Protection Paladin Playstyle and Rotation Guide

Protection Paladin is a fast-paced tank spec centred around the use of Holy Power. This resource can be generated by multiple short cooldown abilities like Judgment and Blessed Hammer, and can then be spent in sets of 3 on Shield of the Righteous, Word of Glory, or Hammer of Light (for Templar). In general you’ll be spending the vast majority of your Holy Power on Shield of the Righteous, as this will give you more damage output as well as allow you to maintain the defensive buff it provides. This ability is also separate from your normal GCD, so you’re able to use it alongside generator abilities which contributes to the fast pace of the spec.

Ensuring you continue to spend your holy power without overcapping is a core aspect of the spec, as spending this resource fuels CDR for major cooldowns including Ardent Defender, Guardian of Ancient Kings, Divine Shield, and Avenging Wrath. This means that properly executing your rotation is not only beneficial offensively, but also has a significant impact on your defensive uptime.

Survivability

When it comes to surviving as a Prot Paladin, there are several different layers of defensive buffs and cooldowns you have at your disposal. For general damage intake, you are usually safe by just maintaining Consecrate and Shield of the Righteous, which you’ll want to do at as close to 100% uptime as possible to smooth out incoming damage. Consecration can sometimes be difficult to maintain in heavy movement situations, so in these cases you can grab the Sanctuary talent if you can afford it, as this node basically solves all potential uptime issues you may face.

Outside of this initial line of defense, you also have quite a few defensive boosts tied to Avenger’s Shield, including an absorb shield from Bulwark of Order, as well as increases to your block and parry thanks to Barricade of Faith and Strength in Adversity when talented. Maintaining these buffs is particularly important when doing dangerous content, meaning you’ll want to be sure you are casting Avenger’s Shield at least once every 10 seconds.

When it comes to healing your main ability is Word of Glory, which can be cast on either yourself or an ally, though it gains an additional boost based on missing health if used on yourself. This can be further empowered by 3 different talents in Light of the Titans, Seal of Charity, and Hand of the Protector, however currently none of these see much use. As previously mentioned Word of Glory does cost holy power, however when you gain the Shining Light buff it becomes free to cast, so generally you’ll only want to use this ability while this buff is available to allow you to spend holy power on Shield of the Righteous instead. Like Avenger’s Shield, this ability also has a defensive buff tied to it when spec’d into Faith in the Light, which is quite a large boost to your durability when active, particularly if you’re looking to hit 100% spell block as we’ll discuss in the stat section.

Moving on to paladin’s signature cooldown, Avenging Wrath (or Sentinel) is a significant increase to both your offense and defense, meaning regardless of content you should be trying to maximize the number of times you can use this ability throughout a dungeon or raid encounter. This usually leads to you wanting to press this ability as close to on cooldown as possible, with the only exception being if you explicitly need to wait to burst something down (damage amp phase, important add spawn, etc) or if what you’re currently engaged with will die before you can use the full duration of the buff (and this death isn’t the end of a raid boss fight).

Using this on CD while also being able to hit things for the entire duration are both important aspects of this ability, as the CDR provided by Righteous protector gets amplified by the holy power generation increase from Sanctified Wrath, which you can then extend for longer thanks to Zealot’s Paragon, meaning having uptime while Avenging Wrath is active fuels your ability to have more overall uptime on its buff.

Finally we have your standard defensive CDs, which you can rotate between to handle large tank busters or just general moments of higher damage intake. Ardent Defender is your shortest cooldown defensive when you consider Resolute Defender CDR, plus it also prevents a single deadly attack if one occurs while it is active. Guardian of Ancient Kings is your standard “wall” ability for when a large defensive is required, but you also get the ability to proc this from the Gift of the Golden Val’kyr talent, which acts like a pseudo cheat death and is one of the stronger passive defensive tools available to Protection Paladins. Eye of Tyr is another defensive option, though it’s also a significant offensive cooldown for Templar, meaning that if you choose that hero spec you’ll likely just be using this ability on CD, similar to Avenging Wrath.

There are also a few different immunity abilities available to Prot, with Divine Shield, Blessing of Protection, and Blessing of Spellwarding. These are long cooldown, powerful buttons that can prevent an enormous amount of damage if used correctly, both on yourself as well as on allies in the case of BoP and Spellwarding. Something to keep in mind is that both BoP and Divine Shield will cause you to lose aggro if used on yourself, however you can prevent this when fighting a single mob if you pair it with Hand of Reckoning, forcing it to attack you despite being immune. This is particularly strong on boss encounters in both raid and dungeons where you are fighting a single enemy that has an individual heavy hitting attack or applies a dangerous debuff, though be aware the BoP only immunes you to physical based damage and debuffs, so for other forms of damage you’ll need to use Divine Shield or Spellwarding.

Speaking of Divine Shield, you can actually avoid using Hand of Reckoning entirely and use it against multiple enemies if you spec into Final Stand, which adds a 15yd AoE taunt to the ability for its entire duration, which allows you to safely use it without worrying about aggro, in fact this can be a great tool to get aggro back if you find yourself losing multiple mobs at once. This freedom makes Divine Shield your most powerful defensive tool when talented into Final Stand, allowing you to survive things that would cause other tanks to flop over, whether that be from direct hits or stacking periodic effects. Spellwarding is much easier to use as it does not have the same aggro side effect as the other immunities, so it’s a great defensive in boss fights that have heavy hitting magic hits and debuffs, as well as trash pulls that have a lot of tank targeted magic damage.

Rotation

In this section we’ll discuss your general rotation outside of cooldowns like Avenging Wrath, Eye of Tyr, and Divine Toll. For these abilities it’s generally best to send them on cooldown in order to maximize their uptime and number of uses.

Lightsmith Rotation

1. Consecration if not active OR with 5 stacks of Divine Guidance (if talented)
2. Sacred Weapon if Avenging Wrath is active AND the current buff duration of Sacred Weapon is <= 5 seconds in order to extend it and maximize Blessing of the Forge
3. Shield of the Righteous to not cap on holy power or if you get a Divine Purpose proc
4. Avenger’s Shield if there are 2 or more targets OR Moment of Glory is active
5. Hammer of the Righteous when empowered by Blessed Assurance (if talented)
6. Hammer of Wrath
7. Judgment
8. Holy Bulwark if you have 2 charges of Holy Armaments
9. Avenger’s Shield
10. Hammer of the Righteous or Blessed Hammer
11. Holy Bulwark if you have 1 charge of Holy Armaments
12. Word of Glory if free to cast with Shining Light to heal yourself or allies and trigger various CDR talents
13. Consecration if already active

Example Lightsmith Opener

1. Consecration pre-pull
2. Avenger’s Shield
3. Avenging Wrath
4. Hammer of Wrath
5. Judgment
6. Shield of the Righteous
7. Hammer of the Righteous
8. Judgment
9. Shield of the Righteous
10. Moment of Glory
11. Avenger’s Shield
12. Divine Toll
13. Follow respective rotation rules

Lightsmith Rotation Notes

Sacred Weapon’s buff duration follows pandemic rules, meaning that if you cast it while you are already buffed by Sacred Weapon then you will waste part of the duration if your current proc doesn't already have 5s or less remaining. This means you’ll want to keep an eye out for both Divine Inspiration procs as well as the buff you gain when using Avenging Wrath

Blessing of the Forge is an important piece of optimizing Lightsmith’s damage, as it provides a significant boost if you manage to overlap your Sacred Weapon with Avenging Wrath. Since you’re able to extend Avenging Wrath thanks to Zealot’s Paragon, the free Sacred Weapon you get doesn’t last for the entire duration, so if you chain a Sacred Weapon cast when the free cast has 5s or less remaining you ensure you don’t waste any of the buff duration while also maximizing its output. That being said, you don’t want to hold onto Sacred Weapon casts forever, so something like a timely Divine Inspiration proc could allow you to instead use Sacred Weapon outside of wings so that you can continue to generate charges of Holy Armaments.

Templar Rotation

1. Consecration if not active
2. Hammer of Light
3. Shield of the Righteous to prevent overcapping holy power
4. Avenger’s Shield if > 3 targets OR it would interrupt a spellcast with Punishment talented OR you need to refresh defensive buffs to survive (this is a DPS loss when Shake the Heavens is active)
5. Hammer of Wrath
6. Judgment
7. Blessed Hammer if Shake the Heavens is active
8. Word of Glory if free to cast with Shining Light AND Shake the Heavens is active (this is a damage increase thanks to Hammerfall even if you don’t need healing)
9. Avenger’s Shield
10. Blessed Hammer
11. Word of Glory if free to cast with Shining Light to heal yourself or allies and trigger various CDR talents
12. Consecration if already active

Example Templar Opener

1. Consecration pre-pull
2. Avenger’s Shield
3. Avenging Wrath
4. Hammer of Wrath
5. Judgment
6. Shield of the Righteous
7. Judgment
8. Eye of Tyr
9. Hammer of Light
10. Divine Toll
11. Shield of the Righteous
12. Follow respective rotation rules

Templar Rotation Notes

Hammer of Light only remains usable for 12s, regardless of whether its from an Eye of Tyr use or Light’s Deliverance, so you’ll want to make sure you use these before they disappear. This ability also counts as a holy power spender, so to maximize it’s damage output you’ll want to make sure you are always casting it with Blessing of Dawn active.

Maintaining Shake the Heavens is extremely important for the damage output of Templar, which is why Avenger’s Shield gets pushed down the rotation priority slightly. The free uses of Hammer of Light make keeping the buff active a bit easier, but keep in mind that Shake the Heavens obeys pandemic rules similar to Sacred Weapon, so if you cast Hammer of Light back to back you can lose some value in terms of buff extension. That being said, it’s not worth missing out on a cast of Hammer of Light entirely, so don’t let these go to waste!