This is the first part of a multi-part series on paladins. This may have been obvious, but this is for DUMMIES so I’m writing this on a level that Liyhe and Dozzer can understand. The rest of you, bear with me.
I’ve joked about tips for levelling paladins before, but this time I’m going to get down to details. Extreme details.
Queue intro to paladins:
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Paladins are one of the 2 classes in World of Warcraft capable of fulfilling all 3 roles of tank, healer, and dps. The other three-in-one class, druids, rely on shapeshifting to different forms to perform different roles. For paladins, the only difference in roles is attitude.
A protection or retribution-specced paladin, for example, can toss out some beefy Holy Lights and have some massive overhealing. Granted, he cannot keep that up for very long but he can feel cool about doing it. Likewise a ret or holy paladin can slap on a shield or just freaking BUBBLE and becomes INVINCIBLE like a prot pally but without the prot part.
This guide will focus primarily on levelling, but will include PvP and PvE tips along the way. And once I hit 80 I’ll probably right a level 80 guide as well. For now, my paladin is 74 and I won’t even try to write a guide for something I have not experienced yet.
Retribution Paladins: Levels 1 to 10
Level 1
Upon finishing your cutscene and appearing on Sunstrider Isle (because you are of course on the Horde) you appear with these abilities:
Holy Light: Rank 1
Seal of Righteousness
Auto-Attack
Also available from your trainer as soon as you collect 10 copper is:
Devotion Aura
As you continue on your journey of paladin-ing, you will find that the core mechanics of the class revolve around auras, seals, blessings, and judgements. For now, you have an aura and a seal.
Auras are always on (unless you’re dead). They give a constant beneficial effect to every party or raid member (including you) as long as they are within 40 yards of you. You can switch auras at any time (if you’re alive) at the cost of a GCD. Your beginning aura, Devotion Aura, gives additional armor, meaning you take less physical damage and you live longer to put out more awesomely righteous damage. Speaking of righteous..
Seals are 30 minute self-buffs that give you a passive chance to do something. And that was almost as vague as that other thing… No seriously. Seal of Righteousness causes each of your melee attacks to cause additional holy damage. This scales slightly with weapon speed, so you’ll find that a great big stick will hit harder than a little stick. Paladins like big sticks. Remember always the paladin motto, given to us by the great Tirion Fordring (yes he’s a stinking human but he saved Eitrigg so he can’t be all bad)
Yell really loud and carry a big stick!
The essence of paladin-ing right there.
For your choice of stick, I personally recommend the Reforged Truesilver Champion. It is slightly faster than the Bloodied Arcanite Reaper, but has the same average weapon dps. And it has more strength. As we’ll discuss in a minute, Strength is our most important stat. And Honor. Strength and Honor!
Because these Bind-to-Account weapon options are so overpowered, consider that a slightly faster nuclear missile will be more effective than the slightly slower but slightly bigger nuke. If, say once you get to level 10-ish, it takes you 2.5 weapon swings to kill a mob. Well, we don’t get partial weapon swings so you actually have to hit it 3 times. Have a slower weapon that can kill it in 2.2 swings will not help.
In later levels, once you have large amounts of strength on your gear already and you have actual instant attacks, then you may consider taking advantage of the slower weapon speed. That is up to you. I’m still using my sword of awesomeness at level 74.
Also, for your large stick, you should seriously consider making it into a large glowing stick. Enchant it. The absolute best option pre-60 is Crusader. You have no idea how good 100 strength proc is at level 3. You can look at mobs and they die.
But I’m getting off track… we’re still level 1.
Aura – Devotion. Your only choice right now.
Seal – Righteousness. Your only choice right now.
Heal Spell – Holy Light. It takes a while to cast. But it’s worth it. Before level 10, this is basically a guaranteed full-heal. Because it takes so long, and because of pushbacks from mobs, you may want to start casting this at around 40-50% health to be sure it goes off. There is nothing more frustrating than dying with .1 seconds left on your Holy Light. Start it early. Especially if you have more than 1 mob beating on you.
Rotation – Are you kidding me? A ret paladin.. with a rotation? Hahahahaha. Ok, here you go, your level 1 rotation:
Auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, repeat
And it’s going to stay like this for awhile.
A note on starting zone nerfs: Your health and mana regeneration is so ridiculous before level 20 it’s not even funny. So even if you spam Holy Lights for some reason, you’ll be at full mana within 5 seconds (the 5-second-rule). But by the time you finish casting it, you’ll be at full health anyway if you’re out of combat. It’s just stupid easy.
Level 2
Well that didn’t take long did it? And now you get… nothing yet. Wait until Level 4.
Level 4
This level will entirely mix up your rotation. Haha. I liked that joke too.
At level 1, you got your aura and your seal. At this level, you get your first blessing and judgement.
Blessing of Might
Judgement of Light
Blessing of Might is a 10 minute buff that you can cast on any friendly target, and you should always keep this up on yourself. You will get other blessings down the road, and you should still train them in order to help out your tanks and healers. There is no excuse for not training Wisdom.
Blessing of Might increases your attack power. This means you kill stuff faster. Any questions?
Judgement of Light is a 10-second cooldown attack. You should try and fit this into your auto-attack, auto-attack rotation every 10 seconds, preferably right before an auto-attack. It has a 10 yard range, so you can use this to pull a little bit. Good for while you’re running at your target. Saving time = killing stuff faster = more loots.
Now, for what Judgement of Light actually does. First, it applies a debuff called (drumroll please) Judgement of Light. Whoa. Didn’t see that coming. This debuff gives anyone that attacks that target a chance to heal themselves for 2% of their maximum health. Now, this has a small (I believe about 4-6 seconds) internal timer, so hitting it 3 times a second (rogues) doesn’t help. This internal cooldown is for each person, so everybody can benefit. At later levels, you will get other judgements, but that’s for later. Set your mind on the here and now, young padawan.
Judgements also apply an effect based on your current seal. You must have a seal active in order to use a judgement, which is why it is vital you never let your seal fall off. It’s a freaking 30 minute duration, you have no excuse. Hitting a button every 29 minutes is NOT hard. The judgement effect from Seal of Righteousness is: MOAR DAMAGE! It is holy damage, and is therefore not mitigated by armor and is virtually immune to resistances.
Judgement of Light, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Judgement of Light, repeat
Level 6
Divine Protection
Holy Light: Rank 2
Divine Protection. This isn’t quite the BUBBLE we all hear about, but it’s close. It reduces all damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds. It only has a 3 minute cooldown. It also gives you a debuff that says you can’t use it for 2 minutes. Sense it any doesn’t make right now, but just wait. That’s later.
I am the kind of person that likes to save their cooldowns. You know, because what if you use them early and then you need them right after they wear off… which means I almost never actually use them. Dying with a defensive cooldown unused is a very sad thing.
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It makes me cry.
It makes kittens die.
I don’t know why.
A good thing to note, is because this does not make you immune, don’t wait to use it at 3% health. Because all that does is effectively give you 3% more life. Fail. Use it early, around 40-50% health if you’re facing more than one mob (which should be the only time you drop that low). Very useful tool, if you use it. Duh.
And Holy Light got beefier. Whee.
Level 8
A stun. A 3 second stun on a 1 minute cooldown. And you can remove poisons and diseases. At level 8. Have I mentioned already that paladins are overpowered? Yeah.
Stuns have several important uses. Just think what you can do in 3 seconds?
Not take damage.
Run away (lol yeah right)
Heal.
Hmm, a 3 second stun… we have a 2 second heal… hmm….
Stuns also interrupt spellcasting, best used for when a mob has a very annoying heal or long-lasting debuff. Don’t just use it on a damage spell unless that damage spell will kill you. This reminds me… we have a racial. Because you are of course on the Horde, you are of course a Blood Elf, and so of course you have Arcane Torrent. Use it. It stops enemy heals. You eat their mana. Om nom nom.
Level 10
Brings a whole lot of righteous goodness, but I’ll have to save that for another day. I hope to release Parts 2 and 3 next week, at that pace I can (hopefully) get to the 70-80 guide before Orange doesn’t need it anymore ๐
-Del
dummies…hahahaha ๐
โค
โค
Once you reach Crusader strike, you want a harder hitting slower weapon, since most of your damage will be coming from instants. This is even more important once you pick up Divine Storm. For low levels, meh, I guess the sword is better, but I prefer the giant axe with the skull on it. =p
Like I said, once you get instant attacks the slower speed works in your favor, but until then the same-dps-but-higher-strength-sword will win out.
And I think it looks cool.