Prot pally questions

Classes Paladin
1

I consider myself an average pally tank, and recently started running Mythics. In season 3 I hit a wall around +12 , and now with the key level squish I’m struggling with M0s. I’m Ok with that, given I’m old, slow, and don’t use macros. Having fun is more important to me than the BiS purple, but I don’t want to let my group down.

After doing a lot of reading, and finding out the prot pally role has changed a lot since I started playing years ago, I’m realizing there are a few fundamentals I’m not understanding. So a few questions…

My job - hold aggro, take a pounding and help the healer heal me. My damage dealt helps hold aggro, but damage is not my #1 priority. Is this correct?

I sometimes have a hard time collecting aggro where there’s a lot of adds, like the tree boss in academy, or the first boss in ruby life pools. If Divine Toll is on cooldown, what other spell should I use to grab it all?

Defensives - I keep SotR up as often as I can. But when I need more damage mitigation, in what order do I use my other defensives?

Avenging Wrath - can someone school me on why it’s so important, and when I should use it? Why doesn’t it show up in my spellbook?

TIA

2 Likes
2

#1 have fun :grin: .
Real#1. Stay alive, your active mitigation spell is also one of your primary dps abilities so you should always have sotr up
For RLP just hang onto divine toll for a few extra seconds until the welps come down then hit em, for the next waves just throw your shield and try and cut them off from going at your group.
Same thing for tree boss, just save it for a few seconds and let it rip on the small adds. Focus and kick the summoned add .
Always keep consecration up
Always have sotr up when taking physical dmg
You will learn what mobs are dangerous and what mobs you can just run damage on and, learn when to hold divine toll for important interupts and snap aggro. Just play, have fun, and dont be afraid to fail, how else would you learn :slightly_smiling_face:

3

Yes.

Eye of Tyr, it’s uncapped and hits harder than anything else.

Order doesn’t matter as much as using them early and often. You will learn where one is better than another. The more you hold defensives the less uses you get out of them in the key, particularly considering the amount of CDR we have. Be aggressive and use your defensives early on difficult pulls. Try not to stack defensives, but rather stagger them back to back if necessary.

It’s important to note that Shield of the Righteous is not our only active mitigation. Standing in Consecration is also extremely important. It can help to make a weak aura to highlight the screen if you are or aren’t in your Consecration.

You have to talent into the class tree and/or spec tree to have it. But assuming you have taken talents you should remember you have both a spec spell book and a class spell book.

Whether you take Sentinel or Avenging Wrath both add damage. Sentinel is giving you flat mitigation and damage, AW is giving you more damage through crit.

You can, and should, get CDR on either. So you want to use it early and often for both damage and defense. Generally it should be your first CD used on pull. This will help with threat as well as survival. Sometimes you will need to delay it.

Edit: Edited to remove error about crit form AW giving Parry.

2 Likes
4

Not dying is priority #1.
Helping your group survive #2.
Enabling your group to do max damage – which includes your damage #3.

5

Thank you for the replies.

Whether you take Sentinel or Avenging Wrath both add mitigation as well as damage. Sentinel is giving you flat mitigation, AW is giving you more Parry through crit.

I do have Sentinel, I’m using the M+ talents from Icy Veins

You can, and should, get CDR on either. So you want to use it early and often for both damage and defense. Generally it should be your first CD used on pull. This will help with threat as well as survival. Sometimes you will need to delay it.

So, use Sentinel early and often? What is CDR?

6

Cooldown Reduction = CDR

Spending holy power reduces the cooldown on Avenging Wrath, provided you take the Righteous Protector talent.

Righteous Protector gives CDR to Guardian of Ancient Kings and Avenging Wrath.

Resolute Defender gives CDR to Divine Shield and Ardent Defender.

Zealot’s Paragon causes Judgement and Hammer of Wrath to extend Avenging Wrath.

Judgment generates more holy power during Avenging Wrath.

So in summation, you cast Avenging Wrath early to generate more holy power, deal more damage(threat), and spend more holy power. Which in turn reduces the CD on AW and increases your uptime for the entire dungeon/Raid. You should only hold AW when you will need it later but not be able to get it back before hand. This is best found by trial and error.

With this much CDR it is almost always better to have a wipe because you aggressively pulled and used CDs but mistimed them, than to sit on CDs and “save” them for the “right moment.” If you use your CDs aggressively you will learn where you did or didn’t need them, without having to die constantly because you were waiting to see if the moment was right. You will also learn pacing such that you will better be able to predict when you can use a CD and know that you will have it back before the next need.

One example is if you pulled big, then used Guardian of Ancient Kings. But your heath never dips below 95%, you can then know for the given key and pull you really don’t need kings there. Then later if you very nearly die, or die, because you don’t have any CDs available, you then know you will need to save something for that pull/phase.

Most of the time we think about CDs as only keeping us alive, but when it comes to mitigation it can be measured similarly to dps. How much damage was actually mitigated?

If you take a 30min key and have a 5min CD, you should be able to get 5-6 uses of that CD before taking into account CDR. If you take advantage of the built in CDR you can often nearly double the number of uses. If you plan your route well around your CDs you will not only double the uptime of defensives but the effectiveness. When you have CDs you want to maximize the benefit, while minimizing the risk. This takes the form of your route, when and what you pull.

1 Like
7

What I like to do specially in tree boss is hold divine toll for the first spawn of adds, then use divine shield with final stand talented, this taunts all adds within 15 yrds with added benefit of making your immortal, for the second set if divine toll is on cooldown.

Hold ardent defender and use it if you think or feel like the next hit will kill you as it will prevent death and heal you up instead.

8

I used to do this but honestly think it’s better to just spam defender as your primary defensive CD, and have the cheat death as a back up incase you start taking too much damage or get bursted to the moon. I use Guardian of the Ancient Kings as my “oh sh*t” button, because a hit that was going to kill me is very unlikely to kill me if it only does 50% damage. Especially good if you hold onto a free Word of Glory from Shining Light to emergency heal yourself.

9

My opinion: Eye of Tyr, Ardent Defender, Guardian of Ancient Kings. If you don’t have the taunt talent, I would never use Divine Shield as it negates your aggro for the duration. We don’t really have a lot of options for big defensives in exchange for consistent damage reduction across our base kit. That order gives you the most uses out of the spells while saving the biggest damage reduction and cooldown for last. But consistent use of Avenger’s Shield, Shield of the Righteous, Consecration, and your free Word of Glorys should be able to keep you alive through most things.

10

Thanks again for all the help, it all makes sense.

Big takeaway is that I haven’t been using defensives correctly. Other than SotR, I rarely use them until I can tell the healer is having trouble keeping up.

Is there a simple addon that will show me what defensives are active? I don’t mean on CD, but actively mitigating damage. I’m toying with WeakAuras, but it’s very overwhelming.

11

I apologize, but I believe avenging wrath is coded as an aura that affects the Crit chance of specific abilities. I don’t believe it increases Parry.

Its value comes from the bonus Holy Power generation, snap threat, and healing it provides.

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12

I think AW does give regular ol’ crit chance, but Riposte only gives us parry for the crit that’s on our gear. It’s a weird passive.

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13

This is correct as far as I can tell.

14

start with full mastery - crit build, with disregard of both vers and haste.

BIEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA0iWOQiiEHItkEaFRikIJEAAgAAAAAAAAIkkIJJSQkCICAgAJAEkAA

it is lazy battle healer tank, and you can cheese most of the fights once u get the right crit / mastery gear, start with explorer or veteran gear, gather all those gears that gives that stats.

you can change strength of adversity for double dipping parry once u get the 2 sets that gives 7% chance to parry.

that build gives you allowance to miss some shield of the righteous in exchange for high chance to block (still u should keep your sotr at all times, dance with it even if u don’t have haste).

avenger shield will proc with this set up, along side with chance to proc when activating holy power generating ability.

high crit will allow you to generate very high threat but if someone have leg axe and trinket combo pop , u won’t be able to 100% hold threat unless theres a bubble taunt.

as you can see the build tree leans heavily in the left side with moment of glory, your main mitigation is mastery and avenger shield absorption, more like bear avoidance build back in the day. (you can still die if u take direct hit from obvious death mechanic).

try this build, it is slow but chunky. you can change obduracy for repentance or turn evil for affix ccs, cast time will be 1.5sec so it is slow.

when things drop for you in dungeon and u are not carrying any fren, take all the gear, keep 1 of them, stash them in your bank and play around with stat combination. like having both haste items for haste build (right side of the talent tree) and crit for crit build.

15

Is it a necro if it’s under a month old?

As a paladin you should never have agro issues. If you know certain encounters will have large density mobs, hold your DT for it or plan your CD usage for it to be back up. As for AA, the first set of adds don’t become “live” until the 2nd set. Don’t waste your DT on the first spawn.

SoTR should have near 100% uptime. Aside from that, you should be cycling your other defensives + trinket. Paladins have enough defensives for you to use 1 and even 2 every pull. You should be using defensives often. If you are holding defensives until you “feel” like you need it, you waited too long. You should be popping them while still high HP, but knowing heavy damage is incoming.

You should also always be standing in your conc. Defensives should be up if you need to move out, before you move out.

It’s a DPS CD and defensive CD in one. It’s very good.

This is terrible advice. Haste should be around 35-45%. Haste impacts CD timing which means more DPS and more defensives.

16

may be try it first.

in mop, haste was king when everyone tells u to go full mitigation(meta) now that can be apply in today’s meta thinking.

right now u have all the opportunity and resources to combine and mix stats. doing 200-300k dps on average 7+ run with full crit/mastery is pretty exceptional. lol, + u will never run out to press if u spec with full grand crusader + crusader’s judgement, or at least it makes your judgement ready almost 100% (+ u can spam AS). going all out with one build just limits you and ur view of talent tree potential.

17

I don’t need to try it because I know it’s going to be terrible. If it was good, you would see the top players using those stat weights because they will go with even a 1% increase.

The haste thing was true even in Shadowlands. Our rotation and CDs benefit heavily on haste.

I think many builds can work within a key level, but your current talent choices make me question your choices honestly.

https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/paladin/protection/DAPFRAURkUgVERmFRQBAMVVVViVFFVQgQCFF

You opted to skip Sentinel which increases crit chance by 20% (which you said you value) that also acts as a defensive CD on a sub 1.5 min CD with haste and cd reduction from casting SoTR. It gives you 30% damage reduction and 15% max hp.

In turn, you also opted to forgo Zealot’s Paragon which would extend the duration of Sentinel.

You also don’t have Blessing of Sacrifice or Spellwarding which is a major group utility.

You also don’t have Eye of Tyr, another massive defensive on a 1 min CD before haste.

You also don’t have Final Stand, the strongest defensive in the game.

I looked at your built and I’m sorry, but it’s not good for higher keys. This is playing with a handicap on so many levels.

18

Thanks to the advice here, I’m using defensives more effectively/early now. I was holding on to them too long, not any more.

I haven’t tried this alternative build posted above. I imagine it being as slow as molasses.

19

I’d recommend using the personal HUD so you can see Shield of the Righteous duration easily. Your job, keep that up as much as possible with your Hanmer/Judgment rotations.

For grabbing groups, if Divine Toll is on CD… try Avenger’s Shield (grabs 5) or Eye of Tyr… if those are also on CD, I will sometimes use Blinding Light to get the mobs attention or drop down a fresh Consecration in their path. You got lots of tools.

With regard to Avenging Wrath, I use it to open each boss fight and use it off CD to keep up damage and maximize healing and mitigation. The fantasy of glowing wings is my favorite part of the Paladin spellbook.

Save Ardent Defender (AD) and Guardian of Ancient Kings (GAK) for hard-hitting boss attacks or to help out a busy healer with larger/tougher trash pulls. I usually keep an eye on my teammates, spread around Blessing of Protection (as needed) and use my AD more freely before going to GAK for stressful moments.

20

Don’t bother trying it, not worth your time. It’s missing multiple key defensives and group utilities.

Glad you feel “tankier” :]