Protection Paladin Soloing Guide

[Fouton 266]

Protection Paladin Soloing:
The following post is for soloing all sorts of old content, for a variety of things. If you want a specific item that isn't listed, let me know and I can update it! Only difficult content will make the guide, if it isn't hard and you ask for help, I'll reply with a small explanation in a PM.

 

Note: This guide can sometimes assume basic knowledge of some fights, if you feel I left something out that should be mentioned, let me know!

 

This guide also assumes you have read the Protection Paladin Guide, and know the basics between self healing, and utilizing your rotation to deal damage. Assume Seal of Light unless told otherwise, and Talents/Glyphs usually will not be of much difference, unless told otherwise.

 

Also, thanks to Belloc for giving tips on farming Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel 25 man, for the legendaries: Shadowmourne and Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings, which can be found here.

 

 

Table of Contents:

 

Classic and Burning Crusade:
The dungeons from Classic WoW and Burning Crusade have become trivial, if you have an questions on soloing these, feel free to message me.

Wrath of the Lich King:

Obsidian Sanctum: Reins of the Black Drake(10) and Reins of the Twilight Drake(25)

Eye of Eternity: Reins of the Blue Drake and Reins of the Azure Drake

Ulduar: Mimiron's Head

Icecrown Citadel: Invincible's Reins

 

Cataclysm:

Throne of the Four Winds: Reins of the Drake of the South Wind

Firelands: Flametalon of Alysrazor

Dragon Soul: Experiment 12-B, Reins of the Blazing Drake, Life-Binder's Handmaiden

 

SOON Mists of Pandaria:

SOON Mogu'shan Vaults: Reins of the Astral Cloud Serpent

Throne of Thunder: Spawn of HorridonClutch of Ji-Kun

Siege of Orgrimmar: Kor'kron Juggernaut

 

 

Obsidian Sanctum: Reins of the Black Drake(10) and Reins of the Twilight Drake(25)
On 10man, This fight is simple. Just burn his face, he should be that easy now.
On 25man, You'll want to clear the trash on this one, without pulling any of the drakes. The heal from the big dudes will fully heal Sarth, so they can't be alive for this. (Was supposedly hotfixed, but nope). After that, you should be able to just zerg Sarth before he goes immune.

 

Eye of Eternity: Reins of the Blue Drake and Reins of the Azure Drake. Both drop on 10, at the same % as 25.

 

Since everything drops on 10, just do 10. The fight is very easy, just nuke maly hard in the beginning, kill all the adds, and finish Maly off in the last phase. Even if you manage to let Maly get through with a lot of health, just rotate the abilities 1-1-2 on her until she dies. You should have absolutely no issue with the fight at all.

 

 

Ulduar: Mimiron's Head

 

This is assuming a 10man clear to Yogg:
Flame Leviathan: Just gun him down with pyrite on the pull.
XT: Nuke him, nothing possibly hard about it.
Kologarn: Make sure youre standing close to his body so you count as the tank, and none of the bad mechanics will affect you, and kill him however you want.
Auriaya: Just kill her (makes the port to Mimiron show up, so definitely kill her).
Hodir: Just kill him. Make sure you don't get Deep Frozen by standing where the large AoE circle once was after snow builds onto it, and make sure to move occasionally to dodge the knockback falling ice.
Mimiron: Just kill him. Make sure his parts die evenly in final phase. Don't stand in the big red rocket marker, or you get 1shot.
Freya: Just engage her, kill her adds until you can beat her healing buff. Make sure to kill the wave of 3 mobs at the same time.

Thorim: This fight was nerfed, so soloing it is a matter of just running down the gauntlet and killing everything, tagging Thorim and killing him after you jump down.

Vezax: Just kill him. You may want Execution sentence, for the single target dps. He doesn't let you regenerate mana, so you can either sit there for a while if you don't beat him fast enough, and let your execution sentence widdle him down every minute, or you'll want to kill vapors and stand in the green residue for mana. Remember to step back out of it before it kills you, and get to new puddles when yours disappears.

Note: You can clear all of this with a friend, and split up after it's all been cleared. If you bring a friend it will be really easy, and you can both attempt to solo Yogg 25 on your own, while being in different lockouts.

Once you've killed these bosses, you'll be swapping the difficulty to 25man.

Yogg 25:
In phase 1 you will want to step into a bunch of puddles to start (5?), and just kill the adds on Sara as they come in. This part should be very easy, and you'll have no adds left once she hits 1 HP. 1 may spawn, but take it down quick and be ready for the next phase.

 

Going into Phase Two, a constrictor will grab you almost immediately, so you will want to judgement or holy wrath the constrictor to kill it quickly. After the constrictor, you want to go straight to the Corrupter and kill it fast. You may get a Black Plague cast on you, so cleanse yourself immediately. Once it's dead, you can work on the Crusher tentacle, but it's not too important if it dies. You'll be Constricted 2-3 times while waiting for the portals to open, one of which happens as they spawn, so break free of it and get into the portal room as soon as possible. It's recommended to bubble to get to the portal, in case you have a slow from a corrupter.

 

Once in the portal room, quickly move mob to mob killing them, while doing your best to avoid facing the floating purple skulls. Since speed is the most important now, you'll want to minimize time spent on the killable adds. The types of adds will depend where you get sent: Wyrmrest has dragons along the outer wall, which need to die. Stormwind has guards along the outer wall, which will need to die. Icecrown will have 3 groups of NPCs that need to die, one far in the middle, and two closer on each side. It's okay to take some ticks from the floating skulls, since speed is more important than your sanity. Clear these as fast as you can, move to the brain and pop every cooldown you have. You want to kill the brain before the DBM timer (recommended addon for this) shows that your time is up. If you're down to 3 seconds, click a portal on the side and try again when the brain room opens up again.

 

If you didn't make it in time, just try to follow the same pattern as last round and get the corrupters down. They matter the most right now, since the stuns will ruin you later on. The brain room is likely going to open in 2 constrictors this time, so be ready for that. Get back in and finish it off, and be ready for a very difficult final phase. If you managed only 1 brain room, the final phase will be a lot easier for you.

 

As soon as the brain goes red, click the portal to get out, since Phase 3 has started. First, go straight to the corrupters that are left (new ones will have spawned, so make sure to check) and cleanse off any more Black Plagues you get. Once they're clear, work on the Crushers and work them off, without facing yogg to avoid the sanity losses from Lunatic's Gaze. Once the crushers are gone, it's time to kill Yogg. There's one major mechanic left to pay attention to, which is the Beacon. You'll have a DBM timer for the beacon, and when you see it run out, you'll want to run to the outer edge of the room, and wait until the new timer (Beacon ends) to run out before you head back to beat on yogg. If you don't, he'll get some serious healing and you won't be able to complete the fight. If you have decent gear you can just skip the beacon and nuke yogg.

 
Icecrown Citadel: Invincible's Reins
Just like Ulduar, you can clear it on 10man, zone out, and set it to 25, then zone in before setting it to 25 heroic. You can also clear it with a friend and then each of you solo it on your own in separate groups.

Marrowgar: If you have it on heroic, you'll need to kill him before his Bone Storm, or you could get spiked for all of eternity. If that happens, turn it to normal and just kill him.

Lady Deathwhisper: Make sure to kill Adherents fast if you cant just nuke her to pieces, cuz they'll put an annoying debuff on you that adds 15s to the CD of all your spells.
Gunship Battle: Just charge up your turret before the fight starts and hit the ship for a high powered shot, which should instantly finish the fight. Make sure not to use the '1' ability when you're over 91 power or you'll probably overheat and lose all your power.
Saurfang: Just kill him.
Valithria: You can skip her. Just circle around all the mobs and head to Sindragosa.
Sindragosa: Easy fight, she can't tomb you, so beat her up.
Princes: Easy fight, just beat down the empowered one til its over, pop defensive CDs against Keleseth. If you're on heroic, do your best not to move, since the Shadow Prison hurts insanely bad.
Blood Queen Lana'thel: This fight's timer seems a little hard, but thanks to a tip from Belloc, you can actually bubble when you are about to be bitten, and it will remove that mechanic from the rest of the fight, which makes the enrage timer very easy.
Festergut: Bubble off the stacks when you get to 9, and you should be able to kill him before you hit 10 and instantly die.

Rotface: You can do heroic on this so long as you stand still and beat him up.

Putricide: You may find it beneficial to strafe around him constantly in attempt to avoid malleable goo. Either way you'll kill him quick. Just ignore the oozes.

The Lich King:
Phase 1: Just burn him and don't pay too much attention to the adds, they'll be dying on their own. Always start moving to avoid the shadow traps the second he casts them, or you'll be flown off the edge. Be sure to be at 90%+ health throughout the fight, or Infest will rampup in damage and kill you. When he hits 70%, youll get a transition phase.

 

Transitions: Just stay in and beat him up. You'll see little blue orbs fall from the sky and become attackable as 'Ice Sphere's, which if they reach you, you get flown off. You'll want to save judgment for these, and 1shot them as they spawn. Be careful, one usually spawns after the transition is done, so don't think you're out of the clear just yet.

 

Phase 2: Just beat him up, don't even move from Defile. Make sure you're at full health though, since Infest is still a thing. You'll get another transition at 40% that has a bit more add spawning and orbs to it, so be ready for that.

Phase 3: You can do this in 2 ways, either just try to burn LK and ignore the spirits, or kill the spirits first then burn LK. Both are easy ways of doing it now, since you won't be panicking for health anymore. I'd recommend just burning LK since the spirits will die as the fight goes, but you can try the other way if they're giving you trouble.

 

 

Throne of the Four Winds: Reins of the Drake of the South Wind

Al'Akir has been an easily soloable fight for a long while, but often it's overlooked because of the first boss was very difficult to solo.

 

Conclave of Winds: Start on Rohash and burn him down quickly, move to Nezir and do the same, then Anshal and finish them off. You'll have to kill them all within a minute (or 2?) of eachother, so you should have plenty of time to do it. If you're having trouble for any reason, you can just go in with a friend, clear it, leave and split up to each take Al Akir later in the week after the zone soft resets. (Sometimes it isn't kind about the save if you dont give it time to reset, so make sure to do that just incase)

 

Al'Akir: This fight is fairly simple, so you can just zerg him. If you're undergeared, you'll have to do some tornado dodging, make sure Wind Burst doesnt send you off the edge, and try to kill the stormlings that spawn in P2 slowly and spaced out, so that he keeps the debuff they give him for extra damage taken. If you have issues in P3, just try to start at the top, and slowly fly lower and lower as he dies. He should just fall over though, so I doubt this will come into play.

 

 

Firelands: Flametalon of AlysrazorSmoldering Egg of Millagazor

Shannox: Just burn Shannox as fast as possible. If it's on normal and the fight is giving you trouble, take the dogs down first. Try not to stand in Crystal Prison traps or you'll just die.

Beth'tilac: Kill the spinners the second they show up, and then kill Beth'tilac as fast as you can up top. If you dont kill her fast enough, youll be sent down where you need to go again and again, so try to be as fast as possible.

Rhyolith: Just burn a foot down and make him spin like a top, then kill him when he changes phases.

Alysrazor: When you begin, pick up 2 of 3 feathers while you beat alysrazor up, until you've reached the end of the strip, where you'll want to grab your last feather. you need to be quick to keep up with Alysrazor to stay in melee range. If you don't stay in melee range at all times the fight will reset, so make sure you pop Speed of Light for this portion. Once you get up in the air, you want to get every flaming circle you can for the haste buff. You want to hit every single one of them and avoid the smokey clouds. The haste buff you get will cap at 25 stacks and give you a 75% crit buff along with it's capped 200% haste, but keep getting the flaming circles to keep your flight buff. When she starts to dip down you might come out of melee range, so try to stay close. You don't have to kill her in 1 air phase, when you come down just keep running through some of the flaming circles to keep your buff as you hit her, and when she finally lands unload on her. Don't even kill her adds, don't aggro the pyroblasters in the corners at all. Just nuke her and stay alive with seal of insight. She will eventually start up again, and you get a pile of feathers to follow her. Repeat until dead.

Baleroc: Just burn him as fast as you can. Crystals shouldnt spawn if youre alone.

Staghelm: Just burn him, don't worry about any mechanics.

Ragnaros: This fight could be a pain if you're undergeared. Phase 1 is simply just beat him up, you'll get a transition at 70%, where you will need to kill the adds that spawn before they reach the hammer that he places. There will always be adds on both sides of the hammer, so try to be good about taking them down. You'll likely struggle to get them all, but you can just bubble out all the damage they deal, or you can pop some defenses. Phase 2 is also just a beat-him-up, with some mechanics that won't hurt, then you'll get another transition at 40% which is the same as last time. You'll be dropping some fire puddles but they dont matter anymore. Finally you'll enter Phase 3, which should just be more beat him up, with some meteors that cant kill you, and he'll die at 10%.

 

 

Dragon Soul: Experiment 12-B, Reins of the Blazing Drake, Life-Binder's Handmaiden

 

Sadly, you can't attempt to get the Life-Binder's Handmaiden on normal, and doing it on heroic means everything must die on heroic. All mounts can drop on heroic though.

 

Morchok: This fight is easy on both normal and heroic, just burn him quick. As a note, if you go just right of the path you can skip all the trash to get to him. You may end up body-pulling some on the way though.

Zon'ozz: Make sure to clear the trash first, since it pulls with him. Once you pull, you can either just let the orb hit the wall and just beat him up slowly over the course of the fight, or you can run back into the ball and try to make it hit him.

Yor'sahj: This fight is extremely easy, you can even pull it with all the adds still up and AoE it all down with a few CDs. Just nuke as fast as you can!

Hagara: Just beat her up, and if you get a second phase, try to complete it normally. Don't stand in the water bubble for the ice phase, since that still hits like a truck (unless recently nerfed). If you can't complete a phase, theres a trick you can do by resetting Hagara until her weapons are the colour of the phase you want first (purple lightning is lighting, blue ice is ice). Sometimes she'll glitch out and show one of each, in which case just reset again.

Ultraxion: This fight should just be a beat-him-up fight, but if you get fading light you'll have to use your extra action button with 1s left on the debuff to avoid automatically dying.

Gunship: DO NOT KILL THE DRAKES EARLY. If you do, fight will reset, you will be a sad panda. Or even worse, the add might grip you off the boat and you die. Learned that the hard way. Just do the fight like you're supposed to, kill drakes as they fly over the boat to avoid some ship damage, and kill the adds as they fall. Make sure to stand in as many purple swirls as possible to keep the ship alive on heroic.

Spine: This fight is a pain, but should be very easy. Treat it like you normally would; kill the tentacles, roll, slowly build the add up by running it on dead slimes, killing it at 9 stacks to reveal a tendon, and then killing the tendon. Then, repeat 2 more times. However theres a bit of a challenge to this fight. You ALWAYS are going to be in a roll, so you'll have to strafe left and right to switch sides of Deathwing at all times. It can be challenging, and will require all your focus to complete, but you should be able to handle the fight no problem if youre fully aware of the mechanics and keep strafing along the spine. If you ever get low on health, a Lay on Hands will do good.

Madness: Just beat the arms up, one by one, and kill the Arm Tentacle when it spawns behind you, once you've done this you can kill Deathwing himself, and get your loot. The fight has one annoying part to it, which is that I get a lot of trouble jumping between platforms, since it'll often send you back the way you came. Ive found that if you jump fairly close to the front of the platform, you'll often be fine. If it sends you back, just try again.

 

 

 

Please let me know if there's any unlisted bosses, mounts, pets, or other things that are difficult to obtain on your own that aren't on this list.

[Fouton 266]

Just gonna list all the things I solo that I think was cool/fun here:

 

Paladin World First: 25 Leviathan with 4 towers, no vehicles used:

[chlcrc 4]

This post is the best xmas present ever :O (I just got my prot/holy pally to 90)

[Fouton 266]

I hope you all found a nice mount for Christmas :)

[Belloc 6]

Note on Blood Queen: You can use Divine Shield before she bites you and immune it. You'll never get bitten and then it turns into a regular tank-and-spank (with a little bit of moving out of fire). For those farming Shadowmourne Shards, this will allow you to kill the fight on 25-man heroic. You will hit the enrage, so just save cooldowns for it and rotate through them. Eternal Flame + berserk vengeance should be enough to keep you alive if you survive the initial burst.

 

Also, most of 25-man heroic ICC is easily soloable by us, as well. The only fights that I recommend doing on normal (or 10) are Marrowgar (currently impossible on 25-heroic), Gunship (I've only heard of DKs soloing 25-man... the axethrowers just nuke your ship constantly), Festergut (10 stack = instant death and bubble has too long of a cooldown to clear more than one set of stacks), and Valithria (I couldn't heal up her before the enrage overwhelmed me on 25-man). Marrowgar used to be barely doable (have to beat the bone storm bone spike cast) with tons of adds and vengeance, but 5.4 broke that and Festergut was the same way. Both are doable on 25-man normal, though, so you can still get shards.

 

Finally, if you're interested in soloing as a paladin, you definitely want to get a good ret set. Certain fights become much, much easier (or they simply become possible) as ret. Heroic Lich King, for instance, becomes a total joke of a fight with a good ret set and a little practice.

 

Oh, and almost all of Ulduar 25 is soloable, as well, if you're wanting to farm Val'anyr. You'll want to move all of your demolishers in for Flame Leviathan, space them out a bit so they don't all die at once, and just rotate through them (quickly!) when your pyrite runs out.

 

For Razorscale, Ignis, and XT, I recommend pulling XT trash, killing the mobs that cast the shield, and just holding onto the trash for Grand Crusader procs. I also usually hold onto the golems from Ignis trash after I kill XT. If you pop cooldowns, you should be able to kill XT's heart and, once there, the fight is pretty easy as long as you keep EF up.

 

Steelbreaker last is pretty easy -- kill the little guy and then the medium guy. I like to carry some of the less dangerous trash with me to this fight for GC procs, but you have to be careful. It's pretty easy to get bursted down here if adds are standing in the rune of power.

 

Kologarn... just make sure you don't leave melee range and it should be easy. If you're really good, you can solo the eye beam achievement, but prepare for frustration.

 

Auriaya is pathetically easy. Just kill the adds she starts with and maybe the single add that keeps respawning and you're good.

 

Hodir: You might be able to pull off the speed kill if you carry some of the Jormungaar trash with you for GC procs while also breaking the buff mobs out of the ice. Stand near fire, hope for stacks to build, and try to stand in a beam of light, too. Probably easier to go ret, though.

 

Thorim: No comment. You don't want to do this one on 25-man unless you bring a friend... the timing involved in the transition is different on 25-man, so, if you're going to solo, just switch to 10.

 

Freya: clear a little trash and go straight for her. The fight is a complete joke, even with all 3 elders up.

 

Mimiron: Switch to ret. It's doable as prot, but odds are that you'll hit the enrage and wonder how it is that an Ulduar boss' enraged damage is worse than a heroic ICC boss'.

 

Vezax: Exactly as Fouton said. This fight bloooooooooows.

 

Yogg: 0 lights is now pretty easy to duo. It used to be that you'd almost certainly get MC'd, but now it seems to never happen at all. Bring a friend and ezmode it.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Belloc

[Fouton 266]

Updated with your tips on the legendaries, thanks Belloc!

[Fouton 266]

Fixed up the H LK strat a bit. (Seems you can get lucky and have ghouls until the end - will try to replicate). Also, I got Flametalon <3

[krazycheetah 0]

I'm having trouble with the stacks on Festergut, I am prot specced and I know I can use the bubble to clear them but hitting the dps mark needed hasn't been possible.

[Fouton 266]

If you're not doing 10man normal you're going to have a ton of trouble. Luckily you can set it to 10man and clear it, then swap it back to 25H or whatever difficulty you were doing. Fortunately you dont have to kill anything on heroic to do H LK

[Fouton 266]

I figure I can add some of my soloing feats in here, so I'll show my edit my Merry Christmas post to slowly update with new kills I get.

[Whytie 0]

So trying Festergut in 6.0.3 on 25 man, get to 10 stacks and get insta-blown up, any way to avoid this or am I doing something wrong? This is an alt and gear is at 510. Thanks! Great guides btw!! 

[Fouton 266]

You can bubble off the stacks at 10, but it wont be up again if you cant beat it before 10 after that. You should be able to edge it out on 25 normal, basing this off my 518 paladin who was about to do so. If you keep having issues, you can pick up some single target glyphs to get that extra push.

[Fouton 266]

Updated the list to be current with patch 6.0.3, even though i'll have to update it again in a week >.>

[Fouton 266]

Updated for WoD, which was really just trimming down all the explanations that are now simple. So far MoP seems to be gated by tons of mechanics, so you'll probably have to duo them. Garajal has a phasing mechanic which resets the fight, Jinrohk resets the fight when he picks you up, and I haven't tried SoO.

 

There will be some work-arounds for these mechanics. Ill post them when I can make them work.

[Kulia 39]

Cata 25 heroic and beyond are now all trivial, due to the massive buff you get to that content. 

All of MSV should be soloable - Feng is pretty heavy magic damage in second phase, so if you have Drums of Fury use those then, Gara'jal will be the only *MAJORLY* difficult one as you either need to out-DPS it or out heal it. Spirit Kings, on the dude who spikes you just make sure you have some sort of ground AOE effect out that's able to kill it in time. The rest of it should be pretty easy, just tank and spank. Elegon just make sure you don't fall when the platform disappears. Will of the Emperor would be a bit difficult to kill due to mechanics, but there's absolutely no reason to kill them as they don't drop anything worthy for Transmog, only reason you'd kill them is to get into heroic, and if you need to do that, bring a buddy along :D

ToES - All of it should be soloable, first boss is a bit of a DPS race and survability race(magic damage heavy, so holy shield may be nice) just keep the bosses out of the pools of water that put the HoT debuff on them. Tsulong, really easy, tank and spank. Lei Shi, RNG f*ck-fest and COMPLETELY magic damage, DPS is irrelevant on 10man normal though. Sha of Fear should be pretty easy.
HoF - Imperial Vizier has the MC therefore impossible to solo as far as I know. Otherwise rest of the instance should be doable. Maybe Amber-Shaper due to mechanics might not be possible.
ToT - majority is doable. Jin'rokh make sure you have some sort of engineering target dummy on the ground when he throws you or he resets. If that's not possible bring a buddy. Rest of the instance is soloable EXCEPT Durumu due to mechanics. Council of Elders is heavy magic damage.

SoO - mostly soloable TBH. Immerseus you might need to wait out the enrage if you either don't have the DPS or you can't handle the enrage. (it is survivable). Protectors - can be rough. Norushen you need to use a trick to purify yourself - don't have it on hand.
Sha and Galakras impossible due to mechanics.
Malkorok is too high a DPS check.

Thok should be doable - may need to reset stacks at some point.
World bosses - Sha of Anger is doable - out-range the MC when he casts it.

Galleon - easily doable, 15 minute enrage so a bit of a DPS race.

Nalak - easy as just heavy magic damage.

Oondasta - I barely 2 manned it with my friend on our blood DKs right at the end of MoP, so maybe not now but next tier. You can try it though if you think you have the gear.
Celestials - were doable during MoP easy done now.

Ordos - Impossible due to enrage.

- disclaimer: personally haven't done any of these on a pally, but have done them on both a brewmaster and a blood DK and have seen some of these solo'd by DPS classes or other tank classes so pallies shouldn't have too many issues.