Protection Paladin Midnight Talents Guide

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Hammer of Wrath and Vengeful Wrath

The main rotational change for Protection Paladin in Midnight, Hammer Of Wrath, is no longer its own button; instead it's a transformation of Judgment that is only castable during Avenging Wrath. This makes the rotation slightly simpler and impacts your holy power economy.

There is some significant upside as Hammer Of Wrath now benefits from any talent that amplifies Judgment, resulting in increased damage, cooldown reduction, and other effects. On top of this, a new talent in the class tree in Vengeful Wrath allows you to keep the execute damage of this ability, turning Avenging Wrath into a powerful cooldown against low-health targets.

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. The target cap will need you to be wary if you’re trying to interrupt multiple mobs in a pack with more than 5 enemies, as you aren’t guaranteed to hit the targets you want.

To help mitigate this, your current target is always hit by one of the shields, allowing you to guarantee at least one caster gets interrupted, but if there are multiple casters, then you'll 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 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. This also has synergy with the Apex talent nodes to give Paladin some strong burst, which we’ll discuss in a later section.

Blessing of Freedom and Unbound Freedom

One of many blessing buffs paladins can give to themselves or allies, Freedom is a bit of a niche choice that generally has very little value, but it can be extremely strong in content where slows or roots are more common, particularly if these are tied to DoT effects, as generally that means Freedom can fully mitigate that damage.

Protection is able to expand on this a bit more with Unbound Freedom, allowing them to always use this on another player while also gaining the benefits themselves, plus adding a 30% move speed increase to the buff to make it much more generically valuable.

This helps a lot with paladins lacking mobility outside of Steed, plus makes it even more useful against debuffs that target multiple players, as you can now clear two with a single global.

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. If you aren’t using sac frequently enough to make use of this CDR, you’re better off with Recompense or another talent entirely.

Speaking of Recompense, this 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.

Blessing of Protection

Another blessing talent, with this one providing a short physical immunity to whoever is targeted, giving it quite a few different uses, including to clear physical or bleed debuffs, to soak extremely large physical hits on a single player, to prevent a player from gaining aggro on mobs, or to assist with grouping a large pack, assuming no other players are present.

Beware that if you plan to use this on yourself, you may need to be ready with a cancel aura macro to prevent mobs from running at other party members, which will be included in the macro section of this guide. Note that this ability does share a cooldown with the protection-specific Blessing Of Spellwarding, which we’ll discuss in the spec talent section, so while you can’t use them together, you can get some additional CDR from Improved Blessing Of Protection, which does count towards both spells.

Righteous Protection

This talent essentially adds Poison and Disease immunity to the target of your Blessing Of Sacrifice, making it extremely useful in situations where multiple of these debuffs are thrown out in a short duration, as it allows you to dispel 2 separate players with sac and Cleanse Toxins. More Poison or Disease dispels in your group does hurt the value of this node, and of course, the content you’re doing needs to have a relevant debuff to dispel, making it a bit of a niche choice.

Blessed Hammer

Blessed Hammer is the default talent in this choice node, with the exception of Lightsmith ST builds, and one of the main reasons for this, outside of having an additional charge, is that it does not require a target. This means you can continue building Holy Power between trash pulls, during intermission phases, or whenever you’re out of range of mobs. As a result, you can always ensure you have enough to cast Shield Of The Righteous once you re-engage.

It also provides significantly more defensive upside than Hammer Of The Righteous, which is a nice bonus.

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+, Avenger's Shield resets let you lock down casters for extended periods. Meanwhile, the extra charge of Judgment and the added cooldown reduction form the backbone of your Holy Power generation, helping you maintain Shield Of The Righteous uptime and fill many of your globals.

Blessing of Spellwarding

This niche but powerful blessing is unique to Protection Paladin and acts similarly to Blessing Of Protection, except it immunes magic damage instead of physical. There are a couple of things to note about this, however, first, it does not actually remove magic debuffs on a player, but it can prevent them if applied before the debuff goes out, meaning in situations where debuffs are longer than the duration of this spell, you need to use it a bit more preemptively.

Second, since mobs are still able to hit you with melee attacks while this is active, you are able to use it as a personal mid-pull if you need to mitigate any magic damage without losing aggro, again just keep in mind that you will still take the full amount of any physical damage.

Avenging Wrath and Sentinel

This choice node allows paladins to choose between a more offensive or defensive defining cooldown, otherwise known as “wings”, with Avenging Wrath granting additional crit and uptime compared to Sentinel, giving you a significant boost to your maximum health and damage reduction.

Generally, you’ll see crit wings taken in raid and in easier M+ content, whereas Sentinel is used in high keys and especially hard-hitting boss encounters.

Sanctified Wrath, Zealot’s Paragon, and Righteous Protector

Regardless of which wings option you choose between, these 3 talents empower your cooldown further and will likely be taken in all situations.

Sanctified Wrath provides a flat increase to the base duration while also causing Hammer Of Wrath casts to generate additional holy power, allowing you to cast Shield Of The Righteous more than you would otherwise be able to.

Newly moved from the class tree to the Protection tree, Zealot's Paragon further empowers Hammer Of Wrath to now extend your wings by 1s per cast, double what the talent did in The War Within, which adds up to a significant duration increase, assuming you correctly prioritize keeping this ability on CD during your cooldown window.

Finally, there’s Righteous Protector which has had the most significant changes in Midnight, now providing a flat amount of cooldown reduction to wings while also decreasing the duration by a flat percentage.

While these changes do result in less skill expression, having wings on a 1min CD is quite useful even on a shorter duration, as it allows for strong burst windows when paired with Divine Toll and the new Apex talents, which we’ll discuss in the next section.

Gift of the Golden Val’kyr

An extremely powerful defensive talent, this acts as a pseudo cheat death effect as it will help to mitigate the hit that initially procs 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, especially in M+ situations where you’re able to consistently hit multiple targets with Avenger's Shield.

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 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, helping to shore up a previous weakness of Protection Paladins when taken together.

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.

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 defensive cooldown 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.

One of the other new additions for all specs in Midnight is Apex talents, which players are able to grab by using capstone talent points. For Protection Paladin, these nodes are called Glory Of The Vanguard, and they have the following effects based on point investment:

First Node - Judgment has a chance to grant you Vanguard, causing your next Avenger's Shield to leave a line of light between you and your target, piercing enemies for holy damage.

Second/Third Node - Judgment damage increased by 10%/20%. When you consume Vanguard, you gain 1 holy power/3 holy power.

Fourth Node - Your next Shield Of The Righteous cast after Vanguard deals 50% additional damage to your primary target and refracts light onto 4 nearby targets for holy damage. During Avenging Wrath, your Avenger's Shield always benefits from Vanguard

As an entire package, these Apex nodes work together to generally increase your holy power generation and AoE damage. This massively amplifies your damage during wings, turning it into a powerful burst window with extremely fast gameplay.

Taking it step-by-step, the first point gives you access to the new Vanguard buff, which can only proc from Judgment, an ability that is now even more important to maximize your casts of.

The frontal effect this creates when consumed is between you and your target, so in AoE situations, you may need to adjust which mob you’re aiming at in order to ensure this frontal hits as many targets as possible.

The second and third points are fairly straightforward. Notably, the additional Holy Power generation from empowered casts of Avenger's Shield makes it much easier to maintain Shield Of The Righteous, helps you get more Shining Light procs, and increases your AoE damage.

The bonuses from all these previous talents are further amplified by the fourth node. It causes every Avenger's Shield cast during Wings to act as if it were empowered, firing a frontal attack, granting 3 Holy Power, and triggering the new damage effect tied to your next Shield Of The Righteous cast.

What this does is turn wings into a powerful burst cooldown where you are constantly flooded with holy power, requiring fast button presses in order to minimize capping on resources while maximizing the time you spend in wings. Since so much of your damage comes during these windows, how you handle your rotation during them is extremely important, and we’ll dive into the details in a later section.

On top of that, keep in mind that the Vanguard effect also triggers from Divine Toll and Divine Resonance, meaning you can gain a significant boost to your burst if you always cast Divine Toll after your wings, something that is much easier to do now that the reworked Righteous Protector causes their cooldowns to line up.

Now these Apex nodes do play favourites with the hero trees, as Templar’s Higher Calling does not trigger off Avenger's Shield, whereas Lightsmith actually gains additional Grand Crusader procs from Reflection Of Radiance, meaning Lightsmith will always get more value out of them with their current design.

Lightsmith

This hero tree grants you a new ability in Holy Armaments, which is a 1min CD with 2 charges that rotate 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 and Lay On Hands.

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 Hammer.

Rotationally, there isn’t a lot different with this hero tree 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. The main thing to keep track of is optimizing your Sacred Weapon uptime, particularly during your Avenging Wrath window 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. The main gameplay loop, however, revolves around maintaining a buff called Shake The Heavens, which allows you to call down smaller Empyrean Hammers for more consistent throughput.

You can extend this buff thanks to the Higher Calling node, which is very important as these hammers also apply damage reductions to enemies and grant you a free use of Hammer Of Light once you’ve called down 60 due to the Light's Deliverance capstone. Keep in mind that all uses of Hammer Of Light have a 20s limit, so you can’t hold on to these procs 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 fewer 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 and lack of boss uptime, particularly if they result in you losing your Shake The Heavens buff. On top of this, it has a bit of counter synergy with the Apex talents, which want you to hit Avenger's Shield as frequently as possible during your Avenging Wrath, something that Templar generally does not want to do.