One downside of RAF gifting.

[shaeman]

hehe. I didn't say I nearly died. It's a prot pally - I probably had about an hour and a half before I worried

I bought some upgrade items of the AH and it went better. I also realised that I was kind of in tanking mode (I'm such a pally noob) so my aggro generation was fine, I was missing out on actually trying to hurt the boar.

My pally is now gonna have some high level escorts at all times to just burn through quests, till he's got some gear that I can use in instances.

[Vyndree]

Indeedy, RAF "gift levels" will NOT do the following:

• Increase your weapon skill
• Level your hunter pet
• Make your gear better -- if you're level 30 and you gift to 60 then you're still wearing the gear you had at 30
• Increase rep with any factions
• Give you flightpaths
• Give you enough money to pay for your skill training

It's good for an alt -- especially if you have the patience to later grind out weapon skill on dead mobs or tote around a level 70 to "protect" it while it levels weapon skills and earns new gear... Buying AH greens or BoE blues is also an option, but you should get a full replacement of gear in outlands quests anyway.

Hints:

• If you're a pet class, spec BM or Demo to compensate for sucky gear.
• Spells work well since they are unaffected by weapon skill
• Leveling weapon skill can be done on ANY mob -- including critters. Spamming a non-damaging ability like hamstring or wing clip works well too!

[Nomak]

Paladin[/url] that I've gifted to 59. I'm going to go outside org and pull 15 raptors later this weekend to start to level my def. After I get it over 250 I'll head to blasted lands to level my sword skill on those mobs that can't be killed.

They no longer provide weapon skill.

[moji]

This isn't viable for level 60's, but weapon skillup NPC version 2.0 - http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=21416 keep this one in mind for lvl 70 weapon skill.

[noir]

FYI...

Prot. Paladin's CANNOT DPS. Period. End of story. They can't solo (well, they can, but its horribly painful).

This advice is so terribly wrong, it's hilarious...

No class solo's better. Tankadins can solo more mobs than a mage or lock can AOE pull, and still end up the fight FH/FM. Tankadins can solo fel reavers, Onyxia, instances...

[shaeman]

Things have got better.

I realised I was in tank mode, so wasn't whacking out damage on the mob as I should.

After adjusting I was able to kill the boars.

I got my son to bring his 65 fury warrior along and he helped me do the first load of quests in HFP and my gear was upgraded. So my 59 is now a 60.

If you are horde I would thoroughly recommend going into RFC in Orgrimmar to level skills.

Especially on a palladin. I went in and killed the first few elites one by one, till I was skilled up enough to kill them easily. then I ran around aggroing absolute loads of the mobs in there standing with my back to a wall and letting them hit me. No danger of dying and my defense and sword skills rose rapidly.

[Talamarr]

Prot paladin single target DPS IS horrible. However, this is off-set by the unbelievable survivability and the ability to solo ridiculous amounts of melee mobs. I leveled all of TBC as prot. Very little instances. But, I sometimes beat my head in the wall when I need to just kill one freaking caster mob!!!

[Stabface]

I can easily do over 20K DPS sustained with my Protection Paladin.
Actually the Paladin has the highest potential sustained DPS of any class in the game, since our AoE attack is uncapped.

[moji]

FYI...

Prot. Paladin's CANNOT DPS. Period. End of story. They can't solo (well, they can, but its horribly painful).

This advice is so terribly wrong, it's hilarious...

No class solo's better. Tankadins can solo more mobs than a mage or lock can AOE pull, and still end up the fight FH/FM. Tankadins can solo fel reavers, Onyxia, instances...

Put one elite caster in front of them, or mobs that can AOE heal, or just do the island dailies trying to fight the guys that burn your mana or aoeing the blood knights. single target dps on a prot pally is laughable. survivability =/= soloing ability, in the end, you just want to burn the crap out of everyone in a hurry, not be OP against meele and gimped vs healers and casters. Prot pally has the worst PER TARGET dps in the game. You can only attain high dps by pulling a lot of targets.

[Stabface]

Really it depends on the target - ya, against single pulls or casters/healers then a Prot Paladin will be terrible. But I can for example out-DPS an Elemental Shaman on those elite trees at Skettis.

And a Prot Pally that only pulls 1 mob is doing it wrong... rather like a Mage using Blizzard on a single mob. Yes if you play your class badly then you'll do poor DPS, that's not news