Does anyone have a suggested talent tree for leveling up a Paladin through Classic? What should I go for in order to be as efficient as possible and deal the most damage to mobs?
And once I hit 60, if I want to raid I need to switch to Holy, correct? If so, what talent tree would people suggest for that? And is there a weapon I should be going for? My plan is to get Judgment Armor, but I have no idea what weapon I should get for a Holy Paladin. Thanks.
Retribution for leveling. Nothing requires you to go Holy once you hit 60. If youāre not in a cutting edge progression guild most people will take you with w/e spec you prefer. It is possible to make a paladin work outside of just being a healer for raids. If you do want to heal at 60 more power to you.
Your heal talent tree will actually out dps your dps talent tree. With the shockadin build.
Retribution is your best bet for leveling. You want a slow two handed weapon to maximize your damage. And of course, youāre gonna be taking damage, so keep up on your armor. Thereās a number of paladin leveling guides out there and theyāll all mention these things.
As for raiding, many raids tend to find Holy to be most optimal, but that is not saying that there isnāt room for non-healers. At higher levels, holy will give you quite a bit of performance, but you will want gear with spellpower to maximize that effectiveness.
Check out this build for Retribution: The Spelladin - new Retribution meta for Classic
Ret, not just for damage output, but for one talent and one talent only:
Pursuit of Justice
Walking speed buffs are KING before you get a mount.
go shockadin for memes
Go ret for level 1-60, go Holy for raiding, once you have AQ 40 gear and weapons, go Reckoning to one shot anyone that attacks you.
Shockadin, do it, no b4lls
Pure unsupported assumption on your part. Lets look to the past if weāre going to use anything to try and predict the future behavior. And the past says youāre wrong.
Every time I see someone talk like this, all I think is theyāre trying to groom the community to their liking by attempting to make this seem like it is, was, or will be a common thing so they can hopefully get the community acceptance they want.
Hereās the thing. āCutting egdeā in vanilla meant āGuild that even kills things in raids at all.ā
There were plenty of guilds that stepped into raids and either killed 1-2 bosses or none at all. The ācutting edgeā guilds were the 1-2 guilds on a server that even ever managed to clear a raid.
Ergo, ācutting edgeā actually means āRemotely competent guild that will provide the raid experience of actually winning the gameā which is what people expect at baseline when they start daydreaming about raiding.
Possible and accepted are two completely separate things. People donāt typically like making things intentionally harder than need be by hamstringing potential before skill ever enters into the equation.
Leveling you start out as Retribution. If they donāt remove the /sit macro to proc Reckoning, then you can switch to Prot once you can get Reckoning. As you approach 60, the fastest is actually an AoE build that uses Holy Shield + Consecration.
At 60 the main thing you need to heal is 20 points in Holy, primarily to get Healing Light and Illumination. With that, itās possible to heal even into raids if you want.
If you want to go pure healer you can either do a Shockadin build to have a bit more damage out in the world, or 30/21/0 to get Blessing of Sanctuary.
As a healer the main reason to go deeper into holy is the +5% spell crit from Holy Power. Holy Shock itself is very situational as a healing spell because itās very inefficient on mana.
In cutting edge guilds youāll generally be forced into healing, but in more casual raid guilds they might be willing to take you a non-healing spec.
Your mileage may vary obviously. Cutting edge to me is guilds that are planning to clear in week 1 or 2. In those cases you will absolutely need to have people in the best specs for their respective classes due to a gear deficit. However, guilds that are planning a month or two out from launch will probably be more lenient on what specs you can be. I know from my vanilla experience my guild was fine me as a tank paladin for raiding content. Vanilla mechanically speaking is not very challenging, and many raid bosses did not have an overabundance of raid mechanics. Hardest part typically was getting the gear needed, and the attunements required to enter.
Also given the fact that we have far more information available today than we did back then I think it is perfectly fair to assume that people will figure out ways to make it work regardless. One of the things that will be interesting to see is how long it will take players to drop the BFA mentality of only dps mattering and the go go go mentality. Vanilla WoW is a completely different game in that regard. All classes are very unique in what they do and how they do it, and provide some type of utility that is needed for the raids. No one needs to feel shoehorned in a certain spec because the meta build is āxā for their class.
Psevers are a good indicator of this because we know from a Blue post that they are overtuned for both dungeon and raid boss damage. Yet even on those servers you see ret paladins, and tank paladins rolling around in raid gear.
At the end of the day it will come down to finding the right guild and I suspect there will be quite a few out there that will be more than willing to work with fellow players and let them play the spec they enjoy.
I have a hard time linking on the phone, so I canāt do a talent link.
Best for leveling Ret is 20/0/31, taking the Ret talents first.
At 40 you can switch to tankadin, protection, and AOE grind as 20/31/0 and easily tank as well.
Shockadin, which is weak until spell damage gear, is 31/20/0.
Ret is usually recommended because itās easier to gear for while leveling, as you just equip warrior gear, and there arenāt very many good āBuilt for Paladinā armor you can use and Paladins are locked out of staves.
These are the talents Iām thinking of. Am I on the right track, or is there something I need to change?
The goals would be:
A) Being able to successfully raid heal.
B) Being able to PVP.
C) Being able to PVE in dungeons.
Divine Strength - Rank 5/5
Spiritual Focus - Rank 5/5
Healing Light - Rank 3/3
Consecration - Rank 1/1
Improved Lay on Hands - Rank 2/2
Illumination - Rank 5/5
Improved Blessing of Might - Rank 5/5
Improved Judgement - Rank 2/2
Improved Seal of the Crusader - Rank 3/3
Conviction - Rank 5/5
Seal of Command - Rank 1/1
Pursuit of Justice - Rank 2/2
Eye for an Eye - Rank 2/2
Improved Retribution Aura - Rank 2/2
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization - Rank 3/3
Vengeance - Rank 5/5
Drop a point from here and grab Divine Favor. Itās a free max rank heal every 2 minutes since you get 100% mana back on Crit.
Great advice. Thanks for the tip. So with that change, would this build be able to successfully raid heal as well as DPS in the world and PVP?
Heres what im doing ā my theory is I want to be able to heal grouped content, and kill single target mobs quickly while leveling. Iāll do this to 51, then Iāll respec to 20/31/0 deep Prot to AoE farm and heal dungeons well as I approach 60.
So First 3 points im going Devo aura (thats right ā good value per point while low level), then im going Holy for 5/5 Divine Intellect by level 17 ā when I start healing VC.
Then back to Prot tree ā finish 5/5 imp Devo for physical mitigation (you can be the devo aura for x2 pala groups), then grab Precision hit and Imp BoF/BoP (excellent while soloing and groups), grab kings.
Next you want to be able to heal well by level 33 (SM). So go back to Holy tree and take 5/5 Imp SoR (excellent synergy with precision for both JoR and SoR), Consecration, and Healing Light (3/3 is an outstanding leveling healer). Now youre mid 30s, you have great single target grinding, you offer a great buff your allies will love you for, and you heal really damn well for the 40+ push
From this point Iād just go ret tree till the 51 respec ā grab useful things like Imp Judgement, Deflection (parry haste OP), pursuit of justice, etc
End result would be 14/11/17 ā This path would make you really strong at the 2 things paladins NEED to do while leveling, and the points are specifically timed for level ranges of content
cheers
Added bonus, with SoR (+precision) builds you have the flexibility to swap between good 1 handers and 2 handers as you get them while you level ā no need to groan about wanting a 2H slow weapon thats highly contested with both warriors and Rats
I leveled holy way back and was never in want for a dungeon group who were around my level. Just be aware soloing as a Hpally is slow but as long as you stay somewhat up on gear, you will not die often.
Absolutely. You get the benefit of mana return on healing crits and better heals which is more or less the crux of what you need to be a dedicated healer.
21 Holy / 30 Ret was a pretty common build in Vanilla because of its flexibility. All you needed to do was gear swap to do what you needed to do.
Letās look back ay history.
Oh history says that paladins didnāt even heal because they were too busy buffing 40 people with 5 minute buffs.
When the longer buffs came in, some of the most cutting edge guilds had hybrids in dps specs, even ret.