Tuesday, July 29, 2008

WotLK Beta - Soloing with Protection

Protection is a lot of fun for solo questing. It's not as fast as Ret, but it's pretty good. I used Judgement, Hammer of the Righteous and Holy Shield, and easily went through 1-3 mobs at a time. I didn't feel it was worth using Consecrate for so few mobs. Prot is a little mana-hungry, but I went JoL + SoW, and still killed fairly fast while keeping my health and mana pretty high.

The caveat to this is that I did not use Prot gear. I used my Ret gear + a green 1H hammer from one of the first WotLK quests (~84 dps) + an Illidari Runeshield. When I tried with my epic Prot tanking gear, it just felt terrible. I think you really need a decent amount of strength to make the new Protection work. I'd probably get the new Cobalt blacksmithing gear as soon as possible, and replace all my precious epics.

I think I'm probably going to level as Protection in WotLK. It's solid for soloing, and I can tank instances on the way up.

11 comments:

  1. if you specc prot and you want to grind, go for retri aura, shield spikes (ideally on Petrified Lichen Guard http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25828 and then you can (with some gear) easily do 5-10 mobs at the same time with close to zero downtime (don't go for casters, go for melee mobs... dual wielders are perfect)
    Use Seal of Light and Judgement of Light to heal yourself up, and use Holy Shield and maybe concecrate (rank 1)... if you're on full health and low on mana switch to Seal of Wisdom that way you should usually end up with full health and full mana (mostly depending on concecrate usage)

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  2. Prot Pally soloing seems to be a well-kept secret of WoW. I've had moderate success on the live servers soloing with a Prot/Ret hybrid in Prot gear; it strikes me as more interactive than Command and forget, and having Holy Shield to fall back on is a big plus.

    One suggestion I would make is to keep the most recent 2H weapon you're able to get without sacrificing other slots, and try grinding with the 2H. You will need a weapon switch macro for situations when adds come and you need Holy Shield. Depending on your spec, you lose some of your abilities, but it feels to me like the damage is better (especially if your 1H weapon is a 41 DPS spell damage stick).

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  3. Random WotLK-beta question, not paladin related: what happens to level 70 daily quests?
    Can you still do them while leveling towards 71? What about beyond level 71?
    If you can do them, do they give gold or xp or both? If gold, same as the BC version or less?

    I'm just curious :)

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  4. No idea about the 70 Dailies though I would have to imagine they'd give XP, just scaling down.

    There are a few daily quests that I've found in Wrath so far and in addition to the gold, they're dropping 20K XP on you each turn in so I wouldn't worry too much about the 'older' dailies.

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  5. Proc grinding is great. Be sure to grind with melee type mobs. Any casters in the group will slow your progress.

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  6. This is solo questing, ie one mob at a time. We all know about the craziness that is prot grinding.

    Also, Hammer of the Righteous requires a 1H weapon, and Holy Shield requires a shield, as will Shield of the Righteous at 75. Going 2H would negate much of the point of the build.

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  7. Hi there nice blog mate :)

    A question :
    Im retri pally well geared (T6\Brutal) now around 3,5k of AP in raid, in wotlk i get 30% in SP right.. but how many +Healing Power i get from my SP ???

    Thanks :)

    Maxèllum Runetotem Ally

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  8. Im retri pally well geared (T6\Brutal) now around 3,5k of AP in raid, in wotlk i get 30% in SP right.. but how many +Healing Power i get from my SP ???

    Healing Power = Spell Power.

    There's no difference now. What has happened is the coefficient on the healing spells has doubled or so.

    So Flash of Light used to get 43% of your +healing, it now gets something like 100% of your Spell Power.

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  9. This is unrelated to your current post (sorry) but I just want t olet you know this blog is awesome. I just found it yesterday, my wife linked to you and I've been reading all the way back to oct. 2007 archive.

    My main alt is a Pally, and the sheer amount of information and tips here is incredible.

    So, really I'm just leaving a comment to say thanks for the info, and I'm really enjoying reading here.

    /hug
    /cheer

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  10. It seems like all 3 spec's are looking good. Go Retribution for CC and DPS. Prot for Tanking and Holy seems to be more about ranged combat than it is about healing.

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  11. I have to admit, this is a little disappointing. I'd been expecting (hoping?) that my epic tanking gear would still be perfectly serviceable until mid- to upper-70s. But if AP is as important as it looks like it's going to be, I'll be replacing my T6 with greens and blues in a level or two, just like I did when Burning Crusade came out.

    I do still like the changes, though. It's always seemed a little absurd that strength has absolutely zero meaning to an entire tanking class. How can mobs see me as a threat when I have arms like limp noodles?

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