Paladin Builds

I just recently started my first Alliance toon when my server was down and I decided to join another server. I figured I'd try something completely new and rolled a Paladin. My Paladin is great fun. She levels slower than my Hunter, but she rarely dies and I can't stand being a ghost.

Well, I had no idea how to play a Paladin, but luckily I purchased a package of 17 WoW guides which included The Unofficial World of Warcraft Paladin Guide. For a complete review of the Paladin Guide, take a look at my World of Warcraft Leveling Guide blog. Anyhow, the Guide gave me nine Paladin Builds and a lot of very important information.

Basically, when you are looking at builds for your Paladin, there are three primary options - Holy, Protection, and Retribution. I'm going to go over the strengths of each of the Talent Trees available to the Paladin.

Holy is possibly the most popular Paladin talent tree. The primary focus of this tree is healing, but it also provides some offensive punch. Holy is probably the most balanced tree with regards to offensive and defensive capabilities. Divine Illumination, the final talent in the tree, is a lackluster final talent unless you are going to be a healer first and foremost. Many of the earlier talents are quite useful, however.

Protection, as the name implies, deals with helping your Paladin survive. There are a few useful tanking talents in this tree so this is a useful tree if you are planning on having your Pally tank. If you go into this tree, you will want to go at least until you qualify for Blessing of Kings.

Retribution will help you with dealing damage at the expense of healing and survivability. This tree is very strong for PvP. Your final ability, Crusader Strike, is very nice. Conviction is also a strong talent.

All in all, Paladin's have tough choices to make and there are certainly tradeoffs to be made. It's hard to focus on healing, survivability, and damage dealing. It's better to focus on one primarily and another tree for a few beneficial talents. For nine talent builds and a breakdown of every talent, check out The Unofficial World of Warcraft Paladin Guide.

There is one simple problem with most Paladin builds - well most builds for any class actually - they are designed to be efficient for level 70 toons. If you have a level 70 Paladin, you can find many builds that will improve your proficiency depending on what you see as your primary roll.

However, what do those of us that aren't level 70 do? Should we pick a build and start to work toward that final destination? Which talent do we choose at each level?

Well, I've got eight very strong looking level 70 builds from The Unofficial World of Warcraft Paladin Guide, but my toon is just in her low 30's right now. None of the options are really helping me much right now.

Luckily, The Unofficial World of Warcraft Paladin Guide provides a ninth build - a leveling build. This build shows you exactly which talents to select at which levels to help you in your quest to hit level 70.

The advantage the leveling build is that it provides an efficient map for you to follow to get to 70. No more picking talents that will be more useful in the endgame than they are early. Focus on the talents that will get you to the endgame.

Once you hit level 70, though, what should you do? Luckily, Blizzard gave us the option to re-spec our characters. Simply re-spec to an end-game option that suits your vision of your Pally. Well, I'm off to see if I can hit 33 tonight.