With the updates released for World of Warcraft in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and its updates, the dynamics of player vs player combat have changed once again.
With the new rules, its becoming increasingly popular to create highly specialized protection Paladins.
If you want to avoid being another speed bump on the battlefield of your PVP server should you too invest the talent points required for deep specialization in the protection tree? Well, that depends on your playing style, but some of the new builds circulating seem to make this a choice worth making.
Obviously these builds are designed to rely heavily on the Protection tree of Paladin specialization.
While the preferred PVP set up for paladins in the past relied on Holy and Retribution, this is an all new set up that when used correctly can let the Paladin absorb massive amounts of damage while still hammering away on his enemy.
If you can't absorb the high damage hits that are so common in PVP conflicts, you'll be regretting lost time spent lying on your toon's dead back.
The whole point in wearing plate armor is to take punishment - and the protection tree when fully developed can give a paladin a host of abilities that let you take tons of damage and still not fall.
This set up works because you wind up using abilities like Guarded by the Light and Touched by the Light to generate large amounts of mana and critical heals.
It also opens up the possibility of such buffs and defensive techniques as Divine Sacrifice, Sacred Shield.
Combine that with abilities like Hammer of Justice for quick mob stuns, and Avenger's Shield leaving multiple mobs dazed at range and it's easy to see how developing the protection specialization tree can unlock some real potential for the paladin class.