Alright so I decided to make a small guide for all the people out there that didn't play a paladin in vanilla wow or didn't play a paladin at all.
The Guide will include Talent builds for PvE and PvP, explanations of the build, gear and randomness.
General shorcuts that may be used in the guide tho I try to avoid it:
BoM = Blessing of Might
BoW = Blessing of Wisdom
BoK = Blessing of Kings
BoL = Blessing of Light
BoS = Blessing of Sacrifice
BoF = Blessing of Freedom
Socom = Seal of Command
SoC = Seal of Crusader
SoR = Seal of Righteousness
SoW = Seal of Wisdom
SoL = Seal of Light
Other shortcuts and wow terms can be found in your WoW manual in the glossary on page 174 - 177
(yes I did read the manual when I started WoW and it actually helped quite alot)
1. Holy
1.1 The Healerdin
1.1.1 Talents
1.1.1.1 PvE
1.1.1.2 PvP
1.1.2 Learn to play
1.1.3 Gear
1.2 The Shockadin
1.2.1 Talents
1.2.1.1 Prot
1.2.1.2 Ret
1.2.2 Learn to play
1.2.3 Gear
1. Holy
The Holy build mostly about healing, mana regeneration and Support but it can also be used as a damage build for PvP. It can either be mixed with prot talents which is the choice for a healer, buffing the survivability and making the paladin less easy to kill. This is the choice for Healers and people who want to improve their defensive skills in PvP. You can also spend your left over talents in the ret tree, making the shockadin do even more damage but sacrificing alot of your defense.
1.1 The Healerdin
1.1.1 Talents
1.1.1.1 PvE Build:
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#sVxhrgotEMp00h Divine Intellect in the first Tier obviously to increase the mana pool but also the spell critical strike chance.
Spiritual Focus in the second tier to prevent spell interruption when attacked by adds or hit by AoE damage.
In the 3rd tier you obviously want to take Healing Light to buff your healing spells, Unyielding Faith to have a
higher chance of resisting stuff like aoe fear and such.
I also like putting 2 points in Improved Lay on Hands instead of consecration simply because consecration is
completely useless for a healer and it's also really nice to have Lay on Hands ready more often. But the spell
can also be used as a buff instead a emergency heal. The 30% armor increase which lasts for 2 minutes is
extremely powerful and I suggest using it as a buff at fights like Golemag/Chromaggus and Patchwerk(when
hes released derp) since they all hit like trucks (if the tank isnt overgeared) so that buff helps alot.
The 4th tier is the most important one in my opinion since it gives you Improved Blessing of Wisdom which is
always nice to have and:
Illumination. This talent is the heart of the Healerdins build. It gives you a chance of 100% to loose no mana
all when you crit with one of your healing spells. That is just awesome. Nothing more to say there
Divine Favor: yes.
Holy Power in the 6th Tier of course since it gives you + 5% spell crit chance, improving your healing and
MP5 thanks to Illumination so it's a great talent.
And of course Holy shock as an instant heal to prevent the tank or anyone else from death when you don't
have time to cast a Flash of light and the target is about to die.
In the Prot tree you have a few more choices but I will explain my personal preference
First Tier: Improved Devotion Aura, increases the armor that the aura gives to allies, really nice.
And Redoubt just because you have to spend the points somewhere and this seems to be the most viable
talent out of the ones you can possibly pick. Buffs your survivability in case you are being attacked by adds.
Second Tier: Toughness, same as Redoubt.
Guardians Favor to save someones life more often, making them fall in love with you
3rd Tier: Blessing of Kings. You had to spend a point here to get access to the greater Blessing in vanilla.
Even tho it's not required on VG it's nice to have the lesser blessing in case you can't spend alot of mana and
someone is spamming BOK PLES ME BOK YES PLES DO ME BOK.
4th Tier: Improed Concentration Aura. Using this aura combined with Spiritual Focus will make you Immune to
loosing casting time which is really amazing so you can even use Blessing of Sacrifice on your tank, making
him take less damage without suffering from the pushback that the damage would usually cause.
And of course the increased chance to resist interrupts and silence effects for all people that are effected
by the Aura is nice aswell
1.1.1.2 PvP Build:
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#sVxuRgotE0x0cb The only real changes in the build are that I take consecration in the Holy tree to get rogues and druids
out of stealth (rank 1 consecration) and I also take Improved Hammer of Justice in prot instead of the
Improved Aura because it reduces the cooldown down to 45 seconds which even becomes 35 seconds
when you use 3/6 parts of the PvP set. That's awesome
I also put 5/5 in redoubt instead putting 1 point in kings because meh... that's why.
1.1.2 Learn to Play
So how do I heal as a Paladin? The paladin is propably the easiest healer class to play as far as pure healing
goes since Flash of Light is so fast and mana efficient that you will find youself spamming only that spell alot
of times. That doesn't mean that Holy Light and Holy shock are useless. Holy light heals for a great amount of
damage but has a long cast time and costs alot of mana so it should be used when the tank is slowly going
down and flash of light just can't keep up with that damage. You cannot really do anything about the cast
time but you can use lower ranks of the spell that cost less mana. They also heal less than the highest rank
but due to the long cast time you will often do like 20-30 % overhealing implied you aren't the only healer in
the raid which is very unlikely
And last but not least Holy shock your instant heal, very nice to save
someone when he's low on health and even a flash heal wouldn't be fast enough, blow divine favor, do a shock
and you should have enough time to even cast a full Holy Light.
But that is not all a Healerdin does. You also enhance your group with your auras like Devotion Aura to make
the Tank happy by increasing his armor quite alot and Frost, Fire and shadow resistance auras which are
extemely usefull in actually every 40 man raid there is. And of course Concentration Aura which can be used
to throw out healings without pushbacks while AoE in fights like Flamegor. I should also mention Retribution
Aura for being one of the most useless abilities I've ever seen.
Another thing that makes the Paladin so awesome are his blessings. As a Paladin you have Blessing of Wisdom
which increases the mana regeneration, that's what healers and casters like. Then there is Blessing of Kings
which is usefull for every class, increasing all stats by 10% and you got Blessing of Might for all the melees
out there.
(DO NOT USE BLESSING OF MIGHT ON HUNTERS! IT IS ONLY MELEE AP IN VANILLA) The last of the "Buff blessings" is Blessing of sanctuary (you get the greater one without having to spend
a talent point because zeard is gay) which increases the tanks survivability.
Besides those 4 buff blessings there are also Blessing of Freedom which is mostly used in PvP to either escape
when someone is beating on you or to remove snares from your flag carrier but it's also nice to put it on a
dps warrior and watch him go nuts.
The other blessing is Blessing of Sacrifice. This blessing is often overlooked by Paladins and many don't even
bother to put it on their action bar... or even a keybind. I personally think this is one of the most important
abilities in PvP since you can bless someone with it and you take a small amount of damage each time the
blessed targets gets hit. This may sound kinda stupid but as a healer you will always either get focused or
CC'd. And as everybody knows incoming damage breaks CCs like sheep, sap, blind etc. and that is why this
blessing is so very nice in PvP. I think this covers most of what you need to know about playing your Pala
as Healerdin, if I forgot something just tell me and I will add it to the guide
1.1.3 Gear:
The Healerdin gear has some differences from the other healers. Even tho they aren't so big they are still
there. The stats you should look for are:
Int, +healing, +mp5 and spirit.
Mp5 and spirit have a lower priority than other casters because of Illumination which I explained above.
So your major stats are Intellect to increase your mana and your spell crit which gives you more
"Illumination regen" and +healing to boost your flash of light and ofc the other heals.
After that comes spirit and mp5 because even tho Illumination works really nice for the paladin you will still
need normal mana regen from your gear. In the higher level tiers you will also find gear with +healing AND
+spell crit. Of course you should go for those but you should not sacrifice you other stats for gear that
has spell crit but spell damage and healing (pure +healing is always more comparing 2 items of the same tier)
and no spirit or mp5 at all.
1.2 The Shockadin
1.2.1 Talents
As you see I did not make a PvE and PvP category here for the simple reason that I don't consider the shocka
build viable in PvE, there is a Spellpower damage build but that will be explained later on. Instead I will show
2 different PvP builds, one that provides more survivability and one that makes you do even more burst.
1.2.1.1 Shock/Prot build:
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#sVEu0xotE0Lcc This build is obviously very similar to the healerdin PvP build but it has an important difference which is taking
all points out of Improved Lay on Hands, Improved Blessing of Wisdom and Unyielding Faith and put them into
Improved Seal of Righteousness which is the seal you will want to be using most of the time.
In the prot tree I take the 2 points from Guardian's Favor and put them into shield specialization to take even
less melee damage. The rest of the tree is the same as the Healerdin's.
1.2.1.2 Shock/Ret build:
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#sExu0xotZVf0tr This build concentrates 100% on dealing as much damage to your enemy as possible. It's designed for using
a big 2hander instead of a 1hander and a shield. For that reason I take the 5 points from Improved Seal of
Righteousness and put them into Divine Strength to buff the weapon damage which also buffs Seal of
Command procs.
Now for the ret tree:
In the first tier you can decide between Benediction and Improved Seal of Might. My personal preference is
Benediction since you will be judging and putting up new seals alot and theres no worse thing for a pala than
to be out of mana.
In the 2nd Tier I take Improved Judgement and Improved Seal of Crusader to be able to judge more often
which is obviously very nice and Imp SoC just buffs your SoC and increases the damage increase (hurr)
when you judge SoC on the target.
In the 3rd Tier I like to take Conviction which explains itself and Pursuit of Justice to improve movement.
And of course I take Seal of Command which will mostly be used with this spec (that's why you ideally want
to use a 2hander)
The last 2 points are spent in Eye for an Eye which is very helpfull when fighting casters.
Note: This is only one build, it is the max damage shocka 2hand build but of course there are more than just
this build that are viable, you can for example take the points from Conviction, Eye for an Eye and Pursuit of
Justice and put them in the prot tree or other stuff but for now this is the build I show you and you can
decide what to do with it
1.2.2 Learn to Play
The shockadin is actually not so very hard to play, in general you put up your Judgement of Crusade (Judge
SoC on the target) on a target (not on targets that can dispell ofc) then you start auto attacking to lower his
HP, it's not ideal to instantly shock the target since the cooldown of holy shock is 30 seconds and the target
can easily be healed up and then you don't have your big burst ability to kill the it.
A good way to kill an enemy is to damage him with autoattacks
(seal procs), judgement and consecration until he is at about 2/3 or 1/2 of his HP, then you can pop your
Spellpower trinket if you have one, put on Divine Favor and release a big burst using Judgement and your
holy shock which will crit (100% with divine Favor) to take him out or atleast below 20% HP so you can use
your Hammer of Wrath which should kill your enemy. However holy shock can also be used defensively in case
you need an instant heal for example when you are being attacked by several targets or having low HP and no
time to cast even a flash heal and your bubble and stun on Cooldown. Before "wasting" your shock as heal
you should of course try to stun the target using Hammer of Justice, giving you enough time to get out a
Holy light and a flash heal. Only use shock as a heal when you are really in trouble. You can make a macro to
target yourself, cast shock and instantly target your last target for that.
One big advatage you have compared to other Spellpower based classes is that enemies can not increase their
holy resistance so you will always do your full damage (except resists D:), making it very reliable.
But as I said always keep in mind: You are a Paladin not a warrior doing spell damage so use your support
abilities to enhance your group and always be ready to switch from a dps role to a healer if your team is in
trouble and needs healing.
Selfcast macro for shock:
/script TargetUnit("player")
/script CastSpellByName("Holy Shock")
/script TargetLastTarget()
1.2.3 Gear
The shockadin pretty much uses only 4 stats: Int, + Spelldamage and Healing, +Spellcrit and Stamina.
Intellect to get a bigger mana pool which allows you to fight longer without going oom which makes the paladin
useless.
+Spelldamage and healing obviously to boost your overall dps since almost all your damage is holy damage
+Spellcrit is also obvious, you want to do crits
And of course stamina so you don't die too fast
There are 2 "best in slot" item sets for a shocka you can get right now on VG.
The first one is full Judgement set from Blackwing Lair and onyxia which provides great Spelldamage and int
and has the awesome 8/8 part bonus that increases your judgement damage by a good amount.
Alternatively you can use 5/8 Judgement armor to take the spellpower set bonus and mix it with 3/6 parts
of the Paladin PvP set (Legs, Chest, Shoulders) to reduce the cooldown of hammer of justice. Tho I would
not suggest using those if you don't go into the prot tree
