80-85 leveling

[Lirik]

Alright, so currently I have a DK main which I tank on. I am all set on that character and basically just wait to raid in order to get gear on that character now. So, I am now switching over to my paladin who I will be leveling from 80-85.

The problem that I have is that my paladin is in full 264 holy gear. Now, how exactly would I go about leveling in full healing gear? I know from 80-85 you get bombarded with dps gear so would it make sense to just quest as holy and when I get enough ret gear from questing to just switch over to ret and equip that gear?

I had thought about also maybe just leveling through dungeons and healing but the expansion is still need and I think there would be a lot of wipes so leveling wouldn't be fast at all.

If you guys were in my situation, what would you do?

[jyn]

I just speced into Denouce and leveled as Holy while spamming Exorcism and Holy Shock. I tried going Ret for a few quests, but I was just getting smashed and taking a minute to kill one mob lol. I didn't have any problems until Twilight Highlands, mobs had too much HP and I started to go OOM after 2 mobs.

[Honzi]

Buy some dps greens in the AH and quest as ret. Leveling with instances only would be alot slower and you would end up without any reputation.

[Cryoh]

264 holy gear should be sufficient to get from 80-81 with Exorcism spamming, and you should be able to get ample DPS gear from quest rewards to swap over to ret by then.

[kenn9530]

i would suggest leveling as pret, ret gear in prot spec as it does very good damage and you can survive pretty much everything.

[AetherMcLoud]

First, I would level as prot (in ret gear with 1h+shield) rather than ret, but that is a personal choice. I find ret mindnumbingly boring (or hilariously bursty depending on your proc luck at the time with holy power and hand of light) and prot ALWAYS has something to press every GCD.

That aside, I would do what I did (my paladin twink [or alt as I hear you non-german speakers call them ] had AWEFUL gear when I started cata, like some old heirlooms still, iLevel 150 greens, a BC cloak, etc.): Do a trip to the AH, search for all items level 78-80 (cata crafted and dropped items start at 78, a few at 77 even), and just buy yourself some nice green outfit. The cata greens are bounds and leaps above buyable wrath epic stuff and give you a nice outfit to start questing. I think I only spent like 500g on a full outfit, and seeing as you already have a level 85 that shouldn't be any amount of money to really think about