Paladin Discussion

UPDATE: I have added information on paladin tanking. Added clarification and fixed some errors.

We have several level 70 paladins and many others have or plan to have paladin alts, so I figured it would be helpful for me to give an outline of this class. I would also like to note that I am not trying to tell anyone how they should play a paladin, I am just outlining what can be the more confusing aspects of this class.

The paladin, according to Blizzard, is a defensive hybrid. To me this means that the Paladin in the group should be capable of filling in as offtank/offhealer when needed.
In order to fill those roles though, its important to know what main talents in each of the trees are.

Holy: This is pretty much self explanatory. The talents in the Holy tree enable paladins to be very capable healers. (And if you have the gear, good damage also.) The talents any Holy paladin should have are: Divine Intellect, Spritual Focus, Healing Light, Illumination, and Divine Favor. The effectiveness of the other talents is dependant on whether you have spelldamage gear or not.

Protection: This is the paladin's tanking tree. Paladins generate the most threat of any class capable of tanking if you have Righteous Fury up and have the Improved Righteous Fury maxed. Other talents essential to a Prot paladin are: Redoubt, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Sanctuary, Reckoning, and Holy Shield. Ardent Defender is very helpful if your the main tank. Avenger's Shield is pretty much just good for pulling.

Retribution: This is the paladin's leveling tree. Straight from the mouth of Blizzard. Ret paladins are most effective when geared like warriors. This means they have a hell of a time tanking and with a 5-6k mana pool are not good healers. Important Ret talents are: Benediction, Improved Judgment, Seal of Command, Conviction, Vengeance, Repentance, Sanctified Crusader, Fanaticism, and Crusader Strike.

The important thing to remember is spec the way you enjoy. Remember it is only a game. This is my spec if you want to know: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-talents.xml?r=Eldre'Thalas&n=Hadoredic

Seals: The paladin seal system is generally the most confusing aspect of the class, so I am going to go over each seal and its use in detail.

Seal of Righteousness: This seal generates the most threat and does the most damage if you have spelldamage gear. It always adds damage on each swing.

Seal of Command: This seal is best for Ret spec paladins. It is reliant upon a proc, and it procs more often on a slower weapon. This is why Seal of Command should ALWAYS BE USED WITH A 2 HANDER. Seal of Command works best with a weapon that has a speed of 3.0 or slower, and normally will not proc more than 8 times a minute. If you run Seal of Command with a 1 hander it rarely procs because of the faster speed of a 1 hander. If the seal does not proc it is not doing damage nor is it generating threat, which means you are doing little more than autoattacking.

Seal of Vengeance: This is the new "dps" seal. It is best used with a 1h in a long boss fight in which you need to conserve mana. It has a dot effect that stacks up to 5 times but it can expire quickly. It does not generate much threat so it should not be used for tanking.

Seal of the Crusader: This seal, when active, increase attack power and weapon speed. If judged, it increased holy damage taken by the target. This is a good seal to judge on bosses with high health if you have not judged Light or Wisdom already.

Seal of Justice: Limit's a player's ability to move when judged, also prevents mobs from fleeing.

Seal of Wisdom: When active, can proc and restore mana to the paladin. When judged on a mob, it can proc and restore mana to the entire group.

Seal of Light: Same as Wisdom but affects health.

Tanking: This is probably the second aspect of the class most are confused about. I am going to go over the basic method of how to tank with a paladin. Assuming that your are prot spec, this is how you should handle every pull. Activate Holy Shield, have Seal of Righteousness ready to be judged, and pull the target so the initial aggro is on you. Always keep Holy Shield up as much as possible since it generates alot of threat from being hit. Consecrate works great if the pull has multiple mobs. Paladins do have a taunt in the event they lose aggro but its slightly different from the warrior one. To taunt a mob off a player, target that player and hit Righteous Defense. This ability has a limited range and a 15 second cooldown, but it has the same effect as a Warrior's taunt.

I am going to skip over the Blessings and Auras as they are pretty self explanatory. Maybe this thread will make people less confused about the Paladin class.

Thanks Hado. Many questions I had were answered. Once I hit 70 with my warrior Im gonna try out a pally and this helps =)

Maybe you could tell us what professions are best for pallys?

This is a list of paladin changes for the upcoming 2.2 patch from http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=174505927&sid=1.

Important changes are in bold.

Paladins

* Blessing of Freedom cooldown increased to 25 seconds.
* Blessing of Protection: This spell can no longer be cast on others when stunned. It can only be cast on self (to break the stun) under those circumstances.
* Blessing of Kings, Light, Might, Salvation, Sanctuary and Wisdom increased to 10 minutes.
* Blessing of Sacrifice now has a 1-minute cooldown.
* Consecration will now properly hit large creatures.
* Greater Blessing of Kings, Light, Might, Salvation, Sanctuary and Wisdom increased to 30 minutes.
* Guardian's Favor now increases duration of Blessing of Freedom by 2/4 seconds.
* Eye for an Eye: This ability can now trigger while the Paladin is sitting.
* Hammer of Wrath cast time reduced to .5 seconds, global cooldown reduced to .5 seconds.
* Illumination: Paladins will now correctly gain mana from this ability if they sit down to drink right after a healing crit, and receiving mana from this ability will no longer cause a Paladin who is sitting to stand up.
* Judgement: The Judgement spells will no longer cause triggered effects to go off twice.
* Redoubt: This ability can now trigger while the Paladin is sitting.
* Reckoning: This ability can now trigger while the Paladin is sitting.
* Righteous Defense: In some cases this ability would fail to work properly when the Paladin casting it had just been crowd controlled by a creature. That is now fixed.
* Seal of Righteousness: The tooltip for this ability has been improved. It now displays a different number for one-handed weapons and two-handed weapons, and adjusts to the speed of your current weapon. It displays a single number, rather than a range of numbers for different handedness and speeds.
* Seal of Vengeance: The damage from this ability will now stack properly when two different characters are applying Seal of Vengeance effects to a target.
* Seal of Vengeance duration increased to 15 seconds. In addition, when Seal of Vengeance strikes a target that already has 5 applications you will cause instant Holy damage.

New Patch??

Good stuff Hado! thank u for taking the time to post this info (I know cut and paste not hard), has already been helpful. As Radian is spec ReT atm. Not sure what I will do once 70 comes about 8O)!

Rad