I came into this expansion with a lot of enthusiasm for trying out the Protection Paladin as my main tank. I dedicated a significant amount of time leveling and gearing up, striving to push through Mythic+ content. However, my experience so far has left me feeling more like a naked mage than a fully-geared tank.
Despite my efforts, I often find myself struggling to keep up in Mythic+. It’s disheartening to feel this fragile despite having the gear, and the frustration only grows when one out of every three pulls ends in death simply because my self-sustain feels underwhelming. I understand tanks were nerfed significantly this expansion, but I genuinely believe Protection Paladins require a comprehensive rework to remain viable.
Admittedly, I’m not claiming to be a top-tier Prot Paladin, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s an inherent imbalance with this class/spec right now. Even with optimal play, the level of struggle far outweighs any sense of reward. Protection Paladins should feel like defenders of the Light, not brittle paper shields that crumble under consistent Mythic+ pressure.
Many players, myself included, do not have endless hours to spend on the game. Between families, jobs, and other responsibilities, our time is precious. Investing all of it into gearing a character only to find out it cannot effectively fulfill its role is disheartening. I love Paladins as a class, but right now, the state of Protection Paladins feels unrewarding and almost punitive.
I know that I am not alone in this sentiment, as many others on the forums have echoed similar experiences and frustrations. I sincerely hope Blizzard takes these voices to heart and considers adjustments to make Protection Paladins feel more in line with their intended purpose—sturdy and reliable tanks who can protect their team without feeling like a burden.
It’s bad now, and Blizzard seems content to sit on their hands until the rework in November without doing the most simple of aura tuning to roughly balance the spec with its peers.
Tuning wise, all we have to look forward to is a redesign over a month away where they will transform the spec to being a busted broken god.
This will give us the other extreme problem, and rob us of any satisfaction that we timed a key on our own merit.
Its not the same with all tanks. Prot Palas somehow flop super easy, especially on pack pulls. Prot warriors on the other hand are super easy to heal.
The only tank I know nothing about is BM monk. Still have to heal 1.
Not having to heavy heal tanks means heavy healing on party. DF was not a “joy ride” …
The idea of blizz was to take some of that damage and funnel it to tanks. Which IMO is good. The 1-shot meta of DF was getting annoying to be honest.
And then if you think healers just heal and can get carried… you are delusional. Healers do (or should do) much more than just heal. And if they dont do those tasks the group wipes.
I agree that most tanks are squishy at the moment, but prot palas are in another level, many sites including wowhead, icyveins, not recommended to play due to its lack of self defense. I would have understand if the reason to make tanks squishy to make healers more including in the game, but when the dungeons are overtuned as well, there is nothing much you can do.
I also feel that next patch paladins are not getting buffed, they will still be a C tier tanks
Then you are right. SL was AFK healer. And my main concern in high keys was to push as much DPS as possible. So I was not “ALFing”, I was doing stuff all the time. But none of that was healing.
And if you ask me what do I prefer: SL healing or DF healing… my answer would be DF healing any time of the day. Being a nerfed out version of a DPS did not feel good in SL.
We’d go oom spamming wog so there’d need to be a reduction to the spell’s mana cost, and to self sustain we’d be out healing the healer.
I’d revert the nerfs in a hot fix as a stop gap measure until the rework was ready.
Dont try it you fluffy lock.
You will regret every pull on M+.
With the current state of Prot pallys. Your are not the one thats farming M+, I’ts the other way around.
M+ is farming you. Heck if mobs knew leatherworking they wold go for your pelt to.
to the point that ofc groups started to Ask them to dps inst ad watching Netflix on 2nd screen for 70 % of dungeon 
Guardian is fine, Prot war fine, DH fine, blood dk fine even brew is fine.