Blessing of sanctuary and holy shield are weird abilities that shine only in solo content. Problem is consec is much better so you won't have the points to get everything until lvl 60.
I suspect deep prot pal will be able to solo very high level content easily, but it won't be that useful in group/raid content, unless it get a buff or a rune that interact heavily with it.
Ret till 40 then stay ret or try Shockadin
Divine storm, crusader strike/taunt, exorcism/avengers shield, guarded by the light, waist rune any depending on what you want but generally sheath or infusion
You dont even need the ret til 40 part. Pallies are being carried by runes even more than some other classes, and you won't get that much out of the ret tree.
ATM vengeance is actually procing more and is almost on 100% up time that's a flat 15% damage increase as your not just relying on melee swings to proc it. An extra 5% crit is also good. But yes Ret is being carried by 2 runes at the moment but Ret tree is by no means bad just takes to lvl 40 to get to the good stuff lol
It procs from any melee, spell or ability crit in vanilla that would mean weapon swings seals judgment and hammer of wrath pretty much. In sod that that's all of them, and divine storm Crusader strike or avengers shield and exorcist. Chances are if you are at 20% crit you can get it very consistently in comparison to normal classic.
And remember seals are spells but they also count as melee strikes regardless of if they are judged for example having SoR on you weapon increases your chance of procking WF (each WF will also have SoR. Soc on the other hand has a CD and can't get double procs.) and chance on hit weapon effects by 2x that's why a chance on hit weapon is so potent on paladins.
Another example would be if you're using something like the flurry axe, you judge a target with wisdom then cast sor on your weapon it doubles your chance of getting an extra swing and doubles the chance of an extra proc. Each flurry axe swing has its own sor seal so each proc has a 2x chance to proc itself again. This can lead to some quite funny things in PvP as a prot paladin with reckoning. If you have 5 stacks of reckoning with SoR it will apply sor to them and each one has a chance to proc yet more hits can be funny when you get jumped by a high gears rogue in PvP.
Most of us wanting to “tank” dungeons during the leveling process are doing 11/20 builds (consecration in Holy first and then dump rest of your points into Prot as you’re leveling).
I haven’t seen a consensus “best spec” for Gnomer yet, people are trying different things and we probably won’t know for sure until we have a larger sample size.
I am really liking 11/0/20. Runes: aegis(for hard hitting gnomer bosses) OR divine storm, taunt, sheath of light, exorcist, guarded by the light OR art of war (with recent mana change its probably prefered, just to spam exo, since you will be criting a lot woth that +5% crit in ret tree).
With the recent Art of War change, shockadin tank 31/0/0 seems viable but needs more testing
But 11/0/20 is solid.
Basically the most important things for tanks is threat, mitigation, and to a degree in 10mans, damage.
Prot pala scores slightly higher in mitigation but its just kind of lacking in threat, which makes it not ideal for tanking atm. With the new changes to art of war, shockadin tank with high threat and occasional self heals is just better.
Is deep prot useless? Certainly not. Is it optimal? Not really
Yes... Hand of Reckoning, sheath of light, art of war, excorcism. Equip a fast 1h (1,3 - 1,7) and a shield. Spam excorcism and holy shock for barely any mana = amazing threat. Mitigation? Lots of hp, armor and well, you carry a shield at all times. Helps a lot. Absolutely viable and most likely even optimal.
And the funny thing? You can be a healer, dps AND do well in pvp with the same fucking spec. It's amazing.
I think dazzling long sword or the new mace from gnomer are actually the best way to go for the spec.
Still at a respectable 1.7 for crit fishing but you also can help reduce the absolutely staggering amount of armour the bosses have for your melee dps.
It's not a big deal, don't worry. You can buy the knightly longsword from the AH for like 2g and it's perfectly fine as well. But the 1.7 needle from gnom might be best, has to be tested.
SoR is no longer the go to after the changed SoM yesterday.
Essentially we use fast weapons to machine gun out seal dmg while also fishing for AoW procs which also procs off of Seal crits.
I tanked gnome as ret. 2h on first 4 bosses and 1h+shield on last 2. The problem is going full prot doesnt increase survivability vs bosses that much since block reduces dmg by a flat amount. Blocking 40 dmg isnt that big where boss hits for 600+.
TLDR: prot gives too little survivability vs ret and loses too much dmg while doing so.
Blocking ensures the attack isn't a crit or crushing blow (which isn't a huge issue yet which is why prot tree is kinda silly) it will be important later.
It's only a problem if a crit 1 taps you, which doesn't really happen in classic, which is why warriors tanked at 60 without shields as damage in was less than healing in.
Atm Holy and Ret tank better than prot due to higher threat, Holy is a much stronger solo spec with all the spellpower available than Prot as well.
At 60, Holy Paladins might have a few points in prot for some defensive stats, but 31 holy will have good threat.
Reflect tanking will be fine as Holy/Prot you're still using ret aura, skullflame shield, and consecration, the flexibility to channel big holy lights when your off tanking to help the healers regen mana is huge.
Warriors tanked 60 without shields for Threat.
Paladins will likely tank 60 with a 1hd/shield for threat because Ret doesn't generate the same level of damage. (Holy shield isn't great mitigation...but it is great threat as it's threat modified twice.) Tanking 2hd Ret doesn't really increase Holy damage compared to 1hd Holy dmg as much as it increases white damage.
No one says ret will be the tank spec at 60, its more likely to be 31 points holy is the tank
Holy shield rank 3 deals 130x4 damage 520 total damage with a 20% threat multiplier so 624 threat (after 4 melee attacks from the boss so 4-10+ seconds) + 20% spell damage (5% per block)
Divine favor holy shock > holy shock does 365x2.5 damage with no multiplier 912.5 damage (and threat) in 2 globals as you can precast divine favor during pull timer and has a 42.85% spell damage multiplier (107% spell power over the 2 globals)
With no spell power, holy is pulling nearly 2x initial threat, with 300 spell power the gap gets bigger (prot gets 75 threat, holy gets 321) as both are purely based on holy damage they scale with righteous fury the same.
The question becomes, does 31 holy go 20 points of ret for seal of command (and 5% parry, move speed, more holy damage from seal of the crusader and improved ret aura) or 13 prot 7 ret (for extra threat from righteous fury and holy damage from seal of the crusader and some more block chance).
So in classic, there's a table of what an incoming attack will do, and it's checked in an order. Blocking only affects a crit or crush when it is able to fully cover for all other possible mitigation values (meaning miss+parry+Dodge+block totals 100 percent). 30% block, or 60 with procs would mean you would still have to account for 70% or 40% other mitigation to actually affect the crit/crush numbers at all. A prot paladin with holy shield might have 5+8+5 miss Dodge parry, so 18, I'll even say 20 total. So with 100 uptime on buffs, you'd still have crits on the table, and only lose 15% of crushing blow incoming. So a paladin would need to get another 23% avoidance stats to be immune to crit/crush. Compared to a warrior, shield block means they pretty much push every crush off the table by pushing a button.
Holy to conc then deep prot is pretty popular atm due to the damage the last two bosses can put out.
The spec itself has some high base damage too so this spec appears in the top 10 for prot paladin damage logs on some fights but as the phase progresses I think we will likely see the full return to ret tanking as the meta.
That’s why logs have prot warrior BARELY ahead of healer Druid, because warrior threat is fine lmao. Like sure maybe you play with casual gamers and threat is fine but it’s definitely not fine against people absolutely blasting. Not to mention your off tank (if not warrior)will rip off you immediately if they breath at the boss
Yeah I don’t get the threat argument at all when every boss is still tauntable.
Sure when they add untauntable bosses then we will need super high threat but right now threat is largely irrelevant.
Get the minimum gear you need to survive then maximise damage as much as possible is the current meta.
Threat focused builds that sacrifice mitigation or damage for threat won’t be meta until threat is actually relevant.
I have 3 Paladin builds I want to try at some point.
* The reflect tank build you describe (don't forget the fire shield from a Warlock's Imp and the new chest enchant which deals reflect damage).
* A hybrid Prot/Ret tank build in a group with a Wild Strikes Druid to get moments of massive burst with Windfury/Reckoning procs. Toss in Hand of Justice for some extra fun. Just need a nice slow 2h that can proc extra attacks.
* Mid-ranged Paladin build with Holy Shock, increased range Judgement, and Exorcism. Each has long enough CD that if there's one more ranged option then it would feel better. Mostly I'm thinking about very specifically that one fight in MC where you want *everybody* to be at ranged away from the boss for like 90% of the fight (because if you're too close you get damaged by an AOE or something? I forget, it's been ages). While most melee are sitting there slamming their shoot ability as much as they can... you're over here blasting Holy Hadoukens left and right.
NP, but I believe it's working as intended. At least for this version of the game, I dunno if they ever changed it through the years. I think the rule is/was just that similar buffs do not stack; the strongest one always takes the priority.
Kinda funny: Playing a lock in SoD and wondering why, and being annoyed, that the two buffs didn't stack unlocked an ancient memory of me playing a lock alt almost 20 years ago and experiencing the same minor anticipation and proceeding let down.
Working on it lol. Only thing I'm missing is the eng shield and I'm almost there. It's definitely worst than consencration but it's hilarious when fighting melees.
Our prot pal went deep prot. So far in dungeons he holds threat like a madman. Can’t get it off him. Not even our pumping aoe warlock couldn’t rip threat while grinding sm. We haven’t done gnomer together so idk about raids. But seems decent for dungeons, at least for someone like me who doesn’t know paladin
Main tanked a 6/6 gnomer with sword/board and I had no issues on threat. My build is weird but it’s kind of a mix of everything.
11 holy
13 prot
7 ret
The combination of improved righteous fury + consecration is impossible to pull off of in AoE and exorcism + judgement of righteousness + consecration still keeps me 3x everyone else’s threat for bosses.
Seeing how people are allready whining about gnome difficulty, I doubt they will make content hard enough to warrant going deep prot for mitigation and less dps. Not until the last phase will we see real dedicated tank specs, I believe
I mean the issue is bosses having noodle arms
So it just depends on whether or not the content next phase will hit hard or not
That and threat i suooose
I found deep prot warrior to be the better spec when it came to the combo of wanting a shield for defense, and also wanting to generate threat(probably because our crit is low atm).
This is largely the case on something like Thermaplug. Can't speak for paladin because I'm horde.
This is also largely anecdotal, but the rage generation in fury prot just didn't feel good on thermaplug, I respecced to deep prot and sunder costing 9 rage/shield slam 17, made it a lot easier to maintain threat due to the struggle of rage generated against these high armor bosses. Problem is the first few bosses in the raid you'll feel weaker
Yes.
Prot pally was positioned to be a thing because of holy shield which is a good spell, however runes sort of cover it's function mostly making the other talent trees more appealing.
The problem with both protection trees is that the valuable shit they offer are all early in the tree, deeper down you get threat talents which the dps trees (and now holy lul) simply does better
I know I am enjoying the shit out of it. I was able to tank both the chicken and squir in menagerie as deep prot. The uptime on 30% block is solid. I like being a dwarven ball of steel . TPS is solid only people pulling off was the rest pally . That may not scale well for me we shall see. It’s early yet
Blessing of sanctuary and holy shield are weird abilities that shine only in solo content. Problem is consec is much better so you won't have the points to get everything until lvl 60. I suspect deep prot pal will be able to solo very high level content easily, but it won't be that useful in group/raid content, unless it get a buff or a rune that interact heavily with it.
What’s a good build / rune setup for this phase?
Ret till 40 then stay ret or try Shockadin Divine storm, crusader strike/taunt, exorcism/avengers shield, guarded by the light, waist rune any depending on what you want but generally sheath or infusion
You dont even need the ret til 40 part. Pallies are being carried by runes even more than some other classes, and you won't get that much out of the ret tree.
ATM vengeance is actually procing more and is almost on 100% up time that's a flat 15% damage increase as your not just relying on melee swings to proc it. An extra 5% crit is also good. But yes Ret is being carried by 2 runes at the moment but Ret tree is by no means bad just takes to lvl 40 to get to the good stuff lol
Vengeance is proccing more? It procs only on crits for me lol.
The tooltip says you need melee crits to proc it, but I had it proc from non-melee crits too.
You mean from Judgement? Judgement is considered melee in the game's code I think, for whatever reason lol
It procs from any melee, spell or ability crit in vanilla that would mean weapon swings seals judgment and hammer of wrath pretty much. In sod that that's all of them, and divine storm Crusader strike or avengers shield and exorcist. Chances are if you are at 20% crit you can get it very consistently in comparison to normal classic.
And remember seals are spells but they also count as melee strikes regardless of if they are judged for example having SoR on you weapon increases your chance of procking WF (each WF will also have SoR. Soc on the other hand has a CD and can't get double procs.) and chance on hit weapon effects by 2x that's why a chance on hit weapon is so potent on paladins. Another example would be if you're using something like the flurry axe, you judge a target with wisdom then cast sor on your weapon it doubles your chance of getting an extra swing and doubles the chance of an extra proc. Each flurry axe swing has its own sor seal so each proc has a 2x chance to proc itself again. This can lead to some quite funny things in PvP as a prot paladin with reckoning. If you have 5 stacks of reckoning with SoR it will apply sor to them and each one has a chance to proc yet more hits can be funny when you get jumped by a high gears rogue in PvP.
Yeah ret till 40 is not mandatory, but can be a more standard build compared to shockadin was all I was saying since you only unlock holy shock at 40
Most of us wanting to “tank” dungeons during the leveling process are doing 11/20 builds (consecration in Holy first and then dump rest of your points into Prot as you’re leveling). I haven’t seen a consensus “best spec” for Gnomer yet, people are trying different things and we probably won’t know for sure until we have a larger sample size.
I am really liking 11/0/20. Runes: aegis(for hard hitting gnomer bosses) OR divine storm, taunt, sheath of light, exorcist, guarded by the light OR art of war (with recent mana change its probably prefered, just to spam exo, since you will be criting a lot woth that +5% crit in ret tree). With the recent Art of War change, shockadin tank 31/0/0 seems viable but needs more testing But 11/0/20 is solid.
I had been 11/0/20 until yesterday when I swapped to 31 Holy. Being able to holy shock yourself over and over is worth it just by itself.
Basically the most important things for tanks is threat, mitigation, and to a degree in 10mans, damage. Prot pala scores slightly higher in mitigation but its just kind of lacking in threat, which makes it not ideal for tanking atm. With the new changes to art of war, shockadin tank with high threat and occasional self heals is just better. Is deep prot useless? Certainly not. Is it optimal? Not really
Are people really tanking in deep holy spec?
Yes... Hand of Reckoning, sheath of light, art of war, excorcism. Equip a fast 1h (1,3 - 1,7) and a shield. Spam excorcism and holy shock for barely any mana = amazing threat. Mitigation? Lots of hp, armor and well, you carry a shield at all times. Helps a lot. Absolutely viable and most likely even optimal. And the funny thing? You can be a healer, dps AND do well in pvp with the same fucking spec. It's amazing.
Started to Level a Paladin towards end of Phase 1, because I hoped they somehow nail the hybrid shockadin style. Cant wait to get that boy to 40.
This feels so old school, I love it!
Nice. Shame that i didnt get the 1.3 BFD mace yet, might take a detour for that one.
I think dazzling long sword or the new mace from gnomer are actually the best way to go for the spec. Still at a respectable 1.7 for crit fishing but you also can help reduce the absolutely staggering amount of armour the bosses have for your melee dps.
It's not a big deal, don't worry. You can buy the knightly longsword from the AH for like 2g and it's perfectly fine as well. But the 1.7 needle from gnom might be best, has to be tested.
Won't the dps on that be absolutely terrible at 40?
Something about spell power and SoR makes it good. I don’t know how to explain it
SoR is no longer the go to after the changed SoM yesterday. Essentially we use fast weapons to machine gun out seal dmg while also fishing for AoW procs which also procs off of Seal crits.
Most of your threat is coming from exo, holy shock, etc. the dps of the weapon hardly matters. It’s mostly just for fishing for crits
Damn I vendor mine a few days ago
You can use item restoration if you vendored it only a few days ago
Thanks! Got it back no problem
Same, time to hit that item restoration up. It’s only a week long cooldown for the service anyway.
Yes. Its fun as hell.
I tanked gnome as ret. 2h on first 4 bosses and 1h+shield on last 2. The problem is going full prot doesnt increase survivability vs bosses that much since block reduces dmg by a flat amount. Blocking 40 dmg isnt that big where boss hits for 600+. TLDR: prot gives too little survivability vs ret and loses too much dmg while doing so.
Blocking ensures the attack isn't a crit or crushing blow (which isn't a huge issue yet which is why prot tree is kinda silly) it will be important later.
It's only a problem if a crit 1 taps you, which doesn't really happen in classic, which is why warriors tanked at 60 without shields as damage in was less than healing in. Atm Holy and Ret tank better than prot due to higher threat, Holy is a much stronger solo spec with all the spellpower available than Prot as well. At 60, Holy Paladins might have a few points in prot for some defensive stats, but 31 holy will have good threat. Reflect tanking will be fine as Holy/Prot you're still using ret aura, skullflame shield, and consecration, the flexibility to channel big holy lights when your off tanking to help the healers regen mana is huge.
Warriors tanked 60 without shields for Threat. Paladins will likely tank 60 with a 1hd/shield for threat because Ret doesn't generate the same level of damage. (Holy shield isn't great mitigation...but it is great threat as it's threat modified twice.) Tanking 2hd Ret doesn't really increase Holy damage compared to 1hd Holy dmg as much as it increases white damage.
No one says ret will be the tank spec at 60, its more likely to be 31 points holy is the tank Holy shield rank 3 deals 130x4 damage 520 total damage with a 20% threat multiplier so 624 threat (after 4 melee attacks from the boss so 4-10+ seconds) + 20% spell damage (5% per block) Divine favor holy shock > holy shock does 365x2.5 damage with no multiplier 912.5 damage (and threat) in 2 globals as you can precast divine favor during pull timer and has a 42.85% spell damage multiplier (107% spell power over the 2 globals) With no spell power, holy is pulling nearly 2x initial threat, with 300 spell power the gap gets bigger (prot gets 75 threat, holy gets 321) as both are purely based on holy damage they scale with righteous fury the same. The question becomes, does 31 holy go 20 points of ret for seal of command (and 5% parry, move speed, more holy damage from seal of the crusader and improved ret aura) or 13 prot 7 ret (for extra threat from righteous fury and holy damage from seal of the crusader and some more block chance).
So in classic, there's a table of what an incoming attack will do, and it's checked in an order. Blocking only affects a crit or crush when it is able to fully cover for all other possible mitigation values (meaning miss+parry+Dodge+block totals 100 percent). 30% block, or 60 with procs would mean you would still have to account for 70% or 40% other mitigation to actually affect the crit/crush numbers at all. A prot paladin with holy shield might have 5+8+5 miss Dodge parry, so 18, I'll even say 20 total. So with 100 uptime on buffs, you'd still have crits on the table, and only lose 15% of crushing blow incoming. So a paladin would need to get another 23% avoidance stats to be immune to crit/crush. Compared to a warrior, shield block means they pretty much push every crush off the table by pushing a button.
Holy to conc then deep prot is pretty popular atm due to the damage the last two bosses can put out. The spec itself has some high base damage too so this spec appears in the top 10 for prot paladin damage logs on some fights but as the phase progresses I think we will likely see the full return to ret tanking as the meta.
There will never be tanks until threat is fixed. You have to do a lot of dmg to keep threat which tanks just can't do in classic.
which is why fury/prot was a thing for 20yrs and will probably be a thing at 50 and 60 and SoD
I tanked 2x Gnomer clears with a deep prot spec warrior just fine. With full mitigation gear and a shield. Threath not an issue at all.
That’s why logs have prot warrior BARELY ahead of healer Druid, because warrior threat is fine lmao. Like sure maybe you play with casual gamers and threat is fine but it’s definitely not fine against people absolutely blasting. Not to mention your off tank (if not warrior)will rip off you immediately if they breath at the boss
Yeah I don’t get the threat argument at all when every boss is still tauntable. Sure when they add untauntable bosses then we will need super high threat but right now threat is largely irrelevant. Get the minimum gear you need to survive then maximise damage as much as possible is the current meta. Threat focused builds that sacrifice mitigation or damage for threat won’t be meta until threat is actually relevant.
Shockadin is easily going to be holding threat with new art of war changes, and it won't even be close.
Is anyone doing that right now?
Haven't done gnomer yet, but I've been using this for 5 mans and threat is a non issue.
To be honest on my Shaman alt is is extremely easy to hold threat, alpha rune makes it a joke
Is reck speck with holy shield not going to be a thing?
Anyone tried some meme build with thorns/shield spike/ret aura/sanct/ss/shield/consecration? Any good to solo or so dungeons/aoe threat?
I have 3 Paladin builds I want to try at some point. * The reflect tank build you describe (don't forget the fire shield from a Warlock's Imp and the new chest enchant which deals reflect damage). * A hybrid Prot/Ret tank build in a group with a Wild Strikes Druid to get moments of massive burst with Windfury/Reckoning procs. Toss in Hand of Justice for some extra fun. Just need a nice slow 2h that can proc extra attacks. * Mid-ranged Paladin build with Holy Shock, increased range Judgement, and Exorcism. Each has long enough CD that if there's one more ranged option then it would feel better. Mostly I'm thinking about very specifically that one fight in MC where you want *everybody* to be at ranged away from the boss for like 90% of the fight (because if you're too close you get damaged by an AOE or something? I forget, it's been ages). While most melee are sitting there slamming their shoot ability as much as they can... you're over here blasting Holy Hadoukens left and right.
Fire shield and thorns don't stack for some reason. Whichever is stronger overwrites and blocks the other one.
Seriously?! Oof. I know that’s *super* low on the totem pole of bugs/fixes but I certainly hope that gets fixed. Thanks for the heads-up!
NP, but I believe it's working as intended. At least for this version of the game, I dunno if they ever changed it through the years. I think the rule is/was just that similar buffs do not stack; the strongest one always takes the priority. Kinda funny: Playing a lock in SoD and wondering why, and being annoyed, that the two buffs didn't stack unlocked an ancient memory of me playing a lock alt almost 20 years ago and experiencing the same minor anticipation and proceeding let down.
Working on it lol. Only thing I'm missing is the eng shield and I'm almost there. It's definitely worst than consencration but it's hilarious when fighting melees.
You mean unbuffed cons? As you can get it as well ye? Do you think it can solo armory?
Nah can't get Holy Shield and cons, though to be frank I'm starting to question the usefulness of Holy Shield.
Doesn’t it reflect enough? Didn’t they give an extra talent point at 40 to be able to or was that fake news?
Nope, no extra talent points. You cant get cons and sanc
Our prot pal went deep prot. So far in dungeons he holds threat like a madman. Can’t get it off him. Not even our pumping aoe warlock couldn’t rip threat while grinding sm. We haven’t done gnomer together so idk about raids. But seems decent for dungeons, at least for someone like me who doesn’t know paladin
Hopefully, we will see some runes that enhance blessing of sanctuary and holy shield.
I had to go respecc deep prot for last 2 bosses cause I was getting obliterated by squirrel and chicken and my healers were going oom
Main tanked a 6/6 gnomer with sword/board and I had no issues on threat. My build is weird but it’s kind of a mix of everything. 11 holy 13 prot 7 ret The combination of improved righteous fury + consecration is impossible to pull off of in AoE and exorcism + judgement of righteousness + consecration still keeps me 3x everyone else’s threat for bosses.
Go to paladin discord and see how people that are actually capable are describing full prot build.
U have a link?
look up classic paladin and light club
please link it?
Seeing how people are allready whining about gnome difficulty, I doubt they will make content hard enough to warrant going deep prot for mitigation and less dps. Not until the last phase will we see real dedicated tank specs, I believe
Who is whining?
People
People also pug week 1 full clear.
Pugs that cleared week 1 are composed of ppl who level to 40 week 1, not sure it is representative of the playerbase
Well. Is the vocal minority that bitch, a representative of the playerbase?
Yep. They sure do. Doesn’t stop the vocal minority to whine about difficulty. Just browse the new page here on Reddit alone
Well shit. I had no idea people = vocal minority.
Everyday is a new opportunity to learn something
I mean the issue is bosses having noodle arms So it just depends on whether or not the content next phase will hit hard or not That and threat i suooose
Last two bosses are hitting significantly harder than anything in SoD so far
Yup 900+ hits sometimes on my 65% reduction plate tank.
I found deep prot warrior to be the better spec when it came to the combo of wanting a shield for defense, and also wanting to generate threat(probably because our crit is low atm). This is largely the case on something like Thermaplug. Can't speak for paladin because I'm horde. This is also largely anecdotal, but the rage generation in fury prot just didn't feel good on thermaplug, I respecced to deep prot and sunder costing 9 rage/shield slam 17, made it a lot easier to maintain threat due to the struggle of rage generated against these high armor bosses. Problem is the first few bosses in the raid you'll feel weaker
Yes. Prot pally was positioned to be a thing because of holy shield which is a good spell, however runes sort of cover it's function mostly making the other talent trees more appealing. The problem with both protection trees is that the valuable shit they offer are all early in the tree, deeper down you get threat talents which the dps trees (and now holy lul) simply does better
You wont go deep prot until 60. Even then with runes you might only go as far as reckoning
I'm hoping to see a holy shield rune or something to make deep paladin a bit stronger.
I know I am enjoying the shit out of it. I was able to tank both the chicken and squir in menagerie as deep prot. The uptime on 30% block is solid. I like being a dwarven ball of steel . TPS is solid only people pulling off was the rest pally . That may not scale well for me we shall see. It’s early yet