You’ve had the ability to wear plate now long enough that all your straggling mail pieces should be long gone, and you should be decked out in full plate. Even for leveling, prot is the way to go since it’s the most effective spec for AoE grinding and it’s particularly useful for those times when you’re sick of grinding and just want to run an instance or two. After all, most everyone levels as a DPS spec regardless of their class and tanks are at a premium. Keep in mind, the “prot” gear you pick up along the way should be good for both leveling and tanking instances, and that’s a lot easier to accomplish than you might think.

What’s the first thing we learn about as we delve into the world of tanking? Well, okay, maybe not the very first thing, but certainly one of the first. Effective health. This is an important concept for all tanks to be familiar with, regardless of class, but it plays a particularly important role when you’re leveling as a prot pally. Why? Because that same concept will keep you alive through ever increasing packs of mobs as you grind.

But what is Effective Health? Here’s a quote from TankSpot:

Effective Health is the measurement of how much breathing room your healers have to keep you alive assuming all other factors fail – assuming you do not avoid or block attacks or have a mana shield active. Effective Health is important for tanking heavy hitting creatures because of Murphy’s Law – if you can have long strings of not Dodging an attack, it will definitely happen.

So what does that mean in plain English? It’s a value determined by a combination of your total health and your armor that will dictate how long you can survive without heals and without dodging attacks.

How does this come into play while leveling? Even without Holy Shield up, you’ll find you frequently block, dodge or parry most incoming attacks (though the number of blocks increases significantly with Holy Shield up). However, it’s entirely possible that you’ll get a string of “bad luck” where you won’t block, dodge or parry any attacks, and because you’re AoE grinding, that means you’re not taking damage from just one mob, but potentially 10-12 mobs at a time and the damage adds up quickly.

Now, because you’re a pally, you do have escape mechanisms available to you. Holy Light, Lay on Hands, and Divine Shield just to name a few. Ideally, though, you shouldn’t have to rely on your escape mechanisms to make it through large packs of mobs, and that’s where Effective Health comes in.

Because Effective Health is a derivative of your total health and your armor value, stacking AC, Stamina and Agility should be a priority. Remember that, for leveling, being able to efficiently deal damage is also important, so after Effective Health, you should also focus on Strength and/or Attack Power to help keep your damage up rather than moving into stacking Defense.

With that in mind, here’s some early 50s tanking gear you’ll want to keep an eye out for, both for grinding and instances:

• Carapace of Anub’shiah – Blackrock Depths, Anub’shiah
• Foreman’s Head Protector – Blackrock Depths, Fineous Darkvire
• Lavacrest Leggings – Blackrock Depths, Bael’Gar
• Ebonsteel Spaulders – Blackrock Depths, Princess Moira Bronzebeard
• Lightforge Boots – Stratholme, Balnazzar
• Lightforge Gauntlets – Stratholme, Timmy the Cruel
• Vambraces of the Sadist – Stratholme, Timmy the Cruel

Remember, as you work your way into the 50s, the Lightforge set becomes available to you and 3 of the 8 pieces can be picked up right from the Auction House to get you started (the +200 armor 2-piece bonus is nice to have).

While soloing, you’ll want to have the following buffs active:

• Blessing of Sanctuary
• Retribution Aura
• Righteous Fury
• Seal of Light

If you find health regeneration isn’t an issue, you can switch to Seal of Wisdom instead, but I’d recommend just picking up more mobs! Don’t be shy! After all, there’s always Lay on Hands. Also, the more mobs you pick up the more mana regeneration you get from your Holy Shield blocks, so Seal of Wisdom shouldn’t be necessary for mana regen anyway.

Your damage rotation should look something like this:

• Holy Shield
• Consecration
• Judgement of Light

Those three abilities should be more than enough to keep you alive, gather plenty of mobs, and deal plenty of damage. If you need help gathering up big packs of mobs, don’t be afraid to use your taunts (Avenger’s Shield and Hand of Reckoning) to bring in more!

Because you’re leveling, you may find that, despite the fact that you’re specced to tank, you’ll be called on to heal a few instances now and then. From personal experience, I’ve found that healing as prot (at least in the early 50s) isn’t very difficult. Sure, I’ve had some experience healing (both in 5mans and in a raid environment, thanks to my priest Antherwina), but even a novice healer can heal as prot in an instance if the situation calls for it.

The key is knowing how much each of your heals will heal for (my Flash of Light heals for roughly 400, while my Holy Light heals for about 1400 at 52) and how many casts of each you can use before running out of mana (in my tanking gear I was able to pull off roughly 7 Holy Lights or 20 or so Flash of Lights before my mana ran out).

Knowing that will help you determine which heal is best given certain circumstances. Often times, you’ll find it’s best to wait until your target has lost enough health to merit a Holy Light rather than spam Flash of Lights. Also, having the Glyph of Holy Light makes instance healing much easier. If you’ve got cash to spare, you may want to pick up some Intellect plate from the Auction House so you can have some healing gear with you, just in case. Don’t worry so much about getting items with Spell Power, just stack plenty of Intellect and you’ll be fine.

Pallies really are a versatile class, especially once you start getting into later levels when you’ve got more abilities to work with. I’m especially excited for dual specs to come out so my pally with have both prot and holy builds to work with, making switching roles that much easier!

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