This HD video is narrated footage of my 85 Prot Pally in Cataclysm Patch v4.0.3a in Arena 2v2 with an Enhancement Shaman, Kashmír. This is my fourth Arena video for Cataclysm for Season 9.
We started the week at 2002 Rating and finished at 2005, with a record for the week of 31-25. It was an up-and-down week but we continued to learn a lot from our mistakes – hopefully you will too
Last week was not a great week for us – we had a couple ugly slumps, but we managed to dig ourselves out. We finished the week ranked at #221. I looked through the top 200 teams on Shadowburn, and there were 0 Prot Pallies and 7 Enhancement Shamans.
Last night (Tuesday) we did go 6-2, which raised our rating to 2036 and our ranking to #175 in our battlegroup. Onward, upward!
Opposing Comps
DK / Holy Paladin
Mage / Shadow Priest
Mage / Resto Druid
Rogue / Resto Shaman
Rogue / Shadow Priest
Rogue / Feral Druid
Mage / Shadow Priest
Mage / Rogue
Mage / Warrior
Tips
As discussed in the video, Kashmír switched from 8/33 to 5/33/3, putting points into the Spark of Life talent. For a dual-DPS comp that has been a great move, as I have an easier time keep his HP up with my healing
One thing I forgot to mention in the video: if we know that we are facing a Caster/stealth MDPS comp, we have Kashmír wait out of LoS, so that when the MDPS opens up on him, the Caster has to ride around the pillar to DPS Kashmír. This buys us valuable time until we can get control of the situation
I treat Divine Shield as a second trinket. Long gone are the days where a non-Holy Pally can bubble and heal to full. I can heal about 30-35% of my HP while bubbled
As I said in the video, against Rogue/DPS comps, I will break Sap with my PVP trinket, because these fights go quick and if I ride out the Sap duration the outcome may already be determined. This isn’t 1v1, where you wait out the Sap against a Rogue
Check out my Prot Pally PVP Guide for the full scoop on the Prot spec, including my take on the upcoming changes for Prot in 4.0.6 (Rebuke!!!)
If you have a questions for Kashmír or me, please post ‘em below.
P.S. there are over 330 comments posted on the Prot Pally PVP Guide – there are dozens of Pallies sharing their tips and tactics there, and I am glad to see the Guide grow as a resource for the community.
P.P.S. blog readers and players from other servers in BGs been kind enough to express their thanks for the material I’ve been posting. One player last night found a funny way of contacting me:
I love that Blizzard has introduced crafted PVP gear (i.e. Bloodied Pyrium for Prot and Ret Pallies), as you can buy those pieces to jump-start your PVP viability until you have time to grind out Honor and Conqueror gear. The mats aren’t that expensive, on Wildhammer they’re roughly 250g per crafted piece.
Here are a few suggestions for gearing up quickly:
When you ding 85, definitely buy the crafted Bloodied Pyrium offset belt, bracers, boots, and one other piece (helm, legs, or shoulders). The Honor pieces are slightly higher iLevel, but there is no set bonus for the offset pieces. Moreover, the crafted pieces have a lot of Hit rating, which is necessary to get to the 5% Hit cap
Get to 2/5 and then 4/5 Scaled set as soon as possible. The 2/5 set bonus includes 400 Resilience and 70 Str, and the 4/5 bonus includes the Judgement cooldown reduction (huge, see below) and 180 Str. The 1st set piece you should get are the gloves, as they have a CS damage bonus
As you are saving up Honor and Conqueror points for an expensive upgrade, rent gear upgrades and then return them before the 2h expiration. E.g. I’m saving up for the Scaled legs which cost 2200 Honor, so once I had 1250 Honor saved up I bought the blue ring to use, and once I earn another 950 Honor I’ll return the ring to buy the legs. Ditto for the Conqueror shield
I wanted to make sure to share those gear insights because some players I spoke with were gearing up the wrong way (e.g. buying the crafted set pieces and offset Honor pieces, instead of the other way around).
You may be wondering why I got the crafted helm instead of the Honor helm. The Crit damage meta gem is “broken” because it won’t activate unless you have more blue gems than red. This is supposed to get fixed, but in the meanwhile it means that helm meta gem isn’t that useful. As I’m in a hurry to fill the many gear holes I have, I went ahead and bought the crafted helm.
I’m continuing to use 80 epic PVP gear instead of Cataclysm PVE items. Many players are neglecting Resilience so far in Cataclysm, and I have beaten other players of the same spec who have more 85 PVP gear than I have. YMMV.
Right now I have 2400 Resilience (25% mitigation) and can’t wait to get more 85 PVP gear. My survivability is very good at 2400 Resilience and should only improve once I get at/over 3000.
Enchant / Gem / Reforging Recommendations
Str for red sockets
Resil for yellow sockets
Str/Hit for the blue sockets to activate the socket bonus, or go Str
Reforge the following stats to Hit until you reach the 5% cap, then reforge to Crit:
Haste (almost completely useless for Prot)
Mastery (only helpful against melees)
Expertise (actually not that bad, reduces avoidance for any target)
You’ll notice it’s tough to get Hit-capped and reach even 10% Crit. I’m close to 7% Crit now.
Mechanics Changes @ 85 compared to 80 for 4.0
OK, with all that gearing and stats stuff out of the way, here is my take on how Prot functions in PVP now.
Summary: we are truly “outlast/support” tanks now @ 85:
Our FoL and WoG healing is very inefficient now. FoL with my gear only heals for ~10k but I have 110k HP. WoG isn’t worth casting at less than 3 stacks unless it’s an emergency heal. You won’t be able to bubble and heal up to full from low health
We have very good mitigation abilities in Divine Protection, Ardent Defender, Guardian of Ancient Kings and a solid AOE “mitigation” heal in Holy Radiance. In PVP you should use these abilities as often as possible and chain them under focus-fire
We can chain some solid burst together with Avenger’s Shield, 3-stack Shield of the Righteous with Sacred Duty, and Hammer of Wrath. But don’t expect to burst people down in 10 seconds – fights take much longer now. I actually prefer this to the critfest that characterized pre-Cataclysm PVP. Fights are much more tactical in nature
Our sustained damage has taken a hit. Our Seal damage and Retribution Aura damage are now fairly insignificant. My crit Crusader Strikes hit Cloth for ~8k and Plate for ~6k, so it’s a modest burst ability
Tips:
If you remember only one thing from this article, remember this: our Crit % is pitifully low now. Mine is 7%. Therefore, you should try whenever possible to wait for Sacred Duty to proc before using a 3-stack SotR for the guaranteed Crit. That is partly what makes the 4/5 set bonus so critical – you want to have as many opportunities as possibleto Judge to proc the SD buff
In mass combat pop Divine Guardian and Holy Radiance. They can keep friendlies up long enough to make a difference in the outcome
Don’t save your mitigation cooldowns. Fights in Cataclysm tend to last a long time, and by the time the current fight is over many of your cooldowns will be halfway to being ready for use again
Rated BGs and Arena
I organized two 15-person raids for Rated BGs for my guild. We went 3-3. We lost 2 matches due to healer DCs and stupidity. The AB loss chapped my hide because we would have won it down a player (14v15) if we had simply stayed near the BS flag. The SotA loss was embarassing – I got my Demo from the beach up to Yellow gate but no one picked up the 2nd Demo despite repeated asks from another player on Vent. If the 2nd Demo was with mine, we would have shaved at least a minute off the time to finish. It’s a learning experience, hopefully we’ll improve as a group.
My main complaint about Rateds is the queue in our Battlegroup is slow to pop, sometimes 15 minutes per. Too much downtime. Hopefully the 10-person Rated queue will pop faster.
I ran 2s with two different comps:
Prot Pally + Holy Pally
Prot Pally + Enhancement Shaman
The Holy Pally and I went 6-3. My partner possessed no Resilience gear, had dinged 80 right before Cata, and had no experience as a PVP healer. E.g. he kept moving out into open fire lanes even though I suggested he find a pillar to hug. This comp actually functions very differently compared to pre-4.0 now that Holy Pally can put out functional damage with Exorcism spam. It’s a viable comp and the matches don’t last 15 minutes like they used to.
The Enhancement Shaman was the same player (Kashmír) I had run 2s as a Moonkin. We went 5-6 for the first 5 matches, as we were new to the comp and learning from simple mistakes. He got focus-fired most matches, which made sense given our specs, but he only had 1k Resilience so he was squishy. So we got him the 3 crafted offset pieces to get him to 1.5k Resilience and we changed our strategy a bit to having me be the frontline aggressor.
We won the last 5 matches to finish 10-6 for the week. Some points of interest:
Neither of us has strong/efficient cast-time heals, but his Wolves heal him for a lot and I have a lot of mitigation tools, Holy Radiance, Divine Sacrifice, and Holy Protection to help protect my partner
We beat different Healer/DPS comps consistently
Mage/Lock gave us the most trouble because of the CC and ranged DPS
This was a fun comp, matches go very quickly!
I was trying to record some good footage yesterday in Random BGs queued solo, but out of a dozen queue pops I got mostly AV and IoC, which I dislike for videos because they often zergy.
Hopefully I’ll get at least 1 video published before my vacation starts and we hit the road.
I have some work to do to update the Cata Prot Pally PVP Guide but what I’ve written above is a good starting point if you wanted the skinny on Prot @ 85.
EDIT (2010/12/21): I’ve updated the Cata Prot Pally PVP Guide, so let me know if you have any questions.
This guide discusses Prot Pally PVP in the Cataclysm (Cata) expansion, Patch 4.0.6. This guide provides comprehensive written material and narrated PVP videos.
Please post your feedback, tips, and questions!
Revision History
The first version of this Guide was posted on Oct 14 2010. It has been through many revisions since then; here is the change log for recent revisions:
2011 Mar 05: updated 4.1 notes
2011 Feb 28: added links to comments that document previous Patch changes (4.0.3a, 4.0.6). Added my take on 4.1 changes
2011 Feb 24: added note re: glyphing SoT for Expertise
2011 Feb 22: added more notes on Resil
2011 Feb 12: rewrote heal macros for clarity (and hopefully so that they work more consistently)
2011 Feb 11: mass update for 4.0.6
Table of Contents
Mechanics Overview
Resource Mechanics
Burst and Sustained Damage Mechanics
Healing Mechanics
Bubble and Mitigation Mechanics
Crowd Control Mechanics
Seal Mechanics
Team Support Mechanics
Recommended Talents and Glyphs
Stats / Enchants / Gems / Gear Recommendations
General PVP Tips and Tactics
Macros
UI / Addons / Power Auras
Recent Patch Changes
Narrated PVP Videos
About the Author
1. Mechanics Overview
The good news is that Prot is a viable PVP spec
Prot is a good fit for you if:
You want to be a melee, and
You want to be durable, and
You want to have the capability of generating solid burst damage, and
You want to have tools to support groups and spot-heal
Here is a brief summary of the spec’s mechanics:
Our spec-defining ability is Avenger’s Shield (AS), which is an excellent ranged ability that interrupts/silences the target and when glyphed can provide good burst and apply a daze effect
Our cast-time heals are mana inefficient and do not heal for large amounts. We do have a mana-free “mitigation” heal called Word of Glory (WoG) that is instant cast
We have multiple mitigation abilities to work with, and when chained together they significantly increase time-to-live
Shield of the Righteous (SotR) is our new melee “Execute” ability capable of big burst when used with 3 stacks of HoPo and the Sacred Duty (SD) buff
Mana typically isn’t an issue as long as you keep casting Judgement and are careful not to spam-cast cast-time heals
Our Judgement spells have been replaced by one Judgement spell. The downside to this is we don’t have the pre-4.0 flexibility of mixing Seals and Judgments with different effects, e.g. the popular combination of Judgement of Justice (applies debuff that limits run speed) with the damage-over-time (DoT) Seal. To apply the run speed limiting debuff in 4.0 you have to use Seal of Justice but the catch is your damage will take a significant hit relative to using Seal of Truth, which is a scaled-down version of the old Seal of Vengeance / Corruption
We no longer cast Holy Shield (HS); the HS buff is triggered through the use of Shield of the Righteous (SotR) or WoG. The HS buff has a modest impact in PVP – it increases damage blocked from 30% to 40% (mitigation not chance)
2. Resource Mechanics
We have two resources to manage:
Mana
Holy Power
We generate mana via the Judgments of the Wise built-in passive which generates 30% of our mana over 10 seconds when Judgement lands on a target successfully. The Sanctuary talent also generates mana when we Block or Dodge. That being said, there are some situations where you may find yourself getting low on mana:
You are chain casting heals, e.g. Flash of Light (FoL)
Your target is > 10 yards away so you can’t cast Judgment
You use mana-intensive abilities, such as Holy Radiance (HR) or Consecration without the talent Hallowed Ground (HG)
I’ve found it helpful to invest 2 points in Improved Judgement (IJ) to extend the range of Judgement to 30 yards. More on this later. I don’t think HG is worth the investment so I only use Consecration when I have enough mana to work with.
We still have Divine Plea (DP) to regen mana, but with the change in 4.0.3a to Shield of the Templar, the most valuable use for Prot for DP is to generate 3 Holy Power instantly.
As of Patch 4.0, all Paladins have a new class mechanic called Holy Power (HoPo). For Prot, Hammer of the Righteous (HotR) and Crusader Strike (CS) build 1 HoPo per use – assuming the blow is not dodge/parried and the target is not immune – up to 3 total (note that HotR and CS now have a shared 3-second cooldown).
We have to manage HoPo carefully. It’s advisable to use your ranged attacks (e.g. AS, Judgment) while closing a gap so that you can cast HotR / CS as soon as you are in melee range to build HoPo.
At 85, you can spend HoPo to cast:
SotR for the burst damage
WoG for the heal
Inquisition for the damage buff
I like the HoPo mechanic because it adds flexibility and situational control – YOU can choose how to spend it and it makes gameplay more dynamic. It reminds me of the awesome Righteous Fury mechanic from Warhammer Online.
3. Burst and Sustained Damage Mechanics
We generate most of our burst from the following abilities:
AS
SotR
Hammer of Wrath (HoW) on targets at 20% or less health
I do not typically use Inquisition in PVP. While it’s excellent for AOE PVE tanking, the Inquisition buff is not guaranteed to provide value in PVP given that you may be CC’d during the time the buff is up. One case where Inquisition is valuable is when casting it prior to a high-burst sequence with Avenging Wrath and a 3-HoPo SotR with Sacred Duty up.
It’s worth noting that these (and some other Paladin) attacks deal Holy damage, which is not mitigated by any resistance. If you’ve read my class guides for other games, you may recall that I favor non-Physical damage, e.g. Swordmaster’s Spirit damage in Warhammer Online and Orc Reaver’s Fire damage in LOTRO, because targets tend to feel equally squishy when you are dealing damage that is not mitigated by armor or resistance.
AS has a 15-second cooldown, and that cooldown can be reset via a 20% proc (with talents) from HotR / CS. Because of this, you want to use AS early and often. Pre-4.0 sometimes we would wait for the right moment to use AS (e.g. chain CC a Healer/Caster for a burst sequence) but that rationale isn’t as valid anymore.
SotR packs a wallop when it crits at 3 HoPo. In general, you should not use SotR unless
You have 3 HoPo, due to the damage scaling, and
You have the Sacred Duty (SD) buff proc from Judgment
The SD buff guarantees that SotR will crit. Given that our Crit % has dropped significantly at 85 (i.e. from ~25% at 80 to < 10% at 85) it’s unlikely that SotR will crit without SD.
We generate solid sustained damage from our Seal of Truth (SoT) ability, which is a scaled-down version of the pre-4.0 Seal of Vengeance / Seal of Corruption. It’s also our only DoT so it’s useful for whittling away kiting targets or when we’re CC’d. As of 4.0.6 all single target attacks (including Judgement, Hammer of Wrath, Exorcism, and Templar’s Verdict) can now trigger SoT.
CS and HotR are our main spam attacks so their total damage adds up – typically ~20% of my total damage. They share the same cooldown. CS is Physical damage and delivers decent burst. HotR is an AOE that delivers low single-target Physical damage and AOE Holy damage. I generally favor CS over HotR because it hits significantly harder and PVP is often about focus-firing one target at a time.
4. Healing Mechanics
With the increase in HP pool sizes to 120K+ in blue PVP gear and the lack of scaling for our cast-time heals, we are limited in terms of our in-combat healing capability at 85:
FoL is very mana intensive (~25% of total mana) but only heals for ~8% of max HP
Divine Light (DL) has a long cast time and is therefore easy to pushback/interrupt/silence. Holy Light (HL) takes as long to cast as DL, but if you have the Crusader talent proc HL heals for more than DL, so HL is a nice patch-up heal after you get a killing blow and can freecast a slow heal
WoG heals for ~4% of max HP per HoPo, so it’s not worth using the cooldown unless you have multiple stacks or you really need a heal immediately to buy time
We have an AoE HoT called Holy Radiance (HR)
Lay on Hands (LoH) is our silver bullet, but it has a lengthy cooldown (10m or 7m glyphed) and is not usable in arena
Seal of Insight (SoI) isn’t guaranteed to proc on melee auto attacks and it heals for a very low amount, so this seal is not worth using for Prot. The mana regen effect from SoI is not useful given that we have other effective mana regen tools already
I consider WoG and HR to be “mitigation heals” – they will not outheal incoming damage but they will enable you to stretch out a fight. Check out the Cataclysm 2v2 video posted Dec 22nd in Section 15 – you can see that WoG healing enabled me or my partner to stay alive long enough to win matches.
When you overheal yourself with WoG, the Guarded by the Light (GbtL) talent converts that excess WoG healing into a temporary absorption bubble.
To boost your healing output, you can glyph SoI and WoG (credit: Donnar), but given that our heals don’t scale well at 85, I would recommend taking 0 or 1 of those glyphs.
5. Bubble and Mitigation Mechanics
As with pre-4.0, we can cast Hand of Protection (HoP) on friendly targets to bubble them from Physical damage.
What has changed in 4.0/Cata:
Sacred Shield (SS) is now a Ret talent and therefore not available to Holy or Prot @ 85
Divine Shield (DS) duration was reduced from 12 to 8 second
Divine Protection (DPr) has been changed to a 10-second 20% damage mitigation ability for the Paladin on a 1-min cooldown that no longer procs the Forbearance debuff. So this is an ability that should get a lot of use whenever you are taking focus fire. It is dispellable
The passive talent Ardent Defender (AD) was changed from a passive to on-use ability (ugh!) and is dispellable
We gain an awesome mitigation ability at 85 called Guardian of Ancient Kings (GoAK) which is not dispellable and mitigates damage by 50% for 12s. This ability in some ways is better than DS because your damage output is not affected, the duration is 50% longer, and it does not put Forbearance on you
Per Tullkas’s testing, when you use both DPr and AD, they stack additively (20% + 20% = 40% total mitigation, or 60% damage taken). DPr / AD seem to stack multiplicatively with GoAK; i.e. if you have GoAK and DPr up at the same time, you take 40% damage (50% mitigated by GoAK, then 20% of the remaining 50% of the damage is mitigated by DPr).
When we block a melee attack with a shield, we mitigate 30% of the damage or 40% if HS is up. Note that we can’t block spells, which limits the value of the Block and Mastery stats.
6. Crowd Control Mechanics
Our stun, Hammer of Justice (HoJ), has a cooldown of 40 seconds with talents.
The daze (snare/slow) effect was removed from the base AS ability but you can and should glyph it back.
Aside from AS, our only “snare” ability is SoJ, but it’s not really a snare, it’s a run speed limiting debuff. As noted in the Overview, we can’t mix and match different Seals and Judgments as we did pre-4.0, because now there is only 1 Judgement spell. Note that SoJ only applies on melee attacks, so you have to close to melee range first before the debuff is applied, whereas pre-4.0 we could apply Judgement of Justice from range.
In 4.0.6 all Paladins can train Rebuke, which is a melee interrupt on a 10 sec cooldown that lockouts the target from the interrupted spell’s school for 4 sec.
7. Seal Mechanics
We have four Seals:
Seal of Insight (SoI): chance to restore mana/health on melee hit
Seal of Judgement (SoJ): applies run-buff removing debuff on melee hit
Seal of Righteousness (SoR): adds Holy damage on melee hit
Seal of Truth (SoT): same as the pre-4.0 SoV/SoC DoT on melee hit
SoI provides a very minor amount of healing and is therefore not helpful for Prot. In my experience you don’t need SoI for mana regen if you have IJ talented or when you are fighting melees and have Sanctuary talented as your Blocks regen mana. (FWIW, SoI isn’t useful for Prot PVE either, because we glyph SoT to provide an Expertise bonus, and this is necessary to reduce chance for a boss to Parry / Dodge, and the Parry decrease is a big factor as Parry resets a boss’s swing timer.)
SoJ is situational. I’ve found that the effect’s value has been decreased with the increased usage we get out of AS and the fact that you have to melee to apply the debuff, whereas pre-4.0 you could cast JoJ up to 10 yards away to apply the debuff.
SoR adds a flat amount of damage to melee attacks and Judgement but it never crits.
SoT is superior to SoR as a DPS seal in PVP. SoT DoT ticks (Censure in the Combat Log) can crit, and once SoT is stacked to 5, every attack delivers extra damage (Seal of Truth in the Combat Log). As of 4.0.6 all single target attacks (including Judgement, Hammer of Wrath, Exorcism, and Templar’s Verdict) can now trigger SoT.
8. Team Support Mechanics
As with pre-4.0, we can cast Hand of Protection (HoP) on friendly targets to bubble them from Physical damage.
Divine Guardian (DG) was changed to be an AOE raid buff that decreases damage taken – without transferring that damage to the Paladin – and this scales incredibly well the more friendly targets are under attack. Given the lack of damage transfer we can no longer use DG as a tool to pre-emptively break CC such as Sheep/Blind/etc. However, we still have Hand of Sacrifice (HoS) which transfers damage from the friendly target to the Paladin.
In mass combat it’s very helpful to cast DG and HR – this can buy just enough time for friendlies to survive to affect the outcome of a big fight.
In 4.0, the Druid buff Mark of the Wild (MotW) and Paladin buff Blessing of Kings (BoK) provide the same buff, so if you have a Druid in your party/raid you should buff Blessing of Might (BoM).
9. Recommended Talents and Glyphs
Here is the recommended 0/31/10 “Protribution” spec at 85:
Here are comments on the mechanics of select Prot talents:
Eternal Glory (EG): we are dependent on HoPo for our healing (WoG) and SotR burst damage, and EG makes 30% of your WoG casts consume no HoPo
Grand Crusader (GC): synergizes with AS by having a 20% chance to remove the cooldown when using HotR or CS. Amazing talent
Sacred Duty: synergizes with SotR to make it crit more often. Amazing talent
Shield of the Templar (SotT): this talent provides multiple benefits – in particular it reduces GoAK’s cooldown from 5 min to 3 min and enables Divine Plea to instantly generate 3 HoPo
Guarded by the Light (GbtL) buffs WoG healing and causes it to proc the HS block buff, which provides a modest mitigation increase. GbtL is no longer must-have as it was in 4.0 before 4.0.3a, but I still take it.
You’ll notice that I took all the Prot tree talents (31 points total) except the following:
Toughness: armor is useless against bleeds and non-Physical damage (i.e. Spells)
Hallowed Ground: buffs Consecration. I passed on this talent because most players will simply move of Consecration and the cooldown of Consecration is too high for my liking
Reckoning: don’t spec into Reckoning now because not only is Seal damage nerfed (previously, Reckoning’s extra melee attacks proc’d your Seal) – in addition, Reckoning now only procs off Blocks not your melee attacks (credit: Elemental)
As far as where to invest talent points outside of the Prot tree:
Crusade: buffs the damage from our main spam attacks so it’s worth considering. As of 4.0.3a, also procs the Crusader buff which increases the next HL heal by 300%
Improved Judgement (IJ): the extra 20 yard range for Judgement is surprisingly useful. It not only provides better ranged damage capability but also helps mana regeneration when you have no nearby targets to Judge and can drop a target down to the HoW threshold. As of 4.0.6 Judgement stacks SoT, so IJ increases the range that you can stack your SoT DoT. Some Paladins IMO greatly underestimate IJ’s utility in PVP
Rule of Law: provides a 15% increase in Crit rate for frequently-used abilities (CS/HotR and WoG)
Pursuit of Justice (PoJ): buffs movement by 15%, which is better than any enchant. And it enables some CC effects cast on you to generate 1 HoPo
For Prime Glyphs: SotR and WoG are must-have. Your 3rd glyph should either be CS or SoT. With CS no longer generating HoPo if the target dodges/parries, it’s now worthwhile to glyph SoT for the Expertise buff, which should reduce your target’s chance to dodge by 2.5% and parry by 2.5%.
There are 2 must-have Major Glyphs:
Dazing Shield Major Glyph: applies the run debuff daze effect we had prior to 4.0
Focused Shield Major Glyph: this is the same glyph was had pre-4.0 for buffing AS damage
For the 3rd Major Glyph, I recommend taking Hammer of Justice (HoJ) – the extra 5 yards to our stun can be a life-saver. You can also slot LoH, which in 4.0.3a was changed from a Minor to Major glyph. Situationally (i.e. against Locks and DK’s) Turn Evil is very useful.
For Minor Glyphs: doesn’t really matter. I slotted both Blessings. I would have thought Insight would be worthwhile but you typically won’t go OOM – I slotted Truth.
Summary: Strength and Resilience are our most important PVP stats
Each point of Strength grants 2 AP (2.10 with BoK/MotW) and through the Touched by the Light (TbtL) passive 0.60 Spell Power (0.63 with BoK/MotW). TbtL is the reason why Prot favors Strength over Attack Power (AP). If you want to boost your damage and healing, this is the stat to stack
Resilience provides passive always-on mitigation (i.e. reduction) for all damage in PVP. If you want to improve your survivability, this is the most important stat. Note that once you have a full set of PVP gear, you probably won’t need to gem/enchant any Resil – what you get from gear and socket bonuses is sufficient – and in most PVP situations opponents won’t be targeting you anyway (unless you are the Flag Carrier)
Some players have theorized that Intellect is better than Strength point-for-point as many Paladin abilities have coefficients for Spell Power. Given that we “double-dip” from Str with the TbtL mechanic, Str is better point-for-point compared to Int.
Stat Myths
There are a lot of guides that are (unfortunately) providing misinformation about which stats to stack for Prot. I’ll go through stat myths one-by-one.
“Stack Mastery to boost your survivability”
The Prot Mastery Divine Bulwark boosts Block %, but Block doesn’t do anything against Spells. Mastery does provide some value against melee opponents but not enough to stack.
In addition, you can only block attacks from your front-facing and when you are not incapacitated.
You will gain far more survivability from Resilience than Mastery.
“Stack Stamina to boost your survivability”
Stam does not scale based on the amount of incoming damage whereas Resilience does. For other classes (esp Healers) there may be valid arguments for stacking Stam.
I have seen the benefits of passive mitigation, from stats such as Resilience, over Stam in other games – e.g. Toughness in WAR.
“Stack Stamina because it provides a DPS boost via Vengeance”
Vengeance only consistently stacks anywhere near max in PVE because bosses deal very high sustained DPS which more than offsets the fast rate of Vengeance decay. However in PVP you will rarely get to 75% max Vengeance, let alone 100%. You can easily test this in PVP with the Vengeance Status addon. If you watch any of my videos from Nov 27, 2010 on, you can see my Vengeance Status bar below the HoPo bar.
Keep in mind that any additional benefit from stacking Stam would only kick in after you reach the amount of Vengeance before stacking Stam. Therefore, stacking Stam for the DPS benefit would be as helpful as wearing a floatable life vest while driving a car to prevent drowning – it might help in that rare case you drive into a body of water but otherwise it’s of no value.
“Haste is a good stat for Prot”
Haste is pretty useless for Prot. Remember that Prot is an ability-cooldown-limited spec, not a global-cooldown-limited spec, and that the vast majority of our abilities are instant cast. The only benefits you get from stacking Haste are fasting cast-time heals and slightly faster auto-attacks. In most situations the only in-combat cast-time heal you’ll be able to reliably cast is FoL and it already has a short cast-time and its main mechanics issues (mana inefficiency, small healing amount) are not addressed with Haste.
If you are wondering why Ret Pallies talk about Haste so much – it reduces the cooldown of CS through the Sanctity of Battle talent, which is not applicable for Prot.
Enchants
Weapon: Landslide or Avalanche
Shield: Titanium Plating – please note this is a must-have for the 50% Disarm reduction as we can’t generate HoPo when Disarmed
Reforge the following stats to Hit until you reach the 5% cap, then reforge to Crit:
Haste (almost completely useless for Prot)
Mastery (only helpful against melees)
Expertise (actually not that bad, reduces avoidance for any target)
Gear
In general you should stick with PVP gear instead of PVE gear, given that there are 1+ PVP items with Strength and Resilience for each slot. You want to use the Pally Scaled PVP set and off-set plate pieces and the accessories that have Strength on them.
Make sure that your first purchase with Conqueror points is a/the weapon – this is the case for any MDPS class or Hunter. Get the Mace (Vicious Gladiator’s Bonecracker) or Axe (Vicious Gladiator’s Hacker), as these have the highest max-damage number for 2.6 Str weapons. The Sword (Vicious Gladiator’s Slicer) is a no-no because it has a lower max-damage number and PVP is all about burst. If you play a Human or Dwarf Paladin, take the Mace over the Axe per the 3 Expertise racial (contributed by: Marko, Tullkas).
Which trinket (Insignia or Badge) depends on what are you trying to maximize:
For controlled burst, go with the Badge
For higher average benefit, go with the Insignia
For a great breakdown on the new PVP points systems and the order to buy PVP pieces, read Cynwise’s excellent article on PVP Gear in Cataclysm for Season 9. If you want to understand the relationship between arena team rating and weekly max Conqueror points, check out Felbent’s chart or a points calculator. Keep in mind that a Prot Pally can buy their 1H weapon with 2 days of Arena – Monday and Tuesday – it’s super easy.
the main reason for my post was to mention that this spec does really well with the Darkmoon Hurricane deck. Average damage is around 5k’ish but it can crit and I’ve seen 8k+ numbers from it previously. On my damage meter it’s normally sitting just below my melee or auto attack damage. If you don’t need the resilience from the other trinkets I would recommend grabbing this trinket for this spec.
DMCH synergizes great with our class mechanics!
11. General PVP Tips and Tactics
When closing the gap to opponents, open with AS and Judgement – there is no point anymore in saving AS. You want to use CS or HotR as soon as you are in melee range to start building HoPo and to proc the cooldown reset for AS
Use enemy Pets as Holy Power batteries, esp as you are making your way to your target while they are kiting you. Against Mages, do not get caught in No Man’s Land – where you are taking fire from the Mage and their pets but are out of melee range of any of them
Remember that CS / HotR will not build Holy Power on an Immune (e.g. bubbled / Ice Block’d) target or a target that dodges or parries your attack (e.g. Rogue with Evasion), so plan accordingly
If you are low on health and have 3 Holy Power and your opponent is also at low health but above Hammer of Wrath range, you can choose to finish with SotR or heal with WoG. If you go with WoG you have a 30% chance to get an EG proc which restores those 3 Holy Power and you can use SotR immediately. It really depends on the situation, but against DPS classes going the WoG route is the more conservative play in 1v1s
If you need to bubble yourself to heal up, it’s a good idea to use a GCD while you’re bubbled to cast Judgement, which procs your mana regen. Then spam-cast FoL. That way you can heal up without going bone dry on mana
12. Macros
Macros can be a HUGE help for simplifying your keybinds and thereby improving gameplay. Below are some of the key macros you see me using throughout my videos.
CS / Judgement
This macro is simply for convenience, so I can hit the same button at least 3 times in a row when engaging a target in melee range:
Pressing this once will cast DP, which generates 3 HoPo, and pressing it again will remove DP. This is a great macro if you need an emergency WoG heal or SotR.
Cast-Time Focus Heal
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:ctrl] holy light
/cast [@focus, mod:shift, nodead] flash of light; flash of light
If you press Shift with this macro, you FoL your focus. Otherwise you either cast FoL or HL.
WoG Focus Heal
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:ctrl] holy radiance
/cast [@focus, mod:shift, nodead] word of glory; word of glory
If you press Shift with this macro, you WoG your focus. Otherwise you either cast WoG or HR.
Hand of Sacrifice
#showtooltip hand of sacrifice
/cast [help] hand of sacrifice; [target=focus, exists, nodead] hand of sacrifice
If you have a friendly player targeted, this casts HoS on them. Otherwise this macro casts it on your focus target, if you have one.
In-Combat Aura Switch
/cancelaura
/castsequence retribution aura, resistance aura
Before engaging in combat, use this macro to get to the Aura you want to have up. Then during combat you can simply hit the macro to switch to the other Aura. For simplicity, I map this macro to the “A” key (“A” as in “Aura”) for easy recall.
Maximum Burst (credit: Spiegelmann)
Cast Inquisition (with your 2 HoPo) for 8 secs
Activate my macro:
#showtooltip
/use Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s badge of Victory
/cast Divine Plea
/cast Avenging Wrath
Then SotR
PVP Self-Buff
No Druid around, use this:
/castsequence reset=10 blessing of kings, seal of truth
With a Druid around, use this:
/castsequence reset=10 blessing of might, seal of truth
13. UI / Addons / Power Auras
To turn on enemy health bars with class colors with the default UI functionality:
to show the health bar over all players, use the keybind for Show All Name Plates
to color the health bars of enemy players per their class: check the box for: Options | Interface| Combat | Class Colors in Nameplates
I recommend the following addons specifically for Prot:
Range Display: this simple but highly useful addon shows distance to target, focus, and mouseover
Power Auras: highly customizable addon that can display buffs, debuffs, procs, etc. Non-trivial to learn. Below are some Auras I use
OmniCC: displays numeric cooldown over your abilities
The Devs are still making a lot of tweaks to Paladins in Patch 4.x. Below is a summary of changes (documented and undocumented) for recent patches and their impacts.
Word of Glory now has a 20-second cooldown. This is a monster nerf for Prot and Ret in PVP. Here’s the explanation given by Blizzard:
Word of Glory: We want Retribution and Protection paladins to have reasonable healing on themselves or others, but we know paladins sometimes feel like they can’t use their Holy Power on anything but their heals in some situations. We’d rather these two specs spend most of their Holy Power on damage-dealing abilities, with occasional healing.
IMO Prot and Ret will be steeply nerfed PVP if the WoG nerf goes in with even a 5-sec cooldown let alone 20-sec, without some other strong compensating mechanics, e.g. increased CC.
Back-to-back WoG heals (via Eternal Glory for either spec, or Divine Purpose for Ret) or WoG heals cast within 2 GCDs of each other (e.g. WoG, Divine Plea, WoG) are a huge part of what make Prot and Ret viable in PVP.
Anyone who debates that point IMO is either ignorant about the mechanics of those specs in PVP or biased against Paladins.
I’m very perplexed by the reasoning for the nerf mentioned by Blizzard. Granted, Blue posters often get skewered / nitpicked by players for anything they say, but this is one case where I think the concerns of the playerbase are entirely warranted.
I have read some inane arguments that Prot and Ret shouldn’t have offhealing capability in PVP, but what the people saying those things fail to take into account is that relative to other DPS classes, we lack CC. As such, we heal because that’s what is needed in some situations to help friendly players, because we can’t peel to the extent other classes do.
Walk in the Light (passive) removes the cooldown of Word of Glory. N/A for Prot
Divine Guardian cooldown is now 3 minutes, up from 2. Minor nerf to Prot
Grand Crusader will now generate a charge of Holy Power if the Avenger Shield it procs is used within 6 seconds. Very nice buff that should help offset the nerf to HoPo generation in 4.0.6
Divine Storm now generates 1 point of Holy Power if it hits (i.e. successfully lands on) 4 or more targets. N/A for Prot
Sacred Shield’s internal cooldown has been increased to 60 seconds, up from 30. N/A for Prot
15. Narrated PVP Videos
Below are my narrated PVP videos, in reverse chronological order (most recent first). Although some of the mechanics in the older videos are outdated, there are points I make in each video which are timeless.
2011 Jan 31 (Cataclysm, Patch 4.0.3a): 3v3 Arena Volume 2
2011 Jan 28 (Cataclysm, Patch 4.0.3a): 3v3 Arena Volume 1
2011 Jan 19 (Cataclysm, Patch 4.0.3a): 2v2 Arena Volume 4
2011 Jan 11 (Cataclysm, Patch 4.0.3a): Victory by Landslide
2011 Jan 08 (Cataclysm, Patch 4.0.3a): 2v2 Arena Volume 3
2011 Jan 05 (Cataclysm, Patch 4.0.3a): 2v2 Arena Volume 2
2010 Dec 31 (Cataclysm, Patch 4.0.3a)
2010 Dec 22 (Cataclysm, Patch 4.0.3a): 2v2 Arena Volume 1
2010 Nov 27 (WotLK, Patch 4.0.3a)
2010 Oct 24 (WotLK, Patch 4.0.1)
2010 Oct 21 (WotLK, Patch 4.0.1)
2010 Oct 16 (WotLK, Patch 4.0.1)
2010 Oct 14 (WotLK, Patch 4.0.1):
16. About the Author
Added this section due to this (predictable) post on the WoW forums, prior to the launch of Cataclysm:
It doesn’t look like you have that good pvp gear and experience, i wonder what prompted you to make this post ?
My Paladin hit level 80 over the summer of 2010. I didn’t get to 5k PVP GearScore until 2 months before Patch 4.0, so I had very little time to Arena before 4.0 launched.
I earned the 2k rating Achievement in 2v2 and 3v3 in Cataclysm as Prot and was the highest-rated Prot Pally in the Shadowburn battlegroup in 2v2 and 3v3. You can see my Arena teams here:
This HD video is narrated footage of my 80 Protection Paladin in an Warsong Gulch battleground (queued solo) for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, patch 3.3.5.
(Double-click on the video to see it in higher-resolution / larger screen size on YouTube)
Notes / errata:
When healing with Flash of Light or Holy Light, you should remove Divine Plea (e.g. while casting the heal). DP cuts your direct-cast healing in half except for Lay on Hands
I should have switched the Retribution Aura when fighting the Retribution Paladin
You’ll notice that I didn’t put up Sacred Shield against the Elemental Shaman – the reason is Shamans often purge buffs. So I focused on timing my CC’s to shut him down
If you have any questions, feedback, or comments, please post ‘em!
Spec
Here’s a link to my 58/13 PVP spec, which is commonly known as the “Jagoss” spec:
From honor points: necklace, cloak, bracers, belt, boots, both rings, Medallion trinket, Battlemaster’s trinket
From arena + honor points: Relentless helm, Relentless chest
From WG: shoulders
The following pieces came from PVE:
From VoA25: Wrathful hands, Wrathful legs
From PVE: i264 1H sword from ICC25 (Saurfang), i219 shield from normal HoR
From badges: libram
I just got my Friendly rep ICC ring so I may use that instead of the Relentless ring. I still need to get a good DPS trinket. The only one I have is Herkuml War Token but that is a no-no for PVP due to the buff falling off .
Arena
I just recently started experimenting in 2v2 with my Prot Paladin and still have under 100 matches total. Here are some of the comps I’ve tried with random people:
me + Warrior: not a good comp from the Warrior’s perspective
me + Resto Shaman: matches take a long time
me + under-geared Rogue: my partner was too squishy
me + Retribution Paladin: our stuns and racial silence overlap in terms of diminishing returns (DR). Ret has Repentance but the cooldown is long (1 min)
me + Shadow Priest: functional comp, we are able to take healer/DPS comps. The Shadow Priest still has some honor point upgrades to buy and was using a PVE spec, but we won 13 out of 15 matches and earned the 10 consecutive win Hot Streak achievement:
This HD video is narrated footage of my 80 “Protribution”-spec’d Paladin in an Arathi Basin battleground (queued solo) for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, patch 3.3.5.
(Double-click on the video to see it in higher-resolution / larger screen size on YouTube)
You’ll notice that I didn’t include any clips where I bubbled. I definitely use bubbles and longer cooldowns whenever I think they’re needed. E.g. we were getting rocked in the first 5 minutes of that Arathi Basin match and I burned both Lay on Hands and Divine Protection defending nodes. They were on cooldown when I was fighting that well-geared Warlock, but it did give me an opportunity to mention the importance of kiting, even as a melee.
If you have any questions, feedback, or comments, please post ‘em!
I’m definitely still in the learning process and have several areas to improve on as a Protribution Paladin, e.g.:
managing my mana more carefully. Several times in the video my gas tank got pretty low
weaving in defensive abilities (Holy Shield, Cleanse, Sacred Shield, etc) in between my attack ability cooldowns
Gear
The majority of the gear I’m using in the video is obtainable through battlegrounds and Wintergrasp:
From honor points: helm, necklace (renting Relentless as I grind honor), shoulders, cloak, chest, belt, boots, a ring, Medallion trinket
From Wintergrasp marks: PVP trinket (a placeholder trinket until I get anything better LOL)
The following pieces came from PVE:
From VoA25: Wrathful hands, T9 PVE legs for the +block value
From PVE: 1H axe from ToC10, wrists from heroic Pit of Saron (to be replaced with Wrathful)
From badges: libram, shield
As noted above, I still need to grind Honor points to replace some of my gear.
Once I get a better 1H weapon and shield I will apply Berserking and Titanium Plating respectively.
Spec
Here’s a link to my 58/13 PVP spec, which is commonly known as the “Jagoss” spec:
As you can tell, after the no-brainer Avenger’s Shield glyph, I am using the following glyphs:
Hammer of Justice: the reason is simple, if your Avenger’s Shield is on cooldown and your opponent is 11-15 yards away, we have no gap closer aside from our run buff. That extra 5 yards is well worth the glyph, esp against kiters and healers
Shield of Righteousness: this is a debatable choice, but I haven’t gotten skilled yet about managing mana as Protection, so this helps
So far Protribution has been a very functional PVP spec and the honor grind has been worth the investment in time.
P.S. I am relieved to be done with the leveling and basic gearing process for my Paladin, my 1st alt in WoW to reach the level cap. As you know if you read my blog, I have disliked the leveling process in every game except for WAR. I love endgame PVP where I can face opponents of equal or better gear (when I have at least a baseline set as I do now).
P.P.S. I plan to publish more Protribution videos from battlegrounds and hopefully arena. Stay tuned!
@KnightSynergy she's right, she just shouldn't say it. Brady slightly overthrew Welker, but there were multiple drops in last 4 min of game - 9 hours ago
#SWTOR Tip of the Day: in 10-49 Warzones, Bolster works against you if you don't keep your gear up-to-date w/ ur level: http://t.co/EbTW5UvI - 9 hours ago
Tom Brady's wife Gisele Bundchen: My husband cannot f–king throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time http://t.co/EK5f8hAf#ouch - 10 hours ago
