Paladins have received a lot of love with the release of WOTLK, and while patch 3.0.8 has reduced a lot of their damage they are still a lot better off than they were in the Burning Crusade.
Continue reading for a guide on the best leveling build and key talents that are focused on getting you to 80 as fast as possible.
The key here is to skip talents meant for PvP and pick up all talents that reduce downtime and increase dps. The factors that slow down leveling are travel, time killing mobs, and downtime.
Paladin Leveling Build
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxbZVfbt0IucrsguAo
While most of the build is pretty straight forward, there are a few talents here that are debatable
Judgement of the Wise and Fanaticism
Enables a Pally to have close to zero downtime. Increasing your dmg from Judgements by a huge amount while feeding you back mana to keep you going to the next mob.
While this talent effectively reduces the mobs health, dmg output and mana by 20%, you will be killing mobs so quickly that this is a wasted talent. However I would consider this if you plan on doing a lot of the group quests and elite mobs. Note: doesn’t work on bosses.
You should be popping Avenging Wrath every time it’s up, at a 20% dmg increase this provides a nice bonus in dmg across the board. Also the bonus crit on this will ensure that you finish off those mobs running away out of range when it might have otherwise not finished them and you have an add on your hands.
Gearing
Our focus here is to go for straight DPS to down things faster. Go for pure STR gear as it is a pallys main source of DPS. 2 Attack Power: 1 STR. Crit and AGI are your secondary stats.
Rotation
Judgement > Crusader Strike > Divine Storm Use Exorcism when applicable. Judgement is your big prioirty here and I’d even wait on using Crusader strike for a second if Judgement is just about to become available.
When a paladins talents are set towards DPS they can compete with the best DPS classes out there, Another option is to level as Prot if you want to spice things up and take on AoE grinding but the general consensus has been Ret is best to complete quests and level to 80 fastest.
Combine this talent build with Zygor’s Leveling guide which has an in-game addon walkthrough for all WOTLK quests for maximum efficiency and to get a level every 2-3 hours. For a free alternative check out my write up about leveling guides in this post.
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Salutations fellow paladins and followers of the light of elune! Excellent article however a little input:
There’s some other debatable talents you are choosing and skipping.
Namely:
Pursuit of Justice: should be taken. allows for faster questing and running to tag mobs before others,besides killing opposite faction that tries to kill you. And most importantly reduces disarm effects (it can be very annoying). Besides just the name of the talent, i mean think about it you are a Paladin! in the pursuit of justice! or happiness or something.
Swift Retribution: should not be taken. YET. 3% haste is not worth it until you are geared (since haste scales with end-game stats/gear). I mean come on, you get instant flash heals (art of war) so there’s no real need to hurry up on that cast, and 3% faster attack speed is not going to make much of a difference on short fights (trust me, while leveling EVERY fight is a short fight), but for heroics and end-game this talent is a MUST.
Divine Purpose: should be taken. If for no other reason than to avoid getting killed by an opposing faction member (rogues), it saves you against elites and other mobs that stun. It certainly makes it so much more fun when they are trying to stun lock you and you haven’t even bubbled!
Blessing of Kings: If you aren’t using blessing of might, you’ve already made a wrong choice. In end-game gear blessing of kings may be superior to might (or if you have a warrior with improved battle shout, since might and battle shout overwrite each other) because 1Str = 2AP, and Kings =10% to stats, you would need to have 1900 strength (after divine strength) at lvl 70, for kings to be better than might. (as a semi-hardcore 70 raider, and now delving into 80 end game content, trust me its TOUGH to have kings be better than might)
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZ0xbZVfbtbIufMsgzAo
this is what your should aim for
and After wards invest in kings and swift retribution. At lvl 80 you can lose pursuit of justice and/or divine purpose, although pursuit of justice makes heigan dance THAT much easier.
Unless you plan to pick up a LOT of mobs, Imp. Retribution aura is not really worth it. Overall it accounts for about 2% of the damage you do, talents points to get that up to 3% is not worth it while leveling up. At level 80 you will keep retribution aura up, for 3% raid wide haste and damage! omg now everyone loves ret pallys, just ask BRK, although he loves replenishment more than anything. So improved retribution aura to help the tanks may actually be worth the 2 points at level 80.
Seals, judgements, glyphs and rotations:
Rotation. FCFS. first come first serve, always use up whatever is not on cooldown. Give a higher priority to jugdements (returns mana, and is a high damage spell – personally i use judgement of wisdom). when doing aoe, higher priority on consecrate and divine storm. Hammer of Wrath should always be used due to its high crit (your spell crit plus 50%)
Glyphs. glyph of consecrate (20% mana saved) and glyph of judgement (you are already going to spam it just to keep your mana up, so might as well get 10% more damage out of it)
Seals. For PvE (leveling and instances) the best one is Seal of blood/martyr, especially with the SLOWEST weapon available. The slower the better even if the DPS (the number in parenthesis) is the same between two weapons. For PvP seal of command. Which coincidentally also is the best one until you get seal of blood/martyr.
Gratz on a very good article, And keep fighting the good fight, or bringing down the hammer of justice on all the unworthy!
Cheers,
Lancerote – Firetree (horde)
“The factors that slow down leveling are travel…”
So, wouldn’t choosing Pursuit of Justice be a good idea? Doing so would make things slightly faster, am I wrong?
Hey.
Just got a quick questiong:
Is is worth using Blessing of Wisdom instead of Might for less downtime? I know my damage is greatly decreased by this, but I use consecretion in all fights. Yes, Even the ones with just a single mob. And I go oom in one time if I don’t use BoW Im afraid…
Regards
Mirathy
(Continued from previously comment)
Please note I’m level 36 atm and don’t have Judgements of the Wise yet (Which I will start getting at level 40).
My question is why waste talent points on Kings when you have Might? The returns on Might are far greater than Kings unless you’re going for an all around boost to your mana/hp pools and a very slight increase to crit. Guardian’s Favor is a complete waste as well imo..
You could effectively keep 5/5 in Divine Strength and throw the other 7 wasted talent points into Vindication (excellent for mob grinding), Pursuit of Justice (most excellent in your 30-40’s where getting around becomes a pita), even Eye for an Eye would give greater damage returns than Kings if you’re going up against mobs 3-4 levels higher than you and start worrying about Crushing Blows.
All just my opinion, thanks for the info!
ps. Mirathy, mana management is key to success with a full blown retadin (shockadin’s are a different story). Your best bet is to roll with Judgement of Light, Seal of Command, Blessing of Might, and get Judgements of the Wise as soon as you possibly can. If you’re going to be using Consecration that often, go ahead and Judge one mob then taunt another. Two to three at a time won’t even dent you same level. Don’t forget that SoC procs for an instant crit when the enemy is stunned.
And the cost of Flash of Light will benefit you more than negating your damage by using Blessing of Wisdom.
hey ima lvl 73 palli and idk why but i lvl rlly slow and i need to lvl faster but i have little time to dunring the week can some1 help me plzzzzzzzzzz