Holy grinding questionsFollow

Hi all,

I just started playing WoW a couple months ago, and now I've got my holy (41/20/0) Paladin to level 70 yesterday (yay!). While leveling I started out ret until about level 35 when I switched to holy because I was doing more instances. Eventually, I just got used to it, and stuck with it the whole way. I love being holy and healing in instances and when I play with my friends (warrior and hunter) we make a great team for questing. I definitely want to stay holy as an end-game build, and I'm starting to figure out what gear I'll need and where to get it for heroics, and possibly raiding (the sticky has been a great help for that).

My one problem, however, is that I've realized that now that I'm at 70 I need to do a LOT of grinding for rep, items (for instance, I'd like to farm the mats for blessed bracers), gold, etc. I've rarely had problems solo questing, I just had to take things a little slower and kill mobs 1 or 2 at a time. But, that's just not an appealing approach for grinding. So, I'm wondering what your suggestions are. I've never really played much prot, but I've read about it being great for killing large groups. Would you recommend switching to a prot build for grinding, and if I did so, would I need to get a new set of gear? Or will my +int/healing gear be sufficient as long as I'm fighting standard world mobs? Or, should I reconfigure my holy build to be more of the shockadin type and hope that I can output enough holy damage to grind effectively?

Any and all suggestions would be much appreciated.

You can grind as holy as well, as the previous post suggested. You could switch to prot for AOE grinding, but keep in mind this works well only against certain kinds of mobs in certain kinds of areas -- specifically, no casting mobs, and there are a lot of casting mobs in Outland as you know. I have no real issues grinding as a holy spec, even though I take them 2 at a time or so.

Depending on the faction, you can do a lot of rep grinding in instances and there is always a need for a healer. For those factions that are not "instance" based and require mob/quest grinding, I personally used a set of Shockadin gear which complimented the Holy tree and allowed me to keep my healing raid build. If you decide to maintain a Holy build for healing, trying to farm/grind in your Healadin set (the one with +heals only) might not be as efficient as something that was more based on spell damage. This is where a Shockadin grinding set comes in handy and can be drummed up "fairly" easily in Outlands both in instances and from quest rewards. Should you decide you want to go this route, definately keep your eyes open for any plate etc that has the phrase, ". . . increases damage and healing done by spells and effects. . . ." The Shockadin can be decent for both offensive attacks and healing and is a nice soloing set of gear.

However it sounds like you may be interested in a more Prot-based approach in which case there is nothing wrong with swapping you talent point and grabbing a tank set. If you're looking to AoE farm, your healing gear and spec may not be the right pick here either. You can do it, but you may find the Prot talents and a tanking set a little more efficeint and easier. You don't neccessarily have to go into Prot in order to use a tank set, but there are talents in that tree that are designed to make multiple mob hurt themselves while beating on you.

But honestly, the choice is up to you depending on your preference. The one thing I wanted to ask is if you're grinding in your healing gear? If your rep farming in something with +heals only (and not +damage and healing) you may be limiting yourself in which case some more offensive plate (Holy or Prot) may be needed

No matter which direction you go, you'll most likely want your grinding set as well as a "heals only" set if you plan to keep your Comabt Medic specialization.

Hope this helps.