ZeroAngel's Quick Guide to Prot Pallys!

An effective tank of any class must accomplish two things:

1. Hold aggro on monsters the group is fighting
2. Mitigate damage from those monsters enough to stay alive

As a tank, you first want to become Defense capped.

Level 80 Heroic Defense cap is 535.
Level 80 Raid Defense cap is 540.
It will not hurt you to have more than the hit cap, it just adds to your avoidance.

At first, you may want to enchant for defense, but as your gear progresses, you will want to enchant for other things. For example, you will want to have [Titanium Plating]

It will be okay to enchant for Defense, however, you probably do not want to gem for it, if you have a gem with two stats, like Stamina and Defense (Enduring Eye of Zul), it will be okay. You should focus more on your gear for your source of defense.

For your Talents, its hard to go wrong. It is really what you want, as long as you have all of the ESSENTIAL talents.

From the Protection tree
1. [Divine Strength] 5/5
2. [Anticipation] 5/5
3. [Toughness] 5/5
4. [Improved Righteous Fury] 3/3
5. [Improved Devotion Aura] 3/3
6. [Blessing of Sanctuary] 1/1
7. [Sacred Duty] 2/2
8. [One-Handed Weapon Specialization] 3/3
9. [Holy Shield] 1/1
10. [Ardent Defender] 3/3
11. [Redoubt] 3/3
12. [Combat Expertise] 3/3
13. [Touched by the Light] 3/3
14. [Avenger's Shield] 1/1
15. [Guarded by the Light] 2/2
16. [Shield of the Templar] 3/3
17. [Hammer of the Righteous] 1/1

From Retribution
1. [Deflection] 5/5
2. [Improved Judgements] 1/2 (ONE ONE POINT INTO IT NEEDED!)(Up to player to fill the other point into it)

It essentially does not matter how you spend the rest of your talents. It is the player's preference.

Now that you have a spec you can work with, we will be getting into rotations.

Paladins in general have a very unique rotation pattern. For tanks, it is the "969696" rotation.

You have two moves with 6 a second cool down [Shield of Righteousness] and [Hammer of the Righteous], and three [Holy Shield], [Judgement], and [Consecration], with a 9 second cool down. holy shield, averages out at 9 seconds since the spell itself has an 8 second cool down, but the duration of the buff is 10 seconds. Also, most bosses if not all, will not be able to swing and knock off all of the stacks of holy shield. that being said, here is a perfect example of the rotation.

Only one point into [Improved Judgements] is needed because of the theory crafting and mechanics behind the 969 rotation. You want to stagger your moves, starting one (either a 9 or 6 it does not really matter) and moving to the other.

I personally try to stick with this rotation.

Holy Shield -> Shield of the Righteous -> Judgement -> Hammer of the Righteousness -> Consecration -> then Shield of the righteousness again.

I move down my 9 second cool downs, "Holy Shield -> Judge -> Consecrate" and switch between Shield of the Righteous and Hammer of the Righteous in between each of my 9 second cool downs.

Paladins, along with most hybrid classes, are situational based, the player has to judge when it is most necessary to use which spell. This means, if you are pulling 4 or 5 + mobs, you might want to choose a different way to start your rotation off.

Holy shield, avenger's shield, consecrate, hammer of the righteous, then holy shield again ... can allow you to pop back into the 969 rotation.

Good and well thought guide. I would like to see some other prot pally opinions on this.

Ill just add a couple of cents here with regard to talents.

Spiritual Attunement (1/2)
This talent is what got us into the tanking buisness to start with. Way back in teh day it was a trainer skill... but that made holy pali's nearly impossible to OoM so they made it a talent in the protection tree, changed Blessing of Sanctuary into a gimicky talent that gives us mana back in a way somewhat like rage (though I really miss the old school version) and stuck us with divine plea. These are great talents if you have a few mobs to tank (and they hit at a normal rate) but on many boss fights and awkward pull mechanics you will quickly find yourself OoM if you are not getting any mana back from healing. Some pali's like putting 2 points into it, but I think this is overkill. The one point, however, is manditory.

Judgemet Of The Just (2/2)
This talent is also manditory, but technically only for the raid. The amount of physical damage that this reduces on most bosses is very significant. However, if you know another tank, or possibly DPS, is bringing this you will likely not need it.

Vindication (2/2)
This is in essentially the same boat as JotJ. It reduces the amount of physical damage dealt by most bosses significantly, but only one player needs to bring this debuff.

At this point most pali's start to think of how they can increase their threat and damage. Im jsut going to say that there are a lot of number crunchers and data miners out there that have spent a lot of time battling which skills are most efficient at this. However, the most reliable and easy to use ones are listed below in order of their efficency:
Crusade
Conviction
Seals of the Pure
Reckoning