The Shadowlands Pre-Patch changes to
Anger Management and its synergies (
Booming Voice and
Bolster) broke Protection Warrior’s positive Rage feedback loop, which had been the mechanic that kept the class competitive (and dominant) throughout BFA. This substantially reduced the class’ power at extremely high-level Mythic+ (e.g. 25+). You can no longer consistently have immensely powerful defensive cooldowns ready for each large pull in a Mythic+. Additionally,
Thunder Clap’s damage was significantly reduced,
Revengefree uses were reduced from
every Dodge/Parry to only 3 procs per minute, and the loss of Corruption really cut into the class’ ability to deal damage. Losing DPS hurts the class at the highest levels, and it also makes it less effective at quickly pushing +15’s.
“Why is Protection Warrior less popular?” “Because it was nerfed!
Vengeance was already a fairly popular spec in Season 4 of BFA due to the synergy of high
Metamorphosis uptime from
Gluttony and
Vision of Perfection along with Twilight Devastation corruption. At the very highest keys, we struggled a bit with lack of controlled AoE threat while being ridiculously tanky due to taking
Gluttony over
Spirit Bomb. In the Pre-Patch we no longer have to rely on corruption and are able to do good consistent damage and threat while retaining survivability due to a talent rework allowing us to take both
Spirit Bomb, which has uncapped AoE damage, and
Demonic at the same time. While we're somewhat less survivable in an absolute sense than in 8.3 due to less uptime on
Demon Spikes and
Metamorphosis, dungeon scaling has been tuned down so we're able to live through pulls without requiring one or the other up at all times.
Protection Paladins gained in two primary areas that made them better in Mythic Plus, especially in higher keys. First, they gained defensive consistency from higher
Shield of the Righteous uptime which equates to having a lot of armor all of the time. High armor works really well against the damage profile of the BFA dungeons and makes the spec less vulnerable to damage spikes that might have killed it in the past. Second, they gained the
Light's Decree which is causing them to light up the damage meters and speeding up overall clear times of keys.
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