Gear
Tier Set
The Protection Paladin tier set for 10.2 can be a little frustrating to play around but with the most recent adjustments, it’s much more tolerable now. It’s a strong tier set numerically when you can utilize the full effects.
- 2-piece bonus: Judgment grants a stack of Sanctification, reducing your damage taken by 2% per stack. Upon reaching 5 stacks, your next cast of Consecration is empowered, increasing its damage and healing by 200% and its radius by 30%. Sanctification’s stacks are reset when your empowered Consecration ends.
- 4-piece bonus: While you are within an empowered Consecration, your abilities have a chance to deal 40% bonus damage or healing as Fire.
The necessity to be within your Consecration is emphasized majorly with the new tier set. It does open up the opportunity of rewarding optimally timed empowerment uses, but at a stack count of 5 being fairly easy to reach, it’ll likely turn out to be a buff you don’t think about too much to see reasonable benefit.
Trinkets
Beacon to the Beyond
Although this trinket is from the Aberrus the Shadowed Crucible, it still does a huge amount of damage despite the nerf. It’ll likely be irreplaceable until you manage to get your hands on some of the new heroic raid trinkets. It provides mastery as a base stat, which is great for Paladin defensively. The on-use effect is a channel that deals a massive amount of cosmic damage split between all nearby enemies, increased for each enemy struck (up to 5).
Cataclysmic Signet Brand
This trinket is currently producing a large amount of damage on the PTR. The trinket builds in strength as you remain in combat, with a cap of 15 stacks. Once you reach the cap you suffer 10% of the damage split between enemies. If you like chain pulling in M+ you’ll love this trinket.
Rezan’s Gleaming Eye:
Making a return from BFA, this trinket is coming back in a slightly nerfed version having lost its haste proc. The trinket itself is still okay, but there are significantly better options available currently.
Fyrakk’s Tained Rageheart
Similarly to Beacon to the Beyond last tier, this trinket is a must have. It’s easily the best trinket with current tuning and its raw damage alone is enough to warrant picking it up, and then it also has a defensive component.
Prophetic Stonescales
A cheat death trinket that restores a large portion of your health as well as providing a huge haste buff and 20% damage reduction. The effect can only occur once every 8 minutes. This trinket is a must have!
Pip’s Emerald Friendship Badge
A big stat stick. Doesn’t synergise particularly well with Protection Paladin but if you manage to get it to trigger during wings you’ll output a large amount of solid damage. Every 12 seconds you have a chance to trigger the trinket, providing a massive amount of secondary stats before diminishing over 12 seconds, giving you a chance to proc it again. It’s proc chance isn’t great, but it’s not an awful option.
Accelerating Sandglass
The haste buff from this trinket is nice but similarly to Pip’s trinket, it’s nothing special. You gain up to 8 stacks of a haste buff. Once you receive your first stack, a 20 second timer starts and that’s when you’ll begin to build stacks. When the buff expires it deals damage and the effect repeats.
Gore-Crusted Butcher Block:
Another BFA trinket coming back into the mix. Butcher Block is a crit stat stick. It has good value in mythic plus, less so in raid. It’s a solid choice but there are definitely better options on the market.
Gift of Ursine Vengeance
This trinket is a potent tank option. It was a powerhouse of an option before the most recent round of nerfs, seeing its potential drop and likely only being sought after for mythic plus. It’s still a good option for raiding but there are better. It’s a stat stick that procs from any damage event every 3 seconds.
Key items/Crafted gear
Gholak, the Final Conflagration
A drop from Fyrakk, this weapon has massive value, providing a large damage proc. There is the downside of it dealing damage back to you, but the amount is negligible.
Servant Splitter
Easily the best weapon from Mythic+ that’s obtainable. If you’re unable to get your hands on Fyrakk’s weapon, this is the next best thing. At the cost of some secondary stats not being present, it gives you a large damage dot proc.
Best Embellishments for Protection Paladin
- Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch (2x is bis)
- Unstable Frostfire Belt (if you still have access to Eranog ring from previous tier)
- Elemental Lariat (If you have 5+ sockets on your gear)