Ret or Prot?Follow

ret or prot for dmg dealing?...i'd say affliction

Yes, affliction pallies are definitely the best at dealing damage ;)

and between prot and ret it depends on the situation i suppose. prot is the pallys tanking/aoe spec.... kinda. ret is the pally's single target dps spec. given enough targets in solo'ing or instancing (w/ a good healer) i suppose a prot pally could do more overall damage. however if you're dealing w/ 1-3 targets at a time the ret will have more damage due to much harder hits and SoC and CS.... In groups i've honestly never had a prot pally beat me. but maybe i keep myself better geared (although i have a hard time beleiving that) cause i don't have "pure dps" classes beat me much either. it's not uncommon for me to be doing more than 40% of the damage in a group, even in the outlands. perhaps a prot pally would keep up with most retadins.

if nothing else, keep in mind that lvl'ing up ret is supposed to do more damage. ret was originally designed by blizzard as the "leveling" spec (so says their books still). so it was designed to kill fast to help lvl fast. it also was designed w/ no threat reduction and seemingly less competetive end game dps originally. the dps has been mildly buffed, and the threat issue has been addressed quite adequately imo. so i'd say that since 2.3 for grouping with others, ret now is even better a dps spec, and prot (with the extra hp) is even better a tanking spec... and with the 2.3.2 changes it looks like they'll be trying again to improve ret. the trick will be gearing up end game the right way unless they change the existing ret gear.

hmm, this post is longer than i meant it to be... sorry. hope it helps.

Like mentioned, it depends on the number of enemies.

Single or few enemies, Retribution does more damage by focusing large amounts of damgage on a single target.

Protection, while doing light damage to a single enemy, can take on literally an infinite amount of mobs at the same time (assuming you can stay alive), while damaging all those mobs at the same time.

If you have 6+ mobs on you, they're all taking damage by beating on you from Blessing of Sanctuary, shield spike, holy shield, and consecrate for little ticks from each. But multiply those little ticks by 6/7/8+ mobs at the same time, and it really adds up.

Cliffs:
Retribution: superior DPS against single mobs
Protection: superior against groups at once