World of Warcraft: Paladin

Today, September 6th, 2009, I will be reviewing the Paladin class of World Of Warcraft. First off, my Paladin is level 70, here is the link to my armory http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Firetree&n=Galahalt. 

As a brief overview of the class, it is a Hybrid, a healer, Dps (Damage dealer), and a tank. With the Retribution talent tree focusing on bust Dps, favoring a slow 2-handed weapon. The Protection Tree focuses on tanking, and being the one who takes the damage in groups so that others do not. The Holy tree is the healing tree; It focuses on single target healing and tank healing, with no Heal over times or AoE (area of effect) heals. All three talents trees are good. 

I would have to say that I liked the Paladin. I felt that leveling in the beging was a little slow, until some more damage abilities came along. I did most leveing as retribution, with my off-spec as either holy or protection. It was a relatively quick class to level, probably due to little down time. It has great survivability, so quests were easy to complete, and pvp was fun. And with the versitility of the paladin, groups were easy to find, but usually expect to heal or tank (although I was able to Dps alot from 58 onward because there were many more Death Knights around). So lets run through a bit how the class plays.

Healing. Being a healer as a Paladin is not that fun. You can heal very well in instances and such as the tank healer, and you have great mana efficiency. Most of the time, its just spaming Holy Light, with the occassional flash of light. One cool thing is Holy Shock, a holy tree ability, that acts as either an instant cast heal, or a damage spell, which is very usefull. Overall, healing is powerful single target, but no much besides that.

Dps. A Retribution Paladin is a LOT of fun. It focuses on burst damage, and lots of it. As a level 67, Poorly Geared, ret paladin, I was able to hold about 1k Dps in instances. Yet, it is not that exciting until you get crusader strike and Divine Storm (Ret Tree talents). This is mainly due to the fact that most damage that happens is passive. But once you get those, you acctually start pressing some buttons and having more fun.

Protection. Prot Paladins have two different ways to go. There is the AoE leveling Prot pally that can fight multiple mobs at once, that are around the same leveling, and come out with basically full health and mana. The tank prot paladins are able to throw down some AoE spells to tank multiple targets (as they are the best multi target tanks in the game) and use abilities like Holy Shield to help block, and Avenger’s Shield and Hammer of Rightiousness to do some multi target damage. Paladins tanks are best for instance tanking, rather than raid tanking, where they fall to more of an off tank role. 

Buffs. The Paladin is the buff god. With Auras that can boost damage, defense, and speed, they can do a lot. Plus, they have blessings which are 10/30 minute buffs that can do many things from buffing mp5 (mana per 5 seconds) to buffing attack power, or even buffing all stats by 10%. Paladins are loved for their buffs, but remember to keep them up!

Utilites. The Paladins have a few useful utilities. They can sacrafice themselves in battle to save group mates, and they can use “hands” on self and party memebers that have different effects. The most well known paladin is their ability to bubble, which fully protects them for 8 seconds, which allows for mid battle bandaging (first aid), healing, or even Hearthing!

Pros. I liked the ability of the paladin to survive FOREVER. With abilities like seal/judgement of light/wisdom, they can gain health or mana just by swinging their weapon! They also can fill any role, so if you get bored with Dps, you could always switch over to tanking or healing. I liked the many buffs they had aswell, and the free mounts always felt good . I also liked the ability to run low level dungeons with ease, yet it sometimes gets annoying when low level guildies always as to get run… O yeah, you NEVER die in pvp.

Cons. There are three main cons that I find with the Paladin. One is the gear. It is very hard to find healing plate, so either you go without, or battle for it with priests, druids, and shamans. Weapons are also harder to get because everyone wants a good weapon, but thats typical for most classes. Another con I find is that Paladin healing is boring. You don’t get much versitility, and it seems pretty repetitive with Holy Light. The last, and probably the main con with the paladin in my opinion is the passive gameplay. Maybe its just me, but it seems like most of the fighting, even as ret, is just droping a judgement, and then using a divine storm or crusader strike, its doesn’t seem like there is much to choose from, there arent that many direct damage, spells. 

Overall, I like the paladin. It can do well in all roles, its always welcome in groups, and itsvery powerful. I think that that all specs are good, but I think that Holy is the most boring, simply because its Holy Light only. Would I level another paladin? No. The early levels are Really boring, kind of like a druid. Will I play it alot? Yes. Although, after playing a class that only seemed REALLY good at tanking (solid at dps, and good at single target only healing), I feel that I want to either play a mage to change it up to range DPS, or a druid, for the fun healing. If anybody has a suggestion, PLEASE say so, I’m having a hard time deciding. If you have any questions, or need a run through an instance, you can message me at ‘galahalt’ on the ‘firetree’ server. So thanks for reading!