WotLK Classic Protection Paladin Spec, Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

Protection Paladin talents focus on maximizing survivability and damage to help with threat generation.

If you were looking for a leveling-oriented build, please refer to our Paladin leveling guide.

Protection does not have many if any flexible points; the build listed above will offer you the most threat while also taking full advantage of all defensive talents available to maximize your personal survivability.

Redoubt greatly increases your chance to block when this buff is active, helping greatly with survivability and mitigating damage especially in lower gear levels.

Righteous Fury acts as a flat damage reduction and greatly increases your threat generation when the Righteous Fury buff is active.

Blessing of Sanctuary is a situationally useful buff that reduces all incoming damage and returns damage to mobs dealing Physical damage to the Protection Paladin. This buff is especially useful against large groups of melee attackers.

One-Handed Weapon Specialization increases all your damage dealt when a one-handed weapon is equipped; not just your attacks, but all spells benefit.

Holy Shield increases your chance to block by 30% and returns damage to Physical attackers. This damage that is dealt causes an additional 35% threat making it considerably easier to maintain threat on melee mobs that are attacking the Paladin.

Ardent Defender reduces all damage taken when below 35% HP. This helps greatly in situations where bosses are dealing large amounts of damage but also against large groups of smaller mobs where you are constantly taking damage. It also acts as a cheat death effect allowing you to survive an attack that would otherwise kill.

Combat Expertise increases your Expertise and your total Stamina. This Expertise allows you to focus your gearing towards other stats than Expertise.

Avenger's Shield is a strong tool to pull mobs or slow and deal damage to mobs that may be at range until you can close the gap.

Hammer of the Righteous will be one of your largest generators of threat and allows for continuous multi-target threat generation even on the move.

Divine Sacrifice redirects 30% of incoming damage from other party members to the Paladin.

Glyph of Divine Plea reduces your damage taken by 3% while Divine Plea is active, which should be 100% of the time while tanking.

Glyph of Judgement increases the damage dealt by Judgement by 10%, greatly increasing your threat.

Glyph of Seal of Vengeance grants 10 Expertise while Seal of Vengeance is active, allowing you a lot more freedom itemization wise.

Glyph of Lay on Hands reduces the cooldown of one of your strongest cooldowns.

Glyph of Blessing of Kings reduces the cost of both regular and greater Blessing of Kings by half, making rebuffing in combat less costly.

Glyph of Sense Undead provides a free 1% bonus damage against Undead while Sense Undead is active.