Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

A friend said he knew a lot of tanks speccing prot around 50, and basically starting to work on dungeons, questlines and good loot 50+ instead (or at the same time as) the usual leveling. Is this worth doing? Just how bad is prot for leveling, especially at that level?

I know you tanked even raids with 11 points in prot during most of actual vanilla, but I was thinking that speccing it properly would both be fun and also make up for tanking in leveling gear, maybe even make pugs a bit smoother.

I'm not a super fast leveler to begin with, but I don't want to double my leveling time (48-60) either. Is it realistic to do?

I'd say to stay in your leveling spec until about level 58 since pugs for most of the dungeons that have your preraid BiS won't invite you below level 58 most of the time. And you will be fine in BRD as leveling spec, trust me.

Gotcha, thanks.