- Author: Kurathis
- Date: April 1, 2021
- Updated: March 2, 2022
- Expansion: TBC Classic
Gems
As a Protection Paladin, we have a few different options to choose from. Based on your level of avoidance and current phase, you may wish to utilize certain gems to reach 102.4% avoidance.
Low-Gear Gems
- Green – Enduring Talasite
- Yellow – Thick Dawnstone
- Blue – Solid Star of Elune
- Red – Runed Living Ruby
- Purple – none
- Orange – none
High-Gear Gems
- Green – Enduring Seaspray Emerald
- Yellow- Thick Lionseye
- Blue – Solid Empyrean Sapphire
- Red- Runed Crimson Spinel
- Purple- none
- Orange- none
Meta Gem
Enchants
Armor Enchants
- Head: Glyph of the Defender (Keepers of Time – Revered)
- Beginning in Phase 2 BiS gear, we will no longer need this enchant and should focus on obtaining Glyph of Power to increase our potential TPS
- Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Knight (The Scryers – Exalted)
- Beginning in Phase 2 BiS gear, we will no longer need this enchant and should focus on obtaining Greater Inscription of Discipline or Greater Inscription of the Orb (Depending on if you selected The Scryers or The Aldor) to increase our potential TPS
- Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Dodge
- Chest: Enchant Chest – Exceptional Stats or Enchant Chest – Exceptional Health
- Wrist: Enchant Bracer – Fortitude
- Hands: Enchant Gloves – Major Spellpower
- Legs: Nethercleft Leg Armor or Runic Spellthread (While offering less stamina, if you are interested in maximizing your potential TPS, Runic Spellthread would be the optimal choice)
- Feet: Enchant Boots – Fortitude
- Shield: Enchant Shield – Major Stamina or Felsteel Shield Spike
- Felsteel Shield Spike may be a better choice if you are tanking more AoE pulls while Enchant Shield – Major Stamina would be better if you are tanking bosses more than AoE trash pulls
Weapon Enchants
Enchants That Are Not BiS
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Warding (Greater Inscription of Warding provides 1.47% total avoidance while Greater Inscription of the Knight provides 1.53% of total avoidance for a difference of 0.06%)
Hands: Enchant Gloves – Threat (Enchant Gloves – Major Spellpower, in combination with Consecration, for example, will increase your TPS from 121.6 to 126.83 – an increase of 4% threat)
Feet: Enchant Boots – Boar’s Speed (Pursuit of Justice increases our movement speed by 15%, while decreasing our chance to be hit by spells by 3% – the two movement speed increases do not stack, so it’s best to get Enchant Boots – Fortitude instead)
Consumables
Potions
Flasks & Elixirs
Food
Miscellaneous
About the Author
Hey! Quick question – what are your thoughts on using Glyph of Power enchant for the helm and using Runic Spellthread for the pants? I also noticed for gems you put the Nimble Fire Opal (5 dodge, 4 hit) which has Hit, as opposed to something like a Vivid Chrysoprase (5 spell hit, 6 stamina) – what’s your opinion on stacking Hit vs Spell Hit? Personally on my paladin I feel I’m very tanky, and my only downfall is when I can’t get threat due to resists / misses / lack of Spell Power.
Hey Krain!
When deciding whether we should be using Glyph of the Defender or opting for Glyph of Power to enchant our helmets with, the most important thing to remember is whether we need this helmet enchant to reach our defence or mitigation cap. The other thing to remember is that by choosing Glyph of Power instead is that you will be more limited to mixing-and-matching your gear as it drops, since you’ll have to be more careful regarding your defence. Glyph of the Defender also increases your block rating by 0.28%, so you may find Holy Shield being triggered slightly more often, causing more threat than without, since Holy Shield doesn’t benefit that much from additional Spell Damage.
I have met several Protection Paladins that swear by Runic Spellthread for their leg enhancement. To better answer this question, we need to look at what both enhancements offer you:
The trade-off between these two is Runic Spellthread providing the chance to cause more threat (Until you reach Spell Hit cap, there’s no guarantee that that spell damage will actually always benefit you) at the cost of slight survivability and mitigation.
Personally, I use Nethercleft Leg Armor because I prefer being able to stay alive longer – 230 Health may not seem like a large difference, but it could be the difference between living and dying. I prefer to consider the 35 Spell Damage bonus second, since we can achieve a bonus of 145 from our consumables alone (Flask of Blinding Light, Blackened Basilisk, and Superior Wizard Oil) We also have access to Destruction Potion which can provide us with an additional 120 Spell Damage for a short time, if necessary.
I have updated the entire list of gems to better reflect the gems available currently.
Is Spell Hit or Melee Hit Rating more important?
It really depends on how you look at it:
At the end of the day, it’s kind of a Catch-22. If you were to achieve 9% Hit, your auto-attacks (and subsequently your Seal of Righteousness) may still be avoided through dodges or parries. If you were to stack Spell Hit to 16%, you’ll still always have that 1% chance to have your spells miss. So, which one is more important? I would say both are important – but which is more important depends on how you tank: Are you AoEing everything in sight, or are you taking it slower? For example, Avenger’s Shield relies on Melee Hit Rating, while Exorcism relies on Spell Hit Rating. (Judgements that cause damage also rely on Spell Hit Rating, so in the case of tanking one mob at a time, you may opt for Seal of Righteousness for snap threat, and thus will need Melee Hit Rating, while the Judgement portion of that relies on Spell Hit Rating)
Unfortunately, until later phases, we’re at the mercy of RNG – We can work on eliminating the chances of missing our attacks, but we can’t eliminate the chances of them being parried or dodged completely. We can try our best to reach 16% Spell Hit to remove 99% of the chance our spells will be resisted, but that would sacrifice a lot of survivability and mitigation as a result. A couple questions come to mind:
There’s definitely nothing wrong with giving it a shot and seeing which setup works best for you!
Thanks for the great comment!
You have listed Wizard Oils under Miscellaneous consumables, but these override Windfury (can’t have both Windfury and Wizard Oil/Sharpening stone on your weapon at the same time). I’ve read a lot of conflicting things about Windfury versus Wizard Oil (+ wrath of air totem) for protection pally. Can you comment on which is the better option?
Hey shaun_h,
That’s an interesting question.
If we look at Wrath of Air Totem and Brilliant Wizard Oil, we’ll see an increase of roughly 137 Spell Damage and 14 Spell Critical Strike Rating.
Now, if we look at Windfury Totem, we’ll see the chance to conduct an extra attack with added attack power.
Realistically, as a Protection Paladin, we don’t consider Attack Power when factoring our threat generation. So, the only actual advantage of Windfury Totem would be the extra melee attack. As it stands, currently, this extra melee attack is not guaranteed to be successful. This means, without 9% Hit and maxed Expertise, it could be a complete waste because we could miss, or the mob can dodge/parry the attack.
At the end of the day, the guaranteed threat increase from Wrath of Air Totem and Brilliant Wizard Oil far outweighs the miniscule benefit of Windfury Totem. Warriors, on the other hand, would greatly benefit from this.
pretty sure you want to go aldor for tanking for the increased spellpower for more threat
What increased spellpower?
https://tbc-twinhead.twinstar.cz/?item=28886 i think this is what he is talking about.
Greater Inscription of Discipline
Binds when picked up
Item level 70
Requires Level 70
Requires The Aldor -Use: Permanently adds up to 18 spell damage and healing and 10 spell critical strike rating to a shoulder slot item. Does not stack with other enchantments for the selected equipment slot.
Both factions have spell damage shoulder enchants. It’s not exclusive to The Aldor. But, no, we shouldn’t use that enchant in place of Greater Inscription of the Knight.
Do you think that going Scryer might be the play for later phases when the shattered sun pendants come out? i’ve been looking at the different procs and the aldor ones seem way better than the scryer ones. for instance, the pendant of resolve gives 100 dodge rating for 10 seconds to aldor and 100 expertise for scryer. the pendant of acumen gives 120 spell damage for 10 seconds for the aldor or a chance to inflict an extra 350 damage if you’re scryer. the 100 dodge rating for a pure mitigation set and the 120 spell power for a pure threat set seems like a better investment than a 0.06% avoidance difference between the two shoulder enchants. of course, the pendants don’t come out until sunwell.
edit: going Aldor**
The main thing regarding the enchants on top of the difference in overall avoidance is the allowance to mix-and-match different pieces of gear a little bit easier, without having to worry about dropping below the defence cap. Yes, there is only 2 points in difference, but that does allow for us to neglect nearly 5 defence rating. This is especially important while trying to reach and maintain crush immunity early on.
The Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve grants 100 Dodge Rating to Aldor followers. This amount appears extraordinary but what we need to consider is the actual conversion rate for dodge rating to dodge chance. Which is roughly for every 18.92 Dodge Rating, we get 1% Dodge Chance. So, 100 Dodge Rating would give us 5.29% Dodge Chance.
The Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve grants 100 Expertise to Scryer followers. (From my research it did show that it was Expertise, not Expertise Rating) This will more or less guarantee that you hit both the soft and hard caps for Expertise if you have started into Sunwell and have gotten some drops, meaning bosses will no longer dodge or parry your attacks, respectively. This is important from both a threat standpoint and a survivability standpoint. With bosses able to parry-haste, we’re tempting fate every time we attack, unless we’re Expertise capped.
An important note to remember is that we can always increase our dodge rating via gem sockets. With Subtle Crimson Spinel giving us +10 Dodge Rating, we’d just need 10 of them to reach the same amount as Aldor beneficiaries. Unfortunately, there are no gems of any colour that increase our Expertise (Rating). Realistically, because Expertise affects both threat and survivability, Scryers would be the best choice to go with.
The Shattered Sun Pendant of Acumen grants 120 Spell damage for 10 seconds if you are an Aldor follower. This, in theory, would grant an extra 28.5 TPS from Consecration. In total, it would grant you roughly 285 extra threat over the 10 seconds.
The Shattered Sun Pendant of Acumen grants the possibility of an Arcane Bolt being cast at your target for an extra 350 damage if you are a Scryer follower. Currently reviewing an article from 2008 that says that it had worked on almost any action (I’m not sure if this will be fixed for TBC Classic) – so, if you buffed yourself, it would have worked. If a Paladin decides to tank 25-man raids using Greater Blessing of Might as we did with Greater Blessing of Kings in Classic, this will be the better choice.
I, myself, would choose the Scryers item since it’s a free 350 (or so) threat that costs no mana, and that may be potentially possible to pull off while spamming Greater Blessing of Might. (We’ll have to wait and see if this was or is going to be fixed with the release of Phase 5) I didn’t read anywhere that it triggered the GCD, so if that is true, then this choice is even better.