If you had to level/gear up one now for tbc, which would you go?
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Well, I’m doing both – Feral Cowtank and Protection Dwarfadin.
Goes without saying that Feral solos/quests better, but a Prot-Paladin can just AOE farm undead in WPL/EPL until gray, then run TBC instances until 70.
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This is one of my favorite things to do. So Zen.
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Paladin and it’s not close
Paladin is way better, druid is not bad it is just paladin tank is super nice.
If you go pally you don’t level prot. You stay ret and just tank anyway. You can get imp RF if you have trouble with threat
Yeah, if you’re gonna level dungeons, make sure you snag consecrate by level 20, then climb the ret tree.
Personally, I leveled both a paladin and a druid. I’ll work on both during TBC (but mostly the paladin… I prefer the class.)
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You really don’t because Prot relies on Blessing of Sanc and Holy Shield to hold threat.
Paladins are not warriors, they don’t have tanking abilities as part of their base kit like Warriors do. Furthermore very little of paladin threat is from melee attacks. It’s your holy damage that holds threat and the ret tree contributes nothing to that. You need to spec prot if you want to tank.
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Paladin is for money, druid is for arena. The choice is yours.
Just one? Druid.
But you should have time to get both up during the pre-patch if you want, as both classes get substantially smoother leveling thanks to Talents and Skill changes.
If you’re horde, go druid. Who wants to be a BE
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You want BoS for sure, both for threat as you’ve mentioned, but also for damage mitigation, which will become pretty necessary after around ZF, but I don’t think many pallies actually go 31 points deep into prot, even those who spend most of their time in instances tanking.
I’ve tanked a lot of instances, and off-tanked in ZG with a 30/21/0 build, without issue.
Not for leveling you don’t. Even in classic you tank all the way up to nearly 60 with almost no points in prot because the level of threat needed is very low. I’ve done it twice. You put your points in ret so you can still solo quest and just tank with RF and consecrate using SoR for melee threat. Holy shield is a waste of mana until you can get better items. And with pre patch paladin will have a taunt making prot even less necessary for leveling. Anyone who tries to level with a lot of points in prot is gonna feel gimped.
If you want versatility, go Feral. You can DPS, MT, or OT.
Whereas Protection Paladins are a one trick pony. They are awesome tanks, but DPS? It is like trying to swing around a wet noodle to break out of a wet paper sack.
Just depends on your healers and group comp. When you get to sm/ZF you want a mage with imp. Blizzard so you can get initial threat with consecrate and just kite large packs while dipping back in to consecrate again. All you really need from prot is the 3% hit.
Hell even at 60 on my paladin I can main tank ZG as deep ret without any taunt because the combo of RF with vengeance is so strong.
I mean past ZF, it’s pretty noticeable that pallies are not naturally tanky like warriors are. You don’t have defensive stance and shield block, or feel like a tank without being specifically talented into it.
Spamming GBoK can help, too. And if your healers are overgeared, which they probably are for ZG in phase 6, then yeah keeping up a Ret pally shouldn’t be too difficult.
My Guild’s T2ish Thunderfury Prot Paladin agrees (-the Ret since he is deep prot)
Gbok spam can work In raids but it’s not so great for smaller groups since the threat comes from buffing multiples of the same class. I’m only able to tank as a ret because I have really good gear for threat but I’ve been doing it since zg released. In 5mans as a paladin just talent redoubt and you’ll be fine without shield block, most warriors aren’t even using shields to tank.
Once you start getting into 40man raid tanking prot becomes much better since you can gbok spam and lots of spell power gear is available
Prot Paladins are much better dungeon tanks. But from experience I think you’re going to find that everyone and their mother is rolling a prot paladin. Which will be great for 5 mans/heroics and a rude awakening when they all realize they don’t have raid spots 
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