Protection

Introduction

Protection paladin is one of the best if not the best tank class in this expansion. It has a lot of raid utilities, great threat generation and amazing survival abilities both cooldowns and maintainable survival spells like Holy Shield. Protection paladin is a must-have for both 10man and 25man raids during all the expansio

Talent

There are many talent variations, but i prefer this one for the huge amount of aggro that this talent can provide, but you can costumize for you many things such as using Aura Mastery or Vindication. Prot paladin talent is really flexible, although I would never use Seal of Command.

Glyphs

1. Major Glyphs

- Glyph of Divine Plea : While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources.

- Glyph of Righteous Defense : Increases the chance for your Righteous Defense and Hand of Reckoning abilities to work successfully by 8% on each target.

- Glyph of Seal of Vengeance : Your Seal of Vengeance or Seal of Corruption also grants 10 expertise while active.

- Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous : Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.

2. Minor Glyphs

- Glyph of Sense Undead : Damage against Undead increased by 1% while your Sense Undead ability is active.

Gems

Meta: Austere Earthsiege Diamond +32 Stamina and 2% Increased Armor Value from Items

Red: Guardian's Dreadstone +10 Expertise/+15 Stamina
(Option 2 : Shifting Dreadstone +10 Agility / +15 Stamina, not advised)
You need 1 red gem for your meta, and if you can have a good socket bonus, it can be worth of course. Your threat benefits from your expertise, and some bosses needs you to have enough expertise anyway.

Yellow: Solid Majestic Zircon +30 Stamina

Blue: Solid Majestic Zircon +30 Stamina

You want to match your caps like defense, hit and expertise, so you should gem according to that.

Enchants

Head - Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector +37 Stamina +20 Defense (there fire, frost, shadow resist + stamina enchants as well, feel free to use them if you think you might them for a couple scenarios)

Shoulder - Greater Inscription of the Gladiator +30 Stamina +15 Resilience
                  Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle +20 Dodge +15 Defense (only if you need defsense)

Cloak - Mighty Armor +225 armor
             Titanweave +16 defense

Chest - Super Health +275 health
             Greater Defense +22 Defense
             Powerful Stats +10 All Stats

Bracer - Major Stamina + 40 Stamina

Gloves - Glove Reinforcements +240 Armor
               Heavy Borean Armor Kit +18 Stamina
               Armsman Permanently enchant gloves to increase threat caused by                                  2% and increase parry rating by 10.

Waist - Eternal Belt Buckle + 1 belt socket

Legs - Frosthide Leg Armor +55 Stamina +22 Agility

Boots - Greater Fortitude +22 Stamina

Weapon - Mongoose Permanently enchant a Melee Weapon to occasionally increase Agility by 120 and attack speed slightly.
                Blade Ward Permanently enchants a weapon to sometimes grant Blade Warding when striking an enemy. Blade Warding increases your parry rating by 200 and inflicts 600 to 800 damage on your next parry. Lasts 10 sec.
Mongoose is better, but usually pretty expensive.

Shield - Titanium Plating +81 Block Value
Major Stamina +18 Stamina
          Defense +20 Defense

Stat priorities

1. Defense cap 540 for all raids, 535 for dungeons.

2. Hit cap 263 = 8% 

3. Expertise cap 26, not that important for basic tanking, but it helps a lot to hold aggro and if you tank bosses with parry-haste mechanic like Sindragosa or Halion, whenever you parry against them their melee attack speed doubles for a couple hits.

4. Armor and Stamina stacking! If you have all your stats capped, you can go and stack stamina and armor. Both can be stacked limiteless (armor is worth less if you reach 75 000 which you can't achieve anyway so it does not matter).

5. Block value increases the amount you can block and increases your Shield of Righteous' damage.

6. Block rating increases the chance to block.

7. Agility gives you armor and crit.

8. Parry

9. Dodge (in ICC your dodge is reduced by -20%)

Professions

1. Jewelcrafting : 3 big gems >> +63stamina

2. Engineering : Gloves enchant +885armor / 885-240 = +645 armor

3. Leatherworking : +62stamina

4. Blacksmithing : +2socket >> +60stamina

5. Mining : +60stamina

6. Enchanting : ring enchant +60stamina

Best in Slot Gear

Head - Broken Ram Skull Helm

Neck - Bile-Encrusted Medallion

Shoulders - Sanctified Lightsworn Shoulderguards

Cloak - Royal Crimson Cloak

Chest - Sanctified Lightsworn Chestguard

Bracers - Gargoyle Spit Bracers 

Gloves - Sanctified Lightsworn Handguards

Waist - Verdigris Chain Belt

Legs - Sanctified Lightsworn Legguards

Boots - Treads of Impending Resurrection

Ring1 - Ashen Band of Endless Courage

Ring2 - Devium's Eternally Cold Ring

Trinkets - Petrified Twilight Scale
                Unidentifiable Organ
                Sindragosa's Flawless Fang
                Satrina's Impeding Scarab
                Corroded Skeleton Key

Weapon - Mithrios, Bronzebeard's Legacy

Shield - Icecrown Glacial Wall

Libram - Libram of the Sacred Shield

It is worth mentioning, that we use in this list a couple lower item level items such as the bracer or the belt, these items give extra armor which is really important, with the higher item level items you would get a little extra stamina and strength and some lesser secondary stat like parry or dodge, which is not really worth it. Further to go, we can build the paladin tank into 2/5 with using only the chest and hands, for the extra armor and good 2set bonus, and use other offparts, but missing the legs which gives a lot of expertise wouldn't wise considering expertise helps you out a lot with your threat generation.

In this build you probably have to use one hit gem to reach the 263 rating, the cap.

Gameplay

You want to use Seal of Vengeance everytime, except dungeon or Valithria Dreamwalker where you would go out of mana, in these cases Seal of Wisdom is a better choice.

As a general boss tanking scenario, you would pull with popping the Avenging Wrath and taunt, then using Avenger Shied. You should try to maximize your damage while tanking, not only to go for the most threat possible but to increase the damage, since you can do a decent damage with protection paladin so more damage means quicker and easier boss fight, so spamm your keys like you would with a dps!!

You have to keep up Holy Shield and Sacred Shield on yourself non-stop. With the suggested libram, you even do more damage with your Shield of Rightousness with the extra shield block value it gives you.

Use your Hand of Salvation/Freedom/Sacrifice/Protection, Divine Sacrifice, Lay on Hands, Dispel and everything you have when it is needed, so you have to have a raid frame addon.