[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Seanali]

So I am looking for an off tank but I am not sure what would be best this patch with me(pala) so could you give me some info on what the best tanks are these patch and what combo works best with a pala?
I want to go for a monk or a DK, but pls tell me which are the best tanks in total for SoO.

[Riemu2k3]

So I am looking for an off tank but I am not sure what would be best this patch with me(pala) so could you give me some info on what the best tanks are these patch and what combo works best with a pala?
I want to go for a monk or a DK, but pls tell me which are the best tanks in total for SoO.

I think it goes something like

Monk >= Paladin > Warrior >> Druid >>>> DK

Go for a Monk (best) or Warrior Co-Tank.

[gerus]

Just a stupid question ,.. but what is it with all the haste stacking. I play A prot Pally for some time and always went for the mastery build. My whole playstyle is based upon using it. I will never see the HC raids on the right level, I am not a top raider. Though why should I have to go to a haste build that would cost me a lot to change the play-style and according to healers I am now easy to heal. So why change it.

For those that want to see the build and gear : eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/silvermoon/Vylandra/advanced

So I did some SimC runs and looking at your gear. It's hard for me to provide super tailored advice because I'm not sure what you're aim is for progression? Is it T16?

First caveat: I'm going to talk to you about TMI (http://www.sacredduty.net/theck-melo...ence-document/) which is a metric for gauging tank survivability over strings of incoming attacks. A lower score is better in the case of TMI much like golf. The one thing to note though is that stamina, regardless of how much you have is always going to be the #1 TMI stat. So you can have enough health to survive 18 successive attacks but SimC reporting on TMI will still tell you that stam is #1.

So back to haste stacking question: I think it would be improper to tell you to stack haste right now. The proper advice would be to tell you to stack expertise. It appears that you're pulling about 4k of your 5k expertise rating from gems and reforges. Once you've freed up those seven gem slots and probably half of your reforging is probably about the time we can start working on stacking any stat in particular.

When I SimC your current gear on a T15 - 25M normal boss I get:
TMI: 621.4k
outgoing DPS: 162k

stat weight:
str: 38.15
stam: 147.60
exp: 2.37
hit: 0.00
crit: -15.98
haste: 75.85
mastery: 25.82
dodge: 26.41
parry: 35.17

I find this stat weighting to be interesting because it places a reasonably high value on dodge/parry. It's always fun that in a mastery build, haste is prioritized highly, and in a haste build, mastery is quite highly prioritized (as you approach GCD cap, which you are in no danger of doing anytime soon),

When I SimC your gear 'optimized'* on the same boss I get:
TMI: 815.6k
outgoing DPS: 180k

stat weight:
str: 108.64
stam: 312.45
exp: 0.00 (I capped your exp)
hit: 0.00
crit: -12.79
haste: 141.99
mastery: 112.49
dodge: 64.57
parry: 57.86

The TMI is overall lowered because I reduced the amount of stamina by 4.6k rating or so. Whether or not you need that stamina on your person for your progression is up to you. You can see that it did indeed increase your DPS by a meaningful amount.

*optimized is defined as 1) running a low stam priority which means dropping/blue/green/purple gems 2) swapping haste above mastery in stat priority

Some conclusions:
If you're going for T16 normal bosses, you might have a correct amount of stam prioritization (I had to run you on T15 boss swings on SimC because the T16Q boss had your TMI in the tens of millions) but if you're cruising through T15 you can probably replace blue/purple/green with pure secondary stat gems. My co-tank who re-rolled and has a similar item lvl with less than ideal pieces had a level of squishiness in T16 that I wasn't seeing. This isn't something I can definitively give you advice on.

You should be prioritizing gear with expertise on it to reduce the amount you need from gems/reforges. If you went for a haste stack system in your current gear, I could only get you up to about 17.5%. This isn't super meaningful, your healers may actually complain that you are harder to heal. It's hard to tell from SimC (trading 4% mastery and 4k stam for 14% or so haste).

If you choose to go hardcore control build (either haste or mastery), you need to be prioritizing 'DPS' drops over the tank ones. The stat priorities are the same in either build, you just swap haste and mastery around. Essentially each item with dodge/parry is wasted itemization towards stats you want.

Also, in terms of general armory advice:
- Drop Clemency for UbS. Clemency is rare in its utility above UbS
- Drop HotR glyph for Focused Shield/DivProt. HotR is more or less throwing a glyph slot away.

[Deleted]

at gerus:

I think for me its Normal runs the max I will get. so T16 normals, The gear is optimized for mastery build on T15. I noticed that mr-robot suddenly only advices into the haste build and the goal will be the haste build, which means slowly going to that one.

I wanted to wait for a few new items and then remove all gems, reforgings , enchants to redo that again. something I do when I have replaced several items. To do that with every item is a bit cost heavy and well as "casual" raider its a bit of a waste though i try to get the build as best as possible to get the most out of it with in the limits of myself. So I might check which RET items are suitable to use for example or slowly gear up a new set aiming for 528 min and make that the haste built.

I'll check the info provided and the link to see what I can do best to get a smooth transition or change of the build.

Thank you very much for the help so far

I wonder though how you guys did the change from avoidance/mast builds to the haste build.

[gerus]

I personally just ran LFR as a ret paladin in T14 and T15 until they allowed you to do loot specialization and then checked 'ret' following that and tanked. I wasn't tanking progression content until 5.3 myself on this expansion so I'm not sure I'm a great example.

One thing to note: no matter how you prioritize mastery/haste, any plate item that's either an ilvl upgrade or same ilvl that has expertise/X where your current item doesn't would be considered an upgrade.

[Promdates]

In short, your can mitigate more physical damage with SoTR if you use haste rather than mastery, because you will have a much higher uptime on it.

While this is correct, having the haste and the ability to have the higher uptime requires you to press buttons more often. I know that the most common answer to "What am I doing wrong?" is usually "press buttons faster". If you're a slower player and can't have the APM to press a button every single GCD and time your SotR, having the haste won't be as big of a benefit.

[xebtria]

I only take the socket bonus if it has haste on it. I ignore everything else and gem full haste. Not sure it's the ideal way to go about stuff, but it's my favorite way.

Also, Cap is still 50% - nothing has changed. So you need 2xxxx Haste (21750 sounds about right) to reach it.

You need to adjust the stat weight on AMR if you wanna have accurate values. The default stuff is not good.

ok, so 2xxxx is still applying. only question I have now is...
SoI gives 10% haste. The raid buff also gives 10% haste.

how does that work regarding GCD? my char sheet always says 44,37% haste. naked, even with SoI and - at least I believe so - with the raid buff, I have 0%. so these do not have any effect on the haste and thus not on the GCD, do they?

[Riemu2k3]

I had the same problem in the beginning.

The Raid Buff doesnt give you Haste, it's Melee-Attack Speed that reduces your Autohit-Speed, but doesn't affect your Haste Rating. SoI also doesn't affect your haste rating.

Only Buffs that give you actual Haste affect it.

And it's 21250 haste rating as FF pointed out earlier

[Promdates]

Seal of Insight gives you 10% Spell haste, and as Riemu2k3 pointed out, the raid buff is 10% attack speed, not 10% haste. There is a very big difference.

[Deleted]

ok, so 2xxxx is still applying. only question I have now is...
SoI gives 10% haste. The raid buff also gives 10% haste.

how does that work regarding GCD? my char sheet always says 44,37% haste. naked, even with SoI and - at least I believe so - with the raid buff, I have 0%. so these do not have any effect on the haste and thus not on the GCD, do they?

Sanctiety of battle is only affected by melee haste, as such the spell haste you gain from SoI or the spell haste buff do not affect it.
The melee attack speed buff only buffs your attack speed and does not actually give any melee haste, so it does not affect your GCD either.

The only thing that affects your GCD is haste rating (and the haste amplifciation trinkets in SoO).

[xebtria]

so that means I can still trust my char sheet haste %. very good.

[Deleted]

so that means I can still trust my char sheet haste %. very good.

not the one shown as it includes melee speed. But the amount you get from rating when hovering over it you can trust.

[Deleted]

Regarding my solo-tanking question from earlier: we invited a friend from another guild and 2-tanked Malk/Spoils. Then we went for Thok, wiped a few times while learning how not to derp up the kiting, then our pally decided to solo-tank the fight. It went relatively smoothly, netting us a kill in 2nd attempt from that point, I think. If you're interested, here are our logs from the fight: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/ujkkx...=13592&e=14043

Thanks for the answers.

[Xothic]

Hello all, some of you may remember me from back in 5.0/1, was very active in the prot pally thread.

Anyway, I basically stopped playing after 5.1 due to RL shit, but 5.4 is making me want to resub. However, I'm very curious as to what position prot pallies are in in comparison to the 5.1 Haste tanking style that I loved so much. Is haste stacking still the way to go or did GC screw it up? Any other major changes to prot tanking that I might not be aware of? Or, hell, any minor changes for that matter? I used to get really into theorycrafting, so I'm basically trying to get a decent handle on what I should expect when I buy a game card later today.

[Jellospally]

Haste is still the best stat by far until the 21250 haste obviously which is super easy to hit...21400 haste atm at 552. GC if anything is better on almost anyfight now how it is because of how many adds there are i get GC procs like mad now. You don't use battle healer anymore.

Thats really it nothing much else changed. Oh Sacred Shield is a lot weaker now EF is pretty fucking strong and 4 set T16 basically makes EF the only way to go now.

[Xothic]

Haste is still the best stat by far until the 21250 haste obviously which is super easy to hit...21400 haste atm at 552. GC if anything is better on almost anyfight now how it is because of how many adds there are i get GC procs like mad now. You don't use battle healer anymore.

Thats really it nothing much else changed. Oh Sacred Shield is a lot weaker now EF is pretty fucking strong and 4 set T16 basically makes EF the only way to go now.

No more battle healer or sacred shield? That's going to take some getting used too. Good news about haste still being the priority though. Thanks for the heads up.

(Also when I said GC i was referring to Ghostcrawler, not Grand Crusader :P)

[Deleted]

Oh Sacred Shield is a lot weaker now EF is pretty fucking strong and 4 set T16 basically makes EF the only way to go now.

That only counts when you are haste capped or nearly haste capped right ? if you are in transition towards that , with lower ilvls say 510/525 range then i think SS might be better then EF. I did notice that my tank got more self healing and lightly more damage already. and I am just on 10% hast and still 15% mast. (ofcourse hit=7.5% and exp=15% and stamina stacked a bit to have a more smoother transition and to get used to the haste way of tanking)

[Aceshigh]

That only counts when you are haste capped or nearly haste capped right ? if you are in transition towards that , with lower ilvls say 510/525 range then i think SS might be better then EF. I did notice that my tank got more self healing and lightly more damage already. and I am just on 10% hast and still 15% mast. (ofcourse hit=7.5% and exp=15% and stamina stacked a bit to have a more smoother transition and to get used to the haste way of tanking)

Yeah I'm sitting at 17,012 haste right now (was messing with the t15 4 set for something I had thought of so I can get quite a bit more haste if needed) and it can be hard to maintain 5 stack BOG effectively; that doesn't even take things like vengeance levels and haste buffs into account. If I didn't have decent DP procs there was a chance it could fall, and whenever you don't have 30s windows on mobs it becomes even more difficult. That being said DP usually makes it fairly easy to keep up even at that haste level if there are some mobs to hit. I couldn't imagine running EF at like 520 ilvl, if I was lower geared I would be running SS for sure just for rotation fluidity reasons.

[Deleted]

What do you guys think about Alacrity of Xuen, 535 Timeless str trinket for prot paladin? I have Spark of Zandalar (norm) and Ji'kun's trink (lfr) so this new one seems to be upgreade for me. How useful is it for prot paladin progressing trough normal SoO?

[Riemu2k3]

What do you guys think about Alacrity of Xuen, 535 Timeless str trinket for prot paladin? I have Spark of Zandalar (norm) and Ji'kun's trink (lfr) so this new one seems to be upgreade for me. How useful is it for prot paladin progressing trough normal SoO?

I can't tell you how good the trinket is (I don't think its really good, because STR isn't a very strong stat for us compared to the hit/haste you lose from the ji-kun trinket, I have no idea how the haste proc takes care of that one) but I can tell you to buy the 522 Valor Trinket and use it instead of your ji-kun LFR trinket. http://www.wowhead.com/item=94508 (it's cost got reduced to 1155 VP with 5.4)

And then it's a choice of Brutal Talisman vs. Alacrity and I think Brutal should be the clear winner here.

But maybe someone with better insight in the math stuff will give you a more funded answer

EDIT:

Did some math. Be aware that I'm not good at it :-)

Alacrity has 20 sec duration, 115 sec cd (if you believe wowhead)

That means in a 6 minute fight you get it procced about 4 times (if it procs right off the bat)

I don't think 1657 Str + 110,50 Haste is better than 1467 Exp (880 Exp/586 Haste) + Str Proc. I don't even think it's that much better than the 502 Feather with 1218 Hit (730 Hit/487 Haste) + Str. Proc.

EDIT2:

Here are the stat weights bases on Theck's 5.2: http://forums.askmrrobot.com/index.php?topic=5359.0
I doubt they have changed much. Control/Haste.

Hit 1.1
Expertise 1.09
Haste 1
Strength 0.6

So in total you have the following trinket ratings (if reforged for haste where applicable)

Alacrity: 1104,72 (Including Proc)
Brutal: 1545,2 (+ Str Proc)
Feather LFR: 1263,6 (+ Str Proc)