Prot Paladins suffering from PvE mitigation/self-sustainment

Classes Paladin
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That is regarding the 350 mastery buff. Depending on gear and diminishing returns, we are talking 5% damage reduction, maybe 8% if the stars align. For 10 sec. Again, this, at best, is in line with set bonuses we’ve seen on gear sets in the past. To call in a 1m defenseive is a pretty big stretch.

I never claimed to be having issues with the spec. True, I notice the tankiness difference compared even to BDK in the content I am running, but lower level content is not the issue with the spec. The issue with the spec is that it is far and away the least tanky of all the tanks, and that’s not just based on anecdotal claims by players. It’s a point drawn by the very best raid leaders in CE Mythic raids. Hard data also backs it up in Mythic+ content. There is literally no explanation as to the complete dive off the cliff the spec experiences above 15+ timed keys after being within 5% representation with VDH for keys under 15.

This isn’t a L2P issue like a lot of the posts above state. It shows glaring issues with the viability of the class that scaling will not fix. In fact, as gear levels have risen, PPally m+ representation in 15+ and above have dropped off more. I’ll concede some of that may be FOTM and meta at that higher end of content, but that doesn’t really explain why the less represented specs (everything but VDH) do not see any drop off. In fact, they all stay static or even uptick in representation.

Haven’t put much thought into this because I run Bulwark over Avenger? I guess that’s one take. As you can see since you’re scoping my armory, my haste is at 20%, and my SoTR uptime is very high because of it. The extra hpower gen is negligible compared to the burst DPS that Bulwark provides on trash. Unless You mean the extra interrupt opportunities, which would potentially mean sitting on AS procs, thereby losing out on dps and hpower gen anyway. But ok…

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It’s as easy as searching Raider io… I haven’t looked for a few days because of work commitments, but there are only 2 or 3 Prot pallies registering about 20+ keys. I mean, feel free to look through the leaderboards. VDH is clearly dominating, and there’s no need to rehash why. The bigger issue is the precipitous dropoff of PPally at that harder range of content. Starts at 15+, and hits a big wall in that 18-20+ range. That’s not making up facts, it’s looking at raw data.

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It isn’t just the mastery bonus though. Most Paladin Tanks are running the First Avenger talent which converts all 5 Avenger’s Shields going out into a massive barrier + the mastery. Having that every minute is actually a defensive.

The explanation is that a lot of people who are pushing keys are min-maxers. That means that they will reroll to any class/spec to gain an advantage. Even if it is a 2% gain. Due to the top players min-maxing and rerolling, it gave the rest of the community the false idea that only DH is viable.

+20 and up (data from RIO)
DH 69.3%
Monk 10.8%
Druid 8.4%
Paladin 6.3%
DK 4.1%
Warrior 1%

+15 and up
DH 40%
Paladin 17.9%
Druid 13.7%
Monk 13.8%
DK 9.8%
Warrior 4.8%

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You’re missing the big picture.

First, something very important to consider here is that rewards stop scaling at +15.

Let’s take a look at DPS representation at +15, and then note at what happens to Fire and Balance vs everyone else at +20. Does this mean that every other DPS is fundamentally broken in M+, or just that those two are overtuned, and the higher you push the difficulty, the more players will gravitate towards the absolute best of the best?

Next, let’s take a look at the top 20 M+ Tanks:
https://raider.io/mythic-plus-character-rankings/season-sl-1/world/all/tank
We see one Prot Pal, one Guardian, and one Brewmaster, and 17 Vengeance. No Prot War or Blood DKs to be seen. We need to go all the way out to #83 to see our first Blood DK, and #168 for our first Prot War.

Okay, so things are clearly far worse for Blood and Prot Wars. That’s a very different picture than the one you’ve been painting. Now, how much of an expectation of class balance should we have beyond the point where the content no longer offers any additional rewards?

For me, balance loses relevance when the content is no longer coupled with character progression, i.e. gear. As Prot has a slick #2 Tank representation in timed +15s, which, again, is the absolute limit of M+ gear progression, I think that’s a pretty solid place to be.

You’ve said that you desire to trade damage for mitigation. Holy Avenger allows you to do exactly that. You have not done that, so either you don’t actually want to do what you said you wanted to do, or you haven’t considered your options. I was being generous by assuming the latter.

You have 19% Haste and are running First Avenger. That’s going to leave you with frequent gaps in your SotR uptime. Fortunately, there’s some very easy haste upgrades available to get you over 25% where things start feeling comfortable. Run HoA until you get the neck, that’ll be a massive Haste bump.

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Look at Raider. io stats. I’m not just blowing smoke.

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If I have the same amount of tanking power/gear/ilvl as a leather tank, I should be able to compete for +20 keys if i want to, it’s really that simple. But I can’t b/c stuff is noticeably weird and our shields are cardboard atm, so that’s why we are all here. A HUGE oversimplification but that’s what going on here dude.

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If that’s your barometer for Prot doing well, good news, the #13 ranked Tank in the world is Prot, while the highest ranked Brewmaster is #20.
https://raider.io/characters/us/illidan/Regya

When you say this:

I think what you really mean is the same tanking power/gear/ilvl as a Veng DH, and that’s just not a reasonable expectation as they’re the clear overtuned outlier.

I personally feel pretty fantastic doing 15s on my Prot Pal, the utility is great and the damage is immensely satisfying. I have no interest in 20s because there aren’t any additional rewards for completing them, but there are Prot Paladins out there completing them, so that demonstrates that it’s certainly possible if I decided I wanted to push that high just for the sake of pushing.

All in all, that’s good enough for me. If you’re having serious issues where you’re at right now, one thing to consider would be dropping the Necrolord handicap.

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Stats. Paladins are doing just fine.

I have 7/8 +17 timed while 218 ilvl with only pugs. There’s nothing about the class/spec that’s holding you back from getting KSM.

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Yeah just checked, there’s plenty doing 20s or more. The original post said 18…I’m doing 18-19s lol that would make me in the top 10 paladin tanks according to the post I responded to…I’m not even close to that.

I think you and the person I responded to think 20 is only 2 higher than 18 and think the jumps of difficulty is low because it’s 2 key levels.

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You are, read my above comment ^

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You literally listed stats that show the massive tank imbalance and claimed it was proof that things are fine… how daft are you dude?

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My stats show that close to 20% of tanks in keys +15 and greater are protection paladins. Yet you are arguing that paladins are on the struggle bus. A big reason there are so many DH is because a lot of people rerolled to chase the meta game. Druids, monks, and paladins are 100% viable. Warriors and dks can use from tlc.

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Check your numbers rere.

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Numbers are directly from RIO’s website. You can check it yourself.
“rere”

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You are right, but here is the issue with M+ right now, every tank needs to grab agro and kite, the only reason DH is top tier in M+ is cuz they can grab agro fast and rather well and kite around.
I dont even see DK tanks in SL, and the other tanks excluding paladin are nothing special, druids are decent for the 15s as they rly dont take a lot of damage, but in the 20s+ you wont really see many druids as tanks get demolished if they cant kite well.
Prot pally is actually not that bad, you grab agro fast, you have infinite slows with consecrate (some mobs are immune but usually pony makes up for it).
With the ancient kings legendary and the WoG conduit, you are actually rather safe, middle of last talent row makes your ancient king be on a VERY low cooldown you essentially have it almost every other pull.

Is the state of prot good? not really compared to DH especially, but we are not THAT bad compared to the ones really suffering right now namely DK (paper begs) and warriors (lacking good aoe agro maintenance).

I really dont see this helping much, the shield it gives even if uncapped is still gonna be too low, some mobs demolish it in 1 attack, its still pretty much a grab agro and run around in some encounters unless you have ancient kings, tho a buff to that talent would be helpful as currently id much rather take the 2 judgments instead to generate more hopo from a distance when I need to run around.

Honestly at this point I am considering going mid range haste, mid-high range mastery and high range vers for better survivability on prot, 30% vers would be more useful right now than having 30% mastery, ofc mastery is nice inside your consecration, but it is no where near what you could do in BFA with getting mastery to insanely high levels. let alone depends on your covenant, you can get a serious mastery boost from your soul bind anywhere from 10-16% mastery as far as I noticed for a decent duration.

This would be a very good change, but imo, they just need to rework SotR to be more useful, currently you would rather spam WoGs than SotRs, the only reason to use SotR is for dealing damage/agro/you dont need to heal/there is an attack that requires damage mitigation or it does absurd damage otherwise

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Check the number you quoted lol. You quoted the data wrong. Man you are not a bright bulb are you?

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Quoted what number wrong? Instead of just saying you are wrong, why dont you pull actual numbers then? That stats I pulled were directly from RIO.

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This is not true. There are some pulls that might require some kiting, but most can be face tanked. Even in +18 fortified I am for the most part standing my ground. There are times I will disengage if the healer can’t keep up, but most pulls I am in there.

If your argument was for +20 and above, I could agree with you due to the scaling. However, lower keys don’t require much kiting.

Currently, the First Avenger shield provides me with over 700-900k in absorbs in a run. That is a decent amount of mitigated damage.

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tldr: DH are the ‘meta/fotm’ tank due to how much kiting was involved in higher keys (or at the very least perceived), it’s not necessarily that prot paladins are bad. However, likely that all other tanks could use a little love to compensate (maybe).

I’d still like to see SOTR changed to something more impactful (imagine if it could also trigger First Avenger lol). I still wish Holy Shield was baseline (it’s just so good but I love Blessed Hammer too much for off healing/targetless phases)

Lastly, someone mentioned taking Holy Avenger over Bulwark to up survivability. Truthfully, for a more defensive approach I use (and love) ‘Of Dusk and Dawn’, which has the added benefit of also being useful for offense as well (especially off of a divine toll) and now that it’s getting buffed it’s looking even better “Of Dusk and Dawn buff duration increased to 12 seconds (was 8 seconds) and Blessing of Dusk damage reduction increased to 4% (was 3%).”

Personally I was stacking vers/mastery for raw damage reduction but started dropping mastery (since vers is so flexible) to acquire more haste. My haste currently is lower than I’d like (17%, shooting for 20%-25%) but I have 15% mastery (10% DR in conc) and 15% vers (7.5% DR). Combine all that with Dusk and Dawn / Devo aura / armor / etc and you get some decent survivability. Now just to ditch this extra crit…

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Holy Avenger has this interesting synergy with Blessed Hammer for an all-in kiting setup that can fish for Grand Crusader resets outside of melee range while generating a lot of holy power. You’ll be throwing far more shields, so something that gives you a 35% chance to instantly reset that cooldown gels very well with that, both offensively and defensively. You’d also get more defensive mileage out of First Avenger.

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