On this page, we list your Protection Paladin coreabilities and how they should be used together (rotation) in World of WarcraftMoP 5.4. We also explain whento use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtletiesthat you will need to know if you want to excel at playing a ProtectionPaladin.

The other pages of our Protection Paladin guide can be accessedfrom the table of contents on the right.

1. Single Target Rotation↑top

Your single target rotation revolves around generating as much Holy Poweras possible, and using it on Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory to improve your survivability. Since both of these abilitiesare off the global cooldown, they are included as part of your standardrotation. In a subsequent section, we go into greater detail in explaining how to use your active survival abilities tocomplement your normal rotation. Below, we present the optimal spellpriority for Holy Power generation.

1. Cast Crusader Strike on cooldown to generate Holy Power.
2. Cast Judgment on cooldown to generate Holy Power.
3. Cast Avenger's Shield regardless of whether or not you have a Grand Crusader proc (which causes Avenger's Shield to generate HolyPower).
4. Cast Holy Wrath.
5. Cast Execution Sentence or Light's Hammer, if you have chosen oneof these talents.
6. Cast Hammer of Wrath.
7. Cast Consecration.
8. Cast Holy Prism, if you have chosen this talent.

In practice, this will result in a cyclic rotation following the formatbelow, where filler spells are chosen according to the prioritygiven above.

1. Crusader Strike
2. Judgment
3. filler
4. Crusader Strike
5. filler
6. Judgment
7. Crusader Strike
8. filler
9. filler
10. Repeat steps 1-9

For maximum survivability, you should be using Seal of Insight at alltimes. This provides you with increased self-healing, as well as sometimeshealing you.

Seal of Truth may be better purely for DPS/threat, but the differenceis negligible anyway.

2. Multiple Target Rotation↑top

The multiple target rotation is flexible, and ideal execution depends onthe number of targets and level of survivability you require. What we suggestbelow is optimised for fighting 4 or more enemies without sacrificing anysurvivability. For fewer targets, executing a normal rotation and tabbingthrough the targets is practically optimal.

The AoE rotation remains very similar to the single target one, with thefollowing changes:

• Crusader Strike is replaced with Hammer of the Righteous.
• Consecration has a higher priority than Avenger's Shield,when the latter do not benefit from a Grand Crusader proc.

When tanking many enemies (10+), you will likely be flooded withGrand Crusader procs. In that situation, prioritising Avenger's Shield overCrusader Strike and Judgment can be a DPS and survivability increase.

3. Active Survival Abilities↑top

You have two important active survival abilities: Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory. This is what you willbe using your Holy Power on. Both of these abilities are off the globalcooldown, so they can be used at any time. Rather than using these abilitiesas part of a regular rotation, you should use them in response to or inpreparation for abilities that the boss will be using against you.

Shield of the Righteous should be used pre-emptively, while you stillhave a lot of health and you are expecting to be damaged. This spell costs afixed 3 Holy Power. Use it to mitigate large, predictable boss attacks.If you have 5 Holy Power, you can use the spell regardless of how much damageyou are going to take, so that you avoid wasting Holy Power.

Word of Glory should be used reactively, to help your healers healyou up, or to recover from a large damage spike. Word of Glory consumes up to3 Holy Power, but can be cast with as little as 1. It is generally best to castit with 3 or more Holy Power, but using with 1 or 2 Holy Power is better thannot using it at all when your health is critical.

4. Righteous Fury↑top

Always have Righteous Fury active while tanking. You must onlyactivate it once, and it will remain active until you disable it (it evenpersists through death).

5. Taunting↑top

Reckoning is your taunting ability. It only works on a singletarget and has an 8-second cooldown, forcing the target to attack you for 3seconds, putting you on top of the mob's threat table, and causes you togenerate 3 times more threat for 3 seconds.

6. Cooldown Usage↑top

As a Protection Paladin, you have a number of defensive cooldowns andother abilities that help you better survive damage spikes or recoverfrom them. This is how they are best used:

• Guardian of Ancient Kings provides you with a 50% damagereduction for 12 seconds, on a 3-minute cooldown. It is an excellent defensivecooldown. You should use this before a period of large damage, or when yourhealers are unable to heal you for a while.
• Ardent Defender is another powerful defensive ability, with a3-minute cooldown and 10-second duration. It reduces all damage taken by 20%while it is active, and it causes the first killing blow against you toheal you up to 15% of your maximum health instead of killing you (the lattereffect consumes the Ardent Defender). This ability is best used to bypassdeadly encounter mechanics, or to save your life in critical moments.
• Divine Protection provides you with 40% magic damage reduction(or 20% magic damage and 20% physical damage reduction, with Glyph of Divine Protection). It is best used before a period of highdamage, or before a damaging boss ability.
• Lay on Hands is essentially a massive heal with a very long cooldown.It will heal you for your maximum health, with a 10-minute cooldown. It isbest used as an emergency heal, either for yourself or another raid member.
• Avenging Wrath provides you with a 20% increase to your damage andhealing done for 20 seconds, on a 3-minute cooldown. It should primarily beused to increase your self-healing, but it can also be used as a DPS/threatcooldown.
• Divine Shield makes you immune to all damage for 8 seconds. Normally,this ability is difficult to use while tanking (since the boss will immediatelyattack the next target on the threat table), but it can be employed to clearcertain debuffs, or to avoid fatal encounter mechanics.
• Devotion Aura is a raid cooldown (unless you are using Glyph of Devotion Aura). You should consult your raid leader on when thebest time for using this ability is.

You also gain additional cooldowns and abilities from your talents. Wecover these in a subsequent section.

7. Optional Read: Mastering Your Protection Paladin↑top

While the information we gave in the previous section will yield very goodresults, there are a few things you should be aware of, in order to playyour Protection Paladin to its full potential.

7.1. Vengeance

Vengeance is a passive ability which you receive forchoosing the Protection specialisation. Essentially, it increases your attackpower for 1.5% of the unmitigated damage you receive. It takes the form of a20-second buff, and its power fluctuates during the encounter, based on yourdamage intake.

Vengeance also has diminishing returns, in that each additional targetattacking you generates less Vengeance than the previous one.

7.2. Pooling Holy Power

Thanks to Boundless Conviction, a passive ability, you can have upto a maximum of 5 Holy Power at one time. However, no ability that consumesHoly Power can consume more than 3. This means two things:

• You do not need to dump your Holy Power as soon as it reaches 3 charges,and you can continue to use Holy Power-generating abilities at 3 charges.
• You can pool Holy Power to chain two of your survival abilities inquick succession.

7.3. Survival Abilities

Using Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory adequatelyand frequently is crucial to your performance as a Protection Paladin.

7.3.1. Shield of the Righteous

Shield of the Righteous has a 1.5-second cooldown and grants you a3-second buff that reduces the amount of physical damage you take by 25%.Casting Shield of the Righteous while a previous buff is still active will addthe 3-second duration of the new buff to the remaining duration of the oldbuff, so nothing is wasted.

In addition to this effect, Shield of the Righteous also stacks a 20-secondbuff on you, called Bastion of Glory, which increases the healing youreceive from the next Word of Glory by 10% per stack (up to a maximumof 5 stacks).

The potency of both of these buffs is increased by your Mastery( Mastery: Divine Bulwark).

It is important to remember that Shield of the Righteous only reducesphysical damage taken, making it entirely useless against magic attacks.

You should try to keep as high an uptime on the damage-reduction buff ofShield of the Righteous as possible, whenever you are tanking a boss thatmelees you for considerable amounts. This will also stack Bastion of Glory, preparing you for whenever you need to use Word of Glory.

7.3.2. Word of Glory

Word of Glory is a simple self-heal that is off the global cooldownand has only a 1.5-second cooldown. You should use it whenever you feel thatyou need additional healing. Since you will probably be using Shield of theRighteous regularly, many of your Word of Glories will be buffed by Bastion of Glory.

If the damage you are taking is predominantly magic damage, then you canforsake Shield of the Righteous altogether, and use all your Holy Poweron Word of Glory. A situation such as this is unlikely to occur often,however.

7.4. Creative Divine Shield Usage

Divine Shield (and to a lesser extent, Hand of Protection)frequently allow you to bypass or break certain encounter mechanics. While thissort of thing is usually an advanced technique, there are some simple tricksthat you can use to great effect even if you are not an experienced ProtectionPaladin.

7.4.1. Divine Shield Taunting

Taunting a boss with Reckoning forces them to attack you for 3 seconds(commonly called a "3-second fixate"). You can use this in combination with Divine Shield to "cheese" certain mechanics. Simply cast Reckoning andthen immediately cast Divine Shield. Then, use a macro such asthis one to cancel Divine Shieldabout 2 seconds later. The idea is that while the 3-second fixate is up, theboss will continue to attack you, despite you being shielded by Divine Shield.For this reason, it is important to cancel Divine Shield before the 3 secondsare up.

You can use this to remove many harmful debuffs (most DoTs and bleeds), orto avoid an otherwise fatal attack. Also note that some attacks bypass DivineShield, and this trick will obviously not work for those effects.

7.4.2. Avoiding Mechanics

There are a number of encounter mechanics that choose a random target (orseveral random targets) from amongst a raid group. Many of these effectsignore players that are immune to damage when the targets are being chosen. Byusing Divine Shield at the appropriate time, you can often divert thetarget choice to another player, or in many cases eliminate the spell castentirely, resulting in an easier encounter.

7.4.3. Hand of Protection

Hand of Protection lets you pull many of the same tricks on otherplayers (since you can cast it on any raid member). It removes many physicalDoTs and bleeds. In a raid team with several Paladins, this can eliminate thedanger from an otherwise complicated mechanic.

In addition, mobs that fixate on a random player often ignore the immunitygranted by Hand of Protection. This is particularly helpful when the mobtargets a caster or healer, as it can allow them to skip kiting a mob andmaintain their full DPS/HPS output.

Finally, Hand of Protection frequently bypasses the target-selectionmechanics the same way Divine Shield does. Casting Hand of Protection on aplayer before the target-selection process can ensure that they do not getchosen. This can allow them to move to locations that would otherwise bedangerous to themselves or the raid.

7.5. Abilities and Cooldowns from Talents

7.5.1. Tier 3 Talents

If you chose Eternal Flame, you should attempt to keep theheal-over-time buff active on yourself with near-100% uptime, ideallyrefreshing it just before it expires, with 3+ stacks of Bastion of Glory,and with 3+ Holy Power. Note that Eternal Flame's healing is affected by Vengeance, so it can be worth refreshing early if it nets asignificant Vengeance gain.

If you chose Sacred Shield, then you should keep up this buff onyourself with a 100% uptime. It is worth noting that the power of Sacred Shieldis affected by Vengeance. This means that, if you pre-castSacred Shield on yourself before the fight starts, you should refresh it assoon as your Vengeance increases after the pull.

If you chose Selfless Healer, then simply use Flash of Lighton yourself or other low health raid members whenever you have 3 stacks of theSelfless Healer buff and at least one stack of Bastion of Glory (if healingyourself).

7.5.2. Tier 4 Talents

Of these talents, only Hand of Purity requires a mention. That said,its usage is very simple. Just use it to reduce the damage of large DoT effects,or, if such effects do not occur as often as Hand of Purity comes offcooldown, just use it to mitigate damage slightly.

7.5.3. Tier 5 Talents

Holy Avenger allows you to generate a great amount of Holy Power,enabling you to keep up your Shield of the Righteous buff 100% of thetime. Holy Avenger also improves your threat output. It should be usedwhenever you need more Holy Power to improve your survivability.

Sanctified Wrath is most interesting for the addition of Holy Powerincome from Judgment, though the passive 20% healing you receive while Avenging Wrath is active is also quite potent. The reduced cooldown onJudgment puts it ahead of Crusader Strike in the priority, turning yourrotation into:

1. Judgment
2. Crusader Strike
3. Judgment
4. filler
5. Repeat 1-4

In case you have chosen Divine Purpose, you should have a way oftracking the Divine Purpose procs, and using them promptly on Shield of the Righteous or Word of Glory.

7.5.4. Tier 6 Talents

Tier 6 talents will predominantly improve your threat generation andDPS.

If you have chosen Execution Sentence, you can either use it onyourself, which will heal you, or on the boss, which will deal damage andprovide you with a substantial amount of threat. Which of the two you choosewill depend on the situation in which you find yourself, and which of the twobenefits you value more.

Holy Prism and Light's Hammer can be used to deal AoE damage(especially useful in the case of adds that are entering the fight), or toprovide some AoE healing for your raid.

8. Changelog↑top

• 19 Feb. 2014: Made a few small modifications to the single-targetrotation.
• 11 Sep. 2013: Patch 5.4 update.
  • Removed mention of using Hammer of the Righteous to apply the Weakened Blows, since Crusader Strike now applies it too.
  • Added a small mention regarding tanking 10+ enemies.
  • Updated talent descriptions where applicable, to reflect their changes onlive servers.
  • Added a mention of using Glyph of Devotion Aura.
  • Improved the recommended usages for Tier 3 talents.
• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: updated Shield of the Righteousdescription to account for the fact that it now offers a 25% damagereduction, down from 30%.
• 01 Apr. 2013: Made several changes.
  • Greatly revised and improved the single target rotation.
  • Slightly tweaked the multiple target rotation and cooldown usagesections.
  • Added mention that Word of Glory and Shield of the Righteous are offthe global cooldown.
  • Added Divine Shield as a cooldown, and added an entire sectiondedicated to clever ways in which Divine Shield (and Hand of Protection canbe used.
  • Made other small improvements to the wording of certain paragraphs.

Builds, Talents, and Glyphs

Buffs, Debuffs, and Useful Abilities