Quote Originally Posted by daviddoran View Post
Man, I think im finally gonna have to make a ret team. Ive always preferred casters, not liking to be limited to being in melee range, but all this hype has to be founded... I already have 1 at 80 and 2 min the mid 60s so im gonna RAF up a couple more and have at it. Probably run with a warrior to 71 then swap to a DK I have sitting around. Man, hardest part about cata is gonna be which team of 80s to lvl to 85 first..... Every other expansion, I was still trying to reach the old cap on my first team...
Keep in mind they are, in my humble opinion, still quite gear dependent and that goes especially for their weapons. For example, while Shamans can get by with a (relatively) low-quality weapon, it really holds back all-Paladin teams.

On the other side of course, once you do get high-quality weapons they run rampant. Stupidly, I put weapons last, preferring to spend time running Heroics for more badges to replace equipment (and outside of ICC heroics, there's no weapons to be had that exceed the i200 epic craftables you make at 80).

Only after running out of Triumph gear to buy did I run normal PoS for i219 weapons for my team, then Heroic PoS for my Prots i232 and finally now equip all my Rets with the i251 Battered Hilt jobbies (as well as 25 bloody runs getting my i219 prot shield out of Normal HoR... lol).

The difference has been eye-popping with each Ret pulling 6k+ DPS and my Prot around 4K DPS on my last ICC10 rep farming run and completely thrashing Heroics.

If you make an All-Pally team my suggestion is that as soon as you possibly can, farm out Normal PoS for the i219 weapons (both prot and ret drop there). More than any armour piece it'll make the biggest difference.