Leveling a Paladin - talent choice struggle

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RustyRyan
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Leveling a Paladin - talent choice struggle

#1 » Post by RustyRyan » 26 Jan 2017 10:16

Hello there fellow Paladins and the likes,

I was wondering if anyone could advise a decent talent-build for leveling a Paladin. I remember leveling a holy Paladin back in retail Vanilla and TBC. Guess you can say I had an unhealthy amount of patience... I want to do it differently this time around.

Anyway, with the whole WotLK engine running Vanilla (jesus I love this so much, I can't stress this enough), things are different. Leveling as Ret or Prot both have their advantages and I'm thinking of doing a hybrid build.

Some points in the protection tree for Divine Strength, Toughness and maybe pick Seals of the Prune in the Holy tree and put the rest of the points in the Retribution tree for decent solo-leveling capabilities. Aside from that, healing/tanking the lower level dungeons should be that much of a problem as well, right?

Anyway, I would greatly appreciate some opinions on the matter. Thanks!

Regards,

Rusty (Bake, Dwarf Paladin, Primal WoW)

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w0lf
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Re: Leveling a Paladin - talent choice struggle

#2 » Post by w0lf » 28 Jan 2017 11:23

Hello fellow pa-la-la :)

I've been leveling paladins in prot spec since pre-TBC. Because of the WotLK client talent tree, I can't give you the spec I used to use. But I put a couple of specs together quickly, drawing from my own experience:

http://www.truewow.org/armory/talentcal ... ,0&realm=p (Survival)
http://www.truewow.org/armory/talentcal ... ,0&realm=p ("DPS")

I can't testify to their utility as I don't play on PW, but I hope this will help you make the decicions you need. Until you get Blessing of Sanctuary you'll be swapping out Seals a lot as you will hurt for mana. The inclusion of Seal of Command is a bit 'meh' as by that time you will be close to finishing leveling. But perhaps it will serve you well if you're still farming pre-raid BiS or gold.

Mad respect to you for leveling as holy/shockadin.
Wilcox wrote:rumor has it, omurtag is still lfm for icc10n
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RustyRyan
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Re: Leveling a Paladin - talent choice struggle

#3 » Post by RustyRyan » 28 Jan 2017 17:58

Hey W0lf-adin,

Thanks for your reply. I like the way you combine protection with a few damage boosting talents in Retribution. As far as my current experience on Primal goes, I've heard that for example doing dungeons, it's good to be a tank. Therefore, I'm going to give your Survival build a try * with a little tweak.

I already spent my first few talent points on retribution (for the parry change and reduced judgement cooldown). I will continue spending my points there untill I get the improved Crit and Run-speed (for leveling purposes). Then Ill dump the rest of my points in the Protection tree for tanking and survivability.

Thanks a lot for you insight!

Appreciated your respect haha!

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Eronox
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Re: Leveling a Paladin - talent choice struggle

#4 » Post by Eronox » 28 Jan 2017 18:22

Hey!

Being a Paladin main since.. Well, my WoW origins back in 08', this'd be my suggestion for a hybride-player like myself in some occasions actually! ^_^

http://www.truewow.org/armory/talentcal ... ,0&realm=p

With this you can easily solo elites all over the world while leveling. Through using Seal of Righteousness in quests and regular mob-killing and Seal of Justice against elites. Use JoL at all time though, and BoM instead of Kings :)
(CC from the seal of justice and hammer of justice will help you more with BoM than with Kings)

This is how I level, no need to get help from a 80 ever :D
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There's things that never will be right I know, and things need changin' everywhere you go.
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You'll never see me wear a suit of white.

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w0lf
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Re: Leveling a Paladin - talent choice struggle

#5 » Post by w0lf » 29 Jan 2017 16:17

In the effort of healthy discussion, I'd strongly suggest NOT using Eronoxs' build above.

The use of Stoicism for PvE has been debated time and time again, it's a PvP talent.

Guardians Favour is largely useless. Hand of Protection, Divine Shield and Divine Protection all give the Forberance debuff, meaning you cannot cast one of those three on the same target for X(?) minutes.

HoP - 100% physical damage reduction 0% Magical damage reduction. Cannot use physical attacks.
Divine Protection - 50% damage reduction from ALL sources.
Divine Shield - 100% damage reduction from ALL sources. 50% increase in weapon swing time. Use this if you want to heal yourself, but care that you don't displace your threat onto a party member.

Healing Light gives you 12% increased healing from HoL, FoL and HS. It does not increase passive healing from SoL/JoL. In addition, you ommit Imp. Devotion Aura which provides you with +6% of healing from ALL sources. Also remember that whilst you cast any of these healing spells you cannot dodge, block or parry.

Blessing of Sanctuary is a MUST. +Str +Sta and -2% dmg from all sources, not to mention mana return everytime you block, parry or dodge. Also a requirement to get Holy Shield. Holy Shield is the mutts nuts, the bees knees. Has a 100% uptime, so much block chance you make warriors jelly and as if it wasn't attractive enough, you get mirror/reflection damage to boot.

Use Kings over Might. Kings gives you +10% to all stats, most importantly Sta, Str, and Agi, remember that Agi also converts to armour and crit chance increase.

Anticipation gives a solid 5% dodge.
Deflection gives a solid 5% parry.
There is no excuse, 1% dodge/parry will always be better than 0%.

Not using Sacred Duty means you loose out on 4% base Sta, as well as the ability to use Divine Shield/Protection more often.

Remember that Judgement is one of the few damaging abilites you have and it's pretty weak in any case, so to maximise your damage output you need the cooldown as short as possible.

Ardent Defender. Why would you even pass up our best "oh shit" ability?

A tank, is a tank, is a tank.

My own criticisms, to my own builds:

Divine Sancrifice - is only really useful using the /cancel aura macro as it removes the damage redirection, whilst keeping the damage reduction.

Spiritual Attunement - I'm glad you said you were doing dungeons as this only benefits you if you're being healed by someone other than yourself.

Edit: If you are going into Retribution first then I agree with Eronox in that Benediction will be better than Deflection so long as you're using a 2H weapon, I'd change Benediction for Deflection as soon as you're able to use Blessing of Sanctuary.
Wilcox wrote:rumor has it, omurtag is still lfm for icc10n
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Re: Leveling a Paladin - talent choice struggle

#6 » Post by Eronox » 29 Jan 2017 16:48

What you are not taking in consideration, W0lf, is that he requested a lvling build not PvE.
If you read the talents and imagine the possibilities, I think that only through a imagination you'd believe my statement that with this spec you'd have no problems leveling at all. And as aforementioned, used this since 12' at WotLK servers.

Edit: Also, what we both should remember, is that such a subject is all opinion based and due to a player's playstyle indeed. A recent bold point to this is Ribba's Survival spec in PvE. Who is essential for his playstyle and does DPS enough but no raid assets. Just as my spec would be essential for soloing every quest ever while lvling and decrease the amount of struggling, while it would not be suited for the PvE dungeons/instances environment in any way.
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There's things that never will be right I know, and things need changin' everywhere you go.
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You'll never see me wear a suit of white.

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w0lf
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Re: Leveling a Paladin - talent choice struggle

#7 » Post by w0lf » 29 Jan 2017 17:47

What you are not taking into consideration is
w0lf wrote:a tank is a tank is a tank
If you just want to blitz through the world sacrificing everything that makes being a tank worthwhile, you may as well level as Ret.

The builds I posted ARE leveling builds with an emphasis on doing so in protection spec. Leveling IS PvE, unless they want to grind their way to 60 through PvP. In which case neither of our builds are suitable.

This does indeed come down to playstyle. But your playstyle, based on the talents you've chosen is "im going to take all the damage whilst mitigating none of it".

That my friend, is not what tanking is about.
Wilcox wrote:rumor has it, omurtag is still lfm for icc10n
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ |

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Stoneform
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Re: Leveling a Paladin - talent choice struggle

#8 » Post by Stoneform » 17 Feb 2017 16:59

This discussion is proof positive that one's play style dictates one's build. There are certain " Must Haves" and certain flavor talents. Then there are the talents that are dictated by your play style. For example:

Must Haves:

Strength, Deflection, Anticipation, Toughness, Improved Fury, Improved Devotion and Blessing of Sanctuary. Pally tanks are very different from Warrior tanks and Bear tanks. The previously mentioned are damage sponges whereas Paladins are mitigation tanks. Warriors and Bears want to get hit to help generate fury. They stack stamina and go to town. Paladins are about avoiding being hit and when we do, taking the least amount of damage for it.

My Play style:

Seals of the Pure: Since judging Seals is our best bang for the buck damage device, increasing it's damage output is a must for me.

That being said, Imp Judgements is a must for me for obvious reasons.

I like to have Divine Intellect. I don't want to have to stop constantly to drink.

I like to opt for 3 points in Divinity as opposed to points in Ardent Defender. With this bonus, I rarely find myself in need of Defender's activation.

Reckoning. Help in so many ways. Added swings means more life back if a mob is judged with Light, more mana back if a mob is judged with wisdom and more damage period.

Sacred Duty. Stamina increase plus added Divine protect/shield usage, That says it all for me.

This build works for me in both World PvE and any 5 man dungeon I go in to.

Side notes:

I NEVER opt into Seal of Command. There is nothing that Righteousness cannot handle. Sure there are some situations where SoC is better, but overall, I find SoR is plenty to work with.

If you decide to raid as a Pally tank, you will have to change up some things. In World PvE and 5 mans, you want to do some good damage. In raiding, you want to focus on threat generation and maintenance. You might be thinking aren't those the same? Not really. For raids, Holy Shield becomes a must, and Vindication is a nice threat generator as well as a little more damage mitigation for you. I would opt out of the 5 points I put in Divine Intellect and put a point in Holy Shield, 3 points in Benediction and the last point in Vindication. Opt out of the 5 points in Seals of the Pure and top off Vindication and get Seal of Command. Yes, raiding is that situation where SoC is better than SoR, lol. Top off Divinity.

In Vanilla content, Spiritual Attunement isn't really a need. Once you hit TBC raid content, it's a nice ability have to help augment more intense mana usage.

My thoughts and my thoughts alone. This post was not intended to make any opinions on Wolf's or Eronox's builds, but only to shed some light on my thoughts about a Paladin leveling build focused on the Protection tree. If you would like, I can provide a post on my thoughts about leveling in the Retribution tree.

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