Advanced Prot pali discussion

[Riparoo 0]

Hello and thank you for reading this post. I've played a pali since end of vanilla so I know my class pretty well. Recently my guild has asked me to switch from Ret to Prot for Heroic Hellfire Citadel. This whole expan I've only tanked small things ie heroic/Mythic dungeons LFR etc... So in preparing for the Heroic Hellfire Ive been reading up trying to maximize my knowledge of prot. From what I've read a lot of sources are saying haste is our god saving stat, and of course the 30% increase to haste would reflect this. But as it is I have about 10% haste as I'm using most of my ret set at the moment and I don't seem to have a problem keeping up my Shield of the Righteousness buff. I'm running Divine purpose and using avenger's shield on CD making sure my crusader strike hits after launching my shield as much as possible, with RNJeses I can usually keep up my buff almost all the time and of course popping CD's when needed when I'm pooling holy power. My question is this, is haste REALLY that great for prot palis? I love my Mastery and self buffed have 51.73% block while running Holy shield and about 37% block when running Empowered seals. With the 10% haste my crusader strike is 4.1 second CD. So should I even opt for more haste or is it more of a stack haste until you are comfortable with the holy power regen thing? Also for my third 2nd wanted stat(dont count bonus armor cuz thats a given priority) any suggestions? I have a lot of multi strike which is nice for the 30% healing received buff especially working with sacred shield/Seal of insight. But I'm thinking crit would help produce more holy power through Grand Crusader and might mitigate more damage since I would parry more often. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. 

[Gravy 0]

I'm no expert, but I am currently progressing mythic content currently as Prot.  My personal advice would be take the highest ilvl you can get for a given slot, and only pick a lower ilvl item if the lower ilvl item has haste/mastery and the higher ilvl item has neither (a crit/multistrike combo for example).  Secondly I would gem/enchant for haste when possible.  Third, always pick the highest ilvl weapon you can get your hands on. 

 

Above all get anything you can that has bonus armor on it, always, everytime, no matter what else it has stat wise.

 

Haste helps you get more Holy Power regeneration which smooths your incoming damage which makes it easier for a healer to keep you alive.  Mastery tends to give you bigger shields which is great but typically you want to have more uptime than a bigger shield when it is up. 

 

One tip, if you are starting out, I'd pick the passive HoPo regen talents while you get the hang of the spec.  The passives are really good in their own right and are at least as good overall as their counterparts.  But they make the learing curve much easier. 

 

Just my two cents.