Greetings Paladins,
I am strongly considering playing a Paladin when classic drops. Currently I am playing a Paladin on a private server (I am aware that private servers aren't 100% accurate) to try and get a feel for the class. I played one for a little bit back in Vanilla, but never got him beyond the 30s. So here are some questions for all the Paladins out there!
How do you plan on leveling in Classic? Race choice? Spec? Zones you are excited to get into? Zones you plan on avoiding? Dungeons? Going to take it nice and slow, or are you going to push hard to 60?
Cheers y'all,
Noish
IF( and that is a big IF, but been playing around with the thought) i choose paladin. I wanna go Human, I dislike the weapon animations for Dwarfs. I plan on leveling as Retribution. ( Something like this https://classicdb.ch/?talent#sE0zZxhZVbetocqo ). When mainly buffing myself Blessing of Wisdom through the leveling phase. I plan on doing as many zones with undead and demons as possible, so i get to deal extra dmg on them! Retri should also be good enough to heal dungeons while leveling, if i bring water!
I've been a Paladin since I started playing WoW, but returning to one for Classic is a really hard choice. If you've been spoiled by how better-designed the class was during WotLK, it's extremely hard to go back to 5-minute buffs, severe mana drain, constant seal casting, and in the case of Classic, the loss of Crusader Strike making ret very, very limited in terms of spells. I am not sure I would get much enjoyment out of constantly being OOM and feeling like there's so little dynamic to the class/spec like in later expansions. I feel that if I go Paladin, I will switch to holy at level cap and heal for raids and BGs. Am I wrong in thinking this? Really curious.
I've been struggling with what else I want to play instead, and having played a Shaman on Nost, I've been thinking a Mage this time around for constant access to food, easy transportation, and easy farming + gold making.
One auto-attack at a time.
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Selexin • Noish • ReverendChris • Timberfist • Escalotes • Pagwani • Muhip • Umbra • fendor • Sauva • jaggerroy6 • Sudnep
The Footpad
I've always found more enjoyment out of leveling a Paladin than any other class mainly due to class fantasy and OP potential they have early levels.
First things first pick Human (unless you just really love dwarfs, no shame, they're cool but not as convenient as human). Human starting zone is OP. Elywnn, Westfall, Redridge and Duskwood clumped together is quite nice. Diplomacy is very handy long term, Sword/Mace spec is overpowered and perception is amazing in PvP.
Your first 11 talents are going to go into Holy to get Concencration at 20. You can go either Prot/Ret spec after that. For me personally I enjoy prot leveling until 40ish. I usually always go mace/sword and board a lot of early leveling (1-35ish) and I enjoy tanking dungeons which is a quality of life improvement as everyone needs tanks. There is also a great quest reward 2 hander that is OP as hell if you get it early level 20's. If you snag that thing you can go seal of command spec and enjoy having fun with that.
You can also heal in any spec comfortably until around 40ish...You're really a jack of all trades early levels and its extremely fun.
Level First Aid ASAP. Don't spend downtime wasting mana on healing yourself. First aid is very cheap early levels. Make sure to constantly hound mages for food/water. (There will be a lot of them running around.) So you can drink/eat right after First aid is used if needed.
Level engineering. If you have engi progressed as you level you will have a serious one up on majority of the content. Dynamite will help out tanking/increase DPS in dungeons. Stun grenades can help you get out of a jam or have a one up on enemy players. Usefull trinkets and life saving devices are plentiful with engineering.
Skinning/Mining is a decent secondary gold making profession.
Just some tips I quickly jotted down. If you want to talk seriously about paladins hit me up, it's my bread and butter.
@Caspus Yo mate, i'd very much like to take you up on that offer. I really wanna play a paladin for Classic, but i fear the leveling is gonna be awfully boring and tedius. So i'm currently thinking about going Hunter. :/
Awesome info Caspus! Very helpful. I'm still struggling with my class choice for classic. It is between Paladin, Warlock, or Druid. Leaning towards Druid atm.
Just hit me with any questions you got! I've done it all, Holy, Prot, and Ret. (Ret is my weakest experience wise though). Once you reach around level 15 and start actually having spells to play around with it becomes a lot more than just "Auto-Attacking". Paladins have some of the best survivability in the game and can withstand multiple mobs at once while leveling where as most classes will drop dead. The simple fact of having Holy Light at level 1 puts you at a advantage over others. The moment you log in you can start kite tagging mobs and killing 2 even 3 sometimes 4 defias mobs at once! (Though 4 is pushing it ;) )
@caspus Hello, fellow paladin enthusiast here. I was wondering what your reasoning for going into holy and getting Concencration first is? I have personally never gone this route even though I have levled 4 paladins to 60 on private servers and several others to lvl 30s~. The talents you get in the holy tree just don't seem to be worth it imo. 10% STR is nothing in the early levels because your total STR is so low. Imp SoR is nice but 15% negligible. Concencration is very mana heavy and damage is low, only useful for tanking dungeons or if you are playing together with a friend.
Myself I usually go 5/5 imp Dev aura and 3/3 precision first. You will be using dev aura almost exclusivly while leveling so in the long run you will gain a lot from it, and one of the most frustrating things is Missing your attacks, especially if using a slow 2h weapon. After that I continute in the ret tree.
JUDGEMENT
@Judgement, don't go Divine Strength/Improved SoR, go Divine Intellect/Spiritual Focus. Together, they hugely boost your durability and make you a better healer. Consecration may seem expensive but if you have three of four mobs pounding on you, you get huge value out of it. Go sword and board, throw up Retribution Aura and Blessing of Sanctuary, put a shield spike on and let mobs beat themselves to death while you keep up your health and mana with Seal of Wisdom and Seal of Light.
Here's my early game talents: http://classicdb.ch/?talent#sVxzZVGoIcz
@Timberfist Hey, yes I have played this prot spec in the later levels, but I was talking about the earlier levels, 10-30, at this level you don't have sanc or any kind of gear to support taking 3-4 mobs at the same time.
My point of view is a bit skewed I suppose, since my main goal is always to level as fast as possible. If you want to take it slow and enjoy the full vanilla experience I can see this being a nice all-around spec, but for faster leveling it wont be.
JUDGEMENT
It all falls down to preference but generally you can start doing a lot of AOE pulls. I personally rely heavily on consumes and engineering when I level. Depending on wether I have a friend or not that's doing herablism/alchemy (i almost always will) im always chugging potions. (Defense, Strength, Agility, Fortitude, Troll's Blood, Mana/Health potions). I usually do Egineering/Mining as my profressions and ill have a friend thats a blacksmith. The early blacksmithing gear is useful, the Sharpening stones/Weightstones are very nice. I don't buy any gear except a main hand upgrade and shield depending on how bad mine is.
I have a bank alt immediately with enchanting so I can disenchant items I mail to him asap. I don't waste too much time on the AH, prices are super cheap and not worth the time spent selling/flipping. Better to disenchant and hoard mats asap and slap enchants on any big upgrades that fall in your lap.
I also tank dungeons, a lot. I find its the easiest way to get better gear aswell as there really isn't any "Tank" gear its just dps gear you call tank gear early on. Tanking early dungeons like Deadmines/Wailing Caverns, SFK, BFD, Stockades, etc. with concencration is perhaps the easiest faceroll in all of WoW.
Hound mages for water and food any moment you get. If you find one mage willing to give you a stack of water say TY and go to the next mage next to him and ask him for a stack. I have my water binded and I drink the milisecond I get out of combat. Make that a habit and life will be great.
This is usually what I end up with at level 40's. I spec more for tanking dungeons as I typically play with a lot of people. We usually level by ourselves but do dungeons together frequently so I have to keep up with that. I would say around 45-50 is when you want to actually start playing your end game spec. Thats when i'd respec to holy/ret etc. Prot is a great tree for leveling up to that point but starts to slow down solo a bit (Still faster than holy). In group play it is still great as you can do mass AOE easily and still hop into any dungeon and faceroll it.
Attempting to quote this relevant post:
@Caspus hope you don't mind the random questions, but I've been on the fence about going back to Paladin for classic finally changing it up.
I've actually never played prot in my 12-13 years of WoW. How is it in vanilla for leveling? It's that or ret, and with ret being so limited in form, and me being so familiar with WotLK and TBC version of Paladin, I would maybe find the spec super lackluster and disappointing. How does prot compare in terms of speed, efficiency, etc.?
If I played Paladin I think I'd consider going Holy so I can easily be included in most raids and fit into BGs pretty well without needing to respec. How enjoyable is Holy? Is it still basically one button like it was in TBC?
I enjoy prot leveling purely on the simple fact that that I can survive most things. It's not the fastest way to level, its a decent steady pace as you do a lot of reflect and AOE damage so you can pull more than one mob at once where as ret is usually 1-2 mobs at most generally at the same time. For example if you're prot specced and decently geared by level 53-55 you can pull 5-10 mobs at once in Western Plague lands at once and AOE grind there like a mage would.
Early level 1-Mid 30's I highly recommend prot leveling. Yes you can do more damage as ret but you will take more damage and if you don't plan properly you will be blowing CD's and wasting mana left and right. You will have more out of combat time if not played properly. Prot is decent damage early on and your mitigation is substantially higher thus you do not worry too much about overpulling.
I played a paladin in vanilla, I can assure you I won’t be making the same mistake again.
To add detail to this, I had engineering, played Ret, did a lot of PvP and a moderate amount of PvE but it’s just freaking boring. Yeah we got hammer later on which helped quite a bit but just overall the fighting was based on auto attacks and managing cooldowns effectively to best utilise the toolkit.
In a nutshell:
It’s boring, and you will be respeccing to heal in a cloth robe in MC constantly and then grinding bandages and engineering mats just to PvP.
All about perspective. Paladin is a lore heavy class and if you enjoy the class fantasy of it you will have a lot of fun. Majority of vanilla is very simple rotations and can get really boring. Just find what's right for you.
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Hello everyone!
I haven’t been playing a paladin in vanilla, my main was a warrior. Now i pretty sure that when the Classic come out I choose a paladin. I really like the idea of being supreme support and be able to help each class somehow or other. Knowing nothing about this class i started to get into the whole paladin thing and I found myself totally confused with all this blessing, auras, seal and after that a bunch of other spells. So i come up with idea of some spell notes that will help me to overview all the abilities that paladin has. There are 3 pages: Blessings, Seals&Auras and Spells. It’s set up for printing (A3 format and 300 dpi will provide good quality) I wanna share it with you guys. Hope it might be helpful for young paladins as I am. All the abilities were picked in the highest ranks.
There are links to download:
https://ibb.co/NFTbdsM
https://ibb.co/J2vqBSr
https://ibb.co/XJ6VPwj
Depends on the sit reck nerf, but I will still stay in prot to handle a few mobs in case of miss-pull. I suggest sticking to prot, or at least a sword and board. It will be tediously boring so have a tv show going on another monitor or something.
Best of luck to you!
I played Ret back then and i will be playing Ret when Classic come.
The leveling specc from Caspus really looks interesting and i will try it out on a pserver before classci comes and see if it works without pots and good main hand because the first char will mostly not be able to buy good equipment from the ah
Manofwar
Kampfzwerg
Mojo
i have a question :D, regarding Holy healing in 60s dungeons/raids, Do they contend well against priests/shamans ? since they lack multi target healing, or are they gonna be mostly tank/ot healers ?! and is their mana efficiency as bad as priests?! i know Illumination talent is their best mana regen but that's only viable when ur well geared and have good amount of critCaspus wrote: ↑6 years agoJust hit me with any questions you got! I've done it all, Holy, Prot, and Ret. (Ret is my weakest experience wise though). Once you reach around level 15 and start actually having spells to play around with it becomes a lot more than just "Auto-Attacking". Paladins have some of the best survivability in the game and can withstand multiple mobs at once while leveling where as most classes will drop dead. The simple fact of having Holy Light at level 1 puts you at a advantage over others. The moment you log in you can start kite tagging mobs and killing 2 even 3 sometimes 4 defias mobs at once! (Though 4 is pushing it ;) )
edit: i just rechecked Illumination on both classic/wotlk because i played allot of hpalla in wotlk pservers, Illumination returns 30% of the spell's base mana compared to 100% in classic ! and Holy Light costs 660 mana at lvl 60, does this mean if i crit a Holy Light, i'll get back the 660 mana ?!
Hi Caspus,
Following your build what seals should I use while levelling? Always unsure what is the correct way ie, if I should unleash (the speed and holy damage one) then refresh and just hit away with righteousness. Not sure if there is a particular rotation or just situational.
Thanks in advance.
I'm very sorry, i've been on vacation and haven't checked backed in a while! For the sake of answering questions despite them already being answered already...
@zutch
Holy paladins are amazing healers and come off really strong at the launch of a game. I would argue they're the best healers until late BWL patch. Priests start to really develop once they're T2 geared with Darkmoon card and their mana efficiency basically doubles.
Regardless though flash of light is such a strong spell and is the reason holy paladins are prioritized on Tank healing since they can react faster.
Holy paladins will always have a spot in a raid all the way to KT in naxx. I've enjoyed my time playing it when I did.
...And yes! Illumination returns full mana cost of that spell every crit!
@Rolopolo
I like to judge with crusader and then whack it down with Righteousness. Judge when its about to come off CD or if you have a good killing pace going and can kill the mob quickly through judge spamming.
If you decide to go ret for leveling then its basically the same thing except judge crusader and have seal of command up. Seal of command can double as a execute if you treat it so. Judging command while the target is stunned does double damage. So either keep Hoj ready for judgement or wait for a buddy to stun it before you judge command.
My leveling spec isn't what I recommend everyone to do. It's more of a defensive playstyle. I prefer survival over damage. But some prefer doing more damage at more risk...But at the end of the day we are paladins so we can bubble hearth to safety if it comes down to it.
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