Paladins in Classic

[Denso]

Yo, played paladin on alliance side for the entirety of Vanilla, sits at 110 now though so a bit out of touch with comparisons to live, but I can probably slot in here. :-)

Your raid role is pretty much tank healing, debuff removal (cleansing) and buffing. You'll be competing with priests as the top healer class. Druids seemed pretty niche for most of Vanilla to be fair (a sort of jack of all trades, master of the Mark of the Wild buff only). I haven't read too much about Classic (not even 100% sure I'd play it as I feel that I accomplished almost everything last time around) but at the start of raiding I buffed every single member of the raid every 5 minutes, which means I spent 20% of my time just buffing (more if I had to go looking for people). Eventually Greater Blessings were added that lasted 15 minutes and buffed every single member of a class in one go, which means you pressed 8 buttons every 15 minutes or when rebuffing after a wipe, this... was a MUCH more pleasant experience.

You can "get lucky" and get to raid as retribution, but it's really boring (if you dislike anything RNG about current game, just wait until you re-live Seal of Command) and you'll pretty much have your weapon choice pre-defined (Nightfall) in a more serious setup. We ran this for a few months towards the end (iirc), but you could probably do it from the start. I probably won't have to tell you that raiding as protection (ie. tanking) is off the table in raids as it was a severely underdeveloped spec for the entire duration of Vanilla.

As far as talents go, 29-30 points in Holy were usually mandatory (I think we allowed people to run 29/11/11 with Kings and SoC, but few of us did).

33/05/13 was quite common, picking up SoC to allow yourself to play outside raids.
35/11/05 was equally common, picking up Kings, possibly the strongest buff in the game.
33/18/00 was usually picked by at least one, if not two paladin(s) to ensure we had Imp. Concentration Aura (and Kings) for raids.
30/21/00 was a build that we started using mid-Naxxramas I think with Imp. Concentration Aura and Blessing of Sanctuary. This paladin (we had one) was ever-present and guaranteed a raid spot. This could probably be done in earlier raids as well I think.

I'm not sure how picked Imp. Retribution Aura was, but we might have had someone running with 17 points in Retribution at some point as well. Thing is, the more utility you packed the higher the chance you'd get slotted in for raid. Ideally you wanted to have everything that paladins could bring inside the raid in the best state possible (ie. Improved this, improved that). We (paladins) usually let each other know when we swapped specs though so to ensure we could always bring the best of everything.

This is raiding at a higher level though. You could heal -just fine- with only 20 points Holy (Illumination is too good to pass up for healing, even for other specs). If you're in a more relaxed guild this would work just fine and you'd be able to enjoy the RNG-machine that is the retribution paladin outside of raids as well, or experiment with protection, who knows what your paladin heart desires :-) It's a perfectly fine build for 5-mans, you'd just spend a bit more time drinking as you'd have less mana back lacking the extra crit further down the tree.

As for your questions/ideas you're mostly right. Holy Shock was never used as a mana-efficient healing spells (and absolutely not used on cooldown), you'd use it purely as an emergency spell (ie. you -had- to move and the tank was dying). As far as downranking goes I believe I used Holy Light rank 3 or rank 4 for a very long time (as it smashed Flash of Light for mana efficiency), only towards the end when I had crazy good gear (with enough mp5 and %crit) and the tanks started taking more damage I started using max ranks.

I'll add a little complementary screenshot at the end for mood's sake, once x-realm battlegrounds opened I met my (and I believe a lot of other paladins') idol during Vanilla, stopped him for a quick chat about our class and raiding and then we duo'd Drek'thar after. Excuse the mess of a UI, but this is 17" so what can you do. I think it's a complete package out of the box (Photek?).



Go Paladins!

Hope this helps. :-)

[Akasha64]

What people say here is true. They were buffbots, but they were also healers. Probably were more mana efficient single target healers than priests too (Flash Heal for priests costs WAY too much mana), making them good tank healers and even raid healers. Though I don't think they had many AoE healing spells or even HoTs.

[s0ul]

lol these clowns in the thread saying only <enter spec here> is viable for PvE/PvP. Play whatever you like. Only the top guilds going for world first are going to give a fuck about what spec you play.

[Armourboy]

What people say here is true. They were buffbots, but they were also healers. Probably were more mana efficient single target healers than priests too (Flash Heal for priests costs WAY too much mana), making them good tank healers and even raid healers. Though I don't think they had many AoE healing spells or even HoTs.

Pretty sure Paladin didn't get an AoE heal til Cata.

[Otaka]

Yo, played paladin on alliance side for the entirety of Vanilla, sits at 110 now though so a bit out of touch with comparisons to live, but I can probably slot in here. :-)

Your raid role is pretty much tank healing, debuff removal (cleansing) and buffing. You'll be competing with priests as the top healer class. Druids seemed pretty niche for most of Vanilla to be fair (a sort of jack of all trades, master of the Mark of the Wild buff only). I haven't read too much about Classic (not even 100% sure I'd play it as I feel that I accomplished almost everything last time around) but at the start of raiding I buffed every single member of the raid every 5 minutes, which means I spent 20% of my time just buffing (more if I had to go looking for people). Eventually Greater Blessings were added that lasted 15 minutes and buffed every single member of a class in one go, which means you pressed 8 buttons every 15 minutes or when rebuffing after a wipe, this... was a MUCH more pleasant experience.

You can "get lucky" and get to raid as retribution, but it's really boring (if you dislike anything RNG about current game, just wait until you re-live Seal of Command) and you'll pretty much have your weapon choice pre-defined (Nightfall) in a more serious setup. We ran this for a few months towards the end (iirc), but you could probably do it from the start. I probably won't have to tell you that raiding as protection (ie. tanking) is off the table in raids as it was a severely underdeveloped spec for the entire duration of Vanilla.

As far as talents go, 29-30 points in Holy were usually mandatory (I think we allowed people to run 29/11/11 with Kings and SoC, but few of us did).

33/05/13 was quite common, picking up SoC to allow yourself to play outside raids.
35/11/05 was equally common, picking up Kings, possibly the strongest buff in the game.
33/18/00 was usually picked by at least one, if not two paladin(s) to ensure we had Imp. Concentration Aura (and Kings) for raids.
30/21/00 was a build that we started using mid-Naxxramas I think with Imp. Concentration Aura and Blessing of Sanctuary. This paladin (we had one) was ever-present and guaranteed a raid spot. This could probably be done in earlier raids as well I think.

I'm not sure how picked Imp. Retribution Aura was, but we might have had someone running with 17 points in Retribution at some point as well. Thing is, the more utility you packed the higher the chance you'd get slotted in for raid. Ideally you wanted to have everything that paladins could bring inside the raid in the best state possible (ie. Improved this, improved that). We (paladins) usually let each other know when we swapped specs though so to ensure we could always bring the best of everything.

This is raiding at a higher level though. You could heal -just fine- with only 20 points Holy (Illumination is too good to pass up for healing, even for other specs). If you're in a more relaxed guild this would work just fine and you'd be able to enjoy the RNG-machine that is the retribution paladin outside of raids as well, or experiment with protection, who knows what your paladin heart desires :-) It's a perfectly fine build for 5-mans, you'd just spend a bit more time drinking as you'd have less mana back lacking the extra crit further down the tree.

As for your questions/ideas you're mostly right. Holy Shock was never used as a mana-efficient healing spells (and absolutely not used on cooldown), you'd use it purely as an emergency spell (ie. you -had- to move and the tank was dying). As far as downranking goes I believe I used Holy Light rank 3 or rank 4 for a very long time (as it smashed Flash of Light for mana efficiency), only towards the end when I had crazy good gear (with enough mp5 and %crit) and the tanks started taking more damage I started using max ranks.

Go Paladins!

Hope this helps. :-)

Thanks for that, this was exactly what i was expecting to find.

If i may ask is seal of command THAT good for soloing? i mean sure it hits hard but its rng... i have found in my mere leveling experience that using seal of crusader is more efficient in killing mobs overall since it makes you hit harder and theres no rng element involved. (other than if your melee hit even hits )
I would imagine this being the case in max level farming too. Have a weapon with low speed, buff the speed with seal of crusader and you are hitting alot faster.

Nice screenshot btw, as i already claimed i wasnt a paladin player but my paladin "idol" back in the day was Jamaz, i saw his pvp videos and was impressed at how good paladin was in open pvp as a heavy support-class. :P

[Super Kami Dende]

I played Ret from start to end of Vanilla and raided all the way up to 4 horsemen. Don't listen to anyone that says Paladins could only be healers, they usually either never played Vanilla, or are just parroting what other people incorrectly thought.

[Otaka]

lol these clowns in the thread saying only <enter spec here> is viable for PvE/PvP. Play whatever you like. Only the top guilds going for world first are going to give a fuck about what spec you play.

haha yeah. xD
It was inevitable that some people would come and try tell whats it like despite not having any experience on the matter.
Thankfully denso saved the day... i will link his reply to the OP so if other people are searching for information they dont have to read through the trolls.

[Armourboy]

I used to run 33/11/7 but I can't exactly remember why ( can't remember some of the individual talents and can't hover over on my phone to see it )

Seems like it covered all the healing stuff, kings, and let you pick up the judgement reduction in Ret, but that was a long time ago and the reasoning slips my mind.

[Perkunas]

More likely, from someone who never played Vanilla and is just mindlessly repeating all the memes about it. I mean, he's speaking about bloodlust.

Didn't catch that. This person is clearly an idiot.

[Monster Hunter]

Ive been thinking of rolling a paladin in the classic for the very purpose of being a strong support healer (healer in dungeons and support in pvp) with the capability to meleeing when necessary.

Are there any experienced paladins who can dive more deeply into the depth of what paladins do in endgame classic? PvP and PvE.

No trolls or memes please, im already well aware of all the memes about how paladins just keep buffing in raids and nothing else.


My personal experience with paladins is only low to mid levels in authentic classic and i did level up one on the infamous server that pretty much started this journey to get our official servers.


The build i went for in the latter experience was this (after level 50): 24/27/0
The purpose of that build is to utilize the paladins incredible survival capabilities... use shield and 1h to benefit from block against all melee with reckoning working as a punishment tool and use concentration aura with unyielding faith to possibly avoid CC and silences against ranged.
Mainly pvp build... but by no means useless in PvE dungeons, you still have significant healing power with the proper gear.

When i healed i think its far more mana efficient to use holy light and some lower ranks of it instead of going all the way to holy shock which i dont think is very useful, or am i mistaken?

What do you guys think... and can you give your insight to what is after the 5 mans if i were ever to venture into the real endgame progression....what should i expect?


EDIT: Insight has been given by Denso... here is his reply so you can skip scrolling: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post50951301

Keep the buffs up and spam low rank versions of holy light to top people up. Is ensentialy what I did end game.

Though to be Completly honest I susaly just put my self on follow, tabbed in every 5 mins buffed the raid then tabbed out.

Did that from pritty much every boss from mc to half way through AQ40.

It's a bit of shitty thing that untill AQ you arn't really all that good at doigg anything except buffing. AQ gear was much better designed and you start putting out some decent healing. But gearing takes ages. And other classes have a higher prio on Alot of gear over a Paladin.

- - - Updated - - -

Pretty sure Paladin didn't get an AoE heal til Cata.

Holy light at various ranks was the go to for pritty much everything.

Down ranked holy light was better than any rank flash.
Holy shock was an emergency heal for if you had to move. Personally I never bothered with it. As I wanted some other talents.

[VanishingAct]

I don't know if it will happen in the age of soy but back in the day we legit had raid leaders that would scream on vent to the pallies to update their buffs. You'd always get that one snarky mage on vent in a dry tone say 'Can the pally for grp5 pls buff GBoW for the 3rd time...'

[BaronRivendare]

I was a healbot from Vanilla up until the end of BC. As most have stated going full Holy is going to be your most useful/optimal option by far. I remember there was always that "what-if" thought in my head and once in a while I would switch up the talents towards ret or even prot and for where Paladins were at that time, it was just total garbage. For ret for instance, you literally just had crusader strike on a very slow cool down, that's it, one button that could do damage on top of auto attacking if you can imagine that vs. today's ret that has all kinds of CD's ready to instantly pop. Prot was just a complete joke unless your raid wanted you to off tank a really easy mob, otherwise you would get crushed as there weren't manage damage mitigation options at the time.
As far as quality of life, they were second to none on pumping fast single target heals, I know some have said FoL was the main go-to but after gearing up a bit and getting some haste/crit you could nail some huge crits with Holy Light to bring people to full health and we were really sought after in PVP as well. Holy Shock was awesome when you would toss an instance Crit heal to a tank that was a bout to die and then follow it up with other heals. Also it was very hard to kill me in PVP (I was in half Naxx gear with a few AQ/BWL pieces). With HoJ's effectiveness for a solid stun, BoF, BoSacrifice, BoSalvation we had a lot of tools up our sleeve. I would run around with a very geared Arms warrior who had the Dark Edge of Insanity and he would own everything in sight while I kept him up. The nice thing if like a mage wanted to poly me, I would just toss Blessing of Sacrifice on him and damage to him would instantly keep popping me out of Poly etc. It was awesome fun. Great FC too.

[Hottage]

Though to be Completly honest I susaly just put my self on follow, tabbed in every 5 mins buffed the raid then tabbed out.

Did that from pritty much every boss from mc to half way through AQ40.

So you didn't bother learning Greater Blessings before starting in AQ40?

[anon5123]

Holy light at various ranks was the go to for pritty much everything.

Down ranked holy light was better than any rank flash.

2.5 second cast.

Have fun getting sniped by every other healer in raids lol

[Monster Hunter]

2.5 second cast.

Have fun getting sniped by every other healer in raids lol

It's that or go oom.

Your job was spam it on the tank. Leave the rest of the raid to the raid healers.

[anon5123]

It's that or go oom.

Your job was spam it on the tank. Leave the rest of the raid to the raid healers.

....you do not "go oom" spamming flash of light

rofl

have you ever played vanilla at all??

Paladins have infinite mana due to Flash of Light being so cheap and getting mana refunded on every single crit. Stop spreading misinformation. Flash of Light is one of the best raid heals due to how quick and cheap it is.

[Monster Hunter]

So you didn't bother learning Greater Blessings before starting in AQ40?

Tbh I don't think I ever did learn greater blessings. made no difference really to me. I wrote a little bot that played the raid for me about half way into MC. And it handled keeping buffs up and spamming low rank holy light on the tank. And I doubt I bothered to change it after greater blessing was added.

I got suuuuper bored of wow around level 30. But every one kept telling me I had to play and they needed a pala at level 60 and no one else wanted to play pala. So I found my fun writing bots to automate it.

I basicly bot grinded to max from about level 40 when I'd finally had enough. Then when end game ended up being just as dull I worked to automate that or had my freinds farm whilst I was afk.

- - - Updated - - -

....you do not "go oom" spamming flash of light

rofl

have you ever played vanilla at all??

Paladins have infinite mana due to Flash of Light being so cheap and getting mana refunded on every single crit. Stop spreading misinformation. Flash of Light is one of the best raid heals due to how quick and cheap it is.

Holy light flash of light who cared. Just hit one. It's not like I was a priest and any one cared what I did.

I just hit the buffs and watched vids till I got a bots to play for me.

[anon5123]

Holy light flash of light who cared. Just hit one. It's not like I was a priest and any one cared what I did.

I just hit the buffs and watched vids till I got a bots to play for me.

"meh who cares who cares, I just bot"

10/10 would gkick

Just because you found a guild that didn't care what you did and carried you through the content while you did nothing, doesn't mean that's how the class is supposed to be played.

[Monster Hunter]

"meh who cares who cares, I just bot"

10/10 would gkick

Good luck getting 40 plebs then.

My bot did its job. It was only wow not exactly CS.

[StrawberryZebra]

Are there any experienced paladins who can dive more deeply into the depth of what paladins do in endgame classic? PvP and PvE.

I played a Paladin in Vanilla, like you I wanted a melee fighter who could throw out heals as needed, much like the Paladin heroes could in WC3. A heavilly armoured class that wanted to be right in the thick of it. In that regard, it was a pretty miserable experience in hindsight. I ended up wearing a dress, a mish-mash of all armour types and looking like I'd collided with a River Island store traveling at Mach 5 while hanging out with the casters. It was nothing like I'd hoped it would be.

Your main roles in a raid will be buffing, healing and cleansing. Your main roles in PvP will also be buffing, healing and cleansing. Your main healing source is going to be from a down ranked Holy Light. Which rank, specifically, you'll use depends on the content. I used to change them on my hotbar as and when required. Blessing of Light is going to be your best friend here, it was an extra +400 ish bonus healing for Holy Light, so you could down rank it even at base stats with some degree of effectiveness. Flash of Light on the other hand I always used the highest rank, usually combined with a Holy Shock to quickly top someone back up.

Trying to get a build that does both melee and healing well is doomed to failure - You were much more effective if you specialised in doing one thing well rather than being mediocre at two. Probably the closest you're going to get to being a melee fighter is keeping JoW up on the boss. That requires you to melee once every 30 seconds, 60 talented. JoW is a huge, huge benefit for Mages, Warlocks and Hunters. Priests too can squeeze a lot of milage out of it if they get the chance to wand

If i may ask is seal of command THAT good for soloing?

It's not amazing by itself, but it is better than Seal of the Crusader and Seal of Righteousness. It means you can throw on a 2h weapon, any DPS gear you have and still hope to kill a mob in a reasonable timeframe. Even if you only scrape together a set of dungeon blue gear, you'll still be able to do world content for yourself at an acceptable pace.

It's main advantage though is that the proc scales with your Attack Power, Weapon damage, and is able to crit, unlike Seal of Righteousness that scales with Spell Damage exclusively and will only crit when Judged. Plus Seal of Righteousness didn't even scale well with Spell Damage, the total bonus was divided across all the swings you could make in the 30 second duration, so the extra damage on an individual hit was rather low.

When you consider that most Paladins are going to be pretty far down the pecking order when it comes to DPS raid loot, having a talent that lets you solo well enough in 5 man blues is something worth considering.

If you want to go the Spell Damage route, your best bet is to take Consecration and then put points into Protection. Then rounding up as many melee mobs as you can and AoE grinding them down. You're going to deal most of your damage by being hit with this kind of build, so you'll want to be using Retribution Aura most of the time, a Shield spike and any other form of damage reflection you can get your hands on. It's slow at killing single targets, but you can effectively kill mobs in larger groups if you find the right spots. Seal and Judgement of Light are going to be your best friends.

Naturally it would work better with a full Protection build, Blessing of Sanctuary and Holy Shield really do help out a ton, as do a couple of the other talents in the Protection tree. But since you've indicated you want to play a healer I guess that's out of the question.

Demons and Undead are very common in high level zones, so having the Spell Damage to really abuse Exorcism is also a huge help.

The Elephant in the room of course is that getting Spell Damage gear as a Paladin is very difficult. A lot of it is Cloth and Leather, so you're giving up a lot of survivability right there which isn't ideal for a build that will intentionally be taking damage. Plate gear with Spell Damage only really starts showing up around BWL, so you're going to be wearing caster gear for a long time. Even getting Spell Damage blues can be a challenge, there's a lot of competition for them right from the off.

It's so much easier to take Seal of Command and still make a workable healing build that can function for solo play and doesn't require too much of you to get it up and running. It does it's job everywhere, unlike a Spell Damage orentated build which is harder to create with a healing spec, needs specific gear choices, specific mob types and grind spots etc. If you have to attach that many conditions to it, you have to ask "is it even that good at all?".