- Author: Nevermore
- Date: July 27, 2022
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
Protection Paladins have a large array of spells in their arsenal, offering both simple rotations for both Single-Target and AoE while also offering a large number of utility spells for their allies. However, you should take into consideration the fact that as a Protection Paladin, your mana can become a big problem unless you carefuly use your spells or you have a strong healer that can constantly proc your Spiritual Attunement.
Simple Rotation
- Do not forget to activate Righteous Fury before any fight!
- Use Avenging Wrath at the beginning of the fight!
- Use Avenger’s Shield as an initiation tool!
- Use Judgement of Wisdom on cooldown!
- Use Judgement of Light if there is no other paladin in the group!
- Use Hammer of the Righteous as your “Core” offensive tool!
- Use Shield of Righteousness as your second “Core” spammable ability!
- Upkeep Holy Shield! Use it on cooldown!
- Use Consecration on cooldown!
- Use Hand of Reckoning to taunt far away mobs or to taunt back from the Off-tank
- Use Hammer of Wrath when available
Abilities Overview
Single-Target
When it comes to a Single-Target rotation, we will only have one rotation throughout the entirety of the expansion!
Rotations
- Avenging Wrath -> Avenger’s Shield (Initiation) -> Holy Shield (Spam on cooldown)-> Judgement of Wisdom (On cooldown) -> Consecration (Upeep) -> Hammer of the Righteous -> Shield of Righteousness -> Avenger’s Shield (On cooldown) -> Hand of Reckoning (On Target swap or Taunting far away adds) -> Hammer of Wrath (Spam when your target reaches 20% health)
In-Depth Explanation
First of all, the Protection Paladin’s rotation is extremely simple! It comprises itself out of 6 spells which you will constantly have to cast in a sequence, one of them being a DoT upkeep.
Aside from those 6 spells, you have many tools in your arsenal which you will want to use to aid your allies, such as Hand of Protection, Hand of Freedom, Cleanse, Sacred Shield and Divine Sacrifice.
You will always want to initiate Avenger’s Shield, you will want to use it in the beginning of the fight combined with our favorite wings (Avenging Wrath) to maximize initial threat generation and spam it on cooldown afterwards.
You will generally want to activate Holy Shield before the fight begins, but you will also want to use it again the next time it becomes available. Holy Shield is one of our most powerful abilities as it increases our block chance by 30%! Not only that it increases our block chance, but it also deals holy damage back to your attacker!
You have access to three different types of Judgement! Each one of them has completely different effects, the first one allows you to regenerate mana with all of your attacks, the second one allows you regenerate 2% health on each of your attacks while the third one allows you to reduce an enemy’s movement speed by a considerable amount.
You will generally want to use Judgement of Wisdom as we have severe mana issues without a consistent healer! And by a consistent healer, we mean someone to consistently proc Spiritual Attunement. In the case there is no other Paladin in your group or raid, you will want to use Judgement of Light!
Consecration is one of your core abilities, allowing you to do consistent damage to your target while also generating consistent and constant threat. Consecration must be maintained at all times! If there is another ability that comes in your rotation and your Consecration is not up, you should always choose to upkeep Consecration instead of casting that ability.
Lastly, come two different spammable skills, which we will consider our “filler” abilities. The use of those abilities depends entirely on your higher stats and the type of fight you find yourself in. Hammer of the Righteous and Shield of Righteousness both have the same cooldown, therefore, they can only be used in specific situations, according to the fight and the stats.
Hammer of the Righteous is best used when there are aditional targets beside the main boss which need to be kept in control. This ability is also best used in combination with a higher Attack Power Value.
Shield of Righteousness is best used when there is only one target available. The ability itself scales better with Block Value rather than Attack Power! You should never use this ability if there are two or more targets around!
Area-of-Effect
When it comes to Area-of-Effect, Protection Paladins have multiple tools at their disposable, ranging from blessing the ground beneath their feet to throwing a “Holy” Shield into their enemies while also striking them with their mighty hammers.
Rotations
- Retribution Aura -> Avenger’s Shield -> Consecration -> Seal of Command -> Hammer of the Righteous -> Holy Wrath (Undead/Demons Targets)
In-Depth Explanation
As we mentioned earlier, Protection Paladins have several tools when it comes to AoE situations.
First of all, one of the most powerful AoE tools in their arsenal is Retribution Aura. This effect returns a specific amount of damage on every melee hit received by the Paladin, turning it into a very potent “Spiked Shield” ability. Considering that all the damage done by this ability is Holy, mobs will have no way of resisting it!
Second of all, your strongest tool comes in the form of Consecration! It allows you to place a zone beneath your feet that does constant holy damage to your enemies. Together with Righteous Fury, this ability will generate a huge amount of threat!
Avenger’s Shield is considered your initiation tool, affecting up to 3 targets. You will want to consistently use this ability throughout your rotation every time the cooldown becomes available!
Seal of Command is one of our most intriguing tools! It makes our basic attacks capable of dealing Holy damage while also targeting two aditional targets. This spell is amazing because it works in conjunction with abilities such as Hammer of the Righteous!
Lastly, Hammer of the Righteous, will be your filler ability, having a low cooldown, you will be using this ability on every possible cooldown!
As a Protection Paladin, we are considered a “spam” specialization, you will want to constantly upkeep Consecration, while also Hammer of the Righteous should be used on cooldown in conjunction with Seal of Command.
About the Author
About the pull, you pop Wings, Throw Avenger at max range and because of travel time you taunt the target. And for god sake, never ever taunt target that is already targeting you.
Pre-taunting is not solution to anything as it either kills dps now or 2 seconds later, either way if he wasn’t able to notice threat situation 10 seconds prior, 2 additional seconds won’t help him and you lost taunt CD.
If a DPS attacks a mob before it gets in my consecrate, they deserve to die. My healers know to heal only me at the start of a pull. If the DPS drags the mob to my consecrate they live. If not they die and I’ll taunt if it goes for the healer. Doesn’t take many times for the DPS to understand this.
You don’t know how much I agree with this. There is the false misconception that threat is only a tank’s concern. In tbc with only one taunt it has been a nightmare at times with DPS trying to compete on who had the longest **** since pull inception
Consider opening with hammer of the rightious instead of consecrate for this reason, its instant snap threat consecrate is not, same applies to avenger shield.
Assuming you are not dealing with an metamorphed demo lock or starfall hurricane boomkin noone should be able to out-threat you as a prot pala on aoe