Protection Paladin Raid Guide

Welcome to the Protection Paladin raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.1! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!

Protection PaladinRaid

Single-Target

Strong

AoE

Average

Utility

Excellent

Survivability

Average

Mobility

Weak

• Both Lightsmith and Templar are very competitive choices. The new tier set has more synergies with Templar, but Lightsmith still performs better on single target throughput wise. Therefore, for raiding as Protection Paladin we recommend Lightsmith.

Tier Set

• 2-Set: Each time you take damage you have a chance to activate Luck of the Draw! causing you to cast Guardian of Ancient Kings for 4.0 sec. Your damage done is increased by 15% for 10 sec after Luck of the Draw! activates.
• 4-Set: While you have Luck of the Draw! Shield of the Righteous refunds 1-3 Holy Power and extends the duration of Luck of the Draw! by 0.5 sec, up to 10 sec.

Opener

• The goal of your opener as a Protection Paladin playing in a Raid is to minmax damage. Use high damage generators inside your offensive cooldowns, such as;Judgment and Hammer of Wrath, while also making sure you're standing in Consecration at all times.

Priority List

Defensive Cooldowns

• Ardent Defender
  • This as your main defensive in Raiding, pressing it almost on cooldown, especially at the start of a pull. With Unbreakable Spirit and Resolute Defender, its low cooldown makes it ideal for frequent use. It also has a cheat death component, allowing survival against extreme hits.
• Eye of Tyr
  • Used to smooth damage intake or for large tank hits, this ability is a debuff on enemies within 8 yards. In AoE with Inmost Light, spam it on cooldown for damage and survivability.
  • Note that it does not work on environmental damage.
• Guardian of Ancient Kings
  • Use Guardian of Ancient Kings for extremely large tank hits or to smooth very high damage intake.
• Sentinel
  • Use this spell almost off cooldown. The health and damage reduction bonuses decay over time, so ideally enter Sentinel with 5 Holy Power to keep it up as long as possible.
• Blessing of Spellwarding
  • Use this spell for large magic damage hits or to preemptively prevent powerful magic debuffs from applying. Remember, it can be used on others as well as yourself. Occasionally, this spell can "bug" and cause certain mobs to target the second highest threat instead, but this is rare.
• Divine Shield
  • With Final Stand talented, this becomes the most powerful defensive ability in the game, making you immortal for 8 seconds. Utilise it around very hard hitting tank abilities or to immune and prevent a debuff.

Offensive Cooldowns

• Avenging Wrath
  • Use Avenging Wrath almost off cooldown due to high cooldown reduction from Righteous Protector, allowing you to spend a lot of Holy Power and get the cooldown back faster. Occasionally, hold it briefly to align with better cooldown windows, which is very boss or dungeon-specific. In progress raiding, you can talent into Sentinel if you feel unsafe.
• Divine Toll
  • Use Divine Toll almost off cooldown. Hold it briefly only if delaying for boss add spawns offers more value.
• Bastion of Light
  • 2 minute cooldown that makes your next 5 casts of Judgment generate 2 Holy Power extra. Basically use off cooldown inside Avenging Wrath if possible.
• Eye of Tyr
  • Using Templar, Eye of Tyr becomes an offensive cooldown that you want to use off cooldown as much as possible.

Holy Shield and Block

• Block is a mechanic exclusive to Protection Warriors and Protection Paladins. Block is more random since there isn't a 100% block chance active mitigation spell. It's good to know whether a tank mechanic is blockable to determine how threatening it is. Holy Shield for example allows using fewer defensives for spell-blockable tank busters compared to other tanks.

Consecration and Movement

• Keep Consecration up 100% of the time and stay inside it when possible for passive damage reduction. Don't press it off cooldown without thinking, or you lose Holy Power from abilities like Judgment and Blessed Hammer. Optimizing movement is important since it frees up globals for other abilities. With Sanctuary talented the Consecration buff lingers for 4 seconds after you leave it, allowing you to min-max Consecration more easily. I recommend using a Consecration WeakAura to track its duration, as tanking outside of it can be dangerous.

Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory

• Shield of the Righteous is your main active mitigation, it costs 3 Holy Power and grants a 4.5-second armor buff based on Strength. Don't use Shield of the Righteous past 13.5 seconds duration of the buff, as it's capped at that amount. The only reason to keep on using Shield of the Righteous is for more damage or if you‘re otherwise overcapping your Holy Power.
• Word of Glory costs 3 Holy Power and heals up to 250% of your missing health. With Hand of the Protector it heals up to 100% of an ally's missing health.
  • Make sure to cast Word of Glory with Shining Light procs.
  • Use Word of Glory when you are at around >60% Health and have 9 or more seconds left of Shield of the Righteous.
  • Get ready to cast Word of Glory if a big hit is coming and you need to be topped beforehand.

Utilizing Divine Shield, Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Spellwarding

Properly utilizing Divine Shield, Blessing of Protection, and Blessing of Spellwarding allows you to break certain fights and mechanics.

• Using Hand of Reckoning can be min-maxed where even inside Blessing of Protection or Divine Shield you can keep threat while the 3 seconds duration of Hand of Reckoning are in effect.
• You can then use a cancel aura macro, such as:

/cancelaura Blessing of Protection  
/cancelaura Divine Shield

in order to cancel the immunity when the 3 second fixate is about to end.

• The idea is that you're invulnerable during the 3 second fixate of Hand of Reckoning. However, don't cancel too late as you lose all threat when inside Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection without the fixate.
• Remember that both Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Spellwarding have a shared cooldown.
• Blessing of Spellwarding prevents the application of many magic damage associated debuffs and Blessing of Protection does the same for physical damage debuffs, such as bleeds.
• Note that while Blessing of Protection removes any already existing physical damage debuffs, Blessing of Spellwarding does not remove existing magic damage debuffs.
• Blessing of Protection can be very useful for making a player that is fixated by enemies immune to their damage which allows them to minmax their DPS/ healing.
• Often times you can save someone with clever use of Blessing of Spellwarding and Blessing of Protection, which can make progressing a boss much faster than usual.
• An important thing to note with both Blessing of Protection and Divine Shield is that it can allow you to bypass a mechanic completely if used at the appropriate time, eliminating the spell cast entirely. For example; Divine Shield and Blessing of Spellwarding can be used before Mortal Stoneslam, which prevent Stoneslam Detonation from happening at all.

Understanding Mechanics

Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.

• Pandemic
• Spell Queue Window
• Stat Diminishing Returns

The following tips are mainly applicable to Heroic Bosses. Mythic tips are going to be released after our progression concludes.

← Scroll for more Bosses →

Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid as a Protection Paladin. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.

Survivability

Damage

All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!

Tertiary

• Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
• Leech - Provides additional healing through damage dealing.
• Speed - Niche tertiary that can be very useful and has been proven useful in the past. Makes playing certain mechanics a lot easier.

In general, Leech is really strong for tanks. Avoidance is great but most of the time tanks are not struggling to survive the typical Area of Effect abilities.

Trinkets

Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the Raid boss.

Active Trinket alternatives

• Ringing Ritual Mud
  • A great alternative to Chromebustible Bomb Suit.
• House of Cards
  • Provides you with a massive mastery buff for 15 seconds which can be used in combination with Avenging Wrath and Moment of Glory since they share an almost similar cooldown.

Passive Trinket alternatives

• Cinderbrew Stein
  • A defensive trinket that will passively give you absorb shields, as well as primary stat to you and your allies. Comes with a downside of giving a lot less primary stat in comparison to other trinkets of the same item level.
• Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker
  • Passive stat stick that gives you critical strike with close to 50% uptime.
• Tome of Light's Devotion
  • Passive trinket that has its biggest value offensively, make sure to always have the "The 50 Verses of Radiance" buff up.

Embellishments

• 2x Elemental Focusing Lens.
  • Craft preferred on Rings, Neck, Bracers.
  • It's possible to put on any crafted piece.

A good option for early season is crafting a 675 weapon with Darkmoon Sigil: Symbiosis and a 675 Shield with Writhing Armor Banding. As soon as you get access to a 678 weapon and shield this option loses value compared to 2x Elemental Focusing Lens.

• Darkmoon Sigil: Symbiosis
  • Passive secondary stats with almost 100% uptime.
  • Has to be crafted on a weapon.
• Writhing Armor Banding
  • Empowering your Darkmoon Sigil: Symbiosis.
  • On Wrists, Boots, Waist, Hands or Cloak depending on your available gear.

Remaining Sparks

• Crafted items are 675 item level and regular items are 678 on max item level, therefore, it's a small loss to equip crafted items outside of your 2x Embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.

Simcraft

To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.

• Phials
  • Flask of Tempered Swiftness
• Food
  • Feast of the Divine Day
• Combat Potion
  • Tempered Potion
• Health Potion
  • Algari Healing Potion
• Weapon Stone/Oil
  • Rite of Sanctification -- as Lightsmith in every situation
  • Ironclaw Whetstone -- as Templar if you have a bladed weapon
  • Ironclaw Weightstone -- as Templar if you have a blunt weapon
• Augment Rune
  • Crystallized Augment Rune
• Sockets
  • Deadly Emerald
  • Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique, use one of each gem colour to enhance your Blasphemite.
    • Quick Onyx
    • Quick Ruby
    • Quick Sapphire
  • Culminating Blasphemite is the best raw output option but using ‍Elusive Blasphemite can help you maintain uptime and dodge mechanics easier. This is an extremely minor dps gain in exchange for a valuable 10% movement speed.

Enchantments

In this section of the Protection Paladin Raid Guide, we showcase and explain how impactful certain racials can be in World of Warcraft:

• Stoneform -- Dwarf
  • Might of the Mountain gives 2% crit damage and healing, which is very strong for Protection Paladin.
  • Valuable due to the fact that you can dispel yourself or remove dangerous bleed effects.
  • Gives 10% physical DR which can be like a small extra personal as a tank for 8 seconds.
• Arcane Torrent -- Blood Elf
  • Strong racial to dispel or purge enemies, the value is very limited but sometimes can come in handy.
• War Stomp -- Tauren
  • Strong AoE stun that can be used as a stop that lasts for 2 seconds.
  • Brawn gives 2% crit damage and healing

Recommendation

I almost always play Dwarf since they are the overall strongest offensive (tied with Tauren) race, as well as being the strongest defensively because of Stoneform ability to remove nasty debuffs.

Discover recommended macros for Protection Paladin for Raids and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.

Macro Import Guide Video

Taunt Macros

Taunt at Mouseover --- Mouseover macro for Hand of Reckoning (Taunt) that allows you to get aggro easily from targets that just come into view or spawn without having to change target. If you have no mouseover it taunts your primary target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead][]Hand of Reckoning

Boss 1 Taunt --- Casts Hand of Reckoning on Boss1

/cast [@boss1] Hand of Reckoning

Boss 2 Taunt --- Casts Hand of Reckoning on Boss2

/cast [@boss2] Hand of Reckoning

Mouseover Macros

Blessing of Freedom Mouseover --- Mouseover macro for Blessing of Freedom to use on allies (do not use this on yourself as it's less efficient than the next macro)

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover] Blessing of Freedom

Blessing of Sacrifice Mouseover--- Mouseover macro for Blessing of Sacrifice that allows you to external someone quickly.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover] Blessing of Sacrifice

Word of Glory Mouseover --- Mouseover macro to use Word of Glory on allies, as with Blessing of Freedom, do not use this on yourself as it is less efficient.

#showtooltip Word of Glory
/cast [@mouseover] Word of Glory

Lay on Hands Mouseover --- Mouseover macro to use Lay on Hands on allies.

#showtooltip Lay on Hands
/cast [@mouseover] Lay on Hands

Cleanse Toxins Mouseover --- Mouseover macro to use dispell on allies.

#showtooltip Cleanse Toxins
/cast [@mouseover] Cleanse Toxins

Focus Macros

Focus Target Macro --- This is one of my favorite macros that puts a target in focus on mouseover and also marks the target as "Cross" (red). This is a very very good macro to have for high level play and it also comes with an easy way to clear focus as well.

/focus [@mouseover,exists]
/run if not GetRaidTargetIndex("focus") then SetRaidTarget("focus",7) end
/clearfocus [@mouseover,noharm]

Focus Interupt --- This macro casts "Rebuke" or interrupt on your focus target. It also interrupts your main target if your focus target is out of range or if you do not have a focus target. Very solid macro for general use play.

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,harm,nodead][] Rebuke

Focus Avenger's Shield --- Macro that puts your Avenger's Shield on focus target if you need to kick or silence your focus target

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,harm,nodead][] Avenger's Shield

Utility Macros

Cancelaura macro --- Here is a very important macro that you want to fill with any buff that is an immunity that you would need to cancel in a given scenario. For example; Divine Shield Taunt fails and doesn't taunt so you need to cancel Divine Shield, or you used Blessing of Protection to get rid of a debuff quickly and need to cancel so that you can continue being the primary aggro target before your allies are tanking instead. In the case of Blessing of Spellwarding, sometimes certain mobs fail to do their primary threat ability on the tank if you are protected by Blessing of Spellwarding, although this is rare.

/cancelaura Blessing of Protection
/cancelaura Blessing of Spellwarding
/cancelaura Divine Shield

Casting Divine Shield --- Essentially this lets you have less delay on casting Divine Shield, if you are for example casting a mechanic in the Raid, or a trinket that has a cast time or pressing flash of light etc.

#showtooltip Divine Shield
/stopcasting
/cast Divine Shield

Player Macros

Word of Glory at Self--- This macro casts Word of Glory on yourself which is very efficient when you want to use Word of Glory as a self heal. I recommend using two binds for Word of Glory, just like Blessing of Freedom.

#showtooltip Word of Glory
/cast [@player] Word of Glory

Blessing of Freedom on Self --- This macro puts Blessing of Freedom on yourself instantly, which is more efficient in terms of pressing faster than if you used a mouseover macro for yourself. In general, it is good to have two binds for Blessing of Freedom, one for mouseover and one for player (self) as it is a lot more efficient.

#showtooltip Blessing of Freedom
/cast [@player] Blessing of Freedom

Lay on Hands Self --- This macro you should use in order to use Lay on Hands as a "self heal".

#showtooltip
/cast [@player] Lay on Hands

Cleanse Toxins Self --- This macro you should use for dispelling yourself as it is more efficient.

#showtooltip Cleanse Toxins
/cast [@player] Cleanse Toxins

Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Protection Paladin, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.

Addons

• Shadowed Unit Frames (SUF) -- Full User Interface replacement
  • Addon to replace your Unitframes and other UI Elements with a more clean look. Takes quite some time to configure but there are plenty of pre-done profiles that you can easily import and check out.
• BigWigs -- Generic Boss Mod
  • BigWigs is a boss encounter add-on. It consists of many individual encounter scripts, or boss modules; mini add-ons that are designed to trigger alert messages, timer bars, sounds, and so forth, for one specific raid encounter.
• Weakauras -- Jack of all trades
  • WeakAuras is a powerful and flexible framework that allows the display of highly customizable graphics on World of Warcraft's user interface to indicate buffs, debuffs, and other relevant information. This addon was created to be a lightweight replacement for Power Auras but has since introduced more functionalities while remaining efficient and easy to use.
• Plater -- Advanced Nameplates
  • Plater is a nameplate addon with an extraordinary amount of settings, out of the box debuff tracking, threat coloring, and support for scripting similar to WeakAuras and wago.io + the WeakAuras-Companion for Mod/Script/Profile updates.
• Details -- In-depth Damage Meter
  • Most powerful, reliable, handsome, damage meter for World of Warcraft.
• MRT -- Notes, Raid cooldowns, and more
  • Helpful addon for raiders, especially for raid leaders and officers.
• Echo Raid Tools -- Notes, Raid cooldowns, and more
  • Echo Raid Tools is a World of Warcraft addon designed by Echo Esports to enhance raiding efficiency. It offers "Echo Approved" WeakAuras for each raid boss accessible through an in-game Dungeon Journal interface, allowing easy import and customization.
• Bartender -- Action Bar Changer
  • Bartender4 is a comprehensive action bar replacement addon for World of Warcraft. It allows full customization of action bars, including scaling, alpha settings, and visibility based on macro conditions.

Weakauras

Divine Resonance

This aura shows how many Avenger's Shields you have left from Divine Resonance and when they are triggering.

Patch 11.1

Paladin:

• Seal of the Crusader healing reduced by 50%.
• Lightforged Blessing now heals 1% of health (was 2%).
• A Just Reward now has a more just reward, its healing increased by 140%.
• Blinding Light and Repentance now break on a damage threshold instead of breaking on any damage.

• Templar
  • Empyrean Hammer now prefers player targets over creatures/summons.
  • The Hammer of Light implementation has been revamped to resolve issues such as casting delays, tuning difficulties, and the limited scalability of its infrastructure.
  • Hammer of Light now displays the correct amount of damage done by its secondary target damage effect for Retribution Paladin.
  • Hammerfall internal cooldown reduced to 0.1 second.
• Lightsmith
  • Tempered in Battle: Sacred Weapon’s health redistribution may only occur once per cast.

Protection:

• Strength in Adversity reduced to 3% parry per enemy struck (was 5%).
• Strength in Adversity now displays with stacks.
• Cooldown reduction from Uther’s Counsel reduced to 15% (was 30%).
• Refining Fire damage reduced by 30%.
• All ability damage increased by 15%
• Templar
  • Undisputed Ruling has been updated – Hammer of Light grants Shield of the Righteous, erupts a Consecration beneath its target, and increases your Haste by 12% for 6 seconds. Additionally, Eye of Tyr grants 3 Holy Power.

Q: Why do I keep dying?

The biggest tip I can give is to always figure out why you died in any given scenario and how you can improve. Tanking is tough, with constant opportunities to better use your externals, rotation, and defensives. Recording your gameplay and reviewing Warcraft Logs are great methods. Being good at tanking requires cognitive flexibility—focus on what you could have done better instead of blaming others. This mindset is more rewarding and healthier for becoming a better tank!

Credits

Written By: Tief

Reviewed By: Rycn