Elites and 2/3-man questsFollow

I was able to solo most quests with my ret/prot ( I changed a couple of times just for fun) paladin, but since DKs are getting the nerf bat, you should also consider the fact that they are a little OP compared to other classes.

In fact, I'm leveling a druid right now and am also able to solo most elites, though it is a bit harder than it was on my paladin (I blame gear as the paladin was t5 stuff).

Hmmmm, there is one quest in Howling fjord which was impossible to do on either my paladin, shammy or druid. And boy, did I try on all three.

BTW 60% more amour is a big deal.

Anyhow, good luck and sorry if I'm not of too much help. Perhaps if you linked your armory ...

Yeah, I'm Ret/Holy, so unlike a lot of other Paladins, my alternative to laying down the smack is to cast pretty colors at people. Still, my Death Knight did all of the quests in his leveling DPS gear. All he had to do was change his "aura" if you will.

Here's my Armory for those who care.

And I'm not whining. I just can't believe how hard soloing elites is on my Paladin compared to my Death Knight. It's been a long, long time since I had to find a group for anything other than instances. I'm not used to it. It unnerves me.

Edited, Jul 6th 2009 5:40pm by Mazra

The quest I had issues with right was the one where you need to kill the big jade owl near Ysera's little oase.

Damn bird does a gust thing which blows you back and slows your casting/attack speed by a lot (5-second Holy Light?). I just can't heal through the damage (1.5k on plate w/o shield) if I need to deliver some sort of DPS as well. I'd spend all my time spamming Flash of Light, until the gust thing and then I'm done.

I got it done eventually because a Rogue from Horde side tried to solo it (and failed miserably). I tried helping out, but the Rogue dropped and I picked up aggro. I had 10% health left when it went down (that's not even one hit from it), having blown Divine Shield, Avenging Wrath and Lay on Hands.

Ohh yeah he was one of the harder ones, to be fair I don't think I actually did that one until I was around 78 or so, and by then I had a pretty good new weapon from Revered Kaluak. I think I was just able to burn him down before he burned me down but I remember that one being a close one, like surviving with only a few hundred hp left.

You get wrecked when you're actually CASTING spells in melee range by anything that hits hard, if you're a ret hybrid trying to cast FoL's or HL's on yourself it will just turn into a race where you heal yourself for 1200 but take 1000 extra damage trying to get that cast off.

If you're holy you can solo lots of mobs but it takes a long time..prot is the best spec for soloing elites/old bosses/etc but leveling prot is slower then leveling a DK, especially as blood. But if you want insane survivability go prot, defense gear, JoL, SoL, etc, prot is pretty beastly. Just slow at the normal mob to mob stuff.

Fastest way by far is just go ret, accept the fact you have to group for most elite 3+ man quests and ask in general every 10 minutes while you blast through every solo quest in the game. Theres a few elite quests my mage could solo, basically if they're snareable they're soloable, but if something hits hard and is immune to snares and roots theres no way.

The wanted quests,i was able to solo on my Protadin,very simple to me. I can see why a ret/holy would have trouble though,Healadins are not meant to take dmg,rets truly can heal themselves and put some dmg on the board,but again arnt meant to take dmg at all.

Death Knights can tank in nearly any spec.

Ret Paladins can't; there's very little if any survivability in the Ret Tree other than lolbubble.

You could do some weaker Elites with Ret, on the simple strat of just burning it down before it can hurt you, but I've found it to be unreliable.

If you really wanna solo Elites, you do it as Prot with a good tank setup. It will take you longer, sure, but it is much safer. I've done many group quests, solo in Northrend as my Prot setup, though there are some quests that you just can't solo.

As far as my DK, I never attempted to get a tank setup, or an "Elite Solo" setup for her, however I did manage a couple Group2 quests with her on my own. I find that having to bite my nails waiting on Rune Tap and Death Strike cooldowns is a bit more stress than I care for; I would rather just use Healing Light, lol.

The Beauty of Prot, is that you will never run out of mana, and as long as you can defend yourself long enough to regain one holy light's worth of mana, you WILL win, regardless, unless the mob does something cheap (spell interrupts will absolutely destroy you, knockbacks are highly annoying, but managable if predictable, etc) or enrages when near death or adds respawn (you DID pull him somewhere safe, RIGHT?).

But back on the subject of Ret, Rets were never meant to be shieldless tanks like Death Knights are. They don't have any extra survivability, everything in the Ret Tree, is geared to dealing more damage.

Edit: After reading the OP again, some more thoughts:

1). Go sword and board. Seriously. The Prot Tree is useless without your shield. With BoSanc, most of your mana regeneration will come from Blocks. No shield = No Block.

2). Get the Glyph of Divine Plea, and talent that talent that makes Divine Plea refreshed by your melee attacks. use a fast tank weapon. This ensures that your Divine Plea never wears off (thus you maintain 3% damage reduction at all times, along with the simply powerful mana regen). If your self-healing falls behind, cancel Divine Plea before healing yourself and put it back up once your health is doing OK again.

3). I'm sure you know the normal prot rotation, if mana is ever an issue, drop Hammer from the rotation if there's only one mob. You could even drop Consecrate too, if needs be, if it means keeping enough mana regen to cover the cost of your heal spells.

4). Use Ret Aura, obviously. that extra armor from Dev won't mean much of anything to you, as far as damage taken.

5). Use Holy Shield every time its up. This adds to your DPS, and adds survivability -- Win/Win.

Other than that, if you still can't solo it at 80, then it just wasn't meant to be solo'd. Some quests in Northrend are particularly lousy for this, it seems Blizz decided to give most of those mobs either knockbacks, spell interrupts, or ridiculous mana drains. Most of the Icecrown Group Quests are like this, the mechanics of those quests include one of the aforementioned abilities to try and limit soloing. They know Warriors can't solo this stuff unless they are geared out the wazoo, paladins can't if they are getting spell interrupted (which locks out the ENTIRE actionbar, making us powerless, as EVERYTHING a Paladin does is considered a "Holy Spell" save Auto-Attack), knocked back constantly (can't cast if you're constantly flying through the air), or being mana-drained (no mana, you're dead).

However, they didn't come up with a death knight counter yet. Death Knights' heals are all instant (no spell interrupts or knockbacks), don't take mana (they laugh at mana drains, thought hey wouldn't laugh so much if mana drains worked on Runic Power, oh wait, yes they would. They heal with Runes, not RP).

That is why Death Knights can solo stuff Paladin's can't. However, there's a limit to how much a Death Knight can heal; he gets small heals from hitting things, he has Rune Tap, which uses a Blood Rune AND a Cooldown, and he has Death Strike which uses 1 Unholy and 1 Frost AND requires 2+ diseases up on the target to be of any use. Multiple mobs and/or mobs that do too much damage are what DKs hate, as far as soloing stuff goes...

Edited, Jul 9th 2009 9:38am by Zariamnk

Chillmaw suddenly made me the most popular guy in my guild. I figured out the bombs are fire damage, so you can completely trivialize the encounter with the appropriate aura. Just like onyxia.

Has anyone tried Molten core as ret? I like the idea of walking around with Sulfuras. I just assumed it would be impossible without trying first, though i read a hunter thread about soloing on elitistjerks which suggests it wouldn't be difficult at all. And i have Zul'gurub on farm status for the achievement/mounts and it's starting to get very dull.