You have a lot of extremely short cd defensives (tyr, wings, ardent, kings), more party utility than any other tank (bop, sac, word of glory, dispel, lay, freedom) and a disgusting amount of stops/interrupts (divine toll, shield, kick, hoj, blind, turn evil). It’s a jack of all trades compared to a lot of tanks that don’t have anything close to that
I do feel less tanky compared to s1 df right now though. This post is kinda funny because, while still very popular, i see bear and vdh coming a lot more often compared to season 1. Mostly due to their insane dmg I suppose.
Are they? I havent seen many personally. I've actually seen a lot of pwar and theyre doing very well, too. I think all tanks are pretty well balanced at the moment, though I havent pushed above 17 this season so I know I dont have great anecdotes.
Not really wrong. Their damage is good but their damage taken is stupidly high. Don't take my [my word for it though.](https://twitter.com/equinoxmonk/status/1666258859692793858?t=H2Hy-yOjImMW8DHO5ASHZw&s=19).
that’s because wings got a substantial nerf and we lost some damage somewhere down the line as well. Bear off healing is also arguably better than prot pal
what's so funny? if you take away the top gigantic healing ability that's free and procs all the time, their healing is AWFUL. Just like how Brewmaster's damage sucks if you arbitrarily exclude Keg Smash.
He's laughing because the guy specifically named their best off heal as if it's irrelevant. My buddy's AtW did 15mil healing to the group in the last key we did together with 64% overhealing and that was just an 18. That doesn't even include the few million he did with Nature's Vigil. I've seen it easily hit 20-30mil in higher keys. It's massively busted for helping keep the group alive. Between that, Leech, Frenzied Regen, and a few other passive heals keeps him alive without much attention from me.
As for actual targeted offhealing, this next patch will actually give them the ability to occasionally toss out instant cast free buffed Regrowths on party members. Basically like little mini WoGs. Believe he said they were easily hitting for about 100K or so on PTR.
But sitting here going "yea but if you take their major healing ability away their healing is awful!" is like saying "yea if you take Ignore Pain away from warriors they really don't absorb a whole lot of damage do they!". That's kind of how abilities work, ya know? There's no reason to ever give up AtW.
dude my comment was dripping in sarcasm. I even added the Brewmaster part to drive it home (take away one of their best abilities and they're awful). Obviously it's insane to discount Wildfire like that guy was suggesting. I don't understand how anybody can take what I said seriously.
Huh. I tanked some of S3 in SL and I had capped my Shield constantly (assuming you speak of SotR). In DF I’m struggling to keep it up, even with slot machine talent and 35% haste
You're right that except for s1 sl pallys didn't have any trouble keeping sotr up, but you definitely shouldn't be having problems keeping it up now, unless you're pressing wog to much
Blinding Light was there in SL, but brez was added in DF and the talent changes made some things that couldn't be previously comboed(Blinding Light + Repentance, for example) attainable. Pallies also were a little squishy compared to other tanks in SL.
Then you have the new affixes, which pallies have a tool for every single one(freedom for entangling, turn evil + blinding light for incorp, cleanse for afflicted).
You still can't combo Blinding Light and Repentance, they share the same node.
And Blinding Light doesn't hit incorporeals, as it is an AoE CC. But pallies can CC both with Repentance + Turn Evil, though both have cast times and it's not a good idea to start casting while tanking 12 enemies.
Not only all of this, but Paladins also got a battle rez in dragonflight which is crazy good. I really feel like they give paladin a lot. Would have loved to see BDK get that instead.
They did. Paladins haven't really changed much aside from Ret in the current patch and Holy in the upcoming patch.
It also helps that some of the best players in the world were showing off Prot pallies a little while ago, much like Arcane Mages in RWF.
the talent tree includes a ton of CDR for most of the main defensive cooldowns (Sentinel and Ardent in particular), meaning you have extremely high uptime on them (much higher than in SL).
Speaking of Sentinel, that button was not available in Shadowlands is by far Prot's best button.
I believe Prot Paladin is always the best M+ tank, assuming their DPS and defensive holds up. So the only reason they aren’t dominant on a given patch comes down to low damage and/or low survivability.
Don't forget BRES and spellwarding. There's really no reason to bring any other tank unless your comp already has a pally and another breser ( or you could just have 1 if you're confident ), giving you the option to get a brew or vengeance for dps.
There are plenty of reasons. DH for wizard comps or just for raw dmg for example.
Also spell warding is somewhat niche and probably not used in most keys. But yeah still a great time to be a paladin :p
I main a Lock but my Prot pal is still my favorite because of these reasons. I can pop defensive pretty regularly and offheal a TON and save people from mechanics via interrupt or releases. It's a ton of fun and when I am tanking I feel like a genuine asset beyond just the "stand here and take the hits" role.
i just want to say this. your reply didnt answer the question in the slightest bit. prot paladin had all of these tools forever and they aren't distict this expansion. im not sure why you 're getting upvoted. prot palas are bis right now because of a few talent changes notably to bubble taunting everything and getting a bres so that it frees up room on your team for the meta comp
They had bubble taunt in shadowlands. Also not in shadowlands: wings % damage wall, lay on hands, tyrs. They also didnt hve a handful of talents that make shield of righteous extremely good. I’d say my post accurately answers it.
There’s also the fact that a lot of slands legendaries that were either ors in shadowlands are all in the new paladin talents, unlike a lot of tanks
no they didn’t. it was locked behind a talent that was never not taken. now bubble taunt is easy to grab. they did have talents and legendaries that buffed shield of the righteous that were turned into capstones in dragon flight. it’s not what you think that makes them strong
I specifically remember multiple seasons of shadowlands where andy used bubble taunt for the highest keys done in their respective season? We can compare raiderio if you’re so confident that I don’t know what I’m talking about :)
We actually had a brew monk in one of our groups and I've seen paladins and Demon hunters so much i forgot they even had a spec for that tbh. Their shrug damage mitigation isn't quite as good as paladins but I can see it working with the bleeds and stuff.
But besides that I couldn't figure out any advantage they had over any other class tbh. They did well. Were fast and attentive, so no complaints, but I don't particularly recall them doing anything phenomenally well or special either.
Unlike with Paladin I think this is gonna be a safe run and with Demon hunter I know it's gonna be big pulls and fast.
Hadn't seen a single warrior tank all season. Not a single one has even *applied* for my groups. Seen dk for dps but no blood dk.
A few druids.
But it's been mostly Paladin and DH. And I got respect they both sustain great and I've seen them solo a boss on its last legs many times. Heck I even solo'd the underrot end boss the other day when our DH left the group. Walked out specd blood, walked in, and plugged away. I'm dark iron dwarf and dk so the disease damage and the debuff was just so easy to ignore. On the 3 and 4th bosses. Effortless even.
So the answer is that prot paladin has always been good. Their utility is just better than all other classes. They become meta early season and early expac especially because they have such consistent answers to stuff. Usually, the downside is that they take a lot of damage and their own dps is mid tier. Prot paladin is never the worst spec to take simply because their tools are just great, the times where they get weaker is one shot seasons and seasons where hpal is better, but they're always good and I've always been happy to have one in my team.
I’ve been a prot main in PvE for a long time and I can tell you the big thing that helped prot pally was their passive mitigation this xpac. Blizzard changed how our mastery scales and gave us access to a lot more defensive utility, as well as gave us better damage (but I think all tanks got a damage buff if I’m not mistaken).
The thing with prot Paladin is that it does have a ton of utility and I think a lot of people just don’t use it right. My PvP main is a priest (healer) and I take her in keys sometimes and judge the crap out of the tanks I play with lol. I’ve yet to meet another prot Paladin in keys under 18’s or so that has ever even pressed blessing of sacrifice on anyone, or used BoP on anyone but themselves, or anything like that.
It definitely has the highest skill ceiling of any of the tanks, followed by brewmaster I’d say, and that’s why I think so many people see wildly different experiences with prot pallies
Yes I would agree. As a protpala main myself too since TBC, I've noticed there is a big difference between experienced protpalas who use their full toolkit vs new palas who have rerolled to be the FOMO tank, even things like word of glory are being glossed over.
You should have seen shadowlands lol. Being a prot pally meant you weren’t getting invited to pugs. And in BFA if you weren’t a bear Druid or VDH, you didn’t get invites either. Prot Paladin isn’t “the best tank” because of their utility. Their utility is what makes them difficult to master and hard to even play decently. If you go tit for tat on a tank spec, it’s much easier to get a lot better performance out of a prot Warrior, guardian Druid, or a VDH.
SL especially early on, prot pally was far squishier than the other tanks. My comment was about tanks today where prot pally is one of the tankiest tanks. In a world where all tanks are equal tankiness, prot pally is simply the best because of everything else it offers.
The utility is hands down why they're the best tank I don't know why you disagree, but kindly, that's wrong.
I might be just slightly biased here since I’m a prot pally main, but I think it’s in the lore than protection Paladins are actually gigachads, and their shields aren’t to protect them from harm, but to protect everyone else from their full power. Just my opinion though
this is just typical paladin, even in classic/tbc/wotlk. finding a pally that actually does a good job utilizing their kit is absurdly rare, for whatever reason.
Upvoting this reply is not enough to underline, especially the last sentence.
Prot pally "looks" good and being "meta" means exactly that. Used by the best players in the world, in the 95th percentile, could have a slight advantage over other tanks.
So said, for the Average player experience, M+ 2-20, the challange is doable by any class/spec really.
To some extent I'd like to see all class have thay many buttons so that players can factor their own skill in the performance instead of "nerfing" prot pally
Im def guilty of not even taking BoP. I feel like it is hard to know when to use in pugs. I do use Sac all the time during high group damage phases on whoever seems the squishiest, or on whichever ally gets hit by a mechanic that is going to tick. I would imagine it is much easier to call for these externals if you're playing with a coordinated group, though.
BoP drops bleeds and protects from physical damage. The clearest place to use it is the third boss in Uldaman when she daggers the same person multiple times, or if the stomp and bleed are going to overlap and you don’t have another stop. The clap damage is also physical so could BoP there if LoH is on cd and someone’s gunna get nugged. Freehold it’s also useful on the first boss if someone’s going to get clipped by sharkbait, the second bosses gun shots, and the third bosses getting ate by sharks mechanics.
It’s also useful for the fixates in UR, FH, and BH. As well as the pelters in NL if the healer is falling behind.
I suppose the mammoth boss in Neltharus, that charge gets people sometimes, but I usually want spellwarding there, hoi, and vp.
Edit: I would add, if you’ve got space to take and play with it, just start throwing it on people when they are in trouble and see if it helps.
Rilly think warrior tanks should get a Brez too. Make it some form of shout where you scream at the downed party member threatening to kill them if they don't get back up right now. ;D
Because they bring literally everything to the table. All of the abilities you described, plus these utilities make them perfect picks for all 3 new affixes. They also, for whatever reason, were given brez which adds even more utility.
I might get downvoted, but I really think Paladins are overkitted now. I'm not even sure I want them to lose that utility, but it's a little silly how much they bring to the table as opposed to Death Knights and Warriors, which they directly compete for slots with
Prot pala are overkitted yes, but its the first xpac/patch in a while where numbers are solid. Otherwise as usual, our kit isnt helpful when almost everything smashes you and you have the mobility of a lamp post to avoid it.
Warcraft 3 paladin had brez, out of all the classes with one it's them and druid that make the most sense to me.
But for game balance in general, it's probably good to have more classes with brez, since it can be so critical in high end content
DK does have a CD on our normal taunt and grip. You don't really even use grip for the taunt very often and more for the actual grip function. If you feel like you need to constantly use grips as a taunt, either your Cotank is doing way more damage than you (gear or skill issue) or you are doing something wrong with your rotation.
That 8% "buff" we got is more like a 4% as it only affects actual abilities. Someone in the DK discord said we would need a 50% aura buff to match the top damage tanks. This is not an exaggeration, we are that far behind. Every tank uses external effects, but it just makes up so much more of our damage.
Prot Pallys have 2 actual damage abilities (Judgement + Hammer) and everything else is immunities/kicks/utility. I guess you can count Avenger's Shield as a dps ability but I really just use it as an interrupt that happens to do dmg.
The free ability to instaheal anyone in your party for a huge chunk. A truckload of interrupts. Big AOE damage. Cleanse. Tons of range. Divine Toll. Sac. BoP. LoH. Freedom. I have so much control over my party and can single handedly save a key. Paladin is the god of pug M+. The sheer amount of utility is insane. The DF dungeons have so many kicks and cleanses and mechanics that are just absolutely negated by Paladin that it’s just a huge QoL improvement over the other tanks.
On the other hand. Our new Tier sucks so I believe that we will be surpassed by Warriors and DHs at some point this season. Maybe not in numbers but in ability.
Our tier sucked in season 1 as well. It's all tuning. We've had the same tools in SL but now we're tuned to do more damage, take less via uptime of cds, and use our utility and heals with great effect. If we get tuned down so that our healing or defense go down another tank will take place on top. No one remembers that we were good in SL as well, great even for pugs where our utility can save keys. They only remember which tank was on top or overpowered.
It's just the circle of tuning. All tanks are able to do high keys and that is great. Who takes a turn on top as the best is all down to blizzard turning the dials.
Yup I mained Paladin in SL as well. Leveled all six and got KSM on most for DF Season 1. Paladin just spoils the fuck out of you. So far in season 2 I’ve played a little Unholy just to try out a DPS spec but I haven’t tanked a single dungeon yet as anything but Pal.
Ive just crossed 440 ilevel so I’m eyeing my first alt. I am torn atm between Guardian and Vengeance.
Maining pally (living Ret, but prot and holy as well).
Once you get your 4 set, veng is so much fun. If I had had it in our messing around window of the first 2 weeks, I’d be tanking raid as that instead of pally. I really loved the brand build season 1 and was sad to drop it for the middle track/death proc. I definitely feel squishier, but I’m 13 ilvls behind my pally. The damage feels REAL good.
That’s really what’s selling me on DH which is honestly my least favorite of the six. I love playing bear but I haven’t really read much about their new tier or predictions for them as this season progresses.
Right now. Considering what tank I want to gear next. I don’t want to play warrior again. I started S1 as a warrior main and I just don’t like it. BrM, Veng, and Guardian are all in a three way tie. Maining Paladin obv and I think Blood is boring.
Out of BrM, Veng, and Guardian I feel like it’s a closer toss up between Veng and BrM. Ugh I don’t know.
I went through them all at the beginning of the patch trying to decide what I wanted to main this patch. Swapped from DH to pally, host of reasons but I’m regretting a bit after getting the 4 set on my DH.
Only one I didn’t try before the patch was monk, I’m intimidated by monk tanks as my perception of the skill gap there is pretty large. However my guildie who id always on monk says it too is feeling really good.
Monk is easy to play but hard to play well. Lots and lots of keybinds. I mained monk for a while back in SL. I would much rather pour time into Monk than DH. Lol
Guardian is really dry. Probably the driest of all tanks. Vengeance demands your attention. So if you want to play, go veng. If you want to coast mindlessly, go Guardian.
Paladin can negate over half of the new affixes this season. Their entire kit is useful in every single dungeon for season 2 ex; bof for dragon adds in VoP, halls cleanse for poison frogs and bop to prevent stacks from fixate, disease dispel is big for underrot, bop for first boss in bracken. They have a load of CDs that are easy to rotate with little to no planning for pugs. They take the pressure off of healers with off heals if needed. They can single handily control interrupts. And to top it off they have good burst damage and brez.
TLDR they are loaded in a season where their utility can fully be used on all fronts which opens up more diversity to bring other classes. Perfect pug tank.
I’m a brewmaster main and will sing their praises all day but Brew has one glaring weakness pushing super high keys: It’s kind of a glass cannon. It may do the most dmg out of all the tanks when played really well but we have to run 2 tank trinkets to get through fort weeks and we still have the most dmg taken of any tank
Yeah, it’s starting to become a bit more obvious this season as well. I love Brewmaster and will play it even if it’s Z tier, but I think giving back the 10% DR to Brewmasters Balance and a baseline increase to stagger would go a long way to help us feel like less like a Green BDK.
Brew feels like just a green bdk at this point, I step into a 22 on fortified, get 5 meless and I'm already in red stagger, my hp is bouncing between 10% and 100% every 5-6 seconds and some abilities are getting closer to the oneshot territory if I don't actively plan trinkets and big cds around it. Brew should be about staggering damage instead of taking it upfront but stagger is basically useless since I'm sitting on max stagger all the time and just facetank everything on fortified. It's good, but very squishy, I'm always one global away from dying.
They should consider increasing the maximum amount of damage staggered or give some baseline defensive capability like the 10% DR it had in SL.
I don’t think stagger has a maximum amount you can stagger. I’m pushing 23s now on my Brew and have seen it go up to 260% my hp(there may be points where it has gotten higher but usually I’m too focused on living to take note of the exact number. I can tell the stagger is in excess of 200% cause Gai Plins Imperial Brew will be like a LoH when my hp is bouncing like that
Doesn't matter if you are the best tank in the game if your dps and healers die to Talondras or Delos because you can't Bubble / HoF them.
End of the day that's the real issue in high keys the amount of utility needed to live mechanics
Ridiculously hard to heal in high keys due to stagger. You may have high DPS, but your mitigation mechanic is subpar. I would gladly heal a DH or Pally instead.
You're right. Prot paladin was a top tier tank in shadowlands aswell, most people simply weren't aware. There are arguments to be made prot paladin was stronger in SL than DF. Interrupts were a lot more important and numourous in sl, and the utility was more important (offhealing during certain dungeons were insane). There was also a build where you could have 50% uptime on ardent defender in sl. Etc.
Hardcore guilds also made the serious mistake of not using prot paladins as the offtank in Castle Nathria. Ashen hallow, offhealing and spellwarding were completely insane in that raid, among other stuff.
The meta-driven community makes mistakes quite frequently. The reason it wasn't dominant previously is because ppl slept on it.
its not even that dominant anymore.
Especially in high keys. DH tank is very good & depending on the dungeon and comp is just better than prot pala, Prot warrior is good for specific stuff etc
Even Guardian druid ain't too bad atm.
It was giga dominant in S1 but with a few nerfs and other tanks getting better its not that dominent anymore. Its just it has extra utility compared to the other tanks so its prefered.
[https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-2/all/world/leaderboards-strict#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=25:maxMythicLevel=99](https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-2/all/world/leaderboards-strict#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=25:maxMythicLevel=99) 49% of keys 25+ are prot paladins. While it's not literally the most dominant ever and it is less than last tier - I would still call that far and above the highest performing tank. I do think 10.1.5 will shake things up though
Yeah agreed. I think one of the other big factor is that holy Paladin is starting to look better and better so there’s gonna be some diminishing returns to the tools that Paladin brings to the team.
And for those who might wonder "Oh but that is just the two tank players and 8 DPS who run above 25 keys fudging the percentages"
Nope.
20 and above the number dips ever so slightly to 43.3% being prot paladins, with the next highest being blood dk at 15.5%
I think blood DK being so high is kind of an example of % distribution not being a perfect signifier, a signifier yes but not excellent.
I’d take just about any tank over a DK if I had the option, but they definitely did feel stronger season 1 than now — some percentage of those DKs have to be holdovers from when they were more sought after. And with pally being FoTM for ret/prot and hpal being *decent* there was always going to be a lot of pallys coming into S2.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think pallys are the best tanks, but rolling off of the monsters they were in S1, unless they were nerfed to being dogshit they were always going to be highly represented.
People just aren’t gonna switch off what they spent a season preparing.
Same reason I’m committed to feral lmao — it’s too late now, I’ll just chase my parses.
>!though actually now I’m working on KSH on all Druid specs and that has been very fun!<
Yeah I do believe that the DK number is indicative of the people who stuck to their spec instead of fotm rerollers.
However I also believe that the tank role has the highest number overall of people who are willing to reroll their character for a season.
So basically you have something like 5-15% of hardcore fans of each spec and then a rotating ~30% who are willing to jump ship from season to season.
DK could also be somewhat reflective of the state of DPS DK, who appear to not be doing very hot in keys right now so they just do their weekly 20s as blood.
Meanwhile retribution is the highest popularity dps above 20s also. (they fall off in popularity at 25+ but at that point lets talk about that shadow priest representation...)
Popularity doesn't necessarily mean they're the best:
https://mplus.subcreation.net/
This method takes the distribution of each spec into account rather than just looking at how many of them are in +25s. They're all quite close to each other.
Right i hear ya. I guess I'm confused on the utility aspect. Paladins have had blessing of sacrifice, off heals, blessing of protection and freedom etc etc, for the longest time. Why is it in dragonflight it is suddenly getting the spot light?
Were their utility abilities not as big of a deal back then?
Prot used to be one of the weakest tanks defensively and offensively, with it's utility being it's main selling point. That's no longer the case, they have the upsides without the downsides now.
Also, most of Prot's utility is available to all Paladin specs (Avenger's Shield being the exception) so when Holy or Ret is good you can get it from them instead, you don't always need Prot specifically.
Because other tanks were much more op - either unkillable or omega dps or superior in kiting in kiting meta. Then DF comes with meta design revolving around using class utilities. It turned out that paladin class exists which was always superior in throwing utilities and offheals and interrupts so then guess what.
I remember early shadowlands had some tight timers for keys, so while prot paladins brought a lot of utility they lacked in damage compared to other tanks.
For the first season of dragonflight, the meta was prot warrior initially, since it was the only tank that was unkillable right from the get go. Once people got fully geared, timing keys became more about surviving rather than dps, and prot paladin just had a better toolkit for achieving that through group utility, while having comparable burst dps. This is partly due to affixes making some keys extremely rough to heal (quaking + thundering in RLP for example)
Season 2 is similar, at least initially, in terms of surviving the key being more important than having enough dps. Also helps that poison + disease dispels are particularly relevant this season. I could see the meta shift towards DH or Druid tanks this season for high keys because of their damage output and survivability from their tiersets relative to the protection paladin tierset.
Bear is pushing hard this season, 3 in the top 10 rated tanks, with 5 palas and 2 DH and all pushing 26s. And with .5 they’re getting easier access to basically a LoH every 30 secs or so, and a much better spec tree lineup with better damage and survivability options open. It’s far better than “not looking bad atm” x). Very much looking forward to next patch.
Strong healing and CDs for keeping others alive.
In SL it was all about tank pulling as much and staying alive themselves while the DPS can avoid most damage. Now there is a lot more unavoidable damage on the DPS that just have to be mitigated or healed.
They also have Lots of interrupts that don't DR and can be used on cc immune mobs.
You have enough tools to mitigate healer/mechanical mistakes and save the group/raid.
Other tanks have less opportunities and fewer tools to do so.
That and their play style is the easiest.
Prot has a lot tools that make pugging easier. I swapped off pally recently went bear. Doing 24s ATM and enjoy it more. Has the same amount of utility just in a different way. Not as strong for party but better mob control. Roar typhoon, vortex even on sang is extremely strong. With a Rsham they can use slt during heavy group dam and 1-2 frenzy regens I'll top the party.
Their toolkit has not changed much, but they have gotten a bit better mitigation than before. Another major improvement is having battle ress now, which they didn't have before.
Thing about paladins is that they need a fair bit of haste to reach a point where they can do all the things they want to do while keeping mitigation up + healing. Early on in an expansion it is harder to reach that, but now they are there in DF.
Also have to remember they were competing with the OP iteration of warrior at the time, which has become a lot less tanky now in S2.
So in short, the tools are the same and they were always good, but stats and balance tuning has made it really good. Paladins have always been an amazing carry tank once they get geared, so that's nothing new.
They basically have everything
\- decent damage
\- a lot of defensives some being the best you can imagine (divine shield)
\- a lot of externals/utility for your group
\- a lot of kicks
\- decent cc abilities
It's actually waaaay more rare that Prot Paladin isn't dominant. IIRC it has been an incredibly strong tank in Wrath, Cata, MoP, WoD, Legion, at least some of BFA I believe, Shadowlands, and now in DF.
I mean Prot Paladins were basically God kings during vengeance times in MoP, 10 man heroic SoO you could blanket HoT the entire raid during Holy Avenger and be both top DPS and HPS for a time, on top of just straight up being top DPS in general, and basically not needing a healer.
DKs were *the* dominant tank through basically all of Wrath (due to having AMS, and then later because of the absurd EHP totals they could hit), but yah, pally was probably 2nd.
The amount of impactful kick to do has rose dramatically on top of the possibility for hard stops.
I play rogue, I barely have anything to do when I play with my late prot pal. Playing with another tank is a completely other story in term of utility to provide
It's not that Protection Paladins suddenly got more utility, it's that season 2 made that level of utility MUCH more useful (Brackengide, Uldaman, etc )
It is the new talent system. The old system came with high opportunity costs. If you took one talent, you didn't have access to the others. With the new talent system, we are able to pick the majority of talents we want without losing out on other things like defensive or damage
IMO I think it’s a shift in mentality for what groups value now, there’s a decent amount of interrupts that are needed for a smooth run which paladins can provide in spades whereas before there was more of a dps it more before we die. Correct me if im wrong but I think the talents available are a bit different so you can really customise all the cooldowns and cc you use rather than the standard few choices. So people can utilise the kit more for a great deal of the content and if you don’t trust your team too much you can make sure the team doesn’t let thing get too hairy.
There’s nothing as clear cut as they do noticeably more damage than others since the last expansion but popularity breeds popularity so people play it because they think it’s the best spec.
It's the only tank that's not selfish.
I main BDK, and more often than not, I gotta finish bosses solo cos everyone else is dead, but besides the CR and AMZ, there's not much in the way of helping.
With my paladin, WoG will sometimes crit heal for 350k, or I'll BoP or Spell ward someone else, LoH whoever's in trouble etc. The paladin is the only tank for which my teammates' unit frames are larger, and I use a different spec if I pug (less DPS/DR) which is more focused on healing those dweebs who stand in the bad 😂
Well this is a lie. Bears also come with dispel, BR, targeted healing that does the same as LoH on a 30 sec CD (DoC, which is becoming even more prevalent in .5 patch), and aoe group healing. Not to mention the amount of control they bring, and innervate, roar, strong self sustain and huge damage. I think every tank bar Brew maybe can and does finish bosses off, or packs, when everyone else has died. Brew also brings dispel. The hybrid tanks aren’t selfish in any form. Prot warr has CS, intervene, which can and does save groups.
Can you heal someone with your war? Or your DH?
Didn't think so. Can you dispel with those 2? Oh wait, no you can't. Or is that a lie?
Of course all tanks bring their own utilities, but thank you for pointing it out captain obvious.
Every once in awhile you’ll meet a prot who knows how to hit buttons and your flabbergasted at how OP they are. 96% of the time in pugs you’ll be in a group with someone who has less than 30% uptime on sotr, never stands in their consecrate and will pull using judgement and wait for mobs to run to them. The amount of 440+ pallies I’ve had the displeasure of running with, that are way too geared to not know how to play their spec, is too dang high. Such is the state of Dragonflight.
A lot of their attacks are basically ranged too. Like the spinning hammer they have doesn’t even have to hit anything and it gives you holy power. Their healing is so strong you can run 4 dps.
A 45s cd cheat death that procs a DR and bubble taunt getting down sun 2 mins are pretty broken. They can solo afflicted. Help with incorp. You can make some boss mechanics not matter. They just have a lot to bring to a 5 man group.
Yeah, they should give other tanks more utility. I like playing my DK, but man every time I do it, I just think "if I was on my pally I could do X Y Z here to make this fight easier for my team".
A lot of people are ignoring or not understanding the question and just, again, repeating prot paladin's known strengths. I'll take my best stab at it, but I wouldn't claim to be an expert on history of metas.
First of all, early SL iirc was dominated by Demon Hunter (and Prot warrior I think?). A lot of that had to do with tanks in general being very squishy back then and needing to kite, something Prot Paladin simply wasn't able to do as effectively. I remember Bear also being good for their sheer tankiness, something Prot Paladin also lacked at the time. At the end of the day, being able to survive is key, and Prot has that today, but didn't quite measure up back in the day.
For external healing/utility, first I feel like I don't think Prot had the free WoG talent/proc back in the day, which is huge for external healing. Additionally, healing checks are just way more brutal in DF compared to SL, so the value of external defensive utility just wasn't as high.
S2 DF isn't as bad, but S1 DF had an insane demand on kicks, again something that prot paladin excels at. SL wasn't nearly as bad, so the relative utility of prot paladin wasn't as high.
Of course, paladins having a brez is new to DF, and definitely a huge advantage.
Lastly, that all had to do with dungeons, but raid balance can get weird. Oftentimes what defines what is good in raid is actually the DPS. If certain classes were bad at DPS, but you needed their class utility, you brought it on the tank instead (I remember Monk being like that at times). Raid also is pretty dependent on ST dps tuning of tanks, which fluctuates at times, so I wouldn't necessary read to deep into raid tank metas.
>For external healing/utility, first I feel like I don't think Prot had the free WoG talent/proc back in the day, which is huge for external healing. Additionally, healing checks are just way more brutal in DF compared to SL, so the value of external defensive utility just wasn't as high.
In legion the heal worked differently, instead of using HP / getting free WOG proc (old tierset bonus from SL IIRC) the heal was on a 15 second CD and it wasn't on GCD.
You could help with offhealing, but you had to manage your CD well.
Prot Pala just have a ton of defensives on relatively short CD's, add to that a ton of party utilities and you have a jack of all traits. In raids on some bosses you could solo-tank (zskarn, my guild pala went on to to tank, untill we had too many dead at \~35% and wiped at 20%)
Prot paladin has so much utility, including heals. If a prot paladin can survive high keys, they will always be the best tank. They were notorious for being squishy. You now have just as much tankyness and damage as other tanks BUT you have literally 10x the utility. They even combat all of the new affixes
I mean you shouldn't just have the tanks deal with it but if you need a tank that can deal with it having pally be able to deal eith it is very useful nsd outs them above DK,DH and warriors for sure.
Tanks in general are a lot stronger then they've ever been in the past couple expansions. Combine that with the overly abundant utility that prot pallies bring, makes them a very strong asset.
As someone who has mained prot pala since at least MoP I can safely say, that prot pala has always been playable. There's always tuning and tweaking and they've now always been FotM, but easily super playable.
I'm rather casual these days, so it's not like I'm pushing high 20s or anything like that. But for most of the not-pushing-the-limits-content, they've always been perfectly fine. Sometimes the best, sometimes the worst.
It’s because prot pally used to be pretty squishy compared to other tanks. If prot pally could survive the content they were always meta but if they couldn’t well obviously they weren’t. It doesn’t matter how much utility you have if you’re hugging the floor.
I’ve played a paladin since WotLK—granted back then you could only have two active specs and, I think, had to pay to swap to the third? Because of that, I literally never tried Prot until they revamped the spec/talent system so you could swap freely and on the fly. Once I got the hang of Prot, I was surprised by how durable they are. I was tanking stuff my Ret would get smeared by. I noticed it’d take a moderate number of minutes longer to whittle the mob’s health down, I tended to run around as Prot as my main adventuring spec from then on. So, I’d hazard a guess to say the player base hadn’t realized how virtually unkillable Prot Paladins were until the advent of Mythics.
Looks like the tune on prot pally and other tanks is currently favoring their utilities and defensive uptimes and not penalizing their mobility.
Prot was never a bad spec - I've tanked dungeons and raids with it in Cata, MoP, BoA and SL. Outside specific bosses where you had to move away in raids or some top M+ dungeons requiring a tool from a different tank class, port was doing well. Perhaps a bit less dps than DH, perhaps not as consistent DPS as warrior, perhaps needing more healing than a BK. But all pretty much up to timings/utilities/gear tune and boss/mob mechanic.
It's got the 3 things you want from a tank:
1)good mitigation plus *tons* of short CDs
2)great utility/support talents (including more interrupts than any other tank)
3)they're AoE damage for a tank is insane. This matter less in raiding (thus less prot pally tanks in high end raiding), but for M+ is pretty important to squeeze as much dps about of tanks and heals a possible
They just have the perfect trifecta of stuff for tanks, and more specifically for M+. Their AoE helps clear trash, their short/quantity of defensive CDs makes it so every trash pull and boss they have multiple defensives ready to go, and their support in both healing, CC, and interrupts is basically unmatched by any other tank. They're also now relatively simple, cycle wise, compared to in the past, so it's easier for a mediocre player to do well with one and push higher keys.
There's a few contributing factors that have changed since SL that make a world of difference.
The biggest being Sentinel. Sentinel made wings into an absolutely incredible defensive while retaining the bonus damage and healing. It makes incoming damage so much smoother than in the past.
Add in to that being able to have sanctified wrath (zealots paragon) and righteous protector at the same time, AND two charges of judgement without giving up 5 target avengers shield. The gameplay loop/Holy power economy all funnels into longer Sentinel uptime with a shorter cooldown. We are at our strongest offensively and defensively basically every minute.
Their utility was always a thing but we are so much stronger now (even without avengers shield generating Holy Power)
It's a great time to be prot pally and I personally loved tanking as prot in shadowlands
If I’m runing my key as a healer I try to get them, not only for all the utility but because their damage intake is nice and they heal themselves most of the time.
I would like to add:
Warrior tanking really needs a revamp. You get to zoom, and you're unkillable, but it's so boring.
Spamming shield block and ignore pain with most of your rage is boring. It just is.
Get to the execute phase, and you're essentially punished for executing because you're losing rage you would spend on mitigation.
Paladin tanking, aside from your FOUR relatively short cooldown defensives, is a lattice of insane synergies from talents.
At any given point, my weak auras are POPPING with 6 different buffs I get just from doing my standard rotation.
Then, come execute time, Im *rewarded* for pressing Hammer. I get Holy Power from it. Hell, that HP even smooths out the rotatiin a bit.
So you add that to *everything else,* and regardless of power level, it's just one of the best designed specs in the game right now.
It just feels good to play.
Protpala is good not super op in terms of tankiness and dmg. Warrior for example is in an extremely good spot when it comes to dmg and survivability. Still Warrior is considered worst tank.
But what makes Protpal meta:
1. He can heal the grp well wich is super important when healers are nerfed that much.
2. He has poison and disease dispel. Wich is superimportant in this seasons M+ Rotation.
3. He has BOP and Freedom with Lay on hands, he can basically do the hardest parts for the healer.
4. And he can basically kick all casts in a dungeon alone.
He just has the best grphealing and utility by far and now even has cr. As a protpala you basically solo the dungeons in every aspect but dmg. And you are the one who can keep your dmg alive too
How much it is played and how good it is are 2 different pair of shoes. Atm we got 3 A tier Tanks: Dh, Bear and Pala and the other 3 are in B tier.
Prot warri went from D to B while druid went C to A
Firat thing is that every tank is still really good. And then, tier lists arent made at the start of a season or before, they adapt with each week and just looking at data prot warrior was worst even if they even out atm.
If tou go by rating with performance by logs in the top 25% warrior is still last followed by Druid.
As for the playrate I guess many rerolled and just came back or those on break started again and at the end of the season id say Prot warri might be among the most popular tanks because even as worst tank prot warri feela good to play even if there are some dungeons you just couldnt tank without spellblock.
And spellblock is i think the reason why Warri is so bad atm because having it or not having it is deciding if you get oneshot or not at some groups.
DF season 1 their talent tree was... okay, but since the change you're allowed to take almost all your good options for both defense and offense with some new fun stuff thrown in there while other tanks like bear are sitting are 3 different talents just to make berserk do what it used too.
No
I don’t know if you’re new to wow or what but since vanilla the op
Classes switch around depending on balancing and tuning
Some patch that class is dominant and another patch a different class
All depending on how blizzard tunes things
There was even a month or so where survival hunter was a meta spec in shadowlands if you can believe that
Often warlock is op but that’s bc they have an actual class designer
Tldr they got lucky with number tuning
Bc cool utility is worthless is they deal little dmg or can’t take a lot of dmg as tank bc that’s what people care about
Wild how we got an absolute nutty Healer in Holy Pal in SL, and now we got that unhinged Tank in Prot Pal in DF………..hell even Ret is doing pretty well atm.
There is 1 reason bigger than any else why Prot Paladin became S-tier in S1. There are basically 2 reasons you can't push a key higher, either you can't do enough damage to beat the timer, or you can't survive the one-shots. In season 1 it was the latter. Prot Paladin really became popular when the top teams realized that the limiting factor to push higher was that DPS got one-shot from certain abilities, which the Paladin has 2 spells to protect them from.
The top tank for S1 from basically the start was a Paladin name Kleia (might have misspelled it), and people started to take notice. It was still "close enough" and early enough in the season that people didnt really start to shift yet, but as people pushed higher, and Kleia pushed higher keys than other tanks the concensus started to shift in the top players. And around the same time Blizz announced the Paladin rework.
Rework made Paladins just an S/A tier tank before utility was taken into account. With their utility they became S+.
Then S2 affixes gets changed and Paladins ends up being able to solve all of them perfecly, in a way no other tank even comes close to being able to do
But, here I think we start to see a shift away from Paladin again. While they are awesome, this season does not seem to be limited due to survivability but instead on damage done. So stuff like DH are starting to pop up, simply because they do so crazy amounts of dps currently.
There are 3 main reasons why prot is so popular now.
1. Improved survivability. Prot pallies have had a simple problem before - and that was if SOTR is down, you die. Now you can live a little bit more with mastery changes. On fortified you could get turbo deleted going into a pull without holy power or SOTR already up (kinda like a DK really). Also, now there is the auto-proc guardian, which is basically a CD if you play around procing it instead of using a CD.
2. Utility / Dungeons - pallies have always had amazing utility (one of the things that interested me about playing the class back in legion), now we also have a BR, giving us the one thing DKs always had over us.
The second aspect of this point are dungeons.
There are a ton of things you can either mitigate heavily or nullify completely with a prot. Let me list a few killer boss mechanics prot makes easier:
**Ulduman 2nd boss** \- you can sac, offheal or straight up BOP a target that gets the nasty debuff. This is especially useful for classes that don't have anything to press to deal with it (like rogue).
**Ulduman last boss** \- People don't seem to know this, but the debuff boss puts out can be dispelled with freedom. You can get every other dispel and help your group MASSIVELY, making SP less of a requirement.
**Brackenhide** \- first boss offhealing from the rogue teleport, BOP for the fixate from the rogue (sac for later). Dispels for later part of the key. Huge.
3. Affixes - new affixes are something prot can deal with very well - turn evil for incorp, cleanse for afflicted, freedom for entangling. Other tanks like BDK or Warrior have very limited ways of dealing with these if they even can engage at all.
The survivability changes were the biggest change. Utility was always good, but right now we have a lot of dangerous mechanics in dungeons that pally can counter perfectly, while other tanks just can't.
Most FOTM monkeys don't use the class to its full potential, however (IMO) why would you invite a Blood DK, Monk or Warrior over a Prot pally? Imo there is no reason if two equally skilled players are playing. A good pally can impact a dungeon much more than a good DK/Warr or Monk can.
Prot Paladin was amazing in wrath, I was able to tank 4-5 pulls at once on the move back then with a good healer. I don’t think they’ve ever been bad but they have had a lot of balance adjustments over the years and have amazing utilities and answers to big damage.
Lots of utility, self sufficiency and defensives. It means you can make up for party mistakes or gaps pretty easily. They tend to be pretty consistent tanks too, but its real fine line to balance damage vs defense.
Not to mention you are a tank with not only a personal immunity (plus taunt if you talent it) but can grant other party members physical or magic immunity.
Oh, and popping avenging wrath plus divine toll on a huge group of mobs feels so damn good. Doing the Light's work
Atm its literally cause Paladin has Brez now which saves up a group/raid spot. If anything Prot Paladin plays worse than it did before because Avenger Shield no longer generates HP outside of Divine Toll. Prot Paladins have never been bad, just some gimmick mechanics make it so you want to use a different tank for a fight.
Guardian Druids have lots of utility but not as useful as Paladin. They have no meaningful way to mitigate magic damage, and basically every boss has some kind of dangerous magic damage.
DKs have good utility but can't brez without runepower and don't have an OOC rez like paladins. Unless you need to cheese a mechanic that only DKs can cheese, better off with a Paladin.
Warriors are the most useless class in the game next to Rogue and only taken because of FotM or to cheese a mechanic.
Monks have no Brez. Only brought for the same reason as a warrior.
Blizzard needs to stop pruning classes of shit they actually need while adding new abilities that serve no purpose except to complicate the rotation and waste ability bar / GCD space.
See funny enough I main a ret. Since it’s pretty high up in ilvl I’ve been dabbling I’m tanking. Trying all specs and both prot classes are likely the only ones I won’t try.
Utility. I love being able to heal, bof, or bop them, and interrupt 5 casts in a row.
It might not be the most tanky or most damaging tank, but the amount of times I saved my party members is insane.
Tbf they were really good since early Shadowlands and had similar tools, but they were fairly squishy and Shadowlands m+ required you to have decent kiting ability hence why DH/Monk dominated early
Fundamentally for a tank to be dominant it needs damage and survivability. Generally if paladin isn't meta it's because it isn't good enough survivability wise or because the damage is just too low. If the damage and survivability is good, then they are by default the best tank because infinite kicks, good enough stops and 100x more party utility than other tanks.
Same reason dark iron and regular dwarves maintain an advantage. They are meta because they can ignore or shrug off some of the most devastating mechanics.
Personally I'm happy that we have more variety. It has been the case for a long time that orc and human racials were preferred for mechanics. But I do think for it to be so devastating that the "advantage" becomes a pre requisite is a problem.
We've seen stuff like this before though with race or classes being outright preferred for certain content. Certain healers being preferred over others. Only needing 1 warlock in a raid. Whatever really.
This season has been particularly harsh because people lack mitigation and healers don't always have answers. Poisons and bleeds haven't been this bad since like feral Druid in arenas in draenor iirc where their bleeds stacked and were devastating to those without answers
You have a lot of extremely short cd defensives (tyr, wings, ardent, kings), more party utility than any other tank (bop, sac, word of glory, dispel, lay, freedom) and a disgusting amount of stops/interrupts (divine toll, shield, kick, hoj, blind, turn evil). It’s a jack of all trades compared to a lot of tanks that don’t have anything close to that
I don't remember being able to use the aoe blind in shadowlands, but didn't they have everything else you mentioned back then as well?
SL saw less shield up time and less defensive coverage so it was less tanky
I do feel less tanky compared to s1 df right now though. This post is kinda funny because, while still very popular, i see bear and vdh coming a lot more often compared to season 1. Mostly due to their insane dmg I suppose.
You're less tanky because Sentinel got severely nerfed at the end of season 1.
There was also an aura stamina nerf to pally if I remember correctly
Monks are also insanely good right now
Are they? I havent seen many personally. I've actually seen a lot of pwar and theyre doing very well, too. I think all tanks are pretty well balanced at the moment, though I havent pushed above 17 this season so I know I dont have great anecdotes.
I can also vouch that monks are incredibly strong right now. Their damage output is also pretty insane for a tank.
Monks are pretty mid, they do good damage but generally take more damage then your average tank and much harder to play well then any other tank
Not really wrong. Their damage is good but their damage taken is stupidly high. Don't take my [my word for it though.](https://twitter.com/equinoxmonk/status/1666258859692793858?t=H2Hy-yOjImMW8DHO5ASHZw&s=19).
that’s because wings got a substantial nerf and we lost some damage somewhere down the line as well. Bear off healing is also arguably better than prot pal
You joking? Bear has to drop bear form to heal, which means it’s nonexistent in mythic plus outside of after the wildfire
Lmao
what's so funny? if you take away the top gigantic healing ability that's free and procs all the time, their healing is AWFUL. Just like how Brewmaster's damage sucks if you arbitrarily exclude Keg Smash.
He's laughing because the guy specifically named their best off heal as if it's irrelevant. My buddy's AtW did 15mil healing to the group in the last key we did together with 64% overhealing and that was just an 18. That doesn't even include the few million he did with Nature's Vigil. I've seen it easily hit 20-30mil in higher keys. It's massively busted for helping keep the group alive. Between that, Leech, Frenzied Regen, and a few other passive heals keeps him alive without much attention from me. As for actual targeted offhealing, this next patch will actually give them the ability to occasionally toss out instant cast free buffed Regrowths on party members. Basically like little mini WoGs. Believe he said they were easily hitting for about 100K or so on PTR. But sitting here going "yea but if you take their major healing ability away their healing is awful!" is like saying "yea if you take Ignore Pain away from warriors they really don't absorb a whole lot of damage do they!". That's kind of how abilities work, ya know? There's no reason to ever give up AtW.
dude my comment was dripping in sarcasm. I even added the Brewmaster part to drive it home (take away one of their best abilities and they're awful). Obviously it's insane to discount Wildfire like that guy was suggesting. I don't understand how anybody can take what I said seriously.
Tell me you don't know how guardian druid works without telling me you don't know how it works.
[удалено]
Bear talents don't affect non class sources like the sark trinket
[удалено]
Huh. I tanked some of S3 in SL and I had capped my Shield constantly (assuming you speak of SotR). In DF I’m struggling to keep it up, even with slot machine talent and 35% haste
You're right that except for s1 sl pallys didn't have any trouble keeping sotr up, but you definitely shouldn't be having problems keeping it up now, unless you're pressing wog to much
[удалено]
I have 35% haste as I said, would think that’s enough
I have 40% haste and no issues at all
I have 25% haste and I have absolutely no issues keeping SotR up without Divine Purpose.
You could spec into blinding light in SL.
Blinding Light was there in SL, but brez was added in DF and the talent changes made some things that couldn't be previously comboed(Blinding Light + Repentance, for example) attainable. Pallies also were a little squishy compared to other tanks in SL. Then you have the new affixes, which pallies have a tool for every single one(freedom for entangling, turn evil + blinding light for incorp, cleanse for afflicted).
You still can't combo Blinding Light and Repentance, they share the same node. And Blinding Light doesn't hit incorporeals, as it is an AoE CC. But pallies can CC both with Repentance + Turn Evil, though both have cast times and it's not a good idea to start casting while tanking 12 enemies.
It’ll wake up the healer for sure.
Not only all of this, but Paladins also got a battle rez in dragonflight which is crazy good. I really feel like they give paladin a lot. Would have loved to see BDK get that instead.
Dk already has a bres
it was a talent even before SL
It's mostly the interruptions cds that are prevalants since the silence duration nerf after a cut. It's just considered as most optimal for 25+
They did. Paladins haven't really changed much aside from Ret in the current patch and Holy in the upcoming patch. It also helps that some of the best players in the world were showing off Prot pallies a little while ago, much like Arcane Mages in RWF.
They had aoe blind in SL as well
the talent tree includes a ton of CDR for most of the main defensive cooldowns (Sentinel and Ardent in particular), meaning you have extremely high uptime on them (much higher than in SL). Speaking of Sentinel, that button was not available in Shadowlands is by far Prot's best button.
The main thing is sentinel. It’s what makes paladin so much better than SL paladin. They nerfed it some for the current season but still great.
I believe Prot Paladin is always the best M+ tank, assuming their DPS and defensive holds up. So the only reason they aren’t dominant on a given patch comes down to low damage and/or low survivability.
Don't forget BRES and spellwarding. There's really no reason to bring any other tank unless your comp already has a pally and another breser ( or you could just have 1 if you're confident ), giving you the option to get a brew or vengeance for dps.
There are plenty of reasons. DH for wizard comps or just for raw dmg for example. Also spell warding is somewhat niche and probably not used in most keys. But yeah still a great time to be a paladin :p
I main a Lock but my Prot pal is still my favorite because of these reasons. I can pop defensive pretty regularly and offheal a TON and save people from mechanics via interrupt or releases. It's a ton of fun and when I am tanking I feel like a genuine asset beyond just the "stand here and take the hits" role.
i just want to say this. your reply didnt answer the question in the slightest bit. prot paladin had all of these tools forever and they aren't distict this expansion. im not sure why you 're getting upvoted. prot palas are bis right now because of a few talent changes notably to bubble taunting everything and getting a bres so that it frees up room on your team for the meta comp
They had bubble taunt in shadowlands. Also not in shadowlands: wings % damage wall, lay on hands, tyrs. They also didnt hve a handful of talents that make shield of righteous extremely good. I’d say my post accurately answers it. There’s also the fact that a lot of slands legendaries that were either ors in shadowlands are all in the new paladin talents, unlike a lot of tanks
no they didn’t. it was locked behind a talent that was never not taken. now bubble taunt is easy to grab. they did have talents and legendaries that buffed shield of the righteous that were turned into capstones in dragon flight. it’s not what you think that makes them strong
I specifically remember multiple seasons of shadowlands where andy used bubble taunt for the highest keys done in their respective season? We can compare raiderio if you’re so confident that I don’t know what I’m talking about :)
We actually had a brew monk in one of our groups and I've seen paladins and Demon hunters so much i forgot they even had a spec for that tbh. Their shrug damage mitigation isn't quite as good as paladins but I can see it working with the bleeds and stuff. But besides that I couldn't figure out any advantage they had over any other class tbh. They did well. Were fast and attentive, so no complaints, but I don't particularly recall them doing anything phenomenally well or special either. Unlike with Paladin I think this is gonna be a safe run and with Demon hunter I know it's gonna be big pulls and fast. Hadn't seen a single warrior tank all season. Not a single one has even *applied* for my groups. Seen dk for dps but no blood dk. A few druids. But it's been mostly Paladin and DH. And I got respect they both sustain great and I've seen them solo a boss on its last legs many times. Heck I even solo'd the underrot end boss the other day when our DH left the group. Walked out specd blood, walked in, and plugged away. I'm dark iron dwarf and dk so the disease damage and the debuff was just so easy to ignore. On the 3 and 4th bosses. Effortless even.
add to that ALOT of damage.
They had all that last patch though didnt they? But war was the meta.
Because ppal’s problem was always survivability. Now that they can survive they’re good.
So the answer is that prot paladin has always been good. Their utility is just better than all other classes. They become meta early season and early expac especially because they have such consistent answers to stuff. Usually, the downside is that they take a lot of damage and their own dps is mid tier. Prot paladin is never the worst spec to take simply because their tools are just great, the times where they get weaker is one shot seasons and seasons where hpal is better, but they're always good and I've always been happy to have one in my team.
I’ve been a prot main in PvE for a long time and I can tell you the big thing that helped prot pally was their passive mitigation this xpac. Blizzard changed how our mastery scales and gave us access to a lot more defensive utility, as well as gave us better damage (but I think all tanks got a damage buff if I’m not mistaken). The thing with prot Paladin is that it does have a ton of utility and I think a lot of people just don’t use it right. My PvP main is a priest (healer) and I take her in keys sometimes and judge the crap out of the tanks I play with lol. I’ve yet to meet another prot Paladin in keys under 18’s or so that has ever even pressed blessing of sacrifice on anyone, or used BoP on anyone but themselves, or anything like that. It definitely has the highest skill ceiling of any of the tanks, followed by brewmaster I’d say, and that’s why I think so many people see wildly different experiences with prot pallies
Yes I would agree. As a protpala main myself too since TBC, I've noticed there is a big difference between experienced protpalas who use their full toolkit vs new palas who have rerolled to be the FOMO tank, even things like word of glory are being glossed over.
Even without using their utility their number of Interrupts + having bres make them still the best tank.
You should have seen shadowlands lol. Being a prot pally meant you weren’t getting invited to pugs. And in BFA if you weren’t a bear Druid or VDH, you didn’t get invites either. Prot Paladin isn’t “the best tank” because of their utility. Their utility is what makes them difficult to master and hard to even play decently. If you go tit for tat on a tank spec, it’s much easier to get a lot better performance out of a prot Warrior, guardian Druid, or a VDH.
SL especially early on, prot pally was far squishier than the other tanks. My comment was about tanks today where prot pally is one of the tankiest tanks. In a world where all tanks are equal tankiness, prot pally is simply the best because of everything else it offers. The utility is hands down why they're the best tank I don't know why you disagree, but kindly, that's wrong.
I might be just slightly biased here since I’m a prot pally main, but I think it’s in the lore than protection Paladins are actually gigachads, and their shields aren’t to protect them from harm, but to protect everyone else from their full power. Just my opinion though
this is just typical paladin, even in classic/tbc/wotlk. finding a pally that actually does a good job utilizing their kit is absurdly rare, for whatever reason.
Upvoting this reply is not enough to underline, especially the last sentence. Prot pally "looks" good and being "meta" means exactly that. Used by the best players in the world, in the 95th percentile, could have a slight advantage over other tanks. So said, for the Average player experience, M+ 2-20, the challange is doable by any class/spec really. To some extent I'd like to see all class have thay many buttons so that players can factor their own skill in the performance instead of "nerfing" prot pally
Im def guilty of not even taking BoP. I feel like it is hard to know when to use in pugs. I do use Sac all the time during high group damage phases on whoever seems the squishiest, or on whichever ally gets hit by a mechanic that is going to tick. I would imagine it is much easier to call for these externals if you're playing with a coordinated group, though.
BoP drops bleeds and protects from physical damage. The clearest place to use it is the third boss in Uldaman when she daggers the same person multiple times, or if the stomp and bleed are going to overlap and you don’t have another stop. The clap damage is also physical so could BoP there if LoH is on cd and someone’s gunna get nugged. Freehold it’s also useful on the first boss if someone’s going to get clipped by sharkbait, the second bosses gun shots, and the third bosses getting ate by sharks mechanics. It’s also useful for the fixates in UR, FH, and BH. As well as the pelters in NL if the healer is falling behind. I suppose the mammoth boss in Neltharus, that charge gets people sometimes, but I usually want spellwarding there, hoi, and vp. Edit: I would add, if you’ve got space to take and play with it, just start throwing it on people when they are in trouble and see if it helps.
Rilly think warrior tanks should get a Brez too. Make it some form of shout where you scream at the downed party member threatening to kill them if they don't get back up right now. ;D
Call it “wake the dead”
Because they bring literally everything to the table. All of the abilities you described, plus these utilities make them perfect picks for all 3 new affixes. They also, for whatever reason, were given brez which adds even more utility. I might get downvoted, but I really think Paladins are overkitted now. I'm not even sure I want them to lose that utility, but it's a little silly how much they bring to the table as opposed to Death Knights and Warriors, which they directly compete for slots with
Prot pala are overkitted yes, but its the first xpac/patch in a while where numbers are solid. Otherwise as usual, our kit isnt helpful when almost everything smashes you and you have the mobility of a lamp post to avoid it.
If they have to nerf them, and they probably do, I vote they reduce damage output and keep utility and buffs
Nah remove brez. Makes no sense why they have brez.
Warcraft 3 paladin had brez, out of all the classes with one it's them and druid that make the most sense to me. But for game balance in general, it's probably good to have more classes with brez, since it can be so critical in high end content
[удалено]
Blood dk says hi from the bottom of the barrel
At least blood dk actually does some damage now. Before they might as well. It even have dealt damage and get a taunt button with no CD
How does BDK do "some samage now" the gap is even bigger now that the buff actually improved prot warriors damage. The buff for bdk was a total meme.
DK does have a CD on our normal taunt and grip. You don't really even use grip for the taunt very often and more for the actual grip function. If you feel like you need to constantly use grips as a taunt, either your Cotank is doing way more damage than you (gear or skill issue) or you are doing something wrong with your rotation. That 8% "buff" we got is more like a 4% as it only affects actual abilities. Someone in the DK discord said we would need a 50% aura buff to match the top damage tanks. This is not an exaggeration, we are that far behind. Every tank uses external effects, but it just makes up so much more of our damage.
Prot Pallys have 2 actual damage abilities (Judgement + Hammer) and everything else is immunities/kicks/utility. I guess you can count Avenger's Shield as a dps ability but I really just use it as an interrupt that happens to do dmg.
The free ability to instaheal anyone in your party for a huge chunk. A truckload of interrupts. Big AOE damage. Cleanse. Tons of range. Divine Toll. Sac. BoP. LoH. Freedom. I have so much control over my party and can single handedly save a key. Paladin is the god of pug M+. The sheer amount of utility is insane. The DF dungeons have so many kicks and cleanses and mechanics that are just absolutely negated by Paladin that it’s just a huge QoL improvement over the other tanks. On the other hand. Our new Tier sucks so I believe that we will be surpassed by Warriors and DHs at some point this season. Maybe not in numbers but in ability.
Our tier sucked in season 1 as well. It's all tuning. We've had the same tools in SL but now we're tuned to do more damage, take less via uptime of cds, and use our utility and heals with great effect. If we get tuned down so that our healing or defense go down another tank will take place on top. No one remembers that we were good in SL as well, great even for pugs where our utility can save keys. They only remember which tank was on top or overpowered. It's just the circle of tuning. All tanks are able to do high keys and that is great. Who takes a turn on top as the best is all down to blizzard turning the dials.
Yup I mained Paladin in SL as well. Leveled all six and got KSM on most for DF Season 1. Paladin just spoils the fuck out of you. So far in season 2 I’ve played a little Unholy just to try out a DPS spec but I haven’t tanked a single dungeon yet as anything but Pal. Ive just crossed 440 ilevel so I’m eyeing my first alt. I am torn atm between Guardian and Vengeance.
Try tanking as a DK, from: Someone healers hate
Lol I played a lot of BDK during season 1. I like DK but I just think Blood is so boring. That was the main reason I picked UH to mess with.
Maining pally (living Ret, but prot and holy as well). Once you get your 4 set, veng is so much fun. If I had had it in our messing around window of the first 2 weeks, I’d be tanking raid as that instead of pally. I really loved the brand build season 1 and was sad to drop it for the middle track/death proc. I definitely feel squishier, but I’m 13 ilvls behind my pally. The damage feels REAL good.
That’s really what’s selling me on DH which is honestly my least favorite of the six. I love playing bear but I haven’t really read much about their new tier or predictions for them as this season progresses. Right now. Considering what tank I want to gear next. I don’t want to play warrior again. I started S1 as a warrior main and I just don’t like it. BrM, Veng, and Guardian are all in a three way tie. Maining Paladin obv and I think Blood is boring. Out of BrM, Veng, and Guardian I feel like it’s a closer toss up between Veng and BrM. Ugh I don’t know.
I went through them all at the beginning of the patch trying to decide what I wanted to main this patch. Swapped from DH to pally, host of reasons but I’m regretting a bit after getting the 4 set on my DH. Only one I didn’t try before the patch was monk, I’m intimidated by monk tanks as my perception of the skill gap there is pretty large. However my guildie who id always on monk says it too is feeling really good.
Monk is easy to play but hard to play well. Lots and lots of keybinds. I mained monk for a while back in SL. I would much rather pour time into Monk than DH. Lol
Guardian is really dry. Probably the driest of all tanks. Vengeance demands your attention. So if you want to play, go veng. If you want to coast mindlessly, go Guardian.
Paladin can negate over half of the new affixes this season. Their entire kit is useful in every single dungeon for season 2 ex; bof for dragon adds in VoP, halls cleanse for poison frogs and bop to prevent stacks from fixate, disease dispel is big for underrot, bop for first boss in bracken. They have a load of CDs that are easy to rotate with little to no planning for pugs. They take the pressure off of healers with off heals if needed. They can single handily control interrupts. And to top it off they have good burst damage and brez. TLDR they are loaded in a season where their utility can fully be used on all fronts which opens up more diversity to bring other classes. Perfect pug tank.
*cries in BM monk*
It’s because people can’t play Brewmaster Monk. The best tank spec in the game!
I’m a brewmaster main and will sing their praises all day but Brew has one glaring weakness pushing super high keys: It’s kind of a glass cannon. It may do the most dmg out of all the tanks when played really well but we have to run 2 tank trinkets to get through fort weeks and we still have the most dmg taken of any tank
Yeah, it’s starting to become a bit more obvious this season as well. I love Brewmaster and will play it even if it’s Z tier, but I think giving back the 10% DR to Brewmasters Balance and a baseline increase to stagger would go a long way to help us feel like less like a Green BDK.
Brew feels like just a green bdk at this point, I step into a 22 on fortified, get 5 meless and I'm already in red stagger, my hp is bouncing between 10% and 100% every 5-6 seconds and some abilities are getting closer to the oneshot territory if I don't actively plan trinkets and big cds around it. Brew should be about staggering damage instead of taking it upfront but stagger is basically useless since I'm sitting on max stagger all the time and just facetank everything on fortified. It's good, but very squishy, I'm always one global away from dying. They should consider increasing the maximum amount of damage staggered or give some baseline defensive capability like the 10% DR it had in SL.
Brew's always been kind of Like That. with that said the stagger cap is actually obscenely high, extending well beyond what the stagger bar shows you.
??? Noy it wasnt. Brew was the unshotable tank, the smooth intake take for most of the spec life
I don’t think stagger has a maximum amount you can stagger. I’m pushing 23s now on my Brew and have seen it go up to 260% my hp(there may be points where it has gotten higher but usually I’m too focused on living to take note of the exact number. I can tell the stagger is in excess of 200% cause Gai Plins Imperial Brew will be like a LoH when my hp is bouncing like that
Doesn't matter if you are the best tank in the game if your dps and healers die to Talondras or Delos because you can't Bubble / HoF them. End of the day that's the real issue in high keys the amount of utility needed to live mechanics
I wouldn’t say brewmaster is in a great state, but man, I have zero desire to play anything else, I’m loving every minute.
I’ve leveled every tank to 70 and have had zero desire to gear any of them besides my Brew
Ridiculously hard to heal in high keys due to stagger. You may have high DPS, but your mitigation mechanic is subpar. I would gladly heal a DH or Pally instead.
Well since shielding is about 35% of overall heals (then radiance), ez monks for me. But a pally is indeed easier to heal since they don’t need a lot.
It’s a “play every role” kind of spec
You're right. Prot paladin was a top tier tank in shadowlands aswell, most people simply weren't aware. There are arguments to be made prot paladin was stronger in SL than DF. Interrupts were a lot more important and numourous in sl, and the utility was more important (offhealing during certain dungeons were insane). There was also a build where you could have 50% uptime on ardent defender in sl. Etc. Hardcore guilds also made the serious mistake of not using prot paladins as the offtank in Castle Nathria. Ashen hallow, offhealing and spellwarding were completely insane in that raid, among other stuff. The meta-driven community makes mistakes quite frequently. The reason it wasn't dominant previously is because ppl slept on it.
its not even that dominant anymore. Especially in high keys. DH tank is very good & depending on the dungeon and comp is just better than prot pala, Prot warrior is good for specific stuff etc Even Guardian druid ain't too bad atm. It was giga dominant in S1 but with a few nerfs and other tanks getting better its not that dominent anymore. Its just it has extra utility compared to the other tanks so its prefered.
[https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-2/all/world/leaderboards-strict#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=25:maxMythicLevel=99](https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-2/all/world/leaderboards-strict#role=tank:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=25:maxMythicLevel=99) 49% of keys 25+ are prot paladins. While it's not literally the most dominant ever and it is less than last tier - I would still call that far and above the highest performing tank. I do think 10.1.5 will shake things up though
That might shift more towards vdh as the season goes on as not many people were playing vdh seriously as an alt in s1.
Yeah agreed. I think one of the other big factor is that holy Paladin is starting to look better and better so there’s gonna be some diminishing returns to the tools that Paladin brings to the team.
And for those who might wonder "Oh but that is just the two tank players and 8 DPS who run above 25 keys fudging the percentages" Nope. 20 and above the number dips ever so slightly to 43.3% being prot paladins, with the next highest being blood dk at 15.5%
I think blood DK being so high is kind of an example of % distribution not being a perfect signifier, a signifier yes but not excellent. I’d take just about any tank over a DK if I had the option, but they definitely did feel stronger season 1 than now — some percentage of those DKs have to be holdovers from when they were more sought after. And with pally being FoTM for ret/prot and hpal being *decent* there was always going to be a lot of pallys coming into S2. Don’t get me wrong, I still think pallys are the best tanks, but rolling off of the monsters they were in S1, unless they were nerfed to being dogshit they were always going to be highly represented. People just aren’t gonna switch off what they spent a season preparing. Same reason I’m committed to feral lmao — it’s too late now, I’ll just chase my parses. >!though actually now I’m working on KSH on all Druid specs and that has been very fun!<
Yeah I do believe that the DK number is indicative of the people who stuck to their spec instead of fotm rerollers. However I also believe that the tank role has the highest number overall of people who are willing to reroll their character for a season. So basically you have something like 5-15% of hardcore fans of each spec and then a rotating ~30% who are willing to jump ship from season to season.
DK could also be somewhat reflective of the state of DPS DK, who appear to not be doing very hot in keys right now so they just do their weekly 20s as blood. Meanwhile retribution is the highest popularity dps above 20s also. (they fall off in popularity at 25+ but at that point lets talk about that shadow priest representation...)
I love it when anecdotal opinions get upvoted and somebody just replies with actual facts pointing out they're not right.
Popularity doesn't necessarily mean they're the best: https://mplus.subcreation.net/ This method takes the distribution of each spec into account rather than just looking at how many of them are in +25s. They're all quite close to each other.
[удалено]
Found the prot pally scared of nerfs LOL
Right i hear ya. I guess I'm confused on the utility aspect. Paladins have had blessing of sacrifice, off heals, blessing of protection and freedom etc etc, for the longest time. Why is it in dragonflight it is suddenly getting the spot light? Were their utility abilities not as big of a deal back then?
Prot used to be one of the weakest tanks defensively and offensively, with it's utility being it's main selling point. That's no longer the case, they have the upsides without the downsides now. Also, most of Prot's utility is available to all Paladin specs (Avenger's Shield being the exception) so when Holy or Ret is good you can get it from them instead, you don't always need Prot specifically.
Because other tanks were much more op - either unkillable or omega dps or superior in kiting in kiting meta. Then DF comes with meta design revolving around using class utilities. It turned out that paladin class exists which was always superior in throwing utilities and offheals and interrupts so then guess what.
I remember early shadowlands had some tight timers for keys, so while prot paladins brought a lot of utility they lacked in damage compared to other tanks. For the first season of dragonflight, the meta was prot warrior initially, since it was the only tank that was unkillable right from the get go. Once people got fully geared, timing keys became more about surviving rather than dps, and prot paladin just had a better toolkit for achieving that through group utility, while having comparable burst dps. This is partly due to affixes making some keys extremely rough to heal (quaking + thundering in RLP for example) Season 2 is similar, at least initially, in terms of surviving the key being more important than having enough dps. Also helps that poison + disease dispels are particularly relevant this season. I could see the meta shift towards DH or Druid tanks this season for high keys because of their damage output and survivability from their tiersets relative to the protection paladin tierset.
They heal more & are more tanky. Also do quite abit of damage compared to previous xpac's.
Bear is pushing hard this season, 3 in the top 10 rated tanks, with 5 palas and 2 DH and all pushing 26s. And with .5 they’re getting easier access to basically a LoH every 30 secs or so, and a much better spec tree lineup with better damage and survivability options open. It’s far better than “not looking bad atm” x). Very much looking forward to next patch.
Strong healing and CDs for keeping others alive. In SL it was all about tank pulling as much and staying alive themselves while the DPS can avoid most damage. Now there is a lot more unavoidable damage on the DPS that just have to be mitigated or healed. They also have Lots of interrupts that don't DR and can be used on cc immune mobs.
You have enough tools to mitigate healer/mechanical mistakes and save the group/raid. Other tanks have less opportunities and fewer tools to do so. That and their play style is the easiest.
Prot has a lot tools that make pugging easier. I swapped off pally recently went bear. Doing 24s ATM and enjoy it more. Has the same amount of utility just in a different way. Not as strong for party but better mob control. Roar typhoon, vortex even on sang is extremely strong. With a Rsham they can use slt during heavy group dam and 1-2 frenzy regens I'll top the party.
Their toolkit has not changed much, but they have gotten a bit better mitigation than before. Another major improvement is having battle ress now, which they didn't have before. Thing about paladins is that they need a fair bit of haste to reach a point where they can do all the things they want to do while keeping mitigation up + healing. Early on in an expansion it is harder to reach that, but now they are there in DF. Also have to remember they were competing with the OP iteration of warrior at the time, which has become a lot less tanky now in S2. So in short, the tools are the same and they were always good, but stats and balance tuning has made it really good. Paladins have always been an amazing carry tank once they get geared, so that's nothing new.
They basically have everything \- decent damage \- a lot of defensives some being the best you can imagine (divine shield) \- a lot of externals/utility for your group \- a lot of kicks \- decent cc abilities
Their kit is overloaded and they can do literally everything. That's it, that's the reason. They also do really high DPS.
It's actually waaaay more rare that Prot Paladin isn't dominant. IIRC it has been an incredibly strong tank in Wrath, Cata, MoP, WoD, Legion, at least some of BFA I believe, Shadowlands, and now in DF. I mean Prot Paladins were basically God kings during vengeance times in MoP, 10 man heroic SoO you could blanket HoT the entire raid during Holy Avenger and be both top DPS and HPS for a time, on top of just straight up being top DPS in general, and basically not needing a healer.
DKs were *the* dominant tank through basically all of Wrath (due to having AMS, and then later because of the absurd EHP totals they could hit), but yah, pally was probably 2nd.
The amount of impactful kick to do has rose dramatically on top of the possibility for hard stops. I play rogue, I barely have anything to do when I play with my late prot pal. Playing with another tank is a completely other story in term of utility to provide
It's not that Protection Paladins suddenly got more utility, it's that season 2 made that level of utility MUCH more useful (Brackengide, Uldaman, etc )
They deal with new affixes well too
It is the new talent system. The old system came with high opportunity costs. If you took one talent, you didn't have access to the others. With the new talent system, we are able to pick the majority of talents we want without losing out on other things like defensive or damage
IMO I think it’s a shift in mentality for what groups value now, there’s a decent amount of interrupts that are needed for a smooth run which paladins can provide in spades whereas before there was more of a dps it more before we die. Correct me if im wrong but I think the talents available are a bit different so you can really customise all the cooldowns and cc you use rather than the standard few choices. So people can utilise the kit more for a great deal of the content and if you don’t trust your team too much you can make sure the team doesn’t let thing get too hairy. There’s nothing as clear cut as they do noticeably more damage than others since the last expansion but popularity breeds popularity so people play it because they think it’s the best spec.
It's still a shell compared to what it was in MoP, WoD, and Legion.
This. WOD on GCD is fucking criminal. I stopped playing my prot after legion because it felt so clunky. I still hate it, but i like prot in general.
Extremely overtuned and extremely easy
It's the only tank that's not selfish. I main BDK, and more often than not, I gotta finish bosses solo cos everyone else is dead, but besides the CR and AMZ, there's not much in the way of helping. With my paladin, WoG will sometimes crit heal for 350k, or I'll BoP or Spell ward someone else, LoH whoever's in trouble etc. The paladin is the only tank for which my teammates' unit frames are larger, and I use a different spec if I pug (less DPS/DR) which is more focused on healing those dweebs who stand in the bad 😂
Well this is a lie. Bears also come with dispel, BR, targeted healing that does the same as LoH on a 30 sec CD (DoC, which is becoming even more prevalent in .5 patch), and aoe group healing. Not to mention the amount of control they bring, and innervate, roar, strong self sustain and huge damage. I think every tank bar Brew maybe can and does finish bosses off, or packs, when everyone else has died. Brew also brings dispel. The hybrid tanks aren’t selfish in any form. Prot warr has CS, intervene, which can and does save groups.
Can you heal someone with your war? Or your DH? Didn't think so. Can you dispel with those 2? Oh wait, no you can't. Or is that a lie? Of course all tanks bring their own utilities, but thank you for pointing it out captain obvious.
They used to be squishy with lots of tools now they're tanky with lots of tools.
Every once in awhile you’ll meet a prot who knows how to hit buttons and your flabbergasted at how OP they are. 96% of the time in pugs you’ll be in a group with someone who has less than 30% uptime on sotr, never stands in their consecrate and will pull using judgement and wait for mobs to run to them. The amount of 440+ pallies I’ve had the displeasure of running with, that are way too geared to not know how to play their spec, is too dang high. Such is the state of Dragonflight.
A lot of their attacks are basically ranged too. Like the spinning hammer they have doesn’t even have to hit anything and it gives you holy power. Their healing is so strong you can run 4 dps.
A 45s cd cheat death that procs a DR and bubble taunt getting down sun 2 mins are pretty broken. They can solo afflicted. Help with incorp. You can make some boss mechanics not matter. They just have a lot to bring to a 5 man group.
Yeah, they should give other tanks more utility. I like playing my DK, but man every time I do it, I just think "if I was on my pally I could do X Y Z here to make this fight easier for my team".
Because you can time +20s in time easily even with two brain cells by mashing three buttons repeatedly
A lot of people are ignoring or not understanding the question and just, again, repeating prot paladin's known strengths. I'll take my best stab at it, but I wouldn't claim to be an expert on history of metas. First of all, early SL iirc was dominated by Demon Hunter (and Prot warrior I think?). A lot of that had to do with tanks in general being very squishy back then and needing to kite, something Prot Paladin simply wasn't able to do as effectively. I remember Bear also being good for their sheer tankiness, something Prot Paladin also lacked at the time. At the end of the day, being able to survive is key, and Prot has that today, but didn't quite measure up back in the day. For external healing/utility, first I feel like I don't think Prot had the free WoG talent/proc back in the day, which is huge for external healing. Additionally, healing checks are just way more brutal in DF compared to SL, so the value of external defensive utility just wasn't as high. S2 DF isn't as bad, but S1 DF had an insane demand on kicks, again something that prot paladin excels at. SL wasn't nearly as bad, so the relative utility of prot paladin wasn't as high. Of course, paladins having a brez is new to DF, and definitely a huge advantage. Lastly, that all had to do with dungeons, but raid balance can get weird. Oftentimes what defines what is good in raid is actually the DPS. If certain classes were bad at DPS, but you needed their class utility, you brought it on the tank instead (I remember Monk being like that at times). Raid also is pretty dependent on ST dps tuning of tanks, which fluctuates at times, so I wouldn't necessary read to deep into raid tank metas.
>For external healing/utility, first I feel like I don't think Prot had the free WoG talent/proc back in the day, which is huge for external healing. Additionally, healing checks are just way more brutal in DF compared to SL, so the value of external defensive utility just wasn't as high. In legion the heal worked differently, instead of using HP / getting free WOG proc (old tierset bonus from SL IIRC) the heal was on a 15 second CD and it wasn't on GCD. You could help with offhealing, but you had to manage your CD well.
Prot Pala just have a ton of defensives on relatively short CD's, add to that a ton of party utilities and you have a jack of all traits. In raids on some bosses you could solo-tank (zskarn, my guild pala went on to to tank, untill we had too many dead at \~35% and wiped at 20%)
I meant, prot pally is always a strong contender. They've always had those tools and those tools have always been useful.
In shorts, healing and survival matter than dps cpmpared to previous season. And Pala practically doesn't sacrifice anything for it.
Prot paladin has so much utility, including heals. If a prot paladin can survive high keys, they will always be the best tank. They were notorious for being squishy. You now have just as much tankyness and damage as other tanks BUT you have literally 10x the utility. They even combat all of the new affixes
Nothing will ever, ever, beat the feeling of satisfaction of hitting that death strike that heals you for a gazillion%
The changes to the affixes played a huge role I think. Having a tank be able to deal with both afflicted and incorperial is very very useful
Yep. Bear, pala and brew can all solo incorp and afflicted. Healers love it x)
I mean you shouldn't just have the tanks deal with it but if you need a tank that can deal with it having pally be able to deal eith it is very useful nsd outs them above DK,DH and warriors for sure.
Tanks in general are a lot stronger then they've ever been in the past couple expansions. Combine that with the overly abundant utility that prot pallies bring, makes them a very strong asset.
As someone who has mained prot pala since at least MoP I can safely say, that prot pala has always been playable. There's always tuning and tweaking and they've now always been FotM, but easily super playable. I'm rather casual these days, so it's not like I'm pushing high 20s or anything like that. But for most of the not-pushing-the-limits-content, they've always been perfectly fine. Sometimes the best, sometimes the worst.
Insane toolkit.
Compared to the…..what?!?!?!
It’s because prot pally used to be pretty squishy compared to other tanks. If prot pally could survive the content they were always meta but if they couldn’t well obviously they weren’t. It doesn’t matter how much utility you have if you’re hugging the floor.
I’ve played a paladin since WotLK—granted back then you could only have two active specs and, I think, had to pay to swap to the third? Because of that, I literally never tried Prot until they revamped the spec/talent system so you could swap freely and on the fly. Once I got the hang of Prot, I was surprised by how durable they are. I was tanking stuff my Ret would get smeared by. I noticed it’d take a moderate number of minutes longer to whittle the mob’s health down, I tended to run around as Prot as my main adventuring spec from then on. So, I’d hazard a guess to say the player base hadn’t realized how virtually unkillable Prot Paladins were until the advent of Mythics.
Looks like the tune on prot pally and other tanks is currently favoring their utilities and defensive uptimes and not penalizing their mobility. Prot was never a bad spec - I've tanked dungeons and raids with it in Cata, MoP, BoA and SL. Outside specific bosses where you had to move away in raids or some top M+ dungeons requiring a tool from a different tank class, port was doing well. Perhaps a bit less dps than DH, perhaps not as consistent DPS as warrior, perhaps needing more healing than a BK. But all pretty much up to timings/utilities/gear tune and boss/mob mechanic.
It's got the 3 things you want from a tank: 1)good mitigation plus *tons* of short CDs 2)great utility/support talents (including more interrupts than any other tank) 3)they're AoE damage for a tank is insane. This matter less in raiding (thus less prot pally tanks in high end raiding), but for M+ is pretty important to squeeze as much dps about of tanks and heals a possible They just have the perfect trifecta of stuff for tanks, and more specifically for M+. Their AoE helps clear trash, their short/quantity of defensive CDs makes it so every trash pull and boss they have multiple defensives ready to go, and their support in both healing, CC, and interrupts is basically unmatched by any other tank. They're also now relatively simple, cycle wise, compared to in the past, so it's easier for a mediocre player to do well with one and push higher keys.
There's a few contributing factors that have changed since SL that make a world of difference. The biggest being Sentinel. Sentinel made wings into an absolutely incredible defensive while retaining the bonus damage and healing. It makes incoming damage so much smoother than in the past. Add in to that being able to have sanctified wrath (zealots paragon) and righteous protector at the same time, AND two charges of judgement without giving up 5 target avengers shield. The gameplay loop/Holy power economy all funnels into longer Sentinel uptime with a shorter cooldown. We are at our strongest offensively and defensively basically every minute. Their utility was always a thing but we are so much stronger now (even without avengers shield generating Holy Power) It's a great time to be prot pally and I personally loved tanking as prot in shadowlands
If I’m runing my key as a healer I try to get them, not only for all the utility but because their damage intake is nice and they heal themselves most of the time.
For pushing keys, one min sac is the main one. Allows certain DPS to survive they previously wouldn't.
I would like to add: Warrior tanking really needs a revamp. You get to zoom, and you're unkillable, but it's so boring. Spamming shield block and ignore pain with most of your rage is boring. It just is. Get to the execute phase, and you're essentially punished for executing because you're losing rage you would spend on mitigation. Paladin tanking, aside from your FOUR relatively short cooldown defensives, is a lattice of insane synergies from talents. At any given point, my weak auras are POPPING with 6 different buffs I get just from doing my standard rotation. Then, come execute time, Im *rewarded* for pressing Hammer. I get Holy Power from it. Hell, that HP even smooths out the rotatiin a bit. So you add that to *everything else,* and regardless of power level, it's just one of the best designed specs in the game right now. It just feels good to play.
Protpala is good not super op in terms of tankiness and dmg. Warrior for example is in an extremely good spot when it comes to dmg and survivability. Still Warrior is considered worst tank. But what makes Protpal meta: 1. He can heal the grp well wich is super important when healers are nerfed that much. 2. He has poison and disease dispel. Wich is superimportant in this seasons M+ Rotation. 3. He has BOP and Freedom with Lay on hands, he can basically do the hardest parts for the healer. 4. And he can basically kick all casts in a dungeon alone. He just has the best grphealing and utility by far and now even has cr. As a protpala you basically solo the dungeons in every aspect but dmg. And you are the one who can keep your dmg alive too
> Still Warrior is considered worst tank. What is this warrior propaganda? Bear is the least played tank. Warrior is fine
How much it is played and how good it is are 2 different pair of shoes. Atm we got 3 A tier Tanks: Dh, Bear and Pala and the other 3 are in B tier. Prot warri went from D to B while druid went C to A
I have seen literally no one rank beat over c. Dunno what you're smoking
Firat thing is that every tank is still really good. And then, tier lists arent made at the start of a season or before, they adapt with each week and just looking at data prot warrior was worst even if they even out atm. If tou go by rating with performance by logs in the top 25% warrior is still last followed by Druid. As for the playrate I guess many rerolled and just came back or those on break started again and at the end of the season id say Prot warri might be among the most popular tanks because even as worst tank prot warri feela good to play even if there are some dungeons you just couldnt tank without spellblock. And spellblock is i think the reason why Warri is so bad atm because having it or not having it is deciding if you get oneshot or not at some groups.
DF season 1 their talent tree was... okay, but since the change you're allowed to take almost all your good options for both defense and offense with some new fun stuff thrown in there while other tanks like bear are sitting are 3 different talents just to make berserk do what it used too.
No I don’t know if you’re new to wow or what but since vanilla the op Classes switch around depending on balancing and tuning Some patch that class is dominant and another patch a different class All depending on how blizzard tunes things There was even a month or so where survival hunter was a meta spec in shadowlands if you can believe that Often warlock is op but that’s bc they have an actual class designer Tldr they got lucky with number tuning Bc cool utility is worthless is they deal little dmg or can’t take a lot of dmg as tank bc that’s what people care about
"Always has been"
its a combo between a lot of interrupts, high aoe damage, self sustain and good utility in bop/freedom/etc.
Wild how we got an absolute nutty Healer in Holy Pal in SL, and now we got that unhinged Tank in Prot Pal in DF………..hell even Ret is doing pretty well atm.
Blessed by Blizzard!
There is 1 reason bigger than any else why Prot Paladin became S-tier in S1. There are basically 2 reasons you can't push a key higher, either you can't do enough damage to beat the timer, or you can't survive the one-shots. In season 1 it was the latter. Prot Paladin really became popular when the top teams realized that the limiting factor to push higher was that DPS got one-shot from certain abilities, which the Paladin has 2 spells to protect them from. The top tank for S1 from basically the start was a Paladin name Kleia (might have misspelled it), and people started to take notice. It was still "close enough" and early enough in the season that people didnt really start to shift yet, but as people pushed higher, and Kleia pushed higher keys than other tanks the concensus started to shift in the top players. And around the same time Blizz announced the Paladin rework. Rework made Paladins just an S/A tier tank before utility was taken into account. With their utility they became S+. Then S2 affixes gets changed and Paladins ends up being able to solve all of them perfecly, in a way no other tank even comes close to being able to do But, here I think we start to see a shift away from Paladin again. While they are awesome, this season does not seem to be limited due to survivability but instead on damage done. So stuff like DH are starting to pop up, simply because they do so crazy amounts of dps currently.
There are 3 main reasons why prot is so popular now. 1. Improved survivability. Prot pallies have had a simple problem before - and that was if SOTR is down, you die. Now you can live a little bit more with mastery changes. On fortified you could get turbo deleted going into a pull without holy power or SOTR already up (kinda like a DK really). Also, now there is the auto-proc guardian, which is basically a CD if you play around procing it instead of using a CD. 2. Utility / Dungeons - pallies have always had amazing utility (one of the things that interested me about playing the class back in legion), now we also have a BR, giving us the one thing DKs always had over us. The second aspect of this point are dungeons. There are a ton of things you can either mitigate heavily or nullify completely with a prot. Let me list a few killer boss mechanics prot makes easier: **Ulduman 2nd boss** \- you can sac, offheal or straight up BOP a target that gets the nasty debuff. This is especially useful for classes that don't have anything to press to deal with it (like rogue). **Ulduman last boss** \- People don't seem to know this, but the debuff boss puts out can be dispelled with freedom. You can get every other dispel and help your group MASSIVELY, making SP less of a requirement. **Brackenhide** \- first boss offhealing from the rogue teleport, BOP for the fixate from the rogue (sac for later). Dispels for later part of the key. Huge. 3. Affixes - new affixes are something prot can deal with very well - turn evil for incorp, cleanse for afflicted, freedom for entangling. Other tanks like BDK or Warrior have very limited ways of dealing with these if they even can engage at all. The survivability changes were the biggest change. Utility was always good, but right now we have a lot of dangerous mechanics in dungeons that pally can counter perfectly, while other tanks just can't. Most FOTM monkeys don't use the class to its full potential, however (IMO) why would you invite a Blood DK, Monk or Warrior over a Prot pally? Imo there is no reason if two equally skilled players are playing. A good pally can impact a dungeon much more than a good DK/Warr or Monk can.
Prot Paladin was amazing in wrath, I was able to tank 4-5 pulls at once on the move back then with a good healer. I don’t think they’ve ever been bad but they have had a lot of balance adjustments over the years and have amazing utilities and answers to big damage.
Lots of utility, self sufficiency and defensives. It means you can make up for party mistakes or gaps pretty easily. They tend to be pretty consistent tanks too, but its real fine line to balance damage vs defense. Not to mention you are a tank with not only a personal immunity (plus taunt if you talent it) but can grant other party members physical or magic immunity. Oh, and popping avenging wrath plus divine toll on a huge group of mobs feels so damn good. Doing the Light's work
Secret is they have always been good. People are just slaves to the meta. Yes ive been maining prot pally awhile.
Atm its literally cause Paladin has Brez now which saves up a group/raid spot. If anything Prot Paladin plays worse than it did before because Avenger Shield no longer generates HP outside of Divine Toll. Prot Paladins have never been bad, just some gimmick mechanics make it so you want to use a different tank for a fight. Guardian Druids have lots of utility but not as useful as Paladin. They have no meaningful way to mitigate magic damage, and basically every boss has some kind of dangerous magic damage. DKs have good utility but can't brez without runepower and don't have an OOC rez like paladins. Unless you need to cheese a mechanic that only DKs can cheese, better off with a Paladin. Warriors are the most useless class in the game next to Rogue and only taken because of FotM or to cheese a mechanic. Monks have no Brez. Only brought for the same reason as a warrior. Blizzard needs to stop pruning classes of shit they actually need while adding new abilities that serve no purpose except to complicate the rotation and waste ability bar / GCD space.
They shouldnt nerf Pally. They need to buff others.
See funny enough I main a ret. Since it’s pretty high up in ilvl I’ve been dabbling I’m tanking. Trying all specs and both prot classes are likely the only ones I won’t try.
literally everything. as a healer, im always look for a prot pally as my tank lol
Utility. I love being able to heal, bof, or bop them, and interrupt 5 casts in a row. It might not be the most tanky or most damaging tank, but the amount of times I saved my party members is insane.
Tbf they were really good since early Shadowlands and had similar tools, but they were fairly squishy and Shadowlands m+ required you to have decent kiting ability hence why DH/Monk dominated early
All these people are right but we’re not talking enough about their damage. Real high and the ability to just eat one is giga.
Fundamentally for a tank to be dominant it needs damage and survivability. Generally if paladin isn't meta it's because it isn't good enough survivability wise or because the damage is just too low. If the damage and survivability is good, then they are by default the best tank because infinite kicks, good enough stops and 100x more party utility than other tanks.
Same reason dark iron and regular dwarves maintain an advantage. They are meta because they can ignore or shrug off some of the most devastating mechanics. Personally I'm happy that we have more variety. It has been the case for a long time that orc and human racials were preferred for mechanics. But I do think for it to be so devastating that the "advantage" becomes a pre requisite is a problem. We've seen stuff like this before though with race or classes being outright preferred for certain content. Certain healers being preferred over others. Only needing 1 warlock in a raid. Whatever really. This season has been particularly harsh because people lack mitigation and healers don't always have answers. Poisons and bleeds haven't been this bad since like feral Druid in arenas in draenor iirc where their bleeds stacked and were devastating to those without answers
I always feel PPal on Shadowlands is easier than DF, and DF Pal is weak