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1.0 - The Paladin
2.0 - Paladin Abilities
3.0 - Leveling
4.0 - PvP
5.0 - Raiding
This guide is simply intended to provide a general overview of the class. For a more in-depth and highly detailed resource on this class, check out this guide here.
1.0 - The Paladin
Paladins stand as one of the most iconic and extravagant figures in fantasy history, having a place in nigh every world created and in all them representing a mixture of ass kicking combined with a command over the power of the light and general holy abilities to make enemies wilt before them whilst simultaneously aiding their allies. World of Warcraft is no different.
However this time around paladins have taken a somewhat unique road, what with the utilization of a seals system, blessings, and aura’s to bring utility to almost any situation whether it be PvP or PvE all while remaining capable of becoming a frontline fighter, to tank or DPS.
Retribution paladins, the offensive variant of the paladin class, have more recently become increasingly viable candidates for raiding positions as well as taking spots on arena teams where we were once seen as only healers.
Holy Paladins however have suffered somewhat for this, becoming increasingly unused in favor of shamans and druids as replacements, this in large part due to our inability to heal on the run and complete lack of AoE healing abilities such as priests possess.
Finally the protection variant of paladin has prospered the greatest, finally taking a place alongside warriors and druids as a true possibility for primary tank throughout the raiding dungeons and various instances open to us.
All in all the paladin class is in most cases at a state of great balance, being capable of taking on almost any role with at least some degree of success, although this is enhanced by actually possessing gear conducive to our desired path, +healing for healing, attack power and crit for retribution, defense for tanks, etc.
Druids are somewhat similar to paladins in this, although they possess some major differences overall, as both Druid’s and Paladin’s require multiple sets of gear for each of three or four possible situations, both a virtue and difficulty of all hybrid classes.
One thing a paladin won’t need to worry about is race, at least for the large part, as racials don’t really come into play here like priests, rather each side – Alliance and Horde – possess seal spell unique to them, Vengeance for Alliance, Blood for Horde.
Tradeskills
Tradeskill wise many paladins choose to take up either Blacksmithing or Engineering combined with mining, I suggest never attempting to combine these two onto a single character unless you have massive amounts of gold to burn through.
Blacksmithing provides us similar benefits as to a warrior, weapons mostly and some might decide to go armor smith, it just doesn’t provide as many benefits as weapon crafting at the moment. Engineering on the other hand has some very nice tanking gear for paladins.
The Tankatronic goggles provide the greatest benefit head-wise for a burgeoning paladin tank pre-tier five or six and that’ll be quite the improvement over any instance greens or blues you might have picked up as well.
2.0 - Paladin Abilities
Paladin abilities are quite varied in their usage, being separated into numerous categories such as seals, auras, blessings, judgements, heals, etc. All in all we have more than a few methods of buffing ourselves, injuring opposition, and aiding our teammates as well.
It’s by proper combination of these spells that we truly unveil the power of the paladin as opposed to flinging off whatever judgement we feel like or utilizing some random seal for a given fight. Through calculation and observation it’s not that hard to determine what seal works best when and where for your paladin specifically, as this will vary by gear and level differences.
For the most part prior to around 10-20 you’ll never even need to use judgement, it’s after this point that the spell becomes wildly better and starts becoming a part of your standard ability rotation all the way to 70 and beyond.
Auras will fluctuate between mediocre and downright useless, especially at 70, but it’s never a bad idea to have one going anyway, generally better than nothing. Blessings prove useful at all times, just getting a bit annoying to refresh every 5 minutes but this will end when you pick up the greater blessings for longer durations.
Seals
Seals play a large part in turning paladin DPS from pathetic into somewhat reasonable, and for higher level retribution players, quite nice actually. Whether you be a tank, healer, or DPS paladin, seals play a large part in maintain mana, health, and consistent damage for some.
However many seals also play a greater role simply for being used as judgements as opposed to actually being active during the fight, many of those would be seal of light/wisdom and sometimes crusader, this can greatly improve a raids health or mana recovery.
Damage wise seal of command, an 11 point talent in retribution, or seal of blood, the horde specific seal, become the primary contenders. As far as I know command Vs seal of blood has SoB edging out command over time in raid DPS, however command is used by both sides until horde (blood elf) paladins receive SoB at 64.
All in all, seal usage is but one crucial part of a paladins arsenal, without proper judgements, blessings, and sometime aura selection, it won’t make a paladin magically great.
Auras
Aura’s are much less difficult to select amongst when leveling, indeed you’ll likely be switching between either Retribution or Devotion, whichever you fancy more, for the majority of your levels. Retribution is particularly useful for protection leveling.
Sanctity aura is also picked up later on in the retribution tree, proving a viable DPS aura but I generally didn’t get much out of any specific aura until the high 50’s, prior to that it’s mostly semantics as to your selection.
Upside is that some specific auras can become very useful raid-wise, determining the course of a fight even where resistances are crucial to a raids survival.
Blessings
Blessings are another aspect of the paladin class, allowing you to give teammates and fellow raid members a large overtime increase to damage, mana regeneration, or with BoK (Blessing of Kings) an overall increase to all statistics.
Proper selection of what blessing to use when will greatly improve your chances of prevailing in certain boss fights and dungeons in general, PvP wise blessing of freedom comes quite in handy, specifically for flag carriers in warsong gulch.
As far as what to use on yourself, leveling will see you switching back and forth between might or wisdom depending on how mana efficient you are, with occasional usage of the others for unique situations.
Judgements
Judgements are another key to effectively fighting, leveling, defeating bosses, boosting raid DPS and health, and finally renewing your own mana pool to maintain unstoppable killing. Almost every judgement has some use at some point, more than you can say about our auras.
Primary usefulness is judgement of either wisdom or light, either one can renew enough life or mana that within any given fight you exit at nigh 100% HP & MP. I personally side with wisdom on the manta that mana = life given paladins amazingly efficient flash heals.
Other judgements include crusader for increased holy damage, useful if you have multiple paladins in a party, and righteousness/blood for instantaneous damage. Personally I find the judgement of blood a bit too much HP costly but righteousness is more like a pin-prick, pick your poison.
This section is only an overview of paladin leveling, check out our Paladin Leveling Guide for more information.
3.0 - Leveling
Unlike most other classes paladins actually possess multiple variations of leveling builds, each viable in an alternate manner and the end result leveling speed will likely be entirely dependent on personal skill and play style.
I find this enjoyable as I’ve leveled multiple paladins to level 70, horde and alliance, without ever finding myself tiring of the paladin itself, although I do find leveling as a whole a somewhat tiring experience. The two primary variations on leveling now prevalent are the Protection (AoE) build and the Retribution (Single target DPS) quest build.
Protection Paladin Leveling
11/50/0 Protection AoE Build
Leveling as a protection paladin is my personal favorite. This build endeavors to find an enjoyable and intriguing method of combining our great AoE tanking capabilities with our stacking damage buffs, designed to slowly whittle down surrounding groups of monsters.
Retribution Aura, Blessing of Sanctuary, Holy Shield, and Consecration, all these buffs, many of them from the protection talent tree, come together to provide us immensely effective AoE capabilities. By itself none of the above would deal more than possibly 5% our overall damage, however when built up in unison they easily do enough to drop groups of 5, 10, and sometimes even 20+ mobs at once.
Optional additions would be a shield spike for increasing block damage, augmenting holy shield and BoS(Blessing of Sanctuary) somewhat. Mana efficiency is another key here, you have to be capable of maintaining your mana pool for at least the entire pull, if not a couple more thereafter.
Key talents for this build would be Reckoning, Holy Shield, Blessing of Sanctuary, and almost everything at the bottom of the protection tree boosts survivability and/or damage.
Retribution Paladin Leveling
13/0/48 Retribution Leveling Build
Retribution paladins can either be a lot of fun or really boring, it’s all in the eye of the beholder quite honestly. I loved retribution almost as much as protection, but it was more the fact that I macro’ed the entirety of one-fights spell casting and attacks into one key, this freed up my time for watching football while I mindlessly killed things.
Some might not like how bipolar our DPS is, one minute you’re a god of death, the next you take five minutes for a single mob fight, and it’s all about getting seal of command to proc on a given fight. When it doesn’t, things are painful, but when it does you get lovely large numbers like any paladin loves.
Another thing is that retribution can be much better for questing as opposed to protection, you’re generally better capable of selectively killing quest mobs for any given objective whereas protection shines when fighting ten at the same time, however those ten might not be exactly what you wanted.
All in all protection edges ahead of retribution in certain scenarios, yet will trail behind you when it hits dry zones,
maximize this and you’ll level about evenly, just with much less effort.
4.0 - PvP
41/20/0 Holy Arena Build
5.0 - Raiding
This gear should be enough to get you off the ground and running towards your first raid, likely a Karazhan run. As with all other starter gear guides, this isn't the end-all be-all of gear prior to raiding, just my particular selections as to what I personally searched for pre-raiding.
Helm:
Mask of Penance - Drop(Steamvault)
X-52 Technician's Helm - Quest Reward
Cover of Righteous Fury - Quest Reward
Neck:
Necklace of Eternal Hope - 25 Heroic Badges
Karja's Medallion - Quest Reward
Natasha's Guardian Cord - Quest Reward
Back:
Bishop's Cloak - 25 Heroic Badges
Light-Touched Stole of Altruism - Drop(Heroic Auchenai Crypts)
Avian Cloak of Feathers - Drop(Sethekk Halls)
Shoulders:
Justice Bearer's Pauldrons - Drop(Heroic Hellfire Ramparts)
Spaulders of the Righteous - Drop(Botanica)
Uvuros Plated Spaulders - Quest Reward
Chest:
Breastplate of Many Graces - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Gilded Crimson Chestplate - Quest Reward
Leonine Breastplate - Quest Reward
Wrist:
Bracers of Dignity - Drop(Heroic Arcatraz/Mana-Tombs)
Fairweather's Wristguards - Quest Reward
Hands:
Gauntlets of the Righteous - Drop(Shattered Halls)
The Hands of Fate - Quest Reward
Gauntlets of Purification - World Drop BoE
Belt:
Girdle of Divine Blessing - World Drop BoE
Khorium Belt - Crafted
Lightwarden's Girdle - Quest Reward
Legs:
Starcaller's Plated Legguards - Quest Reward
Consortium Plated Legguards - Quest Reward
Legplates of the Righteous - Drop(Black Morass)
Boots:
Golden Cenarion Greaves - Quest Reward
Boots of the Righteous Path - Drop(Heroic Arcatraz/Shattered Halls)
Ornate Boots of the Sanctified - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Rings:
Ring of Convalescence/Ancestral Band - Vendor(Honor Hold/Thrallmar Revered)
Cosmic Lifeband - Drop(Mechanar)
Celestial Jewel Ring - Quest Reward
Trinkets:
Scarab of the Infinite Cycle - Drop(Black Morass)
Bangle of Endless Blessings - Drop(Botanica)
Xi'ri's Gift - Vendor(Sha'tar Revered)
Lower City Prayerbook - Vendor(Lower City Revered)
Weapons:
Gavel of Pure Light - Vendor(Sha'tar Exalted)
Hammer of the Penitent - Drop(Mechanar)
Lightsworn Hammer - Drop(Shattered Halls)
Shield:
Crystal Pulse Shield - World Drop BoE
Silvermoon Crest Shield - Drop(Shadow Laybrinth)
Two-Handed Weapons:
Torn-heart Axe of Battle - Quest Reward
The Oathkeeper - World Drop BoE
Librams:
Libram of the Lightbringer - Drop(Botanica)
Blessed Book of Nagrand - Quest Reward
Libram of Divinity - Drop(Scholomance) |
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