Protection Talent Guide

This protection talent guide goes over each of the talents in the Paladins protection talent tree. The Protection talent tree is for Paladins that want to tank. The whole way through it offers talents that increase your ability to take damage and deal threat. It also offers one of the better 41 point paladin talents in the way of the Avenger's Shield, which provides an excellent pulling ability.

Paladin tanking is not for the faint of heart though. It requires a lot of dedication to do it properly. You need to learn how to manage threat, manage your gear and you need to spend countless hours gearing up. Tanking in general is a hard skill to learn and one that burns out many players over time. Paladin tanking is made even more difficult by the fact that many players will not believe that it can be done. However, a properly geared and played Paladin tank can be just as formidable a tank as any Warrior or Druid out there, and in some cases better.

Return to the Paladin Talent Guide. The Paladin Talent guide contains the links to the Holy and Retribution Talent guides along with resources to better help you understand Talents and the best ways to go about spending your Talent Points.

• Improved Devotion Aura - Max 5 points, increases the armor bonus of Devotion aura by up to 25%
  • While it sounds like a lot of armor increase, it really doesn't make that much of a difference. At max level the 250ish extra armor does almost nothing to your 11,000ish base armor.
  • For 5 points, there are better things to spend you points on.
    
    
• Redoubt - Max 5 points, provides up to a 10% chance that any attack against you will increase your block by 30% for 10 seconds or 5 blocks whichever comes first.
  • One of the best base level talents for the paladin and useful for almost any spec. If you will being using a shield at all, get this ability!
  • Required to get Holy Shield so if your building a tank this is a Must!
  • Strongly Recommended

• Precision - Max 3 points, increases your chance to hit with all melee weapons by up to 3%
  • This is useful so that your attacks hit to keep Judgements up on your target.
  • For 3 points it is worth considering, however not needed.
    
    
• Guardian's Favor - Max 5 points, Reduces the cooldown on your Blessing of Protection by up to 2 minutes and increases the duration of your blessing of freedom by up to 6 seconds.
  • Since Blessing of Protection can be used as your backup taunt, it is useful to reduce the cool down. However there are better things to spend points on.
    
    
• Toughness - Max 5 points, increases your armor value from items by up to 10%
  • This ability scales extremely well as you gear up since the better gear provides more armor.
  • MUST Have for Tanking Paladins

• Shield Specialization - Max 3 points, increases the amount of damage you absorb with your shield by up to 30%.
  • Block will be your easiest to gain form of damage mitigation, especially with redoubt and holy shield, however it is also your weakest form of damage mitigation.
  • Increasing the damage you block is therefore very useful, since at max level you can hit 80% easily (with HS and Redoubt active).
  • Strongly Recommended
    
    
• Blessing of Kings - 1 point skill, increases all stats on target by 10%
  • A very useful talent and one many people expect all Paladins to have.
  • 10% extra in all stats can go along way to help out, however don't use it to exclusion. Might, Wisdom and Salvation all remain very important blessings.
  • Strongly Recommended
    
    
• Improved Righteous Fury - Max 3 points, While Righteous Fury is active you produce up to an additional 90% threat from all holy attacks and reduce damage taken by up to 6%.
  • This is the ability that really allows Paladins to tank and hold aggro. The damage reduction is nice but the main ability is the increased threat.
  • Try tanking without using this ability just once and you will realize how important it is!
  • MUST Have for Tanking Paladins
    
    
• Anticipation - Max 5 points, Increases your defense skill by up to 20 points.
  • 20 points in defense helps you hit your 490 defense goal at level 70 much more easily, so that you can not be critically hit.
  • MUST Have for Tanking Paladins

• Stoicism - Max 2 points, increases your resistance to stun effects by up to 10% and reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by up to 30%
  • Meant for PvP players and should be taken by them.
  • Not worth the points when tanking though since most stuns are not "stuns" and will not be reduced by this talent.
    
    
• Improved Hammer of Justice - Max 3 points, decreases the cooldown of your hammer of justice by up to 15 seconds.
  • This is a situational ability. Since most bosses are immune to stuns, it is near worthless to PvE tanks. In PvP though it is extremely useful.
  • Recommended for PvP players
    
    
• Improved Concentration Aura - Max 3 points, increases the resistance to interruption of your aura by up to 15%, and reduces to duration of silence effects by up to 30%
  • Concentration already does 70% avoidance to interruption. An extra 15% is not worth the 3 points.
  • Skip it completely

• Spell Warding - Max 2 points, reduces all spell damage taken by up to 4%.
  • While 4% is not a lot of damage reduction, Paladin tanks weak point is spells, so it is very useful
  • If you can spare the 2 points, it can be worth taking it to help out with damage reduction when tanking.
    
    
• Blessing of Sanctuary - 1 point skill, reduces all damage taken and deals holy damage back for every attack blocked.
  • Since this provides damage reduction and extra threat this is one of your key blessings, especially when tanking multiple MOBs.
  • Use this when tanking trash then switch to Kings when on the Boss.
  • Strongly Recommended
    
    
• Reckoning - Max 5 points, provides up to a 10% chance after taking damage, to gain an additional attack on your next 4 attacks for the next 8 seconds.
  • You are going to be hit, so you may as well hit back. In fact you need to to keep up your Judgements. This allows you to do just that.
  • This also allows you to get of twice the amount of threat from seal of righteousness as long as you have a 2.0 attack speed or faster weapon, since you will get to use all 4 charges.
  • This is very useful until you get into very high level raid content and are geared extremely well. It then starts becoming negligable.
  • Recommended for Tanking Paladins

• Sacred Duty - Max 2 points, increases your stamina by up to 6%, reduces the cooldown on Divine Shield by up to 1 minute and can eliminate the attack speed penalty altogether.
  • The main advantage here is the extra stamina, since paladins are at a health disadvantage over Druids and Warriors already. While not huge 6% helps close the gap slightly.
  • While not strictly required, it sure helps.
  • Recommended
    
    
• One-Handed Weapon Specialization - Max 5 points, increases all damage done while you have a one-handed weapon equiped by up to 5%
  • While causing additional damage is nice, better yet it adds to seals and procs while using a one-handed weapon.
  • This can add almost 10% to your total output of damage once everything is factored in.
  • Recommended

• Holy Shield - 1 point skill, increases your chance to block by 30% for 10 seconds or 4 blocks (whichever comes first) and causes holy damage back for each block.
  • This is the meat and potatoes talent for tanking Paladins. This will always be used as it helps damage mitigation and threat all in one talent.
  • Having this up is the only real hope of getting to the 102.5% avoidance required to ignore crushing blows in raid instances.
  • Must Have for Tanking Paladins
    
    
• Improved Holy Shield - Max 2 points, Increase damage caused by Holy Shield by up to 20% and the number of possible blocks by 4.
  • Since you will always have holy shield up, you should make the most of it. The extra damage while not a lot, helps threat, and the extra 4 blocks brings the total to 8 which will drastically help tanking multiple MOBs.
  • Must Have for Tanking Paladins
    
    
• Ardent Defender - Max 5 points, reduces damage by up to 50% when you are at less than 20% health.
  • Very useful in that it provides healers with a little bit of a buffer if things go wrong in a fight.
  • Can be skipped in the odd situation where something causes enough damage to take you from 21% to dead in one hit though.
  • Recommended

• Combat Expertise - Max 5 points, Increases your expertise by up to 5 points and your stamina by up to 10%.
  • A must have in the protection tree, the 10% stacks with the earlier 6% and your 10% from kings, providing a real increase of almost 28.5% while kings is up.
  • Must have Talent.

• Avenger's Shield - 1 point skill, Throws your shield at the enemy causing holy damage to them and dazing them for 6 seconds, then jumps to and affects up to two additional targets.
  • This will become your main pulling method as a protection based paladin. It allows you to front load a lot of threat on targets.
  • It takes practice to use when using crowd control though, and is not very sap friendly. All CC should be done post pull.
  • While I have heard of many Paladin tanks that do not use this ability due to its semi random nature on secondary targets, I believe it is too good to pass up.
  • Strongly Recommended for Tanking Paladins

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