Protection Paladin Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Protection Paladin. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Protection Paladin spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Protection Paladin, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Protection Paladins have seen a small amount of talent changes on the talent trees:

• Crusader's Reprieve has been removed.
• Incandescence and Touch of Light have been split out of their choice node and each have their own place on the tree.

The key highlights of these changes are:

• Many 2-point talents have become 1 pointers.
• Some talents have moved places in the tree.
• Shining Light can now stack up to twice. This gives you flexibility in your usage of it as a Templar, but as a Lightsmith this acts as a small QoL improvement.
• Improved Holy Shield and Sanctuary have been split into their own spots on the tree.
• Sanctuary has been redesigned to give you the benefits of Consecration for 4 seconds after you leave it. Alleviating a pain point for the spec.
• Bastion of Light has moved to the bottom part of the tree and has been redesigned to make your next 5 Judgment casts generate 2 additional (3 total) Holy Power.

Overall, the talent tree changes are relatively inoffensive and provide more interesting choices along the path. The path remains as inflexible as ever, however as most of your choices are picked for you to gain utility to enable your general gameplay.

The addition of Hero Talents lean into the fantasy of being a Paladin. Lightsmith Paladins focus on providing support for their group and Templar Paladins trend towards being a Warrior of the Light. Peak paladin fantasy in both trees.

This tree is shared with Holy Paladins and focuses on buffing players with Holy Armaments. This ability starts as Holy Bulwark and then becomes Sacred Weapon, and to complete the loop, it cycles back to Holy Bulwark. If you cast these on yourself Solidarity will buff the nearest player to you with the same effect, however if you actively pick the target, you will also receive the buff therefore, it is strictly better numerically to target the best person for each buff.

In the tree are some other tertiary benefits for Protection Paladins such as:

• Weapon Imbue - Rite of Sanctification increases your Armor and Strength. Rite of Adjuration increases your Stamina and makes your Holy Power spenders do AoE healing.
• Utility Choice Node - Fear No Evil reduces fear durations by 50% if you have an Armament buff active. Excoriation reduces the movement speed of enemies around a target that has been hit by Hammer of Justice. Neither are very impactful.
• AoE damage on Judgment crits with Hammer and Anvil.
• Damage buff choice node - Divine Guidance increases the damage of your Consecration based on the number of Holy Power spells cast and deals damage/healing instantly. Blessed Assurance increases the damage of your next Blessed Hammer / Hammer of the Righteous by 100%% after casting a Holy Power spender (which is very frequently as a Lightsmith Paladin!).
• Your auras are 33% more effective on players with an armament buff ( Shared Resolve).

The rest of the talents in the tree focus on the Armaments.

Holy Bulwark applies an absorb to yourself and your target/nearby ally, starting at 15% of your maximum health and increasing by 2% every 2 seconds for 20 seconds. This caps out at 30% max hp.

Sacred Weapon applies a buff to yourself and your target/nearby ally, which gives spells and abilities a chance to deal additional Holy damage or healing.

With how these buffs function, to get the most value from being a Lightsmith Paladin, you will want to actively plan who will receive each buff (similar to how an Augmentation Evoker) functions.

The first thing to call out is that using Holy Bulwark / Sacred Weapon is on the GCD, which adds more rotational pressure to a spec that is already casting on nearly every GCD already. There are talents which directly interact with how/how frequently you will be casting these also:

• Laying Down Arms gives you Shining Light (Free Word of Glory cast). This by itself is relatively inoffensive, however Valiance reduces the cooldown of your armaments by 3 seconds each time Shining Light is consumed therefore, you want to consume these as soon as you get them.
• Forewarning reduces the cooldown of your armaments down to 40 seconds.
• Blessing of the Forge casts Sacred Weapon on yourself when you use Avenging Wrath. Additionally, this makes the Sacred Weapon echo your abilities.

Something to call out here is by casting Word of Glory more frequently, you will run out of Mana during normal play as Shining Light only removes the Holy Power cost from Word of Glory. You are removing your rotational survival tool ( Word of Glory) in favor of having higher uptime on your armaments.

Overall, this tree requires a higher level of play than Templar. Is the effort worth the reward? Yes. Is it fun? Not really.

This tree is shared with Retribution Paladins and includes a rotation-altering hook with Light's Guidance. Eye of Tyr is replaced with Hammer of Light (a 5 Holy Power ability) for 12 seconds after it is cast. With Hammer of Light costing 5 Holy Power, this draws more focus to your Holy Power management and the economy of the resource as a whole. Failing to keep track of this all may result in either lost casts of Hammer of Light or lower Shield of the Righteous uptime.

The focus on Holy Power management may seem offputting at first glance, but Undisputed Ruling adds 3 Holy Power to Eye of Tyr, meaning that you will want to be at 2 Holy Power when you start to get into your Hammer of Light sequence to instantly be at 5 Holy Power to cast it.

Sprinkled into the tree are some other tertiary benefits for Protection Paladins such as:

• Movement Speed Choice Node - Bonds of Fellowship reduces your damage taken from Blessing of Sacrifice and gives you a stacking movement speed buff. This is pitched against Unrelenting Charger, which increases the duration of Divine Steed by 2 seconds and gives it an additional 30% speed for the first 3 seconds.
• A small bonus absorb shield when you cast Eye of Tyr from Sacrosanct Crusade.
• A 15% Haste buff after casting Hammer of Light for 6 seconds.
• Single Target or AoE Choice Node - For Whom the Bell Tolls turns your Divine Toll into a Single Target buffing ability where it will increase the damage dealt from Judgment by up to 100% for 3 casts (this is reduced by 20% for each additional target that Divine Toll hits). This is pitched against Zealous Vindication, which throws down more Empyrian Hammers when Hammer of Light is cast.

The rest of the tree focuses on Empyrian Hammers, a new damaging ability from this tree.

Empyrian Hammers are a new passive ability, which is the central theme of the Templar tree. They are generated by:

• Casting Hammer of Light.
• Every 2 seconds after casting Hammer of Light for 8 seconds ( Shake the Heavens). This can be extended by 1 second by casting a Holy Power generating ability ( Higher Calling), so every 2 generators create 1 additional hammer in this window.
• Casting Holy Power spending abilities ( Hammerfall).
• If Shake the Heavens is active and you cast a Holy Power spending ability, another Hammer will come down ( Hammerfall).
• Zealous Vindication creates 2 hammers on your target (if talented).

OK, we know how these hammers spawn into existence. What do they do?

• Empyrian Hammers will deal damage to the target they are on.
• If they critically strike Wrathful Descent will deal 60% of the damage as an AoE. Any targets hit by this AoE will deal 5% reduced damage to you for 8 seconds.
• Endless Wrath (if talented) gives each hammer a 10% chance to reset the cooldown of Hammer of Wrath and make it usable. This will help to fuel the extension of Shake the Heavens to generate even more hammers!
• Each hammer also gives you a stack of Light's Deliverance. When you reach 60 stacks and both Eye of Tyr and Hammer of Light are on cooldown Hammer of Light will be cast automatically.

With all of that said, there are some things to consider for your rotational gameplay as a Templar Protection Paladin. Eye of Tyr is a 45-second cooldown, which doesn't align well with many of our cooldowns. This means that you need to be more mindful of when they are available and what they will do to your rotation.

• Bastion of Light will be available for every third Eye of Tyr cast.
• Avenging Wrath will be up for every other cast.

Both of these abilities greatly increase the amount of Holy Power you generate, and you need to be mindful to not overcap on Holy Power during your Shake the Heavens windows.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Protection Paladin in The War Within. Where necessary, we added a small amount of additional detail in italic in order to convey the additional limits of the tier set.

• Paladin Protection Season 1 2pc — Shield of the Righteous deals 10% increased damage and grants 3% damage reduction.
• Paladin Protection Season 1 4pc — Casting a Holy Power ability ( Shield of the Righteous / Word of Glory / maybe Hammer of Light) increases the damage and healing you deal during your next Avenging Wrath by 0.5%. This effect stacks.

The 2-piece bonus works out to 2% more DPS on average (with AoE scenarios benefiting more). Overall, it is similar to many other tank 2-piece bonuses, which are all quite boring. Damage mitigation and another unnoticeable perk.

The 4-piece bonus has some good gameplay potential. It encourages a strong focus on your Holy Power economy during Avenging Wrath windows and interacts well with Bastion of Light and Divine Purpose.

Strengths

• More Paladin fantasy from either Hero Talent Tree.
• Higher levels of throughput.
• Strong focus on Holy Power management as a Templar and buff management as Lightsmith.
• No longer rooted to where your Consecration is due to the changes on Sanctuary.

Weaknesses

• Healing is outside of your control as a Lightsmith as Word of Glory is required rotationally, which can lead to mana issues.
• Falling behind on your Holy Power management as a Templar can lead to lower uptimes on the core theme of the Templar Tree or Shield of the Righteous uptime.