Basics

Protection Paladins are shield-brethren to the Protection Warriors. While warriors focus on crippling their enemies with stuns, disarms and spell reflections, paladins focus more on fortifying their allies with Hand spells, Cleanses, and occasionally even heals with Word of Glory.

Talents

Tier Level 15 Movement based. Situational.

Tier Level 30: Again, situational.

Tier Level 45: Sacred Shield. A must. (Will be nerfed in Patch 5.4, but still a must as Prot)

Tier Level 60: Situational.

Tier Level 75: All 3 have their bonuses. Holy Avenger is good for quick threat building. Sanctified Wrath for fast holy power building (not quite as quick as Holy Avenger), but also extra healing. Divine Purpose for free holy power usage, but random chance of proc.

Tier Level 90: Lights Hammer for AoE healing and AoE tanking. Execution Sentence is the strongest single target damaging skill.

Abilities

Crusader Strike: Single-target Holy Power generator. Does pure physical damage.

Hammer of the Righteous: Multi-target Holy Power generator. Does partial physical, partial holy damage. Reduces targets damage by 20%.

Hammer of Wrath: After the enemy reaches 20% health, this should be weaved in as much as possible. It's an execute for a reason, and with an additional 30% chance to critically hit, it becomes a monster.

Shield of the Righteous: This is the hardest hitting ability in the Prot arsenal above 20%. Whenever you need that extra burst of threat, feel free to smash your shield into the bad guy's face. Reduces damage taken by percent equal to Mastery.

Avenger's Shield: This is the Prot tree's signature ability. It hits very hard and should be used on cooldown if a 3-point Shield of the Righteous is unavailable.

Judgement: Fairly weak filler ability, but provides the 20% attack speed debuff and mana regeneration. It also has a chance to cause your Shield of the Righteous attack to crit, try to at least weave one in

Holy Wrath: Weak filler ability, but can provide a nice area of effect burst. Can also potentially stun enemies, so it can also be used to give healers some breathing room while tanking hard-hitting enemies.

Consecration: Area of effect tanking ability. Mana cost is not that high for prot paladins, so if you have a free GCD there's nothing wrong with throwing one in.

Word of Glory: Heals or shields yourself against damage (very weak when used on others). For when you need survival more than threat.

Bastion of Glory: Everytime you use Shield of the Righteous, you gain 1 stack, stacking up to 5 times. Increases Word of Glory healing on self. Very nice self heal for when you know incoming damage will be high.

Defensive Abilities

Sacred Shield: Increases amount blocked by 10%. 6 Second CD / 30 Second Buff. Try to keep this up >95% of the time.

Ardent Defender: If in danger of dieing on the next hit, this will return your life to 35% hp were the next hit to kill you. 3 minute CD.

Guardian of Ancient Kings: Major defense ability. 5 minute CD. Decreases damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds. Good for when you know major damage is incoming. Also good for giving your healer a chance to regen mana.

Divine Protection: Lesser defense CD. 1 minute CD. Decreases damage taken by 20% for 10 seconds. Good to use on CD or for times with low burst damage.

Devotion Aura: Blankets the raid to reduce incoming magic damage by 20%.

Rotations

Protection Paladins use a filler rotation:

Hammer of the Righteous (apply boss damage reduction debuff (Patch 5.4 will provide Crusader Stirke with same debuff)) > Filler > Crusader Strike > Filler > Crusader Strike > Filler > Crusader Strike > Finisher

Only use your finishers when you have max holy power.

For fillers, harder hitting abilities take precedence, of course. Hammer of the Righteous replaces Crusader Strike for area of effect tanking. Finishers are Word of Glory and Shield of the Righteous, use whichever fits the situation.

Gearing

Gearing really depends on how you want to tank. There are two options: The more common option is the haste / mastery build. The second option is active mitigation / stamina build.

First and foremost: With either build, you want to cap hit and hard cap expertise. Can't build threat if you aren't hitting.

For the haste / mastery build, you will go for as much haste as you can possibly obtain. Followed by mastery. You will gem pure haste, reforge weakest stat into haste, etc.

For the active mitigation build, you will increase mastery. Followed by parry. You will also try to increase your health as much as possible. With this build, you will typically try to meet your socket bonus's with the correctly colored gems.

Reforging

Reforging is based on which type of tank you want to become. Haste build: Reforge weakest stat into Haste. If the item you are wearing already has haste, reforge weakest stat into mastery. Your best items will be items with both Haste / Mastery.

Avoidance build: Reforge weakest stat (typically dodge) into mastery. If it already has mastery, reforge into parry. Gem for stamina.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact:

Mslduth or Volcker