Effective Prot Pally Tanking (PrimalWow Vanilla phase)

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.Alexandros

Effective Prot Pally Tanking (PrimalWow Vanilla phase)

#1 » Post by .Alexandros » 05 Oct 2015 15:17

Here's some advice on playing as a prot paladin. Before you get all excited about being a badass, keep in mind that playing prot in this phase of the server's life is a long-term investment. I'll have more to say about that at the end of this post. My personal motivation for going prot is that I'm investing the time now for when we get awesome in BC and especially LK content. In the meanwhile, I'm able to tank any pre-raid content with ease, and that counts for a lot to help guildies run dungeons to gear up. Prot paladins are incredibly good AoE farmers as well, so you can make yourself some cash and speed through rep grinds.


Speccing Prot: You can look up my spec in the Armory to see how I'm set up. The key talents to pick up are Improved Righteous Fury, Blessing of Sanctuary, Reckoning, One-Handed Weapon Spec, and Holy Shield. Put your leftover points in ret and make sure you get Seal of Command. Unfortunately, you cannot take any prot talents below the 30-point line except for Holy Shield (RIP Spiritual Attunement and Avenger's Shield).


Gear and Stats: Your number-one priority as a tank is getting your defense as high as you can. As a just-hit-L60 tank, 350 defense is a good starting point for tanking 5-man dungeons. Getting there is possible with a few items from the AH (Stockade Pauldrons, Stonegrip Gauntlets, etc.) or crafting. The Enchanted Thorium set is expensive to make but really nice. Getting more defense than that (you'll want 440 defense or really close to it, see Kurthos's post further down) will come with time as you gather the "good stuff" from 5-man instances (hi2u Deathbone set) and UBRS. Defense is key because it lowers your chances to be crit/crushed, and it also increases your chances to dodge, parry, and block...all of which proc your blessing of sanctuary. Any gear that adds dodge, parry, or block (block rating is better than block value) is worth picking up as well.

Next up, get a fast weapon and/or a weapon that can give extra swings on hit. The more hits you land, the more often your seals proc. My go-to weapon for tanking trash is a Flurry Axe - it has 1.5 speed and can proc extra swings. Using one, I can seal light and judge light, and have my health and mana go UP with a dozen or more mobs whomping on me. I also have a high-stamina weapon (I use the Timeworn Mace, but the Viking Warhammer is a great option while leveling) for boss tanking, where a couple extra seal procs won't help that much, and you'd rather have more health.

Bonus hint to prove my boast about AoE farming: While you are shopping on the AH, pick up an Uther's Strength (trinket) and a Wall of the Dead (shield). Those and a Flurry Axe are the key tools (assuming the rest of your gear isn't total junk) you need to solo farm massive numbers of mobs Leeroy Jenkins style. I'm talking half of a Silithus Twilight camp, or most of a WPL cauldron field. The only things that should slow you down are respawn timers and the server's leashing/pathing distance for mobs.


How to buff yourself to keep your mana up: I give myself blessing of sanctuary, seal wisdom, and judge wisdom on mobs. Maintaining 100% uptime on Holy Shield helps increase my BoSanc procs. With this buffing setup, I often finish fights at close to full mana, and have no problems chain pulling for even the most impatient RDF groups. You should mention to your group that you are judging wisdom, so healers can sneak in a few hits/wand shots to get a little mana back here and there.


What buttons to push: My tanking rotation is pretty simple. Holy Sheld (get it back up ASAP whenever it's off cooldown), consecrate, judgement. You don't really need much else - and can even stop consecrating once you have a big threat lead on a single target - but there are a few more moves in your arsenal to talk about.

Exorcism is great against single targets at range, like that one caster that didn't get with the program when you tried to line of sight pull. However, remember that it has a cast time. You are vulnerable to being silenced/kicked while casting Exorcism, and you won't be able to dodge, block, or parry while casting. I like to use Exorcism as an extra-powerful pull on undead or demon mobs since it automatically crits against those mob types.

Holy Wrath is massively overpowered for controlling large groups of undead or demon mobs, between the huge amount of damage it does and its stun effect. Great move to use when the mobs have closed in to melee range around you after you initially pull.

Turn Evil is also amazing for taking an undead or demon mob completely out of the fight, since you can chain-cast the spell. Be careful of the cast time though; you can run into the same problems that I mentioned with Exorcism.


Generating threat: You have Righteous Fury on, don't you? If that's not enough, try the pally equivalent of stance dancing and switch your seal to Seal of Command. Weapon oils that grant spellpower can help, so make friends with an enchanter. I don't find Ret Aura all that helpful at holding aggro, especially when considering the loss of damage mitigation that Devotion Aura gives. That said, Ret Aura did seem to help me more at lower levels, so would be worth trying then.

Getting back to my earlier point about having your Holy spell school shut down... watch out! You have very few options to continue generating threat (or save yourself) without your Holy spells. Fairly often you can't avoid it, so try to anticipate when a silence or other spell lockout mechanic will happen and make sure you are ready.

Jumpy DPS that spam their big AoEs the instant you pull WILL grab aggro, but I've found that after a couple ticks of consecrate the mobs don't go anywhere. Try casting consecrate first, then pulling. As the the mobs run to you, consecrate will usually tick at least once before they reach the rest of your group, and that should give you control over the mobs. If that doesn't work, yell at the DPS to hold off for a few seconds...and good luck with that.

With the patch 3.35 mechanics, pallies get more of a damage boost from strength and attack power than from spell power, although spell power does help. You can pick up extra AP or spell power with trinkets, enchants, and food consumables. You might also mix in some gear with hit on it so your attacks miss less often. Trinkets are a good option to boost your hit; the High-Powered Flashlight is one example.


Closing thoughts...Prot pallies in raids: At this stage of the game (October 2015 when MC and ZG are the available raiding options) it seems like my survivability and ability to generate threat is as good as a warrior's. Well, except for that time I tried to tank the ZG bat boss which AoE silences - thanks Blizz! Anyways, I expect this gap to widen considerably in favor of warriors fairly soon. Once BWL opens and warriors can get their full T2 sets, they will be the go-to tanks for any further Vanilla raid content.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, prot pally is a long-term investment. When BC content opens, we will get awesome! In the meanwhile, dual spec is available. We can support our raids with heals and cleanse-spamming, and can swap back to prot for trash tanking, or emergency boss tank duties.
Last edited by BraveMercenary on 08 Oct 2015 17:18, edited 1 time in total.

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.kurthos

Re: Effective Prot Pally Tanking (PrimalWow Vanilla phase)

#2 » Post by .kurthos » 05 Oct 2015 15:42

The numbers you're looking for when it comes to defense and uncrittability are 5.6% or 440 defense. You can also achieve uncrittability with the pvp trinket putting you at 423 defense and 20 resilience for 5.62%

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.Alexandros

Re: Effective Prot Pally Tanking (PrimalWow Vanilla phase)

#3 » Post by .Alexandros » 05 Oct 2015 16:31

That's a good - and important! - clarification. I referenced 350 defense as a beginner-level number to shoot for, but of course Kurthos is right you want your defense to be much higher than that to tank a raid boss.

Note: I updated my original post to better clarify what I was trying to say about defense.
Last edited by BraveMercenary on 08 Oct 2015 17:18, edited 1 time in total.

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.Felix
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Joined: 14 Jun 2015 11:30

Re: Effective Prot Pally Tanking (PrimalWow Vanilla phase)

#4 » Post by .Felix » 05 Oct 2015 23:34

Nice writeup, I too have banked on the Flurry Axe and "seal dance" strategy for Pally tanking - Works pretty well for all the 5-man content apart from Baron Rivendare so far..

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Dreadnought101
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Joined: 12 Jul 2015 22:09

Re: Effective Prot Pally Tanking (PrimalWow Vanilla phase)

#5 » Post by Dreadnought101 » 06 Oct 2015 10:07

This is my setup for prot tanking, pre-raid BiS+enchants (except cloak, you should get the 'Redoubt Cloak' from Dire Maul (North) Tribute Run)

http://www.primalwow.org/armory/character.php?n=Degaris

Defense is important but you also want to stack spellpower as it directly helps with TPS (Threat Per Second).

Additional notes while paladin tanking -
You will want to spec into Seal of Command as it generates more threat, and switch to Seal of Wisdom if you are low on mana. If threat/mana is not an issue at all then use Seal of Light.
Degaris
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