Protection Paladin Stats, Races and Consumables Guide

Stat Ranking

Crit vs. Mastery

While usually crit is considered as an offensive stat for prot paladin, it offers a good defensive value in AOE fights with a lot of parriable damage (frequent melee hits/physical tank hits that you can parry) - for example Necrotic Wake or Ara-Kara. Furthermore when playing Lightsmith, crit provides even more offensive value with Hammer and Anvil.

Mastery on the other hand doesn’t provide almost any offensive value, but is really good against blockable damage - especially magic damage, because it directly affects your block chance. These are most often tank hits on bosses such as Orator Krix’vizx in City of Threads, Speaker Shadowcrown in The Dawnbreaker, Master Machinists in The Stonevault or multiple mobs in Grim Batol. If you find yourself struggling with living such bosses, a good idea is to get enough mastery on your gear to reach 52% block chance - that is around 26% mastery with a 639 shield without a shaman in your group (this breakpoint will be lower with a Skyfury buff and Mastery Flask). Why only 52% block chance? You can get the remaining 48% block chance by making sure you have both Faith in The Light and Barricade of Faith right before the tank buster, and playing Improved Holy Shield for an extra 8% chance to block magic hits. This ensures you will block any blockable magic hit a 100% of the time, making your life a lot easier on hard fights.

With this said, it’s up to you to decide what stat to go for. Ideally it is recommended to have 2 gear sets. One prioritizing Haste-Crit for raid and such dungeons as Necrotic Wake, Ara-Kara, Siege of Boralus, Mists of Tirna Scithe. The other one with as much mastery as needed to achieve 52% block chance for the remaining dungeons. But if you don’t feel in danger of dying to magic hits and just want to do as much damage as possible - go for Haste Crit. Otherwise if you don’t care about your damage and just want to live and not rely on parry - go for Haste Mastery.

Crit-Haste Build: crit>Item level>haste>vers>mastery

100% Magic Block: mastery to reach 52% block chance>tem Level>haste>crit>>vers

While races generally don’t matter too much, and you can just go for the one you prefer aesthetically, here are the minor benefits you can get from best races for Protection Paladin:

Dwarf and Dark Iron Dwarf come with a unique ability to remove most debuffs on a 2 minute cooldown with Stoneform/Fireblood, including magic debuffs and bleeds. This historically has been valueable in some raid encounters and M+ dungeons, and you will find good uses for it in the first season of The War Within as well. While Dwarf is considered a better pick out of these two, mostly due to Might of the Mountain and 10% physical DR on Stoneform on demand, going with Dark Iron Dwarf because of personal preferences is perfectly fine.

Tauren will grant you more HP with Endurance, while also buffing critical damage and healing similar to Dwarf with Brawn, and giving you an extra AOE stop in the form of War Stomp. Beware that War Stomp is target capped at 5 targets, so don’t rely solely on it in big pulls.

Earthen - a new addition in The War Within - is also a good option for Protection Paladins. Its main value comes from 10% increased armor from Titan-Wrought Frame, which will result in a decent gain of physical DR. You can also save some gold on food with Ingest Minerals :)

Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Chant of Leeching Fangs

Chest: Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance

Bracers: Enchant Bracers - Chant of Armored Leech

Boots: Enchant Boots - Defender’s March or Enchant Boots - Scout’s March

Legs: Stormbound Armor Kit

Rings: Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste

Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Authority of Radiant Power

The War Within version of the main stat gem - Elusive Blasphemite - also grants 2% increased Movement Speed per unique gem color. To get the most value out of this effect, and Elemental Focusing Lens in case it is being used, you want to have at least 1 gem of each color. The rest of sockets can be filled with Haste-Crit or Crit-Haste gems which results in the following gem combination:

• Elusive Blasphemite
• Quick Ruby
• Quick Sapphire
• Deadly Emerald
• Quick Onyx
• Fill the rest of your sockets with Deadly Emeralds or Quick Rubys

Food: Feast of the Divine Day or Feast of the Midnight Masquerade for main stat or Beledar’s Bounty/Empress’ Farewell/Jester’s Board/Outsider’s Provisions for secondary stat

Phials: Flask of Tempered Swiftness

Potions: Tempered Potion

Health Potions: Algari Healing Potion

Weapon Oil: Algari Mana Oil (except when you play Lightbringer, in which case you will use “Rite of Sanctification”)