Amera

There are a few paladin threads floating around about certain skills/talents, but the discussion isn't very focused. Let's make this a single thread like the other classes have and consolidate here.

Here are a few thoughts on specs, both as level 70 in beta and now at 60 on live.

Ret Build: CSadin
I've been playing with this on live since the Tuesday patch, and its basically what I used to level with in beta as well. I tried to test it some in a raid setting last night, but we have been short on healers, so it hasn't been practical most of the time. I think to what Bekah commented on in the shadow priest thread that it is hard to convince anyone to have a healer not be primarily healing on any learning encounter. I think raid groups will want the 3% to crit, but do they really want a paladin in melee gear DPSing and keeping all the judgments up? You could put up crusader in full heal gear and occassionally whack the mob and be just fine, but in this case you've sacked 40x points into a spec you aren't really even using on raids, save for one ability. As far as raw sustained DPS, on Noth I was able to place in with the low DPSers (this while full-time healing during balconies), which wasn't terrible given 0 consumables. On Maexxna it was about 15ish. But of course this is with 15% vengeance and 6sec CS.
In PvP, this build is pretty awesome. I had forgotten how amazing repentance is. With that and CS, it's virtually impossible to lose a 1v1 against anyone save maybe a priest. CS gives you the burst to kill healers, and with 2 interrupts (BE will have 3...) its crazy. If you are full combating healing a team, I feel that the ability to repentance one person beating on you almost makes up for prot/holy talents you might otherwise be able to get.

Prot
Prot is fun for iron-manning (like soloing strath at 70), and enjoyable in pvp as well if you want to combat heal. I haven't seen any paladins tanking anything significant yet, so I can't really comment on the build as far as that goes. Even with tanking greens/blues leveling to 70, my gear is still so far behind any warriors I run with that besides off-tanking an add here or there, I haven't had any reason to have deep prot talents.
There seem to be a healthy number of paladins who love to do the Reckoning leveling build, pulling whole camps of enemies and slowly widdling them down while they heal tank. Its unfortunate the prot changes didn't make it to live so the tree is still pretty weak there, imo.

Holy
Besides the 41 point talent, holy remains pretty strong. I've specced holy to solo heal all the TBC 5 mans and for some initial kharazan sorties, but that's about it. I know many paladins swear by spell damage builds for leveling, but I just couldnt get into it. Even with ~500 spell power it seemed so amazingly slow compared to Ret or even Prot I couldn't stick with it.
Obviously with 14k+ hp pools on tanks at 70, there's a concern about flash of light scaling. Even with a bit over 1000 healing fully talented, you're still looking at 1300ish heals - a bargain for 180 mana, to be sure, but the HPS is just so low I'm not sure it will cut it. The rest of the tree gets you +11% to crit with HL, which is pretty nice, and maybe even necessary to sustain healing. In Kharazan, for example, my group was actually wiping to the Butler from running oom on our first few attempts - something I hadn't experienced in some time. Without illumination it would have been brutal.

Spec Options
So what are the current thoughts on what will be the best raiding specs and arena specs out there? My major concern at the moment is whether Ret will end up being viable in either, or if virtually everyone will end up Holy/prot essentially the same as before TBC.

 

• frmorrison

Two Pallys CSadin specced may rock the 2v2 arena bracket, but other brackets, not so much.

I can see people specing 21 in Holy (Divine Favor) and 31+ in Ret (Repentance) to be a decent healer and decent DPSer. However, the importance of BoK sort of forces you to get at least 11 in Prot, so it may be worth it to go 31+ in Prot, at least you get great survivibility.

Sadly it looks to me like CSadin is just the PvE grinding and sub-par healer spec, at least you give a raid 3% more crit ;).

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Amera

Not sure how valuable BoK will be in arena. You have to figure you'll be overwriting it on melee with freedom and possibly casters with sacrifice. I've actually been using light sometimes just to add some extra burst healing.

Obviously in raiding you'll still need 1 paladin with it, maybe 2 if you want a backup.

 

Liar

I think I am going to spec back to Prot for leveling and iron manning. Don't laugh, but that is how I leveled from 30 to 60. Flurry Axe and a Shield and Prot spec. The idea was to tackle 5-6 mobs at once and let them die to Holy Shield, BoSanct, Thorium Shieldspikes, Imp Retri aura and my awesome swings for 100 dmg or less XD

I am really sad Paladins cannot use Daggers because I don't want to get a slower Weapon than Flurry Axe (1.5) because it's plain awesome to proc JoW/JoL so much you never have to worry about mana/health while the mobs kill themselves by hitting you.
I seriously think that is OP, and I intend to exploit it as much as I can. :) (I mean, I could friggin solo the last part of Bloodsail Buccaneers while being 5 levels lower; you know how the mob density in the ships is - dense enough that I swore to never do that quest again, but heh, Paladins are an exception :D)

Aaaanyways, enough rambling. What do you say to this spec for leveling and iron manning?

The way I was going to kill stuff is running around with Retri Aura (or Conc aura if I need to heal) and spam Holy Shield with a Thorium Spiked shield while my fast weapon procs JoL or JoW with SotC active.

EDIT: Should I drop Parry for Ardent Defender? Parrying stuff doesn't proc the damageshield.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Fiola

Why skip reckoning? For AoE grinding, that's a 100% boost to your melee output. (3+ mobs attacking you should keep it up permanently)

You might as well drop the points in Ret and get AD and Reckoning. 3 points in imp. SotC definitely isn't worth a few points in the niftier talents at the bottom of the Prot tree. AD I haven't tried personally, but from duels, heavy Prot pallies are a pain in the rear to finish off. If you like being ridiculously durable, I think it's a decent talent to pick up.

 

Amera

Does parry reset your auto-attack timer? I can't remember if this was confirmed or denied. If so, then yeah its useful.

If that is your grinding build, how did you not have reckoning? o.O Some odd talent choices! I think for prot grinding I'd use something like this to maximize efficiency and damage.

 

Judia

Im going to be a cynic here but, with the way feral druids and shadow priests are shaping up, unless 25man raids only need 4 healers I think most paladins are going to be stuck healing with the shaman and any druids/priests who really like healing. We look to still be the worst of the classess for dps, and provide less utility than a shadow priest or feral druid. In tnaking, we are miles weaker than a bear druid, and behind the game on warriors (though not by much).

Id love to be more optimistic, but to me the new paladin looks to be about as viable as the 1.12 druid. Which is to say, while in tanking or dpsing they are just about viable, and bring a small amount of utility the vast majority of the population will be asked to spec holy and heal.

With that out of the way.
Holy seems to provide more burst controlled burst dps than Ret, and looks to be the strongest for organized pvp. Ret is nice for grinding or some attempt at dps/utility in groups.

To me prot still looks to be the weakest spec, both for pvp and pve.
I expect the vast majority of paladins will be 41 ret from 60 to 70, in much the same way most were ret from 1-60.

 

Liar

Something like this? :)

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Liar

I do think there will be a place for one Retri Pala per 25 raid. Their own DPS is quite formidable, they also take some stress off of other Paladins with CS, Holy Aura helps healing and the already mentioned 3% crit.
That being said, they can also help off tank better than their Holy counterparts, right?

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Judia

Im sure there will be a place for a Ret paladin.
Im not sure they will be dpsing so much as keeping sanctified crusader up while healing, and maybe using CS to keep up other judgements. Alot will depend on how many healers there will be in a 25man raid, but unless it is 4 there more than 1 person from each class will have to heal.

Personally Im tempted to spec deep protection and try leveling to 70 the way I leveled to 60. I main tanked almost every instance and did no more than 2/3 outworld quests for each level while waiting for instance gorups. Of course I had a nightmare getting people to accept I could tank BRS/DM or any instance was fun, but its what I enjoy.

 

Amera

Hard to disagree at this point. One big feeling I've had with TBC healing is that while on live I have always gotten by with 21 holy (for illum and DF), I'm not sure that is enough to cut it in TBC. Granted, you are suddenly not out-gearing the level 70 stuff anymore, so that may be part of it. But that extra crit % and LG feels pretty necessary if you are taking on full healing responsibilities.

Edit: To clarify, by "get by" I mean I never saw a significant difference in 31 holy or 21 holy with the old talents. I don't run OOM unless I use LOH and the extra 5% crit wasn't worth losing talents in other trees to me. Now you can get 11% crit with HL, 2 second HLs, and more than 100 extra spell power. That's a lot more to give up.

 

Liar

But isn't that the same for every DPS healer/hybrid?

Well, regardless I am pretty sure part of making hybrids raid viable will be the balance of class roles needed for each given fight. One might require more healing, one more healing and another one more DPS, you name it.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Judia

Possibly at the moment.
The new shadow priest is bordering on required in its current state, and certainly incredably desireable. I cant imagine any 25man raid running without at least 1 shadow priest. Feral druids are straight up viable either tanking or dpsing and in that way are more desireable than extra warriors at the moment who have to spec deeply and become EITHER tanks or dps. Also mangle from different druids stacks geometrically at the moment, and cat and bear mangle stack with each other, which actually means they stack better than rogues in their current state (which I cant imagine will go live).

At the end of the day there is a minimum number of healers required for any given encouter, that job will most likely be taken up by those classess which do not offer viable dps or tanking (as well as those people who just plain enjoy healing). Unless content is balanced for far lss healing than we are used to some people will be stuck healing even if they would rather be doing something else, and those people are going to come from the class that ofers the least dps/tanking viability.

Edit
Apologies to the OP for taking us off topic this fast.
I do imagine the vast majority of the paladins will be leveling as 41 ret.

 

◊ Zoid

I have a 66 Blood Elf Paladin on beta now (name is Thion, say Hi if you see me). I've respec'd and done everything from tanking to full healing to a full DPS ret build.

But the 41 ret/20 holy build is just incredible for PvP. CS along with the extra healing from 20 in holy just makes you a PvP healer that hits pretty damn hard. I still have a bitch of a time with purge happy shamans however.

I've tanked Hellfire and Sethekk Halls instances, as well as many of the outdoor elite quests such as the demons in west Nagrand. Tanking has been a lot of fun and may be something of a primary goal of mine if I level my paladin up in TBC. Paladins are just amazing at tanking large groups of mobs compared to warriors with Consecration, etc. Does anyone know if the holy damage causes by the Retribution Aura causes threat and by extension causes extra threat with Righteous Fury?

For now on beta, I'm still undecided on spec. Right now I'm a holy build. Now that I have over 300 spell damage, it's actually not that bad to level with. Holy shock is hitting for 700 on a JotC mob and with improved BoW my mana tends to last a decent time. I did just get a 93 DPS polearm, so I might respec back to 41 Ret to smack that thing with Crusader Strike a bit.

Overall, playing a Paladin is a lot more fun. I don't feel as much as the sit back and watch him swing. I feel I'm taking more active action in "playing" the class.

There are some issues. SoR is currently much better than SoC for sustained DPS. There's actually not much reason to use SoC other than stun someone, seal and judge it. I use SoR almost exclusively now.

 

◊ Kalman

Just a quick note:

One of my friends specced prot on PTR and we went and did a ZG. Using whatever miscellaneous mediocre tanking gear he's picked up (he's a full time healadin on live), he main tanked ZG without problems.

Now, when I say without problems, I mean with the exception of him getting silenced on Jek'lik, I really didn't have to worry about my aggro, and I considerably outgeared the rest of the raidgroup (I'm Fang/Pugio with 5 pieces of T3, they're mixed T1/T2 for the most part). Trying to rip aggro, if he got a few seconds start, was pretty much a futile endeavor. Talking with him after the fact doing post-mortem, we pretty much came down to feeling comfortable with a paladin tanking most of the current content pre-Naxx, barring the Emps (we both feel that given no real way to prevent a crushing/UBS combo for a paladin, that encounter just isn't suitable). I actually imagine a paladin could tank 4H just as well as a druid can, at this point, although gear would be an issue to some extent.

Once paladin tanking gets itemized properly and the rest of the changes come in, I expect them to be fairly solid tanks, quite comparable to warriors and druids, superior in some encounters.

 

Phantom

Well, just a few days ago we did Rag (for reference, we just downed Skeram as a guild a week ago). We had about 6 paladins. I put 1 Ret paladin in each of melee dps groups. One kept up Crusader, and the other kept up light. I judged wisdom and then just healed. Lately we've had DPS issues at Rag, finding it tough to drop him even to 40% pre-sons (we lost a bit of our well-geared DPS people awhile back, and usually got him to 50%). I gave the paladins orders to keep judgments up, and heal their respective groups.

This time, we dropped him to 30% easily pre-sons, then finished him off afterwards. The melee stayed alive far longer than they usually did (yes, the new ones do need more FR). Think I'm going to try and have 1-2 paladins melee on each boss from now on. At least the 40 mans.

I would have gone Ret myself, but too many of my paladins did. :( So I stayed a mixture of 31 Holy and 20 Prot, to heal and off tank as needed.

 

Amera

This is very dependent on gear. SoC is still better sustained DPS as long as you have a high crit % The only advantages SoC really gives are burst and crit. I'm not sure of the exact number, but with 15%+ I'd imagine you'll be better with SoC, and at 20% or higher the difference is much more pronounced.

But anyway, you have to work to get good ret gear in beta, while good SoR gear kinda just falls into your lap, so I think for most people it will be better, unless they are hitting beta with Avenger's or the PvP set.

Edit: Zoid, are you on Hellfire or Blade's Edge?

 

Hal

A ret spec if more viable for raiding then it once was. Sadly, it seems the rate of mana consumption of a ret spec is still inferior if one is to go deep enough to help the raid with both improved seal of the crusader and crusader strike.

I should add that I've seen about a 5% improvement in total raid damage output with both a nightfall warrior and a seal of crusader judging paladin added to the raid makeup.

I've been pvping as the last holy spec on two servers since 2.0.1 and Holy, with the consecration, fear / disease resistances and improved holy light talents is still the most viable general build as a paladin.

While Ret is still the best tree for burst dps, given the mobs in TBC hit like small trains (in tier 3), I think holy or prot. are still the trees of choice. Paladin grinding and dps is all about being a porcupine or a support unit. I'm still convinced 2.0 have us in this role.

EDIT:
Damage and Healing heavily geared players benefit more from slower charging weapons and attacks. The best spell for this in the paladin arsenal (as was said in another EJ thread) would be the Seal of Righteousness. Seal of Command is another burst dps tool.

 

Darkmantle

Druids have growl which acts as taunt, paladins don't, so they couldn't tank 4H. However they would probably be awesome tanks on Thaddius. Imagine Polarity + righteous fury....... They would also work well on gothik/noth with all thier ranged unead damaging moves and hoj which could be insanely useful at times.

 

◊ zeidrich

Why would growl work any better than Righteous Defense? They should theoretically do exactly the same thing.

Personally I'm quite interested in seeing how well an appropriately geared protection paladin can tank. I'm kind of nervous about the talent trees. Our heals seems insubstantial to the large HP pools, and we don't have the awesomely scaling HoTs of other classes.

I think it's entirely in the hands of itemization, and I've yet to see enough of the expansion to make up my mind.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
-Mel Brooks

 

RK

I was under the impression that the pally taunt was already in?

 

Amera

Yeah, it something I think a lot of paladins don't understand as far as gear choices. One of the major reasons Ret has not been viable in much of anything was purely a lack of supporting gear. Judgment may have spell power, but it is terrible Ret gear. Avenger was the first really good Ret set out there, but in TBC there is PvP and raid gear available. Once you get good AP and a high crit, SoC is amazing burst damage and good consistent damage. Without those two, it is horrible. There are paladins all over the beta forums complaining about SoC because they are trying to use it with 10% crit and t2 armor.

I've been running around with CS on live pvping, and I'm really just an unsnareable mortal strike warrior with no debuff if I want to be. The combo of Stun - Judge - CS - Autoattack - Repent - Judge - CS - Autoattack will kill almost anything if you crit at least once. No other spec comes close to that kind of burst. However, I really have been tempted to try a Reckoning build with the GM swiftblade and see how that does as a compromise.


RD would work fine for 4h I imagine.

As far as hp pools go, in my runs to Kharazan warriors with decent gear have about 15,000hp, while druids have 16 or 17ish. On live, warriors have, what, 8-9k hp? So you are looking at not quite double the hp, while my healing is about 25-30% more.

My biggest worry is that paladins end up meh DPS, meh tanks, and meh healing, but have blessing of kings et. al. so they get 3 raid spots anyway.

 

• Vinsent

I can only speak for live, but in live even though it shows up a white damage, it counts as holy for RF and aggro purposes.

As to my build, CS is really nice, and I'm having a ton of fun pvping with it. I’m just not sure I’ll stick with it come TBC. It will be good to level up with, but I prefer a more utility build at level 70 something like:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...20033120331000

Gives me repentance, Imp RF, and Healing Light. Not super min maxed, holy pallys will out heal me, tank pallys will out tank me and ret pallys will out dps me.

But I figure I can bring all three in one raid slot Ill still be pretty useful. Good to offtank, 12-18% stronger heals (Imp scant and Holy Light), and I just cant live without repentance. (I've tried, its the one talent that really makes pallys a whole different class in pvp).

So I think Ret Spec up to CS to 70 since I think its a fun way to level, then switching over to a tri spec once I have the talent points to support it.

(At the risk of breaking the board rules. I have not done 4h, but if a taunt is what is needed, Paladins have a Taunt in Righteous Defense, and I don’t see why this would be less effective than a warrior or druid counterpart. Can you explain more clearly?)

/edit - Also not sure how relevent it is but I have not seen it posted, video of a paladin tank all the WM and the two dogs in AV.

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...87916811517822

 

Oneiros

Touching on a few points:

1) The other day during Sartura, I was just imagining the possiblities of paladins tanking the encounter. The ranged taunt would just be incredibly useful. I have already found SO many uses for righteous defence it isn't even funny. From pulling extra dracanoids off of the MT at the beginning of phase 2 Nef to taunting felguards and hunter pets off of more squishier healers in pvp, it has so many uses for a plate healer/support class.

2) Right now in 2.0, I'm specced 40/0/11. I've never been more than 21 holy before, and I don't think I could ever go back to being retribution. Personally, I prefer to be somewhat of a battle healer using a 1h/shield so the great burst provided by JoR/JoC + Holy Shock is awesome, as far as pvp goes. To be perfectly honest though, I really want to go prot. I would love to get reckoning and to get Stoicism to stop my buffs from being purged (As you can probably tell, I've been doing a lot of pvp lately), but giving up the healing talents and holy shock (your only real offensive burst spell as a sword and board pally) just seems like way too much to give up. Protection seems like it would be fun, but I'm pretty sure I would kill things slower than I did on my resto druid.

3) It's not that hard to keep judgements up on a target. Crusader Strike isn't going to be that useful. Meleeing a target once every 15 seconds ( or just rejudging it) with a swing timer that doesn't reset on spell cast isn't that hard. Ret just loses as far as raiding goes. As far as I'm concerned, its an inferior pvp spec as well. I've been in BGs all week, and crusader strike paladins die so fast it isn't funny, while I'm lasting long enough to go completely oom, go out of combat, drink, and go completely oom again most of the time. I'm pretty confident that a similarly geared holy paladin can probably put out the same burst as a crusader strike paladin, while retaining a lot more survivability.


BTW: I recently changed my main from a druid to a paladin.

I believe in Harvey Dent.

 

Judia

To my eyes, Blizzard seem to be doing away with the idea of hybrids. What we consider hybrids are being given deeper, and more defining talent trees and dps/tanking comparable to "pure" classess in the case of druids and priests. Paladins have been given deeper and more defining talent tress without bringing them much closer to the "pure" classess; we are still the worst tank, the worst dps and the worst healing by many measures.

Ret really looks like the PvP tree more than anything but now when we spec for it it will severely impact our healing without realistically making us viable DPS. Holy is the staple tree and the bulk of paladins are going to end up in here after hitting 70. Prot is great were it not for the fact that druids and warriors still do it better, unless Warriors are left broken, or you lack any druids who want to tank the use of paladin tanks will be limited to certain gimmicks and offtanking; noone is going to spec 41 Prot simply to offtank some trash. In 5man content we look good, but in the larger content I think we are going to be reduced to clense, buffs, judgements, and some spot healing unless you lack prot warriors or feral druids; it seems scarily reminiscent of release.

Im not sure what Blizzard can do about this without overpowering us in pvp, but when a class has week dps, week tanking and week healing, we all know what that class ends up doing.