spec advice for a leveling groupFollow

I have started a baby toon with two friends. We're not particularly interested in leveling quickly or getting to endgame, we just want to hang out together. They both rolled paladins and I made a mage.

I am the only experienced player in the group; they've both been playing a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I've never leveled a paladin, so the only advice I can offer is the general wisdom gleaned by association.

As we all freshly dinged 10 last night, we started trying to decide how to spec. I'm going Arcane simply because I never have, thought it would be fun. One friend is determined to go Prot, so I recommended the other spec Ret. I figured that the situations we'd encounter while leveling would rarely need a dedicated healer.

I really don't know much about the spec though. I've tried to direct them to these forums, but until they come here, are there any basic guidlines I should be aware of?

I'd love to get all huffy and say "Of course I read the sticky!" but I must admit I did not. I had assumed much of the advice would be targeted toward players who would be leveling solo.

{{suitably chastised, runs off to read the sticky}}

The ret sanct aura combines nice with prot holy threat and mage dps.
The mage aoe damage combines nice with the prot aoe aggro.
And you have a vending machine and portals, which combines great with lazy people.

Gotta wait for level 62 for that one, so it might be a while, but it is VERY nice to have the 20% extra mounted speed, and I believe it applies to flying mounts too, but have not "officially" verified this. Just seems like my paltry non-epic flyer goes faster with Crusader Aura on than when I don't have it on. Three chained-together birds following each other around outlands can be fun!

Also, try to get really lucky and find 2 cool people who play any healer and any other DPS that play around the same times that you and your friends do, and you won't ever have to PUG anything. My personal preference if you are going to have a Prot Pally, a Ret Pally and a Mage would be Holy Priest and Enhancement Shaman, but that is pretty much an "ideal world" party and you would have to be lucky to find 2 cool people with those specific specs that happened to play on a similar schedule.

At least with the 3 you have, you should have no problem with any (non-dungeon) quests at all... nothing outside of instances REQUIRES 5 people until you hit Outlands.

Edited, Sep 5th 2008 3:29pm by jeromesimina