Protection Paladin Talents Guide

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Notable Class Tree Nodes

Punishment

Punishment can provide a lot of free Blessed Hammer uses in any fights where you can consistently interrupt casts with Rebuke or Avenger’s Shield. Free Blessed Hammers are not only an extremely efficient source of extra holy power, but can also proc Grand Crusader, resetting Avenger’s Shield and providing even more chances to interrupt casts. In M+ you always want to try and “snipe” casts with Avenger’s Shield to maximize the value of this talent. Getting used to utilizing @focus Avenger’s Shield macro helps a lot with that.

Sacrifice of the Just/Recompense

Sacrifice of the Just is an incredibly powerful tool, especially for Mythic+. Having a strong external available every pull is incredibly powerful and your healer will love you for having it.

Recompense is an interesting node for raid. It turns Blessing of Sacrifice into a pseudo dps cooldown. You throw it on your co-tank when they are about to get hit by a tank nuke, and your next Judgement or Word of Glory gets empowered based on the amount of damage you prevented. Timed correctly this can do quite a bit of damage.

Utility Class Tree Nodes

All of the talents below can be freely swapped around depending on what you or your group needs.

Fist of Justice and Blinding Light give you a lot of valuable CC for Mythic Plus, as well as Cleanse Toxins, which might be useful in the Ara-Kara, City of Echoes dungeon.

Unbound Freedom has some niche value in M+, but its potency has lowered quite a bit in raid due to encounter design.

Essential Spec Tree Talent Nodes

Blessed Hammer

Blessed Hammer is the go to pick over Hammer of the Righteous simply because it has 3 charges and thus gives more holy power. Not requiring a target is a bonus as it allows you to build holy power outside of combat so you can go into combat with 3 holy power for a Shield of the Righteous.

Redoubt

Redoubt is the better pick over Inner Light. Inner Light only kicks in when your Shield of the Righteous expires, which with proper rotation basically shouldn’t happen at all. You can on the other hand easily maintain 3 stacks of Redoubt during the pull, gaining 6% Strength and Stamina.

Sanctuary

A nice QoL talent that allows you to shortly leave consecration and still maintain its benefits for 4 seconds.

Shining Light

Shining Light can now stack 2 times, reducing a chance of wasting free Word of Glory procs, and providing the option of using 2 free Word of Glories in a quick succession for big burst healing.

Grand Crusader and Crusader’s Judgment

These two talents form the backbone of Protection Paladin. The extra charge of Judgement and the cooldown reduction it gains from Grand Crusader is what allows us to generate enough holy power outside of Avenging Wrath to keep 100% uptime on Shield of the Righteous. Without these two talents the spec completely falls apart.

Avenging Wrath: Might and Sentinel

While Sentinel brings an extra defensive layer, the nerfs to its duration it got going into The War Within make it very undesirable to get instead of Avenging Wrath: Might. Playing “normal” wings provides higher uptime on it due to longer duration, which leads to more holy power generation and higher CDR on wings and your defensives. The extra 20% crit you get from Avenging Wrath: Might also leads to very high DPS gain. In most situations it is not advised to go for Sentinel.

Moment of Glory

Moment of Glory is an incredibly versatile cooldown - at first glance it just empowers and reduces cooldown of the Avenger’s Shield - so what? But if you take a deeper look at how many benefits Avenger’s Shield gives it will be apparent how strong Moment of Glory really is - Bulwark of Order, Bulwark of the Righteous, Punishment, ability to silence multiple mobs in a short time, list goes on.

On top of shields from Bulwark of Order, Moment of Glory generates an absorb shield for 25% of all damage done - that paired with a Divine Toll, and it becomes a decently strong defensive that helps you self sustain on big pulls.

Resolute Defender and Righteous Protector

Resolute Defender helps us reduce the gaps in our defensives, lowering the cooldown of Ardent Defender and Divine Shield with every holy power spending ability. Righteous Protector was nerfed coming into The War Within, but still remains a very strong option. Having a higher uptime on Avenging Wrath or Sentinel is amazing.

The longer we are able to spend in wings, the more holy power we are able to generate and spend during it, which reduces cooldown on it, allowing us to spend more time in wings…These two talents make Protection Paladin want as much haste as possible to generate and spend more holy power and achieve higher uptime on important cooldowns.

M+ Spec Tree Talent Nodes

Eye of Tyr

This short cooldown ability allows you to bridge the gap between your major defensives in M+. While it can give you an extra defensive to cover tank mechanics in raid, paladins usually already have enough defensives to have them up when needed in raid. It’s also a powerful tool for snap AOE threat at the start of the pull if you’ve talented into Inmost Light

Gift of the Golden Val’kyr

This is a very interesting talent. The main benefit of it is not from the cooldown reduction on Guardian of the Ancient Kings, but rather the free activation of Guardian of the Ancient Kings every 45 seconds when we drop below 30% health.

This is a very very nice “oops I messed up” talent that can really save you in some situations. The cooldown reduction is just an added benefit that lets you have Guardian of the Ancient Kings up more, especially when tied with Righteous Protector.

Strength in Adversity

Strength in Adversity got a massive buff going into The War Within, and now grants 5% parry for each target hit by Avenger’s Shield, up to 15%. This is very strong in M+, where you can nearly have 100% uptime on 3 stacks, and 15% parry is nothing to scoff at.

Crusader’s Resolve makes targets hit by Avenger’s Shield do 10% less melee damage to you. This is a solid choice on low target encounters, for example in raid. On big pulls however the Avenger’s Shield will not always bounce to all the targets, making this talent scale a lot worse with the amount of targets than Strength in Adversity.

Last Stand

This talent gives paladin a unique defensive in the form of a complete immunity for 8 seconds. Just remember that Divine Shield will only taunt targets within 15 meters around you, and you will immediately drop aggro on targets further than that while Divine Shield is active.

Optional Spec Tree Talent Nodes

You will have a couple spare talent points in the spec tree, let's discuss how you can spend them optimally.

Blessing of Spellwarding

Blessing of Spellwarding is one of the strongest tools in our toolkits. You can either use it to save a teammate, or use it as a personal on yourself, which makes it a very flexible talent. Remember that contrary to Blessing of Protection you do not drop aggro when affected by it, so you can safely use it even when tanking big pulls without a risk of someone dying to threat.

Seal of Reprisal/Inspiring Vanguard

Seal of Reprisal is pretty boring and uninteractive, but will make your numbers bigger even if by a tiny bit. Inspiring Vanguard usually provides less overall DPS numerically, but increases the proc chance of Grand Crusader by 5% and grants you 2% Strength when it procs. This is a more defensive option that still provides some extra damage.

Light of the Titans

Light of the Titans causes your Word of Glories to heal you for a good chunk over 15 seconds. This trickle healing really helps tide you over between Word of Glories and is a very good self healing talent. The bonus of Light of the Titans being increased by 100% while you are affected by a harmful periodic effect is great for both raid and M+

Protection Paladin’s hero talent trees offer varying playstyles, flavor and utility. With current beta tuning Templar numerically outshines Lightsmith both on AOE and on single target fights, but Lightsmith offers easier playstyle and more possibilities to support allies.

At the end of the day you can make both of the hero talent trees work, and they both have their up- and downsides, so if you prefer one over the other for whatever reason, don’t feel forced to go for the “more optimal” one.

Let’s take a closer look at what both of the hero talent trees offer us.

Lightsmith Hero Talent Tree

This hero talent tree is shared by Protection and Holy, and revolves around buffing your allies with Holy Armaments. This can be a Holy Bulwark - an absorb shield that grows over time, or a Sacred Weapon - a buff that makes its target do additional Holy damage or healing to nearby targets.The Armaments have 2 charges, start with a Holy Bulwark, and rotate after each use between each other. The core gameplay of this hero talent tree revolves around maximizing uptime on Sacred Weapon on you and your allies, which does not have many implications on your rotation apart from the fact that you have to try and use Armaments on cooldown.

Upsides

• Access to Holy Bulwark is both an extra defensive for you, and an external that can save your teammate.
• A familiar rotation that almost doesn’t change with Lightsmith.
• Getting Sacred Weapon procs back-to-back feels incredibly satisfying.

Downsides

• With current tuning loses to Templar numerically.
• A familiar rotation might be a downside to someone looking for new feelings from playing protection paladin in The War Within.

Now let’s take a look at the core Lightsmith talents.

Notable Lightsmith Talents

Solidarity

This makes you always have 2 Armaments active at the same time - one on you, and one on an ally, which logically doubles the value of the Armaments.

Divine Inspiration

Divine Inspiration gives your abilities a chance to randomly grant you and your closest ally a Sacred Weapon, which increases your uptime on Sacred Weapon.

Blessing of the Forge

Another talent that revolves around spawning extra Sacred Weapons - this time whenever you use Avenging Wrath or Sentinel.

Divine Guidance

This talent buffs your next Consecration to do increased damage or healing for every holy power ability cast, stacking up to 5 times. It is important to keep track of Divine Guidance stacks and not overcap it, replacing Consecration as soon as you reach 5 stacks.

Hammer and Anvil

This passive talent is one of your main sources of AOE damage, splashing damage to mobs each time your Judgment crits. Due to this talent critical strike is one of our best stats for AOE damage now.

Rite of Sanctification

And the last talent we’ll be looking at in the Lightsmith hero tree is Rite of Sanctification. This talent will replace weapon Oils for you, buffing your weapon for an hour to give you 5% more armor and 1% more Strength. Don’t forget to reapply the buff between M+ keys or after several pulls in raid.

As you can see, the Lightsmith hero tree is mostly passive, and only requires you to manage Holy Armaments. This in itself is not too hard, and while ideally you want to pick who is getting your Holy Bulwarks every time for optimal use, you can just use Sacred Weapon on yourself. Sacred Weapon goes on the closest DPS player, and as long as that player is executing their rotation, you will get full value out of your Armaments. Note that 2 Sacred Weapons can’t overlap, so if you have one ready, but got a free one from Divine Inspiration or Blessing of the Forge, hold on to the Sacred Weapon until the free one runs out.

Templar Hero Talent Tree

Now let’s move to the Templar hero talent, which is shared between Protection and Retribution, and is focused on big burst after every Eye of Tyr uses. As a templar protection paladin you gain access to a new active ability Hammer of Light, but only for 12 seconds after casting Eye of Tyr. Hammer of Light costs 5 holy power, does a lot of damage to up to 4 nearby enemies, and additionally sends down Empyrean Hammers, which deal extra damage.

Upsides

• Greatly affects the rotation, bringing new aspects and min-max possibilities into it.
• Using Hammer of Light and continuously calling down Empyrean Hammers looks and feels cool.

Downsides

• Forces you to spend 2 capstone talent points into Eye of Tyr and Inmost light even on single target.
• Extending Shake the Heavens effects the rotation in a weird way and heavily encourages completely dropping Avenger’s Shield on single target which might feel clunky.
• Holy Power economy is dragged down by high cost of Hammer of Light, which can lead to gaps in active mitigation.
• Templar does not provide any unique utilities to support your allies.

Now let’s take a closer look at the key Templar talents.

Notable Templar Talents

Shake the Heavens and Higher Calling

Shake the Heavens makes you call down an additional Empyrean Hammer every 2 seconds for 8 seconds after using Hammer of Light. You can extend this effect by casting holy power generating abilities (Judgment, Hammer of Wrath, Blessed Hammer), and core gameplay of Templar revolves around maximizing uptime of this buff.

Hammerfall

Hammerfall makes your Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory call down one, or if Shake the Heavens is active - two, Empyrean Hammers.

Light’s Deliverance

For each Empyrean hammer you’ve called down you gain a stack of Light’s Deliverance. After reaching 60 stacks you can consume them to cast a free Hammer of Light.

Zealous Vindication/For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a great option when fighting a low amount of targets, i.e. in raid. It makes Divine toll empower your 3 next Judgements to deal up to 100% increased damage when it hits only 1 target. But for each extra target hit by Divine Toll this extra damage decreases by 20% - so at 5 targets this talent loses all value.

That makes Zealous Vindication a better AOE option for M+ dungeons. It increases the amount of Empyrean Hammers you get, which grants more stacks of Light’s Deliverance, meaning you can cast Hammer of Light more often.

Undisputed Ruling

This talent makes your Eye of Tyr generate 3 holy power, which partly alleviates the big holy power cost of Hammer of Light. Due to this talent we ideally want to send Eye of Tyr on 2 holy power, so we can use Hammer of Light immediately after. Additionally Hammer of Light increases your haste by 12% for 6 seconds, which helps extend Shake the Heavens a bit.

Endless Wrath/Sanctification

Currently Sanctification provides more damage both on single target, and AOE situations. Endless Wrath provides more holy power in theory, but complicates the rotation with random procs and just has too small of a proc chance to gain enough value from this talent.

To sum it up, Templar core talents like Shake the Heavens, Higher Calling, Hammerfall and Light’s Deliverance creates a feedback loop centered around maximizing the amount of Empyrean Hammers we get. The following is not a proper description of a rotation, but a short summary of the Templar gameplay loop. For the exact rotational implications see the Rotation part of this guide.

1. Use Eye of Tyr on CD to get access to Hammer of Light.
2. Use Hammer of Light on CD.
3. Generate as much holy power as possible during the Shake the Heavens window to extend it and get more procs of Empyrean Hammers.
4. Use as much holy power spenders as possible during the Shake the Heavens window to get extra procs of Empyrean Hammers from Hammerfall.
5. Each Empyrean Hammer we call down grants a stack of Light’s Deliverance. At 60 stacks use the free Hammer of Light, which brings us back at step 2.