A paladin for the Arena

[Brista]

Mmmm, Horde Paladins are just around the corner and I'm planning mine

I'd like advice on two builds. Firstly the levelling build.

I'm thinking two-handed Retribution for levelling. I plan to level mainly by solo questing and my character will be twinked. Big meaty weapon, lots of Strength, AP and Agility and Crusader enchants. I've levelled a number of Horde characters and I'm fairly clear on the road map to 60 in terms of what quest to do where and can quest to 60 entirely doing green or yellow quests without ever needing to do anything especially hard (although I usually choose to do some tough ones for the challenge but even those should be easy on this character)

I need advice for how to kill mobs efficiently and how to spec.

On my previous (untwinked) Paladin my rhythym was
- pull with Judgment
- Seal of Command (or Justice against runners)

and if I had a mana surplus
- pull with Judgment
- Seal of Command
- Hammer of Justice
- Judgment (JoC does extra damage against stunned mobs)
- Seal of Command

I would never drink while grinding, if necessary I would just use autoattack without the Seals. The aura I used was Retribution Aura. I would occasionally stop to heal with Holy Light

I made the occasional bad pull but I'd like to leave those out of the scope of this discussion. I'm planning for when things go well not for when Things Go Wrong ™ since the paladin has the second category covered by class design

Is this optimal as a killing method for a TBC two-handed Retri paladin soloing even or lesser con mobs? Does Seal of Blood replace SoC at high levels?

Next to spec:
10-14 Improved Blessing of Might (autoattack is my main tool)
15-16 Improved Judgment (reduces the chance that my pulling tool is on cooldown if I'm killing fast and allows greater burst dps which is situationally useful)
17-19 Benediction (not planning to use Seal of the Crusader and for the predominant playstyle the damage I take will be trivial so damage reduction from parry is not important)
20 Seal of Command (main magic dps tool)
21-25 Conviction (anything that boosts autoattack is wonderful)
Pursuit of justice isn't necessary since I will be using boots with Minor Speed enchant and when I get to it Riding enchant
Vindication is a debuff to incoming damage and I'm not anticipating incoming damage to slow me down much
26-28 Crusade (more autoattack damage)
29 Improved Retribution aura (useful secondary damage source and my main aura)
30-32 Two-handed weapon specialisation (boosts autoattack)
33 Improved Retribution aura
34 Benediction (4th point)
35-39 Vengeance (yay for more autoattack damage)
40-42 Sanctified judgement (mana efficiency means I can chuck more nukes)
43 Benediction (5th point)
44 Repentence (nice pulling and pvp tool, prereq)
45-49 Fanaticism (bigger nukes)
50 Crusader strike (another nuke)

I now have 20 points left to spend and I'm running out of things to choose for my basically attack power and weapon based dps build. +10% strength and +3% to hit are the things that leap out at me as damage boosts so let's go straight for them

51-54 Improved Devotion Aura or Redoubt. Both are actually pretty useless to me as a 2 handed pally using Retribution aura so I guess I should pick one for non-standard situations. In PvP and instances Devotion Aura seems more useful than Redoubt especially for a non-tank specced pally
55-58 Precision
59-63 Divine Strength

Ok now I'm seriously out of damage boosting talents. My choices here are either some mitigation (Redoubt/Toughness/Anticipation) or some healing (spiritual focus, healing light). To add to my quandary while from a purist point of view my playstyle would benefit more from mitigation (less heal breaks) the mitigation talents don't seem very good and the healing talents are pretty good (uninterruptible healing with Concentration aura!). I think this is a decision to defer for now but I'm inclined towards the healing, especially as i may be getting many instance invites at this stage

At level 63 then the build would look like this: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/underdev...100233005301051


Onward to the Arena where I hope to be a mulishly obstinant obstacle in the other team's way. I have two main jobs - not dying, and not letting anyone else die. I think that means deep Holy, healing is superior to mitigation for the job imo

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/underdev...000000000000000

That seems to me to be the strongest pvp healer setup. Mana efficiency is important to me as running oom when others are relying on you to keep them alive is a match loser. I wanted to fit in Improved Hammer of Justice as it's a very good pvp spell

I'm not sure what to do for professions. Does anyone have a link to an authoritative list of what does and what does not function in the Arena? I understand a lot of Engineering items and potions don't work. Which professions do people feel will be strong in the Arena?

[Arnulf]

As someone who has leveled a protection paladin (later raided as holy paladin) and is now protection again, I can only give limited advice for retribution paladins.

Retribution aura is (unfortunately) not good. It does not benefit from Judgement of Crusader. And the damage it deals does not scale. The higher you get it will fade away more and more.

Strength is more important to a paladin than anything. Strength gives you attack power, more attack power is always good. You will hit harder. If you hold a shield you will block better. Invest in strength. Strength is to a paladin what agility is for a a warrior or rogue.

Later on, you'll want to have equipment with spell power. Especially if your main tool of damage is Seal of Command. Spell power and spell critical rating is the way to go also for a holy paladin.

Your talent distribution for a raiding holy paladin looks solid to me. I would probably spec that way myself, if I would raid in the future. But I suspect that my raiding days are over. I expect to do more PVP now.

Redoubt is good. But you have to face your opponent for it to be effective. Put the points into Improved Devotion and Toughness to reach Kings. I would put the points for Hammer of Justice into Pure of Heart instead. Resisting curses and the like is much more important in Burning Crusade than anything else I guess. In my book Hammer of Justice is a PVP tool. Many bosses and some mobs in PVE are immune to stuns.

Well, the best way to do it is to go with your instincts and adjust with what your needs are. I usually re-spec when I think that my current equipment warrants it. Aura Mastery for instance does not stack with the three parts set bonus of Judgement (oddly enough), so I left it blank.

Edit: ah forgot... This would be my go at a retribution paladin.

[Artega]

Technically Warriors benefit from STR more than any other class, except perhaps Teddytanks, since the STR boosts their AP (and shield block value, of course), which in turn increases their Rage generation, which further increases their overall DPS:)

[Tuftears]

I'd suggest that you work up a healing set with plenty of intelligence and stamina, because even while levelling, you'll want to hit up instances for the great rewards available therein.

My paladin levelled in a group with Holy Shock (pre-Sanctity aura being moved to ret), so I've never tried levelling ret. Can't offer any advice there.

[Brista]

Retribution aura is (unfortunately) not good. It does not benefit from Judgement of Crusader. And the damage it deals does not scale. The higher you get it will fade away more and more.

I did some testing with my level 38 untwinked Paladin.

Against Drywhisker Kobolds using Judgment of Justice and Seal of Command with limited JoC nuking and mixing Frost Resist aura and Retribution aura my damage break down was:

Melee 74.9%
Seal of Command 13.8%
Damage shield 6.4%
Judgment of Command 3.2%

Testing on Highland Fleshstalkers with Judgment of the Crusader and Seal of Command (with some very limited nuking as SotC, JotC and SoC and the occasional self heal was very mana intensive for me killing fast with a small mana pool)

Melee 62.8%
Seal of Command 20.9%
Damage shield 8.9%
Judgment of Command 4.0%

In the first case replacing Improved Retribution aura with Sanctity Aura would add 10% of (13.8 + 3.2) for a total of +1.7% but would cost me 6.4%

In the second case against pure melee mobs Sanctity Aura would have added 2.49% at a cost of 8.9%


For a level 38 untwinked Paladin putting out approx 62-75 dps Improved Retribution Aura is miles out in front at this stage

My weapon is Grim Reaper a level 35 blue I got from the AH so it's not awful. Even if my Blood Elf's Crusader-enchanted epic puts my autoattack damage to double this Paladin's output Retribution is still better for both pure melee groups and mixed caster and melee groups according to these results (only the SoC damage not the JoC would increase with better gear. I don't think the amount of nuking per mob would go up as you would be moving to new mobs quicker)

I can see that Sanctity aura scales with gear whereas Retribution aura doesnt (unless your gear is so good you can pull 8 mobs at a time!) but I think Retribution starts a long way in front

I'm thinking that generally the faster you level the worse your gear is at any given moment. It's people who do things like run SM 50 times for the Scarlet chest who are well-geared for their level

The only value of Sanctity to a fast levelling Paladin it seems to me is on casters and the resistance auras provide a viable alternative, downtime reduction and less chance of losing dps to things like Frost Nova matching what amounts to about a 2% dps increase from using Sanctity aura

However you don't have a resistance aura for every type of damage (you don't get Nature or Arcane or Holy) so there will be situations where Sanctity is worth using while soloing and of course if I dps in an instance it's better

Edit: after thought

I wanted to add some comments about Judgement of the Crusader. At level 38 JotC adds up to 80 which for a SoC proc means +16. SoC procs once or twice per normal mob kill. Spending mana on SotC and JotC reduces nuking and my JoC does 194 to 209 to a stunned mob. My conclusion is that it's more effective to use mana for Hammer of Justice, Judgment, SoC which costs a total of 187 mana for 194-209 damage than apply JotC at the start of each fight which is 122 mana for 16-32 damage. Using Judgment of Command without stun is 46 mana for 97-105 damage so every time SoC would wear off anyway it's very worthwhile to finish it with a Judgment

So to summarise for the attack power based Retribution Paladin my belief is that the best attack strategy is:

- Improved Retribution Aura
- keep SoC up all the time (unless you specifically need some other effect such as Judgment of Justice to control runners)
- judge and re-apply SoC whenever it's about to run out
- use Hammer of Justice before you Judge whenever it's off cooldown and you have over 40% mana

[Brista]

Later on, you'll want to have equipment with spell power. Especially if your main tool of damage is Seal of Command. Spell power and spell critical rating is the way to go also for a holy paladin.

OK, I don't get this

According to me_irate over at the Basin:

Seal of Command (with spell damage equipment) - 20%
Seal of Command (with Holy damage equipment) - 29%
Judgement of Command - 42.9%

So 100 Spell power adds 20 damage to each proc of SoC right?

100 Attack power would add 100/14 * weaponspeed or approx 25 to each hit for a 3.50 weapon and would not only boost the SoC but would also boost about 3 autoattacks for each SoC. So 25 * (3+1) = 100 meaning 100 Attack power is about 5 times as good as 100 spell power

Is my understanding of the game mechanics not correct?

[Arnulf]

OK, I don't get this

According to me_irate over at the Basin:
So 100 Spell power adds 20 damage to each proc of SoC right?

100 Attack power would add 100/14 * weaponspeed or approx 25 to each hit for a 3.50 weapon and would not only boost the SoC but would also boost about 3 autoattacks for each SoC. So 25 * (3+1) = 100 meaning 100 Attack power is about 5 times as good as 100 spell power

Is my understanding of the game mechanics not correct?

I cannot say anything definitive about this, since I use JotC + SoR (never had Command).

According to this look at post #4 spell power is better than attack power because holy (spell) damage cannot be mitigated by armor.

[Brista]

I cannot say anything definitive about this, since I use JotC + SoR (never had Command).

According to this look at post #4 spell power is better than attack power because holy (spell) damage cannot be mitigated by armor.

Ah yes I'd completely forgotten about armour mitigation

Nevertheless for the purposes of grinding with big meaty 2hander and lots of attack power/strength, ap is more useful than spell power by quite a margin

I can see the value of spell power for other purposes like tanking threat and pvping certain opponents