World of Warcraft Dragonflight’s Mythic+ meta has been quite volatile in the first season. In one moment, we have Arcane Mages topping the DPS charts, and in another, they are begging for a buff. After all the ups and downs over the course of four months of season one, one class is coming out on top in Mythic+ dungeons.
The first season of Dragonflight has been the season of Protection Warriors since they were the one and only tank you’d want to bring to your Mythic+ dungeons if you want to time your key. Now that we’re nearing the end of the season, though, Protection Paladins are popping off and have completely dethroned Protection Warriors as the best Mythic+ tank.
In fact, Protection Paladins are enjoying the royal treatment right now as they took over Raider.IO’s tank leaderboard. While you can still stumble upon a handful of Protection Warriors and Blood Death Knights browsing through the list, Protection Paladins are beyond any doubt the best tank for Mythic+ content.
Protection Paladins have been in a decent state for the entirety of Dragonflight, but the spec truly rose to power after Patch 10.0.7. Although that patch was predominately focused on giving some much-needed love to Retribution Paladins, Protection Paladins received tons of quality-of-life updates and buffs too. The biggest changes involved switching up the talent tree to make talents more intuitive and accessible, adding more defensive talents like Sanctified Plates, and improving Word of Glory healing. Essentially, Protection Paladins have become more durable while still being able to help out with off-healing.
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The true power of Protection Paladins was showcased during MDI 2023 when Echo and other guilds replaced their healer with a fourth DPS. Normally, Protection Paladins are paired with classes that have strong off-healing like Druids and Shadow Priests, but the star of this four DPS meta are predominately Paladins.
In a nutshell, Protection Paladins currently have every tool at their disposal any tank could wish for—sustain, durability, mobility, solid damage output, interrupts, hard CC, and utility in the form of battle resurrection, off-healing, and various blessings.
