Two quick question's about early leveling for a Paladin...

Should I be spending my talent points on protection or retribution spec for easy leveling (1-30)?
Also should I be focusing swords or two-hands?

Thanks in advance!
Darren (Haneul, DOTAMONSTER)

I always recommend folks put their first 5 in Spiritual Focus (makes all the difference in the world for handling adds early on in leveling), then just start working down the ret tree. You don't really have the points to pull off an effective leveling prot. build until level 35 (reckoning) or 40 (holy shield), so you're better off starting in ret for the level range you're talking about.

Use the biggest, slowest 2H you can find. Have someone help you get verigan's fist at level 20 and you're all set for a while.

That is poor advise with the changed to pushback (there is a max amount of pushback you can have per spell).

Also this guy is a BE, so they cannot get a Verigan's Fist (there is BE version, but it isn't as good as Fist).

Got it. I'll do a bit more research on figuring out a solid spec.

Thanks for the tips guys.

Just to dig this up again, I thought that it's probably worth mentioning that it's often beneficial to BoP (I can't call it HoP ) the mage anyway, especially on untauntable bosses. This lets them cancel iceblock and invis safely, whereas otherwise they'd have to sit in their iceblock and pray that the tank was able to generate enough agro to overtake them before it runs out. Salv is another very viable option here. Just remember not to assume that just because a mage is blocked that he's "sorted".

Apart from BoP, there are other ways to handle such an event. Sacrifice will be enough to prevent a mage from being one-shot by most trash, and with a pre-cast HL, followed by a DF holy shock on yourself (or the mage, depending on how much sac damage you're taking) and then another ~0.4 second HL as soon as the mage gets hit again, hopefully the mage will have survived long enough for a tank to pick it up again. Using LoH on trash is potentially a waste, but it's another option if you're absolutely determined to save the mage.

If the mage doesnt live through BoP, Iceblock, Invis and 2 holy lights then your raid has much bigger issues.


To the lvling question, the old advice pre 3.XX was lvl as prot, but the truth of it now is you can run around 2 shotting everything with a nice slow 2hnder + Judgement. There is no need to go sword n board. I recently RAFed a 3rd paladin with a friend, and with nothing more than instance drops was able to solo everything up to outlands perfectly fine. Albeit vanilla was nerfed pretty hard, but even still, gone are the days when 20-50 consisted of tanking mobs with a shield/wisdom.

Firstly, the forum mods will have a cow about signing posts, so in the future, its a no-no.

You have too much hit, you can afford take off 1.2% hit rating and still be capped. Basically swap out all your hit gems for Str, and get a real Meta, 42 AP made me lol. [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] immediately.

Your spec is fine, so it must come down to group composition and how you are prioritising rotations. If you haven't, i would suggest browsing through the first few pages of the 'Retribution DPS' thread.

The only other thing i can see is your dps time on target is low compared to the other melee dps by a few percent, perhaps some practice at moving while dpsing.



*edited for linking wrong gem*

yeah the meta is wrong I know couldn't get something different at that point.

I always thought I needed around 300 hit rating but ok

I will try out what you said thnx

What's the number of pushbacks you can get per spell? I wasn't aware of that change.

I'd still recommend the 5pts in Spiritual Focus, even so - being able to switch to Conc, get off a few quick FoL's and resume dps has saved my life when levelling/soloing more times than I can count.

Without any modifiers to pushback, it can at most be 1 second. Half the channel if channeled.

just a question should sacred shield be sustain a 100% uptime on your healing target in raids and 5mans?

Sacred Shield is amazingly efficient. Obvioulsy you don't want to refresh it if the tank needs heal NOW, but refreshing it when the tank is not hurt is really advisable.

cool thanks, any good timers that constantly monitor beacon and sacred shield?, i have needtoknow although i have to either be targeting the player or have it as my focus target to constantly show these

You're limited to 2 pushbacks, 0.5 seconds each. (1 second total) With the talent, that's reduced to 0.15 seconds each (0.3 second total).


The downside of the 5 points in SF is that you'll have to wait 5 more levels to get JotW/CS - talents that should really up your DPS and your grind rate. On the flip side, grind rate isn't too big a deal with quests being a significant part of your leveling xp.

Self-healing is also not as important since JoL scales with gear. At low levels, JoL healing cancels out the incoming damage. YMMV.

I shamelessly stole this from this blog, but here you go...

Make your main tank your Focus Target. Put the window somewhere out of the way but visible. Then make this macro:

/cast [target=focus] Sacred Shield
/sw 29
/script Stopwatch_Play()

Now you can click the macro and it'll not only cast Sacred Shield on your target, but also throw up a 29-second timer with a convenient *ding!* sound when the time's up so you know when to re-cast it.

I'd suggest the [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond], as it requires one fewer damage-reducing blue gems. (This is in the first post of the Retribution Paladin Thread, so I'd hope you can find the glyph and gear advice there as well.

Looking at the parse, it seems to me that you're not using Consecrate on every cooldown, maybe due to mana concerns (but you're also not using Divine Plea very often, so that shouldn't be it).

Looking at the "All Bosses" statistics, you have the following damage sources (numbers are hit/crit/"miss" from dodge/parry):

Swing (~3s cooldown): 493/387/64
Judgement (8s cooldown): 269+29/124+63/0
Crusader Strike (6s cooldown): 164/124/23
Divine Storm (10s cooldown): 126/98/19
Consecrate (1s ticks): 973/0/6

Based on Judgement (assuming the most consistent source of damage), you've got about 485 * 8s of combat = 3880 seconds. Your Crusader Strike numbers seem quite low -- you did fewer Crusader Strikes than Judgements, even though CS has a shorter cooldown. You did 243 Divine Storms, which is not totally unreasonable if it's third in your priority list. You only had 973 ticks of Consecrate, which means it was up at most 1/4 of the time. If you think of Consecrate as a 430dps ability, you only got about 110dps out of it.

A couple other notes:
1) You have around 3% parries, which based on your ~3-4% dodge rate, means you have around 10 expertise and are standing in front of the boss around 25% of the time. Try to stay behind the bosses more, and if you can get some cheap expertise somewhere, it's probably worth it.
2) If you ever felt like you were running low on mana and couldn't use an ability, you used Divine Plea 11 times in the course of those fights. You probably had at least 50 occasions where you could, so you missed out on about 80k mana.
3) Make sure you're hitting your cooldowns in FCFS priority; from the Ret thread, you probably should prefer abilities if you can hit either in the following order: Judgement > Hammer of Wrath > CS > Consecration > DS > Exorcism > Holy Wrath. In AoE situations, (Noth, Gluth, Gothik) Consecrate and DS should move up in priority. Personally, I'd use Divine Plea if available before hitting the Exorcism button at any point > 15 seconds into the fight.
4) It looks like you're using a Wings+Loatheb's Shadow macro (27 uses of each), and hitting it early and often. (27 uses in ~64 minutes of fights.) This is good, you might be able to squeeze in 1-2 more uses, but it looks like your hitting this button fairly well. Excellent would be about 6-8 more uses. (Expect to see ciel(minutes/2) uses for each fight, approx, so around 34-36 uses in 64 minutes of multiple boss fights.)

Armory is down, and I'm not gonna bother with "rate my gear" anyway.

As a Disc priest my Prot pally friend has been saying that he can't block/parry/dodge when being attacked while shielded (PW:S) and thus gets no returns from Blessing of Sanctuary.

The only information I have been able to find states that Blessing of Sanctuary still procs when a shield is on,(e.g. Can block/parry/dodge) but the source is less than stellar.

So does Blessing of Sanctuary work while shielded? What are the major drawbacks of being shielded (DA/PW:S) in a normal 25 man raid setting?

You can still dodge, parry and block while shielded. The absorb component only absorbs damage that gets through (ie a partial block). Thus a Power Word: Shield, or Sacred Shield, have no effect on mana gains from Blessing of Sanctuary. It will obviously effect Spiritual Attunement though - as damage absorbed means damage that won't be healed and thus net a return from SA.

Barring PBAoE interrupts, knockbacks or cast-slowing auras (like Heigan's), should Holy Paladins be in melee range? I generally tend to say 'yes' because you can proc SoW when you autoattack after refreshing Judgement, Beacon or SS which can net you a fair amount of mana, but some people think it's a bad idea, since you'll eat PBAoE effects and be a burden on raid healers. Thoughts?

Maybe.

Sarth+3D, our Sarth tank healer is swinging at the drake -- it also means that he doesn't have to move for 50% of the waves.

Heigan - Go sit with the ranged and skip out on the slow-dancing.

It depends on the encounter - if it's safe and you might be able to get some swings in, go ahead and do it. If you're adding extra risk to the melee or yourself, find a safe spot. Kel'Thuzzad or Sapphiron, for example, being near the rest of the melee increases your and their risk due to spell effects targeted on one player affecting all melee. Maexxna doesn't do anything like that, so you might as well whack at her after the raid is healed and before the spiders come out.

For progression fights you haven't seen before, I'd tend to stand back and watch how much damage the melee take and how much they need to move. If they're mostly just swinging away, then go ahead and stand with them the next time. If they're getting pounded and dying, then keep standing back.

As a protection pally that's just starting out, would it be better to get some pre-Wrath trinkets, as opposed to the ones I have now? Everyone I run with doesn't like having a paladin having 19k health and tanking, so any help is appreciated. (And I know my spec's odd, I'm still learning about the particulars.)

The Prot thread in this forums has a good starter guide at the end of the post, in the form of a list.

You should put a little more effort into gems/enchants/crafted gear before tanking, 19k health is hard to heal.