Several people have been asking me to make a guide to playing a protection paladin, so here we go. Ultimately, I hope that people will post similar guides for other specs/classes so newer players at each class can benefit from their experience, but we'll just start here for now .

First thing to discuss is the talent spec. I am currently using a 5/60/6 build. This build has everything useful in the prot tree, basically, and all the essential talents from outside the tree. If you want you can trade BoK, Divine Guardian and maybe Judgments of the Just in for things in the ret tree (such as Benediction, Conviction, etc). I do not recommend adding two points to improved Judgments, as having it on an 8 second cooldown will not speed up your rotation any, and so is a waste of a talent point. However, having the one point is essential. Also, I would not recommend picking up Reckoning, as it doesn't proc terribly often, and the effect is not strong when most of your threat comes from abilites.

When the next patch comes out, this will all change, and I will post an updated talent tree.

The rotation that you should follow is known, colloquially at least, as a 9/6/9/6/9 rotation, as all of our main tanking skills either have a cooldown of 6 seconds, or 9 (8) seconds. The general idea is to always have Seal of Vengeance up, pull with Avenger's Shield, then follow the rotation as follows:

Holy Shield
Hammer of the Righteous
Judgment (of Wisdom)
Shield of Righteousness
Consecrate
Hammer
Holy Shield
Shield of Righteousness
Judgment
Hammer

etc

Ultimately you have two rotations going at once, one between Hammer and Shield of righteousness with their 6 second cooldowns, and one of Consecrate, Holy Shield and Judgement with their 8/9 sec cooldowns. If you have to drop something due to low mana/needing to cast Divine Plea/Hammer of Wrath/Hammer of Justice/etc, Consecrate is usually the best spell to drop, especially once you get the badge libram.

As for Glyphs, the Glyphs of Judgement and Seal of Vengeance are absolutely required at this point. Your third glyph is personal choice. I use Glyph of Spiritual Attunement, but you can use the Glyphs of Righteous Defense or Exorcism or Avenger's Shield as well. Minor glyphs are up to personal choice as well. Once 3.1 comes out, Glyph of Divine Plea will be by far the best choice for your third slot.

Next, macros. There are only a handful of macros that are really necessary at this point, as they have changed the way a lot of spells work so the macro is not essential. The Righteous Defense macro used to be essential, and in my mind still is. It can be used without a macro, but I prefer the added flexibility the macro provides. It is:



I also use a cancelaura macro with Divine Shield so I can quickly get terrible debuffs off of myself. It has a five minute cooldown, but it breaks nearly everything you want it to (fear, most webs, uncleansable poisons, etc) It is:



I have the cancelaura part first so I can use it as a normal divine shield if necessary. I also have three self cast macros that are really easy. I have them all on easily reachable keys so I can cleanse myself, Lay on Hands myself or Hand of Freedom myself as necessary. The general way of making these is:



You can also do macros similar to your Righteous Defense macro to quickly Hand of Protection or Hand of Salvation someone who has pulled aggro, but these are more dangerous, because you might end up casting them on yourself, as Hand of Salvation/Protection can be cast on yourself while Righteous Defense cannot.



In terms of gear you are looking for the same gear as most other tanks. You will generally not have quite as high HP as other tanks, but you make up for it with much higher mitigation of damage through Holy Shield, high block values, and Ardent Defender. Things with Block rating/block value are slightly more valuable to you than to other tanks, but Dodge and Parry are still excellent as well. Ultimately you want a good balance between the three. It is possible with good gear to be so that you cannot be hit normally when you have Holy Shield up, but that requires excellent gear.

That is all I can think of at the moment. If anyone has any questions, please let me know .

Just in case you were interested in what the talent tree might look like after the next patch, MMO-Champion has the new talent tree up, and I whipped up what I think is the best spec. The last two points will go into Spiritual Attunement, which is being moved to a two point talent (likely below Divine Sacrifice). Of course, this is all subject to change, but most of the changes to the tree have been in the PTR for a long while, and do not seem likely to change.


See it here

Thanks, Hericus! This is very helpful, and I have the macro set up on Am. I agree with you on reckoning and plan to spec out of that (it was fun for lvling), but I may wait until 3.1 ... we'll see.

Interesting 3.1 build, looks good to me, but I haven't researched the changes very much yet for pally.

One more question that I forgot earlier: what add-ons should pallies have? I think there's one for divvying up blessings, and I think the tankadin2 add-on is supposed to be good. Thoughts on other add-ons that are particularly helpful?

Thanks again,
Eli (or in this case Am) :-)

Pallypower is the perfect add-on for setting up blessings between multiple paladins. I recommend that every paladin in the guild get an (updated) version of it. I say updated because I had it, but hadn't updated since last I played ~a month ago and it just gave me errors all the time.

Tankadin was much more useful when we still had to worry about getting rid of crushing blows. It is still out there, and it has some useful functionalities (such as reminding you about crusader aura and whatnot), but I personally don't use it. It is a useful way to collect all the stats that are important in one place, though.

As to other addons... I can't think of any off the top of my head. I use OmniCC just to track my cooldowns better, and Quartz for the debuff tracker, but that is about it, really, aside from add-ons that change my UI.

Hope this helps.

Nice write-up, Hericus.

Pally Power is a definate plus. Beyond that, I'd suggest.. OMEN!! ;-)


Other than that, I use Quartz to track my buffs/debuffs.

If you're pulling and need to mark, I'd get quickmark (or something like that)to make it easier.

Other web sites that I would recommend are maintankadin and elitist jerks - they both have good forums.

Given 3.2 has come out and made a few changes - what is your tree looking like now?

This is a little late, but updates for 3.2.

The major glyphs you want are now Divine Plea, Judgement and Hammer of the Righteous. The expertise from the glyph of Vengeance is not as much of a threat boost as the Judgement or Hammer glyphs, and the Divine Plea is the best by far because it amounts to 3% straight reduction in damage.

The new talent build should be this. That is what I use, but there are a few points to toss around if you want.

Aside from that, the macros and rotation are basically the same as in my previous post.

Thanks Herc, going to go very similar to you. Going to start tanking on Jax very soon.