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WoW Paladin Leveling Guide - Cataclysm Leveling & Spec

Free WoW Paladin Leveling Guide:

With the coming of WoW: Cataclysm all classes have suffered major redesigns and so has the paladin class. Talent trees have been changed as well as the mechanics. Holy power has been introduced to the paladin class. What holy power represents is a sort of combo point that can go up to three and used up to either do additional damage or do additional healing, certain paladin abilities now don’t use mana but holy power, such as:Templar’s verdict, Word of Glory, Inquisition, Light of Dawn and others.

We will talk more about this later.

What did not change in Cataclysm and will never change is the basic idea behind best leveling and that is more damage + less down time = faster leveling. The faster you can complete quests the faster you level up, the less time u spend healing up or drinking the faster you will move and level.

Your choice still boils down to the protection and retribution tree. Holy spec damage is still way too low to be a decent leveling spec.

Protection vs. Retribution

This is somewhat a hard choice to make. As a protection paladin you will increase your survivability and you will be able to pull several monsters at a time. When fighting single targets however, the damage of a retribution paladin is much higher. Many paladins tend to pick protection over retribution just for the AE grind, which is not a bad choice as u do get faster queues for dungeons as a tank than as a dps.

If you’re really after the best spec you should know it’s a neck-to-neck race between retribution and protections, and whichever you choose you will not go wrong.

Protection

As protection paladin, you are using a one-hand weapon and a shield, while picking up items with strength, stamina dodge, parry and mastery. This way you will increase you survivability reducing your damage taken and allowing you to AE packs of monsters on your own increasing your leveling speed. A basic protection leveling spec should look something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZGMhfRzdRMucbG

Retribution

Retribution paladins have the highest single target damage out of all paladin specs; however, they do take quite a bit more damage than a protection paladin thus making it harder for them to take down several monsters in a single pull. As long as you are able to pull 1-3 monsters at a time, you should be in no danger and have no downtime. Your leveling retribution paladin build should be like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sbhZrZfbGsdkszfz

This build is optimized for maximum single target damage and self-healing. Keep in mind that you can cast a holy light that will heal you up for 300% more (roughly 40% of your total HP), whenever you kill an enemy.

Both of the specs are good and viable and you will not go wrong with either of them. You should base your choice on your favorite play style.  

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