WoW in an Hour: Protection Paladin

Hi, I’m Gameldar from WoW in an Hour and I’m a Protection… Warrior. What the…. what am I doing posting here? I’m Righteous Defense’s Kris Kringle for 2009 (or for those like me that think that is a foreign term – Surprise Santa) – a Blog Azeroth event.

When I signed up for this I feared I would get randomly allocated a shaman blog and have nothing to say. The reality is Gameldar is more or less a retired Warrior Tank, I play my paladin Keluin more these days. Life circumstances don’t allow me to play more than an hour at a time (hence the name of my blog) and only for a couple of times a week – and there is no better class to be able to conquer the many diverse parts of WoW than a paladin. However, if you checked out my armory link you’ll see I’m specced Holy/Ret… but that Ret bit is flexible (and if you check out my glyphs they are still my tanking ones). I have a set of protection gear (including all the bits that Gameldar should have had but never got lucky on) and have tanked a few heroics but until someone can point me to a ‘Paladin Tanking for Warrior (dummies?)’ I must admit I still prefer tanking with my warrior and generally feel lost trying to do so (primarily in the ‘oh hell something has gone wrong where’s my challenging shout, thunderclap and charge gone’). Additionally given my limited time I’ve said I’m not going to gear up a tank again even though Keluin seems to have the luck with gear. However, I am known to change my mind especially since tanking it is my favourite role to play.

So introductions aside – here is my present to you:

WoW in an Hour: Protection Paladin

I was planning on writing a piece about the tools of the trade for playing WoW on a time budget (and I still will) – and one of the tools of the trade is the class (and spec) you choose. The reality of playing with such a limited time frame is that you aren’t going to be on the bleeding edge of progression. As I’ve discovered some raiding is possible (with a accommodating guild helping a lot), and you can generally get heroics done, but if the dungeons and raids don’t start the moment you log in then you’ll need something else to do!

Soloing

As I said before I believe that Protection Paladins are hands down the best class for taking part in all the diverse parts of WoW – primarily because they have the best soloing ability. I would venture that Holy Paladins win out for pure survivability but they pay for that in not being able to do much damage. Blood Death Knights also have good self-healing, but generally lack the tools of the protection paladin that Bubble, Lay on Hands and Ardent Defender provide, as well as the powerful heals of Holy Light. This gives a lot of diversity in the content that can be seen when just by yourself (or a duo), whether it be farming for rare mounts, conquering those old world raid bosses, finishing all those ‘group’ quests or just tanking the whole of Stratholme in one go for the fun of it, the protection paladin (with a little bit of practice) can do it.

Leveling/Questing

The arguments still go back and forth between whether questing or mob grinding is the best method for levelling. Regardless, Protection Paladins have very decent DPS and good ways to retain and get back mana that make the leveling and questing process a (relatively) painless process (that is speaking as someone that levelled both as a Holy Paladin – until duel specs were introduced – and a protection warrior). Add to that if you are levelling you can quickly find groups for instances as a tank, and solo those group quests without even trying.

If you are just doing your dailies then gathering up all the mobs at once that you need to kill is a more than viable path. I’ve been meaning to try to see if I can complete A Valiant’s Field Training in one hit by dropping in on the big roving mobs of fallen heroes that you find – but I have some fond memories of cutting a swath through the vast mobs of undead that cluster around some of the Saronite nodes in Icecrown with Seal of Light keeping me more than healthy (whereas I generally have to bubble and run as Ret if I managed to pull to many mobs trying to stealthily mine it).

Tanking

It’s what you do. But with the new dungeon finder all reports seem to indicate that the wait time is the lowest if you are a Tank. So from the WoW in an hour perspective this is a brilliant as it means less waiting time, more doing time. Additionally by and large you can set the pace of the run as well to make it a quick and painless process. I also find the groups are more successful when I’m the tank… (although they have only been success for me as a paladin because my guild mates have been patient and sucked up the pain when they out dpsed my threat… my gear isn’t that good, and I still haven’t got my head around the best ways to do things as a pally tank… more reading of good Pally tanking sites Righteous Defense is needed and more practice practice practice)… or to put that in a slightly less egotistical way – when you have a bad tank its harder to have a successful run. As a healer I wouldn’t say I have a favourite tank to heal, but I certainly don’t groan when I find a paladin tanking for me… in my guild I would be groaning all the time – our tanks are primarily paladins.

As mentioned just before – it is also a good way of levelling if you have the time and inclination to do the lower level dungeons – and tanking the lower level dungeons is a good way to learn the ropes – something I’ve sorely missed with my Paladin.

Tanking DPS

This gets a heading all of it own largely due to my jealousy! The DPS output as a Paladin tank is fantastic and that is without even trying. I remember healing a heroic for one of our freshly dinged Paladin tanks in our guild and being surprise at his DPS by the end – it was better than I could do with my warrior and I’d be tanking heroics for at least 6 months. It is all a contributing factor to why soloing and levelling/questing is so viable as a Prot Pally. I’d like to try out the Seal of Command spec you have been discussing here at some point too!

Off spec

Or in my case, my main spec. The options for an off spec are great. Holy (I might be biased) is a great healing spec and additionally is relatively easy to gear up – given all that spellpower plate that no one else can use and there are some good crafted items too if you don’t mind wearing mail (I walked straight into raid healing as a freshly dinged 80). Retribution is a solid DPS spec with all the raid support goodness thrown in and as someone who is a pretty terrible melee DPS (“what … standing behind the mob… but it keeps moving and it is not following me”) I find that Ret is more forgiving than say an Arms warrior spec (my warrior’s off spec).
Having written this – I’ve actually convinced myself to switch back to Protection as my off spec – with the idea of getting back into doing some tanking as well as the soloing advantages.

So finally, I’d like to wish you the seasons greetings and wish you well in your travels through Azeroth – and if you find you only have an hour to spare to play WoW during the silly season – remember you can enjoy the best of the game as your Protection Paladin!