Grinding Gear Confusion

[gornack]

Forgive the newbie question, I have read alot of the posts here, and I don't recall seeing this asked. I have recently gone protection spec, and I know what I should be aiming for to tank in instances and such, but I am not sure about soloing. When you guys are out by yourself questing or grinding, do you still wear your tanking gear, or do you have a seperate set of gear you wear?

When I am questing by myself, I use a higher dps weapon, and replace a few of my defense pieces with pieces with more spellpower, but I am not sure it is making much of a difference, things seem to die just the same as when I wear my full tanking gear.

I would appeciate any suggestions on what type of gear you wear when solo questing. Thanks.

[Vanifae]

More spell damage is how I usually go I am not too worried about defense when I solo.

[Ardaic]

I wear the same gear for solo'ing as I do for tanking, but probably because I solo the same way. If I'm farming a drop, I'll bubble-pull as many of the mobs together as I can in 12 seconds, drop a consecration, fire up the HS and start swinging.

Might want to check out my Armory to see how I'm geared though - it definitely isn't the same as most of the raid-level paladins here. When I'm grinding, I have piles of Superior Wizard Oil, Greater Arcane Elixirs and Earthen Elixirs so I'm always juiced - a couple of 15-mob pulls and I pay for them and the rest of the hour is bonus time.

[gornack]

When I am able, I will pull as many as I can and kill them at once, I just wasn't sure if it would be more effective to use different gear other than my tanking gear.

Would it be worth it to add in more spellpower gear, but instead of using my tanking weapon, replace it with one that does not have the spellpower, but one that puts out alot more dps?

I think that is what is confusing me, I understand using a spellpower weapon for aggro when tanking because of the gear we have to wear for tanking stats, I just don't know if it is worth using something different when questing and aggro is not an issue.

[Ardaic]

I use more spellpower when I do that - I find that by the time I kill the 8th, the others are almost completely dead from block damage and consecrations. But I don't know the math directly on it, so I may be quite wrong in the assumption that you'll kill them all quicker than killing them quickly one at a time.

My direct thought-pattern: higher base dps on all targets is better than 60 dps more on one target (assuming you've got a nice, high-dps mainhand weapon).

[adese]

I maximize my stamina, spell damage, and block rating when I am soloing. Like Ardaic, I pull as many mobs as I can, use Consecrate, pop Holy Shield, then just start hitting the mobs. I'll generally keep SoW/JoW up so my mana doesn't go down too fast. The 2 piece DS3 bonus is nice for this, since that way I don't use as much mana keeping Consecrateup.

[cdan]

I use wardrobe 2.0 and have several "sets" of armor. Primarily though I have a raid tanking set that is basically the best tanking armor I have available, a 5-man normal set that is heavier on the spell power and lower on the avoidance / mitigation and a solo set that is higher than the 5 man set in spell power and intellect.

These aren't completely different sets of armor for each slot, but I do carry a 2-option per slot minimum with me.

I have a healing "set" and a solo-DPS "set" for the 3 minutes each day that I forget I like staring at huge feet and swinging a puny sword.

Try mix and matching for the sitation and use the add-on for sanity ;).

[Cimzar]

I use Itemrack personally, just to put it out there.

As far as solo'ing gear, though, I have been doing all of my farming on the platforms of the Ruins of Karabor, and pulling 20-30 supplicants at a time means I need my full mitigation set on. 161 spelldamage is just fine for these pulls, and I can usually pull 25, then the 6 in the narrow 'alley', then another 16 or so up top, and the first 25 are spawned by then...rinse repeat.

I haven't noticed hardly any difference in the time it takes to kill them with more spelldamage gear on, so I like the comfort level my mitigation set gives me just in case I pull the elite. Figurine of the Colossus is pretty much required regardless, though.

edit: there are 16 up top, 17 if you get the one caster by the middle elite

[gornack]

Thanks for the replies, I think I have a better idea of how to go about it now.

[Nich]

For single target stuff, I'll throw up as much spelldamage as I can.

For multi-mob tanking situations, I'll make sure I'm over 11k hp and have a fair bit of avoidance.

For aoe-tanking, I put on some blues with BV and BR, and swap to a fast melee 1h with some mp5 gems. I only have around 35 or 40 spell damage (unintentional, so a bonus), and let things beat themselves to death on my shield - reflective damage doesn't scale very well with spell damage, anyway. It's mostly about the SoW/JoW spam to keep my mana up (barely any mp5 on the gear, and BoSanct rather than BoWis) through the HS spam.

[Tumeric]

I used to quest and grind as full tank in full tank gear. I was asked to respec holy shock for arena and havent looked back as far as grinding and questing. I stack a good bit of Spell damage gear and notice my single target damage increase dramatically. But looking at these ideas i should just respec back to tankadin after arena and HS spam the adds into submission.

And thoughts on how to work with our already crappy mana pool on these pulls i mean Jow/Sow helps but only so much. i am currently sitting around 4500 mana in tank gear. Grinding i can pump out maybe 5200 but this goes away really fast whenyou have 660 a pop consecration and 260( i think dont hold me on it) holyshield. currently with Jow most times i am not regaining the 900ish mana i spend in these 8-10 secs.

thanks in advance for any idea's on how to optimize this ( lichen guard shield maybe?)

[Myotis]

I use a two-handed weapon and gear with Str/AP/Crit. Reckoning is up very often and things go down fast. Though I doubt this is a good idea if you do not have Seal of Blood.