Thoughts on Respecing to Protection

Last night I dinged the big 70 on Tasehires. As I have been planning since I started Tase, I quickly respecced to protection and headed off to Sunwell Isle to crank out some dailies.

It quickly became obvious to me that protection paladins really do have some serious solo play issues. It took me at least twice as long to kill mobs, which was not entirely unexpected. After all I was on a dps-spec (and one that has been a touch on the overpowered side at that). What really concerned me was how quickly I was tearing through my mana pool.

And the problem was more that there just aren't the same tools for regenerating mana in prot as there is for retribution. I was running with Judgement of Wisdom and Seal of Wisdom and I was still running out of mana far faster than it was coming back. This just contributed even more to the slowness of killing that I was experiencing as I had to back off on using abilities.

But that's just soloing, I thought. Surely while tanking that won't be as big problem. Wrong. I got in a PUG for Shadow Labs which was fun as this is one of my favorite instances and was my first time tanking it. We ran it on regular with a 65 priest and demolished it even with a screwed up pull on one of the bosses. So it has definately become easier in 3.0. However, I was still having serious mana issues, particularly with trash.

So how bad is the mana issue with prot paladin's? It's too early for me to say, since I've now tanked just one instance with Tase, but it's something I'm going to be keeping my eye on.