Prot PVP @ 85

Not much discussion about prot PVP at 85...

So figured I would start a thread on it, as it's likely the route I am going to go...

My questions:
1. Spec key points ?
2. Gear key points? (What stat focus)
3. Role key points (wait for low target to burst and finish? maximize shield toss procs? any tips?)


I know some people have had success, and I will say I can actually kill a warrior as prot, where as with Ret I simply died before stun wore off.. so that's progress >.> Anyone have input on prot for PVP?

I can't tell you much about organized BG/Arena PvP, but I have some anecdotal 1v1 evidence.

My 1v1 experience: If it is 1v1 against another player, and they aren't a beast at pvp, you will kill them.

Last night, I was doing the Dragonmaw dailies, and didn't realize that there was an alliance town in the thundermar ruins. I land. Instantly get flagged, fly off, and start doing the dailies.

First came a hunter. I was mowing down packs of thundermar dwarves. She sent in the pet, and starting lighting me up. I switched to Seal of insight, Cycled through my cooldowns, finished off the pack, and the beat her mercilessly. I stunned her, I snared her, I killed her pet, and I ran her down. She even drug me through more packs of dwarves. I didn't even care. they kept my mana up while I killed her.

Then came a warrior. He was trying to catch me mid fight with high shaman mcgillicutty or whatever his name is. Same thing, swapped seals, moved to WoG Spam, killed shaman, then killed him. He was pretty bad. he didn't try to kite me, he tried to stand toe to toe with me.

Then came a shaman. She hexed me, I bubbled, and kept SoV running and just dropped her. When She was close to dying, she GW'd. I Shielded her, HoW'd, and she died on the run.

Then the shaman and the warrior came back. Shaman healed warrior, I killed shaman, warrior finished me off.

Then there was the mage. Who was a PvP (or CC) PRO. I got him to ~30% before he finished me up. I'm sure had he been something besides arcane, I would have died a LOT faster.

Moral of the story:
If they don't outgear you, they will be ill advised to try and stand toe to toe with you.
If they don't plan out good CC, they will not kill you.


The warrior really surprised me. I would have figured that he could take me toe to toe. He was ~115k HP, looked to be in dungeon + rep gear, and he just couldn't beat the heals.

The hunter was also surprising, because even trying to kite me, and snare me, she just couldn't. Sicking her pet on me might have actually been a mistake, because I beat on the pet, and shot her with AS's that procced.

Warlocks scare me. But then... they have scared me since TBC. Other Prot Paladins are going to be stupidly long fights. DK's might be a problem, depending on how often you purify. Druids are probably really tough.

That is all the anecdotal evidence I have. It felt good to be borderline unkillable 1v1:)

I can say, don't bother trying to kill other Prot Paladins or healers, you are up for LONG fights, and i mean retardedly long.

Great thread. There is indeed almost nothing to find about it, PvPing prot paladins are a rare breed. However, the ones who do PvP as prot are mostly people who know what they are doing. Paladin Protection PvP 85 does give some nice hits on YouTube

I have some experience with prot PvP in 2s, 3s and BGs. Currently I got myself the epic PvP shield and 3piece blue PvPgear (working on it, but PvE soaks up a lot of my time too).

What I usually do is sustain low damage, wait for my cooldowns (AS, Stun etc) and 3 holy power and combine all of those.

General tips:

Use Divine Protection alot. Its on 1min cooldown for a reason. Also be sure to use GoAK etc. when your opponent uses his damage cooldowns (a mage popping 3 clones of himself should ring a bell).
When there's a pet/mob on you, use them to generate holy power when your opponent is out of melee range.
When facing opponents who can not heal you should be able to outlast them with WoG on every 3 holy power.
When facing opponents who can heal you should be able to bust them with several cooldowns combined (AS, Wings, Stun, DP etc.)
When you know youre going to use e.g. AS/judgement/HoW/HW there is no need to be in meleerange when facing a melee opponent.
Try to avoid healers/prot opponents 1vs1 as this will take rediculous amounts of time.

I got some questions too, maybe other prot PvPers can help out here.

What heals do you use when bubbled/LoS etc.? I found our heals to pretty much suck except WoG. They either OOM us or just dont heal alot.
How do you guys handle frostmages? They got all benefits of kiters but dont got the pet to abuse. I probably suck most against skilled mages.

Personally, I LOVE PvPing as a Prot Pally, and I don't care what those trolls at junkies say. I'm not a good healer (haven't had much experience healing); I would NEVER go Ret. I started PvPing as Prot last season and loved it. There are some advantages to Prot Pally PvP at level 85:

1. High survivability: Being tanks, we have a large number of defensive CDs. Between Diving Protection, GotAK, Ardent Defender, Divine Shield/LoH, and the self healing of WoG, it takes a LOT of damage to kill us.

2. Decent damage output: In full PvP gear, glyphed AS and SotR hit pretty damn hard, especially with high crit and/or Sacred Duty proc. If we are getting focused, we hit even harder thanks to Vengeance, provided it's not purged off, and that we can survive long enough for it to build up.

3. Interrupt/silence: Grand Crusader is my favorite talent when it comes to PvP. Even though the silence goes on DR pretty fast, the ability can still be used as an interrupt against casters. It's turned the tide for me in plenty of duels and BGs.

4. Good group utility: With BoP, Freedom, Hand of Sac, Divine Guardian, Cleanse, and some off healing (though unreliable), we can do a lot of good for our teammates in arenas and BGs.

However, as much as I love the spec, there are some serious disadvantages that severely limit its viability in arenas.

1. RNG-dependent: As Prot we have 3 procs to keep an eye on. Sacred Duty, when procced, really boosts our damage (unless you need the HP to heal). Eternal Glory has saved my ass time and time again in tight spots. And of course, Grand Crusader resets the CD on one of our hardest hitting and most annoying abilities (annoying to the enemy). However, when these abilities don't proc, we don't really have much else going on. If the RNG god doesn't favor you very often, it can get frustrating pretty fast as a Prot PvPer.

2. Limited CC/interrupt: As Prot, our only source of CC, HoJ, is rather pathetic compared to the myriad of incapacitating abilities the other classes possess. While it does not break on damage, its CD isn't exactly short. The other interrupt we have is too RNG-dependent to be reliable. We might get some good procs and interrupt a few casts, but chances are it won't be up for the big heal or nuke that is the most dangerous.

3. Limited cleansing abilities: In 4.0.1 Blizz took away our ability to cleanse magic, which means that, for most forms of CC and snares, we are SoL. Not to mention, Cleanse costs a ton of mana and is not something we can keep up for long periods of time.

4. Severely limited mobility: This, IMO, is the worst thing about the spec. Compared to other melees, we have possibly the worst mobility. Rets have Long Arm of the Law and can cleanse most snare effects. DKs can Death Grip and snare people without trying. Feral Druids and Rogues can dash and sprint (plus other stuff). Warriors have such amazing mobility, with Charge, Intercept, Intervene, and now Heroic Leap. Prot Pallies, on the other hand, have one Hand of Freedom. As soon as that is popped, it is either immediately spell stolen, or we are CC'ed through the whole duration. Best case scenario, we get full use of Freedom, whack our opponent a few times. When it falls off, we are back to crawling at snail pace while our opponent kites us until we are dead.

That being said, I think Prot Pallies are going to be solid in rated BGs, carrying flags and anchoring nodes. As long as we have people to cleanse CCs and snares and heal us as we build vengeance, we can carry the flag home with ease while dealing some heavy damage along the way. In BGs like AB, unless we are seriously outnumbered, we can usually survive long enough with CDs until the reinforcement arrives, or until we snatch another base. That is what I plan to do in guild rated BGs: stack resilience with full PvP gear, put on some dps gems and enchants, and go to town with a flag on my back or alone at a node. It may not be the funnest job, but it is a necessary job that we are perfectly suited for.

Sleetza wrote:What heals do you use when bubbled/LoS etc.? I found our heals to pretty much suck except WoG. They either OOM us or just dont heal alot.
How do you guys handle frostmages? They got all benefits of kiters but dont got the pet to abuse. I probably suck most against skilled mages.

Unless I have healers around or I need to bubble off some nasty debuffs, I personally prefer to use LoH on myself instead of bubble. I find that my mana pool cannot afford to heal myself to a respectable amount. So instead of bubbling, healing my self to 30%, going OOM, then running around like an idiot because I have no mana to do anything, I'd rather LoH or die faster, so I can rez at full health faster and get back into the fight.

Of course, you can't use LoH in arenas. When I have to bubble/heal in arenas, what heal I use depends on what classes I'm facing. If I'm facing someone who can break my bubble (priest, warrior), I'll use FL to get some quick heals off. Otherwise, I'll use Divine Light to get as much health as possible before the bubble falls off.

As for frost mages, I avoid them if I can. Frost mages are possibly the best kiters in the game. Given our mobility, there's really not much we can do.

Tried pvping rogue, got killed hard. They regen health a lot faster than I can kill them. Ideas?

Tebin wrote:Tried pvping rogue, got killed hard. They regen health a lot faster than I can kill them. Ideas?

You shouldn't have any problems with rogues unless they outgear you. Use your holy power to WoG yourself when you got 3 of it and you'll outlast them easily. Be sure to pop some mitigation CD.

@ Yaz, I found our mobility to be not that worse at all with Pursuit of Justice, Seal of Justice when needed and some ranged attacks.

Sleetza wrote:

Tebin wrote:Tried pvping rogue, got killed hard. They regen health a lot faster than I can kill them. Ideas?

@ Yaz, I found our mobility to be not that worse at all with Pursuit of Justice, Seal of Justice when needed and some ranged attacks.

Pursuit of Justice helps, a lot. Seal of Justice is also nice against melee. But when you face a caster than can reliably slow you, you have no chance, as long as they are not so idiotic that they stand still and cast. Frost mages are the worst. They can spell steal my Freedom as soon as I cast it, and keep me Chilled, in Nova, or in Ring of Frost for the entire fight, while I have no way of getting out of it except with bubble. You can Judge and AS all you want, but you have no way of even building Holy Power to heal yourself without being in melee range, (except with a DP every minute).

Tebin wrote:Tried pvping rogue, got killed hard. They regen health a lot faster than I can kill them. Ideas?

As the others said, generally you're good against a rogue unless they out gear you or *seriously* know their stuff

You should be able to outlast them, especially if you have the PVP trinket to break a stun, and use a CD otherwise (I believe AD works while stunned)


Just remember to use your damage reducing cd's on them, as block means nothing when they are trying to stun lock you or get behind.

Im still interested in the part of
'what gems is best'
'what enchants should I have'
and
'what stat to focus on (and reforge to)'
if someone have some answers.

Personally i go for hit/expertise cap, then strength. Crit is nice too.

Sleetza wrote:Personally i go for hit/expertise cap, then strength. Crit is nice too.

That's my approach too. The argument is that we have enough survivability already and so should enhance our gear for damage. Gem for strength; reforge/select gear for caps then crit. However, stamina and resilience are not bad stats, so I am working towards a full set of ret PvP gear. The ret PvP strength bonuses make it decent for (ret) PvE too.

For trinkets, I picked up the PvP one with resilience plus a chance for strength; and am using an armour one with a +10k max health on use. (My character is human so I did not need the insignia of the alliance.)

I reforged Haste and Mastery to reach my Hit and Exp targets and then went for Crit. I'm assuming that without Sanctity of Battle and a big two hander, that Haste is low value and that there's too much jumping around and magic damage for Mastery to be worth keeping at full strength.

Bladesong wrote:I reforged Haste and Mastery to reach my Hit and Exp targets and then went for Crit. I'm assuming that without Sanctity of Battle and a big two hander, that Haste is low value and that there's too much jumping around and magic damage for Mastery to be worth keeping at full strength.

Yeah thats very true. Apart from our white damage nothing does benefit from haste except our heals with casttime which are mediocre. Kinda sucks that the only pvpcloaks with strength either come with haste or mastery... Went for the haste and reforged to crit.

Oh and... REBUKE BECOMES BASELINE BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

Sleetza wrote:Personally i go for hit/expertise cap, then strength. Crit is nice too.

I'm a little confused as to what the hit and expertise caps are. I hear some say 5%, others 6% (for hit) and then others simply disregard expertise.

Ojimaru wrote:

Sleetza wrote:Personally i go for hit/expertise cap, then strength. Crit is nice too.

I'm a little confused as to what the hit and expertise caps are. I hear some say 5%, others 6% (for hit) and then others simply disregard expertise.

Dont know the pvp-numbers by head, but just go for 0% misses and stuff at lvl 85 targets. Servers are down and cba to check the hard way (because you couldnt either ).

I've just gotten the epic trinket with some resilience and about 1,6k strength on use. Its on 2 minute cooldown and provides awesome bust.

get 3 Holy Power, judgement, trinket+wings (red wings=cool!), SotR, DP, SotR, CS, HoJ CS, Judgement, CS, SotR = win. Tricky to pop without HoJ/trinket available. Good opponents will cc/kite you during it.

I feel I should have rolled a human instead of a draenei so I could use the racial instead of the insignia-trinket. 2 on-use trinkets on 2 minute cooldown paired with wings = awesomesauce.

I've been rocking 2 nights of prot WARRIOR pvp and it's been intense... almost nothing in equal like gear has a chance in touching me...

I figure it'd be about the same as my pally if I tried.. looks awesome.

Prot warriors are way more annoying than prot pallies to kill in my experience because they have a multitude of stuns where as a pallies basically got healz that (aside from WoG) are interuptable. And when i interupt that they are locked out of holy spells for another 5 seconds. However as a feral druid with thorns glyphd all I really hafta do is keep thorns up + bear form and you will more or less kill yourself overtime.

Sure, wanna duel?

As a joke the MT of my guild and I decided to do some Prot 2v2. Prot Paladin and Prot Warrior.

Pretty sure out of the 12 odd games we've played together we've only lost once, and that was simply because we were unsure of how to handle the situation.

With the magnitude of stuns (timed right we can keep one person locked down for up to 10 seconds) and interupts between us we were able to lock down entirely one person whilst putting out a fair level of damage on them, and regardless of who they attacked it was like punching a brick wall. In one instance we oomed a druid warrior team, twice.

I ran some prot paly in 3's with a warlock and holy paladin, managed to win 7 out of 8 games due to me charging in and putting people on the back foot. We nearly lost to a resto druid, survival hunter, ele shaman though. Our lock got bursted with CC going out and then we were down 3-2 with the other 3 on full HP. My holy paly had given up at this stage, and I was getting focused while my holy paly ran LoS so I decided to go out with a bang and try and clobber the druid, hit my buffs and wings etc and smashed him for 25k SotR (Vengeance is good in PVP too!) After seeing that, I hit my Plea and got another 25k SotR with a SD proc. My holy paly was curious and decided to heal me and we stunned the druid and killed him inside of the HoJ. The ele shaman and hunter then tried to kite me to no avail, switched to SoI and just kept my heals up and slowly killed the shaman. The hunter spat on me so my holy paly and I pulled out Hand of Rag and Ashkandi and slowly meleed him down.

It's going to become quite viable with rebuke, we just need to get strats and stuff sorted. We've got good interupts and decent support abilities with amazing survivability, and don't forget our SD procs can hit hard.

I always forget about Sacred Duty. I need a power aura or something to indicate when it's up, I guess.

I've been doing 2v2s with a survival hunter. It's been good so far -- we have about a 50% win ratio. It's interesting how player skill works, though. One warlock/warrior pair we faced died FAST, and the other pair just took our lunches and ate it while we died.

I really like Avenger's Shield as an opener versus mages or other casters -- it really seems to screw with their planned opening, especially when they're trying to CC someone. Interestingly, rogues are pretty hard to kill -- half the damage seems to be nature damage, and SoInsight doesn't prevent them from stealthing. Yikes. Combine that with Recuperate, and it gets ugly. I don't know HOW I beat the one that I faced -- I was lucky.

It's fun enough that I'm planning to stick with this comp as long as I can, and then (once I get enough resilience) try and find a healer or other friend to do 3s with.

Did find another prot pally with 3,1k ish resilience just like me. Did do some 2v2, we actually won everything except the odd healer/damage combo. We lost 2 matches against a warrior with a druid with 3500 resilience and a shitload regen. He did outrun us, we couldnt burn him down because of the regen and couldnt get him oom on the warrior either. Our best try was us running behind pillars so the dps had to come to us out LoS of his healer and try to burst him down while using LoS/HoJ on the druid. I can imagine shamans can do the same with ghostwolf but they dont have cyclonespam, which should make survivability MUCH better since 2 prot pallies easily outheal a dps if they want to. When rebuke gets baseline we'll have more tools to use LoS/spelllockout/HoJ while burning down the dps. Other then that we pretty much facerolled teams with 2 dps, bad restodruids without gear, one time it got to 1v1 where i died because i bursted down a DK but the other prot pally killed the holy pally.

Basically a geared/skilled healer with insane resilience + a class who does high dps and can slow both of us are really hard to beat but by pulling them apart, then bursting the dps while stunning the healer works really good.

Can anyone post their talent builds? I am quite enjoying pvping on my pally, and so far have been doing it in ret spec. Think I need to convert over.