Farnack said:
How about 1 Prot Pally, 1 Holy Pally, 3 Ret Pally? 8D
I have never seen a Holy Pally that's questing other than myself. Everyone's a Ret and probably leveling as ret. I was able to kill things almost as fast as a Ret, maybe 2 seconds slower, with zero downtime. I think there is a stigma for leveling as a healer, so when people level as dps, they feel like staying dps after.
I leveled my paladin mostly as Holy (respecced 2 times ret while leveling up, and I'm keeping her ret for the time being for quests and dailies with respecs when needed to heal raids/instances), and what you're saying sounds weird to me.
As Ret I kill shit fast, faster than I could ever dream of as Holy. As Ret I do it with no downtime while using damage seals, as Holy to have no downtime I was forced to use Seal of Wisdom most if not all the time (those holy shocks coupled with the heals on myself would start to get me low pretty fast, plus the other seals did shitty damage anyways. might as well keep up the only really useful one that let me throw shocks and consecration as much as I please).
What's even better, as Ret with Holy gear on I do more damage than as Holy with Holy gear on and can solo the same group quests I can as Holy (actually, it's better/faster).
As Holy, I was faced alot of times with fights lasting 1 minutes or 2 as the HPs of the mobs increased, what with only Holy Shock doing some decent damage. 75 added ShotR to the damage mix, but it did about as much damage as a judgement, ie. it was kinda pathetic (450ish dmg with 800/900ish crit damage).
After I tried Ret, I wouldn't want to quest (or level) as Holy ever again, unless the changes to Judgement of the Pure make the judgements hit for something more than the pretty low damage they do now as Holy.
Btw, for the first time today I was the party tank. Specced prot for it and did CoT:Strat and The Oculus. It was a blast, but so many cooldowns to watch. Still was pretty fun. I only had 498 def (which became 508 after The Oculus, thanks to the boss dropping the ring and completing the quest for the bracer) but I think I did pretty well. Afterwards went questing in Icecrown to see what it was like as prot, and it was nice up until Coprous the Defiled. Couldn't get this group quest done, so respecced ret and did it as that. I don't know why Blizzard would allow the main target of a g5 quest to be mezzable/fearable, but well, better for me I guess.