Beta tank set ups and initial thoughts:

[masterpoobaa]

100k dps is certainly in raids on the beta where gear scales up to the desired ilvl.
A tank with vengeance does about 100k, without, its like 15k?
Prot pally leveling is really really painfully slow :S

15K?!?! Dear Lord...

I dont mind, nay i EXPECT Prot single target dps to be lower than Ret, but to make up for it we are supposed to be more survivable and thus be able to pull more. Not lookin forward to the grind to 90... Unless I can do it in dungeons.

[Kihra]

100k dps is certainly in raids on the beta where gear scales up to the desired ilvl.
A tank with vengeance does about 100k, without, its like 15k?
Prot pally leveling is really really painfully slow :S

15K?!?! Dear Lord...

I dont mind, nay i EXPECT Prot single target dps to be lower than Ret, but to make up for it we are supposed to be more survivable and thus be able to pull more. Not lookin forward to the grind to 90... Unless I can do it in dungeons.

Yeah, the problem is it's just hard to pull a lot of mobs on many of the quests. Even on the ones where you can, ret has phenomenal survivability, and so you can actually pull quite a few mobs anyway. Between bubble, lay on hands, the ability to go into a "survival" mode where you put all your HoPo into WoG, and Selfless Healer (which crushes EF and SS as the hands-down best leveling talent because of Supplication), prot just ends up being a really lackluster choice. I'd only recommend it if you are not comfortable playing ret.

At the moment dungeon XP is terrible. It is not even remotely competitive with questing. In fact even crowded questing in MoP is beating dungeon grinding for XP/min. It's that bad. Maybe they'll give it a buff, but right now if you're concerned with speed, you'll want to stay out of dungeons. (This assumes Blizzard doesn't have a catastrophic scalability failure with questing in Jade Forest of course. )

[Skye1013]

Selfless Healer

Why is SH better than SS? You don't get the healing boost when casting on yourself, it's just a free, instant Flash Heal, right?

[stevos]

No idea which is better for levelling, but I can see that selfless healer might be

When levelling you almost always leave combat with spare holy power that then runs out before the next quest and probably stacks of selfless healer and bastion. What you could do is combine them with the glyph and flash followed by WoG out of combat to be back on full health for next pack of mobs. Once your out of combat SS adds nothing to your uptime.

Whether that is better than taking less dmg in combat with SS is another question.

[superworm]

Supplication: for 8 seconds after you kill an enemy that yields exp or honor, you next flash of light will be a critical hit.

Is anyone planning to level in holy spec? I think with some glyphs holy damage seems variable.

[Newsom]

Holy is definitely viable for leveling. Probably quicker to level as Holy than Protection 85-90, but I think Ret wins still (especially in multi target situations).

I've been playing around with Holy as a DPS spec a lot at 85 actually. In HoT dungeons, I can easily get near 50k on short 1 minute fights (burst is INSANE with wings and the 20% crit cooldown), but it quickly goes down to 20-30k on longer fights. I'm also leveling a second Holy paladin and I'm still 1 shotting everything with non-crit Holy Shock at level 78...

I could write some kind of guide on what spell priority to use, which glyphs etc if there is interest?

[superworm]

Generally I'm fond of ranged levelling, and in a crowded zone the ability to range-tag mobs is usually more important than dps. Guess I will go holy in MoP levelling, like what I did in cata.

[Newsom]

Here's my Holy guide

[Kihra]

Selfless Healer

Why is SH better than SS? You don't get the healing boost when casting on yourself, it's just a free, instant Flash Heal, right?

Of the three choices, Eternal Flame is obviously terrible because any time you have to use HoPo to heal, you're just costing yourself a big chunk of DPS.

Before I get into why I think SH is better than SS, I should state that I'm considering a pattern of 0 downtime, where you just pull and pull and pull and never ever stop outside of combat to heal. If that isn't going to be your playstyle, i.e., you're willing to stop and heal up and take your time in between pulls, then there is less of a difference between the abilities.

Sacred Shield and Selfless Healer can both be used during available empty GCDs, so then the question is which one is better? I did 85-90 with both talents, and for me, Selfless Healer was hands-down the better choice. This basically boiled down to three reasons:

- It is hard to have a 100% SS uptime without a loss of DPS. I use Divine Purpose when leveling as ret (this is another obvious no-brainer compared to the other two talents, which are just wasted when leveling), so my empty GCD opportunities are pretty small. With SS I found myself either losing DPS to put it up, or just not putting it up since I still had DPS abilities I could use.

- The absorb from SS is frequently wasted. One of the common patterns you see with mobs in MoP is they nickel and dime you for small hits, and then they bust out some really big hit. So what happens is that the SS shield handles the tiny hits that didn't matter just fine, but then doesn't help you much at all with the big hit when it comes. In effect, the percentage of damage mitigated by SS Is frequently well below 100%. Compare that to Selfless Healer, which heals all damage you take and rarely overheals.

- Supplication causes your instant FoL to always be a crit if you use it properly. When comparing SS and SH, therefore, you need to be looking at a crit heal of FoL when comparing with the mitigation from SS.

One other reason, which is more of a personal one, is that I'm just bad and can't be bothered to maintain a fussy 30 second buff while speed pulling. I would just let it fall off too much. This is also part of why I don't take HA or SW when leveling. DP is free, always-on, and it's just one less cooldown that I will forget to pop as I get into questing.

[Newsom]

SS sucks without vengeance. I can definitely see why Selfless Healer would be better as Ret.

[Treck]

Well, an instant FoL is like what, 25-30k heal? while SS is like a 10k absorb every 6 sec.
Both are pretty crap, and doesnt do anything towards their real role, but unless there is predictable damage you wanna heal up from, FoL is pretty crap, atleast SS eases it up for healers, or they can slap it on the tanks

[Newsom]

We're talking leveling here, no healers to ease up for.

[Treck]

Well then you dont have a choice do you.
You need WoG for harsh words I assume so EF is a no go, and obviously SS is crap for leveling, not cause it sucks without vengeance but cause it sucks when leveling.
Altho an instant FoL isnt going to do much either, but its better than nothing and you can use your HP offensivly a little bit more.

[theckhd]

The point is that with SH, you can instant-cast your auto-crit FoL (due to Supplication) while you're running to the next mob. It therefore costs no DPS because it's utilizing otherwise-wasted GCDs (unlike EF or SS).

Also note that as Ret, Harsh Words is a flat-out DPS loss compared to TV. So you wouldn't be using that anyway.

I suppose you could make an argument for refreshing SS while running to the next mob, but even there you're wasting a couple of the absorb bubbles.

[Sagara]

What I could imagine is heal up via SH, and use Harsh Words if you got spare HoPo and J and Exo are on CD to get a quick pull.

Otherwise, use those same HoPo on an Inq or a TV when in range. Nothing says "HI!" like a nice, big TV crit to the sternum.