Finally got an upgrade in beta

Finished a rather epic quest chain involving Arthas, and got the
Betrayer's Choker. I cut an Enduring Dark Jade for it, and it proc'ed a perfect cut. So it's quite the lovely item now.

WotLK update

Well I've hit a lull with the beta (mostly cause I reached where things start to be either not implemented or are capped), so time for a dump!

My paladin tank is 77 now, managed to get it right before they changed the required xp for levels 71-77.  Did the quest chain to enable my flying mount, which was a couple of easy quests.  However it seems you still can't use the flying mounts everywhere, bugged locations such as flying into Borean Tundra will unmount me.

I still haven't upgraded any gear other than main hand, although now that I can cut gems (it was previously broken) I re-gemmed all my gear with the +18 stamina.  I figure now that I have the stamina to spelldamage talent in deep protection that stacking stamina and being an Effective Health whore was the way to go.  I have 18+k health self-buffed now...haven't really grouped up with many other people with buffs to see what my raid health is going to be at.  Still need to get all the +stamina enchants, but I'll probably wait till it's live to really focus on it.

This leads me to believe that anyone wearing T5+ gear may want to consider replacing gems and enchants on their gear, and make them last well in to the later 70's.  I have a Shadow Priest I copied over as well with only T4 level gear and I've only really replaced one item so far and I've completed all the quests in Valiance Keep.

Jewelcrafting got a lot of content that doesn't seem to work recently.  The daily quests are there which give you tokens as a reward.  There is another vendor that has pretty much most of the rare recipes for 5 tokens each (as well as a mat or two for 1 token).  It looks like you'll be doing this instead of hoping for a world drop or hitting the AH (which is a good thing).  I'm looking forward to doing these, unfortunately the drops for the dailies don't appear to be in yet.

There's also Gem Perfection, which is a passive skill you can learn once you get 77.  Supposedly it works like Alchemy specializiation in that each cut has a possibility of yielding a 'perfect' cut instead of the normal one.  The perfect cut should have a tad better stats, and the tooltip indicates it only works on uncommon gems.  So far it hasn't proc'ed.  It may be bugged.

Questing 70+ as Protection Paladin

Just wanted to let everyone know that dps has increased for the Protection tree.  My spelldamage has doubled due to Touched by Light.  I switched to a quest green 1H so I could get more dps from Hammer of the Righteous, and it does put out some good damage.  I'm anxious to try tanking with this new setup.

Other than my main hand I haven't upgraded a single piece of gear and I'm now level 73.

I'm in the WotLK beta

I've spent most of my time just getting used to the new seal/judgement system and the new prot talents for Koln.  New zones are beautiful.  Terrain is no longer monotonous.  Each zone has different visual areas, turn up your graphics settings if you can.  It's pretty.

Paladin talents and spell updates for WotLK

Wowinsider has posted a couple of  articles about what paladins will look like in the expansion.

Part 1

Part 2

I'm really excited to try them out.  It seems like they addressed a lot of the pains I felt doing T5 content (i.e. spelldamage itemization) with stamina giving 30% spelldamage now.

Using Elemental Shaman gear when not tanking with Protection Paladin spec

Long title, but it sums it all up.

At some point in a tanks career they realize that having just one set of gear isn't going to be enough.  Maybe it's the first time they're asking to dps cause there's a better tank, maybe it's when loot drops that noone wants, or you come up against your first boss where resistance matters.  So being a good tank, and a good raider, you grab itemrack/closetgnome or any mod that will let you keep multiple sets organized easily, and proceed to be a loot whore.

I've done some research at maintankadin on this, and it seems most people feel you should get a decent healing set for when you need to heal on fights that only require one tank (and let the Prot Warrior tank it).  However when it comes to dps there really is no unified answer that I've found - other than some configuration referred to as 'loldps'.

Well since tankadins stack spell damage anyways, I figured I'd play around a bit and went the spelldamage route for dps.  Anything with spelldamage that was going to be sharded I would free roll on, and eventually got a up a decent set (mostly shammy and shockadin pieces).  I heal reasonably well in it, so ultimately this saved me inventory slots from having to have separate dps/heal sets.  It's actually worked so well that I'm now using my badges to get elemental shaman badge gear to improve my offgear set since I no longer need badges for tanking.

To give a little more insight into the gear set, the stats I focus on are spelldamage and spell crit.  While not quite up to par with a holy paladin, I never will be not specced into it anyways.  But put enough spelldamage and spell crit on, and you'll do just find as a raid healer or helping on the main tank.  And since Exorcism and Judgement of Righteousness still crit, you'll get the benefits there too.

By focusing this way I can maintain a raid viable set via enchants and gems without breaking the bank that will still perform whether I need to help dps or heal a fight.  Obviously I'm usually tanking, but in BT you will find yourself in many other roles.  If anyone else has success stories of going the spelldamage/spell crit route with dps for Protection Paladins I'd love to hear from you.