Paladins according to the Strategy GuideFollow

Recently at work I stumbled across a magazine created by Becket Massive Online Gamer which was labeled as the "Ultimate Guide to World of Warcraft" along with an article about each class, upon reading this I felt the need to post this.

Please note, I take no responsibility for the following info, I am merely restating the article.

Paladin- When in Doubt Bubble by Drew Walker

Intro:Typically seen as the most effective single target healer in PVE and the most unkillable target in PVP, Paladins have begun to show the versatility that their class has to offer by flexing their muscles with their Ret and prot specs. Let's take a dive in to the realm of the holy knight and see what we can hash out.


PVE Solo/Group


Protection is hands down the best spec for solo play with Ret as a distant second and Holy all but unusable. For groups you will typically see Prot and Holy taking the frontlines with Ret as a distant third since the power of the Ret spec really requires there to be more than five people around. The prot spec paladin in these situations will spec 0/48/13 to pick up just about every ability in the prot tree except spell warding. Reckoning is typically picked up with 1/5, with the rest of the points filtered in to the bottom of the prot tree. In the retribution tree you will want to snag benediction, deflection, and either Vindication or Pursuit of Justice. The prot paladin in groups and solo will focus mostly on shield block rating and value, Hp, armor, and a lesser focus on spelldamage.

The Ret paladin will typically spec 5/8/48 tpicking up divine strength from holy, redoubt and precision from the prot tree and then focusing on the pure damage abilities in the ret tree. Ret pallies are very similar to MS warriors: get your crit up to 25% and then focus almost entirely on AP. holy paladins will be identical in groups and raids so we will cover that in the third section.

PVP: The most consistent paladin spec to show up in pvp is the holy spec, but ret pallies are trying to push their way in to the fray. Holy paladin in pvp will be specced 41/20/0 making sure to pick up unyielding faith and as much effective healing as possible from the Holy tree, typically with only one point in blessed life. From the prot tree these paladins will pick up guardian's favor, Improved Righteous Fury, Stoicism and Improved concentration aura. Paladins are not often chosen as the kill target in 5v5 arenas, so they can get away with not focusing as much on resilience and hp, but with more focus on spell crit, bonus healing and mana regen; in smaller scale pvp they will typically have to focus more on resilience and HP. Ret pallies in pvp will change their spec a little bit to a 3/8/50 spec. The holy and prot talents will be the same, but in the ret tree you will see the drop of Benediction and the addition of Seal of Command, Crusade, and Eye for an Eye to increase their burst damage and add a bit of defense. The pvp ret pally will want to focus on crit, strength, and AP, the required 5% hit (3% from precision) and then HP and Resilience.

PVE Raids: The prot paladin and Ret paladin will be specced identically to their solo/group builds, but the prot paladin will want to focus on trying to get 102.4% if they add up their block rating, defense, dodge, and parry so that they are uncrushable with holy shield up. Once that value is reached, HP and armor become the next most important values, followed by spell damage and block value. Prot paladins will typically look for a caster-type mainhand with spell damage on it rather than the type of weapon a warrior will look for as paladins generate threat with their spells, not with their melee attacks. Ret pallies will look for slow two-handed weapons, just like an MS warrior. The holy paladin will spec a bit different then the pvp build and spec 43/18/0. the points shifted around will be the the drop of stoicism from the prot tree and picking up improved blessing of wisdom from the holy tree. The focus for gear should be almost entirely on spell crit and spell damage, with a bit of focus on mana regen also.

Fin.

That's all of it, unabridged. The author also gave credit to Relm on the icecrown server on what he called the finer points of Paladin.

Thoughts? Comments?

Also note, the date of production on this magazine is June of 2008.

This is pretty insulting to my Healadin. I fully understand that I'm not able to pump out the dps of a Ret-spec....or take on whole villages of mobs at a time like a Prot-spec. But to be called "all but unusable" for solo play is a bit of an overstatement. I have had very little trouble soloing through most non-group quests and dailies. Sure I have to mix in a lot of shocks and judgements to speed up the fights...but I'm still a paladin with tons of survival tools. I rarely die and can overcome situations where my rogue or mage would be looking for the nearest exit.

Give me just the smallest amount of mana and I am like a slow moving steam-roller. Not very fast....but unstoppable. Soloing as Holy isn't nearly as bad as that guide made it out to be.

this guy said to use a spell damage weapon for tanking though...

This is a good example of people talking about things they don't know a lot about. To say that leveling as a Holy spec'd Paladin is "unusable" is just naive and over dramatic. I leveled 1-70 as Holy spec (although I've respec'd around a few times) and I had a decent time, even though it was slow.

Oh well, I just hope that magazine is considered a joke, because this article is.

ive seen worse.

We need a [:meh:] imo.

I thought this was some kind of attempt at being tongue-in-cheek or humourous until it started sinking in that this guy was being serious...

Someone needs to l2p, imo.

There's nothing obviously retarded in the article other than the advice to spec 1/5 Reckoning. And nothing really offensive other than the "Holy can't solo" bit.

Really, I've been given some much worse advice than this. Such as "Use Concentration Aura, it will let you heal yourself while tanking." Or, "Paladin tanks obviously need to stack spell hit. Otherwise, why would Blizzard put it on items meant for us?"

bah i rock pvp as prot pally.... only when warr/rogues are dumb enough to attack me or feral druids who dont back up and heal. i run with a hunter our one and only strat is i run out try to get some attion while he picks them off if they dont fall for it we are toast normaly lol. still fun though : ) prot is gonna be the next big thing in pvp just watch and see : P

lol, my eyes are still bleeding! I don't think I can see through the wave of crimson, but I may check it out.