok, easy to reach haste cap.

[Deleted]

Does that sentiment include gaming Divine Purpose for extra ShoR procs?

Given that it is perfectly possible to get 21250 haste and have the T16 4p bonus, I really don't see why you shouldn't go for it.

If you are at 21250 haste with the T16 4p, you are overgearing all content inluding heroic paragons to the point where it does not matter, I mean, yes of course if you can get the 4p for "free", you should get it. However that only happens at the gearing point in which you could gem spirit and clear all heroic content.

As for gaming it for SotR. I have not felt like this tier has been about uptime at all. Or well, uptime has been nice on some of the easier bosses. The only boss where I feel like gaming the 4p for pros to be really useful might be Thok HC if you solo tank it. However for Siege/Paragons/Garrosh it would give no real benefit.

That is talking purely from a defesive standpoint though. The 4p provides a damage increase, which is really the only reason I would personally ever use the 4p, but would only do that if I overgear the content. Though as I said earlier, mileage vary, nothing wrong with using the 4p, even at earlier bosses. The less comfortable you are with the use of HoPo/EF/SotR and the less comfortable you are with planning your defensives for a fight, the more useful the 4p get.

I couldn't disagree more about this blanket statement. I'm very secure about paladin tanking and love the 4P. On what are you basing this claim?

Liking it from a quality of life perspective is a whole different thing. That does not mean you cant like it at the same time as being secure at tanking. However you could likely get better mileage without it.

The 4p is there to increase quality of life and giving more leeway around the Holy Power usage. Obviously, the less comfortable you are with using holy power for both EF and SotR, the more important the 4p will be.

Yeah really don't see why firefly is so hung up on talking down the value of 4p.
With 4p you get mostly well itemized items with some that are only marginally less useful than their offset pieces.
The 4p has a lot of synergy with DP (I've had lucky streaks with EF at 3 stacks giving me as much as 1 min uptime on ShoR outside of heroism), Glyph of WoG and removing the opportunity cost on WoG in itself is useful in some situations.

The only downside I agree with is that there are just no conqueror drops (haven't had a single Garrosh/Paragon token yet) and others may gain more from it, but by now there shouldn't be a reason not to have 4p.

It is more so not that the 4p is bad, rather than that it is not really good. If you have the options to get higher item level off pieces, I would not hesitate. The 2p on the contrary is great and is something I would almost pick up in LFR over Heroic off pieces. Also as you said, conqueor pieces needs to drop aswell, and you do not want to take them over anyone else in your raid group.

I am speaking strictly from a defensive tanking mileage point of view however, with the presumption that the content that you are in hurts you.
The 4p got several other areas as I mentioned, quality of life increases and dps increases through DP+GoWoG. If you are at the stage when your defensive stats does not matter at all, then you should always pick up the 4p for a dps increase, but I feel like making that presumption is a bad presumption when somebody comes into a thread asking for help.

[celinamuna]

I view 4p as a nice QoL (well and free HoP every 10 or so sec) but given a choice between full heroic 4 piece, and full heroic 5 off pieces (the non shitty ones) i'd go with full heroic 5 off pieces.
In part it's bias against having any parry/dodge, in part because i still instinctively build up to 3 HoP before I EF (ofc i'll do it sooner in case of emergency), but while i like 2/4 piece, i personally don't like 3 bastions EF, but at the end of the day, until everyone has tier pieces i wouldn't pick it up. And as soon as i get all 5 off pieces, i'm switching to them (esp because lol WF)

[rhandric]

Except, Firefly, 4pc is actually a gain in survivability, even if you're not gaming it (and in fact, gaming it is a survivability loss, if a dps gain). At least, under a single-tank environment, as that's what simcraft currently sims. Theck did a set of tests to find out just how much it's worth

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

At the very least, it is 6 seconds of ShoR uptime more per minute.

[Deleted]

At the very least, it is 6 seconds of ShoR uptime more per minute.

My average EF uptime for 14/14H was 30%. For heroic Garrosh it was around 50% but I was probably overdoing it then.

Also, the presumption that you actually benefit from more seconds of SotR uptime is a very strong one. There is not that many fights where overall SotR uptime matters, and those fights are the easier tank fights where it does not really matter. On most of the "difficult" fights, overall SotR uptime is largely irrelevant.

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Except, Firefly, 4pc is actually a gain in survivability, even if you're not gaming it (and in fact, gaming it is a survivability loss, if a dps gain). At least, under a single-tank environment, as that's what simcraft currently sims. Theck did a set of tests to find out just how much it's worth

Yes, as a thousand times before. Once we get Simulationcrafter HC in a raid, that will be nice.

I agree that the 4p is a gain in survivability, but you have to ask yourself, on what fights? The 4p is also not free, you are (likely) taking those set pieces from other raid members which would further have improved your raid group, aswell as giving up higher ilvl off-pieces with better stats.

But, on which fights do you actually get any real improvement from the 4p?

Protectors, Norushen, Sha, Malkorok, Spoils and Thok Solo tank. Out of those, I would argue that the tank damage on Prot, Noru, Sha and Spoils is too low to even count as benefit. That leaves Malkorok and Thok (solo tank) as the only fights where the 4p is actually really effective. And honestly I feel like malkorok is stretching it since Malk H is tuned at around 530-535 ilvl as tank. Most noticeably is that the 4p is rather lackluster on the three last fights in the instance which is the ones that matter the most.

[Pickwickman]

snippet.

The disconnect here is that Firefly is looking at this from a bleeding edge heroic progression kill; where every setbonus for DPS counts. And the rest of the posters are talking from a "I've been farming these fuckers for weeks/months and grossly outgear them".

When you "outgear" them, there is no point to nit go for 4p+hastecap. But when you've only cleared the bosses once on normal, and once or twice on heroic, when you're tackling Thok HC is where you would agree with Firefly here.

(Yes, being 565+before being at Thok HC counts as grossly outgearing in this case.

[Nillo]

So... well boss 1-5 as well as Nazgrim are mostly a joke anyway doesn't really matter what gear you chose for them.
Juggernaut: The free EF can be very useful to heal up after taking a mine (ShoR on the mine then EF after taking explosion damage)
Dark Shaman: Definitely makes it easier to put hots on the 2 dot targets @ haromm and since WoG glyph is great here anyway that just adds to it's value.
Malkorok: Not having DP if you're the soaker is a bit of a bummer for 4p.
Spoils: Still doesn't hurt to have a free heal but yeah tank damage is rarely the issue here.
Thok: Without it you'll have trouble covering enough time with shor and having EF up is pretty much mandatory here
Siegecrafter: I really don't see what you're getting at here. You can use it for a high WoG glyph uptime on the add and while tanking the boss himself it doesn't hurt to have a backup heal for the soft enrages.
Paragons: Uhm I've had several attempts with perma ShoR on Rik'kal => no focus required to keep the debuff off. And it certainly doesn't hurt to have more ShoR/EF uptime on Ka'roz for the last few phases.

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The disconnect here is that Firefly is looking at this from a bleeding edge heroic progression kill; where every setbonus for DPS counts. And the rest of the posters are talking from a "I've been farming these fuckers for weeks/months and grossly outgear them".

When you "outgear" them, there is no point to nit go for 4p+hastecap. But when you've only cleared the bosses once on normal, and once or twice on heroic, when you're tackling Thok HC is where you would agree with Firefly here.

(Yes, being 565+before being at Thok HC counts as grossly outgearing in this case.

The issue is that this was a bazillion years ago and he's still arguing on the basis of set piece going to dps classes.
If it's the question of whether you as a raid gain more from a dps upgrading to heroic over a prot pally getting his 4p that may just be another question entirely.

[Pickwickman]

snip

Correct; but he did say he stopped raiding since his first kill? So, no disrespect, but imo his input on current affairs are therefore skewed.

That said 4p is amazing not just for the SotR uptime or free EFs; but the GowoG increase is insane as well.

Especially considering the only fights where you'd actually want to use a 5BoG EF is Malkorok/Thok/Garrosh anyway.

[Deleted]

Correct; but he did say he stopped raiding since his first kill? So, no disrespect, but imo his input on current affairs are therefore skewed.

That said 4p is amazing not just for the SotR uptime or free EFs; but the GowoG increase is insane as well.

Especially considering the only fights where you'd actually want to use a 5BoG EF is Malkorok/Thok/Garrosh anyway.

Yes, I did stop raiding after my first kill. However, personally I would say that the input with the basis of overgearing the encounter to the point where you could equip a two hander and do fine tanking is just as skewed as the input from a PoV where tanking gearing actually matters.

Also, in the case of the 4p, I am highly for discussions, I think it is healthy for the community as a whole to have discussions around topics. There will never be advancemets as a whole in opinions without discussions. I would not say that I am playing the devils advocate at the moment, but since 90% of the paladins seems to be strongly for the 4p, I take a stronger position against it than what I actually have just for the sake of discussion. I do think that the 4p is highly overrated, but maybe not to the extreme some of my posts may make it out to be. I still think that the two major benefits of the 4p is QoL and DPS. The survivability increase is negliable at best.

Though, I feel like tank dps is just not that important in this tier. The only fight where I personally felt the need to push my dps to the extremes was Thok and Garrosh. And even so
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...00011111000000
A paladin tank is not likely to be the source of vengeance stacking, so our dps is likely to be negliable. When we needed more dps, the answer was often me tanking less and our warrior going full crit tanking more.

Considering three of the tiers drop from thok, siegecrafter and paragons, you are also highly likely to be using one or two normal pieces over heroic/heroic warforged before you are 14/14H. That drop in stats is in my eyes not worth it.
Picking up the 4p is fine, but when you are at the point when you can pick up the 4p without anyone else in your raid group needing it, you are overgearing the content that much that how you gear does not really matter, in which I think that any discussion is just mute anyway.

Picking up the 4p for QoL or DPS is one thing, but players that genuinly think it is a good survivability increase is just shitting themselves. Or well, that is worded badly. The 4p adds decent survivability if you are not that comfortable with the class. It gives you more leeway with HoPo usage and punishes missclicks less. So if you are not that used to managing your HoPo, then the 4p is actually good for survival. However if you can manage your HoPo, it boils down a pure dps and QoL increase. It feels like most players are also arguing switching equal item level off pieces with tier pieces. You are highly likely to have access to a lot higher item level off pieces.

Even so, it can not be stressed enough that you should never take a tier piece over anyone else in the group. This is something that a lot of paladins agree on, and giving that fact, that also speaks for how useful our 4p is compared to others.

Personally I found 5BoG EF much more useful on Siegecrafter and Paragons than on Garrosh/Malk.

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So... well boss 1-5 as well as Nazgrim are mostly a joke anyway doesn't really matter what gear you chose for them.
Juggernaut: The free EF can be very useful to heal up after taking a mine (ShoR on the mine then EF after taking explosion damage)
Dark Shaman: Definitely makes it easier to put hots on the 2 dot targets @ haromm and since WoG glyph is great here anyway that just adds to it's value.
Malkorok: Not having DP if you're the soaker is a bit of a bummer for 4p.
Spoils: Still doesn't hurt to have a free heal but yeah tank damage is rarely the issue here.
Thok: Without it you'll have trouble covering enough time with shor and having EF up is pretty much mandatory here
Siegecrafter: I really don't see what you're getting at here. You can use it for a high WoG glyph uptime on the add and while tanking the boss himself it doesn't hurt to have a backup heal for the soft enrages.
Paragons: Uhm I've had several attempts with perma ShoR on Rik'kal => no focus required to keep the debuff off. And it certainly doesn't hurt to have more ShoR/EF uptime on Ka'roz for the last few phases

I was thinking adding juggernaut on the list. But since you can bubble and bop almost every set of mines that felt unnecessary. It is also not that difficult to use both SotR + EF without the 4p. Which to me means that the 4p falls more into QoL on Juggernaut rather than actual increase.

As for Shamans, yeah I guess it is nice for hotting the raid, it still provides non-increase in personal survivability and EFing the raid also feels like QoL improvement to me since that can be done without the 4p aswell.

For Thok, I would not really know. We always used two tanks. It felt much more reliable and safer for progression. Having two tanks was also extremely OP for staying in the phases longer allowing us to dps more and allowed healers to focus more on the raid. I know my co-tank opted for SS (Our War/Monk tank opted for his third alt protection paladin for Thok), but that was as he started tanking. I guess that should be an option if you are solo tanking without 4p aswell. I used EF as I was second in line to taunt which gave me 5p EF on every taunt cycle.

Siegecrafter for me is a real clockwork boss. I could really have done that boss blindfolded in the end. Every global I used was on a set timer, I knew exactly when the press every button including EF. I feel like the 4p would only have messed up the rotation to be honest. I was already self sufficient, and with the item level people have today, I really fail to see how it would be an survival increase. Since before you could really do the fight without recieving a single heal from healers. Same goes with the add, super easy to reliably kill it before the 4th overload.

On Paragons, I mean, you say it yourself "several attempts" is not something reliable. I always plan and theorycraft tanking from a worst case scenario (as long as it is reasonable). You having 100% uptime on a few attempts does not really help you on the attempts when you did not have it. It is also not that hard to deal with the injection anyways. I would agree with you on Ka'Roz, and was planning on writing it in, but I didnt because... Why would a paladin tank Ka'Roz? We tried that a few times. Just no. That boss eats paladin for breakfast. Also, I feel like on 10 man, Ka'Roz should be dead 3rd or 4th from the end anyways, at which point his damage is not really that bad.

[Pickwickman]

snip

And this is why I appreciate you and Nillo and Butler Log so much, it's a pleasure to read you guys' opinion about things. <3

[Deleted]

And this is why I appreciate you and Nillo and Butler Log so much, it's a pleasure to read you guys' opinion about things. <3

Always glad to be at assistance with controversial opinions

[Nillo]

On Paragons, I mean, you say it yourself "several attempts" is not something reliable. I always plan and theorycraft tanking from a worst case scenario (as long as it is reasonable). You having 100% uptime on a few attempts does not really help you on the attempts when you did not have it. It is also not that hard to deal with the injection anyways. I would agree with you on Ka'Roz, and was planning on writing it in, but I didnt because... Why would a paladin tank Ka'Roz? We tried that a few times. Just no. That boss eats paladin for breakfast. Also, I feel like on 10 man, Ka'Roz should be dead 3rd or 4th from the end anyways, at which point his damage is not really that bad.

Well on several attempts I actually had full uptime on Shor (something like 30-90 seconds) while on most it still helped focusing on others.

Also what's wrong with Ka'roz? From what it looked like our DK seemed to have even more troubles basically relying on not getting hit twice in a row or he'd be mush. After all he's gone for a while which allows you to stack some HP and get ShoR running for until he runs off again - that is if you're lucky enough with HP generating procs.

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Siegecrafter for me is a real clockwork boss. I could really have done that boss blindfolded in the end. Every global I used was on a set timer, I knew exactly when the press every button including EF. I feel like the 4p would only have messed up the rotation to be honest. I was already self sufficient, and with the item level people have today, I really fail to see how it would be an survival increase. Since before you could really do the fight without recieving a single heal from healers. Same goes with the add, super easy to reliably kill it before the 4th overload.

The first and second adds are kind of annoying especially if people don't show you any love by placing laser/sawblades all across the room rather than where you intend to tank it.

[Deleted]

Well on several attempts I actually had full uptime on Shor (something like 30-90 seconds) while on most it still helped focusing on others.

Also what's wrong with Ka'roz? From what it looked like our DK seemed to have even more troubles basically relying on not getting hit twice in a row or he'd be mush. After all he's gone for a while which allows you to stack some HP and get ShoR running for until he runs off again - that is if you're lucky enough with HP generating procs.


The first and second adds are kind of annoying especially if people don't show you any love by placing laser/sawblades all across the room rather than where you intend to tank it.

I guess that DKs also has problems with Ka'roz. But the difference between using a warrior/monk/druid instead of a paladin on Ka'roz is like solo tanking Thok with a paladin or a rogue. We did some tests with my co-tank. At the same stacks on Ka'Roz, with 0 mitigation up, he hit 950k on me and 820k on our warrior tank. Too add on that, the up and down nature of SotR made those 950k hits very unpredictable. The warrior had higher block, higher dodge, higher parry aswel as higher uptime on AM which meant that he was far less likely to take a full hit, and even when he did it was 800k instead of 950k.

The difference between a paladin or another tank (dks dont count as tanks) tanking Ka'roz is really immense. It is simply due to the strengths and weaknesses of the paladin class. The damage pattern of Ka'roz really does not fit paladins with the up and down nature of SotR, paladins having the lowest avoidance+block aswell as the lowest passive physical damage reduction of all tanks, Ka'roz just demolish paladins compared to other tanks.

Given the option, a paladin should never tank Ka'roz past the first 4-5 bosses. I see how a paladin might tank it if you have a DK, not really sure how DKs do against Ka'roz. From what I heard and experienced, DKs are in a terrible place right now in tanking.

As for Siege, I had some issues with the first two adds before I specced into HA. I killed the first add with 3 stacks using HA and the secon add with 4 stacks using AW. That made killing them really trivial. It worked before, but it was a bit RNGish. Only made it before the fourth overload 80% of the times without using double offensive CDs. You really do not need more defensives on Siege, so it was fine speccing HA 100% for the damage on the add, neglecting the survival loss.
Then my warrior co-tank killed the third add with 5 stacks and I killed the 4th and 5th add with 4/5 stacks which was easy.

Having Sawblades for the first adds is for sure nice. As for the second add, I do not know what strat you used, but shouldnt you have empowered laser by then? We atleast always had empowered laser at that point with almost every strategy we used. I think there was one really russian (no offense to mother russia) strategy that I believe we did not have laser there, but we changed that strat quit quickly. In that case it was very easy just tanking the add in the fire.

[Nillo]

Having Sawblades for the first adds is for sure nice. As for the second add, I do not know what strat you used, but shouldnt you have empowered laser by then? We atleast always had empowered laser at that point with almost every strategy we used. I think there was one really russian (no offense to mother russia) strategy that I believe we did not have laser there, but we changed that strat quit quickly. In that case it was very easy just tanking the add in the fire.

We tried it with empowered lasers first I think but decided against it due to laser being the most troublesome for the ones getting off the belt. And well lasers in Magnet phase aren't all that great either. We have Empowered Shockwave and normal mines I think on the second add.
In the end I just used the Sawblades because they're still good enough and more reliable for killing the add anyway. Besides we took so long to kill the boss that I ended up in 570+ gear allowing me to use DP for the adds which made the 4p , Glyph of WoG even more appealing to me.

[Deleted]

We tried it with empowered lasers first I think but decided against it due to laser being the most troublesome for the ones getting off the belt. And well lasers in Magnet phase aren't all that great either. We have Empowered Shockwave and normal mines I think on the second add.
In the end I just used the Sawblades because they're still good enough and more reliable for killing the add anyway. Besides we took so long to kill the boss that I ended up in 570+ gear allowing me to use DP for the adds which made the 4p , Glyph of WoG even more appealing to me.

So I guess you were doing the paragon tactic then.

Yeah, I was using DP when we got the kill aswell as we swapped around the tanking order.

[Crazerage]

I haven't really tried 4p much but I have read about it. Instead I have gone into crit and I reforge/gem out of mastery into it. With a few more pieces I would love to see what I can get from doing this.

http: us.battle.net wow en character stormrage Naomhan simple

[xebtria]

Hey guys. I'm confused, and it is again about haste cap. I know I have asked quite often already, but ... well, I never had the gear to actually reach the haste cap, so it didn't matter much anyways. But now I have the gear to actually reach it. And ... well, my thoughts were, that if I have thok's trinket, I need less haste to achieve the haste cap. and according to that one picture, the haste cap with a 561 thok's is 19760. and I thought, I need to be at 19760 haste with thok's trinket to get to the haste cap.

Now I removed the trinket, and my haste goes down to 18384. Which makes me rethink. And I believe now, that I was wrong the whole time, and I actually need 19760 WITHOUT thok's in order to reach the cap when I equip it.

is this correct or am I wrong again? I am a very confused paladin at the moment.