Protection Paladin Tank Ny'alotha Raid Guide — Dragonflight 10.2.5

This page will focus on how to best prepare as a Protection Paladin for the Nyalotha raid encounters, rather than a general guide for the instance. These guides and their talent recommendations are purely for progression kills, allowing you to increase your chances of killing the bosses. Once you have killed a boss and are more familiar with the fight and feel comfortable with it, you may very well wish to change talents in order to do more damage.

Throughout most of this raid, from a progression point of view, we will almost always recommend using Touch of the Everlasting for its cheat death effect. Spiky damage intake from an encounter you have yet had time to get famililar with can esily cause a death. It is however important to look back and reflect after a couple of pulls if this is ever really proccing, and should that not be the case you will be able to min/max a bit better by using another Essence that strengthen your character in other ways.

This page is based on PTR testing alone and may not perfectly reflect the exact encounter released on live, as changes to the encounters are very common. Frequent updates during the first Heroic week, as well as upcoming Mythic weeks will complete the encounter information. Mythic tips and tricks will be added once the fights have been defeated.

We advise you to use the following essences against Wrathion, the Black Emperor.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

When offtanking, avoid standing in front or behind the boss as he does both a Searing Breath as well as a Tail Swipe. Tanks will likely swap on two stacks of Searing Breath, so the first hit will not do a lot of damage, but make sure to have a cooldown up for the second stack. Blessing of Spellwarding as well as a well timed Divine Shield can be used to negate stacks of Searing Armor.

You are able to reset and be immune to the stacking Creeping Madness stacks with Blessing of Freedom, which can also be used on other raid members should they reach high stacks.

For more information, please refer to our Wrathion, the Black Emperor guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Maut.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

Blessing of Spellwarding as well as Divine Shield can be used to avoid applications of Shadow Wounds allowing you to tank the boss for a longer period of time, to either solo tank the boss or to make tank swapping easier with less debuffs.

Blessing of Spellwarding can be used in Phase 2 to make a player immune to the damage reflect for 10 seconds. You can also use Aegis of Light as a raid cooldown, alternatively Blessing of Sacrifice on a single player.

For more information, please refer to our Maut guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against The Prophet Skitra.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

There is no physical damage in this encounter, so Shield of the Righteous is completely useless to reduce damage intake in this encounter. Since there is no physical damage Seraphim can be used as a defensive option as well as offensive option. Righteous Protector will however still give more Avenging Wrath should that be preferred.

For more information, please refer to our The Prophet Skitra guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Dark Inquisitor Xanesh.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

Avoid getting knocked off the platform or into Queen Azshara from the Abyssal Strike as we do not have any means to change direction in the air. Blessing of Spellwarding will negate the damage as well as the knockback from Abyssal Strike, but you will still recieve the stack.

For more information, please refer to our Dark Inquisitor Xanesh guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against The Hivemind.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

You should most likely be tanking Ka'zir to help interrupt Mind-Numbing Nova with Avenger's Shield as you can solo interrupt that boss while people are mainly focusing the other boss.

For more information, please refer to our The Hivemind guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Shad'har the Insatiable.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

Make sure to never get both the Crush and Dissolve debuffs at the same time as it will kill you. Paladin tanks do fairly well taking Dissolve as we have good magic mitigation with Holy Shield as well as being able to heal ourselves. The damage taken with Dissolve is very even and smooth damage which means it should not take you by surprise. When taking the Dissolve buff, as you are likely not tanking the boss you can fully immune yourself for a couple of seconds with Blessing of Spellwarding or Divine Shield. Be careful if you are running Final Stand when offtanking and want to use Divine Shield. You can also use Seraphim here when offtanking as you will only take magical damage, Seraphim will both reduce magic damage taken, as well as increase your damage potential.

For more information, please refer to our Shad'har the Insatiable guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Drest'agath.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

There will be a lot of running around in this encounter, as every time you recieve the Volatile Seed debuff you should run out to a couple of tentacles to debuff them. Remember that sometimes he may cast these very frequently, and you may sometimes still have the 60% increased damage taken debuff when the other tank gets his Volatile Seed, either wait untill your debuff drops, or use cooldowns to survive tanking untill the debuff drops.

For more information, please refer to our Drest'agath guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Il'gynoth, Corruption Reborn.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

The second stack of Eye of N'Zoth will hurt, make sure you use a cooldown for it, alternatively Blessing of Spellwarding or Divine Shield.

A protection Paladin can solo interrupt the Organs of Corruption on the edges of the room rotating Rebuke and Avenger's Shield to avoid any Pumping Blood casts to go off.

For more information, please refer to our Il'gynoth, Corruption Reborn guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Vexiona.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

A well timed Light of the Protector, preferably empowered with Avenging Wrath to guarantee a critical strike, right before the Despair debuff is about to fall off can guarantee you are at full health and will not be nuking the raid with Shattered Resolve.

Divine Shield as well as Blessing of Spellwarding can be used to great effect on this encounter to negate the Twilight Breath or Annihilation.

For more information, please refer to our Vexiona guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Ra-den the Despoiled.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

When the boss reaches 100 Energy he will cast Nullifying Strike, Blessing of Spellwarding as well as Divine Shield can be used to negate both its damage as well as the application of the 25% health reduction debuff.

In phase two, when the boss reaches 100 Energy he will instead do a very small physical hit, however it will place a debuff on you that will inflict 100% of the health you had when the application was applied, every 2 seconds. This means you need to make sure to go to low health before he casts Decaying Strike in order to have a smaller ticking Decaying Wound. You can safely go to low health using Ardent Defender a bit before he reaches 100 Energy. While Decaying Strike is a physical hit, the debuff Decaying Wound is magical, which means both Blessing of Spellwarding as well as Divine Shield can be used to negate the damage as well as application.

For more information, please refer to our Ra-den the Despoiled guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against Carapace of N'Zoth.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

Do NOT interrupt Gaze of Madness with Avenger's Shield as every time it is interrupted it drains sanity from the raid.

Blessing of Spellwarding as well as Divine Shield can be used to negate the application of Black Scar.

For more information, please refer to our Carapace of N'Zoth guide.

We advise you to use the following essences against N'Zoth the Corruptor.

• Major Slot
  • Touch of the Everlasting — Rank 3: Touch of the Everlasting + Will to Survive
• Minor Slots
  • Nullification Dynamo — Rank 3: Null Barrier
  • Conflict and Strife — Rank 3: Strife
  • The Formless Void — Rank 3: Symbiotic Presence

Help interrupt the Corruptor Tentacle with Avenger's Shield while tanking the Basher Tentacle. Remember that the Void Lash ability from the Basher Tentacles are magic damage, and Shield of the Righteous will not have any effect against it.

For more information, please refer to our N'Zoth the Corruptor guide.