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.

Click here for the Paladin Class Guide, also check out this page for more world of warcraft leveling tips & tricks..

Index:
1.0 - Introduction
2.0 - Talents
3.0 - Gear & Progression

Paladin’s were amongst the slowest levelers in the game not that long ago, bringing up the rear in comparison to even other healing classes such as druids, priests, shamans, etc.  However, with the change to experience gain combined with the increase questing experience, paladins now have the ability to level with the best of them.

As a leveling paladin you’ll excel in certain areas, but never straight up damage, that’s not our intended forte.  Instead, you have to use your combination of abilities to fulfill a number of conditions, paladins are capable of soloing quest bosses that other classes find impossible, healing improves our survivability immensely, invulnerability shield, etc.

All in all I’d say that paladin’s were actually one of my more fun leveling experiences, read on.

2.0 – Talents

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Alright, so this build has more than a few personal choices, but overall I found this, after many respec’s mind you, to be my favorite leveling choices and likely to be suitable for your journey to 70 as well.

The first talent simply makes us more efficient, and given the paladins often mana problems for quite some time so, it helps.  Improved judgement means that you’ll also be expending even more mana if you really want to kill faster.

Deflection serves as our filler talent choice because improved blessing of might and improved seal of crusader are terrible at low levels.  Also, continued increases of melee damage mitigation are quite worthy of a few talent points.

Seal of Command is an obvious obvious, it serves as our defacto damage seal all the way to 70, unless you happen to be a blood elf, whereupon seal of blood would likely replace it at 64, and that’s a ways away.  Seal of command’s damage output can be increased by judging crusader if you want.

Conviction is another great talent, bringing up our generally pathetic critical rate another few notches.  A lot of what makes a paladin deadly is varying burst damage, seal of command procs are quite random at times, and criticals simply factor in to this quite naturally.

Pursuit of Justice is the first real disputable choice, if you really don’t want to get this I’d wager that crusade is a good alternative.  Now, why did I get pursuit of justice? Well, as you level, especially in hardcore questing, you more often than not end up running all over the place to turn in things and pick up continuations, pursuit of justice reduces that wasted time quite a bit overall.

Also, it helps when running from either enemy players if you’re on a PvP server like myself, or just attempting to escape random fights/being ambushed by monsters.  Either way it’s your choice, I still recommend it but it’s definitely
not required.

Sanctity Aura is a useful damage aura, the only other alternatives to this for general leveling are either Devotion or Retribution… well let’s just say Devotion is out of the question and using retribution is up to you, I personally switched between both it and sanctity quite often.

Two-handed weapon specialization, Vengeance, these two increase our general damage output massively.  With a reasonable critical rating you can keep a 3-proc vengeance running for hours at a time when questing and grinding, that’s a big increase of overall DPS.

Sanctified Judgement represents a huge increase in mana efficiency, allowing a careful retribution paladin to continue killing without making a single rest break, you’ll definitely end up drinking less once you pick this up.

Sanctified Seals boosts our critical rating yet more and by connection improves vengeance as it proc’s more often. 
Once you’ve maxed this out and have decent gear you’ll likely never see a single fight without 2-3 vengeance procs.

Fanaticism, apply everything I said above, just more-so.  Dramatically increases our judgement critical rating, bringing it up to an extremely high chance of proccing vengeance when used as an opening strike, nothing much else to say.

Finally, Crusader Strike, the bread & butter of the retribution tree and a hefty DPS increase when factored into a standard damage rotation.  This reduces dependency on random-chance/luck factors such as seal of command procs and so on.

10 – 14 Benediction
15 – 16 Improved Judgement
17 – 19 Deflection 3/5
20 – Seal of Command
21 – 25 Conviction
26 – 28 Pursuit of Justice
29 – Deflection 4/5
30 – Sanctity Aura
31 – 33 Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
34 – Deflection 5/5
35 – 39 Vengeance
40 – 42 Sanctified Judgement
43 – Repentance
44 – Sanctified Seals 1/3
45 – 49 Fanaticism
50 – Crusader Strike
51 – 52 Sanctified Seals 3/3
53+ Branch out and explore the other talent tree options, either make a build of your own or continue with mine.

3.0 – Gear & Progression

Gearing a retribution paladin can be tough at times, at any given time you’ll have numerous priorities to consider such as whether increasing your mana pool for more seals/judgements is a better idea than just boosting strength, etc.

As far as overall greatest DPS and efficiency is concerned, I often tried to get a point or two of intelligence for every three or four points of strength, stamina took slightly less priority than intellect as well.

So, in the long run this lead my health pool to being perhaps slightly high is not even with my mana pool, which actually worked quite well in the long run.  As you continue to level, our mana efficient heals make a high mana-pool essentially the equivalent of an increased health level, just make certain you get that heal off in time.

Critical rating and strength are both massively helpful stats to build up, critical directly increases our chances of procing vengeance and in doing so boosting our overall damage output by up to 15%, that’s very big.

Walk the fine line between too much damage and too much mana all the way to 70, it should serve you well.