Paladin: Focus one tree or spread out?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I never got to play Paladin in Vanilla since I was Horde all the way every day, but since Classic gives me another shot, I thought I give the classic Paladin a chance to see if it was as bad as people say outside of healing (dont take that last part too serious^^).

I heard that the Vanilla Skill trees for Paladins were so badly made that it didnt really pay to go all the way down one tree and most Paladins just spread their points over 2 or even all 3 trees, is that right?

Can some people who know Paladins give me any good advice for playing one? Whats a fun leveling build, whats a good lategame build, should i focus or go hybrid…

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I’d say that after you have played the first ten levels you have an idea of what to expect. I place my talent points all over the place, and I think you should do the same. Dependent on whether you like to solo most of the time, or play in groups you could build around durability vs. damage output.
I find a Tankadin fun to solo unlike most other people. You’re slow, yes, but almost unkillable, and you don’t need many corpse runs to make up for slower fights + I find tanking fun - I know that people hate on pally tanks, but they did exists in Vanilla too :wink:
Notice that some spells for instance Consecration are in the talents, not at the trainers (rank 1 that is).
When you get high enough level to decide what you really want to do, a reset does not cost a fortune.

Rather jumbled, but my 2 copper.

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Pretty much, yes. If you intend to raid you’ll have to go with a deep holy build. Realistically it’s the only tree that has useful talents at the bottom (with the exception of holy shock).

There is a high chance you’ll never see either a prot pally or a ret pally raiding in a serious guild. Ret paladins have pretty bad dps and mana problems. Prot pallys have threat issues (aside from some really weird spam greater blessings strats) and mana problems, however they are viable as 5 man tanks, albeit it’s waaaay slower than a warrior or druid since you have to constantly drink between pulls.

For leveling you’ll want to go with ret, pick up Seal of command and jut go down in the tree picking up anything that can help your damage 2h spec, sanct aura then use the rest of your points in holy to get consecration and bonus int.

Realistically if you want to start doing content, somewhere around cap you’ll want to reroll to deep holy. After picking the most useful stuff in the tree (healing light, illumination, divine favor are a must in my opinon) you can put the rest in to either prot and try and get a bunch of plate and try tanking 5 mans or put them in ret and get seal of command again for some minor damage increase while farming stuff.

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Both retri and prot has been made much more viable specs thanks to 14 years of theorycrafting on 1.12. Sure, they will not be the most optimal on both DPS and TPS / Mitigation (although dont take my word on the prot stuff as I dont know much of it outside AoE grinding), but they hold their ground very well. As for retri, AP, Hybrid and Spellret are the three builds you can do: full ap if you are ultra mega hardcore in an ultra mega hardcore guild as that is what’s best in short fights, Spellret has the best consistent DPS, and performs very well on long fights with a great mana uptime and with great AoE, and Hybrid well, a mix of both (it’s mostly in the itemization, but there are slight talent differences). Overall Retri is quite competetive, despite the stigma.

Well up until talent trees were reworked for paladins. For example, Kings used to be the last talent for Retri. But other than that, I guess it depends on what you intend to do. Reckoning with having both points in holy and retri is something that is actually quite competetive on the pvp scene as an example. My leveling build was quite diverse in talent points spent (stating in holy, STR, Focus, Consec, then Retri, Benediction, Deflection, SoC, Pursuit, then putting the rest into prot). Your general builds will be deep specs however.

I can help you out if you want, but at the time of writing this post I’m quite busy, PM me and we can talk :slight_smile:

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Retri is an awesome levelling build, get the right weapon (high on hit, slow attack speed) and you can unleash an insane amount of burst which mixed with a Paladin baseline survivability makes you able to level quite safely and solo.

The usual 21/0/30 build gives you all the tools a DPS Paladin can have while adding the core of a Paladin healing build, I still have to start raiding but this build make syou able to either be a healer that can easily farm stuff or a decent dps with high sustain and off-healing abilities.

I’d suggest you to check some guides and existing threads though.

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Assuming you have a sane build (grab strength bonus, SoC with a slow weapon etc…), you’ll be fine with levelling but you will need to be patient; it is slow.

Until about 40-ish, you can heal in dungeons with a hybrid ret-holy build without much issue, which is a nice plus. After then, holy becomes god-tier anyway and ret levels out slightly later. It’s fine if you’re willing to piece together an excellent ap/sp set for ret. Holy is just excellent and I can’t shill for it enough however

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Lvl in ret.
You can tank/heal/dps in any spec (until like lvl 30+ , then you gotta have some +int gear to heal the party).
There are several different specs in the endgame, depending on what your goal is.
There are plenty of guides out there, just google it.

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There are quite a few specs for you to go into depending on what you want. I’m going to focus just on healing specs just to show how flexible paladin talents are!

Holy/ret - so you can realistically quest solo whilst being able to raid heal at max level. With the right gear, you can pump out some nice solo damage as well as respectable survivability.

Holy/Prot/Ret - A mix of the three to buff your blessings as much as possible as well as picking up Kings. The downside is you have virtually no solo potential, things will die slowly, and you’ll need to rely on friends to help you achieve stuff.

Deep Holy/Prot - You pick up almost all of the holy talents, including holy shock and take most of the prot talents including kings. This is a good general purpose build, you can tank 5 mans with decent gear, and perform in raids as a healer too. One paladin should have Kings in your raid so it’s not a bad spec to be (my current spec in fact!), and I’m able to solo farm a few places not as quickly or efficiently as other classes, but I can do it!

Holy/Deep Prot - You go deeper into the prot tree to pick up Blessing of sanctuary. One paladin should pick this up in your guild for the tanks in your raid. Makes your ability to solo and farm stuff a lot higher. With a bit of point manipulation you can have holy shock too, but generally easier not to grab it.

As for DPS, there are some great resources out there for dps’ing as a ret paladin, you can do respectable damage especially in 5-mans. Raids you will have to work a lot harder to get generally average results. I personally dps in my holy/prot build with caster/spellpower gear and I can keep up on AoE with most other dps, which is cool!

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prot until blessing of kings, then holy, and 5 points in ret for increased might.

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Why do you spend 5 points to improve blessing of might when you get blessings of kings? You can only have one blessing active or not?

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at lower level before u get salvation u want kings on warlocks because they can mana tap anyway.

For some boss fights kings would be better for mana users too then some mana per 5 seconds.

But rogue’s and warriors and feral druids will still want raw power.

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Depending on the class depends on which blessing you would buff. For example, rogues would benefit more from might than a prot warrior would, so having improved blessing of might is useful utility.

Personally I don’t run improved might as I am generally blessing salv/kings in raids.

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I’m back :slight_smile: I’m seeing a lot of people recommending loads of different leveling builds. The one I talked about in my first reply was made for AoE grinding and dungeon grinding, but if you want to just do solo quests with PvP mixed in, I highly recommend starting in Retri with Benediction - Deflection - SoC - Pursuit -5/5 conviction - after that, it’s your choice, personally I’d suggest going down Holy - STR - Focus - Consec - Faith - Lay - Illumination - Favor, and then going back to retri.

With the Aoe Grinding build you should focus on: Stamina > Intellect = Strength, Agility = Attack Power = Spell Power = Crit = Hit > Spirit.

With the Solo build, you should focus on: Stamina > Strength = Agility = Crit = Attack Power > Intellect = Spellpower = Hit > Spirit. Weapon Speed for the most part, as long as it’s 3.0 speed or above, it’s a good weapon for SoC.

I highly advise leveling First Aid while out in the world.

Again, if you have any questions, feel free to hmu :slight_smile:

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Thank you all for your advices :slight_smile:

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I think Paladins are cool. I don’t have any sort of comparison to modern Paladins, most modern is WOTLK up to around level 30.

Sure they arent good at dps; just don’t download the addon and it’s fine. Sure, they mostly auto attack enemies to death; they have a million things to do to support other players attack enemies and that’s valid.

The more Old-school the MMO the more roles like these are just normal to see, an actual class thats revolved around group play.

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Paladins are one of my all time favourite Classes within World of Warcraft. I really enjoyed playing the class during classic, & even more so during the TBC expansion. I feel I have some reasonable experience when it comes to playing & levelling the Paladin class, & so I would like to offer some advice.

In regards to spec, all three skill trees (Holy, Protection & Retribution) are viable when it comes to solo levelling. However, some skill trees such as Holy & Retribution are generally a bit more useful or efficient in the early levels. The Protection skill tree is a late bloomer, but can really shine at level 40+, when you have more spells & abilities to play with as well as plate armor to really help support the build.

Here’s how I would recommend spending your talent points for the first 10-12 levels.

Holy Tree:

5/5 Divine Intellect (Increase your intellect by 10%) - I recommend this talent over Divine Strength because its not very common to find good mail items with intellect on at lower levels, especially if your going to be crafting your own gear through Blacksmithing. Having a 10% boost on intellect at lower levels can really make a diffidence. It means you can cast more heals, use seals & judgements more often, as well as increasing the potential for your spells to crit.

5/5 Spiritual Focus (Flash of Light & Holy Light have 70% chance not to loose cast time when taking damage) - This is a very nice talent to have in general, even more so when solo levelling. Inevitably your going to need to heal your self during combat, this talent can really help when your in a difficult situation, when bubbles are on cooldown, or if you just want to save your bubble for the next pull or something more dangerous.

1/1 Consecration - I consider this skill a staple of the Paladin class & a must have for pretty much any build. If your thinking of tanking with your Paladin, your gonna want this skill!

Optional - 2/2 Improved Lay on Hands (Target of your Lay on Hands spell gains 30% bonus to armor value from items for 2 minuets. Also, cooldown of Lay on Hands is reduced by 20 minuets) - Lay on Hands is a life saver! Being able to use this spell 3 times in a 2 hour period, rather than just twice is really nice. Also having 30% extra armor from items for the next 2 minuets can be a big help too, if you’ve needed to cast Lay on Hands then your most likely in a spot of bother & the extra armor wont go unnoticed.

^^ The above is what I would consider a good starting point for almost any build. From level 22+ the rest of the talents are really down to you & what you want to do with your Paladin.

Wepon choice? FAST two handed weapons is a really good choice for solo levelling in my opinion. Remember, we are not Warriors, Paladins do not have any instant melee attacks… Paladin combat boils down to auto attacks, seals & judgements. Having a 2H weapon equipped with a 2.6 or 2.8 second swing speed, chance on hit effect & empowered with Seal of the Crusader is actually really good!

A nice example of an overlooked, low level 2H weapon which can actually be quite effective in the hands of a Paladin is “Searing Blade” - 39-59 damage (19.6 DPS), 2.5 second swing speed, chance on hit: hurls fireball that deals 70 damage, plus 9 damage over 6 seconds.

Anyhoo. Hope this information was useful to some. Paladins are a fantastic class. Final piece of advice, and this goes for people playing Druids & Shamans as well… Embrace the hybrid nature of your class! You will have more fun with it. :smiley:

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This is a fantastic piece of advice. I played a Paladin main from Vanilla to BfA, and I now wish I read this before placing my talent points in Classic.

Edit:
And learn fishing and cooking and always have a Smoked Sagefish or Sagefish Delight buff up & running :wink:

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Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but spelladins dont work. Wish it were different but it isnt.

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As for the rest.

Holy is by far the most dull healer in the game. You essentially play a game of whackamole if you are in a 5 man, whackamole if you are on cleanse duty, or get your nodding duck in for tank healing spam. There isnt even any clever mana management mechanics or AoE healing mechanics since your mana regen is largely passive or crit based.

You can get away with 0 Holy tbh because let’s face it, Classic is easy, but I recommend 20 to not take the mick. I healed most of classic PvP specced, but I hated progression raiding. If progression is your thing you will want at least 20 Holy.

Holy in PvP is just extending the boredom from PvE. The common refrain is ‘why bring a Ret if Holy does everything’. The better answer is ‘sure, except anything besides healing’. Pretty much every advantage Holy has is rendered moot by PvP burst damage.

Protadins suffer from mana issues but are great 5 man tanks. Retadins and their close cousins Reckadins are average at best DPSers (getting worse with gear annoyingly) but arguably one of the most interesting classes in PvP, particularly if you play it as a Paladin and not a Warrior.

You haven’t really seen burst damage yet until you’ve seen a Retadin and MS warrior both with Rag grade weapons unloading in a HoJ cooldown.

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This is as I would leveling too…

Up to Level 20 you can spec as you want. Starting from that, if focused on DMG you should spec:

https://classicdb.ch/?talent#sZZVbhz

Parry will reduce your incomming Damage an will make you hit faster (after parrying 40%). This also means you will have a higher DMG output.

SoC procs 7ppm (part per minute). So with slow weapons 7 times very high, with fast waepons also 7 times, but lower… so pic a slow weapon.

Seal: Use SoW on you, that will make you perform longer. For PvP SoM can be intresting, but you will be oom after 1-2 figths.

Try to collect and finish:

https://classicdb.ch/?item=6953

With tht incredibil waepon (for the level) you will be top DD in every group.
Of cause the weapon is very fast (for Retris) there is no better weapon in this level range.

After SoC, you sholud spec down the Retir tree: And fill up Holy, till level 44 your Damage is increasing, due to skill tree. SO you migth be top DD

https://classicdb.ch/?talent#sxZZVbxtdcq

here we go to 53

https://classicdb.ch/?talent#sE0uZZVbxtdcq

Sanct R 1 for push your single target damage, if more than 2 Enemy, use higher ranks as your mana will allow.

you will end up stg. like that:

https://classicdb.ch/?talent#sE0uoxoZZVbxtdcq

It makes you heal pretty good (use heal equip) and an good damage.

Nevertheless: there are encounters, where Retris do not have to figth the boss (Ragnaros for example).
And understand: You can be easily the TOP DD up to level 50, then all other classes will outperform you.

Some ppl will try to force you to heal, as deep Holy paladins will be perfect single target healers. It depends on you, if you wanna be a semi good endgame DD, or a perfect healer.
For me the Retribution Paladin is my love. Especially in 5/10/20 ppl dungeons.