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- Our Judgement spells have been replaced by one Judgement spell.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 
Hey Taugrim, I just figured I could point out a shortcut I discovered with healing my partner in 2s.
Through the interface, you can set the options for self casting and etc, (Sorry, my internet is being weird and won’t let me connect to WoW, otherwise I’d give you a full path) and there is a drop down menu for targeting your focus, which is rather useful. If you get 3 HoPo, you can hold down shift (Or alt or ctrl, you can choose) and it will cast to your focus.
This means, if at the start of the match you set your partner as a focus, you can heal/target/etc. without having to manually target.
Now if this information is completely useless to everyone, disregard me, and I’ll go cry in a corner. But if it’s at least helpful to anyone who didn’t notice, I’m glad to help.
Thanks- Fluffster.
Through the interface, you can set the options for self casting and etc, (Sorry, my internet is being weird and won’t let me connect to WoW, otherwise I’d give you a full path) and there is a drop down menu for targeting your focus, which is rather useful. If you get 3 HoPo, you can hold down shift (Or alt or ctrl, you can choose) and it will cast to your focus
This is a great idea, and it will save me time from having to write macros with the ctrl:shift modifier everywhere.
I’ll try it tonight.
Thanks for the tip!
Ah, I just tested, and this doesn’t work for abilities that are macro’d.
Oh well. I went ahead and updated my WoG, FoL/HL, and LoH macros to cast on focus when Shift is pressed. I’ll see if this works out for me.
well.. personally I prefer to have things bound to mousewheel:
wheel up = target self
wheel down = target focus
and this way it’s fast to switch to focus target and it won’t screw up any macros with modifiers ..
Love ur work, anyway I’m still leveling my pally (prot of course) but I’m finding that i am running out of keys. I was wondering if it would be effective to macro in a hammer or wrath/crusader strike/judgement key (As much as I hate to be a face roller)! If target is below 20pc health it will hammer them, if they are in range it will cs them, and if they are out of melée range (or cs on cd) it will judge them. Seems good in theory to free some space up on my keyboard. Any feedback is appreciated. Would love to see a section on ur keybinds, just to get a rough idea! Thanks
With the way wow has implemented their macro system, it’s not really possible for macros to “make decisions” based on circumstances. You could certainly setup a macro that would perform all of these functions using modifier keys, but it would be up to you to decide which ability should be used and press the appropriate modifier keys.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of using these types of macros, and prefer to have each key perform 1 function, and use modifiers as a means of controlling which target that ability is used on. That’s just a personal preference, and many people do use multi-function macros.
For those of you that find yourself cramped for space, I’d strongly recommend that consider picking up a gameboard type gaming device. In general, the prices of these peripherals have come down substantially in the years, and they’re to the point where there quite affordable when compared to what you’re spending on the game and subscription.
I myself use a Logitech G13 gameboard. I’d link it, but everytime I do my comments get hung up in moderation, so just google it. There are other similar devices on the market, so do your research and see if you can find one that you think will meet your needs and budget.
Here’s a couple of notes about how I have my g13 setup:
I’ve setup the thumbstick to move forward, backwards, and strafe left and right (no turning) and jump when I press it. Generally, I’m using my mouse to control forward movement and turning, but make use of this to strafe and jump. Having a thumbstick frees up your fingers to make use of the 22 buttons (all easily reachable) without sacrificing the ability to strafe in addition to mouse turning.
The two buttons above and below the thumbstick I map to ALT and SHIFT, and use them as modifiers, which I tend to use for targeting (/cast [target=player, focus, party1, etc])
In game using the Dominos addon, I recreate the basic layout of my gameboard and assign my keybinds, but stick it over on the bottom left side of my ui to discourage me from trying to click on anything. This was important since switching to the device took a little getting used to, and while I was adjusting, I found myself trying to click on abilities that were mapped on the outside keys of my gameboard instead of training my mind/fingers to use them and build up muscle memory (since before getting the gameboard I tended to limit my keybinds to 1-6 and q-t and wasn’t used to using my pinky finger for anything but modifiers).
These gameboards also have macro recorder functionality (the ability to record a series of keystrokes and recreate them at the push of a button), but I have not made use of this functionality for WoW since while it’s not exactly the same as “botting”, but it definitely approaches levels of automation that Blizzard frowns upon. Having only started playing wow (retail, had played on privates for 4 years) back in December, I haven’t had the time to really research this and see if it’s okay. Better safe than sorry, and to be honest, given uncontrollable factors like latency, and the fact that PVP in general is as much reaction as it is action, I feel that locking yourself into “action chains” would cause more problems than it would solve.
Another nice thing about these devices is that they’re not restricted to WoW, so while you may be investing $75 or so in the device, it can be used in any game, or many other applications as well.
Right now I’m only using a standard 3 button mouse, but I’m thinking about picking up a multibutton gaming mouse. I think it would simplify my setup if I had the freedom to move my defensive cooldowns over to my mouse hand.
And sorry for the wall of text… I tend to ramble.
If you have any questions, or want to learn more about my setup, let me know.
Personally, I’m extremely accustom to keyboard movement, but I HATE having to take my fingers off the movement keys for abilities. So what I did was I went out and got one of those Naga Razrs with the numpad on the side, now I have all my attacks in a 3×4 grid in the bottom right of my screen and when I press Ctrl, it switches to a differnt grid of 12 (using the bar addon Macaroon). The grid lines up with the buttons on the side of my mouse perfectly so I can fire off any aoes or targeted attacks I want without sacrificing any movement.
On top of that I use Clique, which allows me to fire off all my heals/hands/etc. on friends and all my stuns/CCs/etc. on enemies without having to target any of them individually.
this is just what I do because I’ve found it suits me best and it allows me personally to be the most mobile and the fastest on the draw that I can be. I encourage everyone to experiment with their UI as much as possible and figure out what works best for you personally.
I’ve been putting some serious thought into picking up the naga to compliment my G13. Definitely a smexy looking mouse.
Clique is nice, and I’ve used it in the past with Grid as a replacement for Healbot. I’m now using VuhDO which I am really liking. The ability to setup click functions through it, and then setup completely different click functions through Gladius is nice, particularly for quick interrupts.
TBC > Cataclysm has been a big jump for me, and I’ve been trying all sorts of different addons and UI tweaks trying to find out what works best for me.
Since this has become sort of the defacto resource for Prot PVP, it would be awesome to see some of your UIs, and here the rationale behind some of your UI/addon choices.
Hey Taugrim, im new to prot pally and your videos and information has helped me alot, in search for a 2v2 Partner i came across another Prot Pally who asked if i would try some 2v2 with another prot pally, so we gave it a bash i didnt think we would do that well tbh but we won 12 and lost 3 in first 2 days, do you think this is just luck or is 2 prot pallys a viable 2v2 team?
Thanks alot for all the info on your blog, oh btw sorry i put this in a reply i couldnt work out how to post my message
I’m currently at 1957 with double prot pally 2’s.
Pre-1700 rating, we had no problem beating almost every team we faced, but any team with a good frost mage locked us down from the excessive CC they have.
1700-1800 rating, teams became a bit more challenging. You’ll find many teams at this rating and higher almost always have frost mages!! It’s rather irritating, so it’s also around this rating that you’ll have to learn techniques and strats to deal with them the best you can.
What makes them so painful for double prot is the lack of dispels since freedom is quickly stolen/purged/dispelled, and the lack of a slow/root/snare (daze glyph is on DR so often, you’ll never notice it’s even working most of the time). To deal with this, you’ll need to learn how to LOS, reverse kite (bring them to you!), and make use of your environment to win in some occasions.
Most other comps you won’t find a lot of trouble with. Any team with a healer can become long if they’re able to reset fights by using smart CC or kiting techniques to get out of range and drink, but other than that, you should be able to kill almost everything else especially if you get a team with any form of melee.
Post-1800 rating, most comps we came up against were good countercomps to us, so you’ll have to out-play them. We are hoping to hit 2k by the end of the weekend.
Currently, Unholy DK + Prot Paladin seem like they are holding up best in 2’s. I figure it’s due to the snares (desecration!!), peel (D-Grip!), high dps, and silencing abilities that an Unholy DK’s provides that break down your counter-comps later on at higher ratings; you’ll have a much more difficult time having a second prot pally with you instead.
From what I’ve seen, I’d suggest finding a good Unholy DK to arena with if you decide to go anywhere past 2k.
I’m currently at 1957 with double prot pally 2′s.
Nice!
I haven’t heard any double Prot comps hitting 2k, so let us know when you do :)
I have a feeling when we do, it’ll be a luck-of-the-draw situation on getting good comps to fight against lol. I’ll keep ya posted though!
Honestly, if it wasn’t for this blog, I never would have taken arenas seriously in Cata. I was running Ret/Resto Druid before, and I noticed the limited survivability, lack of a snare (unless my healer cast roots), and various holes in Rets current PvP design; it was so disheartening!
In WOTLK, my 2’s was getting to 2250 with some difficulty, but it was manageable, and I didn’t feel like I was going to die so easily when my healer was CCed. The survivability was just gone after Divine Shield was dispelled or wore off.
I found this blog and decided to try Prot PvP and it was more complete: awesome survivability, good healing overall, decent burst when needed, and stuns/silences/interrupts galore! It basically allows for the “1 Man Army” feel that Ret had in WOTLK.
The only gripe I have is not having a magic dispel, snare (daze glyph just doesn’t cut it), or gap closer. If we had one of those, I feel we’d be better suited for 2k or higher ratings.
After you mentioned double prot not reaching 2k in 2’s yet, I went through blizzards site and found that in all the battlegroups, my 2’s team is the highest rating legitimately played double prot at the moment! :D
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/arena/stormscale/2v2/pipirupirupirupipirupi/
closest to us is this team:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/arena/lightbringer/2v2/peanutbutter%20and%20jam/
The only sad part about it, is we lost 2 games today which painfully lowered our rating :”(
2xfrost mage, and frost mage disc priest. it’s just too much CC to reasonably deal with, and that priest fear feels like it lasts far too long and needs a longer CD. We got the priest down to 5% health about 6 times, but he was always able to survive just long enough to get away without dying.
Hey Githe and Taugrim, i skipped the 2v2 prot pally team it was fun but we just got hammered when it came to frost mages, only once did we beat a team with a frost mage and it was to put it politely because he was bad, i started another team with my RL mates blood dk trying to get him to go Unholy, if anyone had or knows of any good 2v2 prot pally + unholy dk videos can you please link them, and ill let you know how we do and if i can get him to go unholy.
I have no clue where to look for videos or strats for certain comps. To be frank, this was the first place I found any Prot Pally PvP video for 85’s. I just know about Unholy DK + Prot Pally for 2’s simply because they are the only teams with 2100+ ratings on the Blizzard PvP ranking webpage.
This is only in Beta but this will offically kill pallys in pvp if they make Word of Glory AKA WoG heal have a 20sec Cooldown, heres a link to the forums about it…
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1776587886?page=2
Hey. so other than landslide (since it’s expensive) what would you choose as the no. 2 weapon enchant for prot pallies? Any suggestions would be great. This is my current character. Let me know what you think.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/malganis/calixhaze/simple
I am running with Avalanche, only 500gold AH on my server. I read somewhere about it being an option. Landslide looks much better (based on the procs we saw in Taugrims video) but this one is nice for increased damage. I will look at getting Landslide after i get Mace from conquest points. Working on my armor and trinkets first.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/spirestone/arkaeden/simple
From the Guide:
# Weapon: Landslide or Avalanche
As Arkaeden pointed out, Avalanche is relatively affordable and will hold you over until you have the coin for LS.
Personally id go for Avalanche.
Hey tauu, do you know why can’t I get my “Vindication Set” unless I have 2.2k rating but I could get my “Redemption Set” w/o any requirement?
I have no idea. That’s sounds like a bug.
Tau, if you had to play alliance would you choose Human? (Friends kind of forcing me for faction change)
Human allows you to have two trinkets which is a nice boost for damage.
If you play dwarf, you’ll get some mitigation, but since the opponents know you’re hard to kill anyways, they will go for your teammate most of the time, therefore another mitigation doesn’t seem to be so crucial to me.
As for draenei, I’m not sure how good their racial heal it, but having 2 trinkets seems to be a better option
I personally play human.
I agree with LastJudge – Human all the way. Double DPS trinket FTW!
Would you even consider dropping two points out of the prot tree to take Long Arm of the Law? If so, what points and would it be worth it? It seems like it might be an effective way to help close the gap when up against caster comps, which seem to give us melee comps the most trouble.
Would you even consider dropping two points out of the prot tree to take Long Arm of the Law?
It’s not possible.
You need 31 points minimum in a tree to open up a secondary tree. That leaves 10 max @ 85 that you can invest in a secondary tree. To take LAotL would require 12 points.
LAotL is a solid talent but it’s not the silver bullet for solving Pally mobility and ability to close gaps. Last night I was playing around with a Ret PVP spec (2/7/32) and in duels, kiters were still slowing/rooting me while I had the LAotL movement buff. I didn’t fully get the Ret complaints about LAotL until I tried it.
Oh, yeah, okay. I hadn’t actually done the math on that one, but that makes sense. Sadly, I totally blow at Ret pvp for some reason. I think I just do better in a role that leans more towards support, so I’m way better as prot, especially after finding your guide/videos! Keep ’em coming, you rule!
Retri isnt viable?
I think it’s very viable, just for me personally I have way more trouble staying alive and my damage output doesn’t seem THAT much higher than my prot spec. Which is why I dropped ret altogether and now I just have a pvp prot spec and a pve prot spec :P
Glad i’m not the only one. PVP/PVE SPEC FTW!
I haven’t played Ret enough nor do I have an epic pvp weapon to make a grounded assessment.
One problem i have is switching targets. I usually keep my partner (in 2s) as my set focus and click on him there for heals but when it comes to switching between enemies i often use tab or just click on the enemy i want from the gladius list. The clicking seems to take too long and sometimes i tab to a totem or pet and this wastes time… I am still fairly excited while i play due to lack of experience… usually after 4 or 5 matches i settle in to a groove.
I have used keybinds since i first started playing (back in 05) i am constantly tweaking them for PvP. a lot of them are and button.
I use both mouse buttons for forward movement while using keybinds for most of the time but i still use W and S for movement sometimes.
I am totally for a guide on key binds. I like mine for the most part but it would be beneficial to compare.
questions:
-ways of selecting friendly and enemy targets quickly.
-do you use sticky targeting?
keybinds is something that can’t really just be copied or learned or something. It’s all about your individual style and how they fit you. I tried using different keybinds than I use now, but I just could get used to it .. but sure, some ideas might actually be helpful anyways :)
I don’t think mouse targeting (either directly on the player or in gladius) takes so much time .. but that’s maybe cause I use keyboard to move so I use mouse only for rotation and targeting ..
I’m kinda having the same problem with Tab’ing in order to switch targets.
Nothing is worse than targeting a pet or something, and using a 3 point SotR on it instead of that 12% healer -_-
I have to agree with LastJudge on the keybinding issue. Everyone has their own preff binds. I have 14 bindings on my mouse as I feel I can react faster with my right hand. I have a bad tendency to missclick with the keyboard ;)
On a sidenote, me and my frostMage got to 1600. Beeing that this is my first arena season, I’m kinda thrilled about it ^^ I recon we’ll Get to 1800 or something like that befor we hit the roof =D
Ya I use skype with my friend and use Vent only for raiding and such. Having solid communication is key for sure.
Love to hear some other ways of targeting friendlys and enemies. Just about to get a new partner for 2s, another RL friend but a master of PvP. He is going to teach me a lot im sure.. pretty stoked:)
i DLd FRAPS too so ill be getting some footage of my future Arena Battles.
So Tau, any advice on targeting?
You can change your tab keybind from “target nearest enemy” to “target nearest enemy player”. That way you won’t target pets or totems. Just change it back when you do a raid or dungeon.
Nice thanks for the tip!
Just watch your first 3s video. I have been looking to get into a 3’s team but there are not many people out there who are interested in having a Prot pally in the mix :(
I also heard you mention trouble with Vent and that you switched to SKYPE. I would highly recommend this for anyone doing Arenas as there is no lag issues that I have encountered and very little chance of it crashing, like Vent does from time to time.
Thanks again for all the great info and the new videos.
Grats on your 3’s 2000 :P
Well, I am using TeamSpeak without any problems so far (using it since the time of vanilla WoW). But I agree, Skype is a good choice.
[…] would be viable at 85 in Cataclysm, and if that was the case, I wanted to provide helpful material (Guide + narrated videos) to other players who were trying to figure it out. I have a habit in games of […]
Updated the Guide:
2011 Feb 3: added 3v3 Vol 2 video, updated healing macros to include focus modifier, added more 4.0.6 change notes
TRINKETS:
I’m in Arena right now, watching my new DK partner go head to head with a Prot Paladin for over 1/2 hour now… I must admit I died by a miscalculation or something, lol…
But anyways, while WAITING for the end of the match… I noticed that my Badge of Victory says in red letters “Not usable in the Arena”
Have you noticed this?
Doesn’t much matter at this point since I will soon have DMC:H equipped, but… Speaking of which, IT works in Arena, right?
Too funny. I’m the pally that was fighting bloods partner. I came here looking for advice on how when to make a move on blood dk 1v1. Between all the self healing on both of us is it even possible for one to kill the other, assuming similar skill level of course? Also I bound my use trinket to HoW to get some burst right at the end, but was wondering if anyone knows a way to make the button light up with the macro?
Thanks in advance and love the guide and community developing here.
Yep, Roquefort put up a helluva fight. Turns out we are on the same server too, so… gonna have to form an ‘Alliance’, lol…
Pretty cool, first night back on my old server, and first time to run with my new partner, a guildie, and we went 24-5!
Unfortunately, they had a 12-12 record before I joined… (Now 36-17) I think our rating would be a bit higher if we had started afresh. But 1300 isn’t bad for a start I guess.
So this right off the bat kinda leaves my RL friend out, out of the 2’s anyway… Maybe we can do 3’s…
Too funny. I’m the pally that was fighting bloods partner
LOL. Small world, eh?
Now you and bloodniron can steal each other’s secrets to raise your game and extend your matches even more painfully :)
Yeah, that’s basically it. The match ended as a draw, and I don’t know what Roque’s partner was doing during that time, but I went and looked up Roque’s armory. Check it out, come back to WoW, match still going. Tab out again, come back, etc…
Roquefort is running same spec and glyphs as myself. Most enchants are the same. Gears a little different…
Even though we went 24-5, I felt like there were at least 3 of those matches that we shoulda/coulda won had I lived, and I feel the need to do some more tweaking on my action bars/macros.
I got the Addon’s that you list, Tau, and they make things nice! I especially dig the numerical countdowns on the buttons. Now I need to set up Power Auras…
Yeah still working on pvp gear. I didn’t find this blog/guide till I had already made mistakes. I was mixing in pve epics that I had with whatever pvp gear I’d pickup. After figuring out the true value of resilliance I made/bought pieces and am working on filling in honor pieces as I go along. Not getting the weapon right away was a huge mistake. Me and my partner are new to pvp and our plan was to just get enough arena done to hit weekly cap, but then we started winning and more often so now its lets see if we can hit 1800 lol. Addicting and fun and a great change of pace from raiding.
It works, it is just a bug with most of the trinkets.
But anyways, while WAITING for the end of the match… I noticed that my Badge of Victory says in red letters “Not usable in the Arena”
Never noticed this…were you actually prevented from using the Badge?
There is not restriction per se of any trinket not working in Arena AFAIK. Except maybe the ones that summon a pet. Maybe.
I noticed it says “Not usable in arena”, but it works anyways, to it’s just a tooltip bug or something.
CS / HotR no longer generate HoPo when the target is immune or dodges/parries. This is a huge undocumented nerf, because right now Prot (and Ret) are very dependent on HoPo generation to be PVP viable. We’ll have to see how hard this plays out, but I would personally trade Rebuke and the CS damage buff to have HoPo generation left as-is in 4.0.3a
Maybe we need to cap expertise after the patch!
Maybe we need to cap expertise after the patch!
That is not going to solve the problem.
Many classes have talents and abilities that significantly boost their avoidance (Dodge/Parry). E.g. Rogue Evasion, Fury Warrior Die by the Sword, etc.
We’ll see how it plays out in 4.0.6.
Well, are you sure about this change? I mean if they change something like that, they must put it in the patch notes, cause it is indeed huge.
This wasn’t the case even as of just last night, so I’m not sure about it.
There have been multiple threads posted by credible Paladins, e.g. by Hofflerand, a well-known veteran Arena Ret player:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/1181024/
I’m not clear whether this is an intended change or a bug. AFAIK there hasn’t been a response from Blizzard about this.
I have been on the PTR as of today 2/4 and I still generate HoPo on a Ice Block. I believe it has not changed.
Hey Taugrimm,
thanks for your guide, helped me out a lot on speccing my Protadin. I´m playing on a German Server and teamed up with my brother, a Holy Paladin, to just reach the weekly Cap. Now we hit 1300 and are still aiming for more, but we reach our limits at hybrid classes with a lot of cc skills. Guess, we either lack in Burst and overall Damage in that combo. I hope with Rebuke for Holys and Prots we can overcome that weakness.
Im now Teamed up with a Mut Rogue. He is highly skilled but poorly geared. we had some great success early on but now that we are facing higher level players the lack of gear is showing…
Anyways, We faced a comp tonight that was Spreist and Demo lock. Their group name was dot dot dot fear… that explains how both matches went against them. they coordinated their fears well… we couldnt do anything!
My friend is going to switch back to subtlety which was going good but he got excited about the dmg he could do in Mut.
also had a druid dk match where i was chain cycloned 3 times when about to heal my partner!
Hey Tau, do you got any tips for Frost Mages? theyre such a nightmare, it kept kiting me and I can barely reach it…also for Unholy Dks, theyre instant heals and necrotic strike just sets me off.
Not alot you can do vs a frost mage atm. In 2s I focus them and silence every time it not on dr. Vs unholy dks you must play very defensive untill they use their cds then go on the attack.
Trinket, Bubble, and breaking LoS as much as possible. The “reverse kiting” that Taugrim talks about works really well. I’ve been using it a lot lately, even in just world pvp and tol barad.
Yo Taugrim and community,
What are your thoughts on the exp cap. I am currently at 10 exp unbuffed, and 20 exp after the Seal of Truth/ plus +10 exp glyph, so now my chance of dodge from pvp players at lvl 85 is 0% at 20 exp.
But from what I’ve read, exp seems like a pretty useless stat. I’m thinking about switching back my exp to crit since my crit is only at 8.75%.
Let me know what you think. Later
There is no real benefit with any expertise in PVP. Check your stat list. Fighting a level 85 player does not grant him any viable ability to block your attacks. In PVE, it has real value.
expertise is useless for PvP, it’s a PvE stats. so don’t bother raising your expertise. first get the hit cap and after that reforge all you can into crit ;)
Really? useless? It doesnt diminish the chance to be dodged or parried by other players? I would like to know for sure because there is nothing worse than unloading a full stack of HoPo and having your SOTR parried!!!
So it appears that it does count, but attacks from behind can not be parried or dodged… So devliver your SOTR from behind for sure.
i think i knew this once :)
How often do you get a choice of which side of your opponent to attack? I don’t know about all of this, lol…
I *would* like a definitive word on how Expertise, and Block for that matter, plays out (or doesn’t) in PvP.
You are missing a critical Prime glyph if you took SoT glyph.
Stat priority:
Hit to 5% > Str > Crit > Exp > Mastery > Haste > Hit over 5%
Don’t stack Expertise…
Hey love ur guide, anyway i noticed that you didn’t even mention the Divine Protection Glyph. Since we already have two Dmg reduction abilities (GotAK and AD) wouldnt doubling incoming magic Dmg reduction to 40% be very handy! Since one of our begist problems is being Kited by and every class that kites us does magic Dmg (except Hunters I believe) wouldnt this be a very handy talent to have?
Anyway i think it deserves a mention, at least the pros and cons.
Thanks again!
Taugrim have commented about it, that this benefit is situational and generally we dislike glyphs that give something but take also something in return. We prefer pure benefit :D
And we try to do a mitigation rotation, if against physical you miss your Divine protection in it, it will be hard to keep it up (the rotation).
Well I bought the Hurricane Deck and turned it in for the Hurricane Card this weekend and I can state that it is NOT a 100% proc rate at all. Not really pulled any major stats, but in general PvE usage, it is accounting for around 4-7% of my damage. However I need to do an extended fight with a target dummy for more accurate stats.
I love the deck, 321 extra strength and on occasion strikes enemy for 5000 nature damage. The strength alone is worth it has increases your damage significantly.
I think they changed the Hurricane Card to 321 Agility, unless I’m missing something. Seems like it’s not worth the gold.
There are Str and Agi versions of the trinket.
As of 4.0.3 DMC:Hurricane is 100% pron on every avenger’s shield. It is a bug, was to be fixed in the next patch, thought i didn’t read anywhere in the patch notes about fixing it. Guess we will see tomorrow.
errr…proc not pron
Man, my dang computer went down Friday and I have not yet got it back up and running, so… Bah! And I’m going to Mavs game tonight so no real opportunity to get it running today…
But if nothing else, I’ll go over to my friends house and log in and go ahead and get my DMC:H done so I don’t accidentally miss the Faire for a month if my compy issues continue awhile… But hell if they last too much longer I’ll just buy a new one… Meanwhile, dangit I was wanting to get my 2’s rating up to get the cap up!
can you clarify what you mean by getting the arena cap up?
Your weekly conquest points cap is fixed at 1343 if your rating is from 0-1500
Once you get above that, your weekly cap is increased based on your rating from the previous week. For instance, at 1800, your weekly conquest point cap is 1940, and at 2100 it hits 2533.
Yep, that’s what I meant all right, thanks! I guess I should have said “Conquest points cap” which would have made more sense.
Meanwhile, it looks like I’ll be picking up a new motherboard, maybe this afternoon on the way home, and hoping that will cure my issue(s).
Wow, that’s good to know. I’d just been switching back and forth with my 2v2’s arena teams so i could group with random friends and guildies separately. I wanted to group all of us together, but it wouldn’t let us. Is 5 players the max per team?
This is somewhat off topic but I was wondering if someone could provide some information about using Fraps. I downloaded the demo version which only allows you to record 30 seconds of footage.
After downloading the demo I went to Tol Barad and went looking for horde. ;-) I came across a mage and a shaman running together and thought now would be a good time to try this out so I hit the record button and attacked the mage who (fortunately for me) was a fire mage. I took him down and then focused on the shaman. Another alliance person saw what was going on and helped me finish the shaman off. When I looked at the video, I was very impressed with it but it stopped recording just before I hit the mage with How (dangit).
Anyway, I couldn’t find a lot of information on the website other than a price of $37. Is there a monthly cost for this or is it just a one time charge? I also noticed the 30 seconds of video at 30 fps required 1 GB of hard drive space (wow). I would imagine most people would want/need an external drive to record something like arena matches or boss kills in pve raids. Could someone comment on the recommended amount of hard drive space? If you could also list some pros and cons of this softward, that would be greatly appreciated.
Fraps is definitely the popular choice for capturing video, but there are other options out there. The output file size is quite large because it isn’t really compressed. Depending on what quality you want your end result to be, you can reduce this somewhat by setting it to capture at half-size, but even then the files are big. Once you edit them, and encode them when saving your final file, the sizes will be reduced drastically.
In terms of hard drive size, certainly bigger is better, but look for a capacity that offers the best bang for your buck. If you’re not going to be keeping your raw footage afterwards, you can get away with a smaller drive.
If you aren’t looking for the highest video quality, you may want to look into something like Xfire, which has a solid video recording feature. Dealing with the rest of the “features” is a bit annoying, but if you want a free solution, it’s a good choice.
There are other applications like Playclaw which offer additional options, like the ability to compress video on the fly (while recording), but unless you have an absolutely top of the line computer, the performance hit you take while recording can often be pretty steep.
All in all, I’d recommend sticking with fraps if you are looking to do quality footage. It’s a one-time fee, and it just works.
hi
man i love pallys. thier so awsome. thnx taugrim. you opened my eyes a lot for pvp. im a lvl 73 taren pally. and the stuff you post is really helpful. i changed my rotation to suggested. and it is awsome. lol. nice advice and thnx.
Hey everyone.
With the patch most likely coming out tomorrow, are there gonna be any changes to the pvp gear quartermasters with honor and conquest points?
The main thing I’m looking forward to is all pallies getting REBUKE! Forbearance dropping to 1 min isn’t a big deal in arenas, but it’s been an annoyance in BGs.
What patch buffs are you most looking forward to? And which nerfs are you worried most about?
Is there an addon that shows how many people are targeting you to attack you?
Something that shows either the number of pvp players attacking me at the same time. Just thought it’d be a useful stat in bg’s. Thanks
Not that I know of.
I don’t want to derail this blog with information regarding Fraps, but I did purchase the software yesterday and recorded some of my 10 man raid last night. I was wondering if maybe someone could point me to a website for a “Fraps 101” how-to guide.
Specifically, I noticed the video gets split up after a certain amount has been recorded (ie. 5 minutes of video may be stored on 3 separate clips). I’d like to know how you “splice” this together into a single video. Is this accomplished through VirtualDub when you compress the video or some other type of software?
Sorry again for the derailment, I just want to be able to share some video with the rest of my guildies who are having trouble on certain boss fights and as a way to review my rated BG’s and/or arena matches.
I noticed the video gets split up after a certain amount has been recorded (ie. 5 minutes of video may be stored on 3 separate clips). I’d like to know how you “splice” this together into a single video
There are 2 steps to publishing a video:
1. recording the raw footage, e.g. with FRAPS, which records footage in chunks up to 4 GB.
2. editing the footage into a video. For this you need a software program such as Windows (Live) Movie Maker or iMovie. You can find plenty of information on these programs via Google.
and as a way to review my rated BG’s and/or arena matches.
You don’t need to do step #2 above for this – just watch the FRAPS 4 GB files one at a time. And btw, I personally feel that the $37 one-time license fee for Fraps is worth it just to be able to watch footage of oneself in action – you can see not only what your opponents do but more importantly your mistakes. It’s valuable for learning.
Thanks for the info. Taugrim. I’ll Google those software programs so I can edit some footage of my 10 man raid group and share with the other two 10 man raids in my guild who are struggling on some of the fights.
Taugrim can you tell me the shaman enchants on weapon Kashmir was using when you were playing? windfury on main and frostband or flametongue on offhand?
At 2k Arena, he had switched to WF on main and FB on offhand, for the slow effect. WF was helpful for building Maelstrom faster.
Hey Tau, I just found your information. First off wonderful information its going to help me alot on my pally I just started pvping. Also I wanted to ask would Avalanche go good with DMC : H, or is that a bad mix?
Avalanche is fine as an affordable alternative to Landslide. Has nothing to do with DMC:H. But you’re fortunate to have the trinket :)
I’m still about 6k short of the 15k gold needed to buy it on my server. /sigh
Just saw it on the AH for 16k and through lone i was able to buy it! only thing is im stalling on turning it in b/c someone in my guild was saying it didnt proc that much… he was a hunter talking about the agil one but i figured it would be the same… ill have to do some research on it.
I’m having trouble finding a good 2s partner. Last night, just to get my weekly conquest points before reset, I teamed up with a prot warrior with 160k unbuffed hp. We did awesome against any group that didn’t have a dedicated healer, but as soon as we ran into a holy pally we just didn’t have the dps to bring him down. What are some other classes that go good with us? It seems like the best would be dps specs that also have off-heals, like enh shaman, feral druid, ret paladins or maybe boomkin? What do you guys think?
We did awesome against any group that didn’t have a dedicated healer, but as soon as we ran into a holy pally we just didn’t have the dps to bring him down
As I discussed in my narrated Arena videos, against Healer/DPS comps it’s typically better to go after the DPS and reverse-kite.
If you try chasing a Healer, they’ll kite you, you won’t be able to be in melee range to consistently generate HoPo, which means that you can’t heal, which means you or your partner will die.
So go after the DPS instead, tunnel them, and you should win.
I would love to try Prot War / Prot Pally comp but I don’t know of anyone available to try it with.
Yeah that probably would have been better. We started on the healer, thinking we could just burn him down fast and we came wicked close one time, even allowing me to get off one hammer of wrath. Once that happened I think we just got cocky and thought that it must be possible but he still had plenty of mana and everything. With all the stuns and silences we have, what we should have done is just do out best to keep the healer stunned while we burnt down the warrior.
In general, as a comp, we found that we were just really hard to kill, and since most people assume I was a healer, they’d focus him, but because of his ridiculous mitigation, his self heals, my heals and his ridiculous health pool, there was really no way they could burn him down in time. I think we might be able to do pretty well as time goes on.
Actually, forget all that. My prot warrior partner just informed me that he didn’t feel like doing arena anymore :( Finding a good partner is tough.
Tau, what happened to your 2v2 and 3v3 Team? No Arena anymore?
Reverse kite, I see this a few times but do not quite understand…
If you break line of sight with a ranged player, it forces them to come to you.
Read this post and watch the video:
If you still have questions, post them.
Hey Tau, about this quote you made earlier on 4.0.6
CS / HotR no longer generate HoPo when the target is immune or dodges/parries. This is a huge undocumented nerf, because right now Prot (and Ret) are very dependent on HoPo generation to be PVP viable. We’ll have to see how hard this plays out, but I would personally trade Rebuke and the CS damage buff to have HoPo generation left as-is in 4.0.3a
Has this happened yet with the new patch? can anyone confirm this undocumented nerf for pally holy power generating? Also, how’s rebuke been for prot pallys in bg’s and arenas. Some info would be great before I get back home to grind out the weekly cap. GL!
CS / HotR no longer generate HoPo when the target is immune or dodges/parries
I can confirm that we do not generate HoPo when the target dodges or parries. I tested this on 88 target dummies and in duels.
I haven’t dueled a Mage or Pally yet re: the Immune part. If someone has tested today on live, please let us know.
Post from Blue re: HoPo generation and dodge/block/parry/miss:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2046735514?page=2#29
Also, how’s rebuke been for prot pallys in bg’s and arenas
In duels: Rebuke has been an excellent help against some Casters, esp Spriests. The buff to SoT stacking helps against Casters – we can keep stacking it from range which helps whittle down their health while we are being kited.
Haven’t had time to BG yet due to work.
With respect to Arena, I gotta find new partners first :)
Yea good luck on your new teammate search.
Sorry to hear that your previous 2’s and 3’s teams have broken up, especially when you were hitting a good groove. Everyone here will be rooting for you to dominate your battlegroup once you get another team going.
I was really looking forward to this patch, but already, the dodge/parry/miss not allowing HoPo generation is worrying me, especially if it also includes immune (ice block) players as well. I hope that we’re still able to generate HoPo when hitting an immune target, otherwise this could be a pretty big nerf for pallies in the 4.0.6 patch. Hope everything works out well for all of us.
Something else to add.
Will the lack of HoPo generation from miss/dodge/parries make it so we’re gonna have to stack more exp than before the patch, to lower the chance of missing an attack. Or just keep trying to hit enemies in the back? lol
It’s a nerf, no HoPo on hitting ice block.
About Darkmoon Card: Hurricane,
The trinket seems to be fixed in 4.0.6. No longer we have 100% dmg proc on Avenger’s Shield and Hammer of Wrath. With some quick dps meters checking, in 4.0.3a that trinket was doing 10% of my damage, now it is at little less than 3%.
Something about macros and playing strategy section.
Taugrim have you ever consider to focus cast Avenger’s Shield on the RDPS or Healer that you are not nuking, like on every cooldown, to keep him silenced and get some interrupts?
That’s pretty obvious, especially vs 2 casters teams or dps + healer. There are situations when it’s better just silence healer for a while.
ALso with rebuke+stun+as we gonna be more powerful in arenas vs healers and that’s really nice addition to our arsenal.
I’ve got glyph of dazing shields, but as of 4.0.6 it is no longer dazing my targets…anyone else got the same problem?
Yup, and it’s pretty game-breaking, especially for arena. They’re already releasing hot-fixes for some stuff though, so I expect it will be addressed fairly quickly.
If you haven’t seen it already, I’ve posted an article of my first impressions of 4.0.6:
OMG ITS THE END OF PALLIES AS WE KNOW IT!!!!!LOL JK. Mman i realized that too, we get no HoPo while being blocked…. it doesnt really affect my pvp, it just means that the person im raping will take longer to kill. lol and also note that, in my opinion. heals cost more mana, but i think we gain it bak faster. i was in WSG last night and i took me way longer than usual to kill another pally. they kept bloking and i only built up HoPo when i stunned him. but like i said. it doesnt affect the damage or anything jus the time length they have to live
But it’s still a lowering of Damage Per Second. And while it takes longer for you to kill that 1 pally, his ally buddies can gang up on you to kill you, since you weren’t able to kill that pally fast enough..
Hey hey, some of us are alliance here. :P
But seriously, it’s not the dps I’m worried about. In the past, when a mage blocked, or a pally bubbled, it was just an opportunity to stand there generating HoPo and healing myself for free a ton. dps is never my main concern as prot, I mostly just try to save up HoPo, and either heal or hold on to it for a Sacred Duty and go in for some burst damage.
Yea i definitely agree with that. I feel like I can speak for all of us when I say, we understand that miss/dodge/parry should not receive a HoPo. But these are the reasons why we’re mad.
1. It was not in the patch notes, but barely noticed in the bug fixes, for such a big nerf, this was a ridiculous oversight.
2. With the comparisons to other classes, the fact of the matter is, Prot/Ret pallies can only gain 1 HoPo from 1 of 2 attacks (which share a CD). We have NO OTHER way of gaining HoPo (Save your nonsense about using Divine Plea that’s on a 2 min CD, that’s retarded to bring up).
3. However, we should still be allowed to gain HoPo from immune (blocked targets). I AM HITTING THIS DAMN ICE BLOCK! It may not be hurting the target, but I am hitting the target, it just so happens that they are protected by a shield/ice, etc. whatever. This should never be the case. As long as we contact whatever we’re hitting (meaning we hit it and don’t miss/dodge/parry) then we SHOULD get a HoPo.
Let me know what your thoughts are, because it’s extremely frustrating and difficult to try to create a unified coherent voice by the pally community to Blizzard Devs, so we can get a more detailed explanation instead of, “This bug fix was intentional”. We need answers, because we have questions, so let’s think of ways to do get some feedback from Blizzard Devs on this specific Paladin issue.
3. If we are able to get a half CD when we miss. that would be the best compromise for everyone involved.
Yeah I think everyone saw this coming. A little miffed that it wasn’t included in the patch notes. After running about 20 arena with my 2’s partner I can say it sucks not to get the HoPo as easy. Game breaking no, game changing yes.
If anything increases the value of resil more, I was planning to gem more toward the crit side as I started gaining more vicious pieces. Now I’m thinking it might be better to get all the reduced damage I can get to compensate for the lost heals.
I’m going to take a wait and see on this one but if there are any coordinated forum posts planned, I’ll tow the company line :D
Taugrim,
Given your comment about: Summary: Strength and Resilience are our most important PVP stats — what is your opinion about Tol Baradin’s Greater Inscription of Vicious Strength and Arcanum of Vicious Strength compared to your earlier recommendations?
PVP Helm enchant (60 Str, 35 Resil) rocks, it’s an upgrade from the Twilight Highlands faction rep enchant (60 Str, 35 Mastery).
PVP and PVE shoulder enchants are both excellent, take your pick between 25 Crit or 25 Resil.
Note that you can purchase the PVP helm and shoulder enchants either with Honor points or TB tokens.
so, Glyph of Dazing shield doesnt work. Not that it doesnt daze the target but there is not even a debuff on it.
sometimes i just dont understand how Blizz test his releases.
one day after 4.0.6 and so many bugs.
prot is unplayable without that daze. switched to ret.
Uh, you should have been a little bit more patient it was a bug and a hotfix corrected the daze issue late last night:
Paladins
* Glyph of Dazing Shield correctly causes Avenger’s Shield to daze the target, and only allows Avenger’s Shield to trigger the dazed effect.
Patience is a virtue sorely lacking in our community it seems, lol… I started to say, I did fine last night. I certainly would not think that AS not dazing would be enough of a problem to make someone change specs, but hey… stranger things have surely happened! Not trying to start a flame war, as to each his own, but as for me and my house, we shall serve the Prot, lol…
I mean I noticed that for some reason when I was dueling people in SW that fights were going on for a long time, now thinking back on it, probably due to this bug. So ownage should be back in order.
so I switched to ret and its just amazing fun. bb prot, you were a lot fun in wrath but now ret can heal more, do insane bursts and its fun to play. prot has only a better survivability and is very easy and boring to play.
well, good luck prots.
I have completed a 1st pass at the Guide for Patch 4.0.6.
I am not going to document functionality that was accidentally broken but already hotfix’d (e.g. the Daze effect from Dazing Shield glyph).
Please let me know if I’ve missed anything!
Disarm reduction is now 60% ;)
Hey y’all… we discussed a week or so back the idea of taking the double 2-piece bonus by equipping 3 Ret pieces and 2 Holy pieces… Well, I thought just for the heck of it I would revisit the idea this evening. However, I could not equip more than 1 of my ‘Holy’ pieces. If I equipped the legs, I could not equip the shoulders, and vice versa.
So they ‘fixed’ that as well… Maybe it was in the notes, heck I don’t know, I can’t wrap my mind around all of it :-/
And yeah, I noticed my AP is down to 9187 completely unbuffed.
However, I could not equip more than 1 of my ‘Holy’ pieces
That’s weird, Blizzard has said that while they did not like people stacking double 2-pc bonuses they were not going to change it until Season 10 (next Arena season).
I noticed my AP is down to 9187 completely unbuffed.
The set bonuses were reduced for the primary stat for all classes.
So everyone was “nerfed”
Not sure what’s happening, but I am now currently able to equip the mixed gear for the dual 2-piece bonuses again… Hmmm…
With all gems/chants being essentially equal, I’m weighing a loss of over 1000 AP against a gain of 4% damage reduction across the board…
Anyone have any pertinent input? How do you think this stacks up?
What are you seeing for a spell damage and spell crit gain vs what you were getting out of strength conversion? Do you notice a difference exchanging all the haste on the legs for crit?
It’s something I’d been interested in as I’d started gearing up but opted out of for the 4p judgement bonus, but would still like to revisit.
If you have any recount data on a test dummy that you can share, that would be awesome.
No “Dummy” testing yet, but just some basic stats that I made note of last night…
They are pretty much gemmed and chanted alike, only difference is I have the lower level Therazane +30 Str/Crit chant on the Holy shoulders, whereas the Ret shoulders have the nice PvP chant. The following is UNBUFFED…
With my full (4-piece bonus) Ret set, I have:
* Dmg 2562-3285
* Dps 1139.7
* Attack Power 9267
* Resil 3097 (32.53% damage reduction)
* Spell Power 2763
* Mana Regen 1195
* Armor 129k
* Mana pool 24957
And with Holy Legs and Shoulders equipped, I have:
* Dmg 2350-3072
* Dps 1048.8
* Attack Power 8125
* Resil 3473 (36.48% damage reduction)
* Spell Power 3019
* Mana Regen 1274
* Armor 130k
* Mana pool 33927
I do have Recount, but I’m not familiar with HOW TO get the info out of it and into my computer…
With all gems/chants being essentially equal, I’m weighing a loss of over 1000 AP against a gain of 4% damage reduction across the board…
You don’t need the double-Resil bonus as Prot. We have terrific survivability compared to other classes.
And most of the time your opponents (assuming they are competent) will be focus firing squishier targets.
I’d stick with the 4-pc MDPS set bonus instead of doubling up on the 2-pc bonuses if I were you.
Happy Friday to ye!
I was already thinking the same thing, especially with the fact of losing a substantial amount of STRength, more than 1000 AP, etc…
A friend who is a Holy Paladin had asked me about it, thus bringing it back to my mind. What do you think about it from THAT p.o.v.? Healers being squishier, ya think it would be a good thing for Holy Pally to try?
He just changed servers to join me in my new PvP-based guild , and we’ll likely be starting right in doing some Arena while we get a Rated BG team together.
A friend who is a Holy Paladin had asked me about it, thus bringing it back to my mind. What do you think about it from THAT p.o.v.? Healers being squishier, ya think it would be a good thing for Holy Pally to try?
Well, Paladin is different from the other 3 healing classes in that we only have 2 sets of PVP gear.
Healers of the other classes (Druid, Priest, and Shaman) can stack the Caster PVP set along with the Healer PVP set to have Int as well as the double Resil bonus.
For a Holy Pally , stacking 2-pc of the Scaled Set would be a significant hit to their mana pool. So I think a Holy Pally should stick with the Holy set.
Hey guys, pally not yet fully levelled but i am finding that I am running out of keyboard room (Resstricting myself to the “1-5” keys and the F,G,E and R keys atm. I was wondering how to write a macro that would let me cast Hammer of Wrath on a target if below 20% health, if not then cast Crusader strike, and if they are out of range of CS is on CD then cast Judgement. I figure I can fit 3 keys into one and they are in the order of their most important. If anyone nows how to do this or can refer me to a site that can tell me it would be much appreciated! thanks
I was wondering how to write a macro that would let me cast Hammer of Wrath on a target if below 20% health, if not then cast Crusader strike, and if they are out of range of CS is on CD then cast Judgement
This hasn’t been possible since TBC launched years ago. Blizzard wants you to specify which skill to use. A macro is not going to choose which spell to cast for you (with the exception of castsequence which uses a fixed order).
That’s a bummer, I like your cs/ judgement macro, can it modified so that it can work out of melée range as well? (firing off judgement only of course)?
No, you can’t make a macro decide which spell to cast based on range.
Just Helped a Disc Priest on my server get his points…. we went 5-0! low levels but still. id like to try that comp for a while.
ARGG unlimited Whiptail means plenty of hurricane decks, going for way cheaper then i bought mine! and it got nerfed (or fixed) so im not sure i want to use it
trying to make money myself to get my Landslide enchant. Need one more win with points to get my arena weap!!! exciting :)
How do you fight other prot paladins in 1vs1? I have a “tactic” but it is very dangerous. What do you do in such a situation?
I was in an arena match recently and we were the only ones left. When we were both defensive there was no way we could have killed each over. After half an hour of nothing I mounted when I had a chance and was running around in hope that he would leave the arena from lack of patience, both of us having the “prot paladin mentality” :D, this did not happen and after 15 minutes I decided to start attacking him and not wasting any holy power for heals and using only Seal of Truth. As a result we both got down to less then 15% and winning was a possibility now. I won only because I was lucky to do enough damage that he could no longer attack me because he had to constantly spam Word of Glory.
Lol ya, i just fought a DK while herbing in uldum. He was Blood spec ad with both of our self heals going we couldnt get anywhere. I wanted to know if i could finish him off but he hit so hard i had to use all my hopo on wogs.
After 5-10mins an ally jumped in and hleped me finish him off. I signed into a horde toon to say hi and express i prefer fair fights but it might have lasted too long. He lol’d and said he was glad someone stepped in.
stalemates do exist for sure.
I don’t do much arena but am running rated bgs with my guild almost daily.. Would you say that prot palas are the strongest flag carriers? If not, which of the tanks, and why?…
Feral Druid used to be the king of FC’ing, because of their (former) incredible mobility and durability. Now since they can’t shift out of roots, they’re not as amazing as they used to be.
AFAIK, Resto Druid is still a strong FC.
Prots are solid FC, but our mobility can be limited at times without a Cleanser.
our mobility is not too limited. with Hand o freedom. . man whats up with us people. we try and say to stik together in a bg and i see no one in groups, everyone is always trying to play super man and take the flag against 5 peope gaurding. or dont protect flag because they wanna wait till you die and get flag, and your on your own. i noticed that the alliance always stiks in groups no matter what. but us horde are anti- social lol.
Man, prot get’s a lot of crap on arena forums. I get a lot of folks on AJ getting actually mad at the idea of a “tank” spec participating in arena matches, it’s kind of weird. First of all, none of them seem to know what they’re talking about and second, who cares? It’s just another spec that some people are good at playing. gee whiz.
folks on AJ getting actually mad at the idea of a “tank” spec participating in arena matches, it’s kind of weird.
The WoW community (in-game, forums, etc) is the most narrow-minded playerbase I’ve seen in any MMORPG in terms of what is viable and what is not.
“Tanks” have had a place in PVP in other games for years, including recent titles such as LOTRO, Warhammer, Aion, etc. Warhammer’s implementation of tanks was superb – especially with the “Guard” mechanic which split damage between the guarded target and the tank.
First of all, none of them seem to know what they’re talking about and second, who cares?
As you said, many of the people criticizing Prot have limited or no experience with the spec.
totally aggree, outside Stormwind people dont give me much respect… even afew taunts and jeers
at this time they all have better gear so im not winning many duels.
I recently lost my 2s partner for a few weeks so i asked a guildy if i could run some with him for points tomorrow… he said “youre prot right” and no matter how i explained it he wasnt open to it.
but then i go into a bg and get 2nd or 3rd in damage done and i know that ‘I’ know at least that it is viable… or should i say WE know :)
Undeniably, there is some stigma on prot pallys in arenas and, to a lesser degree, in battleground settings. Many of the purists are of the uninformed opinion that if you’re not doing 100% of your maximum damage or healing that you have no place in arena. The facet that they fail to see is survivability.
As prot, we have a truckload more survivability and take vastly less healing, which allows for more options in team comps. We can reliably group with dps classes that have off-heals and that extra dps more than makes up for the loss of damage of prot.
On why we, as prot, can typically be atop the damage meters in battlegrounds, it’s really simple. As a result of our self heals and defensive cooldowns we have vastly more uptime in combat. Less time running back from the graveyard means more time kicking ass and taking names.
And yes, the prot stigma does make finding teammates a huge pain in the ass. I’ve had the damnedest time finding a reliable, solid arena partner. Hell, I’d give my left nut if I could clone myself and be my own arena partner with my prot warrior opposite my prot paladin.
Hey Tau I was wondering which trinket is better for prot/ret. I have the Bloodthirsty Gladiator’s Insignia of Victory which has a chance to give 920 str when you deal damage and love it. I was wondering though is it a good idea to replace heart of solace with the Bloodthirsty trink that when you use it gives 1520 str and has a cooldown of 2 minutes. Seems to me that heart of solace is better imo.
I was wondering though is it a good idea to replace heart of solace with the Bloodthirsty trink that when you use it gives 1520 str and has a cooldown of 2 minutes. Seems to me that heart of solace is better imo.
Are you Human? I’m assuming yes.
Heart of Solace provides Haste which is not a good stat for Prot. Therefore I would not recommend using it in PVP.
If you can use both the Insignia and Badge and their cooldowns are separate (I haven’t tested personally although I do have both trinkets), you should go with that. Or use DMC: Hurricane.
Woohoo! joined up with a gearing enhance shammy tonight! I was just making up a new team and was going to try soloing in 2s just push myself to learn and since i was having trouble finding a partner.
While i was making the team i saw a post of someone looking for 2s partner for points. i of course said id go and when they didnt ask me my spec i new i had an in. Once i sawa he was a shammy I had to ask him and sure enough he is enhance! So we went 3-1 and he got a weapon and put avalanche on it. and then we faced some tougher comps but still did ok.
After a couple where i was top dmg i asked him to tell his friends that prot can do damage. he said was now a believer. lol we agreed to team up solidly and work on strategies and stuff in the coming weeks… Bonecracker with Landslide tomorrow too. pretty stoked!
Jealous. I had some good matches with an unholy dk the other night. I dueled an enh shammy last night and he agreed to do some 2s in the future with me, but I don’t know if he’ll be on tomorrow night. Here’s hoping. I should get my bonecracker tomorrow too.
Oh nice! I suppose i should have gone for it strait off but i had herioc smites reaver and i really wanted to stack some resil. Im pretty stoked to try this comp out, other than seeing Taugrimm adn Kashmir i had a high level mage, who was helping me learn some stuff, tell me Enhance shamm would be a great comp for me. going good so far. ill have to make some videos this week once we get our groove. :)
After reading this guide I found out I should not have bought the slicer which I already did before I found this guide. I did some searching to find out why the slicer had less top end damage and I found an interesting post on the EU battle.net forums with a blue response. It seems the slicers damage may be changed in the next content patch! http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1689709296 <- This is a link to the post I am refering to if you feel like reading it.
Just a few corrections to my post: the blue said “Future content update” Not next patch as I previously stated. Sorry for my error
That’s awesome, I hope the Slicer gets fixed. A lot of players took it not realizing it’s inferior for PVP.
Just a suggestion for those like myself who use the standard UI. I have the ‘extra’ action bars (bottom L/R, side L/R) equipped, which leaves the ‘scrolling’ action bar. If you’re like me, you sometimes accidentally make that bar scroll to the other, meaning you no longer have the abilities you thought you had, lol…
So I finally took it on myself to Unbind the bindings that make the bars switch/scroll.
My Mouse is a Logitech that has the standard 2 buttons plus scroll wheel, plus 2 more buttons behind the scroll wheel. (And yes, I’m looking into getting something like the G700 gaming mouse.) Then I bound Action Bar 1 on the small mouse button on L, and Bar 2 on the R.
I set up Bars 1 and 2 identical, except #1 has CS (makes sense, as it is single target), and #2 has HotR in same position. Depending on the situation, I can quickly choose with just a single button-click which one I want to use.
Hope this helps someone. I have found a lot of help on this site – Thanks Taugrim!
I’ve been recording some stuff lately with fraps. I might edit it together later to throw up on youtubes. I don’t really have anything to show off, but it would be cool to start up some convos, get some tips and bolster the community a little :)
Please do. I would love to see what other prots (in addition to Taugrim) are doing. Not just how they play either. I think it would be nice to see what you guys are doing with your UIs, etc as well.
I know that we don’t have discussion forum functionality here, but maybe if we ask nicely enough, we could convince the boss to post a “share your vids/pics/screenshots” article where we could post this stuff rather than spread it out over his other articles.
Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought of UI actually. I have what I consider to be a rather unique UI setup too. I’ll add some bits about that.