• Lanky

Wow I just did a double take on imp. righteous fury. Damn that is a good buff to the skill.
If I was just going for pure "aoe" prot levelling, I'd avoid tank specific talents and stick with dps and self mitigation and that build is finished as far as levelling is concerned at 50. Then you put the rest in holy or ret as preferred. I personally would go holy up to illumination to finish levelling as prot.

 

• Amera

Those are bad paladins. Just because you have CS doesn't mean you have to have a two hander out charging the enemy in every fight. If I'm with a competent group that needs healing, you put on healing gear and do it. Being fully holy or prot doesnt change that all that much. Some more survivability, yes, but I think with noobs its more likely because they are running in like maniacs with a 2hander when the situation isn't appropriate, rather than spec. I think the biggest thing with holy would be Light's Grace for some really nice burst healing.

People keep saying this, but I dont see how. On beta at 70 I can get 500 spell power, and holy is nothing compared to Ret. I mean you can autoattack, soc, CS, and judge SoC almost in all the same instant. Holy can't even come close to that burst potential. On a rogue today, for example, I stunned him, meleed for 1k, soc for 1.2, CS for 1k, and judged for 1.2k. He died in the duration of one stun. All crits, obviously, but even if they weren't that is a ton of burst. As holy you get what...a holy shock crit ever 2 min for 1200? I actually really want to know if I'm doing something wrong with holy burst, or if people don't have a good idea of what ret is capable of.

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Mizerok

Everyone has seen this correct?

http://warcraftmovies.com/stream.php?id=32822

Currently I am in love with my Capt. America spec, but good god.

 

Oneiros

Well, I am pretty poorly geared as far as holy pvp goes. My set consists of 6/8 Tier 2, Field Marshall's Chest and Boots, Red Dragonscale Protector, and GM Longsword. I only have around 300 spell damage, stun, judge command for ~1200, holy shock for ~900, and then put on seal of righteousness and melee for ~500 a swing, judging every time it is up. If I used a 2h, I imagine I'd do more burst just because of higher melee crits and higher seal of righteousness attacks. So if everything crits you're looking at 1200 (JoC) + 900 (Holy Shock) + 750 (white crit) + 140 (SoR)= ~3000 damage. Granted, that's if everything crits, (keep in mind by being holy spec you're getting +5% crit to holy spells. But I also have ~10k armor, and a large mana pool (and also very high +healing). I think as far as seal of command and ret dps goes, most paladins (unless they have access to aq40/naxx gear) are likely gimping the heck out of their mana pools in order to get the melee hit/crit they need in order to be powerful with a melee-based seal. '


To me, the ret tree seems to be a little underpowered for what you give up. You get an instant attack (which is cool), but you lose a ton of your longevity and healing power. You become less versatile by speccing ret, whereas with a holy or prot spec, you can do a lot more (prot less so, holy moreso). Pretty much if you're getting crusader strike you can get healing focus and you are forced to forsake the powerful higher end holy talents. In PVE, I feel a ret paladin isn't going to be as good at switching roles or at healing intensive encounters, whereas holy dps is always viable.

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Ngita

I am at 580 buffed on live right now:) But I would agree wih you Crusader strike does have the superior burst potential, I did give it a good test on ptr and do intend to respec over xmas for a serious trial but i have so far found I am dissatisfied with it in pvp. In pug vs org/pug I am a obvious target, t2/2.5+ ashkandi. Kill the paladin before he kills us. Kill 1 or 2 people ,die, Rinse & repeat :( In organised vs anybody else I am better of geared for healing and in that case I might as well be holy spec. As holy spec ,outside priests and warlocks I rarely die 1 vs 1 and I suprised myself the other day by killing two t2+ geared shaman at the same time

 

Thelyna

I'll be ret to level, I've been picking up warrior dps gear before it goes to DE, and I still think ret has more sustained damage in it than holy. At 70 .. well, we'll see, but I suspect I'll probably go back holy. =/

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• Amera

Oh, you still have command. That makes a big difference - most people with holy just go SoR. SoC needs crit to be effective, and it's hard to get crit gear with spell power. Anyway yeah, Ret gear is very hard to get, holy gear is easy, which I said in an earlier post. In order to not be a gimp with Ret, you have to get gear with Int/Sta/Str/Agi/Spell power. That's a full plate (no pun intended).

Honestly I wouldn't really care about CS as much if not for repentance. Not having a second stun makes killing anyone with a heal insanely hard unless you want an 8 min fight. The main issue with getting CS is that you can't really get kings (since you want spiritual focus), but you can at least get illum.


Well, it's like being an MS warrior, like I said. :D But you have way more survivability than them, with similar burst if you have the same gear.


Anyway, what about a holy/ret build with reckoning? You could still pick up holy shock and LG by 70. Anyway tried this in pvp?

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Valen

15 sec holy shock with enough spell damage and crit rating has alot of potential, especially when i consider that i can wear a shield.

This is the spec that I plan to pvp with at 70: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=qVEhMxz0xsxZVfx0Mcz


PS: Regarding ret paladins in raids, really they are not bad at all, as long as they maintain 20 points in holy. 6% stronger heals on group can be a gem during certain encounters. 3% more crit isn't bad at all and having judgments up all the time can be a very usefull tool in raids. But as i said, if I were to be the raid leader I wouldn't take a paladin that doesn't have 13-20 points in holy as well.

 

Hal

One thing I would be curious on would be the prot tree.

I've seen most go full prot to become a tankadin. But has anyone found the optimal combination of Holy and Prot such that they can off tank 5 man and 25 man content at 70, yet still not be nerfed in healing?

I can't seem to find a solid combo without sack'ing my 31+ talents (where the new bread and butter talents are).

 

Oneiros

I would absolutely love to go holy/prot with reckoning, however I couldn't bear not having holy shock, so I'll have to wait until expansion to try it out. That build seems like it would be perfect all around. PvP attacking, PvP healing, PvE healing, PvE tanking, I think holy/prot would be able to do it all, and I can't wait to try it out.

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• Galatea

I am currently 0/41/10. It has turned out to be very viable for PvP. Ardent Defender is really effective. it can be leap frogged, but the number of times I have sat at a flag, almost oom, out of life, and 1-2 horde just can't kill me before I manage to regen enough to FoL myself is shocking. I really need to make a mod that calculates whether or not a max rank FoL is likely to push me out of that threshold, so I know if I should just jump to an full Holy Light.

I am in love with Avenger's Shield. With one spell I got a ranged pull, a big junk of initial aggro generation, and a multi-target ranged snare. Hiting a flag runner and his healers with it makes me smile every time.

As far as PvE goes, the largest things I have tanked so far are Ony, Broodlord, and the bugs on Fankriss. Ony I have tanked before (though usually not on purposes), so that was not really a surprise. I pulled initial aggro on broodlord, and then made it through the tank rotation again as the warriors were deaggroed. For that encounter I had about 7.5k health, and 385 def. With Redoubt and Holy Shield up I was at 70%+ block, and 15%+ each dodge and parry, so I could push crushes off the table. The Fankriss bugs were messy, but I think it should work okay. There was a lot of lag, and it was the night of the patch, so everyone's mods were screwed up.

I also attempted to tank Ossirian, but that was not as successful. I was significantly out threating the other tanks, which caused him to lash back to me after envelopes. I think I need to get a better feel for my threat generation relative to a warrior. There might have been something else going on though, because after a wipe I switch to healing, and part way through the attempt people (not me) starting pulling healing aggro. Everyone is still getting used to their new specs, so it is hard to tell what exactly is going on.

In PvE I am finding it hard to sort out what buffs I have up, with all the HoTs. I really need to pay attention to certain buff procs (Redoubt, Reckoning) so I can use certain buffs reactively (Holy Shield, SotC). I guess I will setup custom SCT filters, like the one that pops up Riposte for Rogues.

 

Artaxz

For those that hit 70 on beta, can you give us an idea of your gear/stats, and compare it to the other hybrids -- shaman and druids.

I have seriously considered rolling a BE pally (mainly for arena pvp) instead of my shaman. Earth shield is just fantastic (along with NS, and all the other healing goodies, shamans seem better suited for healing than pallys). Basically, I would give up better healing and dps for survivability. I wonder if paladins can even keep up with the healing at 70 in the arenas.

Thoughts?

http://plaguelands.com/?page_id=298

 

• Amera

I was actually thinking shaman would be slightly disadvantaged healers because of survivability issues, and the fact they have some extra utility things to do (shock, totem), while paladins can mostly just heal. Anyway assuming Light's Grace, you do have 2sec spells that land for 3500 with decent gear at 70 - that's pretty amazing burst healing. And you are still the only healer that can choose to avoid focus fire for a time. So yeah, I think you could keep up pretty well. They each have different strengths.

Edit:
For gear and stats, at level 70 I'm still wearing mostly Redemption, so my healing HP is pretty low - like 7000hp/7600 mana. Full ret gear I'm at 7500hp/4750 mana, and tank gear 7800/5000. That's all without talents for +Sta or +Int and no buffs.

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Caba

Due to our raid having a very solid tanking core, I don't get to tank a whole lot outside of 5-10 mans. For that reason I chose to spec mainly holy (as my main role is healing) and then pick up what mitigation I could in the lower part of the prot tree. This involved 17 points in Prot (Redoubt, Precision (3/3), Toughness (2/5), Shield Spec, Righteous Fury, Kings). I go with Precision over Toughness for the moment as it's important that my holy damage hits as often as possible, steady damage seems to keep aggro on me, plus my warrioresque tanking set has more than enough stam/def/armor to mitigate the extra damage. I've built two tanking sets, one which is mainly spell damage, I've found best in 5 mans where there mobs don't hit as hard, and the second is primarily a def/stamina set which limits my mana pool but allows me to take the big hits on boss adds. With this spec I'm able to tank anywhere we need an AoE tank (i.e. skitterer packs) and I'm also very viable to pick up a loose trash mob if a tank goes down. I run with salvation off, righteous fury up and holy shock at the ready. I can also off tank adds on boss fights and have a solid aggro lock even if people start hitting right away.

Post patch, I'm specced, 34/17/0, which is the same amount of points I had in protection prior to the patch. I did go 5/5 in both Spiritual Focus and Seal of Righteousness so until we can level to 70, I'm slightly gimped compared to our pure healbots.

While going full prot will increase a bit of mitigation and probably make life easier, I've had no problems tanking with limited points in the tree and the new skills of RD and SA, make things a lot simpler. The only issue with going with slightly less points is you have to work a little harder in making sure you get out your aggro generating skills, but holy shock is a great tanking tool. Plus there are so many uses for RD if you can take a hit or two it's not even funny.

 

• Vinsent

I dont really feel like ret gives up that much, and acutally gains a lot of utility.

(Talking about xpac at level 70 so a full set of 61 talent ponits)

So we ignore the bottom 20 of each of the trees since reguardless of spec you are able to reach them (e.g. ret gets 20 holy and holy gets 20 ret)

Ret gains
6% heals (with an aura to their group) and 10% more holy damage
6% more damage with 2 handers
10% more holy and white damage on a crit.
50% mana returned on judging seals.
15% greater chance to crit judgement
3% spell/melee crit for the raid.
Crits Deal 12% less damage.
A ranged Gouge
An instant melee attack

Holy gains:
A forced spell crit every 2 min
6% more crit on HL
5% and 10% reduction to clense and concerate (and HW and Exo, but that doesnt affect pvp much)
5% more crit on holy spells
12% chance to take 50% less damage
An instant spell attack
Cast Time reduction on Holy Light
35% int as spellpower
50% mana cost off spells for 10 sec.

The two seem very compareable to me, they just achive the same goals diffrently.

The following is sort of obivous so you can skip to the bottom if you dont want to read my ramblings, the conclusion, ret pallys dps better, and holy pallys heal better, but I dont think I would use the word "tons" to describe the diffrence.

If your looking at PVE, in terms of DPS I would much rather have the ret pally dpsing with Seal of Command Rank 1, he will deal more damage, still provide 6% heal to his group, lose very little mana and be ready to heal.

Where in the same situation, if the holy paladin is going full burn, he doesnt have +20% damage on holy that the ret paladin does, or the other damage boosters, hes not keeping multiple judgements up, and his dps is mana intensive.

--- A though, how much int do you have to have before 20% more holy damage is worse than 35% of int as spellpower for dps? ---

If you look at pvp dps you are talking about burst, not sustainablity. I think the ret paladin wins, melee crits for double, they have 2 stuns for JoComm, and their instant attack hits for more assuming they are not attacking a prot warrior with a sheild.

The holy paladin is tougher with a sheild as you mentioned, and does good damage, but where burst is king, the power to stunlock and assuming a 2h and Vengence up, 16% more white and 20% more holy is hard to top even with a ton of spell damage gear.

Though on the flip side, the holy paladin is better at healing (sort of stating the obivous, but not that far ahead)

If you look at healing, the holy paladin will heals will hit for about the same (assuming the ret pally is healing those under Imp Scantiy aura and the Holy pally is not) and crit more often leading to longenvity. Now this may change in TBC, but at current if Im willing to dark rune/sup mana potion it up, I have no sustainability problems. And so the holy paladin will heal better in pve, but not by a "ton" which I think is good. Remeber the ret pally still has illumination, just doesnt have the forced crit or crit boost, so like 6% or so less free heals.

---Again the question when does 6% better healing on top of gear become worse than 35% int in spellpower for healing?---

Sure like TSA you could argue that the holy paladin will leach off the aura and be healing targets that have the aura. But without the ret pally the aura would not be there.

I guess Im not seeing the versitily loss that going ret takes as opposed to holy. For healing the ret pally gear swaps and can keep up with the holy pally. Just like a holy paladin gear swaps and can keep up with the ret paladins dps.

Im not seeing the huge utility loss, for not taking the upper teir holy talents. (note Im most likely going to go with the tri spec I listed earlier, cus I love repentence, but none of the upper teir holy talents seem all that exciting to me.

 

Artaxz

Thanks for the reply.

As far as leveling goes, if getting good gear/enchants is not a factor, what is the fastest way to level to 60 (then 70). I have stockpiled around 50 weapons/armor focused mainly on warrior-type gear - agi/str/stam with 2-handers providing the dmg. This was mainly with questing, single target dps in mind - full ret.

I have heard that grinding can also be effective with a prot build; ret aura, cons, BoP, holy shield, mithril spike and pulling 4 mobs at once (hopefully undead?). Should I plan to level ret 1-50 then switch to prot and grind undead in plaguelands? And how does reckoning work exactly? Reading the spell, a 2.0 speed weapon or faster would be the best for that build.

Any advice for leveling to 60 fastest would be appreciated, since I am going to be 2-3 weeks behind my guildies come release.

http://plaguelands.com/?page_id=298

 

• Amera

Actually one interesting thing about Imp Sanc aura is that, since healing talents take effect before +heal is applied, but imp sanc works after, on a long enough gear curve, it would actually provide bigger heals.

Rank 11 Holy Light,
Base: 2196-2446 (2321)
3/3 Healing Light: 2459-2739 (2600)
Imp Sanc: 2327-2593 (2460)

Rank 11 Holy Light w/+1000 Healing
Base: 2910-3160 (3035)
3/3 Healing Light: 3173-3453 (3313)
Imp Sanc: 3084-3349 (3216)

By +1000 healing, which is close to what people will have starting out at 70, the difference has shrunk from 140 to 97.

Yeah, that’s what I meant by crazy burst. :P Obviously he’s only showing crits, but it happens pretty frequently.

One nice thing about the class is there are several viable leveling builds. A holy spellpower build with SoR is consistent DPS with low downtime, but it isn’t particularly exciting (imo). A porcupine build like the one you describes works well also, you just have to pull lots of mobs at once, and the mobs need to be hitting you. If you are in a group, it can sometimes be bad if someone else is taking damage – all your abilities are reactive. If you want to start out with a good weapon, grind the GM quickblade. You need a good mix of shield block, reflective items, defensive items, and melee gear. And you will suck against spellcasters.

A single-target Ret build works fine also, you just have to be aware that you suddenly have ways to blow your mana, which paladins really didn’t before. So you have to temper yourself and not spam CS, judgements, etc, with a focus on conserving mana and minimizing downtime - try and use those abilities only when vengeance is up. Suck up the AP hit and grind with wisdom – the downtime you save is worth the extra time to kill mobs. If you are going to be in an area for an hour or so, don’t be afraid to chug some pots like mageblood and mongoose, or some of the new ones. Also, a little secret – switch into your healing gear while drinking. You’ll gain back like 2k extra mana, then use that to heal yourself/buff up before switching back to Ret gear, which will undoubtedly shrink your mana pool again. You basically just used ghost mana to heal yourself.

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• Chicken

That's no longer accurate, with the 2.0 patch all talents should apply after gear, though there are a few examples of this not working properly (A notable one for Paladins being Improved Seal of Righteousness).

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Cathela

If that's the gear you've got, go with Ret. Once you get up to Sanctified Judgement, the mana efficiency becomes really impressive, such that you can grind effectively in mostly warrior gear and pump out the damage while watching your mana bar creep downward ever so slowly.

I tried this for about one level worth of the BC beta (60.5->61.5 approximately) and it worked decently well. But then I discovered that it was simply easier to use a two-hander out of the same spec and let Reckoning blow the mobs down. I'm 42-prot in the beta and I really only pull out a shield for groups of >3 or for soloing elites or things well above my level.

2.0 or slower actually. You get 8 seconds of double melee damage; you just want to make sure you don't wear out the charges before the timer expires. With anything slower than 2.0, your Reckoning procs will average out to 8 seconds of double damage.

If you have to grind, grind undead when possible. Don't neglect First Aid, and use bandages for non-combat healing so you can conserve mana for offensive use. (Grinding efficiently basically comes down to stretching your mana as far as possible between drinks.) Assuming you're a belf, remember to use that racial whenever you can to gain mana. If there's another paladin leveling in your guild, grinding together is usually worthwhile so you can both have might and wisdom up at the same time, and conserve mana by cross-healing.

That's all the paladin-specific stuff I can think of. Other than that, just the usual advice for powerleveling any class.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.