Protection paladin AOE leveling?

I always remember paladin being slow then at some point after 40 speeding up when aoe farming became viable but my experience with this was mostly in burning crusade.

I painstakingly leveled my paladin to around mid 40s, I kept getting asked to tank dungeons so I went 11 into holy to get consecration and dumped everything into protection.

so far solo/single target is the dullest thing I have ever experienced, I auto attack with seal of light and tab out to do something else while waiting for a mob to die, If I am feeling a little motivated I sometimes seal of wisdom, and throw out a few rank 1 consecrations maybe judge some damage seals.

aoe pulls aren’t working, I have kept my items fairly updated, I have the shield from SM which has plenty armor to last a bunch of levels, I have a spike, I didn’t go deep enough for holy shield yet.

I can pull 4 - 5 things at once “if” I have lay on hands, maybe 6 with a pot,bubble and bandage too, 4 can be tricky and pulling 3 things is cake.

its worn me down but Ifigure I want to try respec give paladin another chance my respec is at 10g at this point and wonder …

1/if I respec into deep prot to take holy shield and start to go into ret to get parry will that give me a substantial boost to survivability/damage and being able to pull more at once?

2/do I just wait it out keep slowly going up the prot tree to eventually get holyshield at level 51?

3/or do I say forget prot altogether and switch/ try leveling as retribution ?

thanks

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I tried that in vanilla and it was pretty bad until level 50-ish. At that point you should have gear in every slot, which gives you better stats against the mobs you’re fighting. You can also go to Western and Eastern Plagelands, where there are lots of undead mobs to fight - allowing you to include Exorcism in your rotation.

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I did some AoE leveling on a BElf pally back in TBC, and I think that Holy Shield was very important then. The more you block the faster the enemy mobs kill themselves. Definitely keep Seal of Light up for the self-heals, and against a bigger mob you could Judge it as well. Maybe make sure you 1h weapon is pretty fast to get those SoL heals quicker?

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Retribution Aura with a shield spike.

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You need Holy Shield to AoE level effectively.

One of the reasons why it was more famous in BC than in Vanilla is that you really need both Holy Shield and Consecration for it to be especially efficient (which requires level 51, so you’re mostly done leveling by then), but Holy Shield alone is doable. Find green mobs to start with, don’t try to AoE pull mobs a level or two higher than you.

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I aoe farmed that spider cave north of Brackenwall Village in Dustwallow Marsh from 41-42, handling up to six at a time w/o ever getting much under half health.

Blessing of Sanctuary and mob selection are the 2 biggies that make it possible in the 40’s imo. Sanc more so for the damage reduction, it really isn’t much of a dps boost. Mob selection I go with green/mostly green/yellow areas where they are packed, caves are very nice for this, as are beasts that don’t run or cast spells.

I usually start by judging wisdom then using crusader to get faster hits in while dropping 2 or 3 max rank Consecrations with ret auro up of course. Once the one I have targeted is dead, the rest should be close to half health and I’m probably close to oom. I judge light on one and then either go SoC or SoW depending on how it’s going and kill off another. Usually by then it’s just a few wacks to finish off the rest.

It definitely does not work yet on mobs my level. Like you said, 3 would be about as much as I could do without having to blow CDs.

I haven’t gone ret as of yet, so sorry, but no opinion of how much faster that might be.

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Im currently going for a tank spec, BUT im also duo lvling with a mage. As you can probably imagine we are just a wrecking ball of destruction. Lol

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