SL Prot: Brief Review and Guide - Kyrian

Classes Paladin
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Introduction
Divine toll is an excellent covenant ability, especially with the Conduit buff listed below. I use it a lot when tanking as a prot pally. I am using the default talent setup for now. It seems to work well. None of the talented active abilities generates holy power. This makes their value questionable imho.

SL Default Prot Paladin Talents and the Kyrian Mount

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Kyrian Starter Armor Set

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Overview
Despite the removal of Crusader Strike, SL prot is a much improved spec. The days of faceroll prot pally tanking are gone. Holy Power is back and thank the light that it is. You will have to manage your holy power and make choices in your rotation. The two most important choices are Word of Glory and Shield of the Righteous. Choose one or the other but you will rarely be able to spam them one after another. If you choose one, you will probably have to wait for enough holy power to use the other.

Holy Power
Holy Power generation is partially RNG dependent. Avengers shield generates 1 holy power. When it procs a lot, you will have plenty of holy power. When it doesn’t, you will have to be patient and wait for your CDs. Don’t spam Hammer of The Righteous too much or you will find yourself waiting for the 5.6 sec cd or hoping for an avengers shield proc. Having crusader strike would help smooth this out.

Healing and Buffing
Word of Glory is a solid self heal and well worth the Holy Power. Shield of the Righteous doesn’t seem to have the impact it used to in terms of the amount of damage done and the armor buff. It could use a buff imho. Flash of Light is weak and has a slow cast time, I rarely use it.

Active Mitigation
Avenger’s Shield does not provide all of the active mitigation buffs it did in BFA. I did take the First Avenger talent which gives AS a good mitigation buff. Redoubt will provide a small mitigation buff to your shield but it is not worth giving up holy shield for. See Kyrian conduits below for more mitigation options. The conduits listed below will give a significant mitigation buff.

Conclusion
SL prot is a lot more fun, interesting and challenging to play. The Paladin Tank is more squishy now until you get at least the Conduits listed below. You will want to keep devotion aura up all the time. Mitigation just isn’t as good as it was in BFA. Is that a huge problem? Gear and time will tell. Hope that your healer stays awake. You cant spam self heals anymore to keep yourself alive when the healer cant keep up. Lay on Hands can have a 7 min cooldown with Unbreakable Spirit. Dont hesitate to use it when your health is low. Prot is a decent leveling/grinding/soloing spec. Soloing will be more challenging than faceroll BFA prot and it is slower due to holy power and a slower rotation.

Kyrian Prot Paladin Conduits (Pelagos)

Let Go of the Past
Using a spell or ability increases your Versatility by 1% for 10 sec. Using another spell or ability increases this amount by 1% when it is not a repeat of the previous spell or ability. Stacking to 5%.

Golden Path
Consecration heals you for 114 every 0.9 sec while standing within it.

Road of Trials
Defeating an Enemy Grants you 10% movement speed for 20 sec. This effect is increased if defeating a powerful enemy.

Punish the Guilty
Shield of the Righteous deals 50% more damage to targets affected by Judgement.

Cleansed Vestments
You have a chance to obtain cloth and enchanting materials when you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor.

Shielding Words
Casting Word of Glory grants you a shield that prevents damage equal to 15% of the healing done by Word of Glory. Lasts 10 sec.

Resolute Defender
Shield of the Righteous extends Ardent Defender’s duration by 25%.

Combat Meditation
Divine Toll increases your Mastery by 720 for 10 sec and occasionally expels Sorrowful Memories. Walking through Sorrowful Memories extends this effect by 3 sec.

[Album] Kyrian Prot Paladin Conduits

These conduits provide a significant buff to the Prot Paladin spec and should be considered essential to SL prot paladin tanking. This is pre-release information and may be subject to change.

Torgast and Legendaries
You will grind Torgast for legendary crafting mats if you want to craft your legendaries. The great thing is that Torgast is solo content and that you can get them yourself.

SL Prot Issues
I have a few bones to pick with the now current Prot Paladin spec. I think that the base Prot spec is sound but…

  • The prot spec like many specs is too dependent on Covenant Conduits.
  • Prot glyphs used to allow Prot players to customize prot in terms of things like mitigation etc. Now prot glyphs like most glyphs are little more than window dressing.
  • Prot like most specs is too dependent on xpac and and content-specific unlocks which we will not take with us into the next xpac.
  • Base Level 60 Prot mitigation is just too weak. Get conduits or get crushed.

SL To Do List
It is clear that Blizzard wants Paladin players to participate in every aspect of PvE:

  • Covenant Campaign (World PvE and Covenant gear, Conduits and unlocks)
  • Covenant Renoun (rewards, unlocks, crafting)
  • Daily and World Quests (in SL, daily and world quests are separate)
  • Dungeons (gear, campaign, unlocks)
  • Torgast (pve currency, legendary crafting mats)
  • Raids(at least Raid Finder)
  • Transmogs, pets and mounts.

I havent done much PvP yet in SL Beta.

This guide should not be considered the be all and end all for SL Paladin Prot but a starting point for discussion. Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

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If Forbearance granting abilities are going to be a greater part of Prots day to day (rather than a true emergency button), do you think this discourages having another Pally on either Ret or Holy enough to cause friction that largely wasn’t a part of BFA?

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Whats the point of divine tolling every 1min on CD, when avengers shield already hits 5 targets anyway…i see were this is beneficial to RET and HOLY spec because it makes there single target spells AOE capable but for PROT???

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Divine Toll is a handy extra long CD for prot. It should be considered a helper ability for prot.

I think that AS not providing additional mitigation is a much bigger issue. I need to take a look at the Kyrian Paladin conduits and see if there is anything useful for prot.

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One of the talents for AS causes it to give an absorb shield for any damage it does.

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First Avenger:

Avenger’s Shield hits 2 additional targets and grants you an absorb shield for 100% of all of the damage it does.

I have that in my talent build. What is gone are the mitigation buffs from Azerite armor, especially those to AS. I can tell a big difference in prot active mitigation without those azerite armor buffs. Those mitigation buffs may be present in the Kyrian Covenant conduits.

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Im personally very excited for the changes

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That’s why you want to use Divine Toll with AV hitting 5 targets. You cast out 5 AV and each of those 5 now bounces to 5 targets. Which means it’s massive Aoe burst. If you have 5 enemies cast Divine toll that is 25 shields bouncing around so each enemy gets hit 5 times.

This also fully charges your SoR legendary to unload the HP you just got with SoR and some big single target dmg with Aoe.

That’s if you are going SoR build with Kyrian to start.

Here is Divine toll in action in this gif on WoW Head soon as you scroll down… Look at that Aoe explosion of dmg.

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Well, I must say Prot Pally sounds more promising at the start of the SL expac than it did BFA.

At the start of BFA, Prot was super squishy, to the point I decided to take nearly a 2 year break from the game, lol. However this time around, I’m tempted to give it a solid go by going with Kyrian and seeing how it flows.

Thank you for the great info, Blackweb!

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I tanked Halls of Atonement last night. I did an LoS pull of what I thought would be one or two mobs. The entire room pulled. Divine Toll came in handy in that situation.

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Nice wish I was on Beta I mostly only mess around in PvE to get PvP gear since I mostly PvP. I will be maining Prot in Arena/RBGs again and there are some really fun builds I can’t wait to use.

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Yeah… I disagree with it being more fun.

I really don’t get all the excitement about holy power. I truly wonder if the ones who like these changes are the same people who just mashed SotR on cooldown during BfA and never had a charge of it when needed.

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Thank you for your post but we will have to agree to disagree. I hated BFA “Mana tank LOL!” Paladin tanking. Sooo boring and waay too easy.

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The best use of Divine Toll for prot is when you are zerged by multiple groups of mobs. In that situation, divine toll comes in very handy.

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BFA prot was so bad imho that it is difficult to compare anything to it. You make a good point that the devs expect us to use all of our abilities when tanking as a paladin, including those that cause forbearance.

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Take a look at the “Let Go of the Past” Kyrian Conduit. I think that will answer your question.

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Yeah i checked into it makes sense im not going to comment any further i have not played Prot this entire EXP. Nor have i tryed them after pre-patch thats why im in this thread testing out the waters.

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Thank you for your post. I just unlocked the Conduits and played several hours with the conduit spec shown above. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a difference those conduits make in prot. Divine Toll is a much more powerful ability when buffed by Let Go of the Past. Do all you can to get them as quickly as possible.

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I like the new Prot, I was running keys last night and between all of the mitigation and healing we have I feel unkillable, you generate a ton of holy power so I never really have down time on my SoR. My only concern is, what do I do to avoid over-capping HP?

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It gets even better once you unlock your Kyrian conduits. In my case, I am using the Pelagos soul bind conduits.

I can solo almost anything in the world with my Conduit-buffed Prot paladin.