{Off-Meta} 11/23/17 Consecrated Sanctuary of Retribution Paladin

Class Builds
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This post is my personal answer to the age old question of … if I want to tank (or at least fill the role of being an aggro magnet) as a Paladin, how do I go about setting myself up to do that? :thinking:

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Credit Where Credit Is Due:

JugsOfLight: youtube channel link (female AI voice reading scripts, but good info nonetheless) :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Pallytime215: youtube channel link (a bit rambly at times, but decent number crunching and theorycrafting, including PvP)

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In order to be a successful aggro magnet as a Paladin, you’re going to need to abandon a few preconceptions that you might have from any experience(s) you gained as either a Warrior or as a Feral Druid, because Paladin tanking really is something of a different animal compared to those two classes. The biggest and most obvious difference being that as a Paladin you don’t have an “I AM YOUR OPPONENT!” styled Taunt spell that will demand attention no matter what as a Threat Override. Because of this, as a Paladin, if you’re going to hold aggro for a group, you need to do so “honestly” by building Threat the old fashioned way … through damage dealing, healing and multipliers. :saluting_face:

The problem with this strategy, from a Paladin’s perspective is that Players tend to be … hasty. :fast_forward_button:

“Yeah, yeah, patience! How long will that take!?” :enraged_face:
– Ed Gruberman

In many cases, simply hitting something ONCE seems to be the flag drop for everyone else to unload everything they’ve got, immediately, without waiting for the Paladin to build up any kind of Threat buffer whatsoever. It is at this point that it often becomes necessary to recite THE AGGRO MANTRA for your group, particularly if they seem to be especially determined to wipe at every opportunity, no matter how much or how well you coach them. :downcast_face_with_sweat:

  1. If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault.
  2. If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault.
  3. If the DPS dies, IT’S THEIR OWN DAMN FAULT !!! :face_with_symbols_on_mouth:

Even Warriors and Feral Druids who are tanking as aggro magnets need to get a little bit of a “head start” on building up a stack of Threat before everyone else dives in, but for some reason it seems like Paladins are rarely (if ever) granted this luxury, especially in pick up groups where almost everyone has an itchy trigger finger. However, if you can educate your group to work with your strengths, as a Paladin, then you’ll make a pretty decent tank. It just takes a slight adjustment in engagement strategies over what typically happens with Feral Druid or Warrior tanking. :+1:

And so, without further belaboring of the point … :sweat_smile:

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Level 60 Paladin ( 11 / 23 / 17 )

https://classicdb.ch/?talent#sVxzZVhthxzZV0xx0b

Holy (11 points)

  • Divine Intellect - Rank 5/5
    Increases your total Intellect by 10%.
  • Spiritual Focus - Rank 5/5
    Gives your Flash of Light and Holy Light spells a 70% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.
  • Consecration - Rank 1/1
    Consecrates the land beneath Paladin, doing 64 Holy damage over 8 sec to enemies who enter the area.

Protection (23 points)

  • Redoubt - Rank 5/5
    Increases your chance to block attacks with your shield by 30% after being the victim of a critical strike. Lasts 10 sec or 5 blocks.
  • Precision - Rank 3/3
    Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 3%.
  • Toughness - Rank 5/5
    Increases your armor value from items by 10%.
  • Blessing of Kings - Rank 1/1
    Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats by 10% for 5 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.
  • Improved Righteous Fury - Rank 3/3
    Increases the amount of threat generated by your Righteous Fury spell by 50%.
  • Anticipation - Rank 5/5
    Increases your Defense skill by 10.
  • Blessing of Sanctuary - Rank 1/1
    Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage dealt from all sources by up to 10 for 5 min. In addition, when the target blocks a melee attack the attacker will take 14 Holy damage. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Retribution (17 points)

  • Benediction - Rank 5/5
    Reduces the Mana cost of your Judgement and Seal spells by 15%.
  • Deflection - Rank 5/5
    Increases your Parry chance by 5%.
  • Conviction - Rank 5/5
    Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 5%.
  • Improved Retribution Aura - Rank 2/2
    Increases the damage done by your Retribution Aura by 50%.
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Warning: WALL OF TEXT CRITS YOU!!!

You have been warned!
No, seriously … I mean it.

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If you’re going to be tanking as a Paladin, you need to generate Threat in order to hold Aggro. You’ll have two (and a half) basic ways of doing this … physical/weapon damage, and Holy damage. The “half” way is by healing, which most tanks don’t do, but Paladins can, and there’s an interesting bit of trickery involved that I’ll need to explain in more detail.

Ironically, while you level up as a Paladin, your physical/weapon damage (and along with it, your Strength attribute) becomes less and less important over time. That’s because as you level up, more and more of your damage output is going to be (able to be) coming from (basically) your mana bar, via spell effects, rather than from your weapon (per se). Your weapon will remain important, but it’s primarily a TOOL for engaging the things about your class that are different from Warriors and Bear Druids who want to be aggro magnets.

The “main” way for Paladins to increase their damage output and their Threat generation(!) is through Holy spells and effects (go figure, eh? :innocent:) while you’re buffed with Righteous Fury to increase Threat generation from Holy damage and effects. Unfortunately, your options for actually doing Holy damage are remarkably limited:

  • Retribution Aura
  • Seal of Righteousness (Holy damage on every melee hit)
  • Judgement of Righteousness (Holy damage, 10 yard range)
  • Seal of Command (chance for Holy damage on every melee hit)
  • Judgement of Command (Holy damage, doubled against stunned or incapacitated targets)
  • Blessing of Sanctuary (requires successful Block)
  • Holy Shield (requires successful Block)
  • Consecration (AoE Holy damage, requires 11 talent points spent in Holy tree)

I might have missed another source of Holy damage output, but to my knowledge this is basically it. For our purposes, the main sources of Holy damage that you’ll be doing as an aggro magnet/tank will be from Seal/Judgement of Righteousness, Blessing of Sanctuary, Holy Shield and Consecration … except that in this specific build I dropped Holy Shield in favor of reaching for Improved Retribution Aura (Rank 2/2).

Point of clarification:

  • Righteous Fury is a +60% Threat from Holy spells.
  • Improved Righteous Fury (3/3) increases that bonus by +50%.
  • Therefore … with 3/3 talent, Righteous Fury yields 60*1.5= +90% Threat from Holy spells.

This is basically “Warrior Improved Defensive Stance” / “Feral Instict Bear Form” for Paladins type of stuff, but it only applies to Holy spells (so white/physical damage doesn’t yield buffed up Threat). The important thing to remember, which I’ll get to later on, is that you have more ways to generate Threat from Holy than just (merely) damage. :shushing_face:

Consecration is excellent for Herd & Burn tactics, but is really only mana efficient against large groups of enemies (preferably 3+). Against single targets, Consecration is simply mana cost wasteful for the amount of Holy damage (and therefore, Threat) it can generate. You have better tools for generating Holy damage (and thus, Threat) for less mana cost when dealing with 1-2 targets at a time. Consecration starts to break even on mana cost around 3+ simultaneous targets, but even then it’s rather pricey. The important thing you need to know is that Consecration is what makes it possible for Paladins to be the best AoE aggro magnets of any class, since they can use Consecration repeatedly for multi-target Threat magnification (with the Righteous Fury buff), rather than being limited by a long cooldown on AoE aggro control spells.

However, because of the way the 5 Second Rule of Casting Debuff works, it is often times more mana efficient to wait to refresh Consecration until AFTER you’ve received a mana recovery from Spirit tick (LINK to why this matters to Sustainment). If you’re playing a “Spirit heavy” itemization (as demonstrated by JugsOfLight) it is possible to abuse use a high mana recovery from Spirit WHILE IN COMBAT in order to maximize both your damage output AND your Threat generation simultaneously, making you a better aggro magnet. However, this capability is “somewhat delayed” until you can obtain Seal/Judgement of Light (at Level 30) and Seal/Judgement of Wisdom (at 38). Prior to then, Seal/Judgement of Righteousness should be adequate until you level up into your 30s and 40s.

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For Seal of Righteousness, you’d want to be making a comparison to the physical/weapon bonus damage you get from Seal of the Crusader. You can run a Critter Test and check your combat log for how much bonus Holy damage you’re adding with Seal of Righteousness. With your Righteous Fury (self) buff in the mix, which you should always have up (even when soloing), so long as Seal of Righteousness is adding at least 65% as much damage as Seal of the Crusader, you’ll be breaking even on Threat generation, even if you’re not breaking even on damage output. Once you’ve got 3/3 Improved Righteous Fury from the Protection tree, once you’re getting at least 50% as much bonus damage from Seal of Righteousness as you would be from Seal of the Crusader, you’ll still be breaking even on Threat generation, even if you’re not breaking even on damage generation.

Because of this tradeoff between physical damage output and Holy damage output, I often times find myself using Seal of the Crusader while soloing, since Threat isn’t a consideration worth bothering with while solo, but then switching over to using Seal of Righteousness in groups for increased Threat generation so as to hold aggro better.

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As a Protection Paladin you’re also able to generate Holy damage from your Shield as well as from your Melee Weapon. This is accomplished via the combination of Blessing of Sanctuary and Holy Shield talents, both of which will inflict Holy damage onto an attacker when your Paladin successfully blocks. Note that adding a Shield Spike and using Seal of Righteousness can start adding up to some really serious Holy damage production, all of which will get multiplied by (3/3 Improved) Righteous Fury when calculating Threat generation. That’s because Holy Shield will deal Holy damage on a block. Blessing of Sanctuary will deal Holy damage on a block. Your Shield Spike will deal physical damage on a block … and will trigger Seal of Righteousness to deal additional Holy damage on a block because the Shield Spike counts as an “attack” for the purposes of getting Seal of Righteousness to proc. That’s a pretty good chunk of Holy damage per block, all of which does increased Threat. So really, much more than a Protection Warrior, a Protection Paladin is extremely dependent upon their Shield for both defense AND offense AND threat generation.

For really serious Holy damage output from your Melee Weapon and/or Shield, particularly against groups of foes, you may want to consider using a Masterwork Stormhammer that can proc chain lightning on attacks, including Judgements cast beyond melee range, since those chain lightning procs can in turn proc Seal of Righteousness for additional Holy damage, meaning win-win-win on Threat generation against groups of foes … before throwing Consecration into the mix for dealing with groups.

Likewise, use of a Force Reactive Disk with a Shield Spike and Seal of Righteousness can yield some rather ridiculous chain reactions that proc way more Holy damage (and Threat) than you’d be expecting to generate. Just make sure to bring plenty of copies of the Force Reactive Disk so that you don’t blow all of its Durability “too soon” in combat. Note that exercising this option can get expensive on repair bills in somewhat of a hurry. :sweat_smile:

However, the thing that REALLY makes me sit up and take notice in the realm of itemization for endgame BiS Shield for a Paladin isn’t either of these …

… it’s THIS …

However, apparently, the Block Buff from Argent Defender sustains (for 10 seconds) even if you switch Shields (apparently) … so get a proc from an Argent Defender and then switch to Force Reactive Disk (with Thorium Shield Spikes added for shizzle) and … hilarity ensues? :sweat_smile:

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The extra “half” measure of being able to generate Threat from healing is convoluted enough to feel somewhat bizarre, in the context of a Paladin acting as an aggro magnet. That’s because Judgement of Light puts a debuff onto your target, attributable to your Paladin, that has a chance to proc a heal every time that debuffed target gets hit. What’s interesting about this is that every Judgement of Light heal that actually heals damage (so over heals don’t count) yields 1 Threat for every 2 Health that get healed via Judgement of Light. The Threat for those heal procs don’t accrue to the character that attacked though. Instead, the Threat generated by those heal procs of Judgement of Light accrues to the Paladin.

This then means that it is perfectly possible for a Paladin to generate healing Threat, via Judgement of Light being procced by (wounded) allies, in addition to their physical/weapon threat and Holy damage production. However, in order for that healing to “count” towards the Paladin’s generation of Threat, only heals up to full health generate Threat, while over healing does not generate any additional Threat.

Now what makes this a particularly interesting option is that the Lawbringer Armor Tier 1 Raid Set offers 2 set bonuses (at 3 and 8 pieces) which enhance your Paladin’s ability to heal a party by having the Paladin attack, rather than just cast (healing) spells.

The Lawbringer 3 piece set bonus increases the chance to proc Judgement of Light heals by an additional +10% (raising the chance from 20% to 30%, I believe, so a 1.5x multiplier on the proc chance) … and the 8 piece set bonus grants a chance ON EVERY MELEE HIT your Paladin makes to heal your entire party.

This then creates a most unusual situation where it becomes perfectly possible to heal both an entire raid as well as the Paladin’s own party in a raid without casting any healing spells … which can be rather important on any boss fights where there’s a healing spell lockout, preventing healers from using healing spells. But healing ANY ally from a Judgement of Light debuff on a target? Perfectly legal, even while the casting of healing spells is silenced(!). Likewise, healing a party by proc chance from swinging a melee weapon is perfectly legal, even while casting of healing spells is silenced(!).

On the Light’s Hope forums (before they got nuked), Taladril had posted an in-depth analysis of Protection Paladin survivability and Threat generation, and found them “lacking” in comparison to Warriors and Feral Druids on both counts. However, one of the factors that simply couldn’t be modeled accurately or adequately was how Paladins increased in performance through use of Judgement of Light to heal their party/raid and generate additional Threat through those healing procs, as opposed to through the casting of healing spells. The best guess was that under ideal conditions, a properly geared Protection Paladin would at least come close to, or be somewhat competitive with, Warriors and Feral Druids … although the road(s) to that performance was slightly convoluted and somewhat confusing. It was also a bit counter-intuitive, but at the same time it conclusively showed that the more allies a Paladin can potentially proc Judgement of Light through, the more Threat the Paladin will generate, provided that those heal procs aren’t resulting in overheals which produce no Threat. From memory, it seemed as though the break even point for Judgement of Light procs (that didn’t over heal) was somewhere around 10 per second, which from a 40 man raid ought to be doable.

The basic “shape” of the Threat production profiles was that raid geared Protection Paladins were running at close to HALF of the Threat generation of Feral Druids and Warriors geared for either self protection or for Threat. However, the obvious missing element in those (solo) raid boss benchmarking tests was the inclusion of the rest of the raid members, which a Paladin is balanced to leverage and synergize with in ways that a solo tank simply cannot, particularly in any sort of solo performance benchmarking test. However, once we were able to make some simple assumptions for the rest of a raid being healed by Judgement of Light procs, along with the effects of the 3-piece and 8-piece Lawbringer Armor set, enough of the deficit in Threat generation was either mitigated or made up for as to make a Protection Paladin something of a competitive aggro magnet on Threat generation. The key insight however was that in order to achieve that near peer parity in performance, a Paladin would have to be also doing a LOT of healing(!) via Judgement of Light procs (and the 3- and 8-piece set bonus from the Lawbringer Armor helped that effort markedly), which would in turn reduce some of the demand for healing services beyond the aggro magnet(s) in the raid due to the supplemental healing that a Paladin could provide simply by attacking, rather than by casting healing spells.

Easiest way to think about this is that if a Judgement of Light procs for 50 healing, that generates 25 Threat for the Paladin who cast that Judgement onto the target … per proc … so long as the recipients of those procs weren’t already at full health (because overheals produce no Threat). With enough people who need healing concurrently (see: Lifetap for Warlocks), this can become a major source of Threat generation for a Paladin. It’s also very nearly “mana free healing” for everyone else, reducing the “load” on any healers in the group, freeing up mana resources to be put to other uses (such as more damage production). But the real thing to pay attention to is that Paladins can generate Threat from (attack) actions that OTHER characters do, making them literal force multipliers.

In the (decade?) since that original research into Judgement of Light, it has been discovered that healing/mana gain done by Seal/Judgement of Light AND Wisdom (all 4!) generate Threat. Because they’re Holy school spells, (Improved) Righteous Fury COUNTS as a Threat enhancer of the health/mana gained from these seals and judgements.

Which then circles back around to the build strategy that JugsOfLight was making … if you can do more damage with Consecration than with your weapon … and you can “net meter” the mana cost of Consecration using Seal+Judgement of Light while piling on the Spirit gear … what do you need slow/big weapons backed by lots of Strength for again? :roll_eyes: When you’re close to breaking even on mana costs in heavy combat, yet you’re still able to (AoE) hold aggro “just fine” in dungeons without needing to stop to drink after every fight … wait, what was the question again? :thinking:

Suffice it to say, there is a way for a Paladin to “compete” with Warrior and Feral Druid tanks … although the route to achieving that competition is somewhat convoluted and non-intuitive if all you concentrate on is physical/weapon damage and Holy damage production to the exclusion of all else. If you aren’t allowing a Protection Paladin to bring ALL of the things they can do for you into a fight, you’re forcing them to fight with one hand tied behind their back.

For example … if you put a Protection Paladin into a party with four Warlocks, who are using Lifetap to convert health into mana so as to always have room for being healed by Judgement of Light procs and the Lawbringer Armor 8-piece set proc, you’ve essentially created a situation in which those four Warlocks are looking at a potentially “bottomless mana pool” situation simply because they can keep using Lifetap to get mana themselves without draining a healer’s mana casting heals to keep those Warlocks healed up. In that case, the Paladin becomes a force multiplier in an endgame raid or dungeon setting for their party of DPS monsters (who all get Blessing of Salvation every 5 minutes).

Or you could swap out one of the Warlocks for a Moonkin Druid, who gets up in melee with the Protection Paladin and helps boost the spell critical hit for everyone in the group, increasing the chances for Improved Shadow Bolt procs for each Warlock. The key point is that this blended hybrid of aggro magnet/healer via procs, rather than cast spells, opens up a variety of different options for raid composition beyond the “bog standard” one(s) that everyone has taken as gospel since Elitist Jerks first espoused them as being The Best™ (and therefore ONLY!) way to do things over a almost two decades ago.

So many people make the mistake of saying the word “viable” when what they really mean (and ought to be) say(ing) is “optimal” instead.

Anyway, back to the talent choices for leveling progression. :wink:

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My personal preference is to spend the first 11 talent points in Holy so as to get Consecration by Level 20. Having Consecration by Level 20 will allow you to complete the Tome of Valor Paladin quest in Westfall (past the Desdmines exit) MUCH more easily than trying to protect Daphne Stilwell from the Defias spawns without Consecration. All you need to do is let the ambush spawn groups of Defias get close to Daphne and then use Consecration to redirect their ire/attention onto yourself, so that Daphne isn’t taking their damage (since if she dies, you fail the quest). Having Consecration also helps you control aggro better in the Deadmines, if your group isn’t intent on running around like chickens with their heads cut off, AVOIDING your Consecration area, after getting overeager and pulling aggro themselves (see: The Aggro Mantra posted above for what they did wrong). :scream:

In the early levels (especially 10-14), Divine Strength feels like the better option over Divine Intellect, but that’s honestly only true for the early game (basically 10-30). Once you start moving into the mid (31-47) and late (48-60) game, Divine Intellect winds up being a better option (because of increased mana pool size, if nothing else), even if you’re wearing Plate armor. At low levels, you’d get +1 DPS out of Divine Strength for every 70 Strength you’ve got on your character, which is a pretty marginal return on investment. Likewise, you need to have “plenty of Strength” as well as “appreciable amounts of Block Value” to reap the rewards from Divine Strength on you Shield Blocking ability, but at low levels (when all of these factors haven’t scaled up yet) the return on investment remains marginal to superficial (see: “twice nothing is still nothing”) in terms of making a difference.

For Levels 15-19, I prefer Spiritual Focus over Improved Seal of Righteousness. That’s because, if I need to heal myself (or anyone else, for that matter) while I’m getting beat on (see: tank role) then I want to reduce the pushback on my healing spells a lot more than I need to be getting an extra +1 Holy damage out of Seal of Righteousness. This is yet another “twice nothing is still nothing” situation. That’s because you need to be dealing 20 Holy damage per hit … base … from Seal of Righteousness in order to add a mere +3 Holy damage per hit from 5/5 Improved Seal of Righteousness. Swinging a 1h Weapon, you’re really not going to be getting that kind of performance out of Seal of Righteousness until around Level 42/50/58. Because of this factor, Improved Seal of Righteousness simply doesn’t DO all that much advantageous for you until you’re heading towards the late/end-game. Starting out as a lowbie, Improved Seal of Righteousness winds up being a LOT of talent points for barely any gain for a 1h Weapon plus Shield user. It takes a long time for your Paladin to mature enough for Improved Seal of Righteousness to be worth it as an investment. In the meantime, until that happens, do yourself another favor and invest in Spiritual Focus. Every time you need to heal yourself while taking damage (which will happen A LOT) you’ll be glad you did. :wink:

At Level 20, invest in Consecration and then try to find a group to help you with protecting Daphne Stilwell at her farm for the Level 20 Paladin quest. I’ve found it extremely easy to convince a Deadmines group to stick together long enough after leaving the dungeon instance to help me complete this quest, even if not everyone stays around to help. All you have to do is keep Daphne alive to the end and you’ll complete the quest. A party of 2 can do this quest, but 3+ makes it almost trivial in terms of success rate.

So starting from Level 21+, start marching down the Protection tree.

Improved Devotion Aura is a “newbie trap” talent. Go full Redoubt instead, even though in this build Shield Specialization is skipped.

3/3 Precision is non-negotiable, and needs to be invested in from Levels 26-28. This cuts down on your Miss chances considerably, increasing not only your DPS throughput onto your targets but also helps prevent Judgements from expiring because you didn’t score another hit to renew duration before their duration expired. Precision makes being a Paladin a lot less frustrating!

Guardian’s Favor is essentially a PvP defensive talent, which is why I don’t invest in it at all, and instead invest fully into Toughness. I would however recommend investing 5 talent points into Toughness at Levels 29-33 so as to maximize the value of your armor protection. Follow up with Levels 34-38 putting 5 talent points into Anticipation to give you overmatch on Defense. For Levels 39-40 put 2 talent points into Improved Righteous Fury (you’re going to start needing it by this point). Level 41 spends 1 talent point in Blessing of Sanctuary.

Blessing of Sanctuary IS MANDATORY and becomes the default Blessing you will use on yourself pretty much at all times. That’s because Blessing of Sanctuary is a Holy damage output multiplier for you, so long as you’ve got a Shield equipped (and you do have a Shield, don’t you?). It’s at this point that you can start using Seal/Judgement of Righteousness full time as a Holy damage multiplier with Blessing of Sanctuary to start really ramping up your Holy damage output, which in turn gets multiplied by Righteous Fury to generate LOTS of Threat when soloing. Alternatively, use of Seal/Judgement of Light and/or Wisdom are available for improved sustain in contexts where it makes more sense.

From Level 42-58 start marching down the Retribution tree.

  1. Benediction
  2. Deflection
  3. Conviction
  4. Improved Retribution Aura

Benediction mainly makes Blessings, Seals and Judgements cheaper to cast.

Deflection does two things simultaneously, it improves protection/surviability but also improves the opportunities for Parry Haste (subtract up to 40% of weapon speed off the remaining swing timer), enabling more weapon swings per block of time than would otherwise have been possible. This then means not only an incoming damage “cancel” effect, but also a “more attacks/seal procs/judgement procs per minute” bonus side effect … which in turn generates more Threat than the alternative (without Deflection).

Conviction for more critical hits, doesn’t need a lot of explaining. :wink:

Improved Retribution Aura is the “capstone” of investment into the Retribution talent tree because of the fact that Retribution Aura is going to be contributing a SIGNIFICANT fraction of damage potential that can be generated by a Protection Paladin. Furthermore, the threat generated by (Improved) Retribution Aura is also enhanced by (Improved) Righteous Fury, because … Holy damage. So even this choice is about being a better AoE aggro magnet.

For Levels 59-60, circle back to Protection to finish out Improved Righteous Fury (59) and finish out with Blessing of Kings (60), the latter of which can be spammed to generate Threat. Saving Blessing of Kings until the end, when peers have enough attributes to “feel” the +10% to attributes buff just feels more satisfying.

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As for your attributes, when you’re starting out early on, try and pile on as much Strength as you can possibly get, because Strength is increasing both your offense (through Attack Power) and your defense (through increasing the damage reduction offered by your Shield when you Block). Towards the end game, however, if you’re wearing Plate, you’re pretty much going to want every attribute … even Spirit.

Strength continues to offer benefits to your 1h Weapon and to your Shield your entire adventuring career.

Agility increases your armor value (enhanced by Toughness), improves your chance to Dodge, and increases your chances of scoring a melee critical hit, which towards the endgame can actually result in a higher overall melee damage throughput than simply dedicating yourself to increasing your Strength. It becomes the difference between a (for you pleasant, for your target, unfortunate) chaotic spike in damage production versus a reliable steady pressure damage production profile.

Stamina is ALWAYS useful for an aggro magnet, since it offers “margin of error” in the event of unlucky dice rolls against your Paladin.

Intellect is helpful in that it increases the size of your mana pool, and a Protection Paladin will be using a pretty fair chunk of mana on a routine basis.

Spirit is what most people consider their dump stat in their builds, mainly because they would rather /sit in order to eat and drink than spend any part of their attribute budget on Spirit, which often times isn’t doing anything for you during combat, particularly if you’re casting a lot of spells. That’s because health recovery from Spirit stops completely while in combat, and mana recovery from Spirit is halted by the 5 Second Rule of Casting, which you can work around through a combination of cast and channeled spells of long duration to cast/channel, but Paladins don’t have access to that kind of combination of spells to cast. :slightly_frowning_face:

Spirit is your “anti-downtime” attribute though, and the more Spirit you have, the less time you need to spend eating and drinking in order to recover your health and mana reserves and resources. This means that with a high enough Spirit attribute (and skillful arrangement of spellcasting timing!), you put less pressure on your inventory for consumables to keep yourself topped up with health and mana. Of course, most Players look at that as an easy tradeoff and would rather spend an inventory slot (or two, or several!) on consumable items than “spend” attribute points on Spirit from their attribute budget. However, as JugsOfLight has conclusively demonstrated, a Paladin who doesn’t need to stop to drink can be quite the force to reckoning with.

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And that’s my take on how to be an aggro magnet as a Protection Paladin. The complicated thing is that in any “benchmarking” solo situation you’re going to be putting a Protection Paladin at a disadvantage relative to their Warrior and Feral Druid peers. I say that because Warriors and Feral Druids don’t have ways to generate Threat for themselves based on what actions other party/raid group members are doing. Only Paladins are uniquely advantaged by being a part of a group in this way. Of course, you can’t exactly run simulations of The Perfect™ Group dynamic to show off a Paladin’s true power as an aggro magnet, because by that point there are so many variables in play that it becomes difficult to attribute success to any ONE contributor, even though the whole group is better off for having brought a Paladin along.

So in that respect, Paladins are uniquely weakened by solo situations, but also uniquely advantaged by groups. Since many of those group advantages don’t show up on the damage/healing meters in a way that can be usefully attributed to the Paladin responsible for those advantages, those benefits tend to be minimized or overlooked in favor of more easily/simply/reliably quantifiable solo performance metrics, rather than the more loosely defined group dynamic metrics.

Needless to say, the build plan I’ve outlined above is the one that I’m pursuing with my Paladin. May the Light shine upon all those who choose to follow in my footsteps.

/pray
/cast Blessing of Sanctuary
/cast Seal of Righteousness