How to Spec Protection: A Talent Guide (3.0-3.1)

How to Spec Protection: A Talent Guide

After seeing threads day after day asking questions about "is this spec viable?" or "is my spec OK?" I've decided to make a thread explaining what makes a spec viable, and what the community generally accepts as a good talent specialization. I'll first show the "cookie cutter" template, and then explain by tier why each talent is or is not a good choice from a tanking Paladin perspective.

Framework of a Viable Talent Specialization
It's important to note that unlike in TBC, each Paladin has many options as to where quite a few talent points go. As such, many have been left open in the "cookie cutter" spec so that you can decide where to spend your points.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/cla ... 0000000000

This spec leaves 20 points open for personal preference, six of which must be spent in the early tiers of Protection. If your spec has all these points filled, it will likely be considered by most of the community to be viable.

Examples of Protection Paladin Builds
These are some builds you could use as something to look off of as possibilities. The developers designed their value to be subjective, so it's naturally fine to disagree. A few builds I recommend and their justifications below:

Five / Ten Man Recommended Build (0/59/12)

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxVAcuMteuRGots00b
This build covers all the standard talents (outlined more clearly below), but also includes the following:

Blessing of Kings - Not likely to be offered by another Paladin.
Improved Hammer of Justice - Great for dealing with casters, trash, and interrupting on a few bosses (Moorabi, Kel'thuzad).
Improved Devotion Aura - Six percent free healing. Also includes 602 extra armor.
Guarded by the Light - If you die in a heroic and it's not because of stupidity, it's likely due to spell damage. This'll help there, and the mana cost reductions won't hurt.
Touched by the Light (1/3) - This is where I stuck the one "odd" point. Extra threat.
Benediction (1/5) - Used this to move down the tree. Could be in Imp BoM if you want. Nothing to see here.
Heart of the Crusader - Three percent crit to your threat and your group that probably won't be offered by someone else.
Pursuit of Justice - Fifteen percent run speed is excellent in many heroic situations, and is quite fun, too.

Alternate Five / Ten Man Recommended Build (4/58/9)

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=smZaxVAbuMteuRGoxs
A variation of the specialization above.

Twenty-Five Man Recommended Build (5/60/6)

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sVZaxVAbuMteIRGoxo
This build also covers all the standard talents, but also includes the following:

Blessing of Kings - Best offered by you, the Protection Paladin in the majority of circumstances.
Divine Guardian - In a large raid, it's likely that you'll be offtanking at least sometimes, and this offers an excellent tool for you to use while doing so.
Improved Devotion Aura - Even if you have a Tree Druid, it's 602 armor for yourself and the other tanks.
Touched by the Light - More threat.
Guarded by the Light - Even situational mitigation is still nice.
Seals of the Pure - More threat.

There is a thread discussing this build here.

The Talents, By Tier
Below is a list of the tanking talents and how important they are to a good tanking build. They are color-coded by relative importance.

Standard - this should be in virtually all Protection Paladin builds.
Recommended - these are great places to spend talent points.
Situational - these talent points aren't bad in some situations and useless in others. Use with caution.
Not Recommended - these shouldn't be picked up.

Tier One - Protection

Divine Strength - Standard
Increases your total Strength by 3/6/9/12/15%.
Because our abilities now scale well with AP (gained from Strength) and our block value scales much better with Strength (2 Str = 1 BV), this is an excellent talent that any Prot Paladin should have.

Blessing of Kings / Improved Blessing of Kings - Recommended
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats by 2/4/6/8/10% for 10 min.
This is obviously a buff that everyone in any raid should have, so it is absolutely worth the talent points assuming that you will, at some point, be providing it. It's also worth mentioning that it's fairly easy for Protection to pick up. After all, we have to get at least 50 points in our tree for HotR and this helps us to get past Tier 5 in our tree, which can sometimes be difficult. Another point is that Holy will likely be offering Improved BoW and Ret will be offering Improved BoM, and every class would also want Kings.

Tier Two - Protection

Stoicism - Not Recommended
Reduces the duration of all Stun effects by an additional 10/20/30% and reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by an additional 10/20/30%.
While it's true that stuns and tanks are bad things to mix, a 30% reduction on stun duration doesn't apply to enough situations to warrant three talent points. The 30% reduction to your spells being dispelled is only really relevant to PvP. There are worse places to spend points, but there are also many better.

Guardian's Favor - Not Recommended
Reduces the cooldown of your Hand of Protection by 60/120 sec and increases the duration of your Hand of Freedom by 2/4 sec.
Like Stoicism, this is a very situational talent. Especially with our new single-target taunt, the times that Hand of Protection will be necessary more than once every five minutes are few, as are the times that an additional four seconds of Hand of Freedom. Completely useless? No, but this is another talent more applicable to PvP.

Anticipation - Standard
Increases your chance to dodge by 1/2/3/4/5%.
A flat increase to avoidance at a cost of 1% per talent point. Yes, please.

Tier Three - Protection

Improved Righteous Fury - Standard
While Righteous Fury is active, all damage taken is reduced by 2/4/6%.
A comparatively inexpensive way to reduce incoming damage (including spells). Highly recommended.

Toughness - Standard
Increases your armor value from items by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 6/12/18/24/30%.
An excellent scaling increase in armor that provides excellent mitigation.

Tier Four - Protection

Divine Guaridan - Situational
While Divine Shield is active 15/30% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin.
This is an excellent offtanking tool, especially when combined with Hand of Sacrifice. However, it offers little use to a Protection Paladin in 5 mans, and a similar lack of usefulness to a main tank in raids. Divine Shield drops aggro, so it's unlikely to be used while tanking for very long.

Improved Hammer of Justice - Situational
Decreases the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice spell by 10/20/30 sec.
With three points, this will reduce the cooldown of Hammer of Justice (our only interrupt) to just 30 seconds. While this is excellent for five mans with stunnable mobs and potential situations where interrupts are scarce, it shouldn't be useful too much in raids because of its comparatively long cooldown and the way it is restricted to the global cooldown (other interrupts are not). It's certainly a viable choice, but not required to be an effective tank.

Improved Devotion Aura - Recommended
Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 17/34/50% and increases the amount healed on any target affected by your Devotion Aura by 2/4/6%.
With three talent points, this increases armor provided by just over 600. The 6% bonus to healing is nice, but doesn't stack with the fairly common Tree of Life Aura. This is recommended for a few reasons. For one, you're not always likely to have a Resto Druid in 5 and 10 mans, so the 6% healing will likely matter. Second, 600 armor for yourself and the other tanks will be helpful regardless. Third, you'll need more points spent to move down the tree anyway, and finally, it's rare that you'd use another aura anyway.

Tier Five - Protection

Blessing of Sanctuary - Standard
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3% for 10 min. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of maximum mana.
This buff is most effective when used while tanking large groups. Still, though, the 3% damage reduction isn't bad, assuming you already have Kings. The damage reduction component doesn't stack with Grace (a Discipline Priest ability). More importantly, it's required to get more important things lower down the tree.

Reckoning - Not Recommended
Gives you a 2/4/6/8/10% chance after being hit by any damaging attack that the next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec will generate an additional attack.
While this talent is excellent for most seals, the seal that currently outputs the most threat (SoV/SoCorr) benefits very little from it, mainly because after stacking to five, only a single hit every ten seconds will produce the same amount of damage as refreshing it twenty or more. It's still excellent for leveling and soloing, and could still show potential should SoB/SoM or SoR step up later on in the expansion.

There is a thread discussing the post-3.0 value of Reckoning here.

Tier Six - Protection

Sacred Duty - Standard
Increases your total Stamina by 3/6%, reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield and Divine Protection spells by 30/60 sec and reduces the attack speed penalty by 50/100%.
Stamina boosts are always excellent, and the one minute cooldown reduction on our shield wall is awesome, as well.

One-Handed Weapon Specialization - Standard
Increases all damage you deal when a one-handed melee weapon is equipped by 2/4/6/8/10%.
You have to read the wording carefully. It increases all damage done when a one-handed weapon is equipped. A (basically) flat 10% increase to threat is too good, especially for so cheap at this point in the tree.

Tier Seven - Protection

Holy Shield - Standard
Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 sec and deals X Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Each block expends a charge. 8 charges.
The bread and butter of the Paladin tank. With this and appropriate gearing, the Paladin can virtually guarantee every incoming hit will be at WORST, a block. Don't underestimate the power of this spell.

Ardent Defender - Standard
When you have less than 35% health, all damage taken is reduced by 6/12/18/24/30%.
Another Paladin signature ability. While skippable for parts of TBC, this talent is now standard for several reasons, even though the talent itself is unchanged. For one, the buff to block value relative to incoming hits means Ardent Defender will be available more often. Second, the change to Divine Protection means a Paladin with both AD and this up is very difficult to kill. this also applies to other percent-based damage reductions stack with it (such as HoSac, Divine Guardian), as well. Last, we have a lot more talent points to play with, and comparatively fewer mitigation talents to spend them on. It's highly recommended.

Tier Eight - Protection

Redoubt - Standard
Increases your block value by 10/20/30% and damaging melee and ranged attacks against you have a 10% chance to increase your chance to block by 10/20/30%. Lasts 10 sec or 5 blocks.
While the second part's benefit is questionable in single target circumstances, the 30% increase to block value will virtually always benefit the Paladin. For only three talent points, it's a pretty good spend.

Combat Expertise - Standard
Increases your expertise by 2/4/6, total Stamina and chance to critically hit by 2/4/6%.
Expertise isn't an excellent stat for us, but Stamina is. Two percent per point isn't bad at all. Be sure to pick this up.

Tier Nine - Protection

Touched by the Light - Recommended
Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your Stamina and increases the amount healed by your critical heals by 10/20/30%.
Spell power still increases our DPS/TPS, it's just not on our gear any more. As such, this is a great way to increase threat, at a cost of only three talent points. The second part just seems silly to me. If you're healing as Prot, you won't have Illumination, so you'll likely be wearing high MP5, low-crit gear, so what does higher healing crits do for you? Ah, I suppose it's irrelevant. You're only interested in the first part, anyway.

Avenger's Shield - Standard
Hurls a holy shield at the enemy, dealing X Holy damage, Dazing them and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. Lasts 10 sec.
While the daze can be annoying, this is one of the few ranged attacks we have as Paladins. It's also useful in a threat rotation now that it's instant cast. Be sure to pick up the glyph if it would help.

Guarded by the Light - Recommended
Reduces spell damage taken by 3/6% and reduces the mana cost of your Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness spells by 15/30%.
The second part isn't too terribly useful, but combine that with the spell damage reduction (often the largest burst in many encounters) and its low talent point cost (2), and it's recommended for most Prot Paladin builds.

Tier Nine - Protection

Shield of the Templar - Standard
Reduces all damage taken by 1/2/3% and increases the damage of your Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness spells by 10/20/30%.
What more can you ask for in a talent than a flat damage reduction and a damage increase to three of our favorite abilities?!

Judgements of the Just - Standard
Your Judgement spells also reduce the melee attack speed of the target by 10/20%.
An effective 20% damage reduction in standard melee swings? Yes, please! As of 3.0, all tanks have some form of this, and ours is among the best. The only reason you should possibly drop this is if you have not only someone else in the raid who will always show up and always provide it, but this person also can't die (or lag out, etc.). It's too much of a damage reduction to give up for only two talent points. You should definitely pick this one up.

There is a thread discussing the value of JotJ here.

Tier Ten - Protection

Hammer of the Righteous - Standard
Hammer the current target and up to 2 additional nearby targets, causing 4 times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage.
Ahh, the reason our weapon DPS now matters. A whole new threat move! Be sure to grab this one.

Tier One - Retribution

Deflection - Standard
Increases your Parry chance by 1/2/3/4/5%.
More avoidance at only 1 talent point for 1 percent? Oh, yes. Thanks to our repeated badgering of the developers, it's now in Tier One. You're welcome.

Benediction - Not Recommended
Reduces the mana cost of all instant cast spells by 2/4/6/8/10%.
A pretty fail talent. While all of our threat moves are instant, a 10% mana reduction is hardly noticeable, and completely irrelevant on the things that hit hard anyway. While I guess it'd be OK to drop points in here if you have nowhere else to put them, I'd only resort to here if it's the last available place, really.

There is a thread discussing the lack of value of Benediction here.

Tier Two - Retribution

Improved Judgements - Standard (1/2)
Decreases the cooldown of your Judgement spells by 1/2 sec.
Why should this be part of every Tankadin build? Why only one out of two points? The people who know about threat rotations tell me that having Judgment on a nine second cooldown is optimum. Why? I'm not sure, because there are a lot of numbers involved. I can't find a good thread to link to, but if you're really interested, try checking out the Advanced Training forum.

You can see a diagram of the standard 969 rotation here.

Heart of the Crusader - Situational
In addition to the normal effect, your Judgement spells will also increase the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by an additional 1/2/3%.
Three percent crit to your group is excellent, but this buff is likely more easily applied by an Elemental Shaman (via Totem of Wrath), a Mutilate Rogue (via Master Poisoner), or a Ret Paladin (via the same talent). If you do 25s, it's probably not worth getting, but otherwise, I'd say it probably is.

Improved Blessing of Might - Not Recommended
Increases the attack power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 12/25%.
Meh, it's a fairly weak upgrade on a buff you're unlikely to use anyway. Unless you have some very odd group makeup (that even then, lacks a Fury Warrior), you should probably skip on this one.

Tier Three - Retribution

Vindication - Not Recommended
Gives the Paladin's damaging attacks a chance to reduce the target's attributes by 10/20% for 15 sec.
All boss mobs are immune to this, so it only affects some trash. Not only that mobs' base stats are actually very low, so this does very little to them anyway (we can tell through Beast Lore). This is a PvP talent.

Conviction - Not Recommended
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with all spells and attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%.
I marked most threat talents as recommended, but this one is marked not recommended because it is too far down in the Ret tree to get to while filling out your better options. Seals of the Pure offers more threat per talent point, so it's unlikely you'll have enough points to grab all the points from the Protection tree, then five from Holy, and THEN enough to pick up more than very few from Retribution. It is some increased threat, though.

A thread discussing the value of the threat increasing talents (including Conviction) is available here.

Pursuit of Justice - Situational
Reduces the duration of all Disarm effects by 25/50% and increases movement and mounted movement speed by 8/15%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.
It's difficult to convey how fun this talent actually is. The 50% reduction to disarm effects is nice, but a 15% movement speed buff is more powerful than the casual observer might think. Keep in mind that Crusader Aura is 20%, and you most definitely notice it. This one, though, is for plain running and has no downside. It's definitely worth picking up if you're down this far in Ret. I marked it as situational purely due to its location lower down the tree.

There is a thread discussing the value of PoJ here.

Tier One - Holy

Seals of the Pure - Situational
Increases the damage done by your Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption and their Judgement effects by 3/6/9/12/15%.
Another potential threat buff, and placed low enough in Holy that anyone can reach it. This is worth picking up if you need the threat and have the points.

Please offer your feedback here. I'm also specifically interested in creating more "this talent is discussed more in this (linked) thread" links, so that we can keep our discussion organized and minimize duplicate questions.

Your build numbers are 10 points off for your protection numbers i.e. you say 5/50/6 instead of 5/60/6.

I would like to add in 4/58/9 as a versitial all-purpose build for all raids and instances.

I would also like to say that I believe that you are overvaluing Imp HoJ. Even improved you are unlikely to use it more than once per trash pull. As far as an interupt for 5 mans, most frequent casts are not dangerous enough to warrent bringing an interupter or speccing imp HoJ (or susceptible).

I found your description of SotP too weak. You fail to mention that it gives more personal dps/threat than the crit talents in the ret tree.

Majiben wrote:Your build numbers are 10 points off for your protection numbers i.e. you say 5/50/6 instead of 5/60/6.

I would like to add in 4/58/9 as a versitial all-purpose build for all raids and instances.

Fixed

Majiben wrote:I would also like to say that I believe that you are overvaluing Imp HoJ. Even improved you are unlikely to use it more than once per trash pull. As far as an interupt for 5 mans, most frequent casts are not dangerous enough to warrent bringing an interupter or speccing imp HoJ (or susceptible).

I'd disagree with you here. The value I placed on the interrupt being 30 seconds instead of 60 is low. I think a 30 second cooldown on HoJ makes many trash pulls a ton easier, allowing better positioning of caster mobs, stunning wayward and enraging mobs. That said, I did still list it as a blue Situational, so the only way I could demote it more would be to Not Recommended. I think it certainly provides Situational power in 5 mans, and is certainly at least as useful as another threat talent.

Majiben wrote:I found your description of SotP too weak. You fail to mention that it gives more personal dps/threat than the crit talents in the ret tree.

I wasn't aware it was. I'll add that.

moduspwnens wrote:

Majiben wrote:I would also like to say that I believe that you are overvaluing Imp HoJ. Even improved you are unlikely to use it more than once per trash pull. As far as an interupt for 5 mans, most frequent casts are not dangerous enough to warrent bringing an interupter or speccing imp HoJ (or susceptible).

I'd disagree with you here. The value I placed on the interrupt being 30 seconds instead of 60 is low. I think a 30 second cooldown on HoJ makes many trash pulls a ton easier, allowing better positioning of caster mobs, stunning wayward and enraging mobs. That said, I did still list it as a blue Situational, so the only way I could demote it more would be to Not Recommended. I think it certainly provides Situational power in 5 mans, and is certainly at least as useful as another threat talent.

It is properly listed as situational but I think your write up on it was too kind in the sense that it listed every positive atribute but not the undesirable. It's not as though you won't have HoJ available for most of the times you would have it available and you have non talented options like trinkets, divine protection and sacred shield to assist in taking less damage.

Majiben wrote:It is properly listed as situational but I think your write up on it was too kind in the sense that it listed every positive atribute but not the undesirable. It's not as though you won't have HoJ available for most of the times you would have it available and you have non talented options like trinkets, divine protection and sacred shield to assist in taking less damage.

Here is the explanation in question:

moduspwnens wrote:With three points, this will reduce the cooldown of Hammer of Justice (our only interrupt) to just 30 seconds. While this is excellent for five mans with stunnable mobs and potential situations where interrupts are scarce, it shouldn't be useful too much in raids because of its comparatively long cooldown and the way it is restricted to the global cooldown (other interrupts are not). It's certainly a viable choice, but not required to be an effective tank.

I think it's an accurate description.

moduspwnens wrote:Improved Hammer of Justice - Great for dealing with casters, trash, and interrupting on a few bosses (Moorabi, Kel'thuzad).

This is the desciption I mostly take issue with.

Majiben wrote:

moduspwnens wrote:Improved Hammer of Justice - Great for dealing with casters, trash, and interrupting on a few bosses (Moorabi, Kel'thuzad).

This is the desciption I mostly take issue with.

In the context of five and ten mans, I think it's fine. The points are certainly better spent there than on threat buffs no 5 man tank should need, at least.

I prefer to look at them as a dps boost since in 5 mans you can easily pull 20-25% of the total dps even on bosses. I know I can tell it takes longer to kill bosses when I drop things out of my rotation to conserve mana.

Small error, Divine Guardian absorbs 15 / 30% damage

As long as were are on the topic, some of the talents you list as X/2X/3X/.... while others you just leave as X with no explaination. A consistent format always pleases .

Great thread and answers my questions...time to respec

I was just thinking of posting something like this the other day, but looks like you beat me to it.

You might want to include in the description of Heart of the Crusader that it does not stack with the same buff from other paladins, like PvE rets.

I can't help but feel that you're giving Benediction a worse press than it deserves. A few % off all your moves is pretty good, and coupled with the fact that you've got nowhere else to put points (other than imp Judgement) if you want to reach PoJ, it's probably worth having.