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Video version: My In-Depth Protection Paladin Guide for M+ in Season 2 of TWW! (11.1)

Note: M+ tanking is a problem that doesn’t have one unique solution. I highly recommend looking at what others do as a guide but trying to think of things on your own as much as possible. Also this guide will probably be updated a lot in the future as we learn things. If something is wrong here feel free to contact me!

Is paladin going to be good in 11.1? Prot paladin is going to be relatively worse than season 1, since we got a few nerfs and the tier set is not as good for damage. However it still comes with somewhat OK self sustain along with strong cds (although those cds will now be longer thanks to the nerf to uther’s counsel) and group utility. I see it being a strong utility tank but not as good survivability wise as some other options.

Talents

Default build : (lightsmith)

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(templar)

Note: In season 2 Templar is doing a lot better than season 1 (especially damage wise) since the tier set works better with templar and tempered in battle was significantly nerfed. However Lightsmith still has somewhat better utility and self sustain.

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Raid I change my build for almost every boss in raid, my logs are here so you can reference for talents: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/illidan/yodafotm

Season 1 sheet Yoda's dungeon talent cheatsheet for prot pally

Overall for season 2 M+ I would suggest starting out with lightsmith and trying templar once you are more comfortable in the keys. I’m not sure what build / hero talent we will end up playing but I am relatively sure that templar is capable of doing higher DPS in M+.

Choices: Spec tree:

1 Blessing of Spellwarding, Inspiring Vanguard (pick 1). You take inspiring vanguard if not playing spellwarding.

2 Moment of Glory, Eye of Tyr, Basion of Light, Inspiring Vanguard, Uther’s Counsel (pick 2) A lot of paladins in TGP preferred moment of glory, however I am still a believer in bastion of light for most dungeons. You can also drop Uther’s Counsel to play both if you want after the nerf. Inspiring Vanguard can be taken as a simpler option that offers almost as much value. Eye of Tyr can be taken if you need an extra defensive for certain tank busters although it is probably not needed in season 2 (but you have to play it for templar).

3 Crit wings vs Sentinel I don’t think you can afford to lose the damage of crit wings since tanks are so low on damage already but sentinel does still exist.

4 As templar, you need to give up a talent point for inner light which can be bulwark of righteous fury or uther’s counsel.

Note about refining fire This was nerfed but it’s still better than two points in tyr’s enforcer so lol.

Lightsmith tree:

1 Divine Guidance vs Blessed Assurance Blessed assurance if playing hotr in raid, otherwise divine guidance in M+. Note that when using Divine Guidance it’s best to use it when it will NOT heal any allies if possible as the healing effect is much weaker than the damage effect, and it splits equally among all targets (although this is not always in your control).

2 Tempered in battle vs Authoritative Rebuke Tempered in battle is broken, always play this.

3 Divine inspiration vs forewarning divine inspiration is more overall dps/shielding but can result in awkward tempers and less control of your weapons so it’s reasonable to play forewarning as well (~1% dps loss).

Class tree:

1 Fist of Justice, Blinding Light, Afterimage, Cleanse Toxins, Light’s Countenance, Turn Evil, Holy Reprieve, Blessing of Freedom/Steed of Liberty (pick 4) The first gate offers a variety of utility, just take whatever ones you prefer or need for the dungeon.

2 Consecrated Ground, Sacrifice of the Just, Blessing of Protection, Improved Bop pick 2. The second gate is relatively cramped since a few talents have been moved here from the capstone tier (divine purpose / divine toll / resonance which are all mandatory in M+). Improved bop also reduces the cooldown of spellwarding if talented. With uther’s counsel that makes it just under a 3 minute cd.

3 Eye for an Eye, Light’s Revocation, Judgment of Light, Lightbearer,points in previous gate pick 2. I’m unsure how strong eye of an eye will be starting off with it talented to test how much damage it does. The second gate is very cramped also and these are the only optional talents in the final gate so if you want to get conc slow + bop + minute sac then you may need to make sacrifices here. Lightbearer may also be playable in some dungeons where AOE healing is difficult.

4 Righteous Protection vs Lead the Charge vs Holy Ritual Righteous Protection is worth taking in any dungeon where it does something (any dungeon with poison/disease) since the

other two talents are kinda bad IMO, but you need one of the three in order to path to Seal of Might. If there are no poisons or diseases in the whole dungeon then just take lead the charge.

Stats

Haste > crit > mastery >= vers Haste is the best stat for higher uptime on defensives. After playing / simming some more crit is IMO the second best stat it has very good offensive stat weight and decent value against physical damage from parry.

Mastery is the best defensively other than haste (probably better than crit) but has low offensive value. If you get to ~10,800 mastery (9420 with shaman buff) then you can get to 100% spell block with faith in the light + barricade of faith + improved holy shield which is relevant for some tank buster bosses.

In-depth explanation: Why I play haste/crit on Prot pally and when to take mastery for 100…

Vers is normally a good stat for tanks, especially ones with self-healing but paladin’s other stats are so valuable that vers is probably the worst here.

As templar, crit is your best AOE stat by far due to wrathful descent.

Trinkets

There will be trinket tuning so these are not final, but the best trinkets so far are:

Damage: Tome of Light’s Devotion (offense mode only, defense mode sucks) Viscera of Coalesced Hatred

Stats: Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker House of Cards Signet of the priory

Absorb: Chromebustible Bomb Suit Ringing Ritual Mud Scrapfield 9001

Delve trinkets (maybe good short term) Funhouse lens Mechano-Core Amplifier Suspicious Energy Drink

Recommended: Tome of Light’s Devotion + Bomb suit. Can drop bomb suit for viscera or a stat trinket if you want to do more damage but it may be hard to survive (stats are in order best to worst). Scrapfield 9001 is also decent to use with bombsuit if you want to play more defensive.

Embellishments

Sword/shield are great early season crafts for a boost in ilvl + power (ascension + writhing armor band). For BIS endgame setup you need 678 weapon + titan of industry (mythic raid shield) and double dawnthread or dawnthread + binding of binding.

Special Items

Titan of Industry is the bis shield on mythic. Cyrce’s circlet is OK to start with but will be replaced later. The Jastor Diamond is good but not good enough to overcome heroic to mythic ilvl.

Cooldown Overview

Avenging Wrath Wings may not appear to be a defensive cooldown if you skip sentinel but it actually does give you quite a few defensive benefits such as extra holy power from judgment + access to hammer of wrath, 20% increased healing for all your self heals, and extra crit (and a temper if you play lightsmith). We want to be sending this off cooldown for damage as well as long as it will last most of the duration.

Eye of Tyr - Without inner light this is a 1minute cd, useful for some bosses but not great otherwise. As templar this is a much more impactful cooldown due to sacrosanct crusade plus the extra hammer of light you get. Remember that you can hold your hammer of light and don’t have to immediately use it (it’s available for 12 seconds) the most relevant reason to do this is to not override the 12% extra haste you get from undisputed ruling if you used another hammer recently from light’s devotion it’s almost never correct to slam hammer of lights back to back.

Ardent Defender This is on a very short cooldown with righteous protector (even after nerfs), usually sending one on pull if it’s available and it should be up before you need it again. This also has a cheat death effect attached to it so it can be considered a trump against most tank busters just make sure you have a wog ready for immediately afterward. Be careful as in season 2 a lot of tank busters come with dots that follow up so the wog afterward is quite important (and sometimes is not enough).

Guardian of Ancient Kings This is a relatively long cooldown but it is very strong. Generally try not to overlap this with other cooldowns as it is usually strong enough to survive most situations by itself. It gets significant cdr from golden val’kyr and righteous protector (more significant on aoe).

Divine Shield With final stand this becomes our strongest cooldown, granting complete immunity for 8 seconds while keeping aggro. It can be also be used to immune / drop certain debuffs. Definitely try not to overlap this with anything, you should also usually sac someone

when you use this as well. Be careful as it can sometimes bug out and not taunt anything, and it won’t taunt mobs at long range having a cancelaura macro ready is important.

Lay on Hands It’s viable to talent into a bunch of things that reduce the cooldown of lay on hands with everything talented it can be ~2mins cd depending on haste / lust / etc. This is really good at combating paladin’s mana issues since instead of using 3 wogs to top yourself you can just use one off-global lay. If you have light’s revocation then you don’t need to worry about putting yourself on forbearance for bubble.

Spellward This can very often be used as a personal defensive cooldown since many tank busters now feature both a physical and magical component. As always, keep forbearance in mind.

Bop This can be used on yourself in niche situations to either take off debuffs or immune a tank buster. Generally needs to be canceled immediately if used on yourself in a trash pull, and canceled before taunt wears off (3 seconds) if you are using it on a boss.

Gift of the Golden Val’kyr This isn’t technically a usable cooldown but it is a very useful proc, just try not to override it with real GoAK (if you use real GoaK first it extends the buff, if you use it afterward then it overrides).

Defensive rotation

Basic mit make sure you are always in consecration if you have any chance to die, and try to maintain 100% uptime on shield of the righteous. This usually just occurs naturally since you aren’t really spending any holy power on anything else. In addition, you will want to maintain as high uptime as possible on barricade of faith + strength in adversity against most trash pulls which is accomplished by using avenger’s shield close to off cooldown. In most trash pulls you will be trying to snipe interrupts with it as well.

Cooldowns We want to be using Avenging Wrath, and Sacred Weapon / Holy Bulwark as close to off cooldown as possible for damage these have defensive benefits as well so the idea is to time your other defensives for situations when your dual-purpose abilities are not available. Eye of tyr is also on this list if you are playing templar. A tough pull could look something like:

Wings + Ardent -> proc golden val’kyr -> real GoaK -> lay on hands -> bubble -> ardent again -> kite (or external)

Do keep in mind that you will often go into pulls with things on cooldown so you will need to get creative to make things work out.

As templar you would want to send eye of tyr + hammer of light on pull as well.

Offensive Rotation

AOE (interrupts available in pack) Avenger’s shield (interrupt) > Judgment > Blessed Hammer (avenger’s shield on cooldown) > Hammer of Wrath > blessed hammer (avenger’s shield available)

AOE (no interrupts available) Avenger’s Shield (maintain defensive buffs) > Judgment > Avenger’s Shield (damage only) > Hammer of Wrath (wings) > Blessed Hammer > Hammer of Wrath

NOTE: When playing bulwark of righteous fury, it’s important not to override your stacks so make sure there’s one SOTR in between each avenger’s shield. This is especially relevant during resonance and moment of glory.

ST Judgment > Hammer of Wrath (in wings) > Avenger’s Shield > Hammer of Wrath (no wings) > Blessed Hammer

Shield of the righteous is off global so just push it whenever possible unless you need to pool for a res or word of glory yourself without shining light (you very rarely would actually do that). Note that while it is off global, it has its own internal cd so it’s usually better to use one per global in periods of high holy power generation. With the new tier set + divine purpose + wings + bastion of light sometimes you will not be able to spend faster than you can generate without dropping globals, in this situation you would use avenger’s shield or consecrate.

The only optimization you need to do with lightsmith is to not overlap sacred weapons with the automatic / free procs you get (from divine inspiration and blessing of the forge), also spend Divine Guidance at 5 stacks on consecration. Ideally also use sacred weapons during wings after your free one falls off as well, and make sure you target someone who doesn’t already have the buff (this is the only time afaik that you need to target someone with sacred weapon for damage).

If you play templar then avenger’s shield becomes lowest priority in all situations unless you can guarantee an interrupt while shake the heavens is up or need to maintain defensive buffs.

Using the tier set (TWW season 2)

This tier set is extremely strong defensively. Whenever it procs, you will want to spam as many sotr as possible. The refunded holy power not only gives you extra hits of sotr (and empyrean

hammer from templar) but also massive cdr on most of your defensives thanks to righteous protector, plus the free GoAK.

With luck of the draw up you want to prioritize generating as much holy power as possible (so non-interrupt avenger’s shield is not as high priority). However if you find that you would overcap holy power, that’s when you use avenger’s shield / consecrate (usually happens if you get back to back 2 or 3hp refunds or proc divine purpose).

Using your utility

Prot paladin has the best utility of all tanks IMO. Using it well makes you feel like you played a role in every single thing that went well in the key, which is extremely fulfilling and one of the main draws of prot paladin.

Tempered in battle - This is both the most OP and the most hated talent for lightsmith prot paladin. In season 2 it is nerfed and can only proc once per use however there is no limit to how strong that proc can be. Be careful about killing your dps with this since if you take their health they may die to damage that they would otherwise survive the counter to this is simply playing well with mitigation when you have a sacred weapon out. There are a few cool tricks you can do with tempered in battle:

1. Bubble + temper. This effectively makes tempered in battle a 60%max hp heal on any party member with weapon who hits 40% since they will attempt to equalize health with you but bubble will immune any damage you were going to take from tempered in battle plus any raidwide damage that you were trying to save them from.

2. Temper as a spot heal - a lot of bosses will put out debuffs on your allies, if you have sacred weapon available you can toss them a weapon and it will usually heal for quite a bit.

3. Temper on mc’d mobs - Temper in battle equalizes based on total health, not health percentage. Any mob your party takes control of via control undead or dominate mind in M+ is generally going to have multiple times your health, so if you give that mob a sacred weapon then it’s equivalent to a lay on hands on yourself if you hit 40% during the weapon. Be careful because if the mob stops being on your team during the weapon then it can bug out and kill you.

4. Holy Bulwark + lay on hands. Not many people know but tempered in battle actually has two parts - overhealing to allies with holy bulwark will be transferred to any allies with holy bulwark, so lay on hands effectively tops both players.

Avenger’s shield This is the most noticeably utility prot paladin has, divine toll + avenger’s shield + grand crusader resets make it so you can output way more interrupts than any other class. A common theme in multi-caster pulls is for you to solo one caster (or two with resonance up) while your group handles another one. Note that the extra hammer proc from punishment can also proc grand crusader which resets avenger’s shield, sometimes allowing you to chain interrupts in quick succession on multiple enemies.

Hammer of Justice This is a long single target stun. It can be used to make time for interrupts to come back (which has more value than another tank’s stun since you can use this to play around your own shield resets). It can also be used to stop something from meleeing you if you’re short on defensives or need to reset stacks, or stop a non-interruptible cast, or on fixate mobs.

Blinding light Nothing special here, just a 1:30cd aoe stop.

Blessing of Sacrifice The low cooldown on this is another one of the main strengths of prot paladin. You can use it if you know a cast is about to go off on someone, or if unavoidable damage is coming and you know they have no personal (or you just don’t believe in them to push one themselves). Try and use this when you bubble. It can also immune poisons/diseases if you take righteous protection which is useful in some dungeons (and can save you mana).

Blessing of Spellwarding - While this is usually better used on yourself, you can also use it on allies to immune certain effects or just to save them from AOE damage.

Blessing of Protection This makes the target immune to physical effects. It can be used to immune melees from aggro, physical damage casts, or to drop physical debuffs such as bleeds (as well as myriad other uses which I won’t list).

Cleanse Toxins You can dispel poison and disease, be careful using this too often as prot paladin mana pool can sometimes be under attack and this costs 10%.

Lay on hands This is an off-global instant full heal, you can use this either to help out a tough raid damage event or if you notice someone is about to die from something your healer didn’t predict.

Word of Glory After the nerfs and mana changes, it is a lot less practical to use this on others since it heals them for much less than yourself try and do something else to save them but there are rare cases where this can be good if used on others.

Blessing of Freedom You have access to this as well which removes all slows and makes players immune to slow. In rare cases it can also immune players from multi-part abilities if part of the ability is a slow.

Holy Bulwark - When your lightsmith activation is on holy shield you can use it on an ally to save them from 1shots or just as an HPS gain.

Random tricks / macros

1. I play with two important macros to help me manage interrupts - the first one is focus avenger’s shield (casts it at my focus target) and the second is target focus. I use this to target either a prio mob or a different caster, then quickly swap to my focus before getting a resonance proc.

/cast [@focus] avenger’s shield

/target focus

Of course, surely everyone has focus kick by now in M+ but in case you don’t have:

/cast [@focus] rebuke

Note that this macro will only kick your focus, there are some more complicated macros that can conditionally kick your focus/mouseover/target but I don’t use those, I only have the baseline rebuke and the one that kicks my focus.

2. I don’t play with these, but you can probably find various mouseover macros on the internet for the abilities you cast on others.

3. However I do use a few macros to help with spellbop/bop/sac:

(separate macros) /cast [@charactername] blessing of spellwarding /cast [@charactername] blessing of sacrifice /cast [@charactername] blessing of protection

Usually you can write this in before a key if you know in that key that you will be casting one of these abilities on a certain player.

This one is also useful:

/cast [@targettarget] blessing of sacrifice

This will sac your target’s current target, useful if bosses target a player before doing damage to them (ex: blightbone in TNW). Similar macros also work for freedom/bop/spellbop but those situations come up less frequently.

4. Cancelaura is mentioned a few times, you very often will want to cancel bop and sometimes want to cancel bubble as well if it bugs out and fails to taunt. Feel free to put both lines into the same macro since you will never have both active on you.

/cancelaura divine shield /cancelaura blessing of protection

5. You can pull through some walls with divine toll resonance. It’s done by casting divine toll as normal then targeting a mob that is in range but through a wall when resonance is about to come up.

6. Rite of Sanctification will fall off if you change any talents, but the ui will still show that your weapon has a buff. You need to re-enchant your weapon with it every time you change talents or you will play without the extra 2% str / 5% armor. There is a separate buff that looks like a scroll (id: 433550) that you will have if you have the buff.

7. To use sacred weapon on a specific mob:

/target (mob name here) /use sacred weapon /targetlasttarget