World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight – Protection Paladin Complete Guide

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• Why Protection Paladin?

• Best Protection Races

• Best Talents For Protection Paladin

• How To Play The Rotation

• Best Stats And Gear For Protection Paladin

Whether you are a new player or a long-time veteran, World of Warcraft: Dragonflight should provide you with a fresh new WoW experience, regardless of which class you choose to play. The new talent trees have diversified build options and given many specialisations multiple ways to customise their character's setup. Even with being a staple of the WoW scene, Protection Paladin comes armed with some new tools, alongside strong burst damage and a multitude of useful utility options for both you and your group.

This guide will showcase why you should try out Protection Paladin in PvE content. It will run through the best talent builds, rotation, consumables, and pre-raid gear, alongside some helpful tips and tricks.

Why Protection Paladin?

Best Protection Races

Although WoW races differ in their passive and active abilities, the gaps are minimal, and you should always go for whichever you like the best. Visually liking your character will help your gameplay a lot and unless you are looking to try and completely min-max your output, the difference in racial effects will not have much impact on your enjoyment of the spec. That being said, there are some nice options to consider if you intend to try out Protection Paladin.

Best Talents For Protection Paladin

Protection Paladin Class Talent Tree

A shared tree between all three Paladin specialisations, the class tree will let you gather a bunch of extremely useful spells and as some powerful passives. Your route through the tree will vary slightly depending on your build, but the core spells remain very similar.

Similarly to the other Paladin specs, Prot chooses to pick up Of Dusk and Dawn. A very strong passive talent, it will tend to have some impact on how you play. Building up to five Holy Power and then back down to zero is fairly important, as you want to maintain the damage reduction and also the damage/healing increase buffs.

Best Protection Paladin Raid Talent Build

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The Protection raid talent build focuses on reducing the AoE capacity of Avenger's Shield and puts more emphasis on its single target damage. The differences are not that large between this and the Dungeon build, as most of Prot's abilities are used in the same way whether you are facing one target or many.

Ferren Marcus' Favour causes Avenger's Shield to deal increased damage to the primary ta. And a standard raid build emphasises single target damage, as burning down the boss' hp is typically the priority in a raid encounter.

Some of your Core Talents include:

• Blessed Hammer: which turns your Crusader Strike into a spinning AoE hammer, reducing damage enemies deal to you
• Ardent Defender: a core defensive, which will save you from dying once during the duration, alongside reducing your damage taken
• Grand Crusader: a proc that resets your Avenger's Shield cooldown, based on avoiding an attack or using Blessed Hammer
• Bastion of Light: an old active, now taken in Dragonflight, this active ability causes your next three Avenger's Shields or Shields of the Righteous not to incur a Holy Power cost
• Eye of Tyr: returning from the Legion expansion, this 1-minute active deals a burst of AoE damage and reduces damage taken from afflicted enemies

Best Protection Paladin Dungeon Talent Build

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Due to the nature of your Consecration spell, the Protection dungeon build takes a few talents that augment your AoE potential. Consecrated Ground expands the ground effect and causes it to slow enemies, which is vital for being able to kite effectively. Prot lacks slows in general, so this is very welcome, especially if your group lacks crowd control.

Additional class tree talents include Cleanse Toxins and Blinding Light, which are generally much more helpful in Mythic Plus content, owing to the higher number of enemies and debuffs encountered. Being able to help out your healer with important dispels helps to make Prot one of the utility tanks around, and added to your powerful Word of Glory off heals, the spec can shine in a supportive role.

Bulwark of Righteous Fury is a former Shadowlands legendary and helps to empower your Shield of the Righteous damage, which is especially good against multiple enemies. Additional targets hit thanks to Soaring Shield means you can quickly build up stacks and unleash them in an Avenging Wrath combo for large damage.

The removal of Holy Power gain from Avenger's Shield means Prot is not quite as spammy as it was in Shadowlands, and you may find yourself having to concentrate to keep up your Shield of the Righteous mitigation. If you know it will drop, kiting can be a good next option, as you don't want to be face-tanking high-difficulty enemies without the damage reduction.

Be careful when kiting, as running out of your Consecration means you will lose your damage taken reduction from Divine Bulwark.

How To Play The Rotation

The Basics

As a Tank specialisation, Protection strikes a balance between dishing out damage and using their abilities to reduce incoming damage to stay alive. While you are not solely focused on damage like a DPS, it is your job to hold the aggro of enemies, and doing as much damage as possible will aid you in this task.

Similarly to the other Paladin specs, Prot utilises the Holy Power resource. Certain abilities will generate Holy Power, up to a maximum of five, and others will spend it, using three at a time. It is the core gameplay loop of building and spending that Prot relies on, and being comfortable with how the resource works is essential.

You do not want to overcap, i.e. waste Holy Power by continuing to generate above five.

Prot Paladin follows a pretty simple damaging rotation and is centered around keeping your abilities on cooldown. Your primary rotational spells are:

Shift Avenger's Shield above Judgment in your priority list when there is more than one enemy present.

These are your core damaging spells, and you will build and spend Holy Power through them. However, there is one more core spell that also consumes Holy Power; Word of Glory. This is a strong single-target heal that can be applied to either yourself or an ally. Is it a great tool for self sustain and helping your healer(s) out with the health of the group.

For pure damage, you would want to only spend Holy Power on Shield of the Righteous, but you can use Word of Glory liberally, depending on the situation. If your health is fine, it is essential you prop up the group with this spell, as part of playing Protection Paladin well is looking out for your team members, as well as places to use your utility spells.

As a tank, you also have a number of important defensive cooldowns:

While some of these cooldowns are pretty long, they can be substantially reduced by selecting the best available talents as options, such as Righteous Protector, to help bring them down to a manageable timer via the spending of Holy Power.

These cooldowns are essential for keeping you alive if you are doing high-end content, and knowing when to use them is something the best Protection Paladins are aware of ahead of time. Try to practice using them and figuring out when they are necessary. Some are stronger than others, and blowing a big defensive on something avoidable could be costly in the long run.

Divine Shield is a good panic button but will drop all the aggro you currently have!

Protection Paladin Macros

One of the most important macros for any class and spec is combining your trinket uses with your cooldowns. This can be done by referencing the slot the trinket is currently equipped, either slot 13 or 14. You will want to combine trinkets with Avenging Wrath when playing a Protection Paladin.

• #showtooltip /cast Avenging Wrath /use 13

Another helpful macro can be to cancel certain buffs. Divine Shield will make you fully immune to all damage, but it will drop all of your aggro, and instead of right-clicking the buff, you can simply use this macro in place of the spell, and recast it to cancel the buff.

• #showtooltip /cast Divine Shield /cancelaura Divine Shield

If you need to interrupt an enemy at a set time, having them as your focus will allow you to use this macro for an easy interrupt rather than retargeting during the fight.

• #showtooltip /cast [@focus,harm,nodead] [ ] Rebuke

Due to having so many utility spells, there may be times you need to cast a certain helpful ability on an ally. Instead of having to target their player frame, you can use this macro in place of the spell, e.g. for Blessing of Freedom.

• #showtooltip
• /cast [@NAMEOFPLAYER] Blessing of Freedom

Best Stats And Gear For Protection Paladin

Once the first Dragonflight season begins, you will get most of your BiS (best in slot) PvE gear from the Vault of the Incarnates raid or high-level Mythic Plus. Before tackling that content, however, you will want to gear up using some easier methods. Both Mythic zero dungeons and early renown levels can set you up for a smooth entry into the season and can be farmed quite reliably without much time investment.

This list will prioritise items featuring the Haste stat, but also include a healthy mix of secondaries. Here are the following recommendations for your Best in Slot Pre Raid gear.

If you can either craft it yourself or have the gold to purchase them, then getting some gear from Blacksmithing is the ultimate option for pre-raid. However, at the start of the expansion, these pieces will be very expensive, and you might want to hold off buying any before your early raids or Mythic Plus. The list above is orientated towards easy-to-acquire gear, but if you want to reach maximum power for the start of the season, consider investing in some crafted items.

Stat Priority

Your primary stat as a Protection Paladin is Strength, and this should be your number one goal in acquiring, as it directly increases the damage of your spells and the Armor gained from your Shield of the Righteous. As a tank, you should also consider maximising your Armor and Stamina, as these will help to keep you alive, which is your main role. Additionally, you have four secondary stats to choose from:

• Critical Strike, which increases the chance for extra effective attacks and heals.
• Haste, which increases your attack speed and decreases certain cooldowns.
• Mastery, which grants damage reduction and chance to block magic damage whilst in your Consecration, overall chance to block, as well as Attack Power.
• Versatility, which increases damage and healing as well as reduces damage taken.

For survivability, your general stat priority should be:

• Strength > Haste > Mastery > Versatility > Critical Strike

Although Haste is your best secondary stat, once you reach around 25-30 percent, you can start prioritising other stats, as your rotation will be sufficiently smoothed out, and you will start to encounter diminishing returns,

Due to the flexible nature of secondary stats, you might want to try simming your character using tools such as Raidbots. This will let you know which stats to aim for regarding DPS output, and if you are not having any trouble surviving, investing in more damage will always be the next best thing.

Gems, Enchants, And Consumables

As noted above, you will want to go for Strength followed by Haste when gemming.

Your best gems will be:

• One Fierce Illuminated Diamond (Strength and Haste)
• Multiple Quick Ysemerald (Haste)

Gems are created via the Jewelcrafting profession, and you should try to socket the highest quality gems you can find, which will result in a higher amount of stats.

Your best enchants are:

Your list of consumables is as follows:

• Phial: Phial of Elemental Chaos (Raid) / Phial of the Eye in the Storm (Dungeon)
• Potion: Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power
• Health Potion: Refreshing Healing Potion
• Food: Hoard of Draconic Delicacies / Timely Demise
• Weapon Buff: Howling Rune

In the same way as acquiring your gems, try to get the highest quality consumables you can and remember to be well stocked up before taking on any end-game content.

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