Introduction
Hi everyone, I’m Tief, and I welcome you to the Protection Paladin guide! I’m tanking for Method in the RWF and I’ve been tanking high Mythic+ keys for multiple seasons. In this guide I’ll be going through everything you need to know about the Protection Paladin in Season 1 of The War Within.
If you have any further questions or feedback regarding this guide you can hit me up with them on my socials:
What has changed
Coming into The War Within, Protection Paladin is getting some class talent tree changes and quality of life improvements:
- Retribution Aura has been removed, which makes us default to Devotion Aura.
- Sanctuary has been redesigned, and now makes Consecration benefits persist for 4 seconds after leaving it.
- Shining Light now stacks up to 2 times.
- Bastion of light has been redesigned, and now increases the amount of holy power generated by the next 5 Judgements by 2.
- Soaring Shield and Focused Enmity are not a choice node anymore, so both can be picked at the same time.
Apart from that, Protection Paladin got hit by several survivability nerfs in The War Within:
- Sentinel now lasts 16 seconds instead of 20.
- Eye of Tyr’s duration reduced to 6 seconds down from 9.
- Cooldown reduction on Avenging Wrath and Guardian of the Ancient Kings from Righteous Protection has been nerfed down to 1.5 seconds per holy power ability.
These nerfs will lead to more downtime in paladin’s defensives, which combined with nerfs to passive survivability like armor granted by Shield of the Righteous and effectiveness of Mastery make paladin a lot less tanky coming into The War Within compared to its state at the end of Dragonflight.
The new addition in The War Within - Hero Talents - introduce the biggest changes for Protection Paladin. These bring some slight alterations to your gameplay, while providing more damage, survivability and utility through passive nodes.
This guide will later go over Protection Paladin hero talents in depth, discussing strengths and gameplay implications of both hero talent trees.