Xeneres Multiboxing Guide and Tips

[Xeneres]

Part 1:

I saw people had a few questions as to how I handle my melee toons movement and some of my setup after watching my videos so I decided to create this thread to hopefully provide a guide. I may try to turn this into a type of multiboxing blog. Warning: it will be sloppy and not very organized as I'm quickly throwing it together and there is a lot of detail that I need to think about how to describe it best. I'll try to come back to it when I have time to format and structure it. For now I just want to get the information, opinions, experiences and comments out there. Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments/feedback in this thread.


Please check out my Mythic+ Video thread in the movie section for any videos I've Exported from Twitch to YouTube. I try to add comments, details and rate the difficulty of the dungeons I run. I also try to go back and add a timeline with time links for each boss, dungeon or notable event as I'm sure no one wants to sift through a 4-6 hour video (let alone a boring muted video!).

http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/53323-Xeneres-Mythic-Videos

I'm leveling a 4dk, 1 pally team right now after seeing what it can do on Mythic. I'm just still trying to work out exactly how Xeneres and Davidmage controll keeping their melee in range. Do they bind their macro to include a Interact with Target hotkey, or just spam their assist/interact with target key frequently?

I cant speak for Davidmage, but I'll give some details about how I control my melee toons and some of my setup.

I have a few toggles and keybinds that control CTM On/Off, Assist, positioning and I also have a manual combined Assist/IWT key. I have a keystroke action called "IWT" that is triggered when I press some of my dps abilities. The state for this "IWT" keybind is always on. This keystroke action performs IWT and has no keybinding as its only sent via my main dps abilties. The important thing to remember is that its not IWT that makes your toons move its IWT combined with Click To Move. I don't think you ever want to turn off/disable IWT or at least have a manual alternate key backup because its very useful for talking to NPCs. What I use is tilde(~) A, D, F1, F2 and F3, F9 (sent via a mouse), the arrow keys on my keyboard, and various formations to control my toons movement. I'm way to scared to use F4 for any of my key binds due to the possibility of hitting some combination of alt+F4.

~ sends the S key or backpedal key to tell my toons to take a step back which interrupts IWT so my toons stop the multiboxer IWT "swarm" that happens when you spam IWT. As long as the boss stays still and in melee range your toons will not move until the boss moves. When the boss moves your toons will move to the new target/location and start swarming again and I'll need to press that key again to stop the swarm. Sometimes the swarm is good as it keeps the toons moving and lessens the chance that they will all get hit by some type of cone effect on trash or bosses and makes it faster for them to follow your leader to get out of bad stuff on the ground. Another helpful thing is to remember that each key press of IWT will only send your toons to the location that the boss is currently at. So if you wanted to be fancy you could press IWT once your toons will go to the boss then you can taunt the boss and drag it slightly away so your toons are hitting the boss from behind, you may also need to somewhat spam the S key because even minor movement can start the IWT swarm once again. ----A word of caution when spamming IWT and also not spamming the IWT key enough...If your toons are in the process of moving to a new target and that target dies/is no longer interactable and/or you let your toons runs out of IWT range (45 yards?) your toons will keep moving until you tell them to stop. This is typical behavior of IWT + CTM in wow. The "swarm" is your toons constantly being sent IWT + CTM.

A - key is my Assist/IWT combination key.I have it setup so that when I press it it tells my toons to assist and IWT and when I release it it sends backpedal (similar to my ~ key). It's very helpful for telling my toons to move to interact with an NPC. I used to have this key also turn on click to move on press and turn it off on release but I found its better to use my 2 F1 and F2 CTM keys below so I always know what state its in:

F1 turns off Click to Move. This is very useful to maintain your formation and stack and/or when looting or interacting with objects on the ground. There is nothing more annoying looting than trying to loot/interact with some object on the ground and once some of your toons have said object it they move to that spot and block the other toons from looting that object. More uses include: turning it off while tanding next cliffs, edges pits and tight bridges which very dangerous to have click to move + IWT enabled. For these type of situations I simply use follow and run my leader to the other side of the mobs hit box so my slaves can attack it.

F2 turns on Click to Move. I find its better to have dedicated key binds for CTM on/off as I don't want to press a toggle then forget what state its in and wonder if its off or on and then have my toons die by falling off a cliff. This is also useful for keeping your toons stacked and in formation.

F3 is my assist toggle. This turns off assist from being sent to my slaves. I use it when I need to have my paladin attack one target and send my Deathknights to go kill another target. This is a new action I created to help with Mythic Serpentrix. I still need to practice at using it more

F9 (sent via a mouse keybind) is my assist all key it make all of my toons assist a target, regardless if assist is turned on or off. There is typically some latency when switching targets with FTL so I use this key when I really want to make sure I'm targeting the correct target before i do something like death grip, stun or gorefiends grasp.

Arrow Keys - My last movement keybind is the arrow keys. I use these to manually move the slaves forward, backward, and strafe left or right. If your toons are able to move via IWT + CTM to your target that will turn your toons to face your target so you can then strafe around your target in a circle by using these keys in combination with IWT + CTM. These keys are very helpful when you need to make slight adjustments to your slaves positioning to move them out of a patch of bad on the ground when you cannot use your leader to do so. Examples include AoE debuffs that force your toons to stay spread out combined with patches of bad on the ground so you can use spreadout formations combined with slave movements to make minor adjustments. I do not have keyboard turn bound and don't think anyone should!

For formations I have a a square or +, Inverted Square or +, Line Formation, Flying V and Inverted Flying V formations. I use the numpad keys for this. I use - for line and + for +/Box. I do not use Num 1-5 as that is what I use to swap to my toons. My most commonly used formation is my sqaure or + formation to spread my toons our around the boss so they all wont get hit by a targeted cleave or breath.

[Xeneres]

Part 2:

DPS rotations and Important Addons:

Combat and Non-Combat Macros (Please see next post for the actual macros)

As for combat and DPS rotations I use my own Gnome Sequencer Macros and I manually trigger interrupts, cooldowns, trinkets and utility spells as needed typically by using round robin. I create a few flavors of these Macros to best suit my needs. They are typically just your basic builder and spender type abilities. Before Gnome Sequencer I used to use cast sequence macros. In past expansions you could use something like:

/castsequence reset =0.5 0,0,Deathstrike

To perform actions similar to gnome sequencer where you can use the 0.5 and 0,0,0 to delay your abilities so you could setup a type of priority system and timers when to refresh debuffs but that has since been removed/disabled by Blizzard. You can still use a combination of timed ISboxer step macros to do this but its best to keep what you send to the game from isboxer to a minimum.

In the past I also tried to multibox by simply sending one keystroke at a time. This could work with some classes but now most classes have procs and varying levels of secondary stats and you are severely limiting your self by not using a type of cast sequence macro or gnome sequencer as you cannot properly account for haste and procs. You will never be able to play your toons combat rotations perfectly while boxing but you can do the best you can with the tools available to you.

I have 3 main combat macros for my DKs. They first is your typical single target macro that uses deathstrike as soon as it is able too. A AoE focused version of the macro that does not use marrowrend at all. The last one is the same as the first but it does not spend runic power


Targeted AoE and Targeted AoE RR

Starting with Patch 7.1 there was a new macro conditionals added to the game that allows you to fire off targeted AoE abilties like death and decay automatically at your characters position or at your mouse cursor.

I do not think that doing it at mouse cursor would be very useful for multiboxers maybe on your leader as would only save you from having to click. I find that seeing the green circle is useful so i can position it properly if im not using the new mcro conditional

The new macro condition has greatly simplified death and decay and makes it as easy to use as consecrate and now I don't have to worry about crimson scourge procs (this resets the CD on DnD and makes it free) but tricky to juggle across 4 toons each with their own random procs.

An example macro that casts a Death and Decay at your toons location is:

/cast [@player] Death and Decay

I still love my manual Targeted AoE Macros and RR variations. They are useful if you are running to engage a boss to drop DnD wehere you will be not where you are currently at. For targeted AoE I use it for things like death and decay. I also use it to loot objects on the ground like treasures or quest objects. With the new shared quest item mechanics in legion you can have all of your toons loot an object by using Jamba Advanced Loot. Without this addon,you will only be able to loot the object/item one at a time as there is some delay in loot objects and NPCs for things like quest items. You may see everyone have loot windows but then you have to spam click each loot window until they all have that object in their inventory. Jamba Advanced loot is very helpful for quests objects that despawn within a few miliseconds of being looted. For objects that don't despawn like treasures you can use round robin mouse broadcasting so you can loot objects one after the other so there is no spamming furiously for 5-10 seconds or swapping to different toons to loot everything.

I have variations such as round robin death and decay. if I want to make a slowing field to kite mobs or to find those annoying rogues that love to sap your leader when doing world quests. When I get a rogue out of stealth using RR DnD it is so satisfying and they better have vanish because I will use any and every CC and CD to make sure that annoying rogue is pulled into my meat grinder and deleted.

Addons

I'm a heavy user of the Addon Vuhdo for my party/raid frames and ElvUI for the rest of my interface. Both give you the option to send your config from one Toon to the other while in-game and you can use broadcasting to make changes to all of your toons UI at the same time. I can use Vuhdo to do so many things it even has its own custom macros, mouse and keyboard bindings that you can setup to execute when you mouse over a toon. By combining this with Repeater Broadcasts you can use this to mouse over a toon to instantly trigger it to use a ability. I use Vuhdo heavily when healing on my paladin.

My Prot/Holy Paladin + 4 DK team is relatively new team, I made it only a few weeks before Legion. I largely got it up and running by trimming my 15-20 boxing config down and adding some of the fine tuning from my old configs in MoP which was the last time I was a 5 man PvE boxer.

Disclaimer:

I learned most of this Info via the Isboxer Wiki, MiRai's videos and personal experiences while multiboxing since WoTLK:

http://isboxer.com/wiki/WoW:Interact_with_Target

[Xeneres]

Part 3: GnomeSequencer Macros

Some of these are a work in progress and I tweak them from time to time

Note: For all of these abilities I also have the ability to manually trigger each ability in these macros. This is very important for abilities like death Strike as its healing is based off the damage you have taken in the last 5 seconds.

1. BloodDK - This is my goto macro that I use most of the time unless i need to use the macros below. I edited this macro and dropped down the amount of marrowrends in favor of weaving in a few more heart strikes. it still uses marrowrend enough so that its up for the haste and mitigation buff from boneshield. It kind of gates heartstrike behind blood boil or marrowrend to make sure they are used first.

PreMacro = [[
]],
"/cast Death Strike",
"/cast [@player] Death and Decay",
"/castsequence reset=combat Marrowrend, Heart Strike",
'/castsequence reset=combat Blood Boil, Blood Boil, Heart Strike',
PostMacro = [[
]],
}



2. BloodDKNoRP - This is for when I want even more fine control of Deathstrike and to guarantee that I have runic power needed to use death strike after a large hit or active mitigation check. It is also useful for when I want to guarantee that I build runic power for bonestorm for adds coming up but there is nothing to cleave yet to use the macro after this one

PreMacro = [[
]],
"/cast Marrowrend",
"/cast [@player] Death and Decay",
'/castsequence reset=combat Blood Boil, Blood Boil, Heart Strike',
PostMacro = [[
]],
}


3.BloodDKAoE - This makes sure I use my blood boil and death and decay while I'm gaining runic power with heartstrike for bonestorm or just if I want to cleave. It also makes sure DnD fires off.

PreMacro = [[
]],
'/castsequence reset=combat Blood Boil, Blood Boil',
"/cast [@player] Death and Decay",
"/cast Heart Strike",
PostMacro = [[
]],
}


4. Prot Paladin - This is the only macro I use on my paladin. I manually control Shield of the Righteous for more control over my burst, mitigation and hand of the protector. It is quite good at quickly firing off avengers shield after a grand crusader proc. You want to limit the amount of lines in a gnome sequencer macro to as few lines as possible so that it only takes a few presses for it to fire off procs. You also want to make sure you build enough time in your rotation to account for haste procs and haste buffs like time warp and blood lust so the macro does not too quickly cycle through to abilities on cooldown.

PreMacro=[[
]],
"/cast Avenger's Shield",
"/cast Hammer of the Righteous",
"/castsequence reset=combat Consecration",
"/cast Judgment",




PostMacro=[[
]],
}

[Xeneres]

Part 4: Stat Priority and Gearing

Blood Death Knights:

For my deathknights I try to go Strength>Haste (To at least 20%) > Crit > Versatility > Mastery

If you look on a guide this is typically what people gear towards with a more damaged focused build. I try to go damage focused because I'm trying to maximize my trash and boss damage for Mythic+. I don't really feel like stuff is destroying me as a DK especially when I can just taunt trade if the damage is too much.

For my rune forging I use Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. I find this rune is better because it gives you 5% extra HP, Strength and Armor. That extra HP and armor is very good for trash and bosses and results in less damage taken and more HP cusion. While Stoneskin Gargoyles strength effect is less than fallen crusader's 15% strength and 6% heal. I did not like the randomness of Fallen Crusader. I also think it is better because having 5% more HP means your deathstrike will at heal for more at its minimum 10% of HP. Fallen crusader does do a fair bit of healing but you don't have any control over when it procs. Fallen crusader has a 70-80% up time.


DK Relics:

For relics I favor higher item lvl almost always.

When I do have a choice between relics I lean towards the following in order:

All-Consuming Rot (DnD damage good for AoE and Single Target)

Veinrender (buffs heartstrike)

Bonebreaker ( buffs marrowrend good single target for bosses since I don't use Heartstrike as much on bossses in favor of maintaining a high bone shield stacks)

Vampiric Fangs (buffs Vampiric blood HP and Healing by 5%

Coagulopathy (More blood plague damage = more shield from Ubilicus Eternus)

Dance of Darkness (extra duration on dancing rune weapon increasing my burst damage but not useful when its on CD)




Prot Paladin:

For my Paladin I go Strength>Crit>>>Versatility>Haste>Mastery

I love crit on my prot paladin (and so does my holy off-spec). I try to get crit on all of my pieces of gear. My 2nd favorite stat is versatility since I use my paladin as a kind of battle healer. Also by going versatility It helps to have a bit of passive damage reduction since I do not typically tank for very long on my paladin for most boss fights.



Note: If its 5-10 item levels better (unless its a ring or neck) I almost always take the ilevel increase no matter the stats.

Prot Paladin Relics:

For my paladin I favor anything that buffs:

light of the protector

shield of the righteous

and resolve of truth (more HP)

As always, I take whatever I can get so if its higher ilevel its probably being used regardless of what it buffs.


Trinkets:

I favor static Strength Trinkets that buff my best 2 stats on my toons.

Sadly these trinkets come from world quests and not really dungeons. So I'm reliant on getting a high titanforge to get a good one. I did get a 880 one from an 825 quest on one of my characters but it had versatility instead of haste or crit. Still it has 400 more strength than the 850s that my other toons have.

I do not like on use or proc trinkets. As a multiboxer we cannot fully utlize ICD or RPPM trinkets due to them procing whenever.

Trinkets like the Darkmoon dominion I would consider my best in slot as they are passive Str and crit which is one of my best stat for both the paladin and DKs. I run 5x Darkmoon Dominion cards on my characters. In 7.1 they will be able to be upgraded to 855. By bying this trinket I only need to get 1 good rng trinket from world quests to warforged to 850 with decent stats. As long as blizzard keeps letting us upgrade this trinket it should be a good investment. I found that it is cheaper to buy the individual cards and assemble the deck than it is to buy the combined deck off the AH. Remember: obliterium take 2 blood of sargeras per upgrade.


Shoulder Enchant:


I have started to use the Bloodseeker shoulder enchant from Wardens Exalted as it allows me to loot bags for 3-5 blood of Sargeras which I then turn into Obliterum or enchants for my toons and in 7.1 profession mats to sell.

Previously, I was using the Manaseeker enchant but since I do not do the withered training scenario and the price of chaos crystals has dropped bloodseeker is better. Blood of Sargeras is my only real limiting factor in my obliterum shuffle assuming felwort prices are not too high to diminish the profit. I can always generate Arkhana from ley shatter as I get probably 5-10 ley shards a day, per toon, just from world quests and heroic daily.

[Xeneres]

Part 5:

Reserved...

[mugg70]

Thnx for the post. Really like this kind of info.

[TheShox]

Hey Xeneres. Thanks for this thread and your other threads. Very insightful.

Any way you could post your GnomeSequencer macros or the macros/steps you are using for your Prot Pally/DKs? There seems to be many different ways to set it up and whichever way you are doing it, it is working well.

I tried to watch one if your videos that was up last week, but seems to have been taken down. Are all your videos offline?

Thanks,
Shox

[Xeneres]

Removed the rest of the details as its now covered in the first few pages of this thread.

[Xeneres]

Artifact Traits and Pathway and Talent Choices Part 1.

Death Knights:

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

Blood Dks really do not have much of a choice in talents. You are almost forced to go this route so you can get out as many death strikes as possible. I found that while boxing purgatory is not very useful. If it procs you are most likely dead and since you hardly ever use it then why have it? Bonestorm is excellent for bursting trash packs down or to cleave adds down on a boss and keep focusing on the boss. It also gives excellent healing against multiple mobs.

Tier 1 row of of the talents that do healing they are largely a joke and can't even compare to a basic death strike. Blood worms do terrible healing and heart strike with 5 targets is an extra 15 runic power per heart strike which is very powerful. Blood drinker does about 2-3 million damage with 4 DKs at 30 yards but you cannot do much while channeling it. Most mobs you can just death grip to you from range but there are quite a few that you cannot pull do you. I have decided that bloodrinker is the better talent for multiboxing at least for boss fights boss fights as it helps DK mobility by giving us some healing and damage at range or while you are switching and moving to a target or dodging a mechanic. I still do really miss heartbreakers extra runic power on trash as it takes longer to build up runic power for bonestorm.

Tier 2 row rapid decomposition gives you 15% more runic power gain while in DnD. If you don't have to move you will have death and decay down 100% of the time. It also makes it do 50% more damage and it does a lot of damage even single target. Soulgorge changes your play style and why as a boxer would you want to have to manually apply blood plague and consume it when there are passive choices that are way better. Spectral deflection may be useful for burst and dangerous attacks but in dungeons but you very rarely get damaged for more than 25% of your hp so this makes rapid decomposition much more beneficial. If you do get damaged for more than 25% HP its likely a powerful attack that you can use AMS or Vampiric Blood on.

Tier 3 row there is no choice but Ossuary as more max runic power and more efficient death strike means you can bank 3 death strikes to use in a row. I often use this after a big hit like Odyns AoE. I'm too slow to move out of it so I just eat it.


Tier 4 row you have to go Red Thirst. Mark of blood is awful as its only 1/5th of a 2% heal, costs 30 runic power and only benefits the toon taking melee hits. Death strike by comparison deals damage, costs 40 runic power heals for at least 10%. Tombstone is pretty bad as well. It does not synergize with foul bulwark or ossuary. When you get umbilicus eternus you basically have a better absorb that has its cooldown reduced by Red thirst. I turn a 1.5 minute cd into a 40-50 second cd and after 10 seconds it turns into at least a 60% absorb shield. That's way better than a 30% absorb on a 1 minute cd that lowers my hp by 20% and makes death strike cost 5 more.

Tier 5 row this is the CC and mobility tier. I always go for Tightening Grasp. It lowers the CD of Gorefiends by 1 minute (turns it into a 2 minute cd) and gives DnD a very powerful 70% snare. Tremble Before Me isn't very good as it breaks on damage and if you play horde you best be blood elf master race! Arcane torrent can do interrupts so much better. Use more Gorefiends and cluster and then AoE them down casting arcane torrent every 2-3 seconds and hardly anything will get a cast off for almost 10 seconds. March of the Dammed can be ok if you need more movement but I find grouping adds and trash up is more useful. Wraith Walk is a terrible ability and I refuse to put talents into buffing it to be slightly less terrible. If you get stuck on a rock, stairs or object on the ground you cant use jump to free yourself. It basically pacifys you for 3 seconds just for a tiny bit of movement speed.

Tier 6 Foul Bulwark is the default talent choice and synergies well with Ossuary. For the toons that are not tanking it buffs your healing by buffing your health and gives you an extra hp cushion to survive dangerous mechanics. Runetap is ok for some situations as DKs have no way to lower their percent of damage taken (other than the 16% absorb from bone shield). I believe if blizzard buffs blood dks they will make this ability baseline because almost every spec in the game as some form of % damage reduction except blood dks. Will of the Necropolis is ok but you shouldn't remain at 35% hp for very long which makes this talent less ideal.

Tier 7 Bonestorm is what I pick in most situations as I'm able to better utilize it in more situations. Purgatory, as I said earlier, will most likely not be used that often and even if it does the absorb shield will likely be very high and a DK on its own without the old Death Pact ability (50% heal) will not be able to heal themselves enough to not die at the end of the 3 seconds. Hand of the protector is enough to save only 1 of the 4 dks and it will get its maximum benefit as they are at 0% hp. Typically, if situations occur where all of my toons die and proc purgatory its almost always a wipe and best to just try again unless the boss is really low or I finally got over a mechanic hurdle where its worth using all my rezes. In the heat of the moment I'm always wasting my battle rezes then go back after I wipe anyway and think to myself "that was stupid, you were dead anyway and now you have no rezes for 10 minutes." Blood mirror is useful as a damage cooldown but not very effective as a survival cooldown. It can be used to throw out 3-5+ million burst on something like Odyn summoned add to wipe it out. The only issue is that its a 2 minute cooldown and you have to be in melee range to apply it to a target.


I currently am about 40k from my 3rd golden trait and have just maxed out Coagulopathy.

1. Consumption

2. Sanguinary Affinity

3. Vampiric Fangs

4. Rattling Bones

5. Bone Breaker

6. All-Consuming Rot

7. Unending Thirst

8. Blood Feast

9. Dance of Darkness

10. Mouth of Hell

11. Meat Shield

12. Umbilicus Eternus

13. Coagulopathy

14. Skeletal Shattering

15. Veinrender

16. Iron Heart

17. Grim Perseverance


My logic for this pathway is start by to focus on damage reduction, making deathstrike more efficient and CDs that benefit all toons not just the one that is tanking. DKs take a lot of damage but heal for a lot too. We are one of the worst tanks for raiding but are still solid 5 man tanks. Marrowrend and Boneshield traits give me the most bang for my buck for bosses as I generally do not use heart strike during boss fights unless there are adds and favor maintaining 10 stacks of boneshield, even if that means using marrowrend at 10 stacks of boneshield. This way my DKs always have that 16% absorb via boneshield and the 20% extra HP from foul bulwark which helps out as deathstrike always heals for at least 10% hp.

Next, I next go for death and decay and the leech section at the bottom middle. The leech talents are very useful on trash and on bosses the leech from unending thirst and taunt trades allow my dks who were pummeled down to quickly heal up to full. I'm always taunt trading every 8-10 seconds to make sure my dks all stay roughly high hp. I typically start fights with aggro on the paladin as DKs are weak at the start of fights and trash until they get those boneshield stacks up.

Then, I move towards burst damage with dancing rune weapon duration buffs and double dancing rune weapon. This allows all of my dks to burst well over 300k at the start of any fight with all CDS popped and a 25% haste drum. Since dancing rune weapon copies your abilities it more than doubles your damage output and healing while its up. While its more of an offensive cool down it is still a defensive one too in that it gives the toon tanking more avoidance and for the rest it increases their healing.

For the next path I wanted to get Umbilicus Eternus but had to decide which was the best way to get it. I really wanted that Heartstrike buff of 9% but I decided to go for stamina as it benefits all toons whereas the extra armor from iron heart only benefits the toon that is tanking melee hits and I also already had 3 points in Dance of darkness so it would take me much longer to get that Umbilicus Eternus. FYI Umbilicus Eternus is a 3-4 million hp absorb on single target with my 855+ ilevel and even higher if you combo it with dancing rune weapon as it will apply 3 diseases per DK.

After, getting umbilicus eternus I wanted to go for my 3rd trait and again it was 3% parry vs 12% disease damage (and healing) so I chose to go for Coagulopathy as I always have blood plague up and it does 100% of its damage as healing. I should get Skeletal shattering within the next day or so on all of my DKs.

After that I plan to finally get that 9% hearthstrike damage from Veinrender, the armor buff from Iron heart and finally the 3% parry from Grim Perseverance.


Update 10/17/16 - Tier 1 Talent Update:

I decided to go with Blooddrinker instead of Heartbreaker as its more useful on bosses.

[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