The Ultimate Retribution Paladin Leveling Guide

LF1M need healer and tank! Instead of spending your time looking for a healer or tank; be sought after for heroic content and raids. The Ultimate Paladin Leveling Guide will show you how to get there super fast so you too can be a level 80 Paladin. High level paladins can dual spec as damage dealers, tanks and healers in World of Warcraft and will always be needed by groups and raids. This guide will show you the insider tricks of leveling a paladin.

Instances for Beginners:

Unless you are a sadomasochistic veteran player who wants to revisit low level instances, do not look for pick up groups before you are level 70-80. Most low level pick up groups are an exercise in misery for a healer because: everyone is off spec (specialization) for their class, no one is well geared and many are still learning how to play their class.

Wiping repeatedly in the Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep or Scarlet Monastery is not going to advance you as a player. Skip the low level instances unless you have a higher level character to run you through for the sake of getting some exp, gear and quests. The only exception to the rule is if you have found some experienced players who want to work on their low level characters. Finally, it slows down your leveling while you wait for a pick up group and even more time consuming when they go AFK (away from keys), leave early and fight over loot.

Leveling a Paladin:

Leveling a Paladin is easier if you specialize in retribution and have the right gear, glyphs and talents to take you to the top! As a paladin you are different from the other classes such as rogues and warriors who can level feral without using mana. As a paladin, you will always be dependent on mana for casting your seals and attacks. Fortunately the retribution tree has the replenishment effect but to level efficiently, you will need to manage your mana well and be able to deal out significant damage constantly.

Leveling Method 1: Recruit-A-Friend

First off, old school leveling sucks because it is slow and tedious. Leveling moves fastest if you use the (Recruit-A-Friend) program and Dual box your two characters. Recruit A Friend gives a straight up 300% or triple experience point gain for both mob kills and quest turn ins and the ability to summon the other character once an hour.

Also, if you use the Recruit A Friend program you will get a Zhevra Epic Mount and earn levels that you can grant to your paladin. Having leveled up multiple level 80 characters the old way, including a paladin, Recruit-A-Friend is a godsend. Level up with a DPS class or even faster if you level two DPS classes and grant levels to the new paladin. If you can get instance runs and dual box, it is possible to get to level 60 in a couple days of game time, if not hours. If you use heirloom shoulders and chest you will receive an amazing 320% bonus from quests and killing monsters.

Leveling Method 2: Solo as a Retribution Paladin

With the retribution specialization paladins enjoy the highest DPS of all of the talent trees but are still highly dependent on mana but if you use your judgments correctly mana will not be an issue. Always cast judgment spells first and trigger the replentishment effect. Retribution paladins should max out the following stats on their gear in order to level quickly: Strength, Hit, Critical Hit and Attack Power.

How to maximize your DPS (damage per second) while leveling:

Always have Retribution Aura and Blessing of Might on your paladin. Start with your judgments and highest DPS spells first and rotate them: Judgment, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm and Consecration. You can also use the Exorcism spell to pull mobs at a distance.

The Fastest Leveling Retribution Paladin Build:

Retribution Talents: 5/11/54

Benediction 5/5, Improved Judgments 2/2, Heart of the Crusader 3/3, Improved Blessing of Might 2/2, Conviction 5/5, Pursuit of Justice, Crusade 3/3, Sanctity of Battle 3/3, Crusade 3/3, Sanctified Retribution 1/1, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization 3/3, Vengeance 3/3, The Art of War 2/2, Repentance 1/1, Judgments of the Wise 3/3, Fanaticism 3/3, Sanctified Wrath 2/2, Crusader Strike 1/1, Swift Retribution 3/3, Sheath of Light 3/3, Righteous Vengeance 3/3, Divine Storm 1/1, Seals of the Pure 5/5, Divinity 3/5, Divine Strength 5/5, Guardian's Favor 2/2, Divine Sacrifice 1/1

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Judgment: Use: Your Judgements deal 10% more damage.

Glyph of Consecration: Use: Increases the duration and cooldown of Consecration by 2 sec.

Glyph of Crusader Strike: Use: Reduces the mana cost of your Crusader Strike ability by 20%.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of the Wise: Reduces the mana cost of your Seal of Wisdom spell by 50%.

Sense Dead: Use: Damage against Undead increased by 1% while your Sense Undead ability is active.

Glyph of Lay on Hands: Use: Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands spell by 5 min.

Tradeskills

Consider Mining, skinning, blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting for your new paladin. Blacksmithing and Jewel crafting will give you the best end game gear but both professions are extremely costly to get without mining. You may wish to start out with mining and skinning and stockpile mining materials in your bank for later. The benefits of starting out with mining are that you will acquire the toughness trait which will give you extra stamina. By taking skinning as a secondary profession, you will be able to sell hides and will also get extra critical hit and DPS from the Master of Anatomy trait.

Heirloom Gear:

Heirloom gear will scale with your paladin from level 1 all the way to level 80 and grant unique bonuses which will speed up your leveling. You will save money also, because your new character will not need to upgrade their gear constantly. The downside is that you have to invest time and emblems of heroism to obtain these items.

Chest: Polished Breastplate of Valor adds 10% extra experience and the perfect stats for a retribution paladin. If you can get this for your new paladin, it's a must have item that only costs 40 emblems of heroism from the vendor in Dalaran.

Shoulders: Polished Spaulders of Valor gives an extra 10% experience points from quests and monsters, definitely a must have to go with the chest piece of valor. This item also costs 40 Emblems of Heroism.

Trinkets: Discerning Eye of the Beast increases spell power and restores 2% of your maximum 2% mana each time you kill a monster that yields experience. This item is a trinket and you can have two of them and there is no cool down on the mana gain benefit. Imagine yourself burning through entire crowds of mobs nonstop with consecration and area of effect attacks while regaining mana from each mob that dies. The Discerning Eye of the Beast is a great item and costs 50 Emblems of Heroism, each.

Weapons: Bloodied Arcanite Reaper, this item is a slow heavy hitting two handed axe that grants strength, stamina and critical hit which scales with your level is a great choice for your retribution build another good choice is the Reforged True Silver Champion.

Leveling Enchantments for Low Level and Heirloom Gear:

Crusader: Permanently enchant a melee weapon to often heal for 75 to 125 and increase Strength by 100 for 15 sec. when attacking in melee. Has a reduced effect for players above level 60. The Crusader enchantment when it procs will buff your paladin's strength by 100 and give you a small heal. The Crusader enchantment is definitely nice to have and will win fights for you, especially at lower levels.

Lifestealing: Permanently enchant a melee weapon to often steal life from the enemy and give it to the wielder. Has a reduced effect for players above level 60. Lifestealing is considered an attack and the enemy can resist it, this enchantment is generally considered better for rogues who dual wield fast weapons but it is nicer to have than fiery weapon if you can afford it.

Fiery Weapon: Permanently enchant a melee weapon to often strike for 40 additional fire damage. Fiery weapon is a cheap enchantment that you should consider getting just for the extra damage if you can't afford Crusader or Lifestealing. If you have enchanting on a higher level character, you can run through the Cathedral wing of the Scarlet Monastery twice, disenchant the blue items from the bosses and do this enchantment for your low level paladin for pennies.

Enchant Chest Major Mana: Permanently enchant chest armor to increase mana by 100. This enchant is really cheap and definitely worth having, especially at low levels.

Enchant Bracer Superior Strength: Permanently enchant bracers to increase Strength by 9.

Enchant Gloves Greater Strength: Use: Permanently enchant gloves to increase Strength by 7.

Enchant Boots Greater Stamina: Use: Permanently enchant boots to increase Stamina by 7.

Normal Gear:

Always choose gear that gives strength, critical hit chance, hit rating, attack power and stamina. You can use green "of the bear" gear as filler for leveling because this will increase your most vital leveling stats. You may wish to obtain some crafted or bind on equip rare or epic items to speed the leveling process.

See Kaliban's Loot List for an in-depth guide to all the instances and quests that offer paladin gear. If you don't want to buy the heirloom gear or rare/epic gear for your paladin, this website will help you plan out which instances and quests to do to get your gear for free. When you are level 57 or higher you can begin to replace your gear with Beast, Bandit, or Soldier platemail to gain a combination of stats, attack power and critical hit that is unavailable on classic gear.

Add Ons for Leveling:

You do not need to buy a commercial leveling guide to get all the in game benefits for leveling! Curse.com and Carbonite offer free addons that will help you complete your quests and track your experience point gain and reveal the map to you! I recommend that you try out different addons to see which one you like best. I prefer Mobmap, Questhelper and Cartographer but you may prefer Carbonite as many players do.

The Best addons for this method of leveling is Carbonite. Carbonite keeps track of all of your quests and shows you where to go in order to complete them in game. This addons is now free, perfectly legal to use in World of Warcraft and not to be confused with 3rd party autobot programs. When an addon is just modifying your interface or providing information and not automating the game, generally it is safe to use it with World of Warcraft.

If you have any doubts about this there is an official Blizzard forum just for addons and macros that you can go to and ask questions and you can also ask a gamemaster ingame if you have any lingering doubts.Cartographer and and MobMap are also available on Curse.com MobMap is available through the developer's website at MobMap.de Both of these programs are good alternatives for Carbonite. Questhelper was once the addon of choice but was discontinued after Blizzard announced changes to its policies about how developers can request donations.

Leveling Process:

If you don't have a friend, relative or guild member you can wrangle into running you through all instances go questing. Quest, quest and quest some more and keep your experience point bar on rested or blue bar the entire way.

Questing will take you a bit longer than being run through instances but will also yield nice gear and achievements for your new characters. I love Jame's guides because he tells you in a logical way how to plan what your doing in each zone to minimize the time you have to spend leveling and what items to pick up before you leave town. Jame keeps his guides updated and I have used his website for years.

Jame even has a new addon that you can use in game. Jame's guide is free, has a community that tests and supports it and has detailed information on how to complete the harder quests. I am so crazy about Jame's guides that I will not attempt to reinvent the wheel, just use his site if you need help with questing.

After level 40, you can buy dual specialization and learn a second role such as holy or protection. If you pick protection, you will be able to tank in dungeons, have extra survivability for fighting elites and you can also use area of effect to kill off massive groups of mobs. If you can afford it, choose a dual specialization in tanking now because it will help you learn how to more effectively play your class and utilize everything your character for the end game. DPS classes are common at level 80, for every player willing to tank or heal, there are at least five looking for a tank or healer. Pick up a dual specialization and you can still enjoy all the benefits of playing the retribution talent tree and still be a sought after healer or tank for instances.

Suggested Zones

1-10: Complete Quests in the starting area for your race

Horde

11-21 Barrens

21-30 Thousand Needles

30-33 Shimmering Flats

33-35 Hillsbrad/Swamp of Sorrows

35-40 Dustmallow Marsh/Stranglethorn Vale

40-45 Tanaris

45-50 Feralas

50-55 Un'Goro Crater

55-60 Eastern and Western Plague Lands

60-62 Hellfire Pennisula

62-64 Zangermarsh

64-66 Terrokar

66-68 Nagrand

68-71 Blade's Edge or Shadowmoon Valley or Netherstorm

71-72 Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord

72-74 Dragonblight

75-77 Grizzly Hills

77-78 Sholazar Bazin/Zul'Drak

78-80 Ice Crown

Alliance:

11-21 Westfall or Darkshore

21-30 Duskwood/Lakeshire or Ashenvale or Wetlands

30-33 Stonetalon Mountains/Desolace

33-35 Hillsbrad/Swamp of Sorrows

35-40 Dustmallow Marsh/Stranglethorn

40-45 Tanaris

45-50 Feralas

50-55 Un'Goro Crater

55-60 Plague Lands

60-62 Hellfire Pennisula

62-64 Zangermarsh

64-66 Terrokar

66-68 Nagrand

68-71 Blade's Edge or Shadowmoon Valley or Netherstorm

71-72 Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord

72-74 Dragonblight

75-77 Grizzly Hills

77-78 Sholazar Bazin/Zul'Drak

78-80 Ice Crown

Now you should be level 80! You could stay retribution or switch to holy or protection, gear up for end game; you're now one of the most desired commodities on the server, a level 80 paladin who can tank and heal.