WotLK Fresh 80 pally torn between Ret and Prot

[Crazycatguy]

Hello,

I come to today with a very simple question in mind, to ret or to prot? While I have serveral lines of thinking for one way or the other. I come to you today with a list of my goals for wow, in hopes I might find an answer.

While some of my goals are fairly simple. Complete all raids, get gear, typical things. I have one big picture goal and that is to do every ach possible (warmane bugs means I can't get them all) This includes both pve and pve.. My first goal (outside the typical 80 start) is to get my loremaster. While spec does not matter in low level area's as I can one shot anything, Its when i move up to places 80s love to camp to be simply a dick that spec comes into play.

Pros and cons that I see with specs are as followed

Prot Pros
- Easy groups cuz tank
- Not easly killed by mobs

Prot Cons
- Pvp situations in open world while working on loremaster
- Slow clear times for mobs


Ret Pros
- Clear speed
- Can PvP and PvE (yeah the spec is diffrent but for the fresh 80 gearing wise...does not matter)

Ret cons
- Possibly slower group finds (DPS)
- Weapon farm for BiS (SM)
- I never played ret before

I know that down the road I can dual spec, but for right now, My gold needs to go to other places as I get my pally set up. So my question to you is this, If the above applied to you. Would you pick ret or prot?

[BigN00b]

If you know how to play prot, then go prot. Prot paladins are unstoppable tanks in PvP and arenas when played correctly. That, and, as you said, being a tank means for near instant dungeon queues. These two factors alone will help you more than learning how to play ret. Pugs will also happily accept paladin tanks. You don't need to dual-spec for all achievements (except for the dual-spec achievement...) and frankly, I wouldn't bother with trying to gear up two specs until much later. Get your prot gear up to high ilvl, then decide if you want to go ret. You could easily complete all achievements being prot, including loremaster.

[Overloard99]

If you gonna play prot as pvp, i recommend going full damage build but specced in prot talents. You gonna burst people really hard. Hammer of the righteous and other spells just do massive damage. Or just be a sustainable tank and kill people. Slowly but works.

Same as my prot warrior. You kill people slowly or decent but hey it works.