PvE Protection Paladin Tank Addons & Macros

Protection Paladin Tank

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Stat Priority

Best Races

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Rotation & Cooldowns

Best Professions

Best in Slot (BiS) & Pre-Raid Gear

Addons & Macros

Beyond directly making your character stronger through talents, equipment, enchants, etc, there are 2 more things you can use in order to improve your performance as a player: addons & macros. It cannot be understated how much of an impact they can have on your gameplay — increasing your DPS or healing by a large percentage, preventing you from dying, etc. You will need the best addons & macros to be the best Protection Paladin you can be!

Addons

General

Protection Paladins do not require a whole lot of addons or macros, only having the need for a few essential tools that most classes and specializations will want to acquire as well.

• DeadlyBossMods – Allows you to track boss abilities. A must-have for raiding.
• Details – Shows you how much damage, healing, etc everyone in your raid is doing. Flex on your friends! As a tank, you also get to track threat with Details TinyThreat.
• WeakAuras– An addon that allows you to create custom notifications or to modify your U.I.

WeakAuras

WeakAuras is a versatile addon with almost limitless possibilities. It allows you to install mini-addons created by other players, which are confusingly also called “WeakAuras”, in order to perform specific tasks, such as tracking the cooldown of a spell, having a visual or audio notification when something procs, giving you a warning when a boss uses an ability, etc. You can find WeakAuras that suit your needs on wago.io. It’s strongly recommended that you use WeakAuras; they’re a huge quality of life boost.

As a Protection Paladin, you will generally want to keep track of your defensive abilities and your utility abilities. You can create separate notifications for each of them, having them displayed as customized bars on your screen showing you a clear view of their duration. This is especially useful for reapplying Holy Shield, and Sacred Shield, in case you don’t have a Holy Paladin in your raid group. Secondly, you can create custom bars that allow you to better see the duration of your big defensive abilities and their respective cooldowns, going as far as creating audio notifications when they become available or when their duration ends.

It would also be a good idea to individually create WeakAuras for effects such as trinkets, allowing you to properly time your cooldowns with your trinket procs.

Macros

Essential

These macros will help you significantly, allowing you to tank more efficiently or save other players and yourself during emergencies.

Panic Macro

In general, you don’t want to use all of your defensive cooldowns at the same time, because you’ll likely waste them — 1 of them is usually enough to save your life. However, there are situation where things go south very quickly, and it helps to have a “panic” macro you can use as a tank, potentially saving your life in a sticky situation.

#showtooltip Divine Protection
/cast Divine Protection
/cast Divine Sacrifice
/cancelaura Divine Sacrifice
/use Fel Healthstone

Startattack Macro

Another useful type of macro for physical damage dealers is startattack macros. You will want to add the /startattack command on all of your abilities. This ensures that your character begins attacking as soon as possible, which can help you get the first hit on an enemy and thus build threat on it before others do.

#showtooltip
/cast Hammer of the Righteous
/startattack

#showtooltip
/cast Judgement of Light
/startattack

#showtooltip
/cast Shield of Righteousness
/startattack

Bubble Cancel Macro

There are occasions where as a Protection Paladin you’d like to use Divine Shield in order to quickly remove a harmful spell off yourself. However, while you’re invulnerable, any targets previously attacking you will temporarily switch their attention to the next highest threat target that they can actually attack — which will very likely be a DPS or healer.

In those situations, you need a macro like this one. It uses your bubble, but then cancels it right away, so the boss won’t have time to attack someone else.

#showtooltip
/cast Divine Shield
/cancelaura Divine Shield

Helpful

These macros will generally not be make-or-break in terms of your performance, as they don’t directly improve your ability to tank. However, they can help you in smaller but very real ways, offering significant quality of life improvements, so we recommend having them.

Hand of Protection Macro

Protection Paladins have access to a plethora of utility abilities called “Hands”. These abilities are used on your allies (and sometimes also yourself) and can help them in a variety of ways. However, as a tank you generally don’t want to stop targeting your current target — potentially the boss — in order to target your allies with a Hand.

In come mouseover macros to the rescue. You simply mouse-over an ally’s character model or raid / party unit frame, press the button, and you use the spell on them automatically, without requiring a change of target. If you have nobody on your mouseover, these macros will simply use that spell on your current target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, exists, help, nodead] Hand of Protection; Hand of Protection

Similarly, you can create macros for your other “Hands” spells, allowing you to cast them without being forced to click on a target.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, exists, help, nodead] Hand of Freedom; Hand of Freedom

And so on. It can also be beneficial to have a mouseover macro for your Cleanse.

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, exists, help, nodead] Cleanse; Cleanse