Paladins

Whatever faction you play, whatever race, whatever class, there are those that laugh at paladins and those that curse them as the bane of their existence and those that praise them as one of the better classes in World of Warcraft. Whatever your views, Paladins are here to stay and so here is something to try and help those that play Paladins and those that group with them. I wrote this because I constantly see people misusing spells or saying ‘that’s not possible’ when other Paladins are doing that ‘not possible’ task every day.

My hope is that new Paladins and other classes will gain more understanding of what we can do, what our spells are capable of and that paladins are one of the best classes in World of Warcraft and are largely limited by gear, experience of the gamer and talent of the gamer. If I want an excellent tank I roll a Warrior, if I want a great healer I roll a Priest. If I want insane levels of dps I roll a Rogue. If I want a class that is unable to be put into any category I roll a Paladin. I can dps steady almost guaranteed dps that unlike Warriors Rogues and many other classes not reliant so much on crits (though they help us a great deal), I can heal nice and while not as good as a priest a paladin heal is nothing to be laughed at, I can tank and while its nowhere near as effective as a Warrior tanking its still possible for a time. That is the wonder of a Paladin and that is what I try to get across here.

Please check out all of the guides on these and the American forums because while it’s a lot to read, every one of them are invaluable.


Aura's

An Aura is an always on spell effect the paladins have that gives a buff to the party within 30 yards. It does not affect whole raids so its often wise to strategically place Paladins within groups and only have one per group.

Devotion Aura

Increases armor by 735 (at rank 7). This is handy and is loved by casters and by tanks. It has turned out to be the common use aura of choice for many paladins. It can be increased by talent points (aprox 183 extra armour) but for 5 talent points it is a matter of opinion weather it is worth the cost. This is best used when fighting melee mobs or anything to do with non magic based attacks.

Retribution Aura

Deals 20 Holy damage (at rank 5) to anyone that strikes a party member. It does not work with magic based attacks, only melee but it still has high use potential. Used by many against rogues for the +20 damage per hit and if the rogue uses slice and dice or blade flurry then all the better. Faster attack speed the attacker has, the more use this has. Some claim that this lets you die too fast without Devotion Aura or Concentration Aura on fast attacking melee because you can’t get heals off but then so many mobs and many classes from whatever faction you’re in can interrupt spells with casting times so it’s often better to use this to help use their own strengths against them.

Example of some classes Retribution Aura is useful with: Rogues, Druids, duel wielding Warriors & Hunters.

It can be increased by talent points by 50% (2 points for an extra 10 damage).

Concentration Aura

Gives 35% chance of ignoring spell interruption when damaged to all party members within 30 yards. It can be increased by talent points to give an additional 15% to the chance to ignore spell interruption and also gives 15% chance to resist silence. Requires 3 talent points to max that out though my own experience with this blessing is that it’s only usable in specific situations. Casters often ask for Devotion aura for the more armour over chance to resist interruption.

Sanctity Aura

Increases Holy damage done by party members within 30 yards by 10%. This is gained by using a talent point in Retribution. It is an aura often used by Paladins wanding to solo, sometimes paladins use it to max out their holy dps and sometimes paladins use it if your grouped with a 'holy crit/smite' build priest. Some say it is useless some say it’s amazing. The fact is, if you deal 1,000 damage then 10% of that is 100 damage. You must decide if you prefer to use Sanctity aura over Devotion, Concentration, Retribution or any of the other aura's. As always, with aura choosing it’s a hard choice with many good and bad points for each aura in each situation.

Shadow Resistance Aura

Increases shadow resistance of party members within 30 yards to 60 (at level 60). Available to all Paladins, this is a must have for PvP against casters such as shadow Priests or Warlocks. The only problem with it is that it does not stack with other shadow resistance buffs such as Priests shadow protection so if you have a Priest able to buff that if you’re fighting mobs or bosses using shadow based spells then it is advisable to let the Priest buff the party and to chose another aura. Some bosses you may find do both shadow and fire based damage with the melee attacks on the main tank so you can chose, if you’re in the MT group to give devotion aura to give the tank the armour or fire resistance to help the group and tank avoid the fire based damage. Many in this situation would be advised for the Fire Resistance aura. Tanks are naturally tough to kill from physical attacks but their armour no matter how good fails to protect them well against fire frost shadow or any other kind of spell damage.

Frost Resistance Aura

Increases frost resistance of party members within 30 yards to 60 (at level 60). Available to all Paladins, this is a must have for PvP against casters such as Mages. Often Paladins will swap aura from fire to frost depending on how the mages hands are glowing as it shows what kind of spell they plan to cast. This can be hard if your trying to get a heal off or if your on another task where you cant change aura but either way, Frost Resistance is a very handy addition to any group when fighting bosses or players who use frost based spells.

Fire Resistance Aura

Increases fire resistance of party members within 30 yards to 60 (at level 60). Available to all Paladins, this is a must have for PvP against casters such as Mages. Aura swapping with mages is handy but remember if you know your up against a frost Mage or a fire Mage you may find it a better idea to stick with the aura they are speced to. This can help you avoid miss timing aura swapping and getting a Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, Pyroblast thrown in your face. (For those not familiar with that combination, it’s an instant cast pyroblast that causes 716 to 890 damage and an additional 268 over 12 seconds but Arcane Power increases the damage by 35%). Many bosses in end game instances too use fire based spells and this aura is a must have in those times.


Blessings

Blessings are short duration buffs Paladins get that are castable on individual party and raid members. The standard duration is 5 minutes but there are blessings that are shorter. At later levels you can get 'Greater Blessings' that buff a single class for a 15 minute duration. If you only have 1 priest and you cast a greater blessing on him or her, then you use a reagent up for a single person to get a 15 min buff. If your raid group has 20 priests, then they all get that 15 minute buff. The greater blessing is limited only by those you can fit within a raid and those that are within a 40 yard range and by the fact you can not buff 1 priest with greater blessing of wisdom and another with another greater blessing of kings, you would have to buff one with the 5 minute buff and the rest with the 15 minute. Only one blessing per paladin can be used per player and the same blessing when cast by multiple paladins on the same target does not stack.

Blessing of Wisdom

Blessing of wisdom is one of the many buffs paladins have that all mana based classes love. It restores 30 mana every 5 seconds to the person that is buffed. To really appreciate this buff you need to understand the '5 second rule' that is used in World of Warcraft. All casters, no matter how much spirit they have (spirit being the statistic that sets how fast you regenerate mana) will not regenerate mana until 5 seconds after finishing casting a spell or attack or buff or anything that uses mana. Blessing of Wisdom ignores this 'rule' and restores 30 mana every 5 seconds no matter if you’re casting or not.

Blessing of Wisdom has a spell upgrade (Rank 6) only available from AQ20. This rank gives 33 mana every 5 seconds. It is BoE and may be found on the Auction House in 'Recipe's' under the sub category of 'books'.

This blessing effect is increased by talent points.

Blessing of Might

Blessing of Might increases attack power by 155. Attack Power is used in increasing damage done by your weapons. 14 Attack Power gives you 1 dps increase. You can now see how useful this buff is for many classes like rogues and warriors and even Paladins and Hunters. If you have a physical damage based class then use this. Blessing of Might (Rank 7) is available as a drop from AQ20. It increases attack power by 185. It is BoE and may be found on the Auction House in 'Recipe's' under the sub category of 'books'.

Blessing of Salvation

Blessing of Salvation reduces the amount of thread of the buffed person by 30%. It is only castable on raid or party members but is a must have for healers or mages or Rogues or anyone that pulls the mob off of the tank.

Blessing of Sanctuary

Blessing of Sanctuary reduces damage from all sources by 24 and in addition to that takes 35 holy damage to the attacker if you block successfully. This buff is available through putting talents into the protection tree. This is really handy in many situations and is an important part of any paladin using a reactionary damage based build. If you have this buff, retribution aura and have a good chance to block, the damage delt by both retribution aura and Sanctuary helps build up a steady flow of holy damage against the attacker. In some cases in PvP if you’re good enough with healing attacking and your stuns you can have a rogue mostly kill himself by taking damage from his own hits while you block most of the damage. Some don’t like this buff others do, as always with Paladins, its personal choice and what you want out of your gaming experience.

Blessing of Light

Blessing of Light increases the effects of Holy Light used on a target by up to 400 and effect Flash of Light used on a target by up to 115. Those are the two Paladin heals and while it doesn’t affect other healers it’s an important part of helping to keep any raid alive. Often if you are limited in paladins then this isn’t the buff to use but if you have a Paladin that’s doing a lot more healing than anything else then its wise to use it.

Blessing of Kings

Blessing of Kings increases all attributes by 10% and is referred to by many as the most useless buff in the game and by others as the best buff in the game. Whatever people say, it’s a buff that is always in high demand and is available by points in protection tree. Useful to increase main tank health when tanking or for increasing healers mana pool its very easy to see why if a Paladin has this buff available he gets a lot of requests for it.

Blessing of Protection

BoP gives immunity to physical attacks for 10 seconds and gives a 'Forbearance' effect that makes you unable to shield the same person again for 60 seconds. It also stops the shielded person from attacking others for the duration but you are able to cast spells. This stopped a long and happy relationship with shield spells paladins used before the paladin 'upgrade' where paladins used to be able to protect themselves against melee attacks with this then heal and carry on fighting and then use divine shield when needed and heal again. That tactic was used due to the constant interruptions Paladins often get in PvP. While this buff shields you for 10 seconds from physical attacks, magic based attacks get through and this shield is also dispellable. It is very handy but if you’re going up against a priest you would be well advised to not even bother with this shield.

Uses of this in PvP will be many and it’s often an important life saver in PvE too. In instances, even end game ones, BoP can be used as an instant threat reduction spell too. The shielded person loses all threat they have generated and the boss or mob will go to another party or raid member. This is very handy when using multiple tanks on bosses like kurinnaxx in AQ20 when some of the time a tank no matter how hard he tries cant lose threat fast enough before he dies. With this spell cast on that MT, the second tank that was trying to generate enough threat to pull the boss away from the first tank becomes the main target and thus gives the first tank time to be healed or bandage.

The cooldown for this spell (5 minutes) can be reduced to 3 minutes through talent points in the protection tree. The same talent points increase the duration of Blessing of Freedom.

Blessing of Freedom

This blessing gives immunity to movement impairing effects for 10 seconds. Useless you may say? Just watch as mages try to Frost Nova you in place or druids try to root you or shamans try to earthbind totem. This ignores them all and lets you move at normal speed. The biggest problem is like most of paladins spells, it’s dispellable and you still can be affected by the 'dazed' effect people get when being hit from behind by players or mobs. It also won’t dispel freezing trap.

This is also important for the 'spider boss' Mar'li in ZG. If you concentrate right, or even better have improved BoF then it lets your tank regain agro and drag Mar'li back from the offtank to the original spot she stood in. so that the raid doesnt get poisoned.

Blessing of Sacrifice

Blessing of Sacrifice is one of my personal favourite blessings. This blessing lasts 30 seconds only and transfers 55 damage delt to the buffed party member to the casting Paladin per hit no matter what source of damage was delt to the target. I have used this in so many situations that it’s rarely a situation that this is not a useful buff to have on someone. To give one example of a use for this is in Molten Core on Corehound packs that do the DoT on the tanks. This buff greatly helps both the tanks ability to stay alive and the healers ability to keep them alive.

It’s also possible to cast on multiple players and a Paladin can keep every tank on a corehound buffed with this at the same time and still stay alive himself. If you notice the speed at you take damage you get to appreciate how much damage you are saving the tanks from and also saving the healers from such a hard task. Practice a lot with this blessing when you get it as if used right it can save a lot of people from dying.

Seals

Seals are the Paladins main spells for fighting. They have many varied uses and it takes a lot of practice to get used to when, where and what to cast. All seals have a 30 second life span and only one seal can be active at any one time. Seals can be 'Judged' and I will get to that in the next section.

Seal of Righteousness

Seal of Righteousness lasts for 30 seconds, granting each melee attack an additional 20.5 to 71.4 Holy damage. Slower weapons cause more Holy damage per swing. This is the basic attack of many paladins but even with talent points increasing effect, Seal of Command is the better choice even if you do need talent points to get it.

Can be upgraded with talent points

Seal of the Crusader

Seal of the Crusader grants the Paladin 306 attack power and lets the Paladin attack 40% faster, but deals less damage with each attack. This is handy at times and some Paladins love it. I find this is best used when judging it though experiment and see what you feel is best for you.

Can be upgraded with talent points.

Seal of Command

Seal of Command gives the Paladin a chance to deal additional Holy damage equal to 70% of the damage of the attack. This often is preferred to be used when you have a 2 handed weapon with high damage for clear reasons but is still used by many paladins over Seal of Righteousness when using both 1 and 2 handed weapons.

Available through talent points many paladins spec at least 11 points into the Retribution tree to get this.

Seal of Justice

Seal of Justice gives each melee attack a chance to stun for 2 seconds. This in PvP and PvE is not often used due to it being thought of as useless. Many paladins would count it as one of, if not the most useless seal we have. Seal of Justice suffers from 'diminishing returns'.

Diminishing Returns means that if you use this spell more than once in a short space of time, it lessens the effect. 1st use is 100% effective, 2nd the spell effect reduced by 50%, 3rd the spell effect reduced by 75%, 4th the target is immune. The 'short space of time' between uses to get the full effect of the spell is 15 seconds from the end of the very last effect.

This means on a 30 second buff, we have 3 stuns on a seal that doesn’t proc that often to start with and then the 4th the target is immune. On a test with a protection spec tank it took almost 50 seconds to proc the 4th time and show immune so as you can imagine many other seals are better used than this.

Some claim that it was patched to not be effected by diminishing returns but I myself find it still is no matter who I try it on. All I can suggest is find a friend and test it to see if it means that much to you.

Seal of Wisdom

Seal of Wisdom gives each melee attack a chance to restore 90 mana. This is of great use when grinding and often paladins use a 1 handed weapon & shield combo to regenerate mana faster than you can with a 2 handed weapon using a much lower level mob to gain a faster regenerate rate and higher proc rate. Uses for this can range from PvP against a class that has just mana drained you or PvE to get mana back so you can heal or cast another kind of spell.

Seal of Light

Seal of Light gives each melee attack a chance to restore 94 health. This is of great use in PvP or PvE depending on your situation. Experience and experimenting with it means it will save your life many times. It does proc more often against lower level mobs and is often used when farming to regain health with lower mobs in order to avoid long down times mana users often get.

Judgements
Judgements are debuffs you cast on a target to help you in your fight. In order to cast a judgement you need to first activate the seal and then while targeting a hostile player or mob, use the 'judgement' spell. Judgements last only 10 seconds but can be refreshed by a successful melee attack by the Paladin on the judged target. This means when using a judgement you can get the effect of a judged seal and a new seal. Judgements can also affect your whole raid or group if they are attacking the judged target.

You can have only one judgement active and you can have only one seal active but you can cast a seal, then judge it, then cast another seal. This is because you can have one judgement and one seal active not one judgement or one seal. Remember your party or raid gets the benefit from the judged seal not the seal still active on you.

When you judge a seal, the remaining time from the 30 second seal is gone as the seals 'charge' is used up creating a judgement. In the spells tool tip the spell description is broken into two. The top information is the seal spell effect, the bottom information is the judgement spell effect. It is hard to remember them all to start but you get the hang of them very quickly.

Example:
1. Cast Seal of Light. Hit mob
2. Cast Seal of Light. Cast Judgement. Hit mob. Cast Seal of Wisdom

In Example 1 you would regenerate health while damaging the target. If you miss or the attack is blocked or avoided then you still have the remainder of the 30 seconds seal time to regenerate health but wont get any health regeneration unless you do hit successfully and even then its 'chance on hit' meaning it wont happen every time you successfully hit. The damage done to the target is the basic weapon damage.

In Example 2 you would regenerate the health from the Judgement of Light and mana from the Seal of Wisdom. Your party or raid can gain health regeneration from Judgement of Light by melee, spell or wand damage this means a group of 5 people (paladin and 4 others) all doing damage on a mob or player would regenerate health but would not be able to regenerate mana because you are using a Seal of Wisdom not Judgement of Wisdom.

You would have to choose between giving a Judgement of Light so they could regenerate health or a Judgement of Wisdom for regenerating mana. Whatever you chose to judge, you can use another seal to give yourself a beneficial effect or to do Holy damage to a target or even to give a chance to stun a target.

Remember that a healer or person not attacking the judged target will not get the effect. The damage done to the target is the basic weapon damage.

Judgement
This is the spell you get very early on and you use to 'judge' seals on targets. It has a 10 second cooldown but can be reduced by talent points. Some say its nice reduced because you can spam the damage judgements others claim it’s not worth the mana. Test out the damage dealing judgements and see what works for you.

Judgement of Righteousness

Does 162 to 178 Holy damage to a target. This is the basic damage judgement that is usable in many situations. The talent points to upgrade Seal of Righteousness also upgrades the damage of Judgement of Righteousness. Judgement of Righteousness does one off damage it does not leave an after effect that is refreshed by a melee hit.

Judgement of the Crusader

This judgement increases Holy damage taken by the target by up to 140. This means as your attack spells deal Holy damage, you do more of it. It is clear why so many like to judge this then use Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command. As with most judgements, melee hits refresh the spell duration.

Judgement of Command

Instantly deals 169.5 to 186.5 Holy damage to a target. If a rogue has a cheap shot, stun or if paladin has Hammer of Justice on a target while you cast Judgement of Command then it deals 339 to 373. Any stun or incapacitating effect will deal the larger damage.

Judgement of Justice

This Judgement prevents the mob from fleeing. Considering in PvE a lot of targets will try to flee when you get them to low health, this helps a lot to avoid picking up additional mobs while trying to kill one. Like all others is refreshed on melee hit.

Judgement of Wisdom

This Judgement gives a chance to restore 59 mana to the attacker. It is different to Seal of Wisdom in that this judgement lets a whole party or raid gain mana by attacking with melee, spells or wands. You will often see on raid bosses Judgement of Wisdom cast with a paladin refreshing it by melee and Mages and Warlocks and even Priests at times using wands to regenerate their mana faster so they can cast spells again. With talent points in 'Lasting Judgement' in the Holy tree it increases the duration of the Judgement by 30 seconds.

Judgement of Light
This Judgement gives a chance of healing the attacker for 61 health. It is different to Seal of Light in that a whole party or raid can regain health. With talent points in 'Lasting Judgement' in the Holy tree it increases the duration of the Judgement by 30 seconds.

Healing Spells

Flash of Light
This is a 1.5 second casting time fast heal that costs 140 mana at rank 6 and heals for 343 to 383 health. This is one of the best heals in the game and is one of the most used by paladins. 1.5 seconds is just enough time to sneak a heal in while PvPing and you may possible get away with it without being interrupted and its also good to spam on friendly targets for assisting priests or druids.

Holy Light
This is a 2.5 second casting time heal that costs 580 mana at rank 8 and heals for 1246 to 1388 health. Not an amazing heal compared to priests but with talent points giving a bonus to heals this becomes much more useful in helping take the load off healers or being able to heal yourself in PvP or PvE more effectively.

Rank 9 Holy Light is available in AQ20 and may be found on the Auction House in 'Recipe's' under the sub category of 'books'.

Other Paladin Spells

Purify
This removes 1 disease effect and 1 poison effect from the friendly target. It’s a great low level spell but at later levels you get Cleanse.

Cleanse
One of the most powerful spells in the game, this removes 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 magic effect from a friendly target. It has no cooldown and so can be spammed. It is often used in PvE on raid bosses or anything that needs to be cleansed or in PvP when Mages Frost Nova or Rogues poison or Shamans Earth Bind Totem. Mostly Paladins will use Blessing of Freedom but that can be dispelled by some casters where as Cleanse is instant cast and cant be interrupted. I use this a lot in both PvP and PvE.

Hammer of Justice
This is the Paladin stun spell. Sure you can try Seal of Justice but its chance on hit and only stuns for 2 seconds. This is instant cast and stuns for 6 seconds. That in PvP is a long time. Long enough for heals, long enough to bandage, Long enough to deal that last bit of damage to kill a player before they can heal. In PvE it is just as useful, if not more so because of the same reasons. 6 seconds is a very long time and it can stop a running target, stop a target healing, stop one target attacking and therefore reducing the dps you receive even if it is only for 6 seconds. Try it out and experiment with it.

Righteous Fury
This is the Paladins main threat increasing spell. It is a 30 minute buff that increases threat generated by Your Holy attacks by 60%

Hammer of Wrath
This spell is to help finish off targets that are on low health. It deals 504 to 556 Holy damage to a target that has 20% health or less. It has a 30 yard range so is often used to catch running mobs.

Holy Shock
This is the 31 talent point spell in the Holy Tree for a Paladin. It has a 20 yard range and can be used to deal damage targets or to heal friendly targets. At level 56 (Rank 3) it deals 365 to 395 Holy damage to an enemy or 365 to 395 healing to a friend and costs 325 mana. With the right gear and using Divine Favor you can get some pretty useful instant crits that can be used for both healing or damage depending on your need. It is also good for agro generation as it is a huge agro generating spell. This used with the many other holy damage spells Paladins have means you can pull agro off squishies often fairly easily.

The hard part about the spell is judging the usefulness for the situation that you are in and also remembering that if the mobs are hitting you, are you sure you can take it with your spec and gear? As always, test things, see how it goes, chose whats best for you as you can chose to go 30 holy and put the other point in Blessing of Sanctuary if you have 20 points in protection or Sanctity Aura if you have 20 in Retribution.

Repentance
This is the Retribution talent tree 31 point spell. It puts a hostile target to sleep for 6 seconds. Any damage will interrupt this and it only works on humanoids. It has a 20 yard range and has a 1 minute cooldown.

With the addition of 'Forbearance' to the Blessing of Protection or Divine Shield, this has become a main part of the continued survivalist Paladin. It is greatly handy in PvP and comes in handy in PvE too. With the use early on against melee players able to interrupt you can use Blessing of Protection, heal, keep fighting Hammer of Justice, heal, keep fighting, Repentance, heal, keep fighting. Sometimes by this point your seconds away from being able to use Divine Shield and if so and your in need of healing and cant wait then you can either drink a healing potion, keep fighting or use Lay on Hands and keep fighting or maybe you need both. By the time you have done all of that the odds are if its 1 on 1 then Forbearance is gone and you can use divine shield. Also in this time Repentance and Hammer of Justice's cooldowns will be nicely on the way to finishing giving you more chances to stay alive.

A lot of the time this wont work, other times it will. Some Paladins say it hasn’t ever worked for them once others claim it hasn’t ever failed them unless they have been attacked by multiple players. As always with a Paladin, have fun finding out for yourself. :)

Sense Undead
This lets you view undead targets on the minimap but not Horde undead as they are humanoids. Problem with this is if there are multiple levels to your area, it shows the undead on all levels on the minimap and so can confuse people.

Lay on Hands
This spell heals a friendly target for an amount equal to the Paladin's maximum health and restores 550 of their mana. It drains all of the Paladins remaining mana when it is used. It has a 60 minute cooldown that can be upgraded with talent points.

Lay on Hands is loved by friends and hated by foes. It is an instant cast spell that can save your own life, your raid or group or maybe a passer by seconds away from dying. While the cooldown on this is long, don’t be afraid to experiment with it and see how you prefer to use it. My own personal use is if im in a group I would never use it on myself. The main tank or main healer would get it. If I die then the healer can still heal or the tank can still tank. If you use it on yourself the tank may die and you will find it very hard to hold agro so you may wipe or your healer may die meaning you will find it near impossible with the paladin healing spells and complete lack of mana from the Lay on Hands mana drain to keep the tank alive. Supporting groups is what we do. It’s the main task a Paladin has and to me if that means I die and get a repair bill but it stops a wipe then fine by me.

Redemption
Brings back to life a dead player with 600 health and 800 mana. It cannot be cast while in combat. Often Paladins are the ones that in groups or raids are soulstoned by Warlocks because Paladins for the most part are used to learning how to die smart and we can also shield ourselves with Divine Shield or just take the hits because of the plate armour and get out of a mobs patrolling range and die there. Once the patrols get back to the normal place or mobs back to their original spots then you can resurrect yourself with the soulstone, then use Redemption to resurrect your Priest or Druid. Make sure you resurrect another class able to assist you in resurrecting, then don’t heal them, resurrect a tank second in case you get any adds, after the tank you resurrect a caster like Warlock or Mage to deal damage if you get adds. Even in dying and resurrecting, you have to think strategically in order to avoid resurrection wipes.

You may if you want to get a friend who is an alchemist to the alchemy area to make Flasks in Scholomance and decide to try to speed it up. If you have a warlock with you and you yourself have the viewing room key, a Paladin can jump down from the start area balcony shield open the door and run inside the room and die safely. Once the party follows you down and they die, you resurrect and use Redemption on them. This can save a long time running through the instance clearing mobs.

People may think the comments are useless or not needed but this guide’s main aim is not just to show what a spell does but the possibilities that the spells have too.

Exorcism
This spell causes 505 to 563 Holy damage to an Undead or Demon target. The use of this has been greatly enhanced since being able to use on demons as you can use it on Warlock pets. It has a 15 second cooldown and costs 345 mana. A very handy spell that lets Paladins grind undead mobs especially easy.

Turn Undead
This isnt usable on Horde undead due to them being Humanoid. This causes the undead target to flee for up to 20 seconds. Only one target can be caused to flee at a time and it has a 30 second cooldown. This is handy if you have too many mobs attacking you but you have to be careful of the fleeing target picking up additional mobs while it’s running away.

Holy Wrath
This is a Paladin AoE that causes 490 to 576 Holy damage to all Undead and Demon targets within 20 yds. Very handy but has a 60 second cooldown and costs 805 mana. Really best usable when you have mana to spare and when your swamped with mobs that the AoE will work on.

Divine Intervention
Divine Intervention kills the Paladin instantly but removes the target party member from the battle. They lose all agro, they are unable to cast and unable to move and for the duration of the effect are immune to all harmful attacks. It lasts 3 minutes and can be dispelled by right clicking on the buff.

Make sure when using this that you cast it on someone out of range of mobs and patrols and make sure your party designated ‘puller’ or the tank that starts any fights knows to pull mobs away from any area where mobs are due to respawn, where mobs stand or where mobs patrol or when the effect wears off then your protected healer can resurrect you. Always use a class that can resurrect or if all are dead and you know someone is an engineer with jumper cables with a chance to resurrect someone cast it on them.

Instant cast and has a 60 minute cooldown. It uses Symbol of Divinity as the reagent for this spell.

Consecration
This is one of the best spells a paladin can have and its well worth putting talent points in the Holy tree to get it. It does 280 Holy damage over 8 sec to all mobs who enter the area of effect. It costs 435 mana and has an 8 second cooldown meaning you can recast the second the AOE runs out.

Warriors have Challenging Shout. An AoE taunt that causes all mobs nearby to focus on the warrior for 6 seconds. In that 6 seconds the warrior needs to build up enough hate with them all to be able to keep them hitting him and not the cloth wearers. Problem is that Challenging shout has a 10 minute cooldown so isn’t usable more than once every few groups of mobs.

One warrior claimed that you can just taunt but taunt causes one target to focus on the warrior for a few seconds and in that time the warrior needs to have done some threat generation to keep the target and with taunt having a 10 second cooldown it is hard work. This works many times perfectly fine but in places like Dire Maul with Scorpid packs or dog packs often a Warrior attacks, and soon after a mage runs in and AoE’s and due to the warrior not being able to taunt so many targets the mage ends up getting so much hate generation he will die faster than a healer can heal him even with a Power Word: Shield.

A paladin with Retribution Aura, 1 handed weapon and shield for the extra armour and block chance and Righteous Fury buff active can run into the mobs and cast consecration and keep spamming it. This causes threat from your holy damage AoE, Righteous Fury increasing it by 60% and also threat generated by Retribution Aura. The dog packs will eat you up quick but not as quick as a mage and a Warrior can charge and pick up agro and dps, a mage can run in and dps and by the time the mage has the agro the packs are almost dead meaning no dead mage.

Another use is in Zul’Gurub with the panther boss where the side panthers cant be taunted because of them prowling to the group at the wall, Challenging Shout is too long a cooldown at 10 minutes to be helpful when you need a chain taunt and Thunder Clap like some Warrior suggested to me doesn’t cause enough threat to keep the panthers in place and off of the wall group.

With a warrior each side and a paladin there each side to heal and AoE, the main group rarely will get any panther adds no matter who is marked and the one or two that get through are manageable. This is done by having Paladins using rank 1 Consecration and Retribution Aura with a 1 handed weapon and shield. The panthers stop heading to the main group and attacks the Paladin causing more damage from the Retribution Aura causing more threat. The warrior then can pick and taunt targets off the paladin without having a lot of them streaming towards the back wall. In the fight you will find that the paladins can heal themselves and the warrior nicely and will require support healing but depending mostly on gear. Using rank 1 Consecration causes enough damage to get the panthers attention but doesn’t drain your mana dry when casting so you can keep the AoE up and keep the healing up.

Another use of this spell is to use it as a line breaker in PvP. Some use it in AV to break a line by running in and spamming consecration then shielding, healing, then carrying on or trying to get back to safety depending on the situation.

My point with the write-up about this spell is that it doesn’t ‘just’ do AoE and that’s it. As with any paladin spell, you can use it to your advantage in many different ways if you think to try out new ideas.


Divine Shield & Divine Protection
Divine Protection shields the target from physical and magical damage for a short time. While this is on you are unable to attack. Divine Shield is the later level version that lets you attack when shielded but at 50% of speed.

Divine Shield to many Paladins is the spell that will keep them alive most in PvP and PvE when getting too many mobs that they are unable to handle. It gives you a much needed time to gather your thoughts and prepare for getting back into the fight or even do the much joked about ‘Divine Shield and Hearthstone’. Yes it does work and one use of it is if your helping a low level friend in a contested area and he gets killed by a player and the player manages to stay just out of range of you while running to the nearest town, you are able to run after them, attack and either kill or know when your out of luck and then just Divine Shield and Hearthstone out of the guards and other players within that town’s range of being able to attack you.

Cowardly? Maybe, Maybe not. That depends on if you count killing someone that goes around killing low level opposing faction and getting out alive any way possible as cowardly.

You can also jump from great heights and survive the fall with Divine Shield. Felwood to Darkshore, Loch Modan to Wetlands, Tanaris to Un’Goro Crater are just some of the survivable jumps.

Holy Shield
At level 60, this increases your chance to block with a shield by 30% for 10 seconds or for 4 charges. When you’re hit, a charge is used up. When a charge is used it has blocked with +30% chance to block, deals 130 Holy Damage for each blocked attack and the holy damage caused by Holy Shield causes an additional 20% threat.

This is the 31 point protection spell and if your going heavy into protection, in my view a must have. Sure it’s a mana drain and yes it only blocks 4 hits and has a 10 second cooldown so if your hit 4 times in 5 seconds you have to wait 5 seconds before reactivating but then it is worth it. The increased threat stacked with the normal holy damage retribution aura consecration and add to that the threat increase from ‘Righteous Fury’ makes it very easy to gain agro from mobs.

If you spec Protection/Retribution you can get good protection and threat management and nice damage dealing but your healing is less than what a lot of Paladins like. You damage great, reckon boming is devastating if your speced that way but with the retribution tree you can gain Benediction for the reduced mana cost of Retribution spells, Deflection for +5 % chance to parry, Eye for an eye to deal some damage and threat back to the caster too and Improved Retribution Aura for the increased Holy Damage done too. Add Seal of Command to the list and you have yourself a build that can deal a lot of damage and receive a lot of punishment while dealing reactionary damage back to the attacker.

If you spec Protection/Holy you can get good protection and threat management and nice healing and getting Consecration is a must for me with almost any build but especially with a heavy protection build. For me the break point in the Holy tree is 14 points. Divine Intellect 5/5, Spiritual Focus 5/5, Healing Light 3/3, Consecration 1/1. If I plan to put more than this then its either a completely stacked spec towards the end or I leave it there and would put the last points into increasing the Protection tree or getting Benediction to save on the mana drain.

Weapon Damage, Damage Per Second and Speed
This has been something that has taken a lot of work to explain to many people and some people still don’t get the importance of the issue. Speed is the delay between your attacks with the current weapon. Damage Per Second is the average damage you get per second. This is often a better way to judge how much damage a weapon will do than using ‘Damage’ though damage gives you an idea of the base damage the weapon can do.

If you have a weapon with a speed of 2.10 that does 60dps and has 100 – 160 damage then you know that you can do an average 60 damage a second, a basic 100 – 160 damage per swing before seal or attack power damage bonus and also be able to get 4 swings out in a 10 second period. This means if you have a seal judged you get 4 chances at renewing it. If you are out of range in one attack because of the target moving, then he blocks a second attack, then he dodges the third but your fourth attack hits then your judgement is renewed. This is useful to know because some weapons can do a huge amount of damage but the speed is 3.50. This means you get only 2 attacks on a target for refreshing judgements and if you miss one and are blocked on the second, you waste more mana in rejudging something.

Some may say they don’t want to judge something on the target and just hit it… if so then why have they bothered rolling a Paladin when one of the two uses our main spells have they chose to not want to bother with? Think carefully about what you want out of your Paladin and what equipment you use as while there is no right or wrong way only your preferred way of playing, if you wish to play with others they may have expectations of your class in general.

Glossary of Terms
AoE – Area of Effect. Usually used when referring to a spell that does damage over a radius and causes an area of the spells effect. Like Arcane Explosion, Psychic Scream, Consecration. These all do an area of the spells effect and so need to be carefully used to avoid breaking a sleeping or sheeped or not attacked yellow mob for example.

Spam – Often used when people want you to repeatedly hit a spell or selection of spells. Like, ‘spam AE’ to a Mage means constantly use Arcane Explosion through the fight to damage as many mobs at once.

Dispel – Remove a beneficial or harmful spell effect. In game you will often see some people now saying ‘Paladins decurse!’. We cant decurse but we can cleanse and that’s what they mean. Due to an addon called ‘Decursive’ that shows everyone who has a dispelable debuff on them and lets you set a single key or create a button for cleansing those in the list that needs cleansing. It saves you manually selecting people and can be spammed. This is something all Paladins need to do in raids or groups and can help to save a raid or group from wiping.

Mob – Used to refer to a target. Can be neutral, hostile or friendly. If someone says ‘there are 6 mobs’ then they will usually mean 6 hostile targets though.

DPS – Damage Per Second. This is often used as a lazy way to say deal damage. Like for example, ‘DPS on the boss NOW!’.

Chance on Hit – Paladin seals and judgements are mostly based on ‘chance to hit’. This means when you hit, there is a chance that you will get the effect. It’s not a great system but it’s the one paladins have and arguably we make do nicely with the cards we have been dealt.

PvP – Player versus Player. It means fighting another character that is player controlled and not computer controlled. This is often done to gain benefits from faction or from PvE Rank system rewards. More information can be found through using the official websites information on PvP and rewards.

PvE – Player versus Environment. Used in meaning gaming without other plaers or in partnership not competition with other players. Often doing quests or doing instance runs for loot or money or maybe that specific item you always wanted.