Protection Paladin, Overview of Shadowlands talents

Classes Paladin
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Greetings!
On wowhead, there is now a page for the currently planned new talents for each paladin specialisation. I highly recommend reading them.

To find the link to the protection paladin tree, search;
“protection paladin talents shadowlands” in google and scroll for a bit. I cannot post links here.

In this post, all of the changes to the protection paladin tree will be brought up and speculated on. With the information at hand there is a lot to go through. There will be direct comparison to retail talents.

To begin with, the first talent row.
Row 15 have some changes, with [Redoubt] having been completely reworked to a stat increase when pressing SotR. But I doubt that a 6% stamina+strength stat increase will be enough to compete with the other choices. The original effect has a new and improved version in next row.

[Blessed Hammer] has gotten a slightly higher value compared to it’s retail counterpart, since it now gives 1 holy power per charge. With it having 1 more charge than the original filler ability, this means that it should be slightly easier to keep a higher uptime on SoTR. Not to mention that the tooltip is now vague enough to state that the ability now reduces the next damage taken, not just the next auto attack damage. Perhaps it works against any attack now? That would be a major buff.

Two talents are different on row 25!
[First Avenger] no longer increases damage dealt by Avenger’s shield nor increases the proc chance on grand crusader, instead making our shield bounce to 2 additional targets. Also, it now grants an absorb shield for 100% of damage dealt. This could be very interesting, with our covenant ability from Bastion; Divine Toll.

The ability will cast Avenger’s Shield on five targets within range, bouncing between them. It has a 1 minute cooldown currently in Alpha, based on gameplay from Preach Gaming on youtube. If you were to use retail damage numbers for the shield then it would give a minimum of a 250k absorb shield when used on a pack of five, not counting the possibility of crits or the paladin using their own avengers shield as well. That is a massive shield on a low cooldown, which makes [First Avenger] a very competitive talent for dungeons and open world gameplay (with crusader’s judgment still being best for raiding).

[Moment of Glory] is the other new talent on the row, replacing bastion of light. The new talent makes it so that every melee attack against the tank during Ardent Defender will trigger Grand Crusader. In practice, that means you would get a chance to click avengers shield 4-6 times during the 8 seconds duration. Possibly amazing for Torghast gameplay. Not that great otherwise, even with the large amount of burst.

Next change is in row 35, with retribution aura becoming baseline and [Unbreakable spirit] taking its place. This is an amazing change, as it means that you no longer take [Cavalier] in every case where spellwarding cannot be used to cheese a mechanic or an arena matchup. Now you get to choose between lower cooldowns or 2 horses.

Row 40 is a completely new row, being the same three talents for every spec.

[Divine Purpose] is now also a prot talent, with the arrival of holy power. Yet, if it only increases damage or healing once in a while, it is not that powerful for protection. Unless it would increase the damage reduction from SotR it would, at most, be used as another way to get free WoG casts. Not bad, not great. If it is meant as an alternative for more consistent sustain, then it is unreasonable for it to be a random proc. Preferably, it would be changed to be more consistent for tanking.

[Holy Avenger] is a new cooldown that can be chose in all specs.
All holy power generation is tripled for 20 sec. In practise, it is lucid dreams on a longer cooldown. While it sounds good on paper, if a protection paladin is using [Blessed Hammer] and [Crusaders Judgment] then they should already have plenty of holy power generation. Not to mention the Divine Toll covenant ability, which instantly grants 5 holy power on a 1 minute cooldown. We have no need for more holy power generation as protection paladins. However, it could be used for spamming WoG for a short time. Could be good, let’s wait and see.

[Seraphim] has become a 45 seconds cooldown, as usual, but with only a 15 second duration, no longer using SotR charges to be activated. Instead, it costs 3 holy power and grants a chunk of bonus stats. For consistency, especially in early shadowlands with lower bonus stats, this could be useful. Depends on how good WoG is for protection paladin.

Row 45 is incredibly frustrating for me personally. It seems that we no longer have light of the protector, perhaps WoG is meant to replace it. [Hand of the Protector], instead of making our retail self-heal castable on other targets, will now make it so that WoG heals more on lower health targets. That new talent now shares a row with [Consecrated Ground] and [Judgement of Light]. In practise, this means that we no longer can heal people from 10% to 100% with one button on a 13 second cd. In higher keys, where we must choose consecrated ground for kiting, our burst healing has been lowered by an incredibly large amount.

The final row is completely different, with last defender having been removed and replaced with [Sanctified Wrath], which in protection will also make judgement generate 1 more holy power during wings, besides increasing the duration of Avenging Wrath itself. Again, we probably don’t need holy power generation.

[Righteous Protector] is now activated by spending holy power and not exclusively by using SotR. It no longer decreases the cooldown on Light of the Protector, our self-heal, as we no longer have that self-heal.
Besides it still decreasing the cooldown on avenging wrath, it now also decreases the cooldown of Ancient kings by 1 sec for each holy power spent. In higher keys, this is overall better for experienced protection players.

[Final Stand] is now also part of the last row. With our self-heal out the window, this talent will probably see even more usage than before, as righteous protector probably cannot compete with final stand in mythic+ since it no longer improves our self sustain all that much.
Perhaps it is still usable in raiding.

To summarize things, there have been some major improvements to the talents themselves. [First Avenger] is now a strong alternative choice in dungeons, while [Blessed Hammer] got an indirect buff. [Unbreakable Spirit] can now be chosen more often, since it doesn’t compete with final stand or the old hand of the protector now. Speaking of [Final Stand], it has been indirectly buffed as you can now choose it together with unbreakable spirit for a 3.5 minute, AoE taunt + 8 seconds immunity.
Our defensive cooldowns have seen a large increase in consistency.

I am concerned about our basic rotation and survivability now being based partly on chance, since we have to either proc [Divine Purpose] or critically hit to cast WoG. We should never have to actually use holy power on it instead of SotR. It is a big issue for a tanking spec to be reliant on inconsistent procs.

Of course, this might not be what the final talents looks like for protection paladin. They still have a lot of time to change things.
For now, my feelings are a mix of appreciation and worry.

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You could already say that for BfA. The less you crit [with Judgment], the less you can use SotR. But, feast thy eyes upon this gem I found: https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/spell=321136/shining-light

(Unless this is what you were talking about with the crit thing, but it’s not mentioning a crit)

Well, it’s also a static reduction, which might mean it’s pitiful against a raid boss. But what really got me excited is the HP generation part. Often, people compare HS and BH in a scenario where you’re just facetanking something, but the fact that you can just throw BH at nothing is even more awesome now. We can already use it while kiting, and it might proc Grand Crusader. But, now we also get HP from it, and can build HP without having any target to fight at all.

I suspect it might get changed so that it only generates HP if it hits at least one target, but even then I will still marry this talent for M+.

Moving on, it seems I will feel a lot less pressured to run Crusader’s Judgment everywhere in SL. Frankly, I almost never change that talent on live. But, it seems all our abilities generate HP, and the HotR/BH “fillers” are now a lot more exciting. Judgment still has that Shining Light thing going for it, and it’s probably still our biggest single target ability, but it really does feel I could stick to CJ for single target fights and First Avenger (that looks SO GOOD) for cleave/M+. And Moment of Glory for massive interrupt memes.

BTW, did you notice the wording change on Final Stand? It sounds like it will now continuously taunt rather than do it for 8s upon cast. That means even if you misjudge your positioning before bubbling you can run into any mob you missed and pick them up after.

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If that passive were to actually be a thing, shining light, then I will be much more comfortable with our basic rotation. It’d be much prefered to have a good notion of when you will be able to heal.

To be honest, when I read the blessed hammer tooltip, I thought the attack power scaling meant that the % damage reduction scales on our total strength.
But it does make more sense for it to be flat now, with that tooltip.

In my case I’ve gone with Holy Shield for all content in the last patches of BfA. Mostly to cheese some mechanics involving spells. I’m also excited to test out blessed hammer to avoid being starved for holy power.

I did not notice the wording change on Final Stand!
If it actually does taunt for the whole duration, then that is yet another great buff. Even without it, I would have chosen it in almost every scenario, barring pvp.

As long as our basic rotation turns out to be just as consistent as in BfA, even with reliance on grand crusader procs, then I am more than happy for our spec.

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i like the special ability with all the flying shields

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Row 1;
I’m likely to keep using holy shield, it’s just generally really good, the ability to block spells is imo something that’s hard to overlook.

Row 2.
I absolutely despise that the strong BFA traits are competing with Crusader’s Judgment, First Avenger and Crusader’s Judgment with their current abilities in the same row feels like a kick in the nuts, moment of glory while interesting is trying to compete with playstyle dominating choices and makes no sense to be in that row as a CD enhancer. This is going to feel like another ‘we lose x without getting anything back for it’

Row 3.
Atleast they had the decency to remove FoJs dependancy on crusaders judgment, bit I despise HP for prot in all expacs it was applied and they’d have to work a miracle for me not feeling the same about it here

Row 4
No big differences it feels like

Row 5
I still despise HP, I still heavily prefer SOTR charges as the mechanic

Row 6
Consecrated ground is still the only good pick in my eyes, HOTP being pulled away and us being forced to choose between SotR and the heal once again through holypower sounds terrible, altho judgment reducing WoG costs improves that

Row 7
None of these choices seem exciting or groundbreaking enough to be our last row

Now the idea of BFAs AS traits and Crusader’s Judgment also competing with eachother makes me feel like we’re losing a lot, what we are gaining back also isn’t that exciting to me by

I really hope they do a number on our passive mitigation, because right now things that we actively need for our mitigation which is the AS absorption traits and Crusader’s Judgment are competing with eachother and one of the baseline features of our heal (increased by missing HP) turning into a talent choice will also directly affect our mitigation because it’s how we deal with spikey damage outside of active mitigation

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I don’t see any difference with BFA, it’s holy shield when you need to be tankier or blessed hammer for the damage or the mega pulls.

First avenger is kinda a dead talent in BFA unless you are in trivial content.
Two charges for judgment + the extra from gc is a lot of st damage and a lot of extra mitigation in sotr uptime.
I like the changes, now that sotr uptime is on hp generation first avenger will be useful for aoe scenario.
It’s possibly the best example we have of the new game design
philosophy Ion talked in his interview with sloot, you can’t have everything but you have to choose A or B to enhance at the cost of the other.

I kinda feel that seraphim will be the default choice here, the unreliability of procs (even if supposed high proc rate is true) is not something tanks like, especially in a tight rotation where you can’t store anything.
Plus, right now sotr is the only hp spender i now, 20% extra dmg on that makes no sense. What ability am i missing?

Compared to BFA it’s a more flexible row now, aegis is a dead talent. JoL is still going to be the raid pick, while the other two are for m+ with the distinction between helping the healer with a on the fly heal, or an aoe slow. They’re going to be both used in various scenario.

True. It’s a clear downgrade from BFA choices which were all valid.
But again it’s the new design, it’s going to be a choice between a damage increase, or an aoe taunt.
Get the sims ready to see what is going to pay more, the extra 5 second and extra hp from sancified, or the reduced cd of righteous. My bet is on righteous, 3 sec roughly every 4 second is a lot.

With the current design, no numbers will be needed. The rotation is so tight that sotr uptime will be huge, 3 gcd to recharge a 4.5 sec cd.
The real issue is that again, it’s going to be haste uber alles.
That said, i still like to have consecration linked to our feet to not lose mitigation when kiting.

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