Protection Paladin Talents Guide

When it comes to raid talents you’ll be making the same set of choices no matter what hero spec you’re playing, with the exception of Hammer of the Righteous for Lightsmith and Blessed Hammer for Templar. Outside of that node in the spec tree, the 2 different builds provided here only change hero tree points.

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Notable Class Tree Talents

Punishment

This is an extremely important node in M+, particularly for Templar, as it can grant a ton of bonus Blessed Hammer casts in situations where you are able to consistently interrupt casts with either Rebuke or Avenger’s Shield. This not only gives you a lot of Holy Power, but for Templar specifically it interacts with Higher Calling, allowing an Avenger’s Shield cast to extend Shake the Heavens when it otherwise cannot.

Divine Toll and Divine Resonance

Divine Toll has been a staple paladin cooldown since it was introduced back in Shadowlands, where for Protection it shoots out up to 5 Avenger’s Shields based on the number of targets, which also grant holy power when they usually would not. Because the value scales with target count it is a bit weaker in ST compared to AoE, that being said if you’re trying to interrupt multiple mobs in a pack with more than 5 enemies you can run into problems with the spells target cap, resulting in you not hitting a mob you want to interrupt. To help mitigate this your current target is always hit by one of the shields, but if you’re trying to interrupt multiple targets then you will need to be ready to use your own Avenger’s Shield or Rebuke on the 2nd target if it gets missed.

Going into Midnight the ability itself is unchanged, but for Templar specifically it is gaining a new function, replacing Eye of Tyr as the main activator for Hammer of Light, meaning after use you’ll be able to re-activate the same keybind to use that powerful spender.

As for Divine Resonance, this adds an additional effect to Divine Toll, causing you to shoot out an Avenger’s Shield at your current target every 5s for 15s after you initially use it. If tracked you can also get some very good value out of this talent in M+ situations, allowing you to keep multiple mobs interrupted for the duration, while also proccing bonus hammers from the previously mentioned Punishment talent. In ST situations this also increases the value of Divine Toll slightly, as it now accounts for 4 Avenger’s Shield presses with a single GCD.

Divine Purpose

One of the more powerful throughput nodes on the class tree, Divine Purpose gives your holy power spenders the ability to make your next spender free to cast. For the most part you’ll just use this on another Shield of the Righteous cast to give you some more damage, but it also opens up the possibility to cast Word of Glory without impacting your Shield of the Righteous uptime.

Sacrifice of the Just and Recompense

This is a powerful choice node that alters your Blessing of Sacrifice, where both options are chosen in different scenarios.

Sacrifice the Just halves the CD, making it extremely powerful in situations where you are consistently using sac to help out your allies, such as some raid fights as well as many high level M+ keys.

Recompense on the other hand turns Blessing of Sacrifice into a pseudo dps CD, allowing you to gain a bit of damage from the ability in situations where you otherwise wouldn’t be using it. In these cases I recommend putting it on your co-tank while they’re taking heavy damage in order to maximize its output.

General Utility Nodes

Paladins have no shortage of utility in their class tree, so the following talents can be swapped around depending on your needs in a given dungeon or boss encounter.

Fist of Justice and Blinding Light are strong CC options, mostly used in M+.

Cleanse Toxins is great whenever a Disease or Poison dispel is needed, otherwise this is something that can be skipped.

Blessing of Freedom has niche value if you or other players need to remove a root or slow effect, which can be expanded further by Unbound Freedom if this effect happens to multiple players at once, yourself included.

Righteous Protection is another niche talent, which essentially gives you another Poison or Disease dispel in Blessing of Sacrifice, making it useful if a lot of these debuff types are going out over a short period of time.

Blessing of Protection has quite a few uses, most commonly used to clear physical debuffs or soak extremely large physical hits on an individual player. Outside of this it can also be used on DPS players if they are close to pulling aggro, or on the tank themselves during a dangerous trash grouping in M+, but in this case be aware that no one else can be in combat with the pack as you’re doing this otherwise they’ll be attacked instead of you. You can also take Improved Blessing of Protection to reduce the cooldown if you need it up more often, which also applies to Blessing of Spellwarding in your spec tree. If using this ability on yourself to clear a debuff, make sure you’re ready with a cancelaura macro so that you don’t lose aggro, which will be linked in the macro section of this guide.

Notable Spec Tree Talents

Blessed Hammer

Blessed Hammers is the default talent in this choice node, with the exception of Lightsmith ST builds, and one of the main reasons for this outside having an additional charge is that it does not require a target. This means you can continue to build holy power between trash pulls, during intermission phases, or just if you’re out of range of mobs, which allows you to always ensure you can cast a Shield Of The Righteous once you’ve re-engaged mobs. It also provides significantly more defensive upside than Hammer Of The Righteous which is a nice bonus.

Shining Light

This is an important buff that allows you to cast Word Of Glory without spending holy power after using Shield Of The Righteous 3 times, allowing you to weave in healing on yourself or allies as needed while still maintaining full uptime on your active mitigation.

Grand Crusader and Crusader’s Judgment

The combination of these talents is what causes a lot of the reactionary gameplay that defines Protection Paladin. In M+ the Avenger's Shield resets are what allows you to lockdown casters for an extended period of time, whereas the extra charge of Judgment and bonus cooldown reduction is the backbone of your holy power generation, allowing you to maintain Shield Of The Righteous uptime and filling many of your globals.

Blessing of Spellwarding

This is a niche but powerful tool, unique to Protection Paladin. While Blessing Of Protection immunes physical damage and debuffs, Spellwarding protects against magic damage and can prevent magic based debuffs entirely. It can be used to save an ally or even as a personal for yourself when taking heavy magic damage, and is much safer to use than Blessing Of Protection as it does not cause you to drop aggro.

Avenging Wrath, Sentinel and Sanctified Wrath

This choice node grants you the defining cooldown of paladins, with Avenging Wrath granting additional crit rating and uptime compared to Sentinel giving you a significant boost to your maximum health and damage reduction. Unfortunately the uptime loss of using Sentinel is quite significant, which leads to not only dealing less damage but also generating less holy power, so in the vast majority of situations you’ll currently opt to take Avenging Wrath.

Regardless of which option you choose, Sanctified Wrath will be a talent you want to pick up, as not only does it increase the baseline duration, but it also causes your Hammer Of Wrath/Judgment casts during wings to generate an additional holy power, allowing you to fire off many more Shield Of The Righteous casts than you would otherwise be able to.

Sanctuary

The last remaining defensive power in Consecration, this helps give you a small defensive boost against all forms of damage while also making it easier to maintain in heavy movement situations as you get 4 seconds of breathing room if you are ever forced out of its radius.

Gift of the Golden Val’kyr

An extremely powerful defensive talent, basically acting as a pseudo cheat death with its free proc of Guardian Of Ancient Kings when you drop below 30% health. This is a defensive staple in the Protection kit, without even considering the fact that it also provides a significant amount of CDR for Guardian Of Ancient Kings as well.

Strength in Adversity and Crusader’s Resolve

These two talents are both buffs tied to Avenger's Shield, resulting in significant defensive gains when used consistently. Despite nerfs to Strength In Adversity it remains a powerful form of mitigation in AoE situations, particularly when most of your damage intake is coming from parryable attacks. Crusader's Resolve on the other hand is better against larger, slower melee swings, making it a good option in certain raid encounters.

Sweeping Verdict and Adjudication

Unlike the talents we just discussed, these nodes are instead tied to Judgment, giving you the choice between bonus cleave damage with Sweeping Verdict allowing Judgment to cleave, or single target durability thanks to the physical damage absorb shield provided by Adjudication. The latter in particular pairs extremely well with Crusader's Resolve to help passively mitigate heavy melee swings.

Instrument of the Divine

Another one of the new talents added in Midnight, this allows you to consume additional holy power to increase the damage of your Shield Of The Righteous casts. This means that in moments where you have excess holy power, such as during Avenging Wrath, you’re able to gain a significant boost to your damage output. At the same time, this doesn’t hurt you in moments of low resource generation as long as you remember to only cast Shield Of The Righteous with 3 holy power available, making this a solid damage option if other defensive talents aren’t needed.

Zealot’s Paragon

Newly moved from the class tree to the Protection tree, these nodes cause Hammer Of Wrath/Judgment casts while Avenging Wrath is active to extend it by 1s, double what The War Within version did, adding up to quite a bit over the duration of the buff and drastically increasing the uptime of your most powerful cooldown.

Righteous Protector

This talent has undergone some significant changes in Midnight, now providing a flat amount of cooldown reduction to Avenging Wrath along with a duration decrease. While these changes result in less skill expression, having wings on a 1min CD is quite useful, even if it's for a shorter overall duration, particularly in combination with the new Apex talents which allow for extremely high burst during your Avenging Wrath window.

Last Stand

An extremely unique talent, this causes Divine Shield to taunt all enemies around you for 8s, preventing you from losing threat and turning it into the strongest defensives in the game. This allows you to do things like clear otherwise undispellable DoTs, or even just soak up lethal damage as if nothing happened. The one thing to be aware of is the 15yd range on this taunt effect, as if there are ever mobs past that distance while Divine Shield is still active you will immediately lose aggro on them, which can be very bad for other nearby players.

Lightsmith

This hero tree grants you a new ability in Holy Armaments, which is a 1min CD with 2 charges that rotates between Holy Bulwark, an absorb shield that grows over time, and Sacred Weapon, a buff that empowers the target to deal bonus holy damage or healing to their target. These buffs aren’t just for allies though, as whenever you buff someone else you actually gain the same benefit, so you get to feel empowered as well! This tree also has a few interactions with Shining Light, giving you the opportunity to gain more of them while also causing your free Word Of Glory casts to grant CDR for your armaments.

In terms of choices in this tree, 3 out of the 4 choice nodes are locked in, however you do have the choice between Divine Guidance and Blessed Assurance, where the latter is often used in raid alongside Hammer Of The Righteous to optimize single target damage, leaving the former as the default choice in M+ when you’d rather be using Blessed Hammers.

Rotationally there isn’t too much different with this hero spec compared to baseline Prot Paladin, making it a solid option for players new to the spec. There are some minor adjustments when taking the previously mentioned Divine Guidance/Blessed Assurance, otherwise it’s mostly about optimizing your Sacred Weapon uptime and doing your best to ensure this buff is active for as much of your Avenging Wrath window as possible in order to maximize the output of Blessing Of The Forge.

Templar

If buffing people isn’t your thing, Templar opts to instead rain hammers down from the heavens, empowering Divine Toll to turn into Hammer Of Light after being used which does some solid burst damage, but also giving you a maintenance buff in Shake The Heavens that allows you to consistently call down smaller Empyrean Hammer for more consistent throughput. Extending this buff via Higher Calling is core to the Templar hero spec, as these hammers also can apply damage reductions to enemies as well as grant you a free use of Hammer Of Light once you’ve called down 60 of them thanks to Light's Deliverance. Keep in mind that all uses of Hammer Of Light have a 12s limit, so you can’t hold on to these for too long.

When it comes to choice nodes you really don’t swap any of them for Templar, as in all cases there’s one option that significantly outshines the other. The rotation does get altered though, as Avenger's Shield loses a lot of offensive value since it does not extend your Shake The Heavens buff. This results in dramatically less casts of this ability in most cases, with the exception being if you can get an interrupt while talented into Punishment or if you need to press it in order to maintain your Strength In Adversity defensive buff.

While I wouldn’t say this hero tree is extremely difficult, it is very punishing for both rotational mistakes or lack of boss uptime, particularly if they result in you losing Shake The Heavens.