Talent questionFollow

No you cannot block without a shield. If you're planning on going prot, then you're planning on AoE grinding as your strategy for leveling, which means yes you will need to get a 1h weapon and shield. Personally I leveled with a 2-hander as ret, but if you want to level as prot, go for it. Yes you need a shield to do it though.

Questions: No, blocking with a 2-hdr is not going to happen. For survivability you'll wand Dodge & Parry.

Check a little closer, sometimes icons don't show the talent increase. Check all icons or even do the math yourself by checking your defense before and after it's applied. Not sure why this is, but I have noticed it happens.



View on Talents:

Depends a lot of what you are doing during your time in-game.

If you PVE a lot (group < solo) and really like the Ret Tree then I would suggest, and these are only suggestions... your choice. Go for this first: 1st Ten Points. This improves your survivability greatly & the +STR doesn't hurt. The first tear, +STR +INT, really is your choice. Either won't make or break you.

Go all Ret after that, you'll want the abilities it offers earlier rather than later; upto lv62. Actually, Pursuit of Justice might be preferred before Imp Crusader. At earlier levels the +speed bonus is very nice, but once you hit Lv62 (Crusader Aura) you'll find little use for it questing. The path you choose again is your choice, this is just what I would take if I solo'd more than grouped. Gear for AP, melee crit and hit rating (STR, AGI, STAM before the Outlands). You should carve through solo quested MOBs like butter.

After that then maybe... I would finish like this. Taking Redoubt over Imp Devo Aura, because I'll have Sanctity Aura up at all times (unless asked to change for rare occasions, or for uninterrupted casting during a major heal). Redoubt will at least be there if I needed to OT or even MT for a group. That alone will be more useful than Imp Devo for a Retadin. Precision is the bread-n-butter for those final points though. You'll find that using a very slow 2-hdr (perfect for ret) has a larger penalty for missing... Precision helps & is highly recommended. But only after the damage talents have been achieved.

If you group or PVP more and don't care much about soloing then that build route isn't very good. I'm not a Retadin, nor have I been big in PVP so my build suggestion could use work, but this is what I think would be decent for PVP: 0/11/50. In PVP your not going to worry about mana unless you back off & start spam-healing... even then mana most likely won't be the problem. It'll be the number of attackers that will be. De buffs should be last on your mind, only burst damage. And the best way to burst is to up the damage% and crit chance%. The second thing you should be worried about is Stam, BoK > BoM IMO... more HPs, MP, Crit chance, AP.. vs. just +AP.

Group (same as above, could use work):0/16/45, helps to have some flexibility with Imp Ret Aura if you ever find yourself in the tanks group. BoKs never hurts, it's my favorite and much easier when your asked "just King everyone". Some of that build is useful if asked to OT. The rest helps with debuffing trash and assisting others by boosting there damage. Thing to remember, a paladin that boosts 4 players damage by Z amount, technically is doing 4xZ more DPS than is noted.


Hope that helps,

Kz

Edit: anyone with experience in the Ret tree feel free to correct me! =)



Edited, Jan 12th 2008 1:57pm by Killzon

Try a hunter DPSing with EotB.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding here, but devotion aura increases armor, not defense. Hence, it shouldn't effect your defense regardless of talent points put in it.