3 Simple fixes to drastically improve Protection Paladin

[Brionac-pozzo-delleternità]

Protection Paladin feels awful in this stage of the expansion, probably due to a combination of factors.

On top of systemic changes done in the previous expansions and poor balance tuning in the current, Protection feels both clunky and weak.

What I’d like to see for the spec is for Blizzard to improve the flow and gameplay of the spec, and once is fun again we can assess where it sits balance wise while building upon a foundation that people enjoy playing.

Avenger’s Shield grants 1 Holy Power

Simply restore of HP Generation on Avenger’s Shield. It was removed in Dragonflight, but it never made sense except for the purpose of pulling down Protection’s Paladin effectiveness. In my opinion is one of the worst change they could have introduced, and as a result Avenger’s Shield is mostly used to proc other buffs like Bulwark of Righteous Fury, this would push it a bit higher on the priority list.

New Talent: Arrival of the Lawbringer -
(Replaces Ferren Marcus’s Favor)
Avenger’s Shield grants you the same armor buff as Shield of The Righteous, and it’s damage is increased by 20%

Currently, this talent slot is never picked because the current iteration is not strong enough to warrant two talent points so deep in the tree, especially when there are better options.
This talent would make paladins start the pull with the armor buff already on.
TBH this isn’t really that big of a buff because most paladins already engage with the buff on, but they cheat holy power out of combat by using Blessed Hammers. In my opinion this isn’t fun gameplay, so I’d remove the need to spam BH by allowing paladins to use Avenger’s Shield when they pull, which is something they should already do.
It also allows paladins to be able to spend Holy Power a bit more freely on Word of Glory if they can refresh the armor buff with Avenger’s Shield. It also makes Hammer of the Righteous more competitive since you no longer need BH to mantain the armor buff.

**Sanctuary is now a choice node. **
Second Choice:Cleansing the Land
Consecration can be cast on the target location. Casting Consecration grants its benefits for 4 seconds.

The reasoning is similar to what I wrote above, basically I don’t think it’s fun that paladins have to precast Consecration to get their damage reduction from mastery, then walk to the mobs and cast consecration again.
While saving a bit of time on global cooldowns is not a big buff, this is another change that would go a long way into making protection more engaging while also having minor effects on performance.

Again, I’m not saying that with these few changes Protection would skyrocket to tier S again, but tbh I think that at the moment the gameplay issues are much worse than the balance issues.

[Soupala-tarren-mill]

Making avenger shield generate HoPo requires rework of punishement to only work on Rebuke kicks, Sotr buff from pressing AS is a bit degenerate, and not needed if we’re to get a hopo from natty casting AS, SoTR uptime is really not an issue with high ish haste or having divine purpose(which we’re always gonna have in a week when 11.0.5 comes), Making consecration into effectively death and decay is very minor QoL, interesting option but not really what we badly need.

What they NEED to implement is mana refund on self casts of word of glory. IT IS CRIMINAL that a tank needs to drink for mana after a intense pull. Especially when we have a talent that grants us block after pressing WoG.
AS giving hopo baseline vs AS only giving hopo via punishment in class tree is something that i don’t mind either being the case, but it definitively would be much better for less try hard player if it just gave holy power baseline, it won’t change much for me but i can see how it just makes low skill prot pallies’ lives much better.

[Brionac-pozzo-delleternità]

@Soupala-tarren-mill

Making avenger shield generate HoPo requires rework of punishement to only work on Rebuke kicks

Sure, I think that talent should be aimed at making interrupts also deal damage, I see it as something more geared toward PvP anyway, shouldn’t be used to make up for poor HoPo builders.

Sotr buff from pressing AS is a bit degenerate, and not needed if we’re to get a hopo from natty casting AS

You see, I’d agree with you if people weren’t actually doing the same thing with extra steps.
Currently people use Blessed Hammer thrice out of combat, then SotR for buff, then pull.
For consistency, either they nerf this interaction (“We don’t want Paladins to have Sotr buff before the pull”) or they acknowledge that paladins need that armor buff before the pull and streamline it (“Yeah, survivability requires you to have SotR before pulls, casting 3 blessed hammers to build HoPo outiside of combat is silly, so just take it and go”).
Again, when prot pallies complain about being squishy one of the most common answer is “just SotR pre pull”, so let’s not pretend this is something degenerate, people are already doing this and prot tanks is still bottom of the barrel.

Making consecration into effectively death and decay is very minor QoL, interesting option but not really what we badly need.

TBH I see it like DnD is the offensive consecration, since Consecration is strictly tied to protection mastery and is also something that affects severely the survivability and raw damage reduction of the spec.

What they NEED to implement is mana refund on self casts of word of glory. IT IS CRIMINAL that a tank needs to drink for mana after a intense pull. Especially when we have a talent that grants us block after pressing WoG.

Hard agree, but when we move in this fied we are talking more about performance than gameplay flow, and as I said I’d rather focus on a foundation that is fun to play before just buffing things so that the class is strong but still not really entertaining to play.
DH and Blood are a blast to play, so the competition is already fierce, kinda.
I think that having WoG costs less mana is just making it effectively a worse Death Strike.

EDIT: I feel like yesterday I didn’t make myself clear enough.
What I mean is that AS granting SotR buff is not that impactful because while on paper it looks great, in actual gameplay we have people already proccing the buff from casting SotR prepull.
We can debate if this is healthy or not, but we must acknowledge that it’s common practice.
In my opinion, it’s not healthy. It wastes charge of Blessed Hammer, it forces people to pick Blessed Hammer over Hammer of the Righteous, and it slows down paladins.