[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Xothic]

(Not sure if this has been copypasted over yet)

Basically, I was lol-ing around over on EJ today, and noticed this macro posted by a guy called Alundris. Goes as follows:

#showtooltip Shield of the Righteous
/castsequence [@player] reset=22/combat Holy Prism, Sacred Shield
/cast Shield of the Righteous

Basically, one button that uses Holy Prism on CD as well as sacred shield every ~25 or so seconds (or so it rounds around to), and of course, Shield of the Righteous. Tried it out on a few randoms, its pretty great. You can sub in Holy prism for Execution Sen or, a little bit more awkwardly, Hammer of light.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I prefer to have more control over when I use Sacred Shield (if you use it a second before a 15 second trinket buff expires you get the benefit of that buff on the Sacred Shield for ~45 seconds out of every 60) but still not too bad.

[Xothic]

I prefer to have more control over when I use Sacred Shield, but still not too bad.

What do you mean? Unless you are casting it on a fellow tank (I have a Hpally healer which does as much anyway), isn't there really no drawbacks to refreshing the duration? I'm not saying this to be snarky, im genuinely curious to see if im missing something obvious here.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Say you have a haste buff that puts you over a breakpoint, or you know your vengeance is going to drop low. If you refresh the buff before that buff expires it inherits your current haste and AP values for the entire duration of the buff. If you are relying on a macro to refresh SS at a set time, you have less control over the application of the buff. Or you know you will have a haste buff in 5 seconds time, and the macro casts SS 1 second before the buff occurs, you won't be able to get SS to benefit from the buff for another 6 seconds, and you wasted a GCD.

[Xothic]

Say you have a haste buff that puts you over a breakpoint, or you know your vengeance is going to drop low. If you refresh the buff before that buff expires it inherits your current haste and AP values for the entire duration of the buff. If you are relying on a macro to refresh SS at a set time, you have less control over the application of the buff. Or you know you will have a haste buff in 5 seconds time, and the macro casts SS 1 second before the buff occurs, you won't be able to get SS to benefit from the buff for another 6 seconds, and you wasted a GCD.

Fuck, so if I cast SS with my current set up a second before lust, I'm completely losing out on an extra two ticks on my sacred shield. This is new information for me, thanks. I'll run a few randoms with SS out of that macro and see what happens. Regardless of what I decide, I'm thinking I'll keep the macro purely for the upkeep on holy prism. With it having such a short CD it seems useless trying to save it for damage spikes or the like.

[Deleted]

One other thing, why would you ever ever ever macro Holy Prism + Sacred Shield to SotR?

Not to mention why even use holy prism? It is so awful on most fight. It got some situational use on some fights, but generally, it is just so far behind the other talents.

SotR is a spammed ability ( kinda ) and you bind 2 fillers to it? Makes 0 sense. You big risk you will postpone your core abilities by doing so.

[silverhatred]

One other thing, why would you ever ever ever macro Holy Prism + Sacred Shield to SotR?

Not to mention why even use holy prism? It is so awful on most fight. It got some situational use on some fights, but generally, it is just so far behind the other talents.

SotR is a spammed ability ( kinda ) and you bind 2 fillers to it? Makes 0 sense. You big risk you will postpone your core abilities by doing so.

Its a filler spell that heals you and low people around you (smart spell) and scales well with vengeance. It is especially good in cms and for aoe.

[Deleted]

Its a filler spell that heals you and low people around you (smart spell) and scales well with vengeance. It is especially good in cms and for aoe.

Yeah, it is great for CMs. Though for raiding its horrible.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I very much prefer Hammer of Light for raiding.

[tallon]

i quitted the game for 2months and i am thinkin of coming back as prot pally but wanted to ask befor doing anything , is the prot pally doing good in mop?

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

i quitted the game for 2months and i am thinkin of coming back as prot pally but wanted to ask befor doing anything , is the prot pally doing good in mop?

Very well.

[MerinPally]

Probably the best tank there is at the moment but definitely top 3 out of 5 in the worse case situation. Going by what I've seen written on these forums.

[Deleted]

i quitted the game for 2months and i am thinkin of coming back as prot pally but wanted to ask befor doing anything , is the prot pally doing good in mop?

We're doing pretty damn good. DKs and Paladins for 10 man.

[Deleted]

I was doing more healing as a tank on normal Stone Dogs (yes, slow starter) last week than our 3rd healer. [Add in absorbs, I topped the healing chart.] That's a pretty big bonus to a prot paladin. Take two and it's like having 2 extra healers. And I don't think it's at a significant cost in personal survivability (I'm mainly healing others).

I'm pretty sure it (glyph of battle healer) is overpowered and will be nerfed at some stage, but am enjoying it will it lasts.

In LFR, I was first on damage taken, second on damage done and third on healing done. And I haven't even progressed past Gara'jal normal yet so it's not like I am uber-geared or very skilled.

[Deleted]

@econ21: Wait for amber-shaper...

Btw: It's not the battlehealer glyph that does so much healing. It is SS+SoI. Battlehealer normally is #3 in healing done for me.

[Kanadei]

And I don't think it's at a significant cost in personal survivability (I'm mainly healing others).

I'm pretty sure it (glyph of battle healer) is overpowered and will be nerfed at some stage, but am enjoying it will it lasts.

This is misleading. I think if you look closely, you will see roughly 90% of your heals are on yourself - regardless of who you are casting SS on.

Paladin tanks tend to take a little extra damage since the consistent heals from SoI cover it succinctly, while throwing out a decent (but not incredible) amount of raid heals (generally through glyph of BH, Light's Hammer and SS on other people).

So yeah, while Glyph of Battle Healer is pretty great - it's not whats contributing the most to your heals by a long shot, and not really in need a nerf aslong as other tanks have some handy tools we are missing, like warriors mobility, DK's self heals and raid cds like army/brez and druids stampeding roar and... I'm sure they have other things.

Also Monks must be good at something right? (I have no idea)

EDIT: And Dorf said exactly the same thing directly above me... I need to get better at this whole reading thing.

[MerinPally]

I can't see it any more, maybe it was edited out - I seem to remember seeing someone say very recently that Colossus is better than Windsong. Obviously having not been able to test this, is it true or not, for the sake of updating the guide? I've seen usage of both. According to wowhead, Windsong has a 2 procs per minute rate and Colossus 6, so is 3000 points of good stats for a short time (with the risk of some, if not all being useless) better than 48k of absorbs every minute? Because even over a 5 minute fight that's 240k absorb which is nice but its less than half your raiding health pool. Alternatively we'll get 1500 Mastery/Haste/Crit every 30 seconds but only 66% of the time is it even useful

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

In terms of reliable damage reduction, Colossus is better - at least for ten man raiders. I think it is a toss-up between Colossus and River's Song for 25man raiders. Colossus is a reliable 800-900 absorb per second (and also works against magical attacks, Windsong and River's Song don't).

[MerinPally]

Hmm, I was definitely under the impression that Windsong > Rivers Song due to the whole "zomg parry and dodge are eeevil" sorta thing. The whole 10vs25 man thing is not something I'm immediately clued up on sadly seeing as I've not raided 25mans properly since ICC/RS and then the only 25s in Cata I did was when I organised FL25hc pugs.

[Fhi]

Hmm, I was definitely under the impression that Windsong > Rivers Song due to the whole "zomg parry and dodge are eeevil" sorta thing.

They're not bad or evil, they're just bottom in the list of good stats.