Is the guide ok?Follow

Hey guys,

I just read the WotLK Paladin faq thread and wasnt sure on a few things.

I've been playing as a Disc. Priest and I'am looking at starting a Holy Paladin up for a bit of variety.
How current is the info in this guide now since 3.3?
Are the talent builds still viable?

The guide mentions grinding undead and gives locations for levels, why do I need to do this?

I'am looking at using Heirloom gear to help with the leveling process, Holy and Ret. both have different attributes, ie: Ret. needs Strength and Crit, Holy needs SP and Crit.
So that makes it hard to figure out what I need, Ret. will level quicker but I'd like to look at Holy as mentioned a bit later on as thats my end goal.
Also Mp5 over Spirit?

Ret. to level and then Holy later on, say at lvl40 when I can dual spec?

Thanks for the help.

Edited, Mar 30th 2010 3:26pm by RodStorm

Thanks mate,

So look for gear with Strength/Crit and Mp5 right and that should get me through.

Enjoying the game and having fun is what its all about so looking forward to playing the class and seeing how it goes.

I enjoy Disc. a lot but always up for something new and by staying with heals I'am hoping some of the mechanics will be similar but
different enough for a challenge.

Edited, Mar 30th 2010 3:35pm by RodStorm

While I wouldn't be surprised if it changes at some point in Cataclysm development, currently STR does nothing for Holy. Also Mp5 does little for Ret. Spirit does nothing for Paladins of any spec because they are always under the "five second rule" and because there is no talent like those some other classes have converting some percentage of it to SP or the like.

For Holy, INT is still the strongest "time to OOM" stat, while Crit was gutted (for mana regen) by a past nerf to the Illumination talent, allowing Mp5 to pip it for #2 in regen despite being underbudgeted (i.e. when there's Mp5 on gear, there's not as much as their "should" be). For throughput, Crit is again bottom dog because it's unreliable and too much of it only contributes to overhealing. Haste contributes more to Holy Light throughput because HL is so powerful even without the spellpower component (the best way to heal more with HL is to throw more of them than to make each more powerful). OTOH, SP synergises better with Flash of Light not just because of scaling, but because your global cooldown can't go below 1 second, so there's a limit to how much throughput Haste can contribute to FoL. Really, as long as all your gear has INT, you can't go too far wrong.

For Ret, it's basically STR. Hit is good, but unlike most DPS classes, there's no particular benefit to stacking it to the cap. Expertise is good, but you don't need all that much of it if you're running with Seal of Vengeance. Crit is fine, mostly because it's not ArP (too much of Ret damage ignores armor) or Haste (Ret is all about instant attacks). AGI isn't worthless, but Ret doesn't get AP from it, so mail items are usually suboptimal unless they are much higher level than your plate alternatives. STR is so good, in fact, that it's usually not even worth matching gem colors for socket bonuses unless the bonus is, in fact, STR.

FWIW, my pally just dinged 80 this morning.

I wanted to heal (as it sounds like you do) so I just leveled her as Holy the whole way. I think I played ret until 26 or so before I decided to heal.

Even leveling as Holy was cake. Yes, it's slower than Ret I'm sure but it was by no means hard to do and probably as fast as any other class would be.

So now I'm a fresh 80 and since I've been healing for 50+ levels I'm very comfortable with how it works, rather than dinging 80 and having to start from scratch learning how to heal on her.

I leveled her with the BoA Cloth robe (already had it), Mail caster shoulders, and Caster mace. Along the way I just equipped whatever the best caster gear I found regardless of type so long as there was int, sp, mp5, etc. Never had any issues at all questing solo or healing via lfg.