Can you imagine if PVE and PvP were mixed? Well, Blizzard did. After the release of World of Warcraft Classic and Legion expansion, players are now able to team up against other players in Mythic+ dungeons. While many people have already wondered how this will affect Shadowlands Season 2 gameplay, it may be harder to see where they’re going with their strategy because no one knows what’s going on with Protection Paladins at the moment because of the recent changes.
The “is prot paladin good in shadowlands” is a question that has been asked for a long time. There are many reasons why protection paladins are good in the current meta, including their ability to take on multiple roles and their high survivability.
Andybrew (aka Cptrogers) recently ranked first in tanks on Raider.io while playing Protection Paladin, and his score has only risen since then, reaching the 3100 mark. In the five years that the feature has featured in the game, this is the best Prot. Paladin has done in top-end Mythic+. Prot. Paladin could always hit high keys, but it was usually two or three key levels behind other tanks like Prot. Warrior in BFA or Vengeance Demon Hunter in Shadowlands Season 1.
Prot. Paladin acquired a reputation as a “glass cannon tank” in Season 1. The overall consensus was that they dealt a lot of damage, but since it was difficult to survive in tough content, the spec was seen as inferior to other tanks in the meta. It can now compete with other tanks on the same critical levels, if not significantly higher. However, no modifications to the specification in 9.1 or 9.1.5 would have produced this movement. There was no one miraculous adjustment in a bunch of Blizzard patch notes for Season 2 that suddenly made them fantastic. It was the result of a number of things.
The first and most visible change is the playstyle transition from BFA to Shadowlands: having greater uptime on Shield of the Righteous makes defensive play more consistent than it’s ever been. The damage output is the second most evident factor. It’s no secret that Kyrian Prot. Paladin’s burst damage is highly AoE powerful and consistent in single target scenarios. These aren’t the only elements at play, therefore today I’ll look at what additional factors have helped a competitive player like Andy to flourish at playing Prot. Paladin in world first Mythic+ keys.
Author Information
Lincoln authored the text for this page. He is a moderator for the Hammer of Wrath Community, where he helps people improve their Protection skills on a regular basis. Please feel free to contact him with any questions, comments, or concerns you may have about anything you’ve read.
He may be found on Twitter, where he expresses his weird thoughts.
Explanation of Stat Scaling
Looking at stat scaling is a good place to start when studying why a spec or class begins to perform well, and it should come as no surprise that Paladin is one of the best scaling tanks.
Paladin, like other tanks, grows well with item level, gaining more life from Stamina and reducing damage with Armor, Block, and Strength. As material becomes more challenging, strength enhances Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory, allowing active mitigation to have a greater effect. All tanks benefit from item level, hence this form of scaling applies to them all.
It’s when it comes to secondary stat scaling that things become truly interesting. Tanks usually focus on two secondary stats, like as Haste/Vers or Blood Death Knight in the case of Prot. Warrior. Prot. Paladin, on the other hand, has three that they may equip. You may equip for Haste and Versatility in the same way that other tanks do, but you can also equip for Mastery, which is very powerful.
Haste aids in the scaling of the builder/spender economy, making it simpler to keep Shield of the Righteous up and running, or heal with Word of Glory. It gives you a lot more options for dealing with a damage spike on yourself or an ally, both proactively and reactively. Through Resolute Defender and Righteous Protector, a robust builder/spender economy will help cycle cooldowns, making it easier to conduct more riskier pulls since your cooldowns will be accessible more frequently. Because the spec requires a good Holy Power economy to work in more tough content, getting Haste was a significant priority of Season 1, but with Season 2, you can simply gain Haste with items like Old Warrior’s Soul and then concentrate on the other two attributes.
Aside from providing a passive damage boost and damage reduction, versatility has no meaningful advantages. It’s merely a useful supplementary stat to have on your equipment.
Through Mastery: Divine Bulwark, Paladin has a great third stat, Mastery. While standing in Consecration, this is a passive damage mitigation tool that boosts block probability and decreases the amount of damage a Prot. Paladin suffers. When you can remain in Consecration and face-tank, Mastery is a better option for a Paladin than Versatility. Unlike other tanks that have more specific and limited Mastery effects like Mastery: Critical Block or Mastery: Blood Shield, which both solely operate on physical damage, Mastery: Divine Bulwark is highly broad and works on all types of damage, including magic and bleeds. When you include in Holy Shield, a Prot Paladin may attain a 47-50 percent unbuffed block probability, which passively decreases damage suffered from melee swings, magic dots, and other sources. When compared to how other tanks gear, the amount of passive damage mitigation a Prot. Paladin obtains from Mastery via enhanced block chance and Consecration makes it an extremely appealing stat to wear.
Because stats are so important, Prot. Paladin scales well with them, and it’s rare to meet diminishing returns on three secondary attributes. This makes gearing more versatile in general, allowing you additional gear alternatives and ensuring that every piece has at least one decent secondary stat.
Anima Powers Tormented
Champion’s Brand and Crumbling Bulwark are two Anima abilities added in Season 2 of M+ that grant 400 additional secondary stats, which is the equivalent of 26 item levels worth of secondary stats.
Champion’s Brand is generally chosen by Paladin tanks who are pushing higher levels since it is more potent than The Stygian King’s Barbs. In addition to the attack power it offers, Champion’s Brand may grant up to 5% damage mitigation when it delivers Mastery. Furthermore, when the Paladin’s health goes below 70% HP, Champion’s Brand has an odd behavior in that it does not immediately switch off. A concealed health check that happens every few seconds determines whether or not the boost is active. Champion’s Brand will never fade as long as the Paladin’s health is over 70% before the next health check. Here’s a chart from a Halls of Atonement run to assist demonstrate the point. The pink line indicates the Paladin’s current HP, while the green coloring indicates when Champion’s Brand is active.
As you can see, despite many HP reductions below 70%, the boost remained active for the majority of the fight, beginning at the 6-minute point. Champion’s Brand is the greatest option for pushing high keys because of these two factors: the quantity of stat increase and uptime.
Crumbling Bulwark, the second ability, accomplishes two goals: it provides free passive damage and damage reduction via 200 free Versatility rating, and it compensates for Prot Paladin’s mitigation ramp up weakness. A Paladin may be quite susceptible going into a pull, since you must use globals to get Consecration down and Shield of the Righteous up, and the four-second cushion of 40% damage reduction provided by Crumbling Bulwark practically eliminates the danger of mitigation ramp-up time.
Prot Paladins got an additional tier’s worth of secondary stats from anima abilities, as well as an offset to one of their weaknesses.
Adjustments to the tank and dungeon tuning
In M+, Protection Paladin benefited from two tuning tweaks. The first was the inclusion of Aegis of Light, which provided a 10% passive damage mitigation. After the problem with Demonic Wards was uncovered, it was implemented as a hotfix. While all tanks benefited from the patch’s passive damage reduction, Paladin improved his face-tanking and kiting of garbage packs in Mythic+, since the update made them studier outside of Consecration.
At the start of Season 2, another modification was a 10% decrease in melee damage from trash and monsters in Mythic+. When these adjustments were combined, a melee swing on the first day of Season 2 caused 19 percent less relative damage than on the first day of Season 1.
Synergy and Utility
Because it’s part of the class fantasy, the Paladin has a lot of basic utility, and a lot of it can be applied to Mythic+. Class usefulness becomes increasingly relevant to many of the tactics used to time keys as key levels increase. There is a solid case to be made that world class keys are difficult to get without a Paladin in the group, and the tank is the best role in the group to obtain that utility.
The following are some of the most important tasks that Protection Paladins do:
But it’s not only about utility; it’s also about the newly found synergy between a Protection Paladin and their preferred healer: Restoration Shaman.
In summary, both the Prot Paladin and the Resto Shaman offer something to the table that the other does not. The Resto Shaman has group-wide DR, magic/curse dispel, and Earth Elemental, while the Paladin provides buttons like BoP, Sac, and disease/poison dispel. The kits just compliment each other better than any other tank and healer combo.
Legendaries and Soulbinds
Season 2 included new soulbind and legendary abilities, which had an impact on Prot Paladin’s performance in M+. The first is Mikanikos’ new characteristic, Effusive Anima Accelerator. As a one-minute cooldown, Divine Toll is very powerful, and with this characteristic, the cooldown may be as short as forty seconds. This increases the amount of Holy Power generated and makes Divine Toll a more reliable defensive and snap threat ability.
The Divine Resonance legendary, which automatically fires an Avenger’s Shield every 5 seconds for 15 seconds after you Divine Toll, is one example of legendary power. This grants a First Avenger shield every 5 seconds, but it also supplies a steady supply of Holy Power, which aids in the builder/spender engine’s mitigation, self-healing, and cooldown cycling. Divine Resonance is a powerful source of Holy Power since it offers you access to spenders you would not have had access to before, and it’s absolutely free and predictable.
When Effusive Anima Accelerator and Divine Resonance are paired, Prot. Paladin gains a level of resilience that no other legendary, such as Bulwark of Righteous Fury, can match. The damage from Bulwark of Righteous Fury is higher, but Divine Resonance will help you survive. The more self-healing and cooldown cycling a Paladin has, the more DPS the healer can do, improving your chances of hitting a high key.
Season 3 and Further
Prot Paladin seems to be in a solid position to maintain its spot in the meta heading into Season 3 M+. Sure, it’ll lose access to 400 secondary stats and Crumbling Bulwark, but it’ll be compensated with another tier of gear, as well as additional external power systems through a second legendary, tier bonuses, possibly new trinkets, and other new systems.
Watch This Video-
Protection paladins are a good class to use in Shadowlands Mythic+ Season 2. They have the ability to heal and protect allies while still being able to deal damage. The “protection paladin rotation” is one of the best ways to play this class.
Related Tags
- best professions for prot paladin shadowlands
- best legendary for paladin shadowlands
- protection paladin 8.3 best in slot
- prot pally mythic+ talents
- protection paladin shadowlands
