SotR ends up taking care of itself just by playing the rotation so you don’t really think about it. All the defensive CDs are nice to have to cover big hits. I went pal over war because it brings more utility to my m+ group and it’ll make it easier for us to succeed. Kicks, BoP, Sac, Spellward all help keep my group alive and take some stress off my healer.
Not only Prot warrior is much easier to play ( as a prot warrior you have only one active defensive, which very easy to keep up, while as prot pala you have five active defensives, only 1 one them - consecration - is easy to keep up), it also has smoother damage intake.
Prot warrior is much beginner friendlier, so I’d recommend it if you wanna have easier time learning tanking. Protection paladin in my opinion is one of the hardest tanking specs to play effectively (I currently play prot pala + blood DK).
That being said, prot pala has the best potential out of all tanks to single handedly carry the group, by doing most of the interrupts, off healing to assist healer, putting defensives to help someone survive and cleansing them of poisons / diseases.
Prot warr most certainly has more than one active defensive, you’ve got shield wall, spell block, spell reflect, demo shout, last stand, and rallying cry
prot warrior also has a way smoother damage intake than prot paladin and only really spikes into Magic damage (but not really). Your maitenance is shield block and Ignore pain.
For hardest I don’t think prot pally is crazy difficult , just requires a high apm and a knowledge of when to use what (which is true for all tanks). I’m of the opinion that blood DK or brewmaster are probably some of the harder tanks.
I agree, but that’s because most prot pallies copy the streamer builds for more dmg. If you play sentinel, you are immortal, but at the cost of dps loss.
This season, prot wars play talent immovable object, which gives 4s Last Stand on Avatar. It’s an inferior version of Sentinel but it feels much better than the last season offensive build, a version of Avenging Wrath
Yeah they all love the crit wings for some reason, probably because of the aforementioned damage, and last 5 seconds longer too, which is a bit more of holy power surplus too. I adore Sentinel too much to drop it. Though Prot pal has a brief bit of down time where they are completely tapped before they can cycle again, that’s where the major damage spike comes in.
What I mean by active defensives are not cooldowns, but the buffs you have to sustain most of the fight.
Prot paladin has Shield of the Righteous, Consecration, Strength in Adversity, Baricade of Faith and Faith in the Light.
Shield Wall, Spell Block, Spell reflect and demo shout are all defensives on cooldown. Paladin has its own kit of defensives on cooldown : Ardent Defender, Guardian of the Ancient Kings, Blessing of Magical Protection, Lay on Hands and Divine Shield ofc.
SoR is an active mitigation.
Paladin has SoR, pwar has shield block.
Paladin has to maintain Faith in light, pwar has to maintain ignore pain.
Maintaining consec is a joke, SiA and BoF are actually the same buff from pressing AS.
Paladin has 1 more maintained buff, but it’s not hard, most of time you naturally have it from casting AS to interrupt or Divine toll.
You barely need to keep track of holy powers, but the current prot war has to pay more attention on rage economy.
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First soul I’ve seen call maitenance buffs actives, but yeah, while it does have more (albeit by one), they are pretty easy to maintain, shield slaps two of the maitenance buffs on, sotr is just core rotation, and faith in the light will be weaved with shining light.
The joke is mantaining a shield block. Mantaining Consecration without Sanctuary talent is harder than you may think in fights with heavy movement requirements (which are most current fights in m=) and most tanks do play without Sanctuary as to invest that talent into BoMP.
Ignore Pain can be compared to Shining Light, but not to FitL.
Protection Warrior has its own interesting tricks to master (like Spell Reflect clever use of Intervene), but it is objectively simpler to play than paladin.
Can you name me 3 defensives buffs warrior has to sustain apart from Shield Block that make warrior only 1 buff shorter of paladin?
So is SoR. It’s actually easier to maintain SoR than SB. SB doesn’t have 100% uptime with the current build unless you have a crazy amount of haste + 4p. On top of that, pwar is rage starved on pull and extremely vunetable unlike prot pally gets free 5 holy power ftom BH.
I did play prot pally for many seasons. And I still think it’s a joke.
I already talked about this, so I won’t repeat again. If you struggle to maintain consec and BoF, you may need help with weakauras. I find some people don’t know how to use weakauras and complicate stuffs up.
I can, (albeit one is a debuf, but it still reduces intake) they’re brace for impact, ignore pain, and punish.
You are right, lol. I almost forgot about them.
You lack of understanding how prot pala’s main cooldown works clearly shows how you played many seasons that spec.
[quote=“Raknawarrior-area-52, post:31, topic:2077422”]
I already talked about this, so I won’t repeat again.
- If you count Brace for Impact for warrior, I’d add redoubt for prot pala, so it’s matched.
- As I already stated, Ignore Pain can be compared to Shining Light, as they’re both sources of self sustain (even though IP is a partly self sustain / partly defensive).
- so this is matched as well.
- Yeah, Punish can be counted as a defensive buff and given its multiplicative nature can be an interesting thing to play around.
so far 7 defensive buffs vs 4 defensive buffs.
Love someone yelling “skill issue” while hiding behind lvl 11 character.
You asked to list 3, he listed 4. What else do you want ?
You really like driving this thread into the controversy paladin vs warrior, don’t you ?
If you think maintaining some buffs is something “complicated” then you should learn how to use addons.
I am playing on EU servers, hence I can only put on display my low lvl alt. If you’re anxious to check my raider io, my pally’s name is Stoicheart-Ravencrest.
All I like, or rather would not like, is to see an aspiring tank to be led to a false conclusion that a prot pally has either the same or even lower skill floor as a prot warrior.
While your statement that prot pally is much more prevalent in higher keys than prot warrior is absolutely correct, notice that Devyric asked “what’s easier to run things?” not “what spec is more effective to push 12+ keys?”
I would not like Devyric to come to the wrong conslusion that he gets smashed in keys as prot pally because he just bad, get frustrated and quit tanking.
Both prot warrior and prot pala are great tanking specs with their own unique perks and tricks, both are viable in low and mid keys and you can spend many hours perfecting your skills as either spec.
Getting skill floor as a prot pally, however is more challenging than doing so as a prot warrior.
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Do you think playing with 30y attack range, a full resource start, a group ranged pull ability, and no worries about AoE threat or playing a pure melee with a naked start, single target tickling ranged pull, and AoE gaps, which one is easier?
I am not talking about class difficulty here. Where did I say prot war had higher skill floor than prot pally? You are the one who jumped in and raised the fight over prot war vs prot pally. What I said was the higher key he played, the better chance he was invited as prot pally. It’s up to him to decide what key bracket he targets. Why should you decide for him to stay as a low key hero? Historically, the time prot pally dominated the meta was many times more often than prot pwar. Even during the time it was not the best, it would stay as the 2nd or the 3rd best.
Additionally, as a beginer, he can play Sentinel, that build is one of the tankiest builds in game.
I do want to point out while sentinel is super tanky. It’s not something I suggest cause threat is tied to damage and people def need to work on their damage as a tank lately
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that’s debatable since a lot of players follow tier lists to a T in terms of pugging. If a group leader is looking for a tank, and a Prot pally and VDH is queued with around the same Raider IO score, the VDH will always be picked simply because it’s meta.
The whole “play what you want” really only applies to playing with friends or guildies.
But with pugs, you can’t really “play what you want” Since your class/spec determine whether you get an invite or not.
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at a certain level you really need to start networking. make friend and groups and ask pals to play with you for higher keys.
pugging higher keys sounds like turbo aids and frankly theres nothing blizzard can do to fix it. they can make it the most balanced tank balancing they ever done (they have btw) and something small would make a meta appear. we already saw this with the meta since SL where the lowest skill floor highest performer tank ends up being meta.
meta always exist and you need to actively start makin friends at a certain level or be a slave to meta forever