Poster: Daybreak at 1/23/2006 1:00:30 AM PST
Subject: A Paladin Talent Guide, updated 2/1/06 (1.9) |
| |
This is taken nearly wholesale from Jhelrond's pre-1.9 talent guide, recently unstickied due to obsolesence. In patch 1.9, many existing talents were changed, several entirely new talents were added, and even some standbys of sage advice were rendered invalid. I've updated/edited the guide according to those changes, along with many formatting enhancements, some missing information filled in, and added a few things that others, and I, had to say.
Contents
1. Introduction and FAQs
2. Holy Talents
3. Protection Talents
4. Retribution Talents
1. Introduction
About this guide
The purpose of this post is to group together all suggestions in the Paladin Forum and in other guides into a complete guide to Paladin Talents. Please note that this guide is under heavy revision and isn't perfect at all, I'm willing to take any and all suggestions.
Any comments and changes and suggestions and notes of, "Actually this talent rocks because..." and, "I don't like this talent because..." are also welcome.
General Information Links
Blizzard's Web page on the Paladin:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin.html
A very nice Talent Calculator tool:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/
A simple Damage Reduction Calculator tool:
http://www.worldofwar.net/guides/damagereduction.php
A website about Paladins (pretty much all the information just condensed into one page):
http://www.wowwiki.com/Paladin
An excellent pair of websites for finding item stats:
http://www.thottbot.com
http://wow.allakhazam.com
FAQs
A. What are the Paladin Talent Trees, and what do they focus on?
Holy - The Holy tree is concerned with healing, Holy damage, and general spellcasting abilities.
Protection - The Protection tree is used to increase your survivability, help protect other players, and increase threat management.
Retribution - The Retribution tree mostly deals with damage and other offensive abilities.
(None of these are etched in stone; they merely describe the theme of the tree. That is, there are damage talents in Protection and defensive talents in Retribution. No class has a talent tree 100% focused on one particular goal.)
B. Which tree is the best tree?
All of them; there is no best tree. Each one offers very good abilities, all of which complement the paladin's play style. A better question to ask yourself would be, "What kind of Paladin do I want to be?"
C. I'm just starting out and am confused! Help!
If you are beginning a new Paladin, your first ten talent points should go into Divine Strength or Divine Intellect, and then Spiritual Focus. This will help you in every way in your quest to reach level 60, since it allows you to reliably heal in combat (especially so once you receive Concentration Aura). Most Paladin talent builds you encounter will include Spiritual Focus for that very reason. However, from there on your path is entirely your decision. If you plan to keep Spiritual Focus at 60, you probably want Divine Intellect, which is more valuable endgame. If you plan from the beginning to respec at or near 60, you probably want Divine Strength, which is more valuable for leveling.
Many paladins will rush into Retribution to get Seal of Command as soon as possible to enhance their damage generation or reduce their required Mana investment in battle, while others will invest another 11 points into Holy to get the "free heal" every two minutes from Illumination and Divine Favor. The Protection tree is rather weak for solo play until you have 25 or more points invested (level 39 minimum if you have Spiritual Focus). Thus, unless your major focus is being the main tank in a consistent partnership or group of friends, you would be better off investing your points in Retribution or Holy. An exception would be if you plan to have some Protection in your build, 7 points in for Guardian's Favor will improve your group support power dramatically. (Although, it can wait until after key abilities, while you're "filling out" post-40. That'll be when a good group starts to make a big difference.)
Although the classes are theoretically balanced at 60, the "power curve" for advancement is not the same between them. Our power is above average up until level 40 (where our abilities begin to plateau), so talent choices beyond the first ten points are not a major issue until then. At that point the 1 gold to redo your talents is easy to obtain, and you can build a paladin that best suits your play style.
D. Should I go with one-handed or two-handed weapons?
Both would be ideal. A smart paladin knows when it's time to use a shield, and when it's time to whip out their war hammer. I suggest picking up the Weapon Quick Swap UI mod found here:
http://www.capnbry.net/wow/
E. What Seal and Judgement combinations are best?
Well, there really is no best Seal combination, but there certainly are a number of combos you may find useful.
Judgement of the Crusader + Seal of Righteousness - Use of this combo will increase a basic level 60 Seal of Righteousness from 67.5 average damage per proc to 106.7. Your Seal's pre-avoidance DPS will subsequently increase from 13.5 to 21.3. Certain talents will increase this combination's effectiveness substantially. ((legacy... anyone have new math?))
Judgement of Light or Wisdom + Seal of the Crusader - Judgement of Light and Wisdom have a flat chance to proc per swing, rather than most of our abilities that proc a certain number of times per minute. Increasing your swing speed by 40% will also increase the rate at which they heal your Health / Mana by the same, while still maintaining a tolerable DPS.
Judgement of Wisdom + Seal of Wisdom - The Mana regeneration provided by this combo is unsurpassed, especially when coupled with Blessing of Wisdom. This generally only gets use when you are trying to solo elites your level or greater, or are burning Mana exceptionally fast in a group. The downside is that you take a good five minutes to kill any single target, making it extremely inefficient for gaining experience or farming for cash. However, if you somehow end up as the last man standing against one target, this could mean the difference between five minutes of downtime and re-clearing an instance.
Judgement of Justice + Seal of Anything - Judgement of Justice prevents your target from fleeing, which can be invaluable in groups, or when soloing in tight quarters against Humanoids. It's not really a "combo" per se, but still exceptionally useful. Also, not really talent-related, but definitely a frequently-asked question: does JoJ do anything in PvP? Yes, it does the same thing in PvP as it does in PvE: makes the target immune to fear. That's it. Warlocks' Curse of Recklessness has the same effect. That's not to say it's useful in PvP -- it's not -- but to say it does nothing is inaccurate.
F. What does each of the five stats do?
Strength - Increases melee attack power and damage blocked with a shield.
1 Strength = 2 Attack Power = ~0.14 DPS
Shield Block Value + (Strength / 22) = damage prevented per shield block
Agility - Increases Critical Hit rate, Dodge rate, and Armor.
1 Agility = ~0.05% Critical Hit rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = ~0.05% Dodge rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = 2 Armor
Stamina - Increases Health
1 Stamina = 10 Health (Note: Stamina gained at level up does not increase Health)
Intellect - Increases Mana, and Spell Critical Hit rate.
1 Intellect = 15 Mana (Note: Intellect gained at level up does not increase Mana)
1 Intellect = 0.01% spell critical rate. ((legacy... anecdotally 30 int = 1% spellcrit, verify?))
Spirit - Increases Health and Mana regeneration rate.
4 Spirit = 1 mana every 2 seconds
9 Spirit = 1 health every 2 seconds
G. Which stat is the best stat?
Like talent trees, the best stat combination is one that defines the type of Paladin you want to be. All paladins need lots of mana (Intelligence) and hit points (Stamina), but for tertiary stats, a Holy paladin might favor Spirit to the Retribution paladin's Strength.
That's not to say that you should neglect any given stat, but that your priorities will vary depending upon your talent build and play style.
H. What does Skill X do?
Thottbot and Allakhazam both have excellent information on what each skill does, as do several other World of Warcraft-related websites. However, this guide covers the math behind any skills that are affected by talents.
I. What professions should I learn?
The Profession question is unfortunately beyond the scope of this guide. Most Paladins choose Blacksmithing or Engineering as their Profession, although nothing is stopping you from being a Tailor, for example. More information can be found elsewhere on this forum.[ post edited by Daybreak ]
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-paladin&t=822324&p=#post822324 |
View all recent official Blue Posts
|
