General Hyjal questions/concerns

Hi, this is my first post on here. just to give you quick backstory before bombarding you all with questions, i am a healer for my guild. been healing for most of my raiding experience, although i have tanked in some situations where pally tanks are really good (tidewalker murlocs, alar/solarian adds, etc) and i have done that role as both holy and prot.

my guild is just starting to enter hyjal/bt (3 bosses down in hyjal so far) and they are considering putting me into a full time tanking role. so i have some questions/concerns about hyjal. if i stay holy spec, can i effectively take the damage from aoe tanking the weaker mobs? could i handle an abom or 2? (i'm at around 14k unbuffed hp) the big debate we are having is if i should stay holy spec so i can tank trash and heal on bosses, or if i should go full prot spec, tank on adds and any bosses with adds, and otherwise heal. so how tough are the adds to survive from while holy?

now, for any of you who heal on bosses while prot, how well do you do? i went prot in ssc the other day and healed the whole time to test it out myself, and while my mana wasn't an issue, i was the bottom 2-3 healers every fight, depending if other healers died or not during. i was basically just FoL spamming. any of you have better strats for healing while prot spec?

if you guys have any general recommendations as to how i could be more useful overall in hyjal, as either holy and offtanking trash, or prot and offhealing on some bosses, i would greatly appreciate it. thanks in advance

edit: one more quick question i forgot to ask. assuming i went into hyjal full prot spec, would it be more benificial on trash/boss adds to be uncrushable, or should i use max stam/spell damage. i would go from around 14k unbuffed hp with 95% avoidance to 13.5ish and uncrushable.
not sure with these trash/boss adds if the extra avoidance would outweigh the extra stam.
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As far as i can tell with my limited experience, you will not be able to hold aggro on trashs in Hijali if you are not protection. Holy Shield is a very big source of both threat and mitigation (nerf broken shield and gear at 80% lol)

Healing as protection sucks, simply because you heal for less and you don't get mana back from crits, and you don't have 11% crit on Holy Light free from talents.

Uncrushability is not really a issue on tanking the trashs there, you should priorize block rating, block value, stamina and spelldamage. I have absolutely no trouble in holding aggro with 500ish spelldamage.
You might need Fire Resist gear for Anatheron if you tank infernals, i've done it today for the first time without, and while we anyway got him down, i needed like 4 healers to keep me up from the huge damage. Next time i will 100% bring my FR gear.
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I have to say, I think I'd get rocked in hyjal without holy shield. Blessing of Sanct is an amazing amount of damage mitigation over the course of a full night of trash, so I'd get that too.

being an MT spammer as prot works out fine, but that's about it as far as healing concerns, and yea you can tank trash waves as holy, I know a ret paladin that does it as ret, no real difference apart from 5% parry I guess
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LoL, a paladin tank!

Sanctity Aura can make up for the absence of Holy Shield.

Well maybe the added spelldamage as Holy can help also.
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Hi2u Targ.

As for tanking the trash as Holy, it's very doable as I do it every week, but your threat is much more limited so spell damage on your gear is a real factor there as well as remaining uncrittable without any points in Anticipation. Whether you get that from keeping a Scarab of Displacement or something similar on or you throw on some resilience, like Glad Gavel, etc. just keep in mind, you need that crit immunity or a 10 pack of Frenzied Ghouls will beat the living crap out of you. Also, if you're going to be Holy, Redoubt is probably a must, but that's a no brainer anyways.

Healing as prot as you can imagine is pretty horrible with a cookie cutter 0/49/12 spec, but you have pretty excellent healing gear as I did back when I was hybrid 18/43/0 or other variations. With at least 13 points in Holy for Healing Light and Divine Intellect and your gear you'll easily put up good healing numbers, just have to spam your mana pots and cry for a shadow priest. A build like this is also just fine for MT'ing bosses, I tanked Nephilim's 2nd kill of Gorefiend with this spec, and OT'ing things like Anetheron/Azgalor adds etc.

And as for itemization, if the other tanks and priests(shackles) can keep Aboms off of you, avoidance should help you quite a bit more mitigating the damage, but if you plan to tank an Abom with other mobs on you, etc. HP is going to be your friend for sure in my experience, or you can always just pop a Free Action Potion or BoP/DS yourself out of an Abom stun in a pinch.
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cool thanks for all the advice guys, and hey atreidies

i'm going to mess around with specs over the weekend, sunday will be my first shot at prot, i will be back here if i have any more questions. thanks alot yall!
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