Paladin Specs. PvE, PvP and everything between.

[Dagonet]

Holy PvE:
The holy talent tree is the healer's tree. this is the most common raid spec, the most common pve spec in general and also the most common pvp spec.

The most common PVE spec is:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The pve holy tree picks up all the 'good stuff' you will need in raids. While some of you may wonder about the 19 points in protection.

The devotion aura improvement is a really good support tool.

The blessing of protection, is in short, what all the Destruction warlocks and the aggro bastards kiss the healadin's feet for. Blessing of Protection, does in fact remove aggro from the target temporarily, giving the tank time to regain aggro. A raid wipe saved.

Blessing of Kings is, arguably, the best class buff in the game.

Righteous Fury, and Improved armor!?
It's a bit tricky to explain this one. one example however, would be Akil'zon's trash in Zul'aman. The 90% Holy aggro and the 10% extra armor makes for *insane* threat and capabillity of taking a beating from non-elites so dpsers are able of aoeing when there is no paladin tank around.

Concentration aura doesn't really need to be explained. Even though you without improvement can reach 100% interruption immunity, the silence effect is a real lifesaver for bosses like Nalorakk whose silence on a paladin (we've only one school of magic. Silence=total lockdown) may be devastating.

Holy, PvP.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

A lot of interesting stuff here. Plenty of similiarities with the pve build, but as you might be able to see this spec focuses more on short-term survival than a long raid fight. There is no improved lay on hands or Wisdom here. The blessing of wisdom is not a good one in a short fight. There is to replace it 10% resist of fear and disorient. Helps against warlocks and other nawty stuff.
In the protection tree, we've started off with imp. devotion aura. This is because, as holy you will have next to no block rating and Redoubt is pretty dodgy when your chance is already low. Further down, we've improved Blessing of Protection and Armor buff. Note that Imp. Bop adds four precious seconds to freedom. This means that your arena partner or yourself have a freedom of movement to kill or heal. blessing of protection for itself, disables MELEE only, so don't use it as a lifesaver against casters.

Protection: Protection is the paladins' Tanking tree. There are many variations of the protection tree, but in my opinion, the best one is

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


most of the talents here should be pretty obvious. there is, however, one point in protection i'd like to point at. Note that reckoning is not specced for. The reason for this, is that when an attack is parried, the counterparts attack will become 40% faster. More melee attacks, even though more threat, risks for more parries because as a tank you will have nearly no hit rating and parries can occur frequently. In a REALLY unlucky situation, I've been hit for 15k By PRINCE(lol) in karazhan in an interval of 2 seconds.
What happened? Both my attacks got parried. Prince is dualwielding in p2 and hits for quite a bit already. In addition to this, Holy shield has a small downtime. This opens for crushes if you lag even the slightest bit. So in short, the more parries, the more damage you will get in return.

As for the Retribution part of the tree, Cheaper judgement and seal spells makes for more efficiency-> More threat. the 10% of heal recieved back in mana is not enough before you get 2 pieces of tier 6 to add another 10%. More judgement, more holy damage. More threat. Parry, More avoidance. Quite simple.


Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Another spec. This is fairly similiar, apart from the spellwarding and %hit instead of imp. devotion aura.
someone kindly pointed out that As your armor gets better this talent decreases more and more in value, and at 19k it's worth measly .45 mitigation.

Retribution, PvE:
I raid as retribution, and im proud of it. don't diss.
This tree is, sadly, quite broken. There are still a few paladins that play it really well though. In pve, those players use either of the following specs:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

a few notes here. Improved blessing of Might gives about... 40 ap. This is not worth 5 points that are very well spent in more efficiency.

Sadly, Pursuit of Justice is just a place holder to get deeper down in the tree. It has its uses in fights with a lot of running, but it's not worth speccing for the effect.

Crusade. This talent is quite a difference in raids, over time.

Note, There is no points in vindication or eye for an eye. bosses and most raid mobs are immune to both effects.

Imp. Sanctity aura: in short, this is what gets you into raids. You have to understand that as a ret pally you will never do on par dps with rogues and all the crazy people, but you are a really nice group boost with 3% crit to the entire raid, keeping multiple judgements up on the boss (from multiple pallies) aswell as the buffs.

EDIT: I retract my statement about retri and the 1k DPS :P I recently achieved 1.657 on Teron Gorefiend.

Repentance may be a useless talent in raids because of immunity. but it's definitely worth picking up for pve soloing and instance interruption.

sanc. seals? 3% more crit. In pvp, no annoying purgers.
Fanaticism, for aggro reduction and fat judgement dpx.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This spec is also similiar, but the 5 points spent in BoK, Guardian's Favor and Pursuit of justice is moved to Imp. BoM for a whopping 44 atp increase<3

Retribution, PvP:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

A lot of the same here aswell. however, as we said earlier, Parry= faster attacks= nice counter dps with potential for burst.
As for Vindication and Eye for an eye, players are not immune. 5k Critting mages returning 30% of the damage while having a healer on you is made of fun effect<3 as for Vindication, 15% decrease to attributes is a quite nasty debuff.

apart from that, pursuit of justice is a nice tool in pve. after all, you've next to no means of catching kiters.

I do hope you've had some benefit. It's about damn time i do contribute a bit to this website
Advice and input appreciated in constructive forms.

[issuesbunny]

Holy PvE Spec : A minor change, but if I were you, I'd take one point out of toughness and put it into purifying power. Not many paladins seek this overlooked talent, but it really is a good one. Reduced mana cost on cleanse, which is a expensive cast, being allmost as much as a flash of light.

Holy PvP Spec : It may just be preference, but I have always preferred redoubt to imp devotion aura any day in pvp, since you'll be using concentration aura pretty much 100% of the time, devo never gets put to use, while redoubt procs nearly all the time, and that extra block from that rogue setting off redoubt may save your life.

Ret PvE Spec : Imp Devo again. :P In some raids, sometimes a guild leader will call on retribution paladins to offtank some trash, possibly in a prot set or just slapping on a shield. Imp sanctity aura is absolutely amazing for threat generation, you'll probably be using that, so again, redoubt really is a good talent to pick up I've found. Also, going down to kings seems a little unnecessary, if you're just picking up filler talents, vindication isn't always a bad talent to take, while most mobs are immune, the proc still can set off the mana restore on JoW, which helps with not going OOM in boss fights.

Ret PvP Spec : How can you go wrong. Wooo!

Prot Spec : How do I specced prot?

[Dagonet]

Heya Well, purifying power is, as you say, a matter of preference. I can agree that purifying power means less cleansing cost. Thanks for the correction.

As for Pvp Holy, it's also a matter of preferrence indeed. Devo is more for your partner being beat on by a melee and you beign safe.

As for ret PvE spec. Same ego thought about devo aura:P It sucks, but you might sometimes be put into a group for giving the tanks devo aura, ect ect. I didn't know about vindication and jow- Thanks for that one. Kings is, again for utillity. being an alliance paladin i NEED the 3% spell hit, and blessing of protection is a nice tool for saving someone's bacon, even if you are ret:P Appreciate some of the advice there though.

[henhouse]

Really good. I'm going to need this really soon anyways. +rep

[SockofBadKarma]

I'm agreeing with Issuesbunny, here.

What I did like to see was the fact that you weren't stupidly, uh, stupid about your talent trees. They were actually relatively optimum. Redoubt would help better for Holy PvP, but most of them were alright.

Except the Ret PvP one.

I'm sorry, but no. I've seen a few Paladins with this spec. This is the spec you want to use if you want to stay capped at 1550 ratings.

You should either be using 0/20/41:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
which is built for extra CC and survivability,
or you should be using 10/0/51:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
for most of the damage that 5/0/56 would give, except swapping out the nearly useless Fanaticism and/or Divine Purpose talents for much more viable "healing interruption avoidance".


I personally run with the 0/20/41 spec, and I couldn't possibly spec out of it. It's amazing.

[issuesbunny]

I'm agreeing with Issuesbunny, here.

What I did like to see was the fact that you weren't stupidly, uh, stupid about your talent trees. They were actually relatively optimum. Redoubt would help better for Holy PvP, but most of them were alright.

Except the Ret PvP one.

I'm sorry, but no. I've seen a few Paladins with this spec. This is the spec you want to use if you want to stay capped at 1550 ratings.

You should either be using 0/20/41:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
which is built for extra CC and survivability,
or you should be using 10/0/51:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
for most of the damage that 5/0/56 would give, except swapping out the nearly useless Fanaticism and/or Divine Purpose talents for much more viable "healing interruption avoidance".


I personally run with the 0/20/41 spec, and I couldn't possibly spec out of it. It's amazing.

I've done arena as a PvE Ret spec (5/8/44 and managed to get 1850.

Ret specs aren't too picky for pvp as long as you're not making stupid mistakes on talents. (Divine Intellect over Divine Strength, lolwut)

[Dagonet]

Heya Sock. To be completely honest with you I've never tried either of the two specs you sent me. I will make sure to test them, thanks, So you know, i am a PvE oriented Ret pally with shizznit low pvp ratings. Cos i suck at it, to put it mildly:P Thanks for the heads up though.

[SockofBadKarma]

Heya Sock. To be completely honest with you I've never tried either of the two specs you sent me. I will make sure to test them, thanks, So you know, i am a PvE oriented Ret pally with shizznit low pvp ratings. Cos i suck at it, to put it mildly:P Thanks for the heads up though.

Not a problem.

I've done arena as a PvE Ret spec (5/8/44 and managed to get 1850.

Ret specs aren't too picky for pvp as long as you're not making stupid mistakes on talents. (Divine Intellect over Divine Strength, lolwut)

1850 is srs bzns!!! Hehe. I kid, but really, though, PvE specs only fit in 5v5, usually. Get 2k with that spec in 2v2 and we'll talk -_^

Also, Divine Intellect helps against Mana drains, obviously! Much better than Divine Strength :P

[issuesbunny]

1850 is srs bzns!!! Hehe. I kid, but really, though, PvE specs only fit in 5v5, usually. Get 2k with that spec in 2v2 and we'll talk -_^

Also, Divine Intellect helps against Mana drains, obviously! Much better than Divine Strength :P

I miss the good ol' days of arena.

Back when all I had to do was run War/Pal to get gladiator.

Nowadays you need this witchcraft called "skill".

Psh.

[[Blaze]]

For your Protection paladin spec, I must say I would revise it to this Remove the 5 points from Imp Devo Aura, and place them into Spell Warding and as well as Precision. [Precision helps taunt from resisting] Improved Devotion Aura when you have 19,000 armor or more would only up your mitigation by .45% plus, a good protection paladin would be using Retribution aura for the small aggro bonus. the 4% Spell Mitigation and the +3% hit rating would help you much mroe than just +45% Mitigation.

[aleatorystories]

I got a pally, and I personally think the prot spec is a bit off, how could you not get reckoning? free swings=aggroz

[SockofBadKarma]

I got a pally, and I personally think the prot spec is a bit off, how could you not get reckoning? free swings=aggroz

Reckoning requires that the mob HIT you to begin with. Since avoidance stats are designed to stop you from being hit, Reckoning's effect diminishes as you get more gear. By the time you are uncrushable, One-Hand Weapon Spec will provide more TPS than Reckoning, and it will also be much more reliable, constant threat.

[geek26]

wtf? who made the Prot tree specs? i play most of my chars as pallies, and believe me, i NEVER infilict so much humiliation upon them as that tree does. Why isn't most of the tree full? and why not get the Imp.BlesOfMight?
The Retr is good though, although, i cnt remember, is Vindication there? thats good for b oth PvE and Pvp.
The Holy tree- ok, but add Devotion Aura (not sure if u did)

Great specs BTW!
+Rep

[damon160]

nice specs lol

[Sadchaos]

those are some pretty nice specs even though I'm not a pally fan. and usually I see a lot of holy pallys in pvp.