Originally Posted by TheCutlery
My 2nd pally is still 66, leveled him entirely after the quest XP change. 10-20 kills? That's 3 pulls for a prot pally. That's 20 pulls for a ret pally. It's not even fair to compare the 2.
I dunno, there's definitely some difference of leveling ability and opinion. There are certain people who feel that they need a leveling guide in order to level efficiently. There are others of us that just go get all the quests from a town, do a big circle around said town, run back and turn them all in. I don't need a guide to tell me how to do that, I've been playing for 3 and a half years and done them all 5 times. If you're the kind of "milktoast bread and butter go here kill this then run over here and grab that" kind of guy, ret may in fact pay off better for you. If you're willing to push the limits of survivability and have some fun with what you're doing, I guarantee that Prot pays for itself so often. Not to mention the PvP aspect of it. I've got 2 pallies close to the level cap now, and I never lost in near level PvP on even numbers on either of them. I get ganked, sure, but anyone +4 or -4 that tries just fails miserably. They either beat themselves to death or just run out of mana trying to burn you down. Ret just can't make that claim, you're nowhere near as durable when you're at half health with 3 mobs on you. My friends and I have so many stories of doing an AE pull and getting jumped. We finish up the pull, and then turn on the ganker and kill him. You can't do that with literally any other class. You might get lucky once or twice and pull it off, but not with any kind of reliability like a Prot pally does.
And like has been mentioned several times, Ret really comes into it's own once you get some real gear. You need str, you need crit and you need stamina, and that stuff really doesn't all come together on gear until 70. For prot, you need a weapon, you need a good shield, and that's about it. Load up the rest on stamina and you're fine, defense when it becomes available.
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You're coming off with a serious attitude of "If you're some kind of clueless mouth-breathing noob who needs a guide to level up, then ret may be faster, but us prot grinding iconoclasts will own you". I leveled my paladin as protection at the release of BC from 1-70 in 9 days /played, I understand that it's good. Pulling 6-8 mobs and killing them takes slightly more time than killing two mobs as full prot, which takes about 3 times as long as killing one mob as retribution. Assuming you actually can pull that many mobs without leashing, and that they're all the quest mob you need. Which, in fact, is not really that common. It's great for grinding, but grinding doesn't compare to quest XP now.
Protection is amazing survivability, and less gear dependence than retribution, but it requires an existing high-level character to funnel shield spikes to you in order to be viable and I don't believe it would be faster than retribution given the new quest XP rewards. I understand it may be your favorite, but in a discussion of leveling talent specs, I don't think chiming in and shouting "protection rules!" every time someone suggests that retribution may be the most effective way to level a paladin in the current environment is contributing to a discussion.
Getting back on topic, I play my warrior again these days, and here's what I would use for my 20-60 leveling specs :
20 -
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Piercing howl is your first escape skill when facing multiple opponents unless you're Tauren and have Warstomp. One of the biggest problems with leveling a warrior is that short of an early retaliation (not available until 20) or intimidating shout (available at 22), your options for turning the tide of battle if you get a couple of adds basically consist of drinking a potion, hamstringing, and hoping they don't kill you before you get away.
30 -
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Blood Craze reduces downtime and improves the likelihood you'll survive a fight with multiple opponents. It's not great, but then neither is the extra 20 attack power you'd get from improved battle shout. Sweeping strikes is the next level 30 choice, making multiple opponents much easier to deal with.
40 -
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Dual wield specialization, flurry, and bloodthirst. By this point if you've run through SM and RFD (and you're horde), you should be dual wielding
[Sword of Omen] and
[Vanquisher's Sword] as quest rewards, and you should be ripping things apart with dual-wielding. Bloodthirst gives another tremendous boost to uptime - 50 health every 6 seconds is the health regen equivalent of chain-chugging superior healing potions. It's not as good as mortal strike for kill speed, but I think the reduced downtime outweighs the difference.
50 -
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Shifting away from the fury tree at 45 - rampage and improved berserker stance are not tremendous contributors with pre-BC gear, so we move on to pick up talents from the arms tree. Improved Berserker rage is a nice rage boost, particularly good for ensuring that you get regular bloodthirsts in.
60 -
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
After this point, you'll be picking up "of the beast/of the soldier" and quest gear and should start shifting towards a more pure killing-efficiency spec. If you can bear the hour of hamstring-mashing agony, it may be worth levelling up a 2-handed weapon and switching to arms at this point - the number of blue 2 handed quest reward weapons dramatically outnumbers the number of blue 1 handed quest reward weapons, giving you a better guaranteed upgrade path as you level through BC.