Sans Pants is back!  This Season Bearspirit and I decided to make another run at 2v2 Arena awesomeness.

It’s been a while, since about mid-season 6, since I’ve PVPed.  In that season, Bear and I put in a few weeks climbing the ranks (only got to 1350ish) but then real life took priority, and we weren’t able to finish the season.  Dang, no Gladiator title.

Welp, at the start of this season Bear and I got all excited again and it was time to fire it up and see how bad we can piss off our ladies by playing too much WoW.  Turns out, we can’t get the Gladiator title this season either due to game changes.  Good thing too, else…

So I start doing what every wanna-be-good WoW player does when they venture into something new…google research.  Seems that a lot of people were rockin some PVP with Protection Paladins…whaaaa?  So up until the recent 3.2.2 patch, we played with me as a Prot Pally healer.  How did this work?  Here was the deal.

Touched by the Light gave a ridiculous increase to Spell Power because it scaled based on Stamina, and PVP gear has a crap-ton of Stamina.  This talent came about with the Echoes of Doom patch pre WoTLK.  Its purpose was to aid in helping Blizzard with homogenizing all the tanking plate in the game.  You remember the days of tanking plate with Spell Power?  Yah, good times.  Pallies used to have to manage Spell Power in order to generate threat.  I remember trying to juggle Defense Cap, Block Cap (102.4% to push crushing blows off the table), Stamina, armor, and all the other good tankings stats…and Spell Power.  It was silly.  Tanking with a mage sword.  So Blizzard gave us this talent to get rid of the spell power tanking plate.  They must not have considered its effect in PVP…seeing as how they nerfed it in 3.2.2 making it scale with Strength (of which holy PVP gear has none).

The second key ability to the Prot Pally healer is Avenger’s Shield.  Avenger’s Shield is already kinda nasty in the way that it silences and dazes enemies.  But glyphed with Glyph of Avenger’s Shield it gets serious cause it becomes a hard-hitting silence.

Also, in the prot tree, Hammer of Justice  ended up being on a 20 second cooldown thanks to Improved Hammer of Justice and Judgements of the Just.

The final ability is that Divine Plea as almost always available because of the Guarded by the Light talent.

So ok, at this point you’re thinking what I was at this point in my research…big deal.  So you get some more spell power, but not enough to be mind blowing…and you get a silence…and more stuns…and more mana replenishment…thats it?  Well yes.  To be honest, I wasn’t convinced either.  The healing strategy basically boils down to spamming Flash of Light with Sacred Shield up on the target.  The flashes hit pretty heavy, so they are effective so the healing can be pretty solid.  The silence is pretty useful for trying to get a kill or for slowing a runner, but it’s not game changing.  The improved stuns really are there to make up for the lack of Holy Shock that comes with a traditional holy build because the Prot healer has no instants.  The Prot build sacrifices mobility to gain the items listed above.  Pallies are already not very mobile healers (freakin druids), so this could hurt.  That’s what the stuns are for.  Every 20 seconds it was necessary to hit the dpser with Hammer of Justice to catch up on the heals.

I also was not sold that this build increased survivability.  It might of, but I couldn’t tell.  Talents like Toughness , Ardent Defender , and Guarded by the Light all play into it I’m sure.  We did have an epic 29 minute battle (pic at top of article) in which we won because the other team afk’ed…

Ok, so I’ve explained how I played as a Prot Pally healer during the first couple of weeks of Season 7.  Even with the changes in 3.2.2, Prot Pally is still doable in 2’s…but the general consensus is that it is gimmicky.

After 3.2.2 dropped I changed to a more common pvp Holy Pally build and we’ve been playing with that ever since.  In the next article I’ll talk about that build and the strategy that comes with it.

Go Sans Pants!