Protection Paladin PVP - Part II

With my paladin now having dinged 70 I decided to toss myself into the AH and grab myself some gear to bring my defense rating into the 490 range. I am still not sure if it will carry significant benefit to boost DR for PVP over other stats like resilience + agility but at least I can savely do some 5-mans when I feel like it.

In the meantime I spent a few hours doing Eye of the Storm and AV in order to get some honor together for the PVP merciless gladiator weapon and shield which is bound to hit the honor vendors on wednesday night.

I am starved for stamina at the moment since all that extra defense rating came at the cost of about 1500 HP but there is something to be said for the extra dodge/parry/block rating.

A few matches in I decided to drop my green spell damage mace for something more substantial namely a main hand fish.

Ironically I couldn't really feel the difference between using a fish and an actual weapon so I spent most of the day slapping people across the face with a large smelly fish hoping they would get annoyed enough to start bashing my shield and taking some real damage.

And it went well... no... better... it went excellently. The protection paladin makes for an excellent protector of flag spots or anything else that needs defended. Those sneaky rogues that would rip my warlock apart in mere seconds now skewer themselves on my holy shield unable to do much damage if at all unless I am actually stunned.

Tunnel vision turned out to be my greatest ally. I could toss myself into a crowd of melee players and they would go crazy on me without taking into regard other people around me or as much as consider disengaging after they see I am practically taking no damage.

At some point I was holding the flag point in EotS against 2 warriors a rogue and an enhancement shaman (I think) and managed to tie them down long enough for reinforcements to arive.

Even in shoddy outland greens and blues the survivability of the protection paladin is amazing to the point where they dedicated a priest to mind control me and jump me into large gaping holes in the ground (although I suspect I am not the only victim of that deplorable tactic...).

The prot pally also seems to make an excellent flag runner. With temporary immunity to movement impairing effects blessing of freedom is great and those pesky arrows hunters shoot at me result in little more than a lovely block sound.

There's 2 significant problems with the protection paladin as is though.

1. Damage: You do appaling damage unless you funnel your reckoning charges into a cloth wearer and even then it's not amazing
2. Disengage: People do disengage once in a while (especially rogues) and there's almost nothing I can do about it.

I am thinking a few modifications on my paladin spec to include pursuit of justice and some heavy investigation in Engineering bombs and other goodies might be able to at least partially solve my problem. A rocket launcher, a net-o-matic, an oversized stack of frost grenades and fel iron bombs should give me some of the utility I need.

I wonder what else engineering has that could be useful.

Protection Paladin PVP

Having spent the greater part of the weekend trying to level up my protection paladin (whose now happily sitting at lvl 67) I started to think a little about the future of the character.

Initially the idea had been to raise a fully fledged protection paladin that would eventually see the inside of 10-mans and 25-mans alike as a tank / off-tank. However being guildless, with wrath looming in the distance and me having a tendency to play things solo for the most part anyway this goal seems further away now than it ever has.

Refreshing holy shield every 10 seconds while you're standing in between 15 mobs really gives you time to think on a protection paladin. I didn't want to give up the awesomeness that is pally aoe (I have to quest after all), I didn't want to respec ret (I rather like to think that that's more of a warrior thing) and I am no fan of canned healing (receiving it yes but handing it out not so much).

So that left me a in a bit of a pickle. I could do the usual route of 5-mans but the thought of pugging things isn't really appealing for the 'chance' of a drop.

To break the rut of grinding / questing I decided to toss myself into a few battlegrounds and almost immediately noticed that I could occupy quite a few enemies (especially with a healer in tow) without too much trouble.
Granted, I didn't kill anything. But consecrating everything, throwing my shield at everything and doing the occasional spot of self / off-healing meant that even with my crappy outland green/blue gear I was able to fend off more than I expected.

Occupying 3+ people in a WSG turned out to be a huge benefit. Our manouverability increased ten-fold. Unwanted targets were simply dropped off in my range and at some point I even got some backup and we were literally dominating the center field.

It was right there and then that I decided that a protection paladin was indeed viable for PVP. Not from a generic 'must do max damage' perspective but from a tactical perspective.

A protection paladin should do in a BG what a protection paladin does in PVP. Generate as much threat as possible on as many enemies as possible and keep the damage away from those who can't take it.

I may never see the top of any meter with a PVP protection paladin but with a little effort, the right gear choice I can make the first step of turning the unorganized rabble that is the horde into a proper standing army (or at least look spiffy whilst I am standing next to my battle standard).

This may just be the start of a journey into protection PVP.