WoW Protection Paladin Tank Guide

Protection Paladin in 10.1 seemingly has an answer for everything with some of the best tank utility in the game. The talent tree rework added a lot of strong abilities to choose from while retaining the core aspect of what Protection Paladin can be.

Offensive Juggernaut? Check. Off healing? Check. Offering great abilities such as Battle Rez, Blessing of Protection, Spellwarding and Freedom, a poison and disease dispel are things that make Protection Paladin one of the best pug tanks to choose from.

Protection Paladin is a block based tank spec that uses their abilities to generate holy power to then use on Active mitigation, damage and healing. The talent trees offer a lot of abilities to reduce the cooldowns of many core abilities and gain a lot of damage amps making the playstyle variable to your liking, no matter how defensive or aggressive you like to play.

How the new 10.1 Tier set changes the playstyle

2pc: Avenger’s Shield causes targets struck to burn with Heartfire, dealing an additional 20% of damage dealt over 5 seconds. Heartfire heals you for 100% of damage it deals.

4pc: Judgment critical strikes apply Heartfire and can trigger Grand Crusader.

Coming into 10.1, the new tier set bonuses for protection paladin are solid, both 2 and 4 piece are focused more around Avenger’s Shield, which now applies Heartfire to targets struck, dealing DoT(20%) damage over 5s and passively heals for you 100% of the damage done. Paladin didn’t really need a healing over time component added to their kit but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The 4pc also applies Heartfire on Judgement crits and adds an extra component to resetting the cooldown of Avenger’s Shield, more Shield, more interrupts, more Heartfire uptime.

All in all, the tier set is strong, albeit kinda boring when compared to some of the other tank tier sets. It meshes well with our kit which is incredibly strong for the upcoming patch.

Onyx Annulet

The Onyx Annulet from the Forbidden Reach is going to be one of our better options for the foreseeable future given its damage and defensive bonuses.

Best setup: Infused Storm Stone, Desirous Blood Stone, Prophetic Twilight.

• Strength in Conviction (flex): While standing in your consecration(which you should always be anyway) your Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory have 20% increased damage and healing.
• Divine Purpose (default): Your holy power abilities (Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory) have a 15% chance to make your next cast of either free and deal 15% more damage and healing. You’d be surprised how often this procs in all fairness, and it can proc of one another chaining it self nicely. At the moment this could be a flex point, but to gain all 3 capstone talents, the two talents on either side cost 2 points each for stat upgrades, making this the better option for pathing.
• Faith’s Armor (flex): This talent is transferred over from the spec tree with this patch, Shield of the Righteous increases armor by a further 4.5 seconds. On its own, this is one of the weaker capstone choices, but it only cost 1 point which makes it better to get to Zealot’s Paragon.
• Seal of the Crusader: Auto attacks deal extra holy damage, a plain and simple damage boost.
• Zealot’s Paragon (default): This talent increases damage of Judgement and Hammer of Wrath by 10% and each cast extends the duration of Wings (Sentinel/Avenging Wrath) by 0.5s, this adds up nicely and provides a nice damage and defensive boost.
• Seal of Might (default): Two talent points to gain 4% increased Strength and Mastery.
• Divine Toll (default): One of the most satisfying abilities in the game to press, sends out 5 Avenger’s Shields and interrupts the primary targets of each Shield cast and is a mini nuke in itself. This is a returning staple from Shadowlands and I’m happy to see it here.
• Quickened Invocation vs Divine Resonance (default): Quickened Invocation reduces the Cd of Divine Toll by 15 seconds, which helps it line up a little better with Wings. Divine Resonance will send out another Avenger’s Shield every 5s after the cast, this lines up incredibly well with the spell queues of a lot of mobs making you a Interrupting machine. Most AoE scenarios Divine Resonance will win out.
• Of Dusk and Dawn: This talent has gotten reworked, and one I really like. These buffs are easier to gain and maintain.
  • • Blessing of Dawn: When you cast 3 holy power generating abilities (Judgement, Blessed Hammer, Hammer of Wrath) you gain the Blessing of Dawn which now grants your next Holy Power spender (Shield of the Righteous or Word of Glory) a 20% increased damage buff.
    • Blessing of Dusk: Rotationally by using Shield of the Righteous or Word of Glory you’ll gain Blessing of Dusk, which is a basic maintenance buff lasting 10s for a 5% damage reduction.
• Fading Light (defensive pick): This choice will increase the damage gain of Blessing of Dawn and while Blessing of Dusk is active, your holy power generators will grant an absorb shield for 20% of the damage done. This is going to create a good amount of self sustain and increase your tankiness significantly.
• Seal of Order (offensive pick): Like Fading Light, you’ll gain a 10% buff to your next Holy Power spender. While Blessing of Dusk is active, you gain 10% increased armor and your holy power generating abilities cooldown 10% faster. While 10% doesn’t sound like a lot, it adds up quickly and speeds up the rotation nicely while all around increasing your damage.

The spec tree for Protection Paladin is very strong, the rework added some talents and variations that make some less feasible talent options due to pathing a lot more accessible.

• Avenger’s Shield: The first talent you, non optional, baseline this hits 3 targets and interrupts the primary target. We’ll be talking a lot about this talent and how to customize it well.
• Holy Shield: This talent gives paladin a crucial active mitigation, the ability the block spells, reflects some damage back to the attacker and increases your base block chance by 20%.
• Redoubt: Another maintenance buff that very simple to keep going, each Shield of the Righteous cast increases your strength and stamina by 2%, stacking 3 times for 10 seconds. Passive and easy.
• Blessed Hammer (default): In Shadowlands, Avenger’s Shield generated holy power, in Dragonflight, it does not. Blessed Hammer has 3 charges and does not require a target to be cast, since Shield of the Righteous, Word of Glory and Intercession (Brez) all require holy power, this gives you a lot more mobility and options to generate holy power.
• Grand Crusader (default) & Inspiring Vanguard (flex): When you avoid a melee attack(blocking does not count as avoiding, parry and dodge does) or use your Blessed Hammer, you have a 15% chance to reset the cooldown of Avenger’s Shield. Inspiring Vanguard increases that chance to 20% and grants you a 2% Strength bonus.
• Ardent Defender (default): One of your main defensives, baseline 20% and an active cheat death. While active if an attack would kill you, you get popped up to 20% max hp.
• Sanctuary (default): While in Consecration, you gain a 5% damage reduction, incredibly strong while combined with all the other benefits of Consecration.
• Barricade of Faith (flex): Using Avenger’s Shield increases your block chance by a further 10%. Simple and Effective.
• Shining Light (default): Every three Shield of the Righteous cast grants you one free casts of Word of Glory. Defensively this is super strong and can provide a lot of useful off healing.
• Consecration in Flame (default): This talent increases Consecration damage by 20% and its duration by 2s, the damage increase is nice but the increased duration is a big quality of life bonus rotationally.
• Strength in Adversity (m+ default): For each target hit by Avenger’s Shield, you gain 2% parry increase, which as discussed early aids in Grand Crusader procs. While Protection Paladin is not a parry based tank spec, the synergies are too good to pass up.
• Bulwark of Order (default): Avenger’s Shield grants an absorb shield of 50% of the damage done to a max of 30% of your max hp. Combined with Fading Light you gain a lot of absorbs for simply playing your rotation.
• Tyr’s Enforcer (default m+): Each target hit by Avenger’s Shield causes a mini explosion for each target hit within 5 yards of one another. This talent causes Divine Toll to be an AoE nuke and why you want your pulls to be more closely together when pulling that trigger.
• Seal of Reprisal (flex): For 1 point you gain a 20% damage increase to Blessed Hammer, admittedly, Blessed Hammer is not going to be one of your highest damaging abilities but this point helps and is good for pathing.
• Bastion of Light: 2 minute cooldown, gain 3 free uses of Shield of the Righteous or Word of Glory. All around powerful ability.
• Crusader’s Judgement (default): Gain a 2nd charge of Judgement, no brainer pick in all content.
• Guardian of Ancient Kings (default): Another mainstay defensive, 50% damage reduction on a hefty 5 minute cooldown, although with talent options below, that can be reduced significantly down to 2m-2m30s.
• Sentinel (default): This is a BEAST of a talent. Pop Wings, gain 15 stacks of Divine Resolve, each granting 2% increase max HP and damage reduction, after 5 seconds you’ll lose a stack a second, using 3 holy power will extend a stack by 1s. During your wings windows its important to be building and spending as quickly as possible to gain the largest possible benefit. Talents such as Sanctified Wrath, Zealots Paragon(Hammer of Wrath access) synergizes well with this.
• Soaring Shield (default AoE): makes Avenger’s Shield hit 5 targets total, default pick in any AoE situation.
• Gift of the Golden Val’kyr (1 point default): Each enemy hit by Avenger’s Shield reduces the cd of Guardian of Ancient Kings by 0.5s, in AoE encounters, 2.5s cd reduction is incredibly nice. You also gain the benefit of when you drop below 30% HP, you gain 4s of Guardian of Ancient Kings on a 45s CD, the real reason to put the point here.
• Eye of Tyr and Inmost Light (default): This applies a 25% damage reduction to you to enemies on a 45s CD(with both talents), this adds to the wide repertoire of defensives Protection paladins have access to. Inmost light also increases the damage of Eye of Tyr by 300%, making it a mini nuke every 45s.
• Final Stand (Flex): I love this talent, causes Divine Shield to pulse threat to all targets within 15 yards so you won’t(mostly) lose any threat while granting your immunity. Due note this talent has had a minor bug plaguing it for some time, there’s a 0.005s where bubble is active and the taunt hasn’t triggered yet causing attackers to occasionally attack your allies. This has mostly been fixed but does sometimes happen.
• Bulwark of Righteous Fury (default): Each enemy hit by Avenger’s Shield increases the damage of your next Shield of the Righteous by 20%, stacking up to 5 times, combined with many other talents, Shield of the Righteous slaps HARD in AoE.
• Sanctified Wrath (default): During wings your Judgement will grant you 2 holy power instead of 1, adding on to the value on Zealot’s paragon, the more uptime you have access to x2 holy power generation from Judgement and Hammer of Wrath simply makes the rotation more aggressive and fun, not to mention the synergies with the many other talents selected.
• Resolute Defender (default): Each 3 holy power spent reduces the cooldown of Divine Shield and Ardent Defender, this will grant you a full immune taunt approximately every 2m45s and Ardent Defender closer to 1m.
• Righteous Protector (default): Holy power spenders reduces the Cd of Sentinel and Guardian of Ancient Kings by 3s. This is a default pick for all scenarios due to the all around strength of Sentinel uptime.

• Improved Ardent Defender vs Blessing of Spellwarding (flex): Improved Ardent Defender grants an additional 10% damage reduction. Blessing of Spellwarding shares a cooldown with Blessing of Protection, this ability does the opposite of Blessing of Protection and grants the target with a magical immunity and removes harmful effects. This ability is a touch more niche but can be very powerful when utilized correctly.
• Relentless Inquisitor (flex): While gearing this is a solid option to take while you’re still building up your haste, one of the most important secondaries for paladin tanks. its a small amount of 3%, but when combined with Seal of Alacrity on the class tree, that can be a free 7%.
• Uther’s Counsel (flex): For 2 point you can opt to reduce the cooldowns of Divine Shield, Lay on Hands, Blessing of Protection and Spellwarding by a further 30%. While very strong, a 2 point investment in this capstone row talent section makes this a little more difficult to take. If you need a 2 minute bubble for one reason or another, this can help!

Off Healing Talents & Playstyle
Protection Paladin has been known as the healer tank, capable of keeping a group alive while tanking themselves, this is due to a key talent, Hand of the Protector. This talent is now locked behind a few choice talents that are slightly more difficult to get and you have to give up more than you’d like to access.

• Light of the Titans: Places a large Heal over Time(HoT) effect on your target for 15 seconds. Unfortunately in most scenarios, this will mostly equate to over healing, more so with a good healer in your group, and lose a lot of its value. The HoT over yourself is increased by 50% if you have a harmful effect on you, this portion can see some niche use.
• Seal of Charity: Casting Word of Glory on a friendly target heals you for 50% of the amount healed, this talent encourages you to be healing others more often and yourself less. Simple and very effective, but you really want to pair this Hand of the Protector for maximum benefit.
• Faith in the Light: Casting Word of Glory grants you an increased block chance buff for 5s. The issue with this talent is the low duration of the buff itself, while the benefit may be good, you do not want to be prioritizing Word of Glory cast over Shield of the Righteous, since if you let SotR drop, you’ll start finding yourself in serious trouble and 5s just isnt worth the 2 talents points to put into this. While it can see some niche use if you go all in on the “Im the Healer now” tank playstyle, if playing a more standard tanking role, there’s better points to be spent elsewhere.
• Hand of the Protector: Let me start off by saying I love, love, LOVE, this talent and played it a stupid amount in Shadowlands. Word of Glory’s healing is increased by the amount of the players missing health. A critical Word of Glory cast on a target sub 20% health is basically a Lay on Hands. This talent has saved so many pug death it’s actually unreal. The large issue with taking this baseline, if you have to commit so many points to the playstyle for the one talent that can be incredibly useful, from time to time.

Protection Paladin is going to be one of the strongest tank specs in season 2, a lot of that has to do with its insane amount of utility and how good it is this season. It honestly seems like the content was designed for Protection Paladin to excel in.