@Buckeye
Hey mate, I posted a SS of the gear I was wearing when I finished the achievement. An armory link is not going to be very helpful b/c I had to swap a lot of pieces around in some of the instances and for various fights. Some encounters required more dps and less survivability, others required the opposite. I used a different setup to quickly clear trash sometimes. I put a synopsis of my gear and gearing strats here for anyone who is interested in doing a 20 prot paladin twink for pve.
The Write Up
Main Spec: Protection.
Main Gear: TBC Gem Gear, Ghost Iron Dragonling, Legion Artifact. As a note I do not have what is called "BiS" for some of slots, despite numerous runs to get some of them (stupid belt!), so I settled for an inferior piece here and there.
Gems: Combination of Steady Talasite (4 armor, 6 stam), and Inscribed Pyrestone(2 Str, 2 Crit).
Enchants: Standard fare excepting I opted for Mark of the Trained Soldier for pve, and had Thorium Shield Spike on a second shield for trash. Crusader and +4 vers/+4 stam on Truthguard. Paladins benefit the most from Crusader b/c it spikes your damage and your heals, and the shield enchant provides a small boost to damage and mitigation/survivability. At the time of this run I didn't bother inscripting my shoulders or lw my legs at all, which you should do.
Off-set Gear: I used a huge variety of off gear since that's where the largest amount of side stat alterations can come from. I have a massive selection of all the +6stam, x/x 2ndary stats to choose from. Some of it is ilvl 24 but presents the right combination of stats. I have a neckpiece of the harmonious, and cloak of fireflash ilvl 28 that have a socket in them (woot!).
Stat Prio: Str/Stam obviously, but I settled on 3600+ HP and about 280 armor (about 46% physical mitigation). Mastery and Crit were the go to for my secondary stats. Many fights required some intense healing as well as mitigation and output (mastery), and critical dmg (faster dps output), and burst heals were big life savers. The huge block chance gave me massive damage reduction and steady damage (1.5% dmg total on average). If you decide to go with a paladin for pve purposes I would recommend secondary stats in the order of Mastery, Crit, Verse = Haste. The secondary stat weights for a 20 twink paladin are all 4:1 with the exception of versatiliy which seems to be around 3.9:1.
Trinkets: I don't have anywhere near the trinkets I would like, but all the ones I have besides the Ghost Iron Dragonling fall into the parameters of the stats I mentioned above. I have Young Drake's Impulse to get around dungeons faster, and a Socketed Academy Faculty Pin I found on the Ah for 1k gold as well. I found some of the guardian pet trinkets to be useful for some fights, so I have all of the ones from MoP (like Crate of Puppies!), and Elementium Dragon.
Talent: Redoubt. More mitigation and some damage, the obvious choice. You can get away with Blessed Hammer in easy dungeons though.
Professions: Engineering is the big one. I used it to craft target dummies and go for the assassin belt tinker for emergencies. You can also create the potion injector (cd 1 minute) which I never used but was awesome to have on hand. Various engi items are useful to get around, namely goblin glider and gunshoes. Crafted meta helms (goggles) are excellent choices as well, but I find their performance to be roughly equal to the Hope Bearer Helm (TBC triple socket with 12 crit). There were times where 10% stun time reduction was preferable however. Any other profs are just touchpoints.
Consumables: I went with the +5 Mastery food most of the time, or +3 all stats as my second choice. Dense Sharpening Stone for +3 weapon damage, and occasionally shadow oil when I wasn't "protting" , and various elixirs for damage. My favorite consumable is Nearly Full Vial of Polyformic Acid, which does not give you stats but instead transforms you into a big undead. This is useful b/c it increases the range of your hit box and therefore you're abilities and melee swings. It's also a ton of fun.
Other: Depending on my gear I could easily get up to 4300-4400hp and put my mitigation from armor close to 50%, but it would of course kill my damage (down to about 150dps). For my standard set I was averaging anywhere from 250-300dps and had good clips up to 350 sometimes, fights that caused me to move around alot put my average dps around 200.
Final: Some of the fights are bugged for solo play, which require workaround strategies, solid play, and dumb luck. A few are massive dps/surviability races that forced me to use LoH and DS in the fight to pull off a win.
Hope you guys find this useful! I would be more than happy to write up a prot paladin for pve guide if people are interested.
Cheers!
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