Protection Paladin Midnight Playstyle and Rotation Guide

Note that the following rotations do not consider cooldowns with a 1min or longer CD, as these tend to be more situational and will be discussed in the Playstyle section.

Lightsmith Rotation

1. Consecration with 5 stacks of Divine Guidance (if talented)
2. Shield Of The Righteous at 5 holy power with Instrument Of The Divine (if talented)
3. Shield of the Righteous to prevent capping holy power or with a Divine Purpose proc
4. Hammer Of Wrath if you have 2 charges
5. Avenger's Shield if there are 2 or more targets or with a Glory Of The Vanguard proc
6. Hammer Of Wrath
7. Sacred Weapon if the current active buff duration of Sacred Weapon is <5s
8. Hammer Of The Righteous when empowered by Blessed Assurance (if talented)
9. Judgment
10. Holy Bulwark if you have 2 charges of Holy Armaments and are outside Avenging Wrath
11. Avenger’s Shield
12. Hammer Of The Righteous / Blessed Hammers
13. Holy Bulwark if you have 1 charge of Holy Armaments
14. Consecration

Lightsmith Notes

Sacred Weapon - The buff duration follows pandemic rules, meaning that if you cast it while you are already buffed by Sacred Weapon, then you will waste part of the duration if your current proc doesn't already have less than 5s remaining. This means you’ll want to keep an eye out for both Divine Inspiration procs as well as the buff you gain when using Avenging Wrath, so you don’t waste any of this important buff.

Blessing Of The Forge - This bonus provides a significant boost if you manage to overlap your Sacred Weapon with Avenging Wrath. Since you can extend Avenging Wrath through Zealot's Paragon, the free Sacred Weapon granted by Wings may not last for the entire duration. If you cast Sacred Weapon when the free buff has five seconds or less remaining, you avoid wasting any of the effect while also maximizing its output.

That being said, you don’t want to hold onto Sacred Weapon casts forever, so something like a timely Divine Inspiration proc could allow you to instead use Sacred Weapon outside of wings so that you can continue to generate charges of Holy Armaments.

Templar Rotation

1. Hammer Of Light
2. Shield Of The Righteous at 5 holy power with Instrument Of The Divine (if talented)
3. Shield of the Righteous to prevent capping holy power or with a Divine Purpose proc
4. Hammer Of Wrath if you have 2 charges
5. Avenger's Shield if it would interrupt a spellcast with Punishment talented or with a Glory Of The Vanguard proc
6. Judgment / Hammer Of Wrath
7. Blessed Hammer if Shake The Heavens is active
8. Word Of Glory if free to cast with Shining Light AND Shake The Heavens is active
9. Avenger's Shield
10. Blessed Hammers
11. Consecration

Templar Notes

Shake The Heavens - Maintaining this buff is extremely important for the damage output of Templar, which is why Avenger's Shield gets pushed down the rotation priority slightly. The free uses of Hammer Of Light make it easier to keep the buff active. However, Shake The Heavens follows pandemic rules similar to Sacred Weapon, so casting Hammer Of Light back to back can cause you to lose some value from the buff extension.

That being said, it’s not worth missing out on a cast of Hammer Of Light entirely, so make sure you use procs within 20s of getting them so they aren’t wasted!

Hammerfall - This node causes your spenders to call down Empyrean Hammer, which has the side effect of giving Word Of Glory some moderate offensive value, which is why it’s included in the rotation section. Just keep in mind that if no one is in need of healing, then you should cast this on yourself to get the mana cost refunded.

Opener

1. Consecration pre-pull
2. Blessed Hammer pre-pull
3. Light's Potential potion
4. Avenging Wrath
5. Avenger's Shield
6. Shield Of The Righteous
7. Divine Toll
8. Hammer Of Light if Templar, Shield Of The Righteous if Lightsmith
9. Hammer Of Wrath
10. Hammer Of Wrath
11. Shield Of The Righteous
12. Follow the respective rotation rules

Playstyle

Protection Paladin is a fast-paced tank spec centred around the use of Holy Power. This resource can be generated by multiple short cooldown abilities like Judgment and Blessed Hammer, and can then be spent in sets of 3 on Shield Of The Righteous, Word Of Glory, or Hammer Of Light (for Templar).

In general, you’ll be spending the vast majority of your Holy Power on Shield Of The Righteous, as this will give you more damage output as well as allow you to maintain the defensive buff it provides. This ability is also separate from your normal GCD, so you’re able to use it alongside generator abilities, which contributes to the fast pace of the spec.

Cooldowns and Defensive Usage

When it comes to surviving as a Prot Paladin, there are several different layers of defensive buffs and cooldowns you have at your disposal. For general damage intake, you are usually safe by just maintaining Shield Of The Righteous and doing your rotation correctly, which will allow you to maintain your active mitigation at close to 100% uptime.

As mentioned previously, you can still gain a small defensive boost for maintaining Consecration if you’re spec’d into Sanctuary, but this is much less important than it was in previous expansions.

Expanding on the importance of doing your rotation correctly, you have quite a few defensive boosts tied to your various abilities. For Avenger's Shield, there’s the Bulwark Of Order absorb, some sustain from Undying Embers, as well as increases to your parry or reductions to melee damage depending on if you’re spec’d into Strength In Adversity or Crusader's Resolve.

On top of that, we have the new Adjudication talent, which attaches a debuff to your Judgment, plus there is a whole set of new talents that add more sustain to Consecration, which can help boost its defensive capabilities outside of just a small damage reduction.

That being said, most of your healing will come from Word Of Glory, which can be cast on either yourself or an ally, though it gains an additional boost based on missing health and refunds mana if used on yourself. This can be further empowered by 3 different talents in Light Of The Titans, Seal Of Charity, and Hand Of The Protector, though these are fairly niche choices.

As previously mentioned, Word Of Glory does cost holy power. When you gain the Shining Light buff, it becomes free to cast, so generally, you’ll only want to use this ability while this buff is available to allow you to spend holy power on Shield Of The Righteous instead.

Moving on to Paladin’s signature cooldown, Avenging Wrath (or Sentinel) is a significant increase to both your offense and defense, meaning, regardless of content, you should be trying to maximize the number of times you can use this ability throughout a dungeon or raid encounter.

This usually leads to you wanting to press this ability as close to on cooldown as possible, with the only exception being if you explicitly need to wait to burst something down (damage amp phase, important add spawn, etc) or if what you’re currently engaged with will die before you can use the full duration of the buff (and this death isn’t the end of a raid boss fight).

Baseline, this is a 2min CD, with the reworked Righteous Protector, you can reduce it to a 1min CD with a 40% reduced duration, which actually works out very nicely for the spec, giving you shorter but more frequent burst windows that line up with other cooldowns like Divine Toll (and Hammer Of Light for Templar).

This is further helped by buffs to the extension provided by Zealot's Paragon, making even these shortened-duration wings casts feel substantial.

Finally, we have your standard defensive CDs, which you can rotate between to handle large tank busters or just general moments of higher damage intake. Ardent Defender is your shortest cooldown, plus on top of its damage reduction, it also prevents a single deadly attack if one occurs while it is active.

Guardian Of Ancient Kings is your standard “wall” ability for when a large defensive is required, but you also get the ability to proc this from the Gift Of The Golden Val'kyr talent, which acts like a pseudo cheat death and is one of the stronger passive defensive tools available to Protection Paladins. On top of that, you can also grab a 2nd charge of this ability thanks to Empyrean Authority, which is great if you need more CD coverage.

There are also a few different immunity abilities available to Prot, with Divine Shield, Blessing Of Protection, and Blessing Of Spellwarding. These are long cooldown, powerful buttons that can prevent an enormous amount of damage if used correctly, both on yourself and on allies in the case of BoP and Spellwarding.

Something to keep in mind is that both BoP and Divine Shield will cause you to lose aggro if used on yourself. You can prevent this when fighting a single mob if you pair it with Hand Of Reckoning, forcing it to attack you despite being immune.

This is particularly strong on boss encounters in both raid and dungeons, where you are fighting a single enemy that has an individual heavy-hitting attack or applies a dangerous debuff, though be aware the BoP only immunes you to physical-based damage and debuffs, so for other forms of damage you’ll need to use Divine Shield or Blessing Of Spellwarding.

Speaking of Divine Shield, you can actually avoid using Hand Of Reckoning entirely and use it against multiple enemies if you spec into Final Stand, which adds a 15yd AoE taunt to the ability for its entire duration, which allows you to safely use it without worrying about aggro, in fact this can be a great tool to get aggro back if you find yourself losing multiple mobs at once.

This freedom makes Divine Shield your most powerful defensive tool when talented into Final Stand, allowing you to survive things that would cause other tanks to flop over, whether that be from direct hits or stacking periodic effects.

Blessing Of Spellwarding is much easier to use as it does not have the same aggro side effect as the other immunities, so it’s a great defensive in boss fights that have heavy-hitting magic hits and debuffs, as well as trash pulls that have a lot of tank-targeted magic damage.