13/52/6, the (situational) max survival spec?

Bored, I decided to ogle the armory profile for Lazeil, the prot paladin who tanked Paragon’s Heroic Lich King-25 kill. I wanted to see what this person was doing to succeed in such an environment. One thing that stood out was Laziel’s second spec, a 13/52/6 protection setup.

The major upside of this spec seems to be how much survival it affords–Divinity for extra heals (a boon in this, the age of trickle-down deaths), Improved Lay on Hands for an extra cooldown (probably more useful to back up an offtank thanks to Forbearance), and Aura Mastery to boost Devo Aura to give 2410 armor (basically like popping 2/3 of an Indestructible Potion every 2 minutes) or boost the resistances of Fire/Shadow/Frost Aura. On top of this, Glyph of Salvation is worth a Forbearance-free 20% damage reduction cooldown, with obvious downsides.

LoH-related sidenote: While researching this post I found this comment by Lazeil on the EU WoW forums concerning Lay on Hands, saying he doesn’t consider LoH a cooldown, because:

[I]t can’t be used beforehand when you know something is going to happen and it suffers from gcd so it can’t be used quickly if something unexpected happened. It even has a drawback. There are very few situations where I would use LoH instead of Divine Protection.

And, furthermore, “[t]here are very few situations where I would use LoH instead of Divine Protection. I use LoH mostly to save others for example from Infest on Lich King Heroic.”

Nevertheless, the downside of such a spec seems to be mostly in regards to threat. Only 1/5 Divine Strength, no Crusade, no Touched by the Light. Lazeil must live and die by Misdirects and ToTs.

Would I recommend this for normal raiding? Absolutely not. It seems entirely situational, good only for heroic 25mans, and only for specific fights therein. Just keeping threat alone probably requires a lot of external help.

Still, nonetheless, it’s interesting to see how those at the cutting edge are speccing their character, even if it’s for certain fights or situations.