Just curious as to the patience needed to level as holy spec. Obviously the survivability is there, but how grueling is the process of killing mobs? It’s mostly just using seals, judgements, and a whole lot of auto-attack correct?
this is something you don’t do… or any class that’s a healer spec. you go the offspec and respect at lvl 45-50… just make sure to keep +intel and +spirit gear for dungs
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I found it a little slow during the stress test. For a while I was grouped with a warrior and the synchronicity between the two made it super fast for us to kill things together.
Find a friend, level in groups. It’ll go much faster than soloing to 60
Eh, I’ve done it. Its possible. I’ve leveled all the healers as healers in pretty much every xpac. Obviously you will kill stuff much faster in a better spec but you can do it.
I would pick up a couple talents to help you out, maybe consecrate? Holy shock helps but thats later. And have a second set of gear for questing so you can kill stuff a little faster.
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From what an experienced Holy Paladin wrote on these forums a while back, as best as I can remember it:
You build first into Divine Strength, and Improved Seal of Righteousness. Your gear while leveling should still be mostly strength and stamina. He said you’ll kill slower, but not terribly so (Of course, that’s dependent on a person’s own perception.).
Paladin is definitely in my alt queue. And when I level, it will be as Holy.
I leveled as Holy the first time around and it took like a month to hit 60 playing solo. If you’re not going to be grouped or running dungeons play Ret. Once you hit level 40 and you can wear plate start selecting the best quest rewards for healing and then you have the option to respec to Holy at level 48 when you can start running BRD for BiS pre-raid gear or just keep grinding as ret until 60.
If you are wanting to level as holy because you are worried about healing while leveling, paladins heal just fine while leveling with 0 points into holy. You can level as Ret, but keep 3-4 pieces of intelligence gear to put on when healing a dungeon.
If you really want to level as holy for RP, I think you can make it work well by either leveling with others(every warrior and rogue wants a pocket healer), or equipping a shield with shield spike, using Ret aura, and pulling 4 mobs at once while healing yourself.
Why would you want to? I leveled a pally to 60 and I promise you that you can heal dungeons 100% fine as ret spec. I respeced Holy once I was done doing all the quests I wanted to do and then just ran BRD until I hit 60. Just carry a set of int gear in your bags and you’re good to go.
Honestly, any healing/hybrid class can heal without any points into healing for like, what, the first 40 levels? Just have some healing gear in your bags you can throw on.
If you really want to level as holy have a friend or 2 for questing and do dungeons as much as you can tolerate it. That’s my plan.
Great post. I also want to create and lvl a holy Paladin. Good info so far. My question is, what about end game grinding? Will we be able to do it as Holy spec?
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Leveling as a heal spec is ridiculous. Dont do it.
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I feel like putting 10-11 points in holy first isn’t a bad idea regardless of where your other talents go when leveling. 70% pushback reduction on heals is a big deal if you ever need to heal yourself while something is hitting you.
Consecration costs an absurd amount of mana for what it does, but if you find yourself needing to be a tank, you might want it.
On Beta, I put 16 points into ret and then started putting points in holy. It worked a lot better than the other builds I tried.
5/5 Benediction -> 5/5 Deflection -> SoComm -> 5/5 Conviction
Oddly, 5/5 deflection worked better than 2/2 imp. judgement and 3/5 deflection. I also focused on stacking int over str, and I was able to keep pulling non-stop and never have to drink using blessing of wisdom.
I might take pursuit of justice before switching over holy while leveling once we are live though. 
On pservers some paladins swore leveling from your mid 40s onward as a consecrate based holy / prot spec for aoe grinding, but pservers also had wierd respawn time so we dont even know if open world aoe grinding will be as viable on the classic servers.
To grind out rep etc at 60 as holy you want +spell power, ie damage and healing.
Coefficients are:
10% Seal of Righteousness on a 1 hander
12.5% Seal of Righteousnes on a 2 hander
50% Judged Righteousness
43% Excorcism
43% Holy Shock
43% Hammer of Wrath
33% Consecration (spread out over its 8s)
Judged Crusader is +140 spell power without talents…and its not worth talenting fyi.
With Seal of Righteousness the faster the weapon the better with similar weapon dps, and accounting for 1 handers and 2 handers.
Ie with SoR Brain Hacker > Arc Reaper as an example. SoR scales with the weapon, BUT +damage is a static value…so the faster the better the more +damage you have.
Yeah it may be slow, I wouldn’t advise it. You can level up as DPS or Tank and still heal well with 0 points in Holy, just have some +INT gear on hand. Good luck 
Just level as Ret. You don’t really need any of the talents in Holy besides Spiritual Focus for leveling.
Build up to at least Seal of Command and Pursuit of Justice in Ret (these are really helpful for leveling) and then specc into Holy afterward.
I’ll attempt to level 2-handed Holy with Improved SoR. Not sure how it’ll work late-game but I tried it on a pserve up to lv 32 and it felt alright. That said, I’ll be grouping with my Warrior friend whenever possible.
I was planning the same sort of thing and not sure how it will go either. Should be faster than pure holy and somewhat slower than ret.