Paladin spec questions (You knew it was inevitable)

[Lantien]

After playing the Warrior for a while, I decided I want to finally create an alt to play with.  Originally I was thinking about a rogue, before realizing that there are too many rogues in the guild relative to other classes. As a result, I wanted to play a class that was underrepresented in our guild.  That plus arguing with some friends about how worthless Paladins are, led me to decide to mess around with leveling a Paladin for a while.

While I'm familiar with how they play (and how they should play), I'm unfamiliar with what talents are good, and what aren't.  Here are some constraints:

1) Since my warrior is my main, I really am not interested in tanking.  If I wanted to be a tanker, I'd pull out the warrior.

2) What I am interested is in some sort of high healing paladin, preferably built for WSG matches; someone who cleans and heals enough to just keep teammates alive long enough to kill their opponents.

3) However, from levels 1-59, I would be more interested in a fairly stock hitterdin.  Since I have no interest in tanking (or really offtanking), I would be building the Paladin towards 2H weapon styles.

I have some general ideas to work with, but could always use some more information.

[WindupAtheist]

Played a pally up to 39 and quit.  They really do suck that hard.  All you're going to do is cast a blessing, cast a seal, then stand there autoattacking.

[Valmorian]

I have a 60 Paladin on Doomhammer, and here's what I can recommend:

1) If you are going 2h, then you'll probably want to go with a Retribution build.

2) Make sure you put at least 5 talent points into Holy tree to get Spiritual Focus.

Are you going for PvE focus or PvP?  If you're going for PvE, then you might want to consider more talents into Holy, since healing and cleansing will be more useful to you.

If you are going for PvP, I suggest the following:
1) A SLOW 2hander with large damage.
2) Use Seal of Command rank 1 (no reason to use the higher ranks as they deal no more damage)
3) Spec high enough into the Protection tree to get Reckoning.

These three things will let you do this:
Make sure your autoattack is off, run into combat and start healing people, ignore the rogues/etc who are attacking you.  Every time you get a crit scored against you, you are loading 1 free reckoning attack.  Once you have had 4 crits scored against you, Activate Seal of Command (rank 1 again) and find a cloth wearer.  Get close and start your autoattack:  You'll instantly unload 5 hits against him, which if you are lucky with crits can 1shot them.

That's the MOST excitement you'll expect from a Paladin though.  They really are quite dull, it's all auto attack, bless, seal, just like WindUpAtheist said above.

[Lantien]

Valmorian, right now I've seen two suggestions for how to build a Paladin with respect to making a "hitterdin":

1) Build retribution to 31, focusing on 2H weapon spec, Bendiction, Seal of Command, Vengeance, Retribution Aura, Consecration, Conviction, Blessing of Kings.  Put points in Holy for Spiritual Focus, Illumination, Divine Favor; dump the rest into Protection's Armor boosting skills.

So basically, something like this: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladins/talents.html?050050000000000500500000000000550351050151

2) Build Holy with Spritual Focus, then Shift to Retribution and build to Seal of Command.  Then go to Protection and go all the way to repentance, grabbing Reckoning, and most of the blessing buffs to fill gaps.

Again, the build would look something like this: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladins/talents.html?050000000000000502515005502010550041000000

I'm wondering what the big deal is going on about Repentance, if savvier players are using it in PVP as a sort of goofy casting interrupt versus spellcasters of note, like Priests, Shamans, Warlocks. Since the time out of combat is so short, it's not a good true CC. 

To be honest, I'm a bit more fond of style 2 atm. With it I can do pretty solid damage (with reckoning buildup) and have a quasi-Counterspell. The main downside is a lack of  Crit boosting and general overall damage compared to retribution.

The main issue is when I do hit 60, I was planning on totally rebuilding the Paladin's focus, instead working more towards a traditional healing role, using holy damage and high mana as the main crux of my "damage" instead. While this would lower my burstable damage significantly, I think the gains to healing and mana pool would be enough to move me more into a healer with damage mitigation styled player for WSG.  I'm curious to basically play a style totally different than the warrior; time will tell how bored I'll get, I played a White Mage in FFXI, so I'm no stranger to watching lifebars.

How THAT build would develop would be to go heavy into holy, picking up most of the basic skills, focusing on things that improve healing/mana, or deal/increase holy damage. In this case, Spiritual Focus, Illumination, Divine Favor, Divine Wisdom, Sanctity Aura, all the way to Holy Shock.  Then go into the retribution pull and pick up Benediction, Improved Seal of the Crusader, SoComm, and Vengeance, and dump the remaining points into 2H weapon spec.

That build would look like this: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladins/talents.html?050055150051501000000000000000525051000000

The 2H vs Vengeance would depend on how much crit gear a Paladin could sanely get; if the odds were low, trend more towards 2H weapon spec.

Additional Notes: While I do want this build to be a priest in plate sort of style, I'm also going to be building skill in engineering for added PVP punch. Things like Gnomish Shrink Ray, Gnomish Death Ray, Disorient Effect with Explosives, etc.

[Calantus]

The second one you linked is a level 60 PVP build, since you are just looking to level up with your first build I wouldn't bother with that. The first build is ok, but you should tweak it a little.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladins/talents.html?050000000000000000000000000000550551003151

The first 5 points you want to spend are the 5 in the Holy tree. There is no justification to ever put a single point into any other talent until Spiritual Focus is maxed when making a leveling build. Once that is done you make the retribution tree as shown, it doesn't matter much which order you put the points in so long as you get Seal of Command as soon as it is available and fill out the ret tree. After that it doesn't matter much, people agonize over the last few points a lot, but on a leveling build you intend to change it is largely meaningless. Personally I'd go like this:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladins/talents.html?053000000000000502500000000000550551003151

Once you are 60 and want your holy spec there's a few ways you can go, and most of them are just up to personal preference. I haven't really explored holy builds so I wont comment on that.

[Morfiend]

Played a pally up to 39 and quit.  They really do suck that hard.  All you're going to do is cast a blessing, cast a seal, then stand there autoattacking.

Paladins might not be the most wexciting class to play, but played right, and specced for your play style, you can do insane in PVE. My friend who just leveled up a paladin to 60 was soloing 2 elites 2 levels below him. Thats impressive.

[Zetor]

Yeah, you can solo elites with pallies, but it'll take 10+ mins per mob. :p

My 60 warlock can solo level 61 mobs with ease as long as they are fearable, seducable or banishable, in under 2 minutes, with almost no downtime.


-- Z.

[Dren]

Played a pally up to 39 and quit.  They really do suck that hard.  All you're going to do is cast a blessing, cast a seal, then stand there autoattacking.

Paladins might not be the most wexciting class to play, but played right, and specced for your play style, you can do insane in PVE. My friend who just leveled up a paladin to 60 was soloing 2 elites 2 levels below him. Thats impressive.

Damn I need more information on his build.  I'd love to be able to do this, but haven't been able to thus far.  Please share. (I currently run like a scared puppy from anything higher than 54 elite.)

As Zetor said, it probably would take for EVER to kill them though.

[Morfiend]

Im not sure of his spec, I will ask him next time I see him in game. I do know it had some thing to do with crit heals.

[Valmorian]

Im not sure of his spec, I will ask him next time I see him in game. I do know it had some thing to do with crit heals.

There are a couple of abilities in the Holy tree that may be the trick, one being an automatic critical heal on demand every (10?) so many minutes, the second is a talent that makes critical heals cost effectively 0 mana.  A critical heal for 0 mana is VERY nice.

[Dren]

I do remember those, but I thought they were pretty far into the holy tree and didn't think it was worth it.  In the case of the 58 elites, my thought was that they were always smacking me for so much damage, I couldn't keep up with the heals.  I was healing so much I wasn't damaging them so I never made any headway.  Then, I'd run out of mana if I didn't always use my mana regen tools, which in turn reduced my DPS.  That does sound seriously like a 15 minute fight for most likely no gain (since exp is moot at lvl 60.)

*shrug*

[Valmorian]

I do remember those, but I thought they were pretty far into the holy tree and didn't think it was worth it.

Nope, pretty much the first three levels.  You'd need about 16 points or so to get them.

  In the case of the 58 elites, my thought was that they were always smacking me for so much damage, I couldn't keep up with the heals.  I was healing so much I wasn't damaging them so I never made any headway.  Then, I'd run out of mana if I didn't always use my mana regen tools, which in turn reduced my DPS.  That does sound seriously like a 15 minute fight for most likely no gain (since exp is moot at lvl 60.)

*shrug*

No point in fighting 58 elites for cash, you'd be better off killing 3-5 non-elites.  You'll end up ahead time/reward wise.

[Phred]

I do remember those, but I thought they were pretty far into the holy tree and didn't think it was worth it. 

11 pts into holy gets you both talents. Well worth it imo.

[Dren]

I switched totally from holy to defense this weekend to try it out.  I seem to hold onto hps much longer and can solo very well now. 

I did take on a 56 elite and won, but it seriously took 5 minutes and I ended up with absolutely nothing at the end of the fight.  I was better off hitting the non-elites and get cash+cloth.

My build is basically 22def/29ret.