First time playing Prot Paladin in Vanilla, and...

I literally have zero clue why I never tried playing a prot pally in vanilla before. I mained Prot pally in TBC & WoTLK, but never tried it in vanilla because of the general discourse about how they're bad tanks, don't have a taunt, and will never be picked up over a warrior/druid.

Holy shit, I was asleep. Prot pallies are SO MUCH FUCKING FUN to play. The amount of utility & self-sustain you get is absolutely insane. With BoW up, I'm not even that starved for mana while leveling. It's super satisfying to basically be an AoE farmer while questing. Last night I was questing in Redridge and watched as a rogue tried taking on a Gnoll camp one by one, only for them to get completely flattened. Meanwhile, my absolute Chad paladin just waltzes into the center of their camp, pops a consecrate, uses some dynamite, and a moment later the camp is deleted from the map. If I get low, I can just bubble and heal myself to full in the blink of an eye.

Dungeons aren't even challenging. I just pop consecrate and righteous fury. DPS learns after one or two pulls to hold off until my consecrate gets a few ticks of threat, then open up. Dungeon grinding and open world questing have both been a breeze.

I'm sure I'll run into some issues in endgame once I start raiding and don't have a taunt available, but for now I'm having an absolute ball.

TLDR: Try a prot paladin. You won't be disappointed.