Protection Paladin Guide - Talents, Rotations, Races & More

Level 30 Talents (2,19,0)

1. Start off with 2 points in Holy Strike since it'll likely be your primary way to build individual threat very early on.
2. From here put 5 points in Redoubt, 3 points in Precision and 2 points in Anticipation.
3. Next get 3 points in Shield Specialization so you can get as much mana back as possible while tanking. Then get 3 points into Improved Righteous Fury for the damage reduction.
4. Finally put your last 2 points either into Anticipation if you want to be tankier. Or you can put them into Improved Seal of Fury and Swift Judgement if you want to build more Threat.

Level 60 Talents (8/34/9)

Here's a look at what we think the level 60 Protection Paladin Talent Tree will look like. As mentioned above this guide will be updated as we go through the beta and during launch to include any other Endgame Protection Paladin Talent Trees, along with all the other information you need to excel in the endgame and Raids as a Paladin Tank.

Here's an even more aggressive version that may be great for Dungeon farming. This tree would drop Holy Shield and quite a big of defenses to go deep into the Retribution tree to pick up Vengeance and Seal of Command.

Level 60 Vengeance (2,25,24)

Playable Races

Alliance - Human, Dwarf

Horde - Undead

Recommended Races

Dwarf provides 3 useful abilities and is probably the best race for leveling to 30 as Alliance. Mace Specilization gives you 1% crit when using a mace. Stoneform grants you immunities and Physical Damage Reduction and Big Game Hunter increases you damage to beasts (which you'll see a lot of while leveling up).

Undead - Well it's not like we really have a choice here! Luckily Undead has the brand new Touch of the Grave Passive which sometimes drains 5% health from enemies with your attacks. We have yet to see this in action, but it is likely going to be insane for Protection Paladins. Will of the Forsaken is nice to remove Charm, Fear and Sleep and being able to Cannibalize between pulls will certainly be apprecaited by whoever is healing you.

See our full racial abilities guide for every other race's bonuses.

The primary Skills you’ll use are Holy Strike, Consecration, Seal of Fury & Seal of Righteousness. Against single targets Rend and Heroic Strike are you best bet for damage per Rage. When you have multiple enemies you can lean more into Cleave to take them down.

1. Tanking on a Paladin is all about getting into a group of enemies and dropping Consecration to deal AOE damage.
2. You're going to want to get up your Seal of Fury or Righteousness up as your running in and use Judgement on the primary target of the pack.
3. Reapply your preferred Seal and start swinging at the primary target to make sure you have a good amount of threat, then tab over to another target, Judge them and repeat.
4. Once your Consecration Cooldown is finished drop another one down if the pack is still healthy and will last for awhile. If you're already down to 1-2 mobs you can save your mana and simply keep meleeing them to finish them off.

Remember that Paladins bring powerful Blessings and Auras to a group. Apply the proper buff to your teammates and don't forget about utility skills like Blessing of Protection to save a friend who pulls threat. Skills like Hammer of Justice can stun an enemy for several seconds and Divine Shield can save yourself from an incoming death.

Check our WoW Forever tier list to see how Protection stacks up as a tank against other classes.

Visit your Class Trainer often to get your new skills. Remember you're a tank, you want to wear as much Mail armor as you can so you have high armor. If you show up to tank dungeons wearing a bunch of cloth and leather your healer is going to cry themself to sleep that night.

Keep in mind if you do use Divine Shield it's going to leave your party in danger as all the enemies will go after them immediately. This is best used as a quick way to let your healer top you off and then you can cancel it to get back into the action before they die. (check out the macro for this down below)

Don't over do it spamming your abilities and running out of mana for no reason. Get a feel for how much threat you need to generate for the party your in and do as little as possible without losing threat to preserve Mana. Nothing is worse than when a Paladin tank has to stop and drink to full after every single pull. If you manage your Mana use well you will be loved by all you tank for.

A Protection Paladin is one of the few classes that actually benefits from every stat. The most important one for tanking is going to be Stamina. Nothing beats just having a big pool of health. Strength gives you an Attack Power boost. Agility increases Critical Hit Chance and gives you Armor as well. And even Intellect will give you more mana, which is also nice to have. Spirit is the one that you're least interested in.

Overall as long as items have a lot of Stamina on them you should be excited about them. Prioritize Strength and Agility when you can and if it's a great item with Stamina/Intellect you should put it on.

The gameplay section above already covers this. The one thing to point out here is that as the tank in a group you are the leader and often expected to guide your team through dungeons. Keep up a good pace, keep an eye on your healer and other casters mana bars, and try to set the tone for how your group will progress through the content.

If someone in your group keeps pulling aggro off you over and over, just let them die a few times and they'll figure it out.

Going Engineering can be extremely helpful for tanking. Even early on those small bombs and other explosives can help you with AOE threat quite a bit if you feel like you're struggling. Engineering and tanking are a hard to be combination.

Most of the time if your healer dies, you die, keep them up at all costs when you can. Taunt, Stun, Blessing of Protection, you have to pull out all the tricks you have if you see your healer in danger.

Cancel Divine Shield

This macro will cancel your Divine shield if you push the button a 2nd time. Keep in mind this can be a bit risky, if you accidently double click the button you might be toast.

#showtooltip Divine Shield

/cast Divine Shield

/cancelaura Divine Shield

Focus Target Blessing of Protection

Keeping your healer as your focus target is always smart when running dungeons. This macro will automatically target them (your focus target) if you ever need to quickly cast Blessing of Protection on them so they don't get sliced to death by an incoming enemy.

#showtooltip Blessing of Protection

/cast [@focus] Blessing of Protection