The title pretty much says it all. With the release of patch 4.3 I have noticed that we [Prot Pallies] are putting up massive dps, tons of cds, and just overall mitigation it looks like Pallies are the go-to tanking class. Let me add that, though I do not currently have a druid tank, I do have a Blood DK and Prot Warrior and all are doing pretty good the sheer amount of tools you get with a pally makes it my favorite and most dependable class.

My pally is Schnookums and if you would like to check out my spec and gear you will see it is not overly crazy and before you start critiquing my build I do not choose to go cookie cutter and build my spec around our current raid makeup and my play style. So lets take a look at some of the great tools Pallys have…

First we will take a look at the T13 Set Bonuses:

2 Piece Bonus: Your Judgement ability now also grants a physical absorb shield equal to 30% of the damage it dealt.

TBD what kind of survivability it is offering. I plan on messing with my spec and changing some glyphs and running some numbers to see what kind of real returns we will get. I have already noticed that with my rotation ‘flow’ I don’t always hit my judgement as soon as its off cd but looks like I may have to hit it a bit more and sacrifice some dps? Thoughts?

4 Piece Bonus: Reduces the cool down of Divine Guardian by 60 sec and increases the radius of its effect by 70 yards.

Well I am sure you have looked around the boards and see that there are not a lot of people happy with this. Mainly, because at the release of Cataclysm was the same cd & same range that is now our 4 Piece bonus 2 tiers later… Yeah I know that all tank classes have some sort of raid CD for the 4 piece bonus and its something that we have always had but maybe they could have been more creative. I mean Divine Guardian doesn’t even give us any damge reduction. So MY 4 piece benefits everyone BUT me. With all that said though I liked it at the beginning of Cataclysm and I still like it just wish it went back to that baseline and given us something like ‘Your guardian of ancient kings now benefits the raid for 50% of the effect it has on you’ of even ‘Casting Divine Guardian now effects you as well as the raid’. Ok I am ranting… Moving on.

Over all our tier bonuses are ok at best but we really thrive on all of the tools in our arsenal. A good pally tank uses them all and uses them often. I can’t tell you how often I am placing Hand of Sacrifice on either the other tank or a healer or a dumb DPS standing in fire [GTFO!]. I use Hand of Protection very often on healers during times of high raid damage so they can worry about healing us and not themselves. I actually use Vuhdo while tanking on my pally because of the sheer amount of things I can cast and this way I don’t have to target someone, cast, and find my aggro target again. If you don’t use Vuhdo… Download it, install it, use it, LOVE it… its a great tool.

Paladin Survivability

So now just for general cds and over all survivability I think Pallys are doing very well. First off, hitting ‘Block Cap’ [102.4%], was possible in Firelands gear but now it looks to be rather easy and soon we will have to start forging out of that mastery we love so much to pure avoidance. Will 5.0 make us absolutely untouchable? At this rate… maybe. Beyond just plain stats and how well our mastery scales we really do have a ton of pretty good cds.

Cooldowns

• Holy Shield: Increases the amount your shield blocks by an additional 20% for 10 sec. [30 Second CD]
• Divine Protection: Reduces all damage taken by 20% for 10 sec. [1 min CD]
• Ardent Defender: Reduce damage taken by 20% for 10 sec. While Ardent Defender is active, the next attack that would otherwise kill you will instead cause you to be healed for 15% of your maximum health. [3 min CD]
• Guardian of Ancient Kings: The Guardian of Ancient Kings is protecting you, reducing all damage taken by 50% for 40 seconds. [5 min CD]
• Divine Shield: Protects you from all damage and spells for 8 sec, but reduces all damage you deal by 50%.  Cannot be used on a target with Forbearance.  Causes Forbearance for 1 min. [5 min CD]

If you use Divine Shield try out this macro. This is the basic ‘stack dropping’ macro used by pallies used in fights where the other tank is busy and you need to get rid of some nasty stacks of something. A key example was in Bastion of Twilight on the Heroic Halfus fight when the pally tank could carry the stacks of Malevolent Strike very high with CDs. Pop divine shield and keep going to take another set of stacks freeing up the other tanks to not have to taunt off as quickly. Try it out.

/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cast Divine Shield

have to double click it. First click activates Divine Shield and clears your stacks. Second click cancels the shield.

So I will have a few more posts that will be coming. I was going to go in to how to get some massive dps numbers but I want to play with the rotation with the 2 piece t13 to see if Judgement is going to get a little more love in the rotation. If you have any questions you can respond to this post or come over to Winterhoof – US and say hey!

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