Paladin Leveling Guide - Which Talent Do You Use?

A Paladin has received some great boosts with the WoTLK expansion. It is especially their damage tree that has gained a lot of improvements. In this guide I will explain which talents should be used and for what reason.

Let’s first have a look at the build:

Paladin Leveling Build

You basically take all the Retribution talents except for Deflection and Divine Purpose, except if you plan to play with somebody else often, then you can make a few changes and use Divine Purpose.

What makes the Retribution tree so powerful? To begin with you will improve your Blessing of Might which is the Blessing you will be using on yourself all the time to increase your attack power. Then you got your Improved Judgment which allows you to use Judgments more often which also results in a lot more damage output.

Heart of the Crusader is not only great for single playing and can also increase the damage of entire parties and even raids. Pursuit of Justice is really great because it improves both your movement speed as well as the mounted movement speed by 16%!

Then you have some other nice talents and you will end up being able to choose Sanctified Retribution which allows you to turn on your Retribution Aura which increases Holy damage done by 10% which is really nice. This one gets even better when you get the Improved and Swift retribution upgrades more down in the talent tree.

You will also be able to take Repentance which is a great crowd control ability. The Art of War allows you to instantly heal when some of your damaging abilities have a critical strike and that is just great because it keep you going. You will need some mana however but that is provided through Judgements of the Wise which gives a nice boost to your Judgement spells: you will receive 15% of your mana whenever you cast a Judgement spell and you will also get the replenishment effect which restores even more mana.

With Crusader Strike and Divine Storm you will gain two ace abilities when it comes down to dealing great damage. Together with your Seal of Command and your Retribution Aura you will be able to deal out massive damage. Righteous Vengeance is also really nice and adds to all the damage dealt in the form of a DoT (damage over time) talent.

Al together you can say that the Retribution tree is just great for leveling. While still being able to heal you can dish out massive amounts of damage and hit that level cap in no-time.

Paladins - Holy Warriors

The Paladin is a hybrid class, capable to tank, heal and do damage. The Paladin can wear plate armor, shields and most melee weapons. The Paladin uses the Holy magic school and physical attacks for most of his abilities.

One of the most well known abilities of the Paladin is Divine Shield, often called ‘Bubble’. The Divine Shield is an instantly casted spell that protects the Paladin from any damage for 12 seconds. Divine Intervention is almost as good as Divine Shield and can even be casted on party or raid members. It protects the target from all physical attacks. The Paladin also has various auras that affect the entire party and several buffs that can also be cast on different players. The Paladins abilities cost mana, no matter what build one chooses.

The following races have Paladins in their ranks: Humans, Dwarves, Draenei, and Blood Elves.

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A Paladin can be a very capable tank when the Protection talent tree is used. While using a shield and some abilities that create high amounts of threat, the Paladin can easily tank in dungeons. A Paladin tank is probably the best tank when it comes down to keeping aggro on multiple targets. This comes at a cost though meaning that he isn’t as good as a Warrior Tank in example when it comes to single target tanking. Some buffs also become available in this talent tree like Blessing of Sanctuary and Blessing of Kings, even though the last one doesn’t have to be chosen since it requires quite a few talent points.

A healing Paladin should use the Holy talent tree to maximize the effect of his healing spells and to obtain some other healing spells that will make him a great healer. A Holy Paladin is a very capable healer known for his fast heals. Known to be one of the best single target healers while his weak spot is the lack in heals that can heal an entire group. A Holy Paladin should focus on getting a lot of critical strike rating, because his heals will heal more and a lot of his heals will refund mana this way.

Finally there is the Retribution Paladin. While wielding a 2h weapon and being able to use several abilities that deal great amounts of damage, the Retribution Paladin is a great class for both PvE and PvP. This hasn’t always been the case; before the WoTLK, Retribution Paladins were almost never welcome in either raids or PvP teams. This is probably why they have received a great boost and are now one of the stronger PvP classes and builds out there.

A Paladin is a strong class, fighting one can be really annoying as it seems that they have multiple lives sometimes. Playing one is a great experience. A nice thing about a Paladin is that you can gather different types of gear and then change from a tank to a healer or DPS if you get a bit bored with your build.