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Protection: A Compendium
Author’s Note: Please understand that this guide is for a slightly seasoned protection paladin. Names of glyphs and different spells will be perceived as being understood by the reader. If needed, explanations will be present, but wowhead.com is a useful tool for discovering different builds.
Index:
I – Rotation
II – Glyphs
III – Consumables
III –Enchants/Gems
IV – Stat priority
V – General Pulls
VI – Change Log
Rotation
With the introduction of “active” tanking instead of being a meat shield for mobs to hit, blizzard has taken the philosophy of the tank being almost a full DPS character. He/she should be able to successfully fill out his or her rotation to the best of their ability, and in turn will not only be offered high numbers, but also low damage in regards to damage taken and high healing numbers. Let’s go over your basic introductory rotation and what you should be using.
High AoE consistent damage or high tank damage= Seal of Insight
Low AoE consistent damage/ “chunk” individual damage = Seal of Truth
Small heals will not be very substantial for everyone when they are losing all their health in 3 seconds, this is why SoT MAY be used to increase single and multiple target dps.
Rotation breakdown: HP generators such as Judgement (J) and Crusader Strike(CS)/Hand of the Righteous (HotR) and finally Avenger’s Shield(AS) procs should be used to maximize HP generation and thus stem the flow of consistent damage onto yourself this leads to the rotation
Single Target Damage:
Sacred Shield > CS > J > AS (Proc) > AS (Regular) > Consecration > Holy Wrath
Multiple Target Damage:
Sacred Shield> HoTr > J > AS(Proc) > AS (Regular and non glyphed) HW > Consecration > AS (Glyphed)
Please note that HotR is NOT that great for single target dps, and should never be used upon a single target boss unless weakened blows is not active upon the target. Not applying this rule will lead to a significant drop in DPS.
Glyphs
Glyph of Alabaster Shield (For melee damage centered fights)
Glyph of Battle Healer (For fights with high or medium consistent AoE damage)
Glyph of Divine Protection (Magic based fights)
Glyph of Focused Shield (For single target only fights, AS is generally the hardest hitting ability, adds tons to DPS)
Consumables
Food: Chun Tian Spring Rolls (450 Stamina )
Flask: Str or Stam dependent on fight
Potion: Mogu Strength (Strength)
Enchants/Gems
Shoulder: Greater Ox Horn Inscription
Back: Greater Protection
Chest: Superior Stamina
Bracers: Stamina
Gloves: Superior Expertise
Legs: Heavy Leg Reinforcements
Boots: Pandaren’s Step
Weapon: Dancing Steel
Shield: Greater Parry
Concerning the weapon enchant, the absorbs and avoidance gained from weapons aren’t that great and your healers or raid leader will barely notice if at all the damage intake difference between others.
Concerning gems, the reason for this gemming WILL be summarized in the stat priority section
Red: Expertise/Haste (Wicked Tiger Opal)
Blue: Haste/Hit (Lightning Alexandrite)
Yellow: Haste (Quick Sun’s Radiance)
The goal is to reach expertise and hit caps while leaving reforges to lean towards the progression of haste. Haste is our best stat, and I will explain shortly.
Stat Priority
Through hours of number crunching, testing, and proof through my high parses and progression, the answers all lead to one word, Haste. Haste is king, not only because it reduces damage over a long period of time by accruing more and more Holy Power with our change to Sanctity of Battle, haste reduces the global cooldown of all your HP generating abilities. This means, the more haste stacked, the more you can put out HP generations, the more SotR’s are going out, therefore more damage is mitigated concerning melee hit damage. Also, Haste increases HP generation which leads to higher stacks of WoG which can be used to put our firm and fast WoGs to ailing raid members and yourself included.
Hit/Expertise: 100% needed to be on caps or just slightly under them. Expertise is 15%, hit is 7.5% barring any racials. A missed HP generator is a significant blow to your HP generation leading to more damage taken throughout the fight. This means that hit and expertise is needed to not only secure threat, but to provide your raid with all that you offer, dps, heals, and mitigation.
Haste: King stat, increases dps, increases healing output, increases Sacred Shield Absorb frequency, Increases the damage that is reduced from melee attacks in conjunction with proper SotR’s.
Mastery: Decent, it’s nice to get on gear, but should not be gemmed or reforged. Haste is just too good of a stat to take over mastery. A stacking of mastery leads to times of extreme mitigation followed by huge low’s where damage is exceptionally high on the tank.
Avoidance Stats: With 5.2 AS is to have more of a chance to proc off of avoidance, BUT, it still isn’t that great, as our avoidance tables are ruled out thus it is just delaying the inevitable to get crushed for huge damage after all your avoidance numbers have been DR’d.
Stamina: This is the biggest mistake tanks have, they stack way too much. You should generally never be stacking huge amounts of stamina. You become a huge mana sponge to your healers, you don’t mitigate everything, and you become increasingly lower and harder to heal in light of significant single target damage upon yourself. Stack enough, or have enough to be totally fine with your healers, and then start going for other stats. A general rule of thumb is to be able to survive 7 or so seconds without a single heal, and to be able to make it to 100% within 3 without a significant healer Cooldown popped for you to stop stacking stamina and march right into different stats.
General Pulls
Generally, SS should always be active. In conjunction with haste, it is a powerful absorption tool and should never be dropped. A standard pull is
SS > Holy Avenger (if you have it) > Judge (to get 3 HP to get an SoTr off before a melee swing) > start rotation
Change Log
03/07/2012 6:53pm
Author’s Note: Please understand that this guide is for a slightly seasoned protection paladin. Names of glyphs and different spells will be perceived as being understood by the reader. If needed, explanations will be present, but wowhead.com is a useful tool for discovering different builds.
Index:
I – Rotation
II – Glyphs
III – Consumables
III –Enchants/Gems
IV – Stat priority
V – General Pulls
VI – Change Log
Rotation
With the introduction of “active” tanking instead of being a meat shield for mobs to hit, blizzard has taken the philosophy of the tank being almost a full DPS character. He/she should be able to successfully fill out his or her rotation to the best of their ability, and in turn will not only be offered high numbers, but also low damage in regards to damage taken and high healing numbers. Let’s go over your basic introductory rotation and what you should be using.
High AoE consistent damage or high tank damage= Seal of Insight
Low AoE consistent damage/ “chunk” individual damage = Seal of Truth
Small heals will not be very substantial for everyone when they are losing all their health in 3 seconds, this is why SoT MAY be used to increase single and multiple target dps.
Rotation breakdown: HP generators such as Judgement (J) and Crusader Strike(CS)/Hand of the Righteous (HotR) and finally Avenger’s Shield(AS) procs should be used to maximize HP generation and thus stem the flow of consistent damage onto yourself this leads to the rotation
Single Target Damage:
Sacred Shield > CS > J > AS (Proc) > AS (Regular) > Consecration > Holy Wrath
Multiple Target Damage:
Sacred Shield> HoTr > J > AS(Proc) > AS (Regular and non glyphed) HW > Consecration > AS (Glyphed)
Please note that HotR is NOT that great for single target dps, and should never be used upon a single target boss unless weakened blows is not active upon the target. Not applying this rule will lead to a significant drop in DPS.
Glyphs
Glyph of Alabaster Shield (For melee damage centered fights)
Glyph of Battle Healer (For fights with high or medium consistent AoE damage)
Glyph of Divine Protection (Magic based fights)
Glyph of Focused Shield (For single target only fights, AS is generally the hardest hitting ability, adds tons to DPS)
Consumables
Food: Chun Tian Spring Rolls (450 Stamina )
Flask: Str or Stam dependent on fight
Potion: Mogu Strength (Strength)
Enchants/Gems
Shoulder: Greater Ox Horn Inscription
Back: Greater Protection
Chest: Superior Stamina
Bracers: Stamina
Gloves: Superior Expertise
Legs: Heavy Leg Reinforcements
Boots: Pandaren’s Step
Weapon: Dancing Steel
Shield: Greater Parry
Concerning the weapon enchant, the absorbs and avoidance gained from weapons aren’t that great and your healers or raid leader will barely notice if at all the damage intake difference between others.
Concerning gems, the reason for this gemming WILL be summarized in the stat priority section
Red: Expertise/Haste (Wicked Tiger Opal)
Blue: Haste/Hit (Lightning Alexandrite)
Yellow: Haste (Quick Sun’s Radiance)
The goal is to reach expertise and hit caps while leaving reforges to lean towards the progression of haste. Haste is our best stat, and I will explain shortly.
Stat Priority
Through hours of number crunching, testing, and proof through my high parses and progression, the answers all lead to one word, Haste. Haste is king, not only because it reduces damage over a long period of time by accruing more and more Holy Power with our change to Sanctity of Battle, haste reduces the global cooldown of all your HP generating abilities. This means, the more haste stacked, the more you can put out HP generations, the more SotR’s are going out, therefore more damage is mitigated concerning melee hit damage. Also, Haste increases HP generation which leads to higher stacks of WoG which can be used to put our firm and fast WoGs to ailing raid members and yourself included.
Hit/Expertise: 100% needed to be on caps or just slightly under them. Expertise is 15%, hit is 7.5% barring any racials. A missed HP generator is a significant blow to your HP generation leading to more damage taken throughout the fight. This means that hit and expertise is needed to not only secure threat, but to provide your raid with all that you offer, dps, heals, and mitigation.
Haste: King stat, increases dps, increases healing output, increases Sacred Shield Absorb frequency, Increases the damage that is reduced from melee attacks in conjunction with proper SotR’s.
Mastery: Decent, it’s nice to get on gear, but should not be gemmed or reforged. Haste is just too good of a stat to take over mastery. A stacking of mastery leads to times of extreme mitigation followed by huge low’s where damage is exceptionally high on the tank.
Avoidance Stats: With 5.2 AS is to have more of a chance to proc off of avoidance, BUT, it still isn’t that great, as our avoidance tables are ruled out thus it is just delaying the inevitable to get crushed for huge damage after all your avoidance numbers have been DR’d.
Stamina: This is the biggest mistake tanks have, they stack way too much. You should generally never be stacking huge amounts of stamina. You become a huge mana sponge to your healers, you don’t mitigate everything, and you become increasingly lower and harder to heal in light of significant single target damage upon yourself. Stack enough, or have enough to be totally fine with your healers, and then start going for other stats. A general rule of thumb is to be able to survive 7 or so seconds without a single heal, and to be able to make it to 100% within 3 without a significant healer Cooldown popped for you to stop stacking stamina and march right into different stats.
General Pulls
Generally, SS should always be active. In conjunction with haste, it is a powerful absorption tool and should never be dropped. A standard pull is
SS > Holy Avenger (if you have it) > Judge (to get 3 HP to get an SoTr off before a melee swing) > start rotation
Change Log
03/07/2012 6:53pm
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