I know that prot has never really been the spec for questing, grinding or PvP since TBC and entering outlands, but I'd like to hear from anyone in beta who is prot specced about these parts of the game. The reason is that I'm, for the most part, roped into being the guild's main tank due to my attendance, play skill and knowledge of the game, and also since I take things seriously enough to gear properly, etc. I've however become completely cheesed off with the spec especially during the summer when there haven't been enough on to run content, and I've moved over to ret, which I'm loving.

I can't ever see myself going back to prot due to it's absolute gimpness in every other facet of the game outside of running instances and raids. If this will not change for the expansion, I'll most likely reroll a DK due to it's advertised ability to tank and DPS in the same spec. This is why I'm interested in hearing if anything has changed for the prot paladin in this regard.

With the stat consolidation, I just can't wait to be able to use haste potions for healing. It will be nice to be able to chug those then not in need of mana potions.

That is the way the talent calcualtors have been saying since wowhead first got them up. Note with the talent LoH can be used every 16 minutes and doesn't cost anything (other than a GCD and using the cooldown).

Having a 2 minute armor buff with little penalty would lead to requiring multiple Paladins to keep the armor buff up.

What's the cut-off limit on Arena abilities again? 15 minute reuse?


I love the new LoH as a Prot Paladin. A Real 'oh shit' button. Really, it's a universal Paladin 'oh shit' button now. Which is great, compared to live, where I forget it exists half the time due to cool down and mana drain penalty.

"Are we playing the same game" pretty much sums this up perfectly. Seriously, where did you get this crazy idea from? Not only is AoE grinding as Protection Paladin the most efficient form of leveling I've ever experienced but it's also far and away the the most fun. I know I won't be changing spec for leveling in WotLK; I even picked up a Rising Tide to embrace the changes.

About the only shred of validity that can be given to this is that trying to AoE grind quest mobs the first week WotLK comes out could be a bit hairy with all the competition.

Maybe offtopic, but I find these claims (Prinsesa said something like that too) a bit inaccurate. I have access to prot pally account which I'm often asked to log onto and tank Felmyst skellies and sometimes other things in Sunwell. In Felmyst set (SD+avoidance) I have under 1700 stamina fully buffed and about +750 SD with oil. I wear T6 helm/gloves though, while your maintankadin has Illidan helm and Felmyst gloves - and for some reason warrior BT boots - but those are "warrior" gear not "pally" and WotLK pally (threat) gear shouldn't be balanced around such numbers.

What I mean, I like paladin changes, and strength on tank gear is really great, however a pally in WotLK tank gear will have less SD than a pally in TBC pally gear, not more. Someone from Blizz said they haven't done threat balance yet, and I hope they won't repeat TBC scaling - paladin aggro excellent in Kara and weak in Sunwell.

I think a lot of people are missing the reason why 'Sacred Cleansing' is actually one of the most powerful PVP talents in a paladin's arsenal, if not the game. A lot of people are petitioning to make it what they think will be better, when in fact their ideas make it worse.

Sacred Cleansing

When ever you cleanse there's a 30% chance that the target gets 30% resistance to poison, magic, and disease.

If you don't really think about it, you just come to the conclusion that your target will get 30% fewer poison, disease, and magic debuffs. However, if you do think about, you notice the 30% resistance to magic. Magic isn't just debuffs. Magic is damage. Mages, warlocks, priests, balance druids, ele shamans, even paladins to some degree all rely on magic to do damage. If this talent works anything like it says it does, 30% resistance to magic reduces magic damage by 30%. What other spell in the game is spammable and reduces the damage taken by your target from all magic dmg classes by 30%?

Sure, it's only 30% chance. But chance is that you're using it frequently anyways, especially vs locks, mages, shadow priests. It also lasts a considerable amount of time- using cleanse every 5 secs will keep the debuff up ~75% of the time.

It's not as good vs. poisons because rogues apply poisons at a very fast rate in WLK. You will reduce the (small) dmg from them. However, the real value is that if your target is also being hit by a caster you consistently get 30% reduction from them even if the caster isn't applying that many debuffs.

Sure, it's dispellable. But so are almost all great buffs. You can lower the chance of this by 30%. Also, cleanse is cheap, and like I said you'll be using it all the time anyways. Amongst the other buffs your allies will have on them, mages, hunters and warriors, warlocks (all classes with dispels on CD's) will have a hard time dispelling this. Priests and shamans will be able to more easily, but with stoicism and your other buffs it will be fairly costly for them.

All in all, I think this talent will allow for a significant reduction in damage from all casters, unsurpassed by any other ability you can use consistently. Please don't petition to change this spell to a weaker form without really understanding its implications.

I find Prot leveling a little overrated. Sure it's great for grinding, but do you really want to grind all the way from 70 to 80? Most likely you will be doing a majority of the quests anyway and finding yourself having to kill single mobs. Prot sucks pretty bad at killing single mobs. It takes forever and you will need to drink after every fight.

Prot AoE leveling was much better pre-Outlands and before the big quest exp buff.

In order for AoE grinding to be more effective than just normal questing, you need to have perfect mobs available. Lots of melee with weak fast attacks. Debuffs or special attacks will screw you. As will too many casters. I don't know enough about all the WotLK zones yet to know how many places have AoE-friendly mob spawns, but several zones in Outlands were pretty skimpy on choices. I remember trying desperately to find AoE opportunities in Zangermarsh and ending up just killing solo mobs slowly instead. And on WotLK release you'll have to fight for even individual mobs.

My reccomendation is to level as Ret and switch to Prot once you get to 80, but that's just me.

You could lvl in instances as a tank. Pros:

1. No need to fight for quest mobs
2. Raise your rep and then easily reach exalted with questing
3. Quite good exp/hour, beats questing in the first few most crowded days/weeks

Wait, what? Last line first - paladin gear in Kara was nonexistent. My threat sucked, and was only somewhat offset by the fact that everything was undead. Compare that to Brutallus, a fight where I easily outthreat warrior tanks.

I'm not logged out in my standard tanking gear, but I sit around 1850 stamina raid buffed without an imp, and around 615 spell damage with oil. (Also if you check the stamina on [Myrmidon's Treads] and [Tide-Stomper's Greaves], you'll notice they're identical ). That's about 550 more spell damage in my current get-up. So there's basically no way that I'll end up with less spell damage in WotLK tanking gear than in my current tanking gear, unless they don't plan to increase stamina on items at all. And even then, I'd still be pretty damn close.

As to leveling prot, personally I've never been too big of a fan of the AoE approach, I find quests to be far more satisfying than mindless grinding. That said, I imagine we'll be awesome 5-man tanks like usual, and I'll be leveling prot primarily for that reason.

Wowhead says for the spell effect: [Apply Aura]: Mod Debuff Resistance % to the three types, so I think it only includes debuffs.



Someone earlier asked about imp LoH, since it has a 16 minute cooldown it is unusable in Arenas (the cooldown must be shorter than 15 minutes).