PvP Prot Paladin: The Guide by Gladiator Lumaca
Protection Paladins are one of the best hybrids in PvP right now, and honestly, they’re the only true hybrid in the game. Protection can do a lot of damage, but not enough to be called a damage specialization – And they possess the ability to do a lot of healing, but not enough to be called a healer. You’ll have amazing utility to keep your team alive and pushing, with several options and strategies you can apply. Our kit will change a bit in Shadowlands, but I think it’ll remain in the same “position” as it is now. With the meta being heavily favoured towards casters and magic heavy affects the power of Holy Shield and Blessing of Spellwarding is simply too great to ignore and allows the specialization to compete at the high end of PvP.
In this guide, I’ll explain how to build your character and why you should build it in certain ways. I’m not going to pretend I’m without flaws, but I’ve spent a lot of time as this specialization and I have worked very hard at theory-crafting and pushing my rating. I’m also going to pretend the reader has a base knowledge of how Protection functions.
1 ) Talents
Level 15: Holy Shield, Redoubt, Blessed Hammer
Holy Shield: In PvP, there’s only one option here: Holy Shield. Holy Shield allows you to block all incoming spell damage, including DoT effects. You can block spells while in any form of CC, including stuns and fears. This will be the bread and butter of the spec for the most part, and it’s the main reason we can exist in PvP in the first place. It has no internal CD, does a lot of damage, and absorbing over the entirety of a game.
Level 30: First Avenger, Crusader’s Judgement, Bastion of Light
First Avenger: There is a specific build you need for it to be a thing, and it’s not the build I will do myself, but it’s a build that exists. I will go in detail later.
Crusader's Judgement: This is the breadwinner for damage. It will be the main source of your active damage, and you essentially only use Hammer of the Righteous to reset Judgement as it hits harder than Avenger’s Shield, even if you spec’d First Avenger.
Level 45: First of Justice, Repentance, Blinding Light
Fist of Justice: With Crusader’s Judgement spec’d, you can expect the CD of Fist of Justice to be reduced to 20-25 seconds very, very often. This is going to be the main choice for most games, similar to how it works for Retribution Paladins.
Repentance: There will be situations where Repent might be a good choice to have in PvP, but this will mostly depend on YOUR comp, not so much the enemies. I don’t play any comp where I feel the need to play Repentance over Fist of Justice, but there are classes such as Feral, where you could line up your CC chains with Repentance for extremely annoying chains.
Blinding Light: This has the same rules as Repentance. This will mostly apply to the comp you’ve decided to play and if there’s anything that will DR with it directly, how long you want and how long you want your chains to be. You could pick this option with a Rogue, for instance, as they already have a frequently used Stun and they are unable to use blind effectively most of the time with your Holy Shield constantly proccing damage.
Level 60: Retribution Aura, Cavalier, Blessing of Spellwarding.
Blessing of Spellwarding: If you’re fighting against classes that do majority magic damage (hint: everyone except Warriors and Hunters), Spellwarding will be your go-to choice. It’s not purgeable (this includes being Spellstolen), but it can be mass dispelled off. It will not remove any magic effects but it will prevent further applications and stall any magic damage completely. Magical kicks cannot be used against you (hint: This means Locks, Mages, Demon Hunters and Shamans cannot kick you).
Retribution Aura and Cavalier: You only pick Retribution Aura if you don’t need Spellwarding AND you don’t need the extra charge for mobility. Either choice is not detrimental, and both are fairly weak, you mostly pick them if you don’t want Spellwarding (if you were fighting Warrior/Hunter for example).
Level 75: Unbreakable Spirit, Final Stand, Hand of the Protector
Hand of the Protector: Similar to how Holy Shield is the bread and better for you being tanky, this is the bread and butter that allows you to heal others. Without this ability, we simply would lack the power to heal our allies effectively and this is a staple in any build.
Level 90: Judgment of Light, Consecrated Ground, Aegis of Light
Judgment of Light: The default choice if you don’t need a slow. It does light healing but this does add up quickly and certain classes take advantage of rapid use of the charges (think DH and Rogue).
Consecrated Ground: If you require a slow, this is not a bad option, it’s a non-dispellable slow and it can be used to clutch points or prevent healers from running around in circles along a pillar.
Level 100: Last Defender, Righteous Protector, Seraphim
Seraphim: This is also the only true option of the tier. Seraphim is a simple stat steroid that does the job well. It can temporarily improve your healing output in a pinch or allow you to expel more damage with Judgement.
1.1) PvP Talents
Standard build 2s:
Judgements of the Pure, Shield of Virtue, Guardian of the Forgotten Queen
Standard Build 3s:
Sacred Duty, Shield of Virtue, Guardian of the Forgotten Queen
Shield of Virtue: Giving us a silence to match the CD of a Shadow Priest silence is pretty amazing. Silence is the ONLY ability to directly stop Vitality Conduit from working (yes, even the major use). Vitality lasts for 6 seconds, this silence can stop 4 seconds of that ability, which is crippling on some healers. I seldom want to swap out this talent, but there are cases that you may feel that you can’t get the value of the ability.
Judgments of the Pure: This is an amazing heal over time. In 2s, I find it almost always valuable as it becomes around 10-15% of my healing, but nearly 40% of my ACTIVE healing.
Guardian of the Forgotten Queen: This gives Divine Shield to any target you want, but be warned, the Queen herself can be stunned, feared, banished, or blinded. The ability does have a wind-up time of about .5 seconds of which you can be lined on or out of ranged (42yds to be exact), and smoke bomb can be a huge issue sometimes, but once the Queen has begun casting you cannot break the spell yourself from lining or ranging.
Sacred Duty: This will put Blessing of Spellwarding on a 2minute CD and Sacrifice on an 80 second CD. This can be the breadwinner vs comps like Rogue/Mage/X or Mage/Lock/X. I wouldn’t bother with the talent if you see no reason to use Spellwarding, but Sacrifice is still very powerful on a lower CD.
Hallowed Ground: I’ve seen this used a few times, and it does pretty well against DKs in particular. This isn’t a favorite of mine, but it is for Stunandbung (another prominent Prot Paladin)
Unbound Freedom: Giving your ally Freedom along with yourself can be AMAZING when pursuing high mobility targets like a Mistweaver. It also can be extremely powerful against heavy peel classes like Death Knights or Windwalkers.
Steed of Glory: While this ability says it makes you immune to movement impairing effects what it means is “you cannot be CC’d in any way shape or form.” It does not remove slows, but it will stop someone from coiling, fearing, polying, cloning, blinding, stunning, etc… This has a lot of practical use if timed correctly, as well as it makes your Divine Steed last 66% longer (2 seconds).
2) Azerite Traits/Armour
There are a ton of good options to choose from as Protection, but the standard build will be:
Avenger’s Might x 3, Light’s Decree x 1, Righteous Conviction x 1, Inspiring Vanguard x 1.
This is mostly for a heavy mastery build, which is what I favor. I’ll go into more detail.
Righteous Conviction: Increases the healing of Hand of the Protector by 200% during wings and is MUST have. This is the only must-have. There are no builds without this.
Light's Decree: This is another must-have in the build. It increases wings duration by 25%, by adding 5 seconds. This is worth the slot, as wings is not a very long CD.
There are three damage options A) Avenger’s Might, which is a mastery steroid during wings, B) Indomitable Justice, which allows Judgement to do more damage if your HP% Exceeds the targets HP%, C) Inspiring Vanguard, which gives strength on Grand Crusader procs. I favour Avenger’s because our HP has to be higher than the targets for Indomitable to do the extra damage. This will not always be the case as you’ll be targetted a lot. Grand Crusader procs are frequent, but not controlled, and I would rather the stronger control of Avenger’s Might. Inspiring Vanguard likely will allow you to output more damage overall.
The non-standard build is the defensive approach:
Bulwark of Light x 3, Light’s Decree x 1, Righteous Conviction x 1, Inspiring Vanguard x 1.
In this build, it’s way more defensive, especially if you can obtain Grand Crusader procs (allowing you to cast more Avenging Shields).
3) Azerite Essences
There are a ton of options for Protection regardless of what your build may be. The standard build will be:
Touch of the Everlasting major – Nullifaction Dynamo, Vision of Perfection, and Conflict & Strife (C&S) minors.
This is the main build simply because it gives a ton of defensive value and a huge safety net in the cheat death mechanic of Touch of the Everlasting. I’ll explain why you might want some other essences and effects.
Majors
Touch of the Everlasting: While I did briefly explain it, it does have to mesh incredibly well with the Protection kit. The heal that it provides cannot be reduced or stopped. You will always return to 40% Health regardless if there’s necrotic effects or healing reduction. It also resets one of our best defensives, Guardian of the Forgotten Queen, and being able to use Queen back to back will overwhelm a lot of people (especially when used at opportune times, AKA they just used Dragon’s Breath or Leg Sweep)
Conflict & Strife: If you don’t want to give up the talent Steed of Glory for whatever reason and don’t need to worry about yourself, obviously pick this choice. I haven’t used it much myself as I haven’t encountered a situation where I need 4 PvP talents often.
Strength of the Warden: Giving you a 50% Damage boost for 6 seconds can cause insane amounts of pressure in a short window if that’s what you’re after, but only works for a specific race (Lightforged). I don’t think it’s a bad option for other races, however.
The Crucible of Flame: Go-to damage option if you don’t need C&S, a 4th talent, or a 2-minute burst CD.
Anima of Life and Death: A more bursty option compared to Crucible, but less frequent use and requiring melee range. It is however very good if you feel all 3 opponents will be stacked up.
Minors
Visions of Perfection and C&S are simply too good to give up, of course, if you main slot C&S, make sure you have one essence that provides the 10 corruption resistance (Anima of Life and Death, Strength of the Warden, Touch of the Everlasting, the Formless Void). The third minor ends up being a flex pick.
Ripple in Space: In PvP, this passive has a massive uptime, at most 66% but usually lands at around 50%. It’s a lot of strength, and our mastery scales our strength particularly well. If you’re crazy enough to obtain rank 3 of the minor, you can benefit from the extra 5% movement speed quite often and I should stop being lazy myself and obtain it.
Nullification Barrier: This is almost the go-to in this meta because there’s a ton of magic damage. Even Gushing Wounds is a magic effect that can be easily absorbed by this minor. It will give a lot of self-healing, which is certainly more important in 2s than it is 3s.
Sphere of Suppression: Passively slowing WW, Rogue, Warr, Hunters, DKs and any pet that’s on you can be pretty good. It’s also donating a small amount of haste and movement speed with it, so it’s never a bad option if you feel like you want to run (and combine it with Steed of Glory + Unbound Freedom).
4) Corruption + Stat Build
Simply put, Prot is Mastery > Vers > Haste >>> Crit
Corruption is unique to this season in BFA and will remain unique. Protection does have a few options that you may go, but there remains one true champion for nearly every situation.
Masterful: Simply stacking mastery is what makes us so very tanky in PvP. We take a bonus 40% damage by default for being a tank in PvP, so we need a hefty amount of mastery to overcome this. Thankfully, due to corruption, we can reach silly amounts of passive block, upwards of 75%! Being able to block 75% of incoming spells for ~60% of the damage ends up being insanely potent at keeping you alive. This isn’t all mastery does, while in Consecration, you will benefit VERY heavily from the damage reduction component which can reach up to 50% reduction during CDs. And we’re still not done, mastery also increases attack power by a metric ton, allowing our spec to scale incredibly hard with gear or strength procs (Cloak and trinkets).
Ineffable Truth: I think there’s nothing wrong with going 1 or 2 of this in your mastery build to simply get some quick CDs. It can catch a lot of people off guard if you had wings come up a bit earlier than expected.
Echoing Void vs Twilight Devastation: I’m pretty firm ongoing mastery, both these options give similar results. They scale with our health to do more damage. EV does more damage overall than TD in PvP because TD is cut in half, however, TD procing can be much more deadly in an instant if fortunate enough. I wouldn’t go TD myself since it’s far too random, and I am working on an Echoing Void build for an alternative to my mastery build.
Gushing Wounds: This would be likely a huge damage boost, but I am unsure of it’s potential compared to EV and TD. Just like Ineffable Truth, I think having 1 or 2 of these in your mastery build is perfectly acceptable. I’m sure it can be super powerful in some scenarios, it will ultimately be up to you if you want to go this route.
5) PvP Comps
Prot is pretty versatile in what it can play within 2s and 3s. Being a hybrid in nature it can suit almost any situation but there are certainly some favourites in the mix.
2s: I have played with almost everything in 2s, but the two classes I’ve played with at 2600 were Warrior and Demon Hunter. Those two classes give a lot of power and benefits for you, Warrior giving Mortal Wounds and the attack power buff (remember, mastery) and Demon Hunter giving himself a lot of self-healing and mana burning, along with being able to purge and having darkness for you, lest not forget the 5% more magic damage debuff.
Other classes that can work in 2s are WW and DK. WW is similar to Warrior and perhaps it can be better than Warrior if you find a highly skilled WW, they provide good slows, can heal you, and can keep themselves alive. DKs have their self-healing and give the added aura of 8% magic damage.
3s: Everything you can play 2s with, you can do 3s with. I and Stunandbung have played with all four I just mentioned at the high end, and he seems to favour DK, while I favour DH. It’s likely these two feel the best since they double down on us already being good against magic users, and DK/DH are also good against magic. So basically any comp that are wizard heavy can have a really hard time dealing with how many CDs both of you have and how long you can live.
Healers, however, are different. Shaman is CLEARLY the best healer for Protection comps. Giving purge and a kick along with being pretty strong defensively on their own is enough to make you want them. That said, I think an excellent Disc Priest or Melee Wings Holy Paladin can do a lot of work for pushing your win through extra throughput. I wouldn’t bother with playing with a Druid too much or MW. Druids simply OOM too quickly and they won’t be able to use clone very often since you and your DPS partner do not cast (all kicks into the healer) and MW just doesn’t do much overall compared to the other healers (incap instantly breaks because of how Holy Shield works, and you already have a 20 second CD stun).
Bonus about Racials: For whatever reason, Lightforged racial scales 3 damage per 1 attack power, leading a mastery heavy build to allow Light’s Judgement (LF racial) to hit extremely hard. Humans are still extremely good due to their stun trinket, and I think Tauren giving stuns is good but I think Zandalari racial (which also scale attack power) are slightly better.
I will update and edit this as needed, as well as answer any questions anyone has for me.
Thank you!
