The Queue: Plate, plate and more plate
by Alex Ziebart 
Dec 29th 2008 at 4:00PM
Good afternoon, WoW Insider! I have nothing useful to say in my preface today, because I need to go put my new power supply and video card in my PC so I can actually play WoW again. Man, have you seen some of the newer video cards these days? If I had enough of these things I could build a fort capable of surviving a nuke out of them. This thing is a beast.
Trech asked...
A couple questions regarding DK tanking... How much Defense rating am I going to need at level 80 to hit 540 defense skill. How much base defense skill will I have at 80? I'm levelling Unholy with a DPS build. If I throw on a few pieces of +def gear can I safely go tank Nexus or Utgarde Keep at level 72?
You can get a full explanation of Defense for Death Knights in our weekly column Lichborne, specifically the Statistics Primer and the Gearing for Defense editions. Between those two, just about everything you want to know is there. Utgarde Keep and the Nexus should be no problem at all as long as you aren't trying to tank it naked and you pull with care.
AyaJulia asked...
Does the damage caused by Retribution Aura tag mobs? I'm leveling my pally alt lately, and I'd like to know whether I NEED to drop a Consecration after charging into a mass of mobs, or whether simply letting them kill themselves while wailing away on me will suffice.
Retribution Aura doesn't tag, and neither do similar things like Thorns. Generally, passive things don't tap since you don't actually do anything. There are a couple of exceptions to that rule, but generally the passive stuff won't fly. You'll need to drop Consecrates to tap, or if you're pulling them around to get a bigger crowd to AOE down, you'll need to drop Consecrates to stop them from leashing as well.
Kakistocracy asked...
I made my Death Knight a blacksmith, but I can't seem to get the quest line to pick a specialty. Is there some trick to it, am I missing something obvious, or is there something wrong that just happens to be low on the totem for Blizzard?
That's a bug that's fixed in patch 3.0.8, so if you want to specialize you'll need to wait a little bit. We don't have an ETA on the patch, but I bet we'll be seeing it soon.
See what I did there?
poilbrun asked...
Me and my wife will soon finish the levelling process with our mains (mage and druid), so we're going to go back to our alts, a warrior and paladin stuck at level 46. Could anyone give me a pointer as to what spec we should choose for our characters?
Ultimately, we will respec Prot and Holy once we reach Northrend to have an easy time starting dungeon runs, but in the 25 intervening levels, I'm not really sure that this would be the best combo.
I'm a big fan of the tank/healer combo, so Prot and Holy might be exactly what you want. Holy isn't the best Paladin leveling spec ever, but Protection is a great Warrior tree nowadays, even for leveling. Its damage output isn't terribly low, and its survivability is great. Put a healer behind that and you can do anything. I think the synergy between the two would be fun, at least.
You could also go Arms (or Fury) and Ret and be a wrecking crew for awhile. Both would be pretty fun, but personally I'd try the Prot and Holy pair. I bet there are some readers that disagree with me here, and they'll probably say as much in the comments (and they should!) so check out what they have to say, too.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: Paladin, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Death Knight, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Chris Dec 29th 2008 4:10PM
I would say prot and ret.
The reason for this is that prot is by far the most powerful all-round warrior spec right now, and Judgement of Light and Art of War are easily enough everyday healing.
Furthermore, if you keep some +int and mp5 pieces in your bank, you could main heal any old world instance, and some BC ones.
jbodar Dec 29th 2008 7:18PM
Did you mean Int and Spellpower? A Ret pally would have a hard time staying outside the 5-sec rule, I think. I could be wrong, but it'd be all FoL spam.
Solid advice otherwise. I second the Prot/Ret recommendation.
Chris Dec 29th 2008 10:07PM
Ret pallies don't need +spellpower once they get Sheath of Light, since nearly all plate has strength on it. However, your point is taken, and +sp plate would be good to keep on hand also.
Yes, a ret pally would have a hard time staying outside the FSR, hence the mp5. Spirit-based regen is affected by the FSR, but mp5 is not.
In addition to my comments above, Ret is now a very, very solid dps spec, and would go very well with a prot warrior.
chamual Dec 29th 2008 10:14PM
5 second rule doesn't apply to mp5. The 5 second rule is mana regen outside of casting a spell. This mana regen is based on spirit, not mp5.
mp5 keeps on ticking whether you are casting or not, whereas the much larger (if you have the spirit for it) regen kicks in when you havent cast for 5 seconds.
This is why palading traditionally stacked mp5 as their style of healing (spam FoL) didn't allow for the 5 sec rule, whereas priest healing used to be about landing massive heals when needed then waiting for the 5 seconds, and the insane spirit, to kick in and start regenning you mana. Most of this hasn't actually been relevant since vanilla WoW however.
jbodar Dec 29th 2008 10:36PM
Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking there. I declare that I was meat-drunk on account of my footlong meatball sub.
Hendrata Dec 29th 2008 4:14PM
I'd say level Fury and Ret until level 58 (or 60 if you wish),
and go to HFP and do the starting quests. The first 10 quests or so in HFP will give you awesome gears and then you can start choosing tanking and healing plate gears.
Oh and don't forget to respec before going to HFP.
jbodar Dec 29th 2008 7:43PM
And as a bonus, as Tank/Healer combo you can run Outland instances whenever you want with the inexhaustible supply of Death Knights as DPS. You too can know the joy of DK's who open immediately with Death & Decay, then wonder how they pull aggro. Or pull mobs 20 ft away from you with Death Grip, just because. =p
Tinwhisker Dec 29th 2008 4:12PM
Prot/Holy is the safe way to go but the reality is that you won't need a lot of healing as you level (it's not an instance).
You could either drop some of the healing or some of the mitigation as you level and do just fine; Prot/Ret and Fury/Holy would work just fine and tear through things faster.
zyli Dec 29th 2008 8:38PM
that's true, you wont need much healing while leveling so if most of your time is spent questing then ret is probably the way to go.
My boyfriend and I leveled two pallies, a prot and holy and instead of questing we two-manned instances. It was a blast doing it and we leveled pretty quickly. We were able to do that up to the outlands, at which point it was easier to quest. but I say give an instance a try just the two of you...its a great time and really hones your respective skills since you can't rely on anyone else to save you ^_^
silverdragon Dec 29th 2008 4:13PM
Whats the best lvling specs for a hunter and pally combo? im currently a ret pally and my gf is BM. It seems to work well, but i was wandering if there is a better combo.
Ahoni Dec 29th 2008 4:20PM
BM and Ret will wreck stuff. Just make sure the pally isn't afraid of the heal buttons.
Boogs Dec 29th 2008 5:53PM
Agreed. My Wife and I are BM and Ret respectively and it works great. I spent 70 as Holy, am geared Holy, and will respec Holy once again at 80, but it was slowing us down questing, and If I ever needed to do something solo, it was like cutting down a tree with a herring.
Palithras Dec 29th 2008 7:51PM
I'm really unsure as to why everyone thinks Holy is bad soloing or levelling. I hit Northrend as a T4 geared Holy pally and have had absolutely no trouble soloing my way through anything in the way.
Maybe I don't kill mobs as fast as Retadins, and I don't have the hits and mitigation of a Tankadin, but I can certainly pull and kill large groups of mobs with no fear of dying. And I certainly don't kill slowly.
Don't be afraid to level as a Holy pally - it's not slow or laborious or dangerous, and you'll certainly get more instance runs as a healer than yet another DPS.
dawnseven Dec 30th 2008 11:31AM
Completely agree with Palithras.
Been a holy spec'd pally since lvl 67 and don't regret it at all. I don't kill as fast as some, but very (very) rarely die either. I can "round 'em up and burn 'em down" as well as any other plate wearer and by being holy I get plenty of dungeon, heroic & raid invites AND I don't have to fight for my gear upgrades nearly as much as druid and priest healers do. Every time a piece of intellect/spellpower/mp5 plate drops my prot and ret brethen say "Meh. Pass."
vexis58 Dec 29th 2008 4:13PM
I'm a fan of the tank/healer combo too. It's a lot of fun when questing to just round up all twelve of the mobs you need to kill and AoE them down at the same time while your healer spams heals on you like no tomorrow. Put down a consecrate to help with the AoE damage.
Prot and Ret is good too, but it's really a shame Divine Storm is limited to four mobs. Hard to AoE big groups that way.
NoTomorrow Dec 29th 2008 6:31PM
I resent that, being a TG warrior myself.
I beat the living $#%! out of stuff, I don't heal it.
Puck Dec 29th 2008 4:17PM
I'll second Prot & Ret. For levelling you don't really need to concentrate on healing -- you just need some for when things go wrong and Ret can do that just fine.
But most of all you'll want DPS.
DaveyMcDave Dec 30th 2008 5:47AM
I find also that Prot is the best for warriors at AOE threat/damage (shockwave, thunderclap), so if you're looking to clear large amounts of mobs quickly, you'll kick butt. I play prot atm and after playing arms for 70 or so levels, I find it FAR easier to level - downtime is seriously low.
Warriors&pally is a popular choice for 2v2 arena teams, so you're going to kick arse no matter what you choose. You may even consider joining BGs and sticking together if you get bored of grinding - PVP is a lot more fun if you've always got someone watching your back.
Ahoni Dec 29th 2008 4:19PM
We had a couple in our guild level as a prot warrior and holy priest. They were able to duo any group quest with ease, and leveled quicker than most. Prot warriors do nice DPS these days, and with a pocket healer, they are pretty difficult to take out. I'd go prot/holy if I were you.
Hua Dec 29th 2008 4:21PM
My wife (Shaman) and I (Hunter) leveled together as resto and MM to 70. the hunter spec isn't as important as the shaman one, as a hunter with the right pet can be dps and tank if played correctly. there's just some damage a hunter can't heal his pet through, and the shaman can dps when not healing. mobs go down quick.