Dailies/Questing as Protection

[Bandin]

I am a long time paladin, and one thing I love most about it is that as a paladin I have access to two separate "sword and board" specs, holy and protection. Healing is my first love, and most of my good gear is for my healing activities (exclusively 5-man heroic, no raiding for me). However, I would very much like to do my general dailies/questing in my protection gear.

The trouble is that for some reason I'm having a very difficult time killing anything in a somewhat efficient manner. I don't tank for dungeons because I love to heal, so my "tanking" spec is just for doing dailies, etc. Is there some sort of special talent build I can use to maximize my damage output for this type of activity? Max survivability isn't a must, and obviously I'm not going to be doing 20,000 dps in a tanking spec, but that's alright with me.

Would something like maxing out hit and expertise caps help? A particular talent build? A different rotation of sorts? Simply using DPS gear instead but keeping my tanking spec for the sword and board style?

I know this isn't a normal type of thing, but it's what interests me and I'm just putting it out there to look for some advice from the populace here which I've found to be rather helpful in the past with my healing questions.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Regards, Bandin

[Deleted]

You know what.. there's one word for this..
It's.. wait for it.. RETRIBUTION!

- And if you only use prot for dailies, you might as well get used to the thought that it will never be 'efficient'..

[Bandin]

I know that Retribution is obviously better for doing much more damage, I'm not arguing against that. I simply (as a personal preference) rather enjoy the shield and one-hander play style and feel. I also much prefer the general abilities of the protection paladin to that of the retribution. I've played retribution quite a bit and know what it is capable of, that isn't the issue at all.

I'm just hoping that while I know my choice isn't perfect, nor it is very common that someone a little more knowledgable that me might be able to help me make the protection spec a little more efficient at dealing damage that it is normally. I know I'm not going to kill things in a handful of global cooldowns, but I am sure there are ways I can close the gap even just a smidgen.

If it turns out that isn't possible, then that's okay as well, I just thought it might be useful to toss out the discussion and see what I could glean.

[Floross]

Focus on getting hit to 5% , expertise 26 wouldn't hurt , SoT glyph helps ( which means use SoT for doing damage ). Focus on STR , STA ( for Vengeance ) , ignore avoidance. ( Like you said you could go full dps gear which also has a ton of sta by default ). For a dps build for I'd go for something like:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZGMRfRddoMucbG:kosbq0Mzm

You can play around with the major glyphs if you want . ( If you're single pulling glyph of focused shield is very powerfull and if you end up going single target also replace HotR glyph with CS glyph for 5% crit )

P.S. Abuse Grand Crusader procs and SoTR 3 HP TO DA FACE.

[moocowfrakmilk]

If you insist on doing them as prot than you need to think like a dps. That means prioritizing hit and expertise above anything else. Totally disregard mastery, and dump talent points in damage reduction to pick up the optional consecration buffs. Without a link to your armory profile its hard to give specific advice.

[Deleted]

If you're going to do dailies as prot in 5-man prot gear then it'll never be fast or efficient.

If you love 1h+shield and prefer the prot abilities all you can do to maximise damage is to use DPS gear with no mastery, get hit/exp capped for the content you're tackling and prioritise DPS talents. A shield spike + retribution aura might help a little.

Rotation is pretty simple .. CS on cooldown for holy power and 3hp SotR for the big bang. Use whatever fillers you have; Judgement for Mana, Avenger's Shield (with focused shield glyph) for damage and holy wrath if you have nothing else up. Avoid Consecration (and it's associated talents) as you'll probably OOM and it does rubbish damage anyway.

[CynicalOtaku]

To echo what's been said before: You simply won't be able to take down a single mob in any kind of "efficient" manner.

As has been said, you can sacrifice defensive talents in favor of offensive talents, and gear for expertise, crit, and hit. Remember that you're dealing with level 85 mobs, tho, so your hit and expertise cap are not as high as if you were trying to cap for a raid, or even a heroic dungeon.

Vengeance isn't going to stack much for you, especially when you don't have many mobs on you. Your goal should be to pull as many mobs as you can and keep up AoE. While the fight will take a while, you'll find your overall efficiency will improve.

[Velthy]

Tanking isnt for questing. I find it silly when i see prot warrior, prot pala or a bear in Molten Front. And im a tank.
You will never get enough vengace to kill anything fast enough so it will be always long and boring.

[Legionnaire]

What problems? You must be doing something terribly wrong. With a prot pally you pull 10 mobs at a time and kill them all at once. It's more efficient then any dps spec/class.. I finish all molten front dailies in 15 mins as a prot pally.

[4KhazModan]

I quest and do dailies as prot. Sure I can't kill as fast as ret, but I can pull all of the mobs at once. In the end, it saves time.

[Bluepants]

Echoing the last 2 responses, pull as many mobs as you can handle, and AoE like hell.

[Bandin]

As silly as it sounds, I think the last few posters have zeroed in on my biggest problem. I was simply going about life as I do on most of my alts and pulling one enemy at a time. Just got done doing a round of dailies in my standard tanking build and pulled 4 or 5 at a time and things were much better.

Yes, they still took a bit of time to kill, but the overall effect was much nicer.

Thanks for the advice folks.

[Téuntjûh]

Pull more mobs @ the same time.
you should have +5 on you all the time.

And if you need single mobs, try to tag em @ the npc's.
They do the killing for you, boy those npc's have pro DPS!

[Deleted]

I dual spec Prot/Holy (I raid as both specs). Prot is fine for questing. Hard to say what the DPS will be, variation from 7-20k (personally).

From a gear perspective I use ret PVP with a str/crit stat 1h PVP weapon and shield. Just gear Str > Crit (haste and mastery and pretty useless for soloing as Prot). Also I tend to use Seal of Insight, just so I don't have to worry about Mana and HP.

[Funky303]

i have ret and prot spec, and most of my dailies go a lot faster as prot novadays, since i pull 5+ mobs for most new quests.

with the new seal of cleave you also do a ton of dmg as prot

[Arcilux]

I quest and do dailies as prot. Sure I can't kill as fast as ret, but I can pull all of the mobs at once. In the end, it saves time.

I do that as ret, and probably kill them all faster. It's all a matter of personal preference, but the most efficient way to kill would probably be 2 H ret > sword and board ret > prot in dps gear > prot in prot gear. Just take the one that fits your personal playstyle preference.

[Ozy]

Tanking isnt for questing. I find it silly when i see prot warrior, prot pala or a bear in Molten Front. And im a tank.
You will never get enough vengace to kill anything fast enough so it will be always long and boring.

I woulnt say its silly for a paladin, some of us dont have dps specs as we tank or heal.

[Malthanis]

with the new seal of cleave you also do a ton of dmg as prot

If you're using the 'seal of cleave' then you're not specced as Prot, since the AoE portion of SoRighteousness is part of the Seals of Command talent.

But as for the topic, if you enjoy Prot for questing, by all means. Even better on a PvP server, since you'll have more survivability.

[Powerogue]

you might do better if you don't even gear for ret but still use the ret spec.

[Dedweight]

Tanking isnt for questing. I find it silly when i see prot warrior, prot pala or a bear in Molten Front. And im a tank. You will never get enough vengace to kill anything fast enough so it will be always long and boring.

It isn't? Suited me just fine on my Warrior, DK, Paladin, and Druid(quested in cat mostly but bear spec). Got to 85 as fast if not faster than a number of other people that insisted a DPS spec is the way to go. I still use my tank specs for dailies and take about as much time to finish as equally geared dps players. The vengeance part I can agree with, it won't build to anything significant but as a Tank spec you can pull a dozen or so mobs to aid in stacking vengeance which makes it a little less of a nuisance.