Here we go, folks, oncemore over the breach. There’s a whole new world out there of zone-spanning questlines, dailies, faction grinds, new 5mans, heroics, raids, and so much more. I for one am pumped and I’m sure you are too.

I’m sure many of you are planning to pull some crazy all-nighters tonight and push as far ahead of the pack as you can, and the best of luck to you if so. For those of you hitting the ground running at midnight Pacific time, I offer the following advice:

Vashj’ir or Hyjal?

Personally, I preferred questing in Vashj’ir. I thought the quests were more engaging and a lot more fun. And I thoroughly enjoyed the whole under-the-sea mechanic. Hyjal felt a lot like “more of the same”, while Vashj’ir felt like something new. Of course, your mileage may vary, and I’m sure loregasms alone will bring people to Hyjal.

In terms of practicality, Meloree brought up a great point when I was talking to him. Vashj’ir has a lot of Earthen Ring quests, which will get you a head start on grinding their rep before you even set foot in Deepholm. This will probably help cut down the time required to acquire the helm enchant and some handy tanking pants.

Speccing

Start with the following spec: 0/31/5. It’ll maximize damage done while skipping talents otherwise mandatory for serious tanking but superfluous in soloing or group leveling.

As you ding, pick up these talents at the following levels:

• 81, Rule of Law (1/3)
• 82, Rule of Law (2/3)
• 83, Rule of Law (3/3)
• 84, Pursuit of Justice (1/2)
• 85, Pursuit of Justice (2/2)

Rule of Law is the next best dps talent available to us, so it should be a priority to speed up leveling. If you’re looking for actual speed, you could switch and grab Pursuit of Justice first, but with flying mounts available as you level, I can’t see that being as much of a priority as it might be otherwise.

New spells

At 81, we pick up the mythical Inquisition. This is not a substitution for ShoR in single-target, you still want to shield slam away. However, feel free to go hog wild blowing your Holy Power on Inquisition and then HotRing the night away.

At 83, Holy Radiance can be learned. It’s not as game changing as the other two spells you’ll pick up on your journey to 85, but it can have its uses. Mana willing, it’ll lighten the load for anyone you’re group leveling with.

At 85, we get the big daddy–Guardian of the Ancient Kings. This’ll summon an Ancient Guardian to reduce our damage taken by 50%. Of course, by this point, you’ll be 85, so its effect on leveling will be non-existent.

Gear

I leveled 1-70 as tank back in TBC. 70-80 in Wrath, too. And I fully expect to do the grind again as prot this time around. In beta, I found that it was very helpful to collect two kinds of gear as I went. A set composed of plate dps pieces for burning down mobs as fast as possible, and a tank gear set for 5mans and tougher quests/mobs that demand a bit more survival.

Two changes make this a great idea: (1) free uncrittability which we now enjoy via talents, and (2) most gear of the same iLevel and armor class has an equal amount of stamina, regardless of function. Concerning my last point, check out this green versus this green. The only different between the two is the secondary stats. One has avoidance, one has dps stats.

Prioritize gear with expertise and hit for your “Ret set” since those will give us the most damage-dealing bang for our buck. Mastery is also pretty great too. Haste is “meh” for us. As for the baby tank set, bank any parry/dodge quest rewards for when they’re needed.

As for the t10 set bonuses, hold on to the 2pc HotR bonus as long as you can, but don’t gimp yourself to keep it.

Ultimately, you’ll probably find that most of your Wrath gear will be completely replaced by the end of Deepholm.

And they’re off!

The best of luck to anyone tonight attempting to race to 85 for realm firsts. If anyone manages to pull it off, please share a screenshot of your accomplishment (and your Feat of Strength) with me and I’ll put it up. Give those shifty Rets and Holys what-for.

Moreover, please share any other leveling tips you might think of in the comments. Anything you might have picked up from the beta or elsewhere which can make your fellow prot pallies’ lives easier during the grind!

I never got back online on Saturday after the 30 minutes I spent setting Rhidach, and had to wait until Sunday morning to do some real exploration of the changed world. Once I got back on that morning, I hopped on my Hippogryph and started touring Azeroth, checking out the more lore-heavy places that were important to my Paladin.

(Sidenote: this entire post might as well be one huge Cataclysm spoiler. If you don’t want to see anything from the screenshots I took, I’d recommend skipping the post. If enough people are trying to stay pristine I’ll start hiding this stuff behind a cut. Though, I didn’t really grab screens of anything particularly important.)

I immediately hopped on a zap to Undercity to check out Lordaeron and the Plaguelands, before ending at the training dummies in Silvermoon.

Flying over Undercity was a sight to see. I was always curious what was behind those massive locked doors in the courtyard (other than the transport orb to Silvermoon) and it’s just amazing to see the sprawling, ruined courtyards and gardens behind and around the citadel.

I then darted off eastward to pay a visit to my bud Tirion in Hearthglen. Looks like the guy has set himself up pretty well since we broke him out of that ice cube. Hell, looks like he took just about all the credit for the toppling of the Lich King and erected a monument to that effect.

If you don’t think that’s vainglorious enough, there’s a matching statue in Light’s Hope Chapel. Tirion, you bastard, we did all the heavy lifting, all you did was a backflip!

After spending a huge chunk of time attempting to work out a rotation (more on that in my next post), I logged off for a bit. While I was gone I had a revelation: just about everyone I know from Twitter was Alliance and therefore Horde-side was going to be awfully lonely in the beta. To increase my chances of maybe doing a few beta raids eventually, I bit the bullet and created a premade Alliance Paladin.

A female Draenei one.

So I did the set up dance with her. She is named Rhydach. Her hips do something funny when she walks. I don’t get it.

Yes, I feel dirty too. But it’s not my fault, Draenei was the only option for Alliance Paladin premades!

On the bright side, since I’m playing Cataclysm on Alliance side, it’ll feel a little fresher once the expansion pack comes out. Rather than if I spent the entire time on Horde side in the beta. In any case, after the set up I spent most of the rest of the day questing in Hyjal. Only took me about three and a half quest hubs to get to 81. Though, I’m guessing 81 to 82 will take a lot more experience.

Soloing as a tankadin was pretty straightforward. We still have a wide raft of abilities, and you’ll generally find yourself using them all except for Consecrate, unless you’re surrounded by a large group of mobs. Health was usually not an issue–I don’t recall dropping under 90% except for a few AOE situations (not being blockcapped/having the old block is a pain) and mana was definitely not an issue. I could Judge every 20 seconds and just about always have a full blue rage bar. It was pretty awesome, but also pretty mindless with regards to our primary resource.

As for our seconday resource, without a specific UI for it, or any addons, Holy Power is a pain to keep track of. I often found myself forgetting how many stacks I had and then having to squint at all my buffs until I remembered which icon was for Holy Power. Annoying, but obviously fleeting. Also, hitting Crusader Strike every third attack is not as huge of a pain as I expected it to be, and I generally had enough HP to keep up Holy Shield if I wanted to.

Of course, Holy Shield is weirdly bugged right now on beta. Sometimes I would hit it and get 45% block, sometimes I’d get 180%, and sometimes I’d get 1.5%. There was no consistency to the buff. I usually just used HP to pop Word of Glory after every mob and top myself off.

(Another sidenote: this is how I was specced at 81. I retrospect, I wish I diverted the point from PoJ and the two from E4E and put them in Divinity. I’ll explain why shortly.)

The Throne of Pain!

So the good news is dungeons require a lot more thought in Cata than they do in Wrath. The bad news is a normal dungeon was about as difficult as a TBC heroic. At least for now, I’m guessing it might be a bit overtuned (just going on a limb here).

I was in there for 90 minutes, and we only got the third boss. And I died 13 times. Sometimes instantly. That place is like a sopping wet meat grinder.

Every instinct in my body was telling me to attempt to tanking all the mobs, and yet as soon as I had two of one kind of mob on my, I would die. Or a wave of murlocs would rush past me, intent on eating the healer (they were tiny and dangerous, like Rot Worms on steroids) and so I’d pop Holy Wrath to aggro them all, and then break CC. Which would then release the mobs that would pulverize me into a fine paste.

Once we worked through the gauntlet hallway we eventually made our way to the first boss who at times felt almost like a raid boss. She has a channeled lightning attack that will do some serious damage to the tank (like around 18000) if not interrupted. She also had two “down” phases where she’d retreat into this whirlwind and three adds would come in the room. The casters would immediately need to be CC’d and the melee add picked up and burnt down. Then one at a time kill the casters before the boss re-aggros. Once we got the hang of it, it was an easy kill.

Huge change of the pace from the tank and spanks of Wrath!

We then ran back to the previous central room where a new boss suddenly appeared. We just ran in and pulled him, and I was promptly one shot (45k damage) by a channeled attack he did. Note to self: run out of it. That must have been a fun surprise for the healer.

The second go we dropped this guy, though it was getting a bit hairy towards the end as he kept giving me a move speed debuff curse, which then almost led to me getting caught by the one-shot attack. To be fair, I think the healer didn’t know I needed a decurse, and I definitely didn’t have the dexterity to type out “HALP” while running out of a Dark Fissure.

About at the 90 minute mark we cleared up to the third boss and got an attempt in, but by that point one of the dps had to go and the group fell apart.

Overall it was a pretty intense dungeon, though I’m sure it’ll be easier once Cataclysm comes out. There’s not way they’ll leave an entry dungeon that overtuned. That said, I really like the design that I encountered in there: I have the threat to tank all the mobs, but if I try, I’ll go splat. I like having to use some CC and think about pull execution. Though this makes me mourn for the kinds of pugs that would bang their heads against such a design on live.

Just to speak a little about threat–I didn’t find I was having much of any trouble with it. I know this is level 81 and an entry-level dungeon, but single-target threat was easy mode. I don’t think I ever dropped on under 100% threat on a mob I was intentionally tanking, at least according to the stock UI. After that run I think I have a much, better handle on the new “rotation” which doesn’t seem as counter-intuitive. But, like I said, I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Survivability on the other hand was tenuous at times. I don’t know if it was the healers or if I was doing something wrong, but it felt like a raid at times where I was three hits away from death. If I was ever tanking more than two mobs I’d chain cooldowns and ride a stream of invectives to victory. It was seat of your pants in there.

Lastly, I have a log of the dungeon run if anyone is interested. There was a hunter, mage, fury warrior, and resto druid in the group as well.

I got an email from one of my WoW-playing friends recently who’s leveling his brother’s paladin in his spare time. He wanted to level by sticking to the dungeon finder tool and initially asked if it made sense to go prot and just farm LFD. I kind of scoffed at the idea and told him just go ret/holy (since he’s a healer usually, it’d be more comfortable for him). Anyway, he emailed me again earlier this week:

so i bucked your suggestion and went prot, because the dungeon queues are literally instant, which i like for my xp/hour
i was thinking – you should write a “how to” for baby prots. like what talents to fill out first, what heirlooms to get, what stats to prefer, pre-divine plea mana strats

And so I shall!

First, a disclaimer: I leveled my tankadin (yes, as prot) during the early days of TBC. Back then we auto-attacked until level 40 and we liked it! … Uphill, both ways. And there was none of this “mounts at 20″ nonsense, we ran ourselves from end of Desolace to the other… and we liked it!

Sidenote: I originally recommended going straight prot all the way, but after discussing it with my colleague Honors on Twitter, I was persuaded to his point of view that it makes more sense to hang out in the Ret tree initially. The reasons why are below in the relevant sections.

Pre-game

There are no tanking heirlooms per se, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use some dps heirlooms to speed up leveling and make you nigh-unkillable in the first chunk of the game. I would recommend grabbing:

Venerable Dal’Rends Sacred Charge (enchanted with Crusade) — 40 EoH
Polished Breastplate of Valor (enchanted with Major Health) — 40 EoH
Polished Spaulders of Valor — 40 Emblems of Heroism
Swift Hand of Justice — 50 Emblems of Heroism

If you want to go the extra mile, and already have it, grab Discerning Eye of the Beast as well. But, don’t go out of your way for it. It’s not critical, just the bonus mana is nice and that would normally be an empty trink slot.

With those items you’ll be ready to level in style. For the other slots though, when you get items from the AH or for quests, always take the highest armor class item with stamina and strength. Those are your two biggest stats (the “of the Bear” item class) and should be the two you focus on gear-wise. Avoid any intellect, mp5, spirit gear. Even though are attacks are technically spells, mana shouldn’t be a big concern for you. And spellpower is garbage, avoid that at all costs.

Levels 1-10

Before you do anything, hie thee to a mailbox and grab all your heirloom items (assuming you sprung for them).

Now, unfortunately, there are no talents at this point in your character’s life. You start off with Devotion Aura, Seal of Righteousness, and Holy Light. Just burn through all the quests and when you hit level 10 you should have your first tanking seal (Righteousness), a judgement spell (Judgement of Light), your first cooldown (Divine Protection), and your extra life (Lay on Hands).

Levels 11-20

10-14 — Benediction (5/5)
15-16 — Improved Judgements (2/2)
17-19 — Heart of the Crusader (3/3)
20 — Seal of Command

At level 14 you get Righteous Defense, your aoe taunt (pulls up to three mobs off a friendly target). At 16 you get Hand of Reckoning, a single-target taunt that does damage (don’t be afraid to use this as an attack when pulling). And, most importantly, at 16 you get Righteous Fury, which you’ll need to hold aggro. Once you get this spell you’re ready to hit the LFD tool with a… er… righteous fury. Lastly, you get Consecrate at level 20, which is key for holding large groups of mobs.

At level 15 you get your first two glyph slots, and for those I’d recommend grabbing Glyph of Judgement and Glyph of Lay on Hands for each.

If you’re tanking dungeons at this point you’ll have to learn how to cope with a limited toolset. Manage pulls by grabbing one add with Hand of Reckoning, judging a second, and then dropping Consecrate. Hopefully the dps you run with will be intelligent enough to know to attack what mob you are attacking. If you lose aggro be sure to quickly pick it back up with either taunt. Be sure to keep Righteous Fury on at all times!

Bless yourself with Might until level 20 when you get Kings, then switch to that.

If you find mana hard to manage, and you’re dealing with lots of downtime, don’t be afraid to judge wisdom. And don’t consecrate for only one mob, because the spell sucks up a huge chunk of mana when you cast it. Consecrate sparingly. However, once you hit 20 and grab Seal of Command, couple that by changing your major glyph to Glyph of Seal of Command. Now every time you judge you’ll gain back 8% of your mana!

Levels 21-29

21-25 — Divine Strength (5/5)
26-27 — Pursuit of Justice (2/2)
28-29 — Conviction (2/5)

At this point we’re just bouncing between the Ret and Prot tree, biding our time until level 30. Enjoy Pursuit of Justice now while you can, you won’t be seeing it again until past 60.

Legel 30: Respec!

Now that we’ve hit level 30, it’s time to hop over to a capital city and ditch our current build so we can reboot as full prot. When you respec, grab these:

10-14 — Divine Strength (5/5)
15-19 — Anticipation (5/5)
20-22 — Improved Righteous Fury (3/3)
23-27 — Toughness (5/5)
28-29 — Improved Devotion Aura (2/3)
30 — Blessing of Sanctuary

Now, the huge, huge new spell at 30 is Blessing of Sanctuary. This becomes your primary tanking blessing for the rest of the game. All the good parts of Kings (stam and strength) coupled with mana return on every block, dodge, or parry and damage reduction to boot. You can’t beat it. This spell will generally negate a lot of your mana concerns and adequately replace Seal of Command.

Another major glyph slot opens at 30, and you can put the Glyph of Consecration in there. That’ll give you a little more return for the massive amounts of mana it costs you to drop a consecrate. Change your first major glyph back to Judgement now that Seal of Command isn’t part of your toolbox anymore.

Levels 31-40

31-33 — Reckoning (3/5)
34 — Devotion Aura (3/3) [this is putting the last point in there]
35-37 — One-Handed Weapon Specialization (3/3)
38-39 — Sacred Duty (2/2)
40 — Holy Shield

Just a note on the 3/5 Reckoning: generally, 3 points in Reckoning will be enough to ensure optimal uptime in aoe tanking situations. The last two points have diminishing returns, we can better use them elsewhere.

At 34 you can get Divine Shield and thus the ability to bubble hearth. Use it well.

And at 40 you get Holy Shield, which is awesome for tanking dungeons. That extra 30% block means more mana from Blessing of Sanctuary, less damage taken, and more threat when Holy Shield does damage to a mob. You’ll find aoe tanking becomes a walk in the park at this point.

Levels 41-50

41-43 — Ardent Defender (3/3)
44 — Spiritual Attunement (1/2)
45-47 — Combat Expertise (3/3)
48-49 — Redoubt (2/3)
50 — Avenger’s Shield

Two awesome talents at this point. Avenger’s Shield is when pulling gets really easy. No longer do you pull one mob then run in to intercept the rest, now you can hit three mobs at once and build a huge pile of initial threat. And with Spiritual Attunement, you’ll find mana is nearly infinite in dungeons.

You also get a minor glyph slot at 50, which you should put Glyph of Sense Undead into. At this level you’ll probably be spending a lot of time in the Plaguelands and the undead-filled dungeons there in. Coupled with your new Holy Wrath spell, you’ll find aoe tanking undead mobs is where tankadins truly shine.

Contine to Part 2: Levels 51-80. >>