Cassieann could use some Paladin guidance
Posted by bigbearbutt in Altitis, Blog CommunityYep, that’s right… not so long ago, she made a Shaman. I asked for advice, we got some great advice… she played to 16 and decided to ask “what else we got to choose from?”
So she made a Paladin.
Benefits? Heavy armor, heals, bubbles and great Blessings and stuff. All sorts of craziness. Rezzes and general fun.
She just dinged 15, she seems to be having fun so far.
Guess what? Another class I haven’t played much, my alt got to 12… and as much as I love it, it’s my “I want to level this next after my Priest dings 70″ class, but I still only got to 12.
Now, she has been rocking the joint solo, it’s true. But she asked me my opinion on what her next Talent point should be spent on, after she showed me she had 3/5 in Might and 3/5 in reduced Mana cost of seals and judgments, and I said “I dunno”.
I looked at her seals and judgments. She told me she liked the reduced cast time of Judgment idea. I thought maybe reduced mana cost and might to max first, myself.
Here’s the thing. Looking at it from a ‘what the Talent and tooltip says’ point of view, it looks like you should pop Seal of the Crusader on a bad guy and instantly Judge it to get the holy damage DoT… and then follow it up by popping Seal of Righteousness to maximise your Holy damage in conjunction with your Judged effect. After those two are up, leave it be and whack him to death. So reduced mana cost, good. But if you’re only popping one Judgement per bad guy, then what the hell do you need with a reduced cast time for?
I guess. I don’t freaking KNOW though.
She asks me “What gear should I use? Is the ‘of the tiger’ good, or should I take ‘of the bear’?”
I don’t freaking know. Strength and Stamina is what I tell her, followed with Intellect for a larger Mana pool. What the hell do I know though? Maybe Agi is good? Spirit?
So here is my challenge to the Paladin bloggers out there. (Banana Shoulders, yes you too…)
Cassie could use two things.
1) A guide to what Talents to choose while leveling as a soloing damage dealing Pally. And WHY to take those Talents at each stage. Just posting a spec is lame, I want a reason, a rationale, I want to know what you’re thinking when you say to put 5/5 in Might at that point in time, or whatever. If you got a guide already, then say so. If you don’t… well, I feel pretty certain your readers would darn well LOVE to see one! And that would bring readers knocking at your door to learn from your wisdom….. hint hint.
2) A guide to how you manage your abilities, your seals and judgments and auras and such as you level, to maximise your usefulness and damage output. It seems clear that your damage output changes drastically depending on what order you use things.
Think about it… I’ve had folks in Trade channel tell me that the only way to level a Pally is Prot… well, gee, thanks for the info. That’s good to know. That is so illuminating.
How about telling me WHY?
If you want to make a flat declarative statement, back it the hell up with your reasoning. Just saying ’cause that’s the way it is done, noob’ does nothing but tell me you don’t know, you’re just parroting something you read at Elitist Jerks and were too stupid to understand yourself.
Oh, and that’s not a shot at any blogger whatsoever… that’s my response to the people that share their lack of knowledge and canned responses on the Trade channel when I ask questions in the game.
How’s about it? Paladins, start your engines! Lead us to your Blessings of Wisdom!
(Yes, I know, I could go do my own research at Wowwiki, Elitist Jerks, the Official WoW Paladin forums, the forums of WoWhead, and my fellow blogger’s websites myself. But ya know, I don’t take enough opportunities to give my fellow bloggers the lovin’ they deserve as it is. That’s why I do these things. It’s not cause I’m lazy at all. Uh uh. No way.)
I found this guide from Honor’s Code to be pretty helpful when I was researching pally stuff.
Soloing by questing, or soloing by grinding?
The reason everyone says to level protection is because you can grind multiple mobs so much more readily. More mobs means more swings for Redoubt to process and more shield blocks means more damage is negated.
Blessing of Kings matches every other stat talent buff and only costs one talent point. You just have to remember to keep it up. Talented Righteousness (more threat from holy damage spell) gives you damage reduction as well.
Blessing of Sanctuary is holy damage when you block an attack. (see above) and Reckoning is more attacks when you get hit. More mobs is more blocks and thus more holy damage which is more threat and when you fail to block you tend to start machinegunning your melee attacks – which are piggybacking your holy damage from your Seal.
Holy Shield is better blocking and more holy damage when you do block. (noticing a trend here?) and coupled with Ardent Defender means when they finally do grind you down to a low life total their damage suddenly drops too. Meaning you live longer.
Expertise means they dodge and parry less so you hit more frequently.
So you run in, aggro a bunch of mobs all at once and they jump on you. Your blocking isn’t really limited by numbers only direction. So you are, in effect, aoe-ing once you get the Holy Shield/Redoubt/Blessing of of Sanctuary going. Even without hitting them with your weapon. They can and will slowly kill themselves on you. With the added bonus you don’t have to try to target a damn thing.
Oh, and as a “tank” you’re automatically in more demand than say, another dps type.
Prot is alright for leveling but I wouldn’t encourage it particularly. In my experience it’s not quite as fast as Ret (although taking on all those mobs at once and surviving can be a lot of fun) but moreover it is just horrible when it comes to caster mobs. You haven’t got the spell mitigation to deal with the damage or the dps to take it down before the damage is done so all in all it’s very much not fun when you come accross the casting inclined. If you have friends to do instances with though then I would seriously consider it, it’s probably quite a lot of fun, I wouldn’t really know because I’m too impatient to find groups to level with and just want to be able to do that most effectively on my own.
In terms of talents, Full benediction is really more the way to go, mana efficiency gets more important as time goes on and the benefit to BoM really isn’t that great. Also, you may find yourself using BoW more as mana becomes problematic, at which point you will regret having the improved version of a buff you stopped using. Improved judgement is a good choice since it allows you to judge your seal for damage that much often (You would judge for the damage and immediately refresh to hold onto the buff it provides). Imp seal of the crusader is basically extra crit, which is always nice. You’ll definitely want seal of command (which is most effective with a high hitting, slow two hander) and full conviction.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxZxGzZVf0tbcuiIot is the spec I use when I go ret, essentially you would want to move through that aiming to get to the next tier above anything else since crusader strike is just must have. The points in crusade can be moved around to anything in that area to personal taste really, same goes for pursuit of justice, there is absolute way of placing those points. You also want to grab seal of command above the other choices in that tier, followed by conviction. Once you have 41 points in ret you might want to get the stuff from the other trees, they are all well spent points (excluding the necessary points in Imp devo or redoubt if you prefer, either way it won’t really be used)
In terms of gear, Strength, Stamina and then intellect and a bit of agility never hurt. It’s difficult to find gear that really works, I ended up with mostly of the Bear stuff until outland but you’ll probably want some intellect to go with it which can be mixed with, well, whatever it mixes with really (ie, you could go for Eagle for stamina or whatever the other ones are for whichever useful stats they give). Spirit is not of any particular use, you probably won’t be spending that much time outside of the five second rule other than time outside of combat which eating and drinking is much more useful.
Hopefully some of that is useful, I’ve never commented here but been reading for a while, figured this would be a good place to throw my first comment in since I play a Paladin as my main (currently my only 70) so I like to think I know a bit about them =P
On youtube – look up ‘prot pally grinding demon hunter initiates’ or something to that effect. Basically showing how a prot pally can kill upwards of 30 mobs at a time, solo. While levelling prot you can often kill anywhere up to about ten solo: using the abilities Thunderpaw mentioned, along with seal/judgement of light to stop yourself dieing while taking such a beating.
I like to think of that style of playing as ‘leaving your shield for the mobs to beat themselves to death on while you go and grab a cuppa’. It’s all based on reflective damage to kill the mobs – using talents + seal/judgement of light to keep yourself alive.
Until you get into the 30s you won’t really have enough prot abilities to play like this – to do 10 mobs your own level you probably want at least level 40 or so. To get up there you tend to just level like a ret pally (strength to hit harder).
Uh, not a clue… good luck though! Maybe I’ll dust off my lvl 6 pally sometime… maybe.
Leveling Prot can be a long slow grind. I honestly leveled my pally with a hybrid ret/prot mix until higher levels, when better gear stats started dropping in Outland. Then I went full prot. Sadly mana efficiency is a MAJOR problem. I am leveling a BElf pally right now, and she just dinged 41. I make sure she is never out of town without both food and water in big supplies.
Thats just my opinion. I am sadly not a number cruncher, but I can offer any advice I can.
I’ll add that I’ve leveled a druid to 70 (go go feral) as well as experimented with both shaman (37) and paladin (21) and I’ve a couple observations to make.
Both of these require mana to function. You have the choice to burn that mana pool for either offensive or defensive purposes. If you do both you’ll need a nap after every fight. The shaman is biased towards attack and the paladin is biased towards defense. The paladin would be the biggest change from a rogue. ;) As such, for both classes I’ve found it far more beneficial to reduce the mana costs as early as possible. The talent points will become more and more valuable as my ranks go up and the mana costs rise with them. After that, anything which reduces a cooldown for a faster cycle time has always had noticeable benefits. Anything with a percentage will always pay off later as you level up and get better and better gear. Crusade and Sanctity aura for example.
I’ve found my paladin very dependent on the cycle time of Judgement and thus I found the 2 second reduction from talents essential. Nothing like a lucky crit and facing a mob second mob with no debuff prep on it. :(
I’ve also found it a lot more dependent on “luck” than the shaman. I need critical hits for the damage. I’ll need my random processes of Seal of Command and Vindication for damage or improved survival, nevermind when we get to Vengeance.
But paladins have a wider variety of roles once you get to 70. :)
It’s been a long time since I leveled my Pally — my first 60, a long time pre-BC, and then my first 70. But, since I always levelled with a damage dealer, I healed, tanked a little, but never really tried to kill anything by myself. I recently switched from Holy to Prot, and while I had always been a holy/prot hybrid, I’d never been strictly a tank. I only figured out how to solo really well in the past couple of weeks when I started doing the SSO dailies myself. The way that has worked well for me, at level 70 of course, is to go for stam/int/spell damage gear, and try to kill as many as I can take at once. Caster mobs and things that steal mana suck, but give me a whole mess of melee, and they’ll all die eventually. Killing one thing takes forever, killing 5-10, as long as you can take the hits, takes about the same amount of time. It’s FUN! I’ve never been ret, though.
I usually judge light or wisdom on one (depends what I need more), keep righteousness up (unless I need more health or mana) and judge that on cooldown (it doesn’t remove the other judgement, just does some damage, redo the seal after judging) and let them beat themselves to death on me. I keep up the aura that hurts them when they hit me, and sanctuary on myself for a blessing.
Of course, that’s from a level 70 perspective, and won’t be much help for a baby pally.
Dont listen to /2 it will only disapoint. The key points for a prot Build are 35 – 1st really good sheild, 40 – Epic mount to allow easy gathering of mobs and 41 – Holy sheild, dont go protection before 35-41.. But protection is more for the person who just wants to get to 70. Sit in Tanaris for 4 levels killing ogres while paying minimal attention to the Paladin and leveling very fast. Doing instances where people will love you for being a real tank to releive the monotony.
With the questing changes their is no real reason to not go Ret 1-60( not 70). The downside to ret is it needs good gear. From what you have posted about Caassieann I am sure she will have decent amounts of Gold, Have a play with Holy or Prot sometime in the 30-40′s, and again around 60. It makes it much easier to join 5 mans and allows her to experience the difference in play style.
Eraedun posted a fairly good spec earlier, Dont worry about imp Might, its a raid talent like improved Motw. A small % of nothing much is still nothing much.
There’s really no point in taking improved BoM, it’s a waste of five talent points to get a slight increase in attack power. Benediction is far more useful. Most endgame ret pallies don’t have iBoM unless they’re hit capped without taking Precision in the Prot tree.
Leveling as Prot isn’t really viable until around level 40 when you get Holy Shield. It’s possible of course, just really slow and boring. Ret is really fun to play if you can overcome the luck aspect of it. Sometimes Seal of Command procs and crits just when you want it to and you take down a mob in no time. Sometimes… not so much. Some people love the class, and spec, some people hate it.
I’d suggest reading the WoW Insider article The Light and How to Swing It: A Class Full of Irony. I got lucky when I rolled my paladin. It’s my first character, my only level 70. And I can seriously see why some people hate playing the class. I hope this doesn’t sound like an attempt to stop people from trying out the class (although I’m pretty sure it does). It’s just very important to spec and gear a paladin properly, otherwise it will suck and you’ll get bored with it.
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/03/05/the-light-and-how-to-swing-it-a-class-full-of-irony/
I leveled as Prot. I’m still Prot. I only recommend it if you can do a lot of dungeons. If you’ll be going solo, go Ret.
My suggestion would be a plan like this:
10-14: toss-up between Imp. BoM and Benediction. I’d choose Benediction for mana efficiency, but no strong winner.
15-19: Imp. SoC and Imp. Judgment. Both are major parts of your damage.
20: Seal of Command… but it’s not all that good for a character with lowbie weapons. You’re mainly taking it to be able to see what it’s like, but you might end up discovering that Seal of Rightousness works better at your level.
21-25: Conviction, because you want Vengeance
26-28: Pursuit of Justice. The movement bonus is very nice.
29: weak choices, nothing outstanding here. Maybe go 1/2 in Eye for an Eye, or 1/3 in Crusade. You’ll add a second point later.
30-32: Two-Handed specialization.
33: Sanctity Aura… but like Seal of Command, mainly so you can play with it to see if you like it. A raiding paladin would also take Imp. Sanctity Aura, but you will not do that, because you’re not raiding.
34: Put a second point into the same talent that you did at 29 (Eye for Eye or Crusade)
35-37: Sanctified Judgement. It helps your mana a lot.
38-39: 2/5 Vengeance
40: Repentance
41-43: 3 more points to finish at 5/5 Vengeance
44: 1/3 Sanctified Seals for all-around crit. You’d like more than just one point here, eventually.
45-49: Fanaticism, for crits of judgement.
50: Crusader Strike is for Retadins what Mangle is for Feral Druids – a core talent.
There are some thin spots in the tree. As you fill in the talents from 51-70, you can finish the weak areas (like getting 3/3 Sanctified Seals), and you can pick up useful talents from other trees, like 5/5 Divine Strength in Holy and 3/3 Precision in the second layer of the Prot. tree.
Like I mentioned, I play Prot, but I’m happy to notice that my suggestions are in close agreement with Eraedun’s suggested build, above.
The single best piece of advice I can offer is to always keep an eye out for gear for the other specs. It’ll make experimenting with the alternate specs much more useful, and with care you’ll find you can still tank and heal fairly well even without respeccing.
As a soloing Paladin, at least until you hit your 30s your best bet is Retribution. You can run Protection or Holy, but it’s gonna be SLOW. As Ret, your biggest stats to look out for while leveling are strength for the hitting and stamina so you don’t fall over first. Intellect is nice; even ret specced it’s very hard to die as long as you don’t run out of mana, and since Agility adds to crit, dodge, and armor it’s more useful than spirit; you spend very little time outside the 5 second rule as a paladin except when running from one fight to the next. Do tote around a shield and one-hander; it’s amazing how much swapping that in boosts your survivability when things start to go south, even if it’s sometimes faster to just die and make a corpse run than slowly win the battle.
For talents, your first 5 talents probably ought to be Benediction. I found that in my teens I was starting to really feel the pinch, mana-wise. On the plus side, you pick up Blessing of Mana around here, and I found that that’s what I was running nearly all the time, which makes Improved Might pretty useless.
Improved Judgement is probably the best place for your next 2 points. When beating on random mobs, you’ll be judging every time it comes off cooldown. Even if it weren’t for the damage, you’ve got nothing else going on aside from auto attack, so why not? It’s +25% damage for your judgements, and more flexibility if you need to juggle them. The next 3 points is a tough call; soloing you’re gonna be getting hit, and +3% parry can help with that. If you’re noticing that your targets aren’t living long enough to make judging Crusader worthwhile, it’s a no brainer.
The 11th point is Seal of Command. Combined with a slow 2-hander you’ll notice a huge upswing in damage. Don’t forget to stun the mob before judging Command; a Judgement of Command does more-or-less double damage against stunned/incapacitated foes, and if you find judging a mana sink, you can always downrank it and do just as much melee damage (unless you’ve actually got some spell damage, but that’s not something you should aim for, and isn’t really going to be an issue for a long, long time.) The big downside is how random it is. Some days it doesn’t seem to ever proc, other days mobs will fall over as fast as you can target them.
All the talents in this tier are handy while leveling. Most regular mobs are vulnerable to Vindication; peeling off a big chunk of attributes on the first couple swings can be very nice. If you’re going all the way in Ret, you’ll want Conviction as much for the Vindication prereq as the 5% crit chance. And Pursuit of Justice’s 15% speed boost is always nice, between your lack of any way to hurt things more than 10 yards away and all the time you’ll eventually spend traveling.
The only talent in the next tier to even think about is Crusade. Most casters are humanoids or undead, so it’s nice to kill them faster. Elementals tend to be annoying as well, because aside from the walking rocks they all ignore that heavy armor you’re wearing. Mobs rarely crit with spells, making Eye for an Eye useless, and Retribution Aura does so little damage boosting it by 50% generally isn’t worth the talent points given all the goodies you have left in the tier below. Any points you don’t put in Crusade should go to finishing those off.
The next tier you’re going to want to fill up with damage multiplying goodness. Grab all three points of 2-handed specialization; almost all your damage is coming from swinging a big, heavy weapon so you wanna boost that as much as you can. The other 2 points should probably go into Sanctity Aura; 2% to two handers is gonna be more damage than the extra 1% to everything you give up by not making Improved Sanctity 2/2. If you find you’re regularly grouping at this point, you probably want to swap that around; an extra 1% to your party is better than 2% to your two-hander. Either way, you’ll probably be using Sanctity Aura all the time now; another reason you didn’t spend points to improve Retribution Aura.
You remember buying that +5% to crit 3 tiers back? You did buy it, right? Because here’s the real payoff: drop those next 5 points into Vengeance. +15% to damage? Yes, please.
For your next point, you’ll love Repentance. Sure, it only works on humanoids, but they are by far the most annoying critters in the game, and by now you’re running into more and more of the bugger throwing spells. It’s another stun for boosting Judgement of Command’s damage; now you can do it twice a minute. And it’s a ranged attack, at 20 yards. By this point that feels huge.
After that, Sanctified Seals is probably your best bet. +3% crit means more damage, and more Vengeance uptime. Which means even more damage.
Your next 6 points are either for picking up Sanctified Seals (the effect, sadly, stacks with Benediction) and filling out the stuff you didn’t pick up in tiers 2 and 3; with the general tendency of mobs at higher levels to live longer, both Deflection and Improved Crusader look better and better, plus Imp Crusader synergizes with Vengeance very nicely.
If you regularly group as DPS, Fanatacism is great. At the top rank it’s effectively a free Blessing of Salvation, and you can still add a Salvation on top. The bonus to Judgement crits is also handy; most of those use spell crit which is going to be pretty low and it’ll help with your Vengeance uptime. It’s still largely useless if you don’t group; Judgements are just too small a portion of your damage.
Now that you’re 50, you can pick up Crusader Strike, the reason you haven’t been two-timing into Protection or Holy. It’s worth pointing out that that second point in Improved Judgement is now useless in a perfect max-DPS rotation; you won’t be able to Judge more than once every nine seconds without clipping your Crusader Strike, which is a no-no. The key word there is perfect, however. The 8-second cooldown does give you a little extra leeway.
Outside of the Retribution tree, the biggest talents to squeeze in are Divine Strength (in Holy) for +10% strength and Precision (in Protection) for +3% to hit. I prefer Redoubt as the prereq 5 points in Protection; at least if my shield is out it’ll be useful. I’m still not likely to use anything but Sanctity Aura, so boosting Devotion Aura is a waste.
After snagging that, you’re 63 and have another 7 points to play with. You could head a little deeper into Holy and get yourself Spiritual Focus and Improved Lay on Hands, deeper into Protection to pick up Improved Righteous Fury (more for the 6% damage reduction than the threat boost) and/or Blessing of Kings by way of 2 points in Toughness, or head back into Retribution and pick up some of the talents you skipped on the way to Crusader Strike.
The single best piece of advice I can offer, though, is to always keep an eye out for gear for the other specs. It’ll make experimenting with the alternate specs much more useful, and with care you’ll find you can still tank and heal fairly well even without respeccing.
I leveled my pally as Prot. When I was soloing it was difficult… especially since my main is a rogue and I am used to actually doing damage when I fight. If you can team up with a good AoE class like a mage then you can burn through mobs in huge groups. That’s what I did.
But as a Prot pally in instances I had a blast… no CC needed at all. The pally can tank whole groups and the incoming heals regen mana.
Looking back at it, if I were soloing I would have gone Ret or maybe a Ret/Prot hybrid. Prot is great for instancing or grouping. I do have two whole bags full of gear for other roles though.
Also – make sure you are leveling all of your weapon skills as you go. If you level as Ret using a 2-hander, then want to switch to Prot with a 1-h sword and shield later, and then maybe switch to a mace if you get a good drop, its tedious to have to level your weapon skills 300+ points.
I didn’t level ret early on in my pally’s career, so I won’t make any suggestions there.
I am, however, a firm supporter of switching to prot at level 40. Put 5 points into Reckoning and get Holy Shield. This was my common leveling scenario:
1. Find an area with a large number (and high density) of non-caster mobs.
2. Make sure you have blessing of sanctuary and retribution aura up.
3. Mount up, then ride around, aggroing as many mobs as you can handle (from about 5 in lower levels to 30+ at level 70).
4. When you’re happy with your number of mobs, dismount.
5. Put up holy shield.
6. Put up seal of righteousness (by doing so you’ll more than double your damage output with each swing… very nice when reckoning procs and you’re doing double swings).
7. Lay down a consecrate.
8. Refresh holy shield and consecrate whenever cooldowns are up.
9. Profit.
There are obvious variations to this strat. On really large packs of mobs I like to judge wisdom on the mob that I’m currently attacking to help with mana regen. Some people like to judge crusader on the mob they’re currently attacking to speed up its demise.
I can see how this leveling build would be pretty boring for a main toon. Full prot doesn’t lend itself well to completion of quests that involve anything but killing a bunch of non-caster mobs. While your usefulness in 5-man dungeon groups is obvious, it’s fairly tough to find 5-man groups for pre-BC instances now that they’re eased the leveling requirements and everyone seems to be rushing for lvl 70.
If your paladin is an alt, however, going prot post-40 is awesome. You can just leave your pally in an inn until she/he is fully rested (while playing your main), then when that bar is as purple as it’s going to get you go out and mow through as many mobs as you can until you’re not rested anymore.
Wow, thanks for all the great and detailed advice!
This pally alt is actually one I made last winter during a day when I was tired of leveling my struggling rogue at the time. The pally made it to level 5 and got to the quests in Northshire that I remembered only being doable with my rogue due to stealth and then I gave up the pally and went back to my rogue.
After trying the Shaman, which there are aspects I really like, I was talking to BBB about what the guild really needs at a high level and he commented that we could always use more healers – priests, shamans, or paladins. Since he’s almost got his priest at 70 (only about 70% of a level to go now!) and I had just tried the shammy, I dusted off my pally. Now that I have general game mechanics down more and had played with the casting abilities of the shaman, I found the paladin to be a lot of fun. Played for a few hours late Thursday night and went from just having dinged level 5 up to 8. The next day made it to 12 and took Hogger down on my own (ok, it took 2 tries and I had 30 health left the second time, but I did it). Now after an additional couple of days of playing (in between dailies and guild runs), I’m up to almost level 18.
I’ve been leveling as retribution and really enjoy it (and from advice above and other places, sounds like that’s the way to go for now). I’ll probably redo my talent points a bit based on what we’re hearing, but overall, my general attack sequence is right on and I’m doing pretty well. Still not enjoying multiple mobs so much and REALLY miss the ranged attack ability of my rogue. It’s much harder when you can’t select one from a crowd to pick off and draw aggro from. No, instead, I get the entire group that wants to interrupt my casts. But I’m slowly figuring out how to handle it and not die. Bubble and heal is my friend!
Thanks again for all the wonderful advice. You guys are the best!
Cassieann
Reckoning and weapon speed:
If you’re trying to maximize damage, 2.0 is the minimum speed for your weapon. Any faster and you burn up the charges before the timer runs out. You want the whole 8 seconds of double damage that Reckoning will average out to. The Reckoning timer and your swing timer will rarely match up; it’s possible (though rare) to get all four swings off on a weapon as slow as 2.6. The extra procs from Seals and Judgements are just bonuses.
If you’re trying to maximize Seal/Judgement of Light/Wisdom, 2.0 is the maximum speed for your weapon. Any slower and the timer will often run out before you use up all your charges. You want all four extra swings to proc your Seal/Judgement. The extra damage is just a bonus.
Random pally tip: if you’re leveling with a friend and you need a bandage, have them do it and get a mana boost at the same time.
Question: Does anybody know if the Jewelcrafting statues trigger Spiritual Attunement? The general rule is that if it generates threat for someone else it triggers, and the statues do generate healing aggro. Incidentally, this is why paladins are less fans of Prayer of Mending, Earth Shield, and Lifebloom’s burst than other tanks; they don’t refill our blue bars.
Aw, I was sure you’d stick with the Shaman. Enhancement can be a blast, and once you get Dual Wielding, its like you’re a superhero Rogue. And then, at 70, you can spec Resto and heal like a damn champ.
Buuuut, and this is really really important: Paladins are at the very HEART of this game. If you level a paladin, and I’m assuming its a Human, you’re going to soaking in the lore and feeling like part of something greater than just your own little quests. It will be a struggle, as most things about being a paladin are, but it will change how the game feels, and your own experience and expectations.
BTW: Stay in the Ret tree and just hit stuff till about 50 or so. A ret who pays attention and has an extra set of +Intellect gear can heal everything up to BRD, and by then, you’ll be in WPL and reachingg the fruition of your paladin’s “Story”. Spec Protection, follow the gearing advice, and revel in the piles of Undead at your feet.
And why Prot is good:
If you do it right, you turn yourself into a massive “unkillable” Holy Magic DoT. You’re a bugzapper on two feet and a shield. Scoop up random melee mobs, set up your blessings and seals, and profit.
i’m not sure what you have for alts but maybe it’d be a good idea for each of you to have a tank and a healer so you could switch roles every other week or so. myself and a friend did this and it so stress relieving. in fact i switched my pally from holy to tank and ended up enjoying it so much i am now raiding mount hyjal as a pally tank. hybrids are so much fun you just gotta figure out which role you like best by trying them all, although i never could get into ret :)
Im one your neighborhood bloggers and fulltime Protection Paladin who leveled and solo to 70 in that very spec. I had wrote out a long response and page got refreshed and lost what I had wrote. So just will condense this.
Resources:
ardentdefender.blogspot.com (Protec Paladin)
honorscode.blogspot.com (Protec Paladin)
retribution-blogspot.com (Ret Paladin)
Fastest up to lvl 35 is Ret overall. A good player playing Protec Spec is not that much slower but Ret works. I leveled Protection but I had skills and wasn’t slow to me.
Rets do lot more damage than Protection Paladins, though Protec Paladins are more defensive with survivability and kill mobs by using a mob own offense against itself. Ret use heavy slow hitting 2H weapon. Protect Psladin uses a solid good Shield and a sub 2.0 weapon speed fast 1H weapon wether it be a sword, axe, mace defensively. Protect Paladins can use a 2H weapon also effectively in offensive combat using different seals and judgements. Works great one just have to be full skilled at all times with both.
Your aim is to look for warrior type gear. As you level you pickup gear mail I’d plate with Stamina, Strength, Intellect and Agility. As a mana user you burn lots of it so need Intellect but it will usually be hard to find. All those stats help for gear.
Retribution Paladins can do much more damage, but Protection Paladin have more survivability and tricks with Shield and 1H and can effectively use a 2H weapon as you like while still having a Shield.
Beyond lvl 35 a Protec Paladin really starts to excell. You a play learn how to master the art of Seals and juggling Judgements while fighting multiple mobs if be. How a person play and how you excell is all in the playstyle of the player.
As a person who leveled from 1-70 I did it entirely Protection Spec and it has nothing to do with AoEing or multi-mob fighting when I choose to level that way. I wanted to play solo and wanted a class and spec that could level solo with lots of survivability. I mastered the art of protection spec leveling with a shield and fast 1H. I used a 2H weapon at same time leveling. I actually leveled a shield and 1H and 7 other 1H and 2H weapon all at the same time. When I got to 70 I had full mastery of every weapon usable by a paladin including unarmed skill. That was the versatile way I played my class within my spec. But how you choose to play will be up to the individual.
I have a Belf Pally who I leveled as Ret (and some as a healer, but I had a quest mate) until I could do BRD, then I went prot. If you can get a solid group, there is some nice plate and some good shields in BRD and that place is 75% easier with a rock-solid healer and an AOE tank. I’ll go in there an easily hold 5-6 guys in place while the dps takes them out, one by one.