3.0.2 Paladin Builds!

[Dankone]

With 3.0.2 coming out tomorrow, you might be at a loss for what might be a good spec. Don’t worry, I got you covered! Here are some of my specs.

---Key---
I. Holy
i. Beacon of Light PvE
ii. Beacon of Light PvP
iii. BoSanc
II. Protection
i. Protection
III. Retribution
i. PvP Retribution
ii. PvE Retribution
IV. Hybrid
i. “I Have Unlimited Mana!”
ii. “I Have Unlimited Mana!” MATH and STRATEGY

I. Holy
Holy’s gearing and strategy has remained generally unchanged.

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…..i. Beacon of Light PvE (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
Not much to say here. Blessing of Kings is good to have since no serious protection paladin is going to be wasting his points on kings.

…..ii. Beacon of Light PvP (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
Only 4/5 in Spiritual Focus because you don’t need the extra 14% because of Imp Concentration Aura (You are using that 100% of the time in PvP, right?). I based this one around my play style, but you may wish to switch out some things for Blessed Hands. Sacred Cleansing may also be desirable because of rogue poisons.

…..iii. Blessing of Sanctuary Holy (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
Pulled this one right out of my ass. Because of the changes to BoSanc, every tank and his dog will want it. Losing Divine Illumination and Beacon of Light honestly won’t hurt you too much.

II. Protection
With the changes to Strength (Much more block from it now) and Touched by the Light (30% of stam --> spell damage), protection paladins will only need to stack Stamina and Strength on top of avoidance stats. In addition, Hammer of the Righteous is based on Main Hand Damage, which means you’ll be using either a melee DPS weapon or a warrior tanking blade. Also, this means that AP from Strength will increase your TPS noticeably.

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…i. Protection (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
You should base your spec off of this loosely. You may want to move some points around to get 5/5 reckoning if you really need the threat, and Guarded by the Light might still be worth it just because of the spell damage reduction, but largely with the new changes WotLK brings, mana should not be a problem. Also, if your threat is lacking, Seals of the Pure might be worth considering.

III. Retribution
Retribution is in the prime of its life. I’ve played a paladin since release, and we’ve never been anywhere close to this level of crazy since pre 1.9. Sheath of Light gives us amazing heals. Ret is now what it was supposed to be: a supporting DPS.

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…i. PvP Retribution (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
You can shift around points within the ret tree to your taste. Eye for an Eye is pretty nice with the new changes, as is Divine Purpose. You can get points for those from Vindication and/or Crusade.

….ii. PvE Retribution (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
Fanaticism isn’t all that necessary any more because of the threat changes; IE, tanks are generating threat out the ass. You could take more points out of Fanaticism for Pursuit of Justice if you’re in the type of content where you need to move a lot (T6 etc)

IV. Hybrid

…..i.”I Have Unlimited Mana!”(Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)
This spec is quite an interesting one. Sacrificing Holy Shock, Divine Illumination, and Beacon of Light, this spec picks up Judgements of the Wise and Repentance, essentially giving you a gross amount of mana (See IV-iii for details). This spec can also be used in PvE, but not having 40 yard judgements is going to hurt you a lot, since you’ll constantly need to run into 10 yard range and judge to reap the full benefits of this. I’d say it would only be functional in a 5 or maybe 10 man.

…..ii “I Have Unlimited Mana!” MATH and STRATEGY

Judgement MP5
Base mana of 70 paladin = 2953
2953/3= 984.333….
(984.333*5)/8= 615.208 MP5

Replenishment MP5
Given 10K mana pool (Very easy to obtain and surpass)
10000 (mana) * .0025 = 25 MP/Second
25*5= 125 MP5

125+615.208= 740.208 MP5

Yes, you read it right, 740.208 MP5 in ideal conditions. Of course, this will be lower due to human error, GCD overlapping, and inability to judge, but the potential is astonishing.

This spec would be played much like the “Restokin” which is popular among druids right now. That is, the paladin would play offensively and healing himself and his allies when needed. Without holy shock, he is limited to judgement and auto attack, but many times this can make all the difference. In addition, the holy paladin can now use mana inefficient spells like Consecration and Holy Light with a bit more ease because of all the raw incoming mana. This looks to be the future of PvP healing, largely because Beacon of Light (Bacon of Lol) is so lackluster in every facet of the game.

[Emilie Autumn]

sweet these are really nice =D im gunna give infinite mana a try 2morro after the reimbursement =D EDIT: i meant your prot one =P lol my guild would kill me if i re-speced that when we got BT 2moro =P

[Pietje]

Currently wiping on M'uru (1% entropius ) I'm gonna spec:

Main holy spec:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Chain heal/CoH still wtfpwn bacon of shit, atleast this way you'll go oom less fast.

[Kolurful]

Thank you, these are coming in handy, I prefer a holy pally personally.

[JRa]

Hi, nice guide you wrote there thanks for sharing!

Since I am a prot pally myself I would like to comment to the prot build.

For me, I prefer to sacrifice 5% strength in exchange for 10% increment to all stats! (BoK instead of DivStr). But I will have to see if I will be having troubles in keeping up raid's TPS.
Also, I took 2 points off Imp. Judgement to get Stoicism. Nothing annoys me more than me getting stunned! So, a 20% stun duration reduction is a must for me. (I don't think I will be judging the mobs that often, nor will it mess up my spell rotation)

", and Guarded by the Light might still be worth it just because of the spell hit chance reduction," - Dankone
The tooltip on that talent calculator says: reduce spell dmg taken by 6%. There is nothing mentioned about spell hit chance reduction? (or maybe was it on previous patch note?)
So, I took 2 points off Ardent Defender and spent it on "Guarded by the Light" (Spell damage hurts!!!!). Another option is to take points off from Reckoning instead. Why? because for some bosses, reckoning is deadly for the tank! opening the opportunity of getting parried and thus getting hit more often in a short time span. (I heard blizzard will be changing the parry mechanic of bosses and I don't know what effect will it contribute to this)

The outcome build: (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)


All in all, I think this build will have less avoidance than yours but will be having more stamina (spell dmg too) and is allowing me to get hit more.
Old school prot pally -- old habits die hard ><


Please discuss and correct me if I'm wrong

[mrtm93]

Hi kewl guide i'll try to use that immediately lets see wut it takes =D
Ty for sharing it +rep

[Tanyamt1389]

Pallys confuse the crap outta me, I'm not good with casting classes. I like melee too much. But kudos to those who own with pallys.

[Sylverin]

The nice thing is that you'll get 40 yd. judges and JotW when you ding level 80.

[Dankone]

For me, I prefer to sacrifice 5% strength in exchange for 10% increment to all stats! (BoK instead of DivStr). But I will have to see if I will be having troubles in keeping up raid's TPS.

Chances are you'll have another holy paladin in a raid. Divine Strength, since you're going to be stacking strength so much now as a prot paladin, will be very worth it.

Also, I took 2 points off Imp. Judgement to get Stoicism. Nothing annoys me more than me getting stunned! So, a 20% stun duration reduction is a must for me. (I don't think I will be judging the mobs that often, nor will it mess up my spell rotation)

I'm confused here. As a protection paladin, you should be judging every time it's up. It's a good chunk of your threat. As for stuns, not a single encounter comes to mind where the tank is stunned regularly. And even then, 30% duration reduction really isn't noticable in a raid environment.

", and Guarded by the Light might still be worth it just because of the spell hit chance reduction," - Dankone
The tooltip on that talent calculator says: reduce spell dmg taken by 6%. There is nothing mentioned about spell hit chance reduction? (or maybe was it on previous patch note?)

Thanks for catching that, I confused it with Pursuit of Justice (on live).

So, I took 2 points off Ardent Defender and spent it on "Guarded by the Light" (Spell damage hurts!!!!). Another option is to take points off from Reckoning instead. Why? because for some bosses, reckoning is deadly for the tank! opening the opportunity of getting parried and thus getting hit more often in a short time span. (I heard blizzard will be changing the parry mechanic of bosses and I don't know what effect will it contribute to this)

No problem there, like I said, you should base your talents off that loosely. I'm a bit confused about what you said about Reckoning, though. If I read that correctly, are you saying that if a boss parries your attack, he hits you faster?

The outcome build: (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)


All in all, I think this build will have less avoidance than yours but will be having more stamina (spell dmg too) and is allowing me to get hit more.
Old school prot pally -- old habits die hard ><


Please discuss and correct me if I'm wrong

Yeah, I like stacking stamina over avoidance, too.

[JRa]

"A successful parry nullifies the attack (for the attacker it's like a miss), and reduces the swing timer of the defender." - Wowwiki
So yeah, I guess that will make the boss attack you faster. But its a very small chance that ALL of your attacks during the reckoning will be parried.

"Chances are you'll have another holy paladin in a raid. Divine Strength, since you're going to be stacking strength so much now as a prot paladin, will be very worth it."

Ah yes ofc, the amount of str we have will be higher. Make sense.