Which may be my single favorite planned change to the mount system. I totally understand why Blizz wanted everyone “grounded” for the first 7 levels in WotLK - how can you really appreciate the zones when you’re flying 1000 feet above ground (or 5 feet in the case of Mister Rik)? But once you’ve done it once, you’ve done it - having an heirloom item that a lvl-80 main can send to an alt (at the full price) is a brilliant solution.
If you pick up Auctioneer Advanced, it comes with a nifty optional addon called Enchantrix (you have to load it manually the first time, but you can use the command “/enchantrix load always” to make it always load).
Auctioneer adds info to the tooltip on the average price the item is posted for; Enchantrix will not only tell you what sort of dusts/essences/shards the item will DE into, but will also give you the market price for them. This makes it very easy to decide whether to sell the item itself or break it down and sell the mats.
ETA:
I just wish I had some special tag that says, “I got my Explorer title at 73 before cold-weather flying was available at 68, so I’m way more awesome than you.” 
While I really like the addition of the CWF manual, I’m not sure what one has to do with the other. My plan right now is to leave Outland once I hit 70, which means unless I wait for 3.2 I won’t be flying for a while anyway. I suppose I could stick to Outland instead and do every single zone; I could probably get up to about 73 or 74 with some effort. I’m not enthusiastic about that idea, though.
ETA: It may be worth mentioning that I don’t have an 80 yet at all, so the manual means nothing to me right now. You can’t send it to other players since it’s Bind To Account, you can only send it from your 80 to a lower level toon.
I have it, but I need to train myself to look at the DE materials’ prices first. I’ve started doing that lately since the SO reminded me he would DE things for me but I am not used to it yet. I’d started doing it with stuff my hunter picked up, as she would often get drops with weird stats on them that you couldn’t even give away. I got some nice gold out of the DEs on those–essences especially bring good money on our server.
I think I am going to try to run instances at level regularly with my paladin. I’m not used to working in a group and if I want to do raids and such later on, I really need to accustom myself to it.
This is kinda sorta what I’m intending with my belf paladin (just dinged 33 last night). My lvl 80 human pally skipped most instances until she so outleveled them that she could solo them (and there are still a ton of them she hasn’t done at all), but she was my very first toon and my thing with her was pretty much “do quests and explore the world”. Now at 80 she’s mostly just running around working on various achievements, hence her recent spate of fishing and cooking achievements, her “the Explorer” title, and my reports of her progress toward the Loremaster title. The downside is that I have no dungeon grouping or raid experience. Rather than start grouping/raiding with her at lvl 80 (risking making people think I bought her on eBay, since it would quickly become obvious that I have no idea what I’m doing in a group), I decided to make a new paladin (since I already know the quirks and techniques of the class) and start learning at low levels how to work in a group.
Still, I’ve only had the opportunity to group twice, and in both cases it was more of a “partner” than a “group” since each time I just paired up with a warlock. And in both cases I still outleveled the instance (SFK and RFC) to the point where the only benefit to doing them was obtaining needed quest items. This is my pally on Cairne, a member of the Burning Dog Legion, so I really need to start pestering my fellow Dogs to log in their lower-level alts and do some of these instances with me (I don’t want to group with 80s, because I want to learn the group experience - I don’t want “run throughs”).
Which leads me to a serious question about how a retribution paladin fits into a group. Whenever I read discussion of groups, the discussion of DPS always seems to focus on the ranged attackers, particularly mages, hunters, and warlocks. With them, the way it works is fairly obvious - the tank jumps in and keeps the mob’s attention while the ranged DPSers stand back and unload on the mob (to put it very simply). But what does a melee DPSer (like a ret pally or an arms or fury warrior) do? My guess is that he/she sticks close to the tank, doing as much damage as possible to the same mob the tank is tanking?
I played a bit with my troll priest last night, too, and now that I’ve finally figured out how to use PW: Shield the class has become much easier to play (read: I’m not dying all the time). Man I wish mages had something like that (Frost Armor just isn’t the same).
As far as I’m aware, pretty much. You shouldn’t need to worry about anything other than dealing as much damage as possible; the tank will be taking the hits and there ought to be a healer. You can help out by using your Judgments wisely, though.
My Warrior on Cairne is up to 24. I’ve been thinking about speccing him as Protection and filling the tanking role, but since I’ve primarily been soloing so far it’s been straight Fury. Might be worth a shot if I can catch up to your BElf, though without extra players we still wouldn’t be good for instances.
Mine is a ret pally too, and when I asked my group, having warned them I had very little experience in grouping, our tank (a warrior) told me to use my spells, stay behind the mobs and hit them with melee attacks from there, and keep mobs away from our healing priest. Basically, don’t draw things away from the tank, but whack away at stuff and help the other group members if they need it. I throw Judgment of Light at the tank’s first mob right away, hit stuff, and use Judgement of Light again when it’s ready. I also use Exorcism and melee while it’s cooling down. This included blessings. I have Blessings of Wisdom, Might, and Kings, and I throw a Might on myself and give the others whichever one they want, refreshing them when they expire. I’m used to ranged DPS because of my hunter. I always put her in the back near the healers but not all the way back, but I have done a grand total of one and a quarter instances with her–Gnomeregan with two 30s when I was over level for it, and a piece of Scarlet Monastery at-level. (no one in the group had time for the whole thing right then)
As ret in five mans your job is indeed to dps whatever the tank is. Beyond that, you can grab mobs off of healers, stun or sleep (repentence) mobs that need short term CC. If you’re starting this at earlish levels, make sure you use Concecrate often, as its radius and CC effect is very similar to Divine Storm’s. The thing to remember is that ret is very very very boring until you hit 50 and get Crusader Strike. (at least you get exorcism and holy wrath, and the 30minute seals :))
One note: you will want to get in the habit of standing to the side or back of the bosses. You (generally) don’t want to be in front of the boss, because when he parries you, his next attack will come faster, and on some bosses this can easily kill the tank. There’s usually a fair margin of error on instance bosses at low level, but parry haste at a raid level has been known to be deadly indeed. You also need less of hit and expertise when attacking from behind than you do from in front, but you don’t want to stand behind a dragon. 
Whoops, mea culpa–I didn’t realize you were planning on leaving Outland, like, now. However, 3.2 probably will drop before you hit 77. You don’t need an 80 to buy the manual–you only need to be able to walk up to the vendor in Dalaran. You could easily get a port there right now and set your hearth to one of the Dal inns. In fact, I highly recommend that you do so as soon as you start questing in the zone, as it’s pretty much the Shattrath of Northrend: portals to every capital city (plus Shatt and Caverns of Time), banks, profession trainers, etc.
You’re only in danger of being mistaken for an eBayer if you’re on a very well-geared 80 with titles for doing particularly difficult things and you still are confused by basic concepts. There’s nothing wrong with coming in as a normal 80 and needing to learn the ropes.
My hunter there is in her low 20s, and I’d be happy to run instances with you, if she’s the right level.
Melee generally do exactly what ranged do–they just stand closer. Here are a few things off the top of my head.
1.) You will probably need to do more movement than ranged DPS (the lazy bastards).
2.) Ranged don’t have to worry about positioning in relation to the mob–melee do. Make sure that you are standing behind the mob unless told otherwise. (Some bosses, mainly dragons, have tail-swipes that will knock you back.) Do not ever, unless explicitly told to, stand in front of the mob, especially a boss. They often have nasty things like breaths, cleaves, poisons, etc. that affect only characters standing in front of them–so the tank should be the only one getting hit. Besides avoiding damage by standing in the back, you will also do more damage–mobs cannot parry attacks made from behind.
3.) It takes less aggro to pull as melee than as ranged–110% of the leader’s threat versus 130%.
4.) If the targets have been marked, focus your DPS on the mob with whatever symbol is next in the kill order. If there is no marking and there have been no instructions, try to hit whatever the tank is hitting/the mob with the lowest health/what everyone else is hitting (these should be the same thing, for the most part).
5.) In multiple-mob pulls with humanoid enemies, you may be asked to use Repentance. Keep the mob stunned until it’s its turn to die. People will try to avoid causing damage, but sometimes there’s an accident and you’ll need to re-stun.
6.) Have a general idea of what specs/classes get what Paladin buffs (Might vs. Wisdom vs. Kings). You will be expected to provide them, so make sure you have a good stock of any reagents you may need. Worst-case, you can just ask people what they want; this may change from fight to fight. In groups with multiple Pallies, you may end up giving everyone the same buff, regardless of how useful it would be to that particular character. (My guild has an overabundance of you jerks :D, so it’s not unusual for one of our 25-man raids to have four or five Paladins.)
7.) Know what you can cleanse/dispel/cure/decurse and be prepared to do so on fights that require it.
8.) Don’t try to do anyone else’s job without being asked, but as a hybrid class, be prepared to haul out an ohshit button if things obviously go south. Tanking a boss for a few seconds while the healer BRs your actual tank, or tossing off a quick heal because the healer just got stunned, can be the difference between a wipe and a bosskill.
Parry-gib isn’t nearly as much of an issue as it used to be, thank god. Most of the raid bosses with the worst melee damage don’t parry-haste, and crushing blows can now only come from mobs at least **four **levels higher than you.
No worries, I tend to have a problem with not giving enough info.
Right. I imagine it’s not unusual at all to haul ass up to 80 solo and only then start raiding. Hell, it’s what I plan to do.
This is something I’m going to have to learn. When I’m on my Ret Pally, I’m mostly grouping with a Warlock and Rogue, all DPS. I’m already working as healer and tank in addition to doing as much damage as I can, and I have a natural tendency to get out in front and hold aggro anyway. Can’t do that as Ret in an instance, and I damn sure won’t be able to do it as Holy. 
Fortunately, all you have to do is turn off the buff that boosts your threat from Holy spells, and you should be good to go. Paladin threat is mostly (entirely?) DPS-based (versus, e.g., Warrior threat, which is based on abilities actually generating extra threat above-and-beyond the threat caused by the damage itself… which is why we are currently trailing way, way behind every single other tanking class in DPS).
The only reagent my lvl 80 pally carries is the Symbol of Kings, for her Greater Blessing of Might buff, but since she’s been purely solo that’s been all she’s needed. GBoM is the only blessing she ever uses on herself, though she’ll occasionally throw a Blessing of Wisdom on a lowbie caster she encounters, or a regular BoM on random melee toons (since the “Greater” variants only work on herself or party members).
Which brings up another thing I’m doing differently with the belf pally: I’m having her learn every spell/ability as it becomes available. While leveling my main I only took those spells/abilities I was actually going to use regularly (though some I have like the Rank 1 or 2 version, but didn’t bother learning the higher ranks when it became apparent I wasn’t going to use them.) For example, the only auras she knows are Devotion, Retribution, and Crusader - she skipped the Concentration/Shadow Protection/Frost Protection etc auras. Of course, with the belf I’m planning right from the beginning to dual-spec her either ret/prot or ret/holy, so I’m just picking up everything so I have them ready to go when the time comes (in much the same way that I’m leveling 1-handed swords right alongside 2-handers, so that I don’t have to spend time later leveling the 1-handers up from 0).
Thanks for the tips!
They do (it’s called Ice Barrier) but you have to spec into Frost to get it. I miss it–I used to raid as Frost during BC when it was still viable, and that little extra bit of protection was quite nice. Now I’m Arcane and I go down when somebody looks at me funny, but I hit a lot harder so things are usually dead before they get near me.
Mages do - mana shield - but you have to wait until level 20. OTOH, a level 10 mage has spells designed to keep mobs far, far away, which a priest lacks.
Spec deep into Frost - I think Ice Barrier is very close to PW:S, though it can’t be cast on someone else.
Edit: Doh, that’s what I get for not previewing before posting, after I walked away from my computer for a while.
Always train everything. It doesn’t cost that much. The magic protection auras especially will become important as you begin raiding. I don’t know how good Swift Retribution is as a Ret talent, but that + Concentration could be a good party or raid buff, too.
On this tangent, does it seem to anyone else that it’s more expensive to train everything on shamans than on other classes? My first 60 was a shammy and it always seemed like all the money I’d managed to accumulate between every other level evaporated like water in Hellfire Peninsula after visiting the trainer. There are STILL a lot of totems I don’t have or don’t have up to the best level because I just can’t freaking afford them.
Well, keep in mind that when my human pally was low-level, I hadn’t figured out the money-making aspects of the game (that is, gathering profession + AH) and so it felt like every trip to the trainer was going to clean me out (hmmm, new spell, or new boots?) I mean, at lvl 30 I was checking under the couch cushions to pay for Apprentice Riding. Not so much a problem now that I have that aspect worked out.
I’m just adding one bit or detail here, to what you said:
A melee DPS generally wants to be positioned behind the mob (usually), to avoid miss/block/parry/doge etc. There will be exceptions, such as the various dragons that do a “tail smash thing”. For those, stand on the side (away from the flame breath and the tail smash).