Paladin Leveling Talent Builds

1. Leveling as Retribution

Once upon a time the way to level a paladin was Protection, pull 10 mobs at once and let them die off damage reflection, however times are changing, and due to the recent buff to low level quest XP, Retribution is once again a contender for a good leveling spec, and leveling as Retribution also lets you master the talent tree and play styles various facets in nice easy chunks. The following section will break down the leveling process gear and talent wise into sections of 10 levels (since that is how many levels between each key talent point) with main sections of 1-40 (pre-plate) 40-60 (pre-Outlands) and 60-70 (pre-raid/Arena).

1.1 The Basics

Leveling a Retribution paladin requires a few basic rules to be followed which make it go OHHH… so much faster, they are these. Firstly, use Blessing of Wisdom on yourself, it cuts your downtime considerably, especially at lower levels, always carry water on you, and drink when your mana drops below 20%ish (getting caught short can be painful in more ways than one), level First Aid - this alone saves you a lot of mana that could be used for smiting something with holy Vengeance and finally, if permitted by the group, roll on healing gear not needed by healers - it may be useful if you are required to main/off heal in instances, which up to about level 40 is about doable with no points in Holy - doing this allows you more freedom to get into groups, you could fill a DPS or a Healer role. Make sure your party knows you are Retribution before starting else they may get upset if you start needing DPS loot as well.

1.2 Level 1-40

The first ten levels of this are pretty boring, Seal of Righteousness and Auto Attack the whole way, with Blessing of Wisdom to keep your mana up and either Devotion or Retribution Aura depending if you want a bit more survivability or a bit more damage dealt, then comes level 10, and your first step on the path… to Retribution!

1.3 Level 1-40 Talents

From level 10 you should start by investing in Benediction, as you are using Blessing of Wisdom to keep your mana up taking Improved Blessing of Might is pretty useless, besides it being a lackluster talent at low ranks of Blessing of Might anyway. At level 15 your first true choice of talents really starts, you have the option for 2/2 Improved Judgement (20% more Judgements, but also using 20% more mana) personally I take this talent, as its an easy boost to early DPS. The other 3 points are yours to chose, taking 3/3 Improved Judgement of the Crusader looks tempting, but soloing you rarely have time to judge Seal of the Crusader anyway, and in groups at this level the damage increase will be negligible at best. Taking 3/5 Deflection basically gives you a 3% damage reduction and slight DPS increase vs all melee mobs you fight solo (an awful lot in the levels to come, and at this point in time is probably a better bet. At level 19 you should have a talent tree something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZZVbh

At level 20 you get the ultimate double edged sword, Seal of Command. At low level this spell will have you feeling invincible one moment, and very much dead the next, however despite its shortfalls, it is the only DPS Seal for Retribution (Horde and Alliance) before level 64. Your next 4 talent points will want to get thrown into Conviction for the bonus critical strike, and to later unlock Vengeance. Once you have 5/5 Conviction you need 4 more points for Sanctity Aura, I suggest 3/3 Pursuit of Justice and 1/3 Crusade, this may seem odd, but the reason for this is that you do an awful lot of running before you get your mount, running 15% faster can make a massive boost to your leveling time, especially when a lot of FedEx quests are involved. The 3% spell avoidance is also nice, coupled with 3/5 Deflection gives you basically a 3% passive damage reduction (yes I know ranged isn’t affected but lets not be pedantic). By level 29 you should be looking at a spec similar to this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZZVbhthz

You are now level 30 and you finally get a decent aura! Stick that point in Sanctity Aura now and get its pew pew time! From this point I would suggest 3/3 Two-Handed Specialization and 1/2 Improved Sanctity Aura to get you to 35, since Improved Sanctity Aura affects all your attacks, and Crusade only affects them against certain creature types. For your final 5 talents before level 40, max out Vengeance get ready for the next phase of your Retribution crusade! At level 39 this spec should be what you are aiming for:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZZVbhthzuq

1.4 Level 40-60

At level 40 things change somewhat, for a start all your armor suddenly became obsolete, and secondly you now have a mount. Now since Pursuit of Justice affects your mount speed having your horsey doesn’t mean you should give this talent up, in fact it makes keeping the talent even more useful. But anyway, on to the talents.

1.5 Level 40-60 Talents

Your level 40 talent will most likely be Repentance, simply because its a useful tool for catching escaping monsters, or an extra spell interrupt, so assuming you’ve put a point in that, where to go now? Firstly I’d put 3/3 into Sanctified Seals, for the extra 3% critical strike it provides. and then a further 1 point in Improved Sanctity Aura to max it out. Now the next 5 points are interesting choices, if you group a lot and feel you are always drawing too much aggro, then you should consider 5/5 Fanaticism, however if you solo more, or feel your damage is lacking I suggest investing two more points in Crusade, and then putting the last three into Sanctified Judgement, this will improve your mana longevity immensely when soloing. So at level 49 you will be looking at a build similar to either this (for Fanaticism) or this (without Fanaticism).
With Fanaticism- http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZZVbhthzuicox

Without Fanaticism- http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZZVbhthcuiIo

At level 50 the fun really begins, because you just learned CRUSADER STRIKE! This extra attack is a massive increase to your damage, and if you didn’t spec Fanaticism before, you probably will need to now, especially with the lack of tank specced tanks at lower levels. Now the interesting question, where to spec now? You can of course invest the next nine talents in Retribution, but for PvE that would, frankly, be a waste. Now might however be an excellent time to respec to something more group oriented with the level 50 instances in grasp and Outlands within sight, so with that in mind I suggest for level 55 to be specced something similar to this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZZVf0thcuiIot

Note that you now have the group utility of Improved Seal of the Crusader - a tangible boost now everyone will be specced deep enough into their DPS trees to gain buffs from crits, and you also have mana regen and threat reduction, to aid with grouping. And for level 60 to be specced with the last five talents in Divine Strength:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxZZVf0thcuiIot

1.6 Leveling in Outlands

Now you are in Outlands the real fun begins, you have to start stacking more and more of the now "primary" stats to keep up with other DPS classes in instances, and this becomes increasingly hard as the next section explains.

1.7 Gear in Outlands

Once you reach Outlands the way gear is distributed shifts heavily, once only end-dungeon bosses dropped the pimp loot, now a lot of it comes from quest chains, many not requiring instances at all. If you have still got level 50ish blue gear you will find yourself quickly gearing up as you quest around Hellfire Peninsula and Zangramarsh. With the 2.4 buff to Retribution loot in Outland there are many good green/blue dungeon and quest rewards with a healthy mix of Strength, Intellect, Stamina and even MP5 (a rare commodity pre-TBC) I won’t list specific gears to take like I did earlier, just follow the guidelines below and your own instincts as to what gear you need now ;-). An excellent source for comparing DPS gear is http://www.maxdps.com/paladin/dps.php which lists all the current items in game in order of how much they willl improve your DPS based on what seal you use and what talents you have.

1.8 The last 10 Talents

Now that you’ve basically got all the talents you need for Retribution PvE DPS to cruise you to level 70, the time has come to decide where you want to do with the last 10. There are two options which reflect your own playing style, the first is to place all 10 into Protection, wasting 5 points on one of the first two useless talents for Precision and Guardians Favor in Tier 2, or even just Precision, with two extra points in Retribution this will maximize your PvE DPS and give you the best chance you can to compete for DPS.

The other option is to spec the last 10 points into Holy (5/5 Spiritual Focus, 3/3 Healing Light, and 2/2 Improved Lay on Hands or Unyielding Faith) this allowing you to heal in instances quite well (assuming you’ve collected gear for it) and with the spell damage stacked on early paladin gear also gives you good self healing to keep yourself going if the shit hits the fan while grinding. For more about level 70 specs see the later sections.