This guide is aimed at the average Protection Paladin, and not the specialist raid tank. In addition to this information you should read up yourself on talents and make your own decisions.

Talents: follow the link to see the actual tree I've chosen for level 80.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w116/Lucifark/ProtectionTree31.jpg

Note: Below I have based information on my understanding of the Talents which reflects the talents I have chosen, there are of course other possibilities dependant on specific tanking needs.

Talent Points, How to Spend them and Why:

Holy Tree:

Nothing in Holy tree in needed!

Protection Tree:

Divinity 0/5 - Increases all healing done by and all healing effects on you by 1% per talent. With the huge amounts of overheal that occur on us what is the real point of boosting this overheal further. Skip it

Divine strength 5/5 - Protections Paladins now need Attack Power. we gain 2 Attack Power per Strength point and also some block value. So this increases your threat and mitigation. Take it

Stoichism 0/3 - Sure reduction to stuns and reduction of spells being dispelled is nice but its far less effective for tanks than other talents, it's widely thought of as a PvP talent, so this one gets missed.

Guardian's favor 0/2 - Cool down on bubbles for other players is shortened, yeah I guess it'd be nice, but again not the most valuable talent so is skipped.

Anticipation 5/5 - 5% Added Dodge. Pure and Simple Mitigation. Take it

Divine Sacrifice 1/1 - Redirects 30% of all raid Damage to the Paladin upto a max of 150% of their HP. Its a raid DPS saver for those moments when a lot of raid healing needed. It can also be used with Divine Protection to mean you actually only take 15% but save the raid from the full 30%. It's optional but nice to take.

Improved Righteous fury 3/3 - All Dmg is reduced by 6%. Again Straight Forward Damage Mitigation. (Righteous fury is always needed as Prot). Take it.

Toughness 5/5 - Increased armor, therefore damage reduction. It's nice mitigation, Take it.

Divine Guardian 0/2 - Improves the effectiveness of your Divine Sacrifice spell by an additional 5% and increases the duration of your Sacred Shield by 50% and the amount absorbed by 10%. In theory it's better to be able to absorb more in reality this means that you'd need even more healing to not die. The points in reality can be better spent elsewhere. Skip it!

Improved hammer of Justice 2/2 - It reduces the cooldown on your stuns and interupts. A very useful tool to have while tanking especially if tanking a healing Boss, we always used to skip this since we had a 1minute cooldown, which made it useless. Since the Cooldown is now down to 20secs fully talented this now becomes a very useful tool. Optional, but I strongly suggest taking it

Improved devotion Aura 3/3 - Since all Auras now apply to everyone in the raid a Holy paladin or retri can provide you with Retribution Aura. You'll be giving devotion for Extra Armor to the entire raid as well as Increased Healing. Take it.

Blessing of sanctuary 1/1 - You'll be using Sanctuary always, every time you block you regain 1% of your mana. Its a great for tanking fullstop and also for AoE tanking and soloing. It's nice mitigation for other tanks too, even though they no longer get the rage/runic power. Take it

Reckoning 0/5 - 10% Chance on hit or block you gain an extra weapon swing for the next 4 swings. With the weapon changes this talent has become better for threat than before (it was terrible pre 3.0). I will skip this talent as it has some disadvantages as well as advantages. Weapon Speeds over 2.0 seem to provide the best threat increase from this talent. Since it procs for 8secs you should check weapon speed to see how many swings fit in to gain best from this talent after the proc occurs. Still only 0.56% threat increase fully talented, which is very poor compared to any other threat talent.

Sacred duty 2/2 - Increases your total Stamina by 8%, reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield and Divine Protection spells by 60 sec.. Stamina gives HP and spell dmg!. Take it

One-handed weapon specialization 3/3 - Simple, all dmg you do is increased by 10% whilst you have a 1h weapon equipped. Take it

Spiritual Attunement 1/2 - The Paladin regenerates mana equal to 5% per talent when healed by other friendly targets' spells. Well I know almost all protection paladins would love to take 2/2 in this talent since the mana regen is often needed especially in heroics / lower gear content. But due to necessities further down the tree we can only afford to spend 1/2 in order to get the best mitigation and threat spec. take 1/2.

Holy-shield 1/1 - 30% Extra Shield Block can be almost permanently kept active. You're dead/Useless without it! Take it

Ardent defender 3/3 - Below 35% HP you take 30% less dmg, again it buys time for healer when you get hit hard n fast. Argent Defenders Reduces the damage of many attacks that otherwise would have killed you.Take it

Redoubt 3/3 - 30 Block Value for Free and 30% Chance to block on a proc.... Oh.... Redoubt Procs a lot! Take it

Combat expertise 3/3 - So 6 expertise, 6% crit and 6% Stamina - No Brainer! Take it

Touched by the light 3/3 - Returns 30% of your Sta as Spell Dmg. New Tank gear has stacks of Sta but no spell dmg and it adds some nice threat, as Paladin tank spells tend to be based Spell Dmg and AP. Take it

Avenger's Shield 1/1 - It's your Pulling tool, that simple! take it

Guarded by the light 2/2 - Reduces spell damage taken by 6% and gives a 100% chance to refresh the duration of your Divine Plea when you hit an enemy. In addition, your Divine Plea spell is 100% less likely to be dispelled. Permanent Divine Plea and less dmg from glyphing. Take it.

Shield of the templar 3/3 - Reduces all damage taken by 3% and grants your Avenger's Shield a 100% chance to silence your targets for 3 sec. Pure and simple mitigation, It's a no-brainer. take it.

Judgements of the just 2/2 - Reduces the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice by 20 sec, increases the duration of your Seal of Justice effect by 1 sec and your Judgement spells also reduce the melee attack speed of the target by 20%.. Judgements are used every cooldown so this adds mitigation as he'll attack you 20% less. All boss fights are balanced around the boss having a 20% reduced attack speed, It keeps the fight balanced for us too. Take it!

Hammer of the righteous 1/1 - It's the paladins Cleave. Basically while using Seal of Corruption (Vengeance for Alliance) not only do you cleave 3 targets but you refresh / apply more charges of corruption to those 3 targets too, great for AoE tanking threat. And is your primary threat spell along with. SotR at level 75.

Retribution Tree:

Deflection 5/5 - Increases your parry chance by 5%. Its Mitigation pure and simple.

Benediction 0/5 - reduces the mana cost of all instant cast spells by 2% per point. Reduces your mana cost on a lot of spells so means less likely to have any mana issues. Not the best choice of a talent and is only for those that really need it. look at it as a last choice filler if for some reason you need one (I doubt you will)

Improved Judgements 1/2 - Reduces the cooldown of judgements by 1seconds per point. Judgements have decent beneficial effects and do ok damage, therefore are a staple to produce threat. All calculations show that tankadin rotations work better on a 9sec (1/2 points) cooldown as part of the 96969 rotation rather than 10sec (standard) or 8sec (2/2 Points). Judgements have been nerfed but taking 1/2 is a must for any level 80 Protection spec for our 96969 Rotation. Can even take 2/2 but is not needed

Improved Blessing of Might 1/2 - Improves the Attack Power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 12.5% per point. It's a filler talent, but we need 1 filler in order to get to Crusade and Conviction. Can take or miss this one, cna instead take 2/2 Improved Judgements or 1/5 Benediction none of them give any serious benefit.

Heart of the crusader 3/3 - your Judgements also increase the critical srtike chance of all attack against the target by 1% per point. It's an extra 3% crit for the entire raid. Very nice talent, We need to take points in retribution to get our max threat potential. This is a good use of points and great in 5man when no retribution paladin is present.

Pursuit of justice 0/2 - Reduces duration of disarm effect by 25% and increases movement speed (incl mounted speed) by 7.5% (rounded to highest whole %) per point. This could be a very useful talent to take, the movement is an added bonus but being disarmed for 50% less is the real deal here. Well disarms don't affect us too badly and the speed can be made by enchanting Tuskarr's vitality instead for a loss of 7 Sta. Hit or miss talent, upto personal choice either take 5/5 Conviction or 3/5 Conviction + Pursuit of Justice 2/2.

Conviction 5/5 - Increases your chance to get a critical strike with all spells and attacks per point. So potential 5%crit rating, Very nice for extra threat. We now have the disposable talents to be able to take this and it's on our way to Crusade which point for point is the best threat talent.

Crusade 3/3 - Increases all damage caused by 3% and all damage caused against Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals by an additional 3%. It's awesome for threat. take it.

Credits to Apollya of <Combustion> @ Argent Dawn

Note:Many people have mentioned Kings in following posts. Fear not ignore them it's all old news now, ALL paladins now have kings to buff and we don't need to waste points in it for raid balance *cheer*

Buffs:-

Devotion Aura (Perhaps Retribution Aura on large trash groups if another Paladin is not providing it)

Flask of Stoneblood

Blessing of Sanctuary

Righteous Fury

Now here's where it changes...

Regular Spells / Attacks:

Seal of Corruption (Seal of Vengeance for Alliance) (Every 30mins) Cast before Pull Initially

Avenger's Shield (Every CD - 30secs) Cast to Pull

Consecration (Every CD) Cast before mobs reach you to start initial threat, casting it early can give an extra tick you'd usually lose out on.

Holy Shield (Every CD - 8 Secs) Cast Just as mobs reach you.

Hammer of the righteous (Every CD - 6 secs, 51 Point Talent)

Judgement of wisdom (Every CD - 9 secs, with imp Judgments form Retri) Cast as soon as possible and kept up at all times.

Shield of Righteousness (Every CD - 6secs, Trained at lvl 75)

Exorcism causes 1000 to 1150 Holy damage to an enemy target. If the target is Undead or Demon, it will always critically hit. (When you ahve a free slot in your 96969 rotation to boost threat. 15sec cooldown)

Specials / Emergency Measures.

Divine Sacrifice. Raidwide 30% dmg bubble that redirects this damage to youm, make sure you got good healing when using it.
Divine Protection (As and when needed the Paladins New Shield Wall, reduces all your dmg by 50%)
Divine Shield (Causes you to temporarily lose aggro while it's active since you are immune to all damage)
Avenging Wrath can be used just before Avengers shield for added Initial threat on a pull and should be used every cooldown to boost threat.
Righteous Defense taunts upto 3 mobs off the tagert or the selected mobs target.
Hand of Reckoning is a single target taunt that also does holy damage to help retain aggro.
Using the Regulars above in that order should help build nice fast threat and maintain it.
(Both Righteous Defence and Hand of Reckoning are best to have macro'd.)

On Undead, Holy Wrath is now an instant cast spell so is well worth popping every CD for lots of threat as is exorcism.

Fills the Paladin with holy power, causing attacks to apply Holy Vengeance, which deals 0.228 additional Holy damage over 15 sec. Holy Vengeance can stack up to 5 times. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 min. Unleashing this Seal's energy will deal 1.36 Holy damage to an enemy, increased by 10% for each application of Holy Vengeance on the target.. The great thing about this debuff is that it seems to be applied by Consecrate, holyshield, retribution aura, Hammer of the Righteous, Judgements etc etc. basically it is very simple and fast to have every mob you're tanking with a full stack of 5 debuffs on them.


Let's Talk Buffs now, here's the Blessings Each Paladin might/should have at Level 80:

The Prot Pala - Sanctuary / Kings

The Ret Pala - Kings and Imp Might

The Holy Pala - Imp Wisdom / Imp Might / Kings

This way each class can be buffed as follows: - (and all improved!)

DK - Kings / Might / Sanctuary

Warr - Kings / Might / Sanctuary

Pally - Kings / Might / Wisdom (Sanctuary for Prot over Wisdom and Sanctuary for Holy over Might)

Mage - Kings / Wisdom / Sanctuary

Lock - Kings / Wisdom / Sanctuary

Hunter - Kings / Might / Wisdom

Druid - Kings / Might / Wisdom (Sanctuary for Bear not Wisdom, Sanct for the Resto / Doomkin Not might)

Shaman - Kings / Wisdom / (Might for Enh, sanct for Ele / Resto)

Rogue - Kings / Might / Sanctuary

Priest - Kings / Wisdom / Sanctuary

Any given 25man raid should have three paladins to all compliment each others buffs nicely and EVERY possible raid member can have all the IMPROVED blessings on them so long as all three specs are present.

Original Credits to Abiz of < Bad Karma > @ Wildhammer for the Above info on Class Buffing.

Credits to: Apollya of <Combustion> on Argent Dawn for Compiling. Thanks to Maintankadin.com forums for Advice and input. Note: This info can be Copied, providing credit is given to the Author. Though this will be updated from time to time.

Enchants:

Weapon Enchants:

Accuracy - enchant a melee weapon to increase critical strike and hit rating by 25. We as paladin tanks need hit rating to help increase hits and threat, it also means we suffer les from Parry Haste attacks. This is the best enchant in game at present for a Protection paladin. But duie to material costs on a lesser tanking weapon you might want to take the Potency below.

Potency on 1h Weapon - Yes the old TBC 20 Str enchant and not the new AP ones. 20 Str gives roughly 48 AP (unbuffed / boosted by kings or talents) as well as 10 Block value. So not only does it add threat and dmg output it also adds mitigation. Now add to that Divine Strength and Kings and this will be boosted to be far better for threat alone than the new WoTLK AP or Spellpower Enchants. Then you also receive the added bonus of the Mitigation.

Bladewarding - Permanently enchants a weapon to sometimes grant Blade Warding when striking an enemy. Blade Warding increases your parry rating by 200 and inflicts 600 to 800 damage on your next parry. Lasts 10 sec. Since this is a proc it' might be considered not the best use of an enchant for protection paladins, however not to be dismissed. More theorycrafting currently needs to be undertaken to work out the true worth of this enchant for us.

Shield Enchants:



Head Enchants:


Shoulder Enchants:


Cloak Enchants:



Chest Enchants:


Libram:

The old TBC libram of 15 badge of justice, which is more block rating while using holy shield. This adds more damage mitigation and takes a little stress of your healers. However this one weakens as you level up.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29388

A new libram obtainable in grizzly hills vendor. This will boost the damage of your Shield of Righteous by a small amount, but it is affected by talents like One handed specialization and shield of the templar, thereby increasing the threat bonus more then it first seems.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=38363

For 15 Emblem of Heroism you can buy Libram of Obstruction in Dalaran. Your Judgement ability also increases your shield block value by 352 for 5 sec." This is the definitive AoE Tanking Libram.
http://armory.wow-europe.com/item-info.xml?i=40707

For 25 Emblems of Valor you can buy Libram of Resurgence in Dalaran. Increases the spell power of your Consecration spell by 141 . It's an AoE tanking Libram but not the most useful.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40337

(Note Downside to Libram of Obstruction is you Judge every 9seconds and therefore there is a 4sec window each time where you are not gaining this benefit)

Glyphs:

The Glyphs below are presented in full with explanations

The Staple Major glyphs:

Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous - Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target. This will help on threat for AoE tanking and will help spread your Seal of vengeance to more targets faster.

Glyph of Seal of Vengeance
One of the better tanking glyphs since expertice reduces the chance your theat generating abilities are avoided. On bosses you will want to use this seal only either way due to the dot threat generation and the big judgement hits.

Glyph of Divine Plea - While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources. So you use Divine Plea every minute for mana and now can use it to provide mitigation, 3% less dmg is a real bonus!

The Situational Major glyphs:

Glyph of Spiritual Attunement
It's obviously a glyph for paladins with mana issues while tanking. Overall when on bosses or trash you'll have either enough mobs hitting you to keep up 100% mana (blessing of sanctuary) or you'll take enough damage (for spiritual attunement). Either way, this glyph is good for paladins who are so heavy on avoidance that they will not take enough damage to have their mana healed back up.

Glyph of Judgement
You have multiple choices here, the first and one of the best is still the good old Judgement glyph.
10% more damage on any judged seal (let's say vengeance, the boss tanking seal) it will increase your threat a fair amount and add leveling dps for protection. In my opinion this is a must have glyph.

Glyph of Righteous Defense
Then there is the glyph for Righteous Defense, which reduces it's chance to be resisted to 0. In certain fight you'll be very happy to have this when a taunt resist will wipe the raid / group. A great safety glyph, but it's vallue may be argueable depending on how much you PvE. We're mainly in Warrior tank gear that should have a nice amount of +hit on it, Righteous Defence Should not miss often.

Glyph of Avengers Shield
It's basically a great theatboost for single mob pulls. However a great nerf for tanking 3-4 mobs at once. It makes it usefull for theat on boss fights but worse for pulling many mobs at once (specially if this amount is 2 or 3, which is when Avengers shield is perfect). This glyph seems more of an end game glyph, soloing or prot-pvp.

Glyph of Consecration
The next option is the Consecration glyph which can give you room for more global cooldowns, but may aswell mess up your rotation or be messy when you drop a consecration on an AoE pull and have to move (aka mobs are no longer in Conse and you have a longer cooldown).

Glyph of Exorcism
Increases the Damage of Exorcism by 20%. Nothing special

Glyph of Avenging Wrath
I know this may at first seem like a retri glyph, and it is. But the less cooldown your Hammer of Wrath has, the more tps you can push on those last 20% of a boss, allowing them to deal additionally much damage. Overall you will be a few 100k threat off the DPSers by this time, but some bosses have an agro reset, thereby making this one worth it's major glyph spot. It will however change your rotation slightly.

Minor glyph

Glyph of Lay on Hands
Overall the only minor glyph that could matter. It reduces the cooldown on lay on hands by 5mins, making it ready for almost every boss fight.

Glyph of Sense undead
It's 1% more damage to undeads and thereby a little bit more theat dealt. Great for naxxramas not so great in Ulduar but will be useful again In Icecrown

Glyph of Blessing of Kings
Reduces the cost of your Blessing of Kings by 50%. Not especially useful since likely you'll buff sanctuary. but could help on mana during 5man groups.

Pheew, bit longer then I expected this to be. I hope it helps :)

Credits to Brukt of <Epiunion> on Laughing Skull for this information. Much Appreciated.

This over-time will be Edited and added to by Apollya of <Combustion> on Argent Dawn, It can be copied and pasted as long as credit is given to all the Authors responsible. As this content may change as updates come in, please check the info you take and also check for updates regularily.

969 Rotation:

Cons still 8s, can Glyph to 10s (Don't)
- HS now 8s, lasts 10s
- HotR, new spell at 6s
- Judgement now on the GCD at 8-10s
- AS, now instant at 30s
- Seals now cast much less often

Barring some revelation I will assume that the principles behind the 9/6/9/6/9 hold true for L70 even though we are missing Shield of Righteousness. This means that you need to be able to treat Cons/Judge/HS as 9sec cooldowns, so the Glyph of Consecration will screw up your rotation, and you need 1/2 Imp Judgement at least. In the 70 version, we skip a GCD for ShoR:

Prep SoV
00.0 HS
01.5 HotR
03.0 Judgement
04.5 (free) <-- AS
06.0 Cons
07.5 HotR
09.0 HS
10.5 (free)
12.0 Judgement
13.5 HotR
15.0 Cons
16.5 (free)

18.0 HS (starting over)
19.5 HotR
21.0 Judgement
...

First of all, notice one thing. If you have 2/2 Imp Judgement, you can sacrifice the GCD at 10.5 to cast at 11.0. This lets you recast by 19, but you can't cast it anyway until 21.0! Those two seconds you gained are completely wasted. Similarly if you take 0/2 Imp Judgement, you can't Judge a second time at all until 13.0, but there's no open GCD until 16.5 unless you want to push back your entire rotation by a second which would cut your TPS by ~7%. Waiting until 16.5 to Judge leaves you judging as if your cooldown was 13.5sec, then 12sec, repeating so a loss of about 29% of your Judgement damage relative to the 9sec cooldown.

Secondly, you'll see we have 3 free GCDs in those 18sec. If we have the mana -- and on a boss, we almost certainly do -- we can do a couple of things in there to increase our TPS. Avenger's Shield on cooldown fits perfectly into the rotation, taking up 1 GCD out of every 5 open ones.

This leaves clusters of 4 GCDs at 6sec intervals, 12sec apart. That %#@!!@%%'s seal twisting time. Now, like RF spamming on Brut, this has limited application. Don't be going OOM trying to do this because aside from what I just mentioned, it's definitely the least efficient thing you can possibly do with your mana pool!

With Vengeance at 15sec, it's too dangerous to leave SoR up for that 12 second time window -- one miss or mistiming and the stack falls off. So what we want to do is open the fight with SoV and use those 4 GCDs to do SoR,SoV,SoR,SoV. This gives us 12/30 or 40% uptime of SoR, at the cost of 40% of our SoV Hits (the tiny bonus damage at a 5-stack) and 9% of our Judgement damage (since 40% of the time they're doing 125% instead of 150%). It also drains 413 mana per cast, which translates into 55 mana/sec or 52 TPS from Spiritual Attunement.

The final rotation:

Prep SoV
00.0 HS
01.5 HotR
03.0 Judgement
04.5 (free) <-- AS
06.0 Cons
07.5 HotR
09.0 HS
10.5 (free) <-- SoR
12.0 Judgement
13.5 HotR
15.0 Cons
16.5 (free) <-- SoV
18.0 HS
19.5 HotR
21.0 Judgement
22.5 (free) <-- SoR
24.0 Cons
25.5 HotR
27.0 HS
28.5 (free) <-- SoV
30.0 Judgement
31.5 HotR
33.0 Cons
34.5 (free) <-- AS
...


To the folks adapting the TPS spreadsheet for level 70, the proper uptimes for this twisting rotation are as follows. Note that I mentioned SA threat up there which isn't modeled at all in my spreadsheet, but mana costs are independent of weapon choice.
HotR,SoV,AS = 1.0
Judge = .9333...
Cons = .888...
SoV-Hit = .60
SoR = .40


TL;DR:
1/2 Imp Judgement
No Glyph of Consecration
96969 using AS in place of ShoR


Credits to: PsiVen from Maintankadin!

Note: If using Hammer of jsutice either continue your rotation from where you stopped or wait for a cooldown and start again. Best to continue from where you left but if you;re confused and threat is fine then just take a pause and continue as long as you keep holy shield and judgement up.

If this is keeping updated (throughout the upcoming patches and all)
I say, make this a sticky.

Since it's a nice guide on how to spent the talent points.

I'm not gonna sign this for a sticky yet, first I wanna see if this is keep getting updated throughout the patches...

Regards.

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Q u o t e:
Blessing of kings 1/1 - It's a No brainer 9/10 you will be the Paladin buffing Kings, Holy Paladins now might lose some very useful talents in order to sepc for kings. At level 80 there may be a retribution paladin buffing it, but for small raids and or groups don't count on another paladin to buff this for you

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stopped reading here

There are some errors in there, but if you can clearly add it's your choice of talents, it can be rectified.

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Q u o t e:


stopped reading here

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Blessing of Kings is very much a highly debated topic at the moment on all forums. Please read it in the way it was intended.

Blessing of Kings is a very useful talent. I'm saying you should take it unless a Retribution paladin on your raid has it. At level 70 maybe a holy paladin will have Kings at 80 in a PvE spec they really should not. A retribution paladin at level 70 will not have kings, although at level 80 they very well might take kings.

In anycase for small raids (10 man) or 5man groups you are likely not to be able to guarantee another paladin for kings so it will be very useful to have.

If at a later date you are raiding and always have someone else guaranteed to buff it, then by all means drop it for something else.

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Q u o t e:
There are some errors in there, but if you can clearly add it's your choice of talents, it can be rectified.

---

By all means give us your views and we can have a freindly debate and update it to be more accurate.

;)

I find it odd that you take Blessing of Sanctuary in your Talent tree, yet use Blessing of Kings in tanking.
Surely BoS is a MUST for pally tanks....damage reduction and mana regen! Why wouldn't you want that?!

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Q u o t e:
I find it odd that you take Blessing of Sanctuary in your Talent tree, yet use Blessing of Kings in tanking.
Surely BoS is a MUST for pally tanks....damage reduction and mana regen! Why wouldn't you want that?!

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I use Blessing of Sanctuary on myself over Kings, however Kings may well be needed for other classes :)

On raids I Buff Sanctuary and another Buffs Kings as we run with 4 Paladins. Updated to reflect that too

I see...in that case you may wish to rewrite your section titled "Buffs" to make this clear.
Good work on putting the guide together. It'll be a great help to those left confused after all the changes in the tree.
Pal

Edit: haha...you beat me too it! I see you've already made the change.

Oh man, I'm so sorry.
You're gonna think I'm a right pain in the backside....lol

But you mention casting Avenger's Shield while under attack and the casting time being effected....but it's Instant Cast now isn't it?

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Q u o t e:
Oh man, I'm so sorry.
You're gonna think I'm a right pain in the backside....lol

But you mention casting Avenger's Shield while under attack and the casting time being effected....but it's Instant Cast now isn't it?

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You're not a pain at all, in fact you're being very helpfull.

Basically I wrote this some-time ago for my own guild forums, I've been updating a lot since but still missing things that have changed. Also on my own forums I was even able to colour code the talents to reflect: Green - 100% take, Orange - Decent, should be considered, Red - Turkey, avoid at all costs.

Shame I'm limited here else it could be a far prettier and simpler guide.


You werre 100% right though, it's now instant cast.

I also noticed it when re-formatting to make it neater and easier to read so had already just removed it :P

*Bumped*

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Q u o t e:

Protection Tree:

Blessing of kings 1/1 - It's a No brainer 9/10 you will be the Paladin buffing Kings, Holy Paladins now might lose some very useful talents in order to sepc for kings. At level 80 there may be a retribution paladin buffing it, but for small raids and or groups don't count on another paladin to buff this for you

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You will gimp yourself if you waste 5 points like this. Let holy palas buff kings.

on the Kings debate - I believe at lvl 80 the best bet will be for 3 paladins in a raid, 1 prot, 1 holy, 1 retri.

The Prot Pala - Sanctuary /Kings
The Ret Pala - Kings and Imp Might
The Holy Pala - Imp Wisdom/Kings

This way each class can be buffed as follows: - (and all improved!)
DK - Kings / Might / Sanct
Warr - Kings / Might / Sanct
Pally - Kings / Might / Wisdom
(sanct for the prot in favour of wisdom - and sanct for the holy instead of might)
Mage - Kings / Wisdom / Sanct
Lock - Kings / Wisdom / Sanct
Hunter - Kings / Might / Wisdom
Druid - Kings / Might / Wisdom
(sanct for the feral tank in favour of wisdom, sanct for the resto/boomkin in favour of might)
Shaman - Kings / Wisdom / (Might for enh, sanct for elem/resto)
Rogue - Kings / Might / Sanct - edited for mistake xD
Priest - Kings/Wisdom/Sanct

I'm a firm believer that three paladins in the raid will all compliment each others buffs nicely and EVERY possible raid member can have all the IMPROVED blessings on them so long as all three specs are present.

I also believe that at lvl 80 ALL THREE specs will want to put points into kings, not only just for those who will prefer it in 5man and 10 man groups, but if you look at the list of buffs I posted, its clear that for hunters and feral dps druids to have the improved blessings they want, (M/W) then the prot pala will be buffing them with kings. - then if you take time to read the list there are other classes who to keep all improved blessings will require a different paladin to be buffing them kings dependant on which imp buff they need


Also, to the OP - very nice guide on prot pala specs and strategies, I agree with everything you wrote and I hope more prot paladins read ur information and understand it well...

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Q u o t e:


You will gimp yourself if you waste 5 points like this. Let holy palas buff kings.

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I agree. Sanc is what you'll be using so let someone else spec for (and buff) kings