I had been leveling up a Holy Paladin originally with a friend playing a Prot Warrior alt but he took off from Classic until/unless BC comes out, I’m excited for that too but I’m still enjoying Vanilla, hadn’t been playing it as long, so I kept my account and started enjoying soloing more which has been pretty fun/challenging relative to when I last played live.
The guides I read all say leveling in Ret, aside from losing the ranged Holy Shock, is basically all win over Holy but I was curious, what actually is the damage difference of say a Level 35 or 40 Paladin using a good green or blue 2 handed weapon in Ret vs Holy?
Is Ret doing 25% more damage? 50%? 100%?
I’ve got the gold to respec twice so I can make the change and switch back in the mid-late 50’s but it would set me back a bit so I’m curious what the practical difference really is.
Tbh it really doesn’t matter.
Both are very slow.
I think holy edges out because you can heal, and heal in dungeons if you can find them.
But like I said both are pretty slow.
It’s fairly substantial. You’re gonna lose 5% melee crit, 30% spell reflect on spell Frits made against you, 15% bonus to damage after you crit, and your two handed will do 6% less overall damage, which becomes more noticeable as you level.
That being said, I actually prefer to go down to consecration and then into prot so that I can AOE kill. That has seemed fastest to me.
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Personally, when I leveled my pally, I went with a deep holy build: 31/x/x, but that was during phase 2, and I was leveling with a warlock friend.
The differences are going to come from the talents you have access to:
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-calc/paladin/--50230350022305
So, for example, if you have 5/5 Blessing of Might, that increases the melee attack power bonus of BoM by 20%.
3/3 Improved Seal of the Crusader increases the melee attack power bonus of SotC and the holy damage increase of Judgement of the Crusader by 20%.
5/5 Conviction increases your chance to get a crit with melee weapons by 5%
2/2 Improved Ret Aura increases damage done by Ret Aura by 50%
3/3 Two-Handed Weapon specialization increases damage done with a 2 handed melee weapon by 6%
5/5 Vengeance gives a 15% bonus to physical and holy damage you deal for 8 seconds after dealing a critical strike from a weapon swing, spell or ability.
That’s just an example that would still leave you with 21 points to put elsewhere, such as in the Holy tree, if you wanted to heal raids.
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I think Frosto makes one of the most important points. Paladin is one of the only classes that can spec 30 points into one of their other two trees and still manage to heal raids. Illumination is really the most important talent in holy as far as raid healing goes.
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If you wana level as holy prot with consecration to aoe mobs can be effective if you focus on undead mobs so you can use exorcism
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Been leveling a paladin for TBC, and level 28 now been sword and board holy with +healing gear and really isn’t bad, but I did pick up the judgement talents and seal of command over seal of righteousness. I found that even though command is a 2 handed thing it seems to perform overall better at this level. Although I am considering going more Ret and getting a 2 hand weapon for the foreseeable future due to how getting AH healing greens has slowed a lot Over the last few weeks.
I think that Ret will preform overall the best, but am no expert, this is only my experience so far.
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Thanks for all the useful feedback on this.
As I get into the 50’s I’ll defin. respec, I enjoy playing Holy and at higher levels dungeons, raids, and PvP are the high end I get that, but right now I’m having a lot of fun solo (questing) and looking at that list of things I’m losing… 5% melee crit, the 15% after a crit, the 6% flat, the 20% off Blessing of Might, Seal of Command IIRC is more damage than Seal of Righteousness… I think it’ll probably be worth it for the next 25 levels at least. I don’t know what that all comes out to but it’s got to be at least 30% more which will add up.
I should have clarified that earlier, I’m enjoying solo questing so the AoE grinding would be faster but I’m considering more single target. Although either way I’ll run down Holy to at least Consecration.
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