World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Paladin Guide: Basics - Playing a Paladin - Equipment - Quests - Trainers Spells and Talents - Paladin Forums & Community Sub-Spec Guides: Tankadin, Healadin, Retadin

Paladin spells come in several types: Auras, Blessings, Hands, Seals and Regular cast spells and attacks. Auras are long term effects that the paladin puts into play that stay in effect until cancelled. A paladin may only have one active Aura at a time. Blessings are short term buffs (benefits) for the paladin or other characters. A paladin can only have one blessing on each character at a time. He can cast blessings on as many different characters as he has mana. Seals are short term buffs for the paladin only. Seals normally have two abilities, one while active and one when released with judgment against a target. The rest of the paladins spells are normal spells just like any other character.

Spells are also sorted by the school of magic that the spell belongs too. Paladin spells are broken down to three schools: holy, protection and retribution. I use the word school so that we do not confuse it with the type as above. Holy spells provide healing ability, Protection spells generally provide damage and threat, while Retribution spells are all about damage.

Talents for any class are important but for a Paladin as a Hybrid class they are even more critical. As a Hybrid class how you place your talent points determines what you can do, unlike a single purpose class like a rogue who no mater how they place their talent points they still are just there for damage. That just is not the case for a Paladin. If you put your points into the Protection tree then you are going to be a Tank, into the Holy tree and you will be a healer, and lastly if you put your points into the Retribution tree then you will be a damage dealer.

This is explained in detail when you go to put your first point into a talent tree. The talent screen will show you a screen that displays what bonuses you get for putting your points into that talent tree. A very important thing to note with talents is that one you select your first talent tree you are locked into spending points in that talent tree until you have spent your 31st point there. Only then can you put points into another three.

This is easy to get around though because you can unlearn talents if you need to. This allows you to build your character one way for early levels and then change mid-way or even late game to a different style. This is a general tip and works for all classes not just paladins.

To unlearn all your talents, the first time only costs 1 gold, the second time only costs five gold, and it increments from there. This is a very nice bonus, it means you do not have to play your end-build from level 1 (well.. 10). Not many argue that a retribution specialist paladin is the best until the 30+ level range. So go with retribution until the 30s, then switch.

Once you get there, many people say that soloing and playing in general becomes a lot easier if you have a shield and are specialized a little more defensively. Well, spend a gold and do that! Then finally, once you hit 60, you can re-specialize your character to be the best you can for PvP or whatever you plan on doing.

Plan on using the re-specs, the first few don't cost that much. Do not use them as an excuse to just throw points anywhere, as that would waste your re-specializations and make you spend much more money, but rather take advantage of your ability to switch between proven existing builds at certain levels.

It may seem obvious to some, but we see people running around in the 20s doing things that are not really optimized, and they know it, but they always do it because they think it will be 'better in the end'. Well, in this game, you can wait until 'the end' to do that if you wanted.

A complete talent calculator can be found on the official World of Warcraft site here. It is a great place to start exploring the Paladin class as once you understand the talents that you can gain you are a lot closer to understanding the class itself.

Talent builds change dynamically based on your current level, as talents and spells change with each patch, as you get better gear, and based on the content you are doing. Basically this means that the best talent build for you changes very often. Therefore it is difficult to have a set group of best talent builds posted in a guide. If you want to find some builds or discuss some builds the best place to do so is in the forums, as they are far more fluid and changing than a guide.

Have comments or suggestions? Thought of something that has been missed? Found an error? I would love to hear from you! Please post in our Paladin Class guide forum, or email me at messiah@tentonhammer.com