Xeneres Multiboxing Guide and Tips

[Xeneres]

Artifact Traits and Pathway and Talent Choices Part 2.

Prot Paladin:

(I don't really play Holy anymore unless Prot heals are nerfed where they are no longer viable)

Talents: 3,1,2,1,1,2,1

Prot paladins actaully have good choices in their talents when compared to DKs. It depends what you are doing or what you want to optimize as to how you want to build your paladin. I went for maximum healing, single target survival and utility. As I build my paladin as a kind of tanky battle healer to support my DKs. My goal is to not have to use every light of the protector on my paladin and to use it as often as I can on the DKs who are tanking 80% of the time. Prot paladins flash of light is nearly just as powerful as a holy paladins. The best part about them I can throw out plenty of them to keep my toons alive if it comes to it. I have enough mana to almost fully heal a death knight every 20 or 30 seconds. I very rarely have to cast flash of light.

Tier 1 I don't think blessed hammer is of any use to 5 tank multiboxers. As, it only benefits one toon who is tanking and it takes good positioning to benefit from it. I prefer to go Consecreated hammer so that I always have the benefit of consecration for my hand of the protector, Shield of the Righteous, and hammer of the righteous. It also does AoE damage too it just doesn't look as cool as blessed hammer. I'm always moving around and dodging AoE effects on the ground so I'm not always in my consecration. Consecrated hammer also removes the cool down to hammer of the righteous and you can use it to proc grand crusader more often which synergies well with some of our talents and a golden artifact trait.

Tier 2 I would go First Avenger until you unlock the 3rd Golden Trait Tyr's Enforcer then use either first avenger or bastion of light. The only time I used another talent in this tree was before I unlocked bulwark of order and I went crusaders judgement. For single target/boss fights I don't care that the shield only hits 1 target I care about maximizing grand crusader procs and improving its damage single target for boss fights which increases my paladins survival. With Tier 1's consecrated hammer spam, the golden artifact trait Bulwark of Order and First Avenger your shield hits 50% harder puts an absorb for 50% damage and you have a slightly more than 1/5 chance on each hammer of the righteous to trigger grand crusader and reset cool down of avengers shield (in addition to avoiding attacks if you are actively tanking) Bastion of light can be very useful for burst damage and healing. My avenger shield with first avenger hits for about 220-250k and crits for 400-500k. On fights with lots of AoE the absorbs from the shield can be 25-35% of my total healing and absorbs. The absorbs can stack and refreshes the duration of the buff but its only an 8 second buff so it is difficult to maintain unless you do nothing but spam hammer of the righteous. Typically, I never have any absorbs that expired due to duration as most fights always have a source of AoE that the absorb can help mitigate. Its also very useful on trash, those absorbs can easily total up to half of my life each trash pull which saves me having to use two hand of protectors on my paladin. After, getting my 3rd Golden Trait - Tyr's enforcer I decided to go back to Crusader's Judgement. I will probably keep this talent setup unless I need more burst damage and/or healing from bastion of light.


Tier 3 I typically go Repentance for the hard CC. It can CC most mob types in the game. I prefer it to blinding light because I just rotate arcane torrent if i want to interrupt mobs or hard stuns via asphysiate or hand of justice or interrupt them with deathgrip or gorefiends grasp.

Tier 4 I go blessing of spell warding most of the time. The two minute reduction to the CD and making it a magic immunity is preferable to having a physical damage immunity which only stops chaos or physical damage. Typically its a magic ability you want to stop not a physical one. Cavalier is not of much use with two charges if the DKs cant keep up with the paladin. Retribution aura isn't that useful because my entire team is tank spec. I heard that blizzard may change it to everyone including tanks which may make it useful.

Tier 5 I go hand of the protector. There is no scenario where I would not take this talent as its core to keeping my paladin viable to play prot instead of holy. So long as hand of the protector exists I cant imagine a scenario where I would ever consider the other two talents.

Tier 6 I go for either judgement of the light or consecrated ground. Judgement of light heals for more so long as you can melee a target or it doesn't die very fast. I'm not sure if blizzard has fixed it but you cannot have multiple judgement of the light up so if you run an all paladin team there is no reason to have more than one paladin with this ability. For Trash and some bosses I find Consecrated ground more useful it also helps after a trash pack to top your toons up before the next pack. I'm working my way through increased duration of consecration so I may go back to consecrated ground as I will be able to get about 4 - 5 ticks of two consecrations for a few seconds which may push it ahead. Its also very useful for bosses that make me move around a lot where i cannot melee for a few seconds and have to run around and dodge things. I'm not 100% sure the effect stacks.

Tier 7 I will always go for Righteous Protector. Its ability to give me more control over how many light/hand of the protectors will always be chosen. I don't imagine a scenario where I would ever choose the other talents unless i was farming easy dungeons and did not need the extra healing. If so I would go last Defender as it scales very well up to 10+ mobs before diminishing returns kick in. The paladins AoE potential compared to the DKs is like 1/3rd as much damage so it may still be better to stick with Righteous Protector.


My paladin is about 2 traits behind my DKs due to putting 18 traits into the Holy Artifact.

1. Eye of Tyr

2. Truthguard's Light

3. Scatter the Shadows

4. Unflinching Defense

5. Bastion of Truth

6. Light of the Titans

7. Forbearant Faithful

8. Faiths Armor

9. Righteous Crusader

10. Resolve of Truth

11. Bulwark of Order

12. Painful Truths

13. Consecration in Flame

14. Tyr's Enforcer

15. Stern Judgement

16. Hammer Time

17. Sacrifice of the Just

My reasoning for this pathway was to buff my paladins healing, utility and survival. I start with light of the protector buffing talents that leads to a fairly powerful hot. It heals for 32k every 3 seconds and about 43k with avenging wrath up. I can use hand of the protector every 5-6 seconds so it can be up on a few targets at the same time as the hot lasts for 15 seconds. I picked up Forbearant faithful because it was only one point and helps lower the CD of my forbearance causing abilities which are very powerful for saving my DKs or the paladin

I then went towards bulwark of order and got those talents. I decided it would be best if I went up the outer left side as I was leaning towards going back to consecrated ground and because it was the shortest number of talents to get the 3rd golden relic talent. With the frequency I can cast avengers shield with first avenger it should lead to quite a bit of extra damage. If I did get the legendary that increases the jump potential to 5 I may look at dropping the first avenger talent and going back to crusades judgement.

I'm also starting to prefer consecrated ground as it offers more healing utility than judgement of light despite being less potential healing. If you can have two consecrations ticking for few seconds due to the duration being longer than the cool down I believe it would equal or surpass judgement of the lights healing.

Finally I plan to finish out my artifact by going for Stern Judgement, Hammer Time and Sacrifice of the Just. I plan to go with Sterm Judgement first as more crit on judgement = more shields of the righteous which = more hand of the protector.

Update 10/17/2016 - After unlocking my 3rd Golden Artifact Trait I decided to go back to Crusader's Judgement (Tier 2 Talent) instead of First Avenger. This maximizes my damage done in AoE and cleave Scenarios by maximizing the effect of Tyr's Enforcer.

I also had a few questions about my artifact pathway:

It is possible to go Hammer Time instead of Faith's Armor and you will still arrive at the 2nd golden Artifact (Bulwark of Order) with the same amount of traits spent. I have found that Hammer of the Righteous is really a small % of my damage typically less than 10%. I believe that Faith's armor is a better talent for survival. I do still tank on my paladin especially at the start of most boss fights and trash. 30% armor is worth about 10-15% physical damage reduction