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- Our Judgement spells have been replaced by one Judgement spell.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:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZGrMcRzdRRucbG:szcVdzmMz
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.
10. Stats / Enchants / Gems / Gear Recommendations
Stats
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
- Head: 60 Str/35 Resil (PVP enchant)
- Shoulders: 50 Str/25 Crit (Therazane faction) or 50 Str / 25 Resil (PVP enchant)
- Back: 65 or 50 Crit
- Chest: 20 Stats, 15 Stats, or 40 Resil
- Wrist: 50 Str, 65 Crit, or 50 Hit
- Hands: 50 or 35 Strength
- Waist: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle for the 2nd gem slot
- Legs: Dragonscale Leg Armor
- Feet: 50 Hit
Gems
- Red sockets: always Str
- Yellow sockets: Str/Crit, Str/Resil, or Resil
- Blue sockets: Str/Hit
- Meta socket: Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond (+54 Str and 3% Increased Critical Damage)
Reforging
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).
For PVP shield, get Vicious Gladiator’s Shield Wall.
Aside from the classic PVP trinket which removes CC, we have two Str trinkets available that have different mechanics:
- Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Badge of Victory: 1520 Str for 20 sec, 2 min cooldown, activated on-use
- Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Insignia of Victory: 912 Str for 20 sec, 1 min internal cooldown, proc chance of 15%
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 one non-PVP item you should consider picking up is Darkmoon Card Hurricane (DMCH), as Andy suggested:
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:
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=2 crusader strike, judgement, crusader strike
I do also keybind Judgement separately, so that I can use it without having to use CS first.
HotR / Judgement
Same macro as the previous one, but for HotR
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=2 hammer of the righteous, judgement, hammer of the righteous
Bubble Me or You or Us
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:ctrl] divine guardian; [help] hand of protection; divine shield
Here’s how this macro works:
- If you hit the macro with the Ctrl key, you bubble everyone else
- If you have a friendly player targeted and you hit the macro, you bubble them with HoP
- If you don’t have a friendly player targeted you bubble yourself with DS
As a side note, I map this macro to the “B” key (“B” as in “Bubble”) for easy recall.
Mitigation Chaining (DP / GoAK / AD)
/cast [mod:ctrl] guardian of ancient kings
/castsequence reset=30 divine protection, guardian of ancient kings, ardent defender
Divine Plea On / Off
#showtooltip
/cancelaura Divine Plea
/cast Divine Plea
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
- Quartz: elegant cast bar addon, shows latency
- Rogue Spam Reborn: suppresses annoying error messages including “you have no target” or “out of range” et al
- Vengeance Status: displays your current Vengeance AP buff. RAWR!
For Arenas, the following two addons are must-have:
- Gladius: provides enemy health, mana, and casting bars
- Gladiminish: enhances Gladius to provide diminishing return timers for CC
Power Auras
Please do not ask me technical questions about how to use PA, you can ask those on the addon site.
Here are some of my auras:
- Hammer of Wrath: when HoW is usable on your target, this aura displays the HoW icon and makes a clear sword unsheathing sound
Version:4.4; ignoremaj:false; icon:INV_Hammer_04; buffname:Hammer of Wrath; x:99; bufftype:7; owntex:true; isResting:0; inVehicle:0; sound:50; exact:true; size:0.15; texmode:2; ismounted:0
- Sacred Duty: when SD procs, this aura displays the SD icon with the timer til the buff expires and makes a clear bell ringing sound
Version:4.4; ignoremaj:false; icon:Ability_Paladin_JudgementRed; buffname:Sacred Duty; x:136; owntex:true; isResting:0; mine:true; inVehicle:0; sound:36; exact:true; size:0.15; texmode:2; ismounted:0; timer.g:0.1882; timer.h:1.11; timer.enabled:true; timer.r:0.1451; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:BOTTOM; timer.Transparent:true
- Crusade: if you land the KB on an opponent, you get this buff icon with timer. The buff increases your next HL cast by 300%
Version:4.9; ignoremaj:false; icon:Spell_Holy_Crusade; buffname:Crusader; x:172; owntex:true; isResting:0; mine:true; inVehicle:0; sound:61; exact:true; size:0.15; texmode:2; ismounted:0; timer.g:0.1882; timer.h:1.11; timer.enabled:true; timer.r:0.1451; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:BOTTOM; timer.Transparent:true
14. Recent Patch Changes
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.
Current Live Version: 4.0.6
Analysis for Previous Versions: 4.0.3a | 4.0.6
My comments for changes are in italics.
Patch 4.1 Changes (Official Patch Notes)
- 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:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/wildhammer/taugrimm/pvp
Taugrim's MMO Blog 
4.0.6 patch notes: * Necrotic Strike’s absorption effect is now reduced by the target’s resilience.
hope this helps… man it was OPD
It’s crazy OP, I’ll show in my next video. I couldn’t heal my partner meaningfully because of it.
In the next patch, we will hopefully get a passive sacred shield at 30% of health that increases healing taken by 20%. Is this a bump to world of glory? Also there is a reduction in damage x amount which should be a boost. In addition we get rebuke which added to our ability to silence should make casters go crazy – hopefully.
Hope this all come on tuesday….
Ret picks up mastery to help inqusition – more damage.
In the next patch, we will hopefully get a passive sacred shield at 30% of health that increases healing taken by 20%.
Ret’s getting it where Rebuke used to be. Prot isn’t getting SS back.
Hi Taugrim,
Found your guide link through MMO Champ.
Just want to thank you for doing this, it’s most appreciated. There are no guides anywhere for Prot PvP at the moment, so this is a real gem.
Have just hit L85 on my Pally alt and levelled him as Prot for the 80-85 levels. I really enjoyed it and now I’m PvP’ing in BG’s as Prot and really enjoying that also.
While my gear is still lousy, I concentrate on being annoying in BG’s rather than DPS. I mainly interupt healers through stun or AS which allows DPS to focus them. Play style is a lot different from my Shaman and I’m somewhat enjoying it a bit more!
Thanks again, keep up the good work and good luck with Arena.
Found your guide link through MMO Champ.
Just want to thank you for doing this, it’s most appreciated. There are no guides anywhere for Prot PvP at the moment, so this is a real gem.
You’re welcome!
I was concerned because the threads were discouraging others from Prot with what I consider misinformation.
Prot isn’t perfect, but it’s viable and I enjoy it.
Thanks again, keep up the good work and good luck with Arena.
Thanks!
My partner (Enhancement Shaman) and I reached 2k rating last night :) I’m uploading another 2v2 video right now. Stay tuned, it should be up by this evening.
Hey, Taugrim! Great guide, I have been following it for the past couple days with almost no deviation and doing very well on the Battlegrounds. It’s a very welcome change from Holy Whack-a-Mole and quite fun to boot!
My only personal touch regarding the spec is using the Glyph of Holy Wrath. I found that timing it properly annoys Frost Mages to no end and gives me a couple more seconds to reach them and give them a little bit more shield lovin’ to the face.
I have one question, though: what do you do against classes with good self-healing?
I have found that, one-on-one, I can generally outlast all melee out there, and that most casters are also not that difficult to deal with, but whenever I go up against an Affliction warlock I’m DoTed up and kited all over the place with Curse of Exhaustion. Sure, it still takes him a long while to kill me, but between Siphon Life, Haunt and Fel Armor I just can’t get through his health in the rare occasion I do get to him.
Got any tips? Sadly, all I can do as of now are non-rated battlegrounds, so I can’t always count on having back-up.
Now, back to leveling my Hunter to 85! I must be a masochist for planning on PvPing as a hunter…
My only personal touch regarding the spec is using the Glyph of Holy Wrath. I found that timing it properly annoys Frost Mages to no end and gives me a couple more seconds to reach them and give them a little bit more shield lovin’ to the face.
Yea, that is a good glyph. If I were Holy I’d definitely go with that over HoJ. But the extra 5 yards is too valuable for me to pass up, as HW glyph is situational.
whenever I go up against an Affliction warlock I’m DoTed up and kited all over the place with Curse of Exhaustion. Got any tips?
Right now with current mechanics, assuming equal skill/gear, that is what will happen. CoE is getting nerfed in 4.0.6.
Only thing you can do is chain mitigations early, use HR whenever it’s up. You won’t typically have the time to kill the pet twice in 1v1, so I generally don’t bother.
I’d just like to say thanks for keeping this guide updated. It has helped my 2v2 partner and I out a lot.
[…] 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 […]
Great news: a guildee told me a new Meta is being added with Str/3% Crit Damage:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1827253308#2
Added new meta gems: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (Agility/3% critical damage), Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond (Strength/3% critical damage), and Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (Intellect/3% critical damage). These new recipes are unbound and can drop from any Cataclysm creature. The new meta gems have a requirement of 3 red gems equipped.
Obviously this will suit our mechanics (and any Plate class in PVP) superbly. :)
May take a while for the recipe to drop enough that the meta prices are reasonable. We shall see!
Thanks for the guide. Was a step away from giving up on Prot PVP.
Time to gear up and train!
Mate i would like to point out that the shield enchant you talk about is not working any more and therefore shouldn’t be used. I like the new cata shield spike, Pyrium Shield Spike, instead as it procs alot and when i look at my recount after 2v2 it actually does alittle nice 2.3-2.5% of my about 7.6k dps avrg. i think that is the best to use now as a pvp protribution.
btw, i gotta say i rly like your guide here, not to mention your nice pvp videos. I really learned alot!
Thanks for introducing me to this epic pvp spec <3
/mud
sry for the bad spelling:)
Mate i would like to point out that the shield enchant you talk about is not working any more and therefore shouldn’t be used
What leads you to believe it’s not working?
When I was “renting” my Epic shield without the enchant, I would get disarmed for longer stretches compared to when I actually bought it and got the enchant.
I’ll try to test disarm duration when I’m back at home.
If the “old” plating doesn’t work anymore option is to use Weapon chain on your weapon and the +100 Int on shield (which gives sustained dmg, instead of burst when you get a proc from your weapon enchant)
mmm, don’t we lose like alot of damage this way, because of the lack of a dps enchant on the weapon? Landslide, …
Landslide rocks. I just got it last night.
I’ll post a video. It costs an arm and a leg (I paid 5800g for mine) but it is worth every penny.
You most definitely do not want Weapon Chain on your weapon, that neuters your damage.
Oh my oh my. i actually did a stupid thing posting that here before checking it. a friend told me that weapon chain is the only one with disarm reduc. but wi just checked it my self and he seems to be wrong and you seem to be right. im sorry if i caused any confusion for the people who read this, but Titanium Plating is stil working.
No problem, I appreciate your trying to make sure the Guide is accurate.
Any misinformation in the Guide will be corrected, to keep it fresh and relevant.
Cheers,
Tau
Long time reader – first time poster. Your guide is very awesome.
I noticed that you switched to Landslide – Big difference?
How often does it proc?
What does your recount show?
Did 1500-1600 yesterday with feral druid (i’m protpala).
We mostly play late nights and see the same teams alot. Yesterday was ‘ranged’ day it seemed, but we did ok. Only real prob we have is against DK+Healer cause of the high dk damage and self healing & against mages. Rly sometimes it seems a frostmage can take us both. I rly seem to have a hard time closing the gab and when i do, they blink the bastads :)
Taugrim, would you be so kind to put a small list f your keybinds? I know it may not be your prio atm and it’s a personal thing, but some other people (almost fans :) ) and me would rly like to know and see how you binded things so we can setup likewise keybinds for ourselves.
Much apreciated!
Did 1500-1600 yesterday with feral druid (i’m protpala).
Nice, keep us posted on how your team progresses!
Taugrim, would you be so kind to put a small list f your keybinds? I know it may not be your prio atm and it’s a personal thing, but some other people (almost fans :) ) and me would rly like to know and see how you binded things so we can setup likewise keybinds for ourselves.
This is on my list of To Do’s, but I don’t want to just post a list of keybinds without explaining why I have things setup the way that I do. I got to 2k rating in Arena – that was my immediate goal and I wanted to get videos posted so people could see tactics for playing the spec in Arena that work.
My setup for my movement and keybinds is very intentional, based on tweaking I’ve been doing over the past 3 years to improve on my melee strafing and reduce finger stress.
Anyway, I haven’t forgotten about the requests for keybinds, I hope to get to it.
Taugrim, you haven’t spoken at all about professions. Anything helpfull pvp wise?
Thanx for the guide, inspiring!
For Prot Pally?
Take 2 of the following 3:
Blacksmithing
Jewelcrafting
Enchanting
I recommend those 3 because their benefits “work” in BGs and in Arena.
I’m JC and Ench.
How come you dont get mining? it improves stam.
As discussed in Section 10 of the Guide, Stamina is a lousy stat to stack for Prot.
It’s worth noting that Leatherworking also provides a decent stat gain compared with other professions as you can enchant the following:
Draconic Embossment – Strength
Emboss the pattern of dragons onto your bracers, permanently increasing Strength by 130.
In comparison the other 3 professions mentioned should provide a gain of around 80 strength. Keep in mind however when comparing that you’ll need to account for the loss the normal bracer enchant you can currently use i.e. +65 crit rating. But as strength is the #1 stat you may achieve a better result with LW.
Interesting, I didn’t know Str enchant existed for a profession for bracers. Sounds like LW is a viable choice for this expansion.
I was wondering why i see a lot of Prot spec wearing the Gladiator’s Ornamented set for arena instead?
They’re either
A. ignorant of the class mechanics (Str converts to 60% SP, and most of our attacks scale with AP and SP), and/or
B. a Holy Pally trying Prot for fun
#A makes zero sense, given the available PVP gear with Str in every slot.
i have been using 3 pieces scaled and 2 pieces of ornamented, to get the extra 400 resi. It does affect dps alot tho so changed into full scaled.
Thanks for the info and feed back guys.
I heard something disturbing today, one of my guildies said Proc Pally are useless once it hits 85 in arena only useful in bg because we cant burst enough to kill healers with 3k res…
You have to understand that people say things like that but with no actual hands-on experience with the spec with proper gear/talents/gems/enchants/reforging and proper use of abilities.
I’m 2k in Arena now, 2v2 team is #137 on my battlegroup’s ladder. Most players at 2k have full PVP gear and we do fine.
FWIW, a lot of times in Arena it’s actually smarter to CC the Healer and burst the DPS, because if you go after the Healer they’ll kite you while their team mate(s) peel.
Oh I see thanks, also one more question how come my icon for Cs/Judge doesn’t change like yours even after i apply the macro to it?
#showtooltip
Add that to your macros in the first line
I did, I have it just as you typed it ^ there.
You have to use the ? icon when creating the macro so that WOW recognizes the spells automatically as you go through your castsequence.
How do you feel about the glyph of divine protection for the third major? Although it loses the damage reduction from physical attacks the 20% reduction to magical damage feels worth it seeing as I have the most trouble with well played casters.
As for auras thank you for the macro! It’s a right pain in the arse for me to waste a gcd in the middle of a fight when I realise another aura would be better.
Great guide and great vids! Keep up the good work.
How do you feel about the glyph of divine protection for the third major? Although it loses the damage reduction from physical attacks the 20% reduction to magical damage feels worth it seeing as I have the most trouble with well played casters.
I don’t like Glyphs that buff x but nerf y, with the exception of Focused Shield.
There are other reallllly good Major Glyphs:
– FS
– DS
– HoJ
Moreover, most of the time the 10 sec of extra 20% mitigation will not save you. They will kite you to death. Our issue is not damage taken, it’s our vulnerability to being kited.
Well been practicing hard, and its starting to pay off. I still cant get out of the habit of looking at my action bars for cool downs (taking my eyes off the action) and sometimes I drop back into the 3 year old habit of using keys for movement instead of both mouse buttons.
I have to ask, do you always use just the mouse buttons? Do you ever strafe in arena using keys at all?
However due to the assistance rendered by your videos and tips, last night in Battle for Gilneas, I was top of the horde with 13 killing blows and no deaths. I was on FIRE! Also, I am finding that in WPVP, if its not 3 or more on me, I tend to win every time, whereas before I was just another Horde Corpse!
Keep up the good work, now excuse me got honor to grind, and duals to win, a new ring to get, and some reforging tweaks to do. NEXT WEEK I try arena for the first time.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/search?q=jaxyrl
ooops.. Twin Peaks, not battle of Gilneas.. though THAT was also goes well as a defender.
Hey Morgan,
Don’t feel bad you use keyboardbutton to run, … I’m still a clicker, how about that? I know i have to try to get rid of clickin and looking at my action bar all the time aswel. It’s just not easy as it sounds but i just need to go for it.
That’s why it would be nice to know how all you protpalas use your keys and mouse and maybe some keybinds. How did you make the switch?
I’m playing like this for +3years now and know it will be hard.
I have taken the first two steps. I bought a logitec gaming mouse and gaming keyboard (with cool LCD display that is configured specifically for WoW). I have some simple binds the mouse wheel clicks left to switch between my seals, press down for HoR (PvE), left thumb button for WoG and so on. Keyboard is trickier. So far I still have all the abilities individually bound to seperate keys and its this consolidation that needs to happen. I have a ‘kill’ macro (Avenging wrath, Trinket, Hammer of wrath, DEAD ALLY) and a ’emergency heal’ as per macro above (DPon, DPoff, WoG).. but I keep.. reverting to STRAFING round the player when i KNOW that mouse control allows you to track a player like a bloodhound its so fast!
this is the point I go wrong though, I lose track of what is ready to use and have to keep refering to my AB, look up and the rogue is behind me as I took my eye off him for 2 seconds
I bought a logitec gaming mouse and gaming keyboard
FYI: I use a stock (normal) mouse and normal keyboard. I choose to use stock equipment because I want to be able to tell people how to use stock equipment and manage with it.
I just haven’t gotten around to making those Guides/vids yet. I did make such a video years ago, but I want to put together something more robust.
I will when I have time. It’s just going to take many hours to do so :|
How did you make the switch?
I’m playing like this for +3years now and know it will be hard.
The most important thing is to try incorporating changes gradually.
What you want to do is simplify and streamline the buttons you have to push, and you can do this via macros, like the CS->Judge->CS macro I have. Or the DPr->GoAK->AD mitigation chain macro.
Eventually what you would want to do is transition to using keyboard buttons to activate skills instead of clicking on them. Clicking as you know can be slower and it requires you to look down at your hotkey bars, away from the action.
Make gradual tweaks.
I still cant get out of the habit of looking at my action bars for cool downs (taking my eyes off the action)
I wrestle with this as well. For a while I tried using Power Auras to track my cooldowns in the middle of the screen, but it was too cluttered.
So I found OmniCC, which adds numbers over the skill icons on the hotkey bars, and that has sufficed. Granted, I have to glance down momentarily to see what’s on or off cooldown. But it’s a workable solution.
I have to ask, do you always use just the mouse buttons? Do you ever strafe in arena using keys at all?
In a nutshell:
– right hand is on the mouse, for mouse-turn (r-click), camera-turn (l-click), and run (both buttons)
– left hand does strafe keys (W/R for me) and all abilities
However due to the assistance rendered by your videos and tips, last night in Battle for Gilneas, I was top of the horde with 13 killing blows and no deaths. I was on FIRE!
Awesome! I’m glad I was able to help and that you are rocking in PVP :)
NEXT WEEK I try arena for the first time.
Let us know how it goes, and g’luck to you.
I shall give omnicc a look, a visual number reference may shade off a few microseconds. I just uncluttered my display and got everything nice and neat using bartender, sexy map and titanpanels. Damned if I am gonna put stuff back in the screen centre.
Quick question about Arena if I may. Does LoS break a Shadowpriests MindFlay. I ran behind a shed in Battle for Gilneas and was still able to be both shot (by a hunter) and flayed by a priest that already had me targetted. Is this still true in Arena or is it TRUE LoS in the fact that if its broken you cant be attacked at range.
Does LoS break a Shadowpriests MindFlay
AFAIK, channeled abilities don’t break on LoS, regardless whether you are in Arena, in World PVP, or in a BG.
I don’t know if that will ever get “fixed”.
We just have to play through it.
My buddy and I are thinking of going prot / shadow 2v2 and one of our ideas is to create a macro that targets the enemy targeting him and taunt them. This would move their target from me to him and put them out of sync. I am interested in any thoughts you have on this possibility.
My buddy and I are thinking of going prot / shadow 2v2
Prot Pally / Shadow Priest should be a very viable comp, SPriest has good CC, DPS, and healing/survivability.
Let us know how it goes!
create a macro that targets the enemy targeting him and taunt them. This would move their target from me to him and put them out of sync
Taunt unfortunately doesn’t work against players.
There are other MMOs where Taunt has an application in PVP (e.g. in Warhammer, where Taunt acts as an interrupt and buffs tank damage by 30%). But not in WoW currently.
[…] For detailed information about Prot PVP, check out my PVP Guide. […]
Thank you for the Landslide video – broke down and bought the mats and found the only enchanter on our server (wow – it was expensive).
Power Auras question – I have your 3 already inported, can you export any others that you have that could be useful?
Again thank you for the time to post your info and videos, very good stuff.
/salute
Power Auras question – I have your 3 already inported, can you export any others that you have that could be useful?
You can basically tweak the 3 I posted to do anything you need.
If you see a particular PA you want, let me know.
Hey Taugrimm you god of prot pvp!!!!
First off, let me say thankyou for all you’ve done with the guide so far :) looks like alot of effort but brand new players to the Paladin class salute you.
I always thought Ret was the go, but I tried prot 80-85 after advice from a friend and won’t look back. You’re guide has inspired me to prot and now I have all the honor gear and am loving it. Prot dominates, I’m regularly in the top for dmg and kb’s of bg’s.
I’m yet to really crack into arena tho, finding it hard to get a teammate willing to go with a prot pally except for a resto shabby and that just didn’t work against other healer/dps classes (not enough burst). I’m also only 1k conq points away from the weapon so should be a good upgrade.
Keep up the fine work mate, I’m a clicker and have found ur macros and power aura’s for Sacred duty and HoW to be a great way of starting the migration to using keys, minimally ATM but getting there.
*thanks again, scuse the long post but hey :). Love the vids aswell, really good info.
You’re guide has inspired me to prot and now I have all the honor gear and am loving it. Prot dominates, I’m regularly in the top for dmg and kb’s of bg’s.
Glad to hear it :)
I’m yet to really crack into arena tho, finding it hard to get a teammate willing to go with a prot pally except for a resto shabby and that just didn’t work against other healer/dps classes (not enough burst). I’m also only 1k conq points away from the weapon so should be a good upgrade.
Finding a partner willing to give it a shot is your #1 challenge.
People will believe Prot sucks in Arena no matter what you tell them. You should see the garbage people post in my threads on forums and videos.
You need to find a DPS partner. Feral/DK/Spriest/Rogue/Mage/Enhance/ProtWar.
Basically anything that has good survivability and good CC.
I am a human Prot Paladin and sense I have the human racial (Every man for himself)Which shares a CD with any trinket that has the use:Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. So I was wondering which trinket you think is best to take its place
Get the Insignia and Badge PVP trinkets, AFAIK they do not share a cooldown.
That’s the big advantage of being Human – the racial frees up a trinket slot.
I really love your guide here mate.
Prot pvp myself. Really think it owns.
But i cant seem to convince ppl to fight along my side in arena.
But i cant seem to convince ppl to fight along my side in arena.
You just need to find someone who plays one of the following specs who is open-minded:
– DK
– Feral Druid
– Enhancement Shaman
– Mage
– Shadow Priest
– Rogue
– Prot Warrior
It might work too with a Warlock or Hunter.
The main thing is to try to find someone to try, say, 10 matches with you. Bring your “A” game, support your partner with offheals, and coordinate your CC.
Hi.. Would you mind going a bit more into detail as to why those specific class/specs work with the prot pala?
I’m particularly interested in prot war + prot pala comapared to with an arms war..
Thank you for the very helpful guide!
Prot will work in almost any dual DPS comp where your partner has solid CC capability and survivability.
Prot is not a pure healer so ideally you want a partner that can survive for a bit even if you get chain CC’d.
Do you do any 3v3 ?.. Would you suggest the same classes?
First off id like to thank you for the guide, sites like these that help out others are great. Very well put together too
Also, I know im in the wrong place but would you know of any prot warrior guides like this?
my pally is 80 while my war is 85 so it wouldnt be a problem getting my pall to 85 as well but i figured if you had so much success with a pally there may be some hope for my war?
Anyway sorry if this is too off topic, great guide, thank you
Also, I know im in the wrong place but would you know of any prot warrior guides like this?
I have no idea. Prot Warrior would be a fun spec to play though! It’s too bad I detest leveling. Otherwise I’d go Prot for Warrior too and CC/grind people to death.
my pally is 80 while my war is 85 so it wouldnt be a problem getting my pall to 85 as well but i figured if you had so much success with a pally there may be some hope for my war?
FWIW, Prot is getting buffed in 4.0.6, and Warrior is getting some nerfs it seems. But play the spec you want to play. I expect both to still be viable classes in PVP.
Why dont you use Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Badge of Victory instead. Imo when you launch on someone stuned with together with wings and 3 holy power + divine plea after target must drop.
Isnt it better to time it then wait for proc which you can get when you dont need?
Why dont you use Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Badge of Victory instead. Imo when you launch on someone stuned with together with wings and 3 holy power + divine plea after target must drop.
Ideally, yes. But you may get CC’d, your target may get bubbled. That’s part of the thing about procs – you don’t always get the expected benefit.
Anyway, your reasoning makes sense. I just prefer the uptime of the Insignia.
Personaly I will go to BGs with the proc chance Trinket as the fight is longer and situation changes frequently. For arena I will get the Badge of Victory to unload all on stuned target.
I’ve been reading this post for a while now and its helped me out a lot, thank you for that. Just some good news concerning wrist enchant. 4.0.6 will have +50 strength to bracers which is great news. Also, the engineering tinker “synapse springs” will now boost intellect, agility, or STRENGTH (whichever is higher) by 480 for 12 seconds with a cooldown of 1 minute. So glad I don’t have to drop engineering for LW now
4.0.6 will have +50 strength to bracers which is great news. Also, the engineering tinker “synapse springs” will now boost intellect, agility, or STRENGTH (whichever is higher) by 480 for 12 seconds with a cooldown of 1 minute. So glad I don’t have to drop engineering for LW now
That is great news on the Bracers :) Thanks for letting us know.
A lot of Plate players leveled LW for the bracers enchant and now it looks like they did it for nothing. That’s the danger of leveling a prof for a specific bonus like what LW had with the wrist.
Me again, ok mostly now decked out in PVP stuff, and ready to start arena, however I would like to.. from the very start record them so I can see what happened and learn from it.. and also provide links for a chuckle.
Can I ask what software you use to see if I can use it also. I used to record video on WoW on XP no problem, but have no been able to find a nice piece of software for Windows 7.
I used to record video on WoW on XP no problem, but have no been able to find a nice piece of software for Windows 7.
I recently migrated from Win XP (3-yr old laptop) to Win7 on a new Alienware laptop.
I use FRAPS for both platforms to record footage, it works great.
For editing, I use the older (Win Vista) version of Windows Movie Maker 2.6 as it supports narration. The “new” version of Movie Maker called Windows Live Movie Maker is too dumbed down to be useful for my needs.
Anyone gone on the PTR to view changes? Does it seem that HOJ got severely nerfed??? Everyone should check it out – transfer your character. There has been many changes to not only paladins but many other classes and their abilities.
Tau, have you done any research into Darkmoon Card: Hurricane? I’ve read posts from a few people stating that it has a 100% proc rate with Avengers Shield. If this were the case, that would increase the damage of AS by nearly 50% and make for some really nice burst.
I’ve tested this trinket out quite a bit and although I see this proc on most AS’s it’s not 100% as there have been times when it doesn’t proc. If I had to put a number on it it’s likely high though and around 80%. Highest self buffed crit I’ve seen from the Proc was 9.9K from a 44K SR on the target dummy (inq, wings, trinket etc). Highest burst I can achieve to date is 10K over about 15 seconds using similar macros to those posted previously, Keep in mind however it might be hard to coordinate all these buffs at any one time in a pvp situation, I plan on making a poweraura to alert me If or when conditions (procs & cooldowns) are suitable to unleash 150K in around 15 seconds :)
It not only inflicts damage from additional strength +321, it also inflicts nature damage 5000. I have seen 9% over all damage from lightening Strikes, nature damage from this trinket. It is significant.
It looks like I may have been a bit hasty in saying that the proc from avengers Shield is not 100% with this trinket. It’s likely I missed out on some procs in my logs due to the target being dead after Avenger’s Shield etc. Further testing on the target dummy has showed a 100% proc rate from Avenger’s Shield. Taking into account the number of times Grand Crusader procs, this trinket certainly is a nice addition to our damage :).
Hey nice vids just wanted to know, whats best to use in pvp CS or HotR. cheers
Definitely CS over HotR. CS hits SO much hard vs single target, whereas HotR is better against multiple opponents. Since Arena is about burst, CS is the way to go (especially when glyphed/wearing PvP gloves).
I like HotR for when Im fighting on the flag in BGs, if it hits three or more people it makes up for it’s weaker damage.
You nailed it.
I have done a little test with my DK friend. He equiped main hand weap and was hitting me with it. I was just hitting combinations of my defensive cooldowns to see how it stacks. Here are the results.
Normal damage: 755 978 839 833 911 828 = 5144 100%
AD: 626 688 764 776 703 630 = 4187 81%
DP: 745 967 673 613 534 655 = 4187 81%
AD+DP: 631 544 492 462 528 502 = 3159 61%
GoAK: 454 452 421 404 327 380 = 2438 47%
GoAK+DP: 299 350 331 385 312 330 = 2007 39%
GoAK+AD: 320 375 381 340 382 316 = 2114 41%
Not a 100% proper test indeed but its enough to see that those abilities stacks somehow. Correct me if Im wrong somewhere.
btw there is one more change in 4.06 which you missed:
PvP trinkets will now clear disarm and silence effects. (minor nerf and buff to our play)
Thx for posting! Did you mean “GoAK” instead of “DG”?
Assuming you did, it looks like DPr and AD stack additively (20% + 20%) but GoAK stacks multiplicatively.
yup GoAK sry. and yes that is the difference between the way how they stack.
Hey i really love your guide – very detailed and noob-friendly so i could understand everything. Videos help a lot too. I got few questions if u will have some time :)
1) i started playing WoW not long ago and im soon gonna hit 85. I want to play with my friend who also started game few weeks ago – he got mage and druid. Question is are this compositions viable in arena ? (prot/frost mage , prot/druid) If not what other compositions are viable except the one u r playing atm? I dont want to play Holy and my friend wanna stick to ranged class with good burst dmg.
2) Considering both players are very good is it possible to reach 2,2k arena with prot paladin ?
1) Prot / Mage should be viable, you both make terrible targets and you partner has great CC.
2) It’s possible but really depends on player skill and coordination
Just wanted to say thanks for the guide, it had exactly what I was looking for and cleared a lot of stuff up. Thanks.
I know this is probably a noob question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Why couldn’t you make the Divine Plea macro to cast Divine Plea and then cancel the aura. This way you would only need to “click” the macro once instead of twice to remove the aura. I’m sure I’m missing something here; it can’t be that easy.
Great guide by the way. I haven’t played prot spec since WotLK and have never done any pvp as prot but I’m really liking it now. I’ve become an integral part of rated BG’s now and some of the group I run with were very disappointed last night when I had to log to get some sleep. :-) That’s always a good sign that you’re needed. While I was ret, no one really cared because dps is so easy to find. However, guarding a base or carrying a flag is very important to winning.
Why couldn’t you make the Divine Plea macro to cast Divine Plea and then cancel the aura.
If you can figure out how to get that to work, post it.
I don’t think a macro can activate then cancel the buff in the same keypress, because the macro operates from the “state” that you were in when you pressed the button – i.e. when you press the button DP is not up.
I haven’t played prot spec since WotLK and have never done any pvp as prot but I’m really liking it now. I’ve become an integral part of rated BG’s now and some of the group I run with were very disappointed last night when I had to log to get some sleep.
Great to hear, stories like this should be encouraging for other people trying Prot.
Thanks for your quick response to my previous question regarding the macro for Divine Plea. I knew that would be too easy to actually work.
The raid leader in the 15 man rated bg I’ve been running with whispered me last night and asked if I would run in his 10 man group this week (you bet I will). Anyway, he mentioned my normal role of defending towers but also asked me to be a flag runner. I haven’t attempted this yet. Do you have any helpful tips for a prot pally flag carrier.
I’m thinking I will be using cleanse alot, HoF, WoG for self heals, and Judgement to replenish my mana. I obviously will not be using DS or HoP (causes you to drop the flag from what I’ve read). Should I use Seal of Judgement to help slow my attackers? That seems like the most beneficial seal to use for a flag carrier.
Thanks in advance for any tips.
I should have included DP and DG in that list of things I will be using as a flag carrier.
Do you have any helpful tips for a prot pally flag carrier.
I’m thinking I will be using cleanse alot, HoF, WoG for self heals, and Judgement to replenish my mana. I obviously will not be using DS or HoP (causes you to drop the flag from what I’ve read). Should I use Seal of Judgement to help slow my attackers?
Use the Resil PVP trinket, you should get to over 3.2k Resil even without any Resil enchants or gems.
Don’t forget to rotate your mitigations.
While you can’t bubble, you can Lay on Hands on yourself. Save that for an emergency, but don’t hesitate to use it as you will likely have it off cooldown again before the match ends.
Don’t out-run your support. A lot of FCs do that, and they end up getting isolated and burned down. Even 1 or 2 friendlies with you can really help in terms of CC/DPS.
If you believe you are going to die and drop the flag, let your team know as much in advance as you can, so someone else can try to pick up the flag after you drop or from the flag spawn point if it gets returned.
“Use the Resil PVP trinket, you should get to over 3.2k Resil even without any Resil enchants or gems.”
I’ve only been running rated BG’s for 4 weeks now and started as ret. My first 2 purchases with Conquest points were the shield and 1h so I could make the switch to prot (got the sword the day before I found this site). I submitted a ticket but Blizz would not allow me to exchange it for the mace. Anyway, the rest of my gear is all Bloodthirsty and I’m at 3031 resil.
I’ll be picking up my first piece of Vicious armor today and will probably get the shoulders because my expertise is at a rating of 9 right now. Hit’s at 4.9% after reforging haste to hit, so it’s ok but I really want to get the expertise up and the shoulders will help. I can’t reforge anything else for expertise without losing crit and I don’t want to do that.
As a side note, for anyone who wants/needs to “practice” their pvp skills, go to TB where you do the 6 daily quests and camp out near the spiders. You’re guaranteed some pvp action. I do it everyday as a warm-up prior to running bg’s.
In actual fact you should be able to move the cancel aura part of the macro over to a Word of Glory macro. Something like this should work and should have the desired effect;
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Word of Glory
/cancelaura [nomodifier:shift] Divine Plea
/cast [nomodifier:shift] Word of Glory
Just modify the above modifiers to suit your needs. It should be pretty basic but if not, shift will allow you to cast WOG while keeping your Divine Plea buff, casting WOG without a modifier (shift) will remove Divine Plea before the heal :).
I was thinking about the same kind of macro:
/castsequence reset=3 Word of Glory, Divine Plea
/cancelaura Divine plea
/cast Word of glory.
I was hoping that I used my holy power (with WoG), then cast div plea and cast another WoG with 3 HoPo.
But this only works with at least 1 HoPo active and when I got a WoG without the HoPo used (Eternal Glory) I waisted those HoPo.
So still looking for a macro that cast WoG when 1 or more HoPo are available, if no HoPo available, cast Div Plea
So still looking for a macro that cast WoG when 1 or more HoPo are available, if no HoPo available, cast Div Plea
That’s not possible with the UI macros and functions. Back in TBC xpac, Blizzard changes the UI to not allow a script or macro to make decisions on which abilities to use based on things such as health, resources (e.g. combo points), etc.
You can write scripts and macros for such as states in stealth, in combat, flyable, swimmable, etc. But not anything else.
Back in Vanilla there were addons that made gameplay stupidly easy. E.g. there was an addon that allowed Healers to click 1 button, and it would choose the target and which rank heal to cast (back when downranking existed – another stupid concept IMO).
Taugrim i bet you have experienced arena matches against healer/dps comps that your partner dies but also their dps dies at the same. what do you do then? Does the game end somehow, you know what i mean.
That hasn’t happened yet, where it’s me vs a Healer. I should eventually win, the Healer will eventually go OOM and die.
I have had this happen a few times it really depends on what the healer is and their kiting ability. 9/10 you should win
Hey I have a question about professions, isn’t BS and Mining something we should go instead? since like BS can give our belt a slot for JC from what I heard, and mining gives Stam. Also they both can farm mats for Enchant and Jc.
Stamina is a poor choice of stat to stack for Prot. See Section 10 of the Guide. Therefore, Mining is not a good choice for PVP, it’s one of the worst actually.
If you want to take Mining for farming, that’s fine. But understand that you are gimping yourself stats-wise.
Best prof choices for PVP in 4.0.6, in no particular order:
– BS
– Enchanting
– JC
Take 2 of those 3.
This is awesome! I love the Prot pali pvp adivce, and my brother and I are this comp, so i can’t tell you how much these videos help!! thank you so much!
Let us know how you two fare with the comp, glad the Guide and videos have been helpful :)
Thanks for the videos. Paired with a Feral and up to 1750 and still climbing. We’ve been toying with the idea of killing pets since our fights always seem to go longer than I expect. Have you put any effort into killing frost mage or dk pets? Or others?
Grats on getting to 1750 :)
Let us know how it goes!
If the comp is Healer/DPS, here is what we do:
1. if the DPS is a Mage, we don’t bother killing the pet, since the pet is RDPS and usually not near the Mage. Also, the Mage has CC and very high DPS, and if we tunnel the Mage we can limit their DPS
2. if the DPS is a DK, then yes, we will kill the pet, because it’s a MDPS and we can do fast switches between the DK to the pet back to the DK. Minimal downtime in terms of attacking
Your comp is functionally similar to ours (albeit with better CC and defense against kiteability), so I would recommend the same strat.
What is 5% cap you mean by for reforge? like when the Hit goes up to 5%? or when it caps some how? cause like right now my hit is 5.30%
This miss chance against level 85 targets is 5%. Therefore, you want to get to 5% Hit.
If you have 5.30% Hit you have a bit more than you need – reforge your gear so that you can convert the wasted Hit to Crit.
Some classes / races have bonuses that make them harder to hit, but IMO it’s not worth stacking more Hit for them.
oh haha idk but okay ill get 5% hit and cap 5% crit than other than that i can just stack the rest i want? oh btw lmk if the pt you swap is going to be better. thanks
Hi Taugrim,
gratz on 2k rating, I was just wondering looking at your pvp videos prot paladin seems to work reali well for you in a 2v2 dps team I was wondering as I play prot paladin in pvp but only play holy in arena I was wondering if Prot Paladin Feral druid would be a viable setup for 2v2 due to dmg output and gd cc (especially against casters or healer teams)
Thanks in advance
Darros
I play prot/feral in 2s. After getting 1750 a few nites ago, we went 8-3 last nite. My feral and I both feel that we aren’t fully up to potential both in individual play and as a comp. We are taking the season slow and are definitely on the rise.
We seem to roll over any double melee and any healer comp. The most problems we have are double caster. Fights usually come down to how much I can stay on a target to generate HoPo for heals.
After getting 1750 a few nites ago, we went 8-3 last nite. My feral and I both feel that we aren’t fully up to potential both in individual play and as a comp. We are taking the season slow and are definitely on the rise
Please continue to keep us posted.
Feral / Prot has really good synergy.
The most problems we have are double caster. Fights usually come down to how much I can stay on a target to generate HoPo for heals.
You hit the nail on the head. Prot Pally play revolves around HoPo generation.
It’s the reason in my comp why we don’t chase kiting Healers, because my HoPo generation drops off dramatically.
We play very close to how you play with an enhance shaman. The subtle differences is I’m the only visible one at the start. I eat full duration saps and my feral will always wait until all of their team unstealths.
We are finding more and more that for any healer comp, we’ll sit on the dps. Once my feral gets full bleeds up, he’ll cyclone the healer. During this I’m stunning the dps to mitigate damage all while healing the feral. If we can’t do a burn down, we keep repeating until healer is oom. It’s usually not hard to keep my partner up.
We play very close to how you play with an enhance shaman. The subtle differences is I’m the only visible one at the start. I eat full duration saps and my feral will always wait until all of their team unstealths
Yea, that makes sense.
We are finding more and more that for any healer comp, we’ll sit on the dps. Once my feral gets full bleeds up, he’ll cyclone the healer. During this I’m stunning the dps to mitigate damage all while healing the feral
Yep, that’s what we do too, swapping Hex for Cyclone.
If we try to focus fire the Healer, the target usually kites and I can’t generate HoPo, which cripples my ability to heal without blowing my mana.
Prot PVP is all about HoPo generation.
[…] 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 […]
FYI.
I am going to make a 1-point swap in my 0/31/10 spec, specifically for Arena:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZGrMcRkdRMucbG:szcVdzmMz
The change is moving the point from Divine Guardian, which I rarely use in Arena (it’s not worth a GCD in a lot of cases), and investing it in 1/2 Reckoning.
DG’s effectiveness scales the more friendly players are involved in combat (e.g. 5v5, BGs, etc), but for smaller contexts (e.g. 2v2), it doesn’t provide much benefit.
Initial impression of 1/2 Reckoning: underwhelming. Reckoning according to Recount is accounting for < 1% of my total damage.
Will keep the new build for a few days to keep trying it out. I was expecting more from the talent.
So i play a human, since our racial is pretty much a trinket what would you suggest in place of the insignia?
Run both PVP +Str trinkets (Badge and Insignia).
The latest 4.0.6 patch notes show what should be a small buff to the Avalanche enchant. Whether this brings it closer to the benefit of Landslide remains to be seen.
Enchant Weapon – Avalanche now also procs from spell damage.
Hi Taugrim,
I wanted to thank you for your super Prot-PvP Guide. I’ve been playing WOW since release but had never played much PvP. Since Cataclysm I’m trying to do some PvP just for fun and I found your Site accidental per MMO-Champion. Since I’ve changed my Equip as you suggested it’s really fun to do BGs and Arena. Right now I’ve been playing with a Buddy ( Holy-Pala ) 2vs2 and normally we win most of our games against other Teams at 1600 rating. It gets a little bit tough against Teams with good selfheal like warlocks + rogues, but the typical 2DD-Team is no match. I never thought a Prot would be that Strong…
So thanks a lot from Caracalla (EU-Malygos)
I realise that you have said you will do the addons when you get round to it but i was just wondering if you could tell me the one that does the other player frames with their cooldowns for the trinkets that would be really helpful i’ve been trying to find one similar but all have been unhelpful as of yet
I realise that you have said you will do the addons when you get round to it
Did you read Section 13 of the Guide?
What you are asking has already been answered there :)
In one of your posts from a few days ago, you mention “tunneling” a mage. What exactly does that mean? Is this the same as the reverse kiting technique you’ve mentioned in previous posts?
The reason I ask is I was challenged to a duel outside Stormwind by one of my guildies who was playing an arcane mage and I was utterly dominated. He would polymorph me, ring of frost, and blink every time I was able to get close enough for a HoJ strike. In hindsight, maybe I should have run around the wall exiting out of Stormwind to LoS him. Any other suggestions? I hate that he made me look so bad in that duel and
In one of your posts from a few days ago, you mention “tunneling” a mage. What exactly does that mean?
“Tunneling” a Caster means applying so much pressure that they can’t free-cast spells that require a cast time, so you are cutting down their DPS. It also means reducing their ability to use CC, such as a Mage’s Polymorph.
Tunneling a Healer means applying so much pressure to the Healer that they can’t heal anyone else.
I was challenged to a duel outside Stormwind by one of my guildies who was playing an arcane mage and I was utterly dominated
Right now, assuming equal skill and gear, a Mage/Lock/Spriest/Hunter should beat a Prot Pally. They have too much CC and kiting tools.
What classes do you have the easiest time with? From my pvp experience, I seem to have virtually no trouble with a boomkin. I couldn’t tell you the last time I lost a 1v1 fight with a boomkin. I don’t seem to have much trouble with rogues either. Death Knights would be a step up in competition over boomkins and rogues.
I remember when I first began pvp’ing I used my DK exclusively. I would not pvp on my pally. I found a website which listed each class in the game and a preferred gameplan for attacking them. There was certainly a disclaimer about no two pvp fights being the same even with the same class, but that guide was very helpful.
The tips you list in your guide are helpful but was wondering if you might add a more class specific guide (ie. when facing a rogue, don’t trinket out of his sap at the start of the fight, save it for his kidney shot). Thanks again for sharing your guide, videos, and the prompt responses to the comments section.
In the next patch, proc will get REBUKE (that Ret already has) – a spell interrupt (4 second lockdown of that spell), which will be awesome.
You recommend Darkmoon Card Hurricane over the pvp trinkets. What’s your opinion of Baradin’s exalted Mirror of Broken Images. Given our need to protect against spells, is this trinket better than pvp Resilience trinket?
I don’t know Taugrim has tried DC:H but I’m rolling with it instead of 1 of the pvp STR trinkets and I love it. IMHO the tradeoff of consistently elevated damage and HIGH proc chance (see other posts about prots using DC:H) far outweigh 3% mitigation and spikey damage.
I find that I am not the burn target most of the time, so I’ve been trading resil for STR where I can.
I honestly can’t tell the difference between 3.3k resil and 3k resil, but I DO notice the difference in damage with +321 STR and that proc…. oh that proc…
Thanks Fenu!
You recommend Darkmoon Card Hurricane over the pvp trinkets
I would use DMC:H over a Str PVP trinket, if I had DMC:H, which I do not.
If you are not a Human Pally:
1. you must use the PVP trinket that breaks CC in 1 slot for PVP
2. your 2nd trinket should be one of the following: Badge or Insignia of Victory, or DMC:H
What’s your opinion of Baradin’s exalted Mirror of Broken Images. Given our need to protect against spells, is this trinket better than pvp Resilience trinket?
If you want survivability, stack Resil, end of story.
Mirror of Broken Images is a horrible trinket for Prot PVP, because:
1. Mastery is a bad stat for us, and
2. The on-use Resistance buff is only for 10 seconds
Another great video, always pick up some great tip from watching them and use what is applicable in my current 2s team (partnered with a Frost Mage).
We have used the Tunneling method on a number of occasions and I am sure this has left some teams a little miffed as to what just happened. So far we have managed to take down SPriests,FrostMs and the occasional kitty this way.
The more and more I play in Prot spec the better it feels and the more comfortable I am with it. It is certainly an improvement for me and my 2s team than Ret ever was.
Funny moment: Last night through a sligh miscommunication on my part, my partner went down. We were fighting a HPaly and an Arms Warr after my buddy went down it took them well into 8min to finally get me down. The whole time the HPaly was emoting is frustration at his partner. I think I could have stayed alive a little longer but we were laughing so hard I could hardly play in the end.
Q: I was wondering if anyone out there has a Frost Mage partner and if so do they know of any sites that are in any way comparable to the information we find here?
Prot in Arena is awesome, thanks again for this excellent guide. Look forward to som more videos.