Holy Paladin leveling guide

Level as Retribution: a slow two-hander, Seal of Command, Judgement on cooldown, and a healing kit that means you never die to a bad pull and never wait for a healer. From 20 the spec plays itself; from 50 Crusader Strike makes it a rotation. The leveling tree ends on the raid Retribution build, so there is nothing to undo at 70.

Your endgame is Holy, the most mana-efficient single-target healer in the game. Illumination hands back the mana on every crit heal, so your gearing is Intellect and crit rather than Spirit, and you keep a tank up through anything with Holy Light and a Flash of Light weave. One respec at 70.

Retribution, 1 to 70. You judge, you seal, you swing a slow two-hander, and when something goes wrong you have Holy Light, Divine Protection and Lay on Hands to make it go right. The real priorities in the tree are Seal of Command at 20, Conviction and Vengeance for the crits that feed it, Repentance at 43, and Crusader Strike at 50. Everything else is filler you buy to open rows, and the order below says which filler is worth something while you level (Pursuit of Justice, Crusade) and which is just the price of the next row.

Weapons: slow, two-handed, highest top-end damage. Seal of Command procs are a share of your weapon's damage, so a 3.6 speed mace or sword with a big top-end beats a faster weapon with the same DPS. Train two-handed swords, maces and axes early so you can take whatever the quest hands you; Paladins cannot use staves or polearms. The weapon masters in Orgrimmar (axes), Undercity (swords) and Thunder Bluff (maces) teach the three types between them. A freshly trained weapon type starts at skill 1; beat on grey mobs for a few minutes before you swing at orange quest mobs.

1 to 20. Seal of Righteousness is your fighting seal: holy damage on every swing. Seal it, Judge it, seal it again, swing. Never fight with Seal of the Crusader up; it trades 40% faster swings for 40% less damage per swing and kills slower than Righteousness. Its only job is its Judgement, and at these levels the debuff is small enough that it is worth the mana only on an elite or a long fight: Judge Crusader once to put the debuff on, then go back to Righteousness.

The loop from 20. Seal of the Crusader, Judge it at once (the target now takes extra holy damage for 20 seconds), then Seal of Command and swing. Re-judge the Crusader debuff when it falls off, re-seal Command after every Judgement, because judging consumes the seal in TBC. You never swing with Crusader active for more than the second it takes to Judge it. Blessing of Might on yourself, Retribution Aura until Sanctity Aura at 35, Devotion Aura when something is actually hitting you hard. Consecration when there are three or more.

Why not Protection to level? Protection with Blessing of Sanctuary, Holy Shield and Consecration grinds packs of five or six mobs at once from 30 and is the better spec for tanking dungeons on the way up. It is slower on single targets and worse at long quest chains in Outland where mobs come one at a time. Retribution all the way is the simpler path; the picker's leveling step has the Protection order if you would rather gather than duel.

The rule that governs the order below: a talent row is locked until you have spent 5 × (row - 1) points in that tree, and you have level - 9 points to spend. Row 2 opens at 5 points, row 3 at 10, row 9 at 40. The consequence is that you will buy talents you don't especially want purely to open the next row. That isn't a mistake; it's how the tree works. The order below has been checked against the real tree: every point is buyable at the level it is listed.

Where it ends: 5/11/45, the "Retribution with Kings" build WoWSims ships as its default raid spec. The eleven Protection points at the end exist for Blessing of Kings, and Divine Strength takes the last five because a Retribution Paladin wants Strength more than anything else those five could buy. If your raid already has a Kings Paladin, the alternative is 0/0/61 with the eleven points in Deflection, Improved Blessing of Might and Divine Purpose; the engine validates either.

Pursuit of Justice early is on purpose. Run speed from 26 is worth more than Crusade or Two-Handed Weapon Specialization for the thirty levels where you are walking between quests, and the three points are in the raid build anyway.

Seals and Judgements

A seal is a 30-second buff on you that does something on every melee hit. Judgement spends the active seal on your target for an effect that depends on which seal it was, and in TBC that consumes the seal, so every Judgement is followed by a re-seal. The cycle is the class.

• Seal of the Crusader: 40% faster swings for 40% less damage per swing, which is a wash at best and worse than Righteousness in practice. Never fight with it active. Its point is its Judgement, which makes the target take more holy damage for 20 seconds: seal it, Judge it immediately, then seal the one you fight with. At low levels the debuff is small, so save the step for elites and long fights.
• Seal of Righteousness: holy damage on every hit, no proc chance. Your seal from 1 to 20 and the tank seal later, because its threat is reliable.
• Seal of Command (talent, 20): a chance per swing to deal a share of your weapon damage as holy. Scales with slow weapons and crit. Your seal from 20 until Seal of Blood.
• Seal of Light and Seal of Wisdom (30, 38): small health or mana back on hits; their Judgements put the same effect on the target for everyone who hits it. Judgement of Wisdom on a boss is what keeps a raid's casters going.
• Seal of Justice (22): stuns on hit sometimes, stops runners on Judgement.
• Seal of Blood (64, Horde only, the reason Blood Elf Paladins out-damage Alliance ones): extra holy damage on every hit at the cost of a little health back to you. The raid seal.

Blessings

One blessing per Paladin per target, ten minutes each; Greater Blessings at 52 last thirty and cover a whole class for a Symbol of Kings each. Might (attack power) for melee and yourself while leveling; Wisdom (Mp5) for casters and healers; Kings (talent, +10% stats) for anyone when you have it; Salvation (26, less threat) for every damage dealer in a group with a real tank, never on the tank; Sanctuary (talent) on the tank; Light (40) on the tank you are healing. Blessing of Protection (10) makes the target immune to physical damage and drops their threat, so it is the healer's panic button and never the tank's. Blessing of Freedom (18) breaks and prevents snares.

Auras

Always one aura up. Devotion (armor) when things hit you, Retribution (holy damage back to melee attackers) while questing until Sanctity (talent, +10% holy damage) replaces it, Concentration (22) in any group where you heal, the resistance auras on the fights that call for them, and Crusader Aura (62) the moment you mount; it is 20% mounted speed and most Paladins forget to switch back.

The three saves

Divine Protection (6) and Divine Shield (34) make you immune for a few seconds; Shield also drops your damage and cannot be used for a minute after it ends. Lay on Hands (10) heals the target for your full health and empties your mana, on an hour's cooldown that Improved Lay on Hands shortens. Lay on Hands on a tank in a dungeon is the save that gets you invited back.

Macros for the things you do under pressure, so you never target-swap to save yourself:

#showtooltip Lay on Hands
/cast [target=player] Lay on Hands

#showtooltip Blessing of Protection
/cast [target=mouseover,help][help][target=player] Blessing of Protection

#showtooltip Holy Light
/cast [target=mouseover,help][help][target=player] Holy Light

The mouseover form is the healing habit worth building at level 20: hover a party frame, press, and your target never changes.

Healing while leveling

Every dungeon from Ragefire Chasm to Scarlet Monastery will take you as the healer whatever your spec. Holy Light is the big heal, Flash of Light (20) the cheap fast one, and the mana rule is the same as every healer: a low-rank Holy Light on a tank at 70% beats a max-rank one at 90%. Carry a few Intellect and +healing pieces, switch to Seal of Wisdom and Judge it on the boss, keep Concentration Aura up, and nobody will care where your talents are.

Train every new spell rank the moment you can afford it; an old rank of your main nuke is the most common reason a level feels slow. Keep your bags clear of vendor trash before leaving town, and pick up every flight path you pass; the map is the biggest time-saver in the game.

Leveling set (Retribution): two-handed weapon damage and speed first, then Strength, then Stamina, then crit and Intellect. Mail until 40, plate from 40, and a good mail piece in your 40s is still better than a bad plate one. Intellect is not wasted on you: every point is mana for Judgements and Holy Lights, and Divine Strength and Blessing of Might cover the rest.

Holy at 70, in order:

1. +Healing. Your throughput stat.
2. Intellect. Mana, crit through Intellect, and 35% of it becomes +healing through Holy Guidance. The stat that makes Paladin gearing different from every other healer.
3. Spell crit. With Illumination every crit heal refunds 60% of its mana, so crit is mana as much as it is healing.
4. Mp5. Works while casting, which you always are.
5. Spirit. Near worthless. The five-second rule turns it off while you chain-cast, and Paladins have no talent that converts it.
6. Stamina. Enough to live through raid-wide damage; healer plate carries plenty.

Plate healing pieces are rare before raids; cloth, leather and mail with the right stats are yours to wear and nobody will mind.

Quest levels by zone, Horde side. A zone is comfortable when your level sits inside its range; move on when the quests turn green.

Dungeon ranges are the levels the quests and drops are tuned for; you can enter earlier with a group that knows the place. In Outland, every dungeon has a heroic mode at 70 that needs a key from the matching reputation at Honored.

You have not picked professions yet, so this section is the advice on which to take; pick them in the character card and it becomes the route.

The two questions. Do you want the profession to make you stronger at 70, or to make gold on the way? The crafting professions with a bind-on-pickup payoff (Tailoring's cloth sets for casters, Leatherworking's sets for mail and leather wearers, Blacksmithing's Armorsmith and Weaponsmith lines for plate, Jewelcrafting's trinkets, Engineering's goggles, Alchemy's flask that lasts through death) make you stronger and cost gold to level. The gathering professions (Mining, Herbalism, Skinning) make gold and cost nothing but detours. The usual answer is one of each: the crafter your healer gear wants, and the gatherer that feeds it.

For a healer: Tailoring (Primal Mooncloth) if you wear cloth, Leatherworking (Windhawk) if you can wear leather or mail, Jewelcrafting for trinkets; Enchanting for the self-only ring enchants. Herbalism with Alchemy is the gold-and-flasks pairing.

Leveling a profession costs the least when you do it while you level the character; every zone's nodes and drops are the ones the route wants at that skill. Pick early.

41/20/0. Holy to Divine Illumination, twenty Protection points for Blessing of Kings and Improved Concentration Aura. Nothing from the leveling tree survives.

The core: Divine Intellect, Spiritual Focus, Healing Light, Illumination, Improved Blessing of Wisdom, Divine Favor, Sanctified Light, Holy Power, Light's Grace, Holy Shock, Holy Guidance, Divine Illumination. The Protection half buys Kings and Improved Concentration Aura, which are the two things a raid asks of its Holy Paladin besides heals; if another Paladin already brings Kings, put those twenty points into Protection's Improved Devotion Aura and the Retribution tree's Benediction and Improved Blessing of Might instead.

Raid job description: tank healer. Blessing of Light on your tank, Judgement of Light or Wisdom on the boss (ask the raid leader which), Holy Light rank 11 chained with Light's Grace on the tank, Flash of Light to patch, Holy Shock when the tank is moving or you are. Divine Favor into a max-rank Holy Light is the save. Divine Illumination every three minutes during the heaviest damage, not on cooldown by habit. Cleanse on assignment; you are the raid's best dispeller of magic, poison and disease at once.

Mana is crit. Illumination refunds 60% of the mana of every heal that crits, so Intellect (which is crit and +healing through Holy Guidance) beats Spirit on every piece, and a Judgement of Wisdom target you occasionally hit with Seal of Wisdom up is real mana on long fights.

When to respec: at 70, or in your mid 60s if you move from questing to dungeon-spamming; Holy in a group beats Retribution in a group. One respec, about 50g.

Pre-raid gearing: normal then heroic dungeon blues with +healing, Intellect and crit; any armor class. Cenarion Expedition and the Sha'tar are the reputations with healer rewards on the way; Keepers of Time for the heroic key and the Black Morass chest. Quest blues from Nagrand, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley fill the rest.

Karazhan attunement starts in Deadwind Pass and runs through Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvault and Arcatraz to Black Morass. Do it as you gear; every one of those dungeons drops something you want.

Start reputations before 70. Every Outland dungeon reputation reaches Honored from normal runs on the way up, and Honored is what buys the heroic key. Cenarion Expedition (Coilfang), Honor Hold or Thrallmar (Hellfire Citadel), Lower City (Auchindoun), the Sha'tar (Tempest Keep) and Keepers of Time (Caverns of Time) each gate a heroic; run the normal versions while they are your level and the keys are waiting when you arrive.

Pre-raid gear is dungeon blues, reputation rewards and crafted pieces. Heroics drop the best of it and pay Badges of Justice for the rest. Quest blues from Nagrand, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley fill the gaps; do not skip the last three zones' quest lines on the way to 70, they are the fastest gearing there is.

The Karazhan attunement (the Master's Key chain through Shadow Labyrinth, Steamvault and Old Hillsbrad, ending in the Black Morass) is the first raid gate on the Anniversary realms; start it the week you hit 70 because it takes a group for every step.

Anniversary realms have Dual Talent Specialization, so the cleanest plan is two trees: level in the one you chose and carry the endgame build in the second slot from the moment you can afford it. Check the trainer for the price in game; sources disagree on what TBC Anniversary charges.

Reading an order from any level. Every talent order on this page is a list of which point to buy at which level, and the trees in the talent section have a level slider that can show any of them. To respec into a build at level 48, pick that build above the trees and drag the slider to 48: the highlighted cells are the 39 points to buy, in the order the table lists them. Every order has been checked so that each row is open by the time you reach it.

Into Holy. At 70, or in your mid 60s if you have moved from questing to dungeon-spamming: follow the Holy raid order from the top. Switching in your 40s works if you heal more than you quest; the first 25 points buy Illumination, which is the spec.

The number to budget: 50g per respec on original rules, the dual-spec price once on Anniversary. A Paladin who respecs at 40 and again at 70 pays well under 60g total; nobody should be flipping specs per dungeon.

Paladins live and die by timers: seal duration, Judgement cooldown, the Crusader debuff on the target, and in a raid, who has which blessing.

• PallyPower: assigns and casts blessings for every Paladin in the raid from one frame, and tracks who is missing one. Mandatory from your first raid; useful from your first dungeon.
• WeakAuras: seal missing or about to expire, Judgement ready, the Judgement of the Crusader debuff on your target, Divine Favor and Divine Illumination ready, Holy Shock cooldown.
• Healing frames: Grid with Clique, or Healbot, so that mouseover healing from the basics section becomes click healing; set it up while dungeon-healing in your 40s, not on your first raid night.
• A threat meter (Omen) in every group.
• One boss-mod addon, DBM or BigWigs, not both.

The addons that pay for themselves on any class: a quest helper (Questie) so you stop reading quest text for coordinates; a bag addon (Bagnon or similar) so you can see what you are carrying; a boss mod (Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs, never both) the day you start dungeons; and WeakAuras once you have a cooldown or buff you keep forgetting. Bind every ability you use in a fight to a key before you hit 20; clicking is the single biggest thing that makes a character feel weak.

Ticks are remembered in this browser for this class and spec.

Now

• Benediction 5/5, then Improved Judgement; Seal of Command the moment row 3 opens at 20
• Train two-handed swords, maces and axes; grey-mob the skill up before you need it
• Fight with Seal of Righteousness (Command from 20); Crusader is only ever sealed to be Judged, never swung with
• Lay on Hands and Blessing of Protection macros from the basics section on a key
• Redemption at 12 from the class quest; carry Symbol of Divinity

40 to 70

• Level 40: plate, Summon Warhorse, Blessing of Light; Repentance at 43, Crusader Strike at 50
• Greater Blessings at 52; carry Symbol of Kings from then on
• 60: the epic Charger; 62: Crusader Aura, and remember to switch back when you dismount
• 64: Seal of Blood replaces Seal of Command
• Respec Holy 41/20/0 at 70; budget about 50g

At 70

• Blessing of Light on the tank, Judgement of Light or Wisdom on the boss, Divine Favor into Holy Light on the big hits
• Avenging Wrath at 70; Honor Hold or Thrallmar for the heroic keys