Holy/Prot or Holy/Ret?

[Lypo]

At the moment I'm Holy/Prot (398 holy, 388 prot) and that worked great prior to 5.0. However, I now feel extremely underpowered in prot. Whenever I raid it's usually as holy, especially for current content, but I tend to do older content as prot, and I went from doing upwards of 15k single target to now considering myself lucky if I get 7k. I change attacks between CS and HoTR and change seals between truth and righteousness depending on if I'm doing single target or aoe. I use judgement and avengers shield and holy wrath and consecrate, all on cd. I use shield of the righteous when I have 3 holy power. And yet I can't seem to break even 10k single target, even with avenging wrath.

So what I'm curious about is does this get better at all at 90? Am I going to get some more dps back, or am I better off going Holy/Ret and just using WoG as ret for survivability? I used to use prot for instant dungeon queues but that'll matter a lot less with MoP due in part to how valor is gained from almost everything now, and hopefully people will be coming back so we can recruit a lot more for guild and guild runs can happen more often.

[Deleted]

I guess when you are talking about Prot dps, you have near zero vengeance. Your numbers match mine on a raid dummy and yes, they are markedly lower than before. If you were actually to raid current content, you would get vengeance and then your dps might be comparable to before (10 man) or even higher (25 man). Tanks are doing insane damage on raid fights with very high damage (impales, Chimaeron's etc). For 5 mans, I think your damage will be down but even PUGs won't judge tanks by their dps.

You could always try Ret out while levelling in MoP. When I tried it, my DPS as Ret was about 3 times higher than Prot on a raid dummy even without using any CDs (and Ret has great CDs, with AW and HA). It will be more efficient for levelling than either holy or prot. I'm liking it much more post-patch, with more Holy Power it feels much more natural and fun to play.

[Lypo]

Well when I raid current content I'm holy. I usually use it for soloing old content like MC or tanking for old raids like Summit of Mt Hyjal. I'd use Holy for those too cause it pulls more dps than my prot spec, but it has terrible AoE.

For MoP I'm leveling with my girlfriend's hunter. Her pet will tank a bunch of mobs, she'll AoE, and I'll heal her pet. I think I will switch to ret at 90 though, simply to make old content easier/faster. I'm really disappointed with these changes, I liked having a decent amount of dps as a tank, without stacking vengeance.

EDIT: another small question, anyone know how rets are doing for PvE dps in comparison to DKs or boomkins?

[kosechi]

a raid guild will almost never want some one with out a dps spec. some fights require fewer healers or more dps. but its never been my experiences that a fight that requires one less healer requires one more tank.

rets are pretty effective at soloing stuff, good damage, good healing, decent aoe. i solo most old raids for funz and gold as ret and have very little issue with any of it.

[Lypo]

We've got a main tank and a dps with OS tank. We've got me and a shaman as main healers and a shadow priest with OS heals. I will never be using my OS in a current raid situation with my paladin unless half our raid quits the game and we recruit other healers.

[gutnbrg]

i was wondering the same thing, i thought i was doing something wrong. When i solo old raids like TK, i am only pulling 7k dps and it takes forever to kill things.

[Deleted]

Bear in mind that with WoG having no CD, and holy power flowing more freely, Rets have very good self-healing now. I suspect they may be better for farming old content than Prots now.

[Sindras]

Bear in mind that with WoG having no CD, and holy power flowing more freely, Rets have very good self-healing now. I suspect they may be better for farming old content than Prots now.

And if you take the talent Selfless Healer you're virtually unbeatable :P

[Theholypally]

Ive been holy/ret for a long time, just recently dropped ret for prot to try it out (4 pc heroic tier; 397 eq ilvl set) and im starting to like it. Im still not sure if i should level as ret (set is almost full BIS) or as prot.

decisions decisions.

[Subbversion]

I was Holy MS / Prot OS all of Cata. When 5.0 hit I decided to try ret out. I built up a gear set (not done yet, but look at my armory to see what I'm doing) and I can easily pull 30k dps on 5mans and on raid bosses 45k. Close to top of the meters ungemmed unchanted with three pieces of tank gear.

As far as solo'ing goes, some stuff is still difficult and we're not as good as Blood DK's...but it's fun. Anything from vanilla/BC obviously. All 5man content in WOTLK, I can do most 10man bosses in raids from WOTLK, some 25man bosses from WOTLK. I haven't attempted much current Cata content but I'd imagine as long as the damage output isn't bad I could solo parts/most of some heroics in Cata albeit slowly.