07-01-2005, 11:36 AM
Contents
1. Introduction and FAQ’s
2. Holy Talents
3. Protection Talents
4. Retribution Talents
1. Introduction
About this guide
The purpose of this post is to group together all suggestions in the Paladin Forum and in other guides into a complete guide to Paladin Talents. Please note that this guide is under heavy revision and isn't perfect at all, I'm willing to take any and all suggestions. All Talent descriptions will refer to being fully specialized in that Talent, or highest rank if you learn a skill from it.
Any comments and changes and suggestions and notes of, "Actually this talent rocks because..." and, "I don't like this talent because..." are accepted.
FAQ’s
A. What are the Paladin Talent Trees, and what do they focus on?
Holy - The Holy tree is concerned with healing, Holy damage, and increasing your Mana reserves.
Protection - The Protection tree is used to increase your survivability, help protect other players, and increases threat management.
Retribution - The Retribution tree mostly deals with damage dealing, either by giving new abilities or increasing the effectiveness of skills you already have (with a few notable exceptions).
B. Which tree is the best tree?
All of them; there is no best tree. Each one offers very good abilities all of which complements the paladin's play style. A better question to ask yourself would be, “What kind of Paladin do I want to be?”
C. I'm just starting out and am confused! Help!
If you are beginning a new Paladin, your first five talent points should go into Spiritual Focus. This will help you in every way in your quest to reach level 60, since it allows you to reliably heal in combat (especially so once you receive Concentration Aura). Most Paladin talent builds you encounter will include Spiritual Focus for that very reason. However, from there on your path is entirely your decision.
Many paladins will rush into Retribution to get Seal of Command and Consecration as soon as possible to enhance their damage generation or reduce their required Mana investment in battle, while others will invest another six points into Holy to get the “free heal” every two minutes from Illumination and Divine Favor. The Protection tree is rather weak for solo play until you have 25 or more points invested (level 39 minimum if you have Spiritual Focus). Thus, unless your major focus is being the main tank in a consistent partnership or group of friends, you would be better off investing your points in Retribution or Holy.
Our power is above average up until level 40 (where our abilities begin to plateau) so talent choices beyond the first five points are not a major issue until then. At that point the 1 gold to redo your talents is easy to obtain, and you can build a paladin that best suits your play style.
D. Should I go with one-handed or two-handed weapons?
Both would be ideal. A smart paladin knows when it’s time to use a shield, and when it’s time to whip out their war hammer. I suggest picking up the Weapon Quick Swap UI mod found here:
LINK REMOVE CAUSE OF FORUM
E. What Seal and Judgement combinations are best?
Well, there really is no best Seal combination, but there certainly are a number of combos you may find useful.
Judgement of the Crusader + Seal of Righteousness - Use of this combo will increase a basic level 60 Seal of Righteousness from 67.5 average damage per proc to 106.7. Your Seal’s pre-avoidance DPS will subsequently increase from 13.5 to 21.3. Certain talents will increase this combination’s effectiveness substantially.
Judgement of Light or Wisdom + Seal of the Crusader - Judgement of Light and Wisdom have a flat chance to proc per swing, rather than most of our abilities that proc a certain number of times per minute. Increasing your swing speed by 40% will also increase the rate at which they heal your Health / Mana by the same, while still maintaining a tolerable DPS.
Judgement of Wisdom + Seal of Wisdom - The Mana regeneration provided by this combo is unsurpassed, especially when coupled with Blessing of Wisdom. This generally only gets use when you are trying to solo elites your level or greater, or are burning Mana exceptionally fast in a group. The downside is that you take a good five minutes to kill any single target, making it extremely inefficient for gaining experience or farming for cash. However, if you somehow end up as the last man standing against one target, this could mean the difference between five minutes of downtime and re-clearing an instance.
Judgement of Fury + Seal of Righteousness - Paladins that are their group’s tank will find this combo exceptionally useful. Judgement of Fury greatly amplifies the amount of threat generated by your Holy damage abilities, of which Seal of Righteousness is one. This Seal combination -- coupled with Holy damage talents like Consecration, Holy Shield, and Holy Shock (among others) -- will all but guarantee you are the person your target is hitting.
Judgement of Justice + Seal of Anything - Judgement of Justice prevents your target from fleeing, which can be invaluable in groups, or when soloing in tight quarters against Humanoids. It’s not really a “combo” per se, but still exceptionally useful. =)
F. What does each of the five stats do?
Strength - Increases melee attack power and damage blocked with a shield.
1 Strength = 2 Attack Power = ~0.14 DPS
(Shield block formula required!)
Agility - Increases Critical Hit rate, Dodge rate, and Armor.
1 Agility = ~0.05% Critical Hit rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = ~0.05% Critical Hit rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = 2 Armor
Stamina - Increases Health.
1 Stamina = 10 Health (Note: Stamina gained at level up does not increase Health)
Intellect - Increases Mana, and Spell Critical Hit rate.
1 Intellect = 15 Mana (Note: Intellect gained at level up does not increase Mana)
1 Intellect = 0.01% spell critical rate.
Spirit - Increases Health and Mana regeneration rate.
(Formula required for Health and Mana regeneration!)
G. Which stat is the best stat?
Like talent trees, the best stat combination is one that defines the type of Paladin you want to be. A deep Protection paladin will probably prefer Stamina and Agility to Spirit, while a Holy paladin will jump at the opportunity to pick up more Spirit and Intellect. And neither of those two will care terribly much about Strength, but a Retribution Paladin sure will.
That’s not to say that you should neglect any given stat, but that your priorities will vary depending upon your talent build and play style.
H. What does Skill X do?
Thottbot and Allakhazam both have excellent information on what each skill does, as do several other World of Warcraft-related websites. However, this guide covers the math behind any skills that are affected by talents.
I. What profession should I be?
The Profession question is unfortunately beyond the scope of this guide. Most Paladins choose Blacksmithing or Engineering as their Profession, although nothing is stopping you from being a Tailor, for example. More information can be found elsewhere on this forum.
2. Holy Talents
Improved Lay on Hands
Gives the target of your Lay on Hands spell a 30% bonus to their armor value from items for 1 minute.
When you use lay on hands on someone, it usually means they're in a very near death situation, so giving them full health plus an armor boost can be a huge lifesaver. This is especially useful when used on the tank, as it gives them a minute of that much less damage, possibly giving healers time to recharge slightly. However, this talent is situational. Because of the long cooldown time on Lay on Hands, this talent will not be used as much as some others. Revelation greatly boosts this talent's utility.
Spiritual Focus
Gives your Flash of Light and Holy Light spells a 70% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.
This talent is almost a must have, no matter what build you make. Being able to heal when monsters are pounding on you no matter what the situation is always a good thing. Some heavy damage builds which assume the paladin will never be the main tank can overlook this talent, but for the most part this is a must have talent.
Improved Holy Light
Increases the amount healed by your Holy Light spell by 12%.
A useful talent, it increases your heal average from 1292 to 1447, an increase of 155 health. Gives your already mana hungry holy light spell a boost to efficiency. A must for healer builds.
Revelation
Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands and Divine Intervention spells by 20 minutes.
In long instances, this can give you one or two more lifesaving heals. In solo play, this means you can be a bit more reckless since you have your "third life" available more often. A good talent for two points, even one point has a big impact.
Illumination
After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light or Holy Light spell, gives you a 100% chance to gain Mana equal to the base cost of the spell.
This talent is usually taken only when you are taking Divine Favor as well. Our int values are usually far too low to expect critical heals on a regular basis, unless you are making a point to put a lot of points into intellegence. That being said, a critical heal that takes no mana is an extremely good thing, considering how mana hungry Paladin heals are. With Divine Favor, you are able to be assured of using this ability once every two minutes, which makes this talent absolutely...divine. Note that this doesn't make the heal a no-mana cost heal. You still need the mana to cast the heal, as the mana is drained then returned to you. Also note that it does stop your mana regen just like any other spell.
Improved Blessing of Wisdom
Increases the effect of your Blessing of Wisdom by 20%.
At it's highest rank, Blessing of Wisdom will restore 30 mana every 5 seconds. This talent kicks it up to over 36 mana. This is an additional 72 mana every minute. All caster classes love Blessing of Wisdom, and enjoy this talent even more, and the extra mana per regen isn't horrible. The question lies in the utility of this blessing. Generally while whittling through normal mobs or normal elite mobs, an unimproved Blessing of Wisdom will serve fine since most of the time the party has time to rest after an encounter. During very long encounters, such as instance bosses, the weak casters want Blessing of Salvation so that the tank can hold aggro better. If there is more than one paladin though, this is not an issue. Healer and mana intensive holy builds will get this talent, other builds generally will not. Note that this is also a pre-req for Divine Wisdom, one reason many people get this talent.
Divine Favor
When activated, gives your next Flash of Light or Holy Light spell a 100% critical effect chance.
An absolutely divine talent. No healer build should be without this. Works extremely well with illumination. See Illumination's description for its utility. Some have asked exactly how the talent combo of DF/I works. Illumination is a Passive Talent, Divine Favor is an instant cast spell. To trigger this combo, you cast Divine Favor first, you then get the Divine Favor effect which either lasts for 8 seconds, or until you cast a Holy Light/Flash of Light. If you successfully cast your healing spell in that 8 seconds, then you will gain a critical heal effect. Illumination then steps in (passively) and returns mana that you just used to cast the healing spell. So Divine Favor works perfectly fine without Illumination, Illum. is just used to give this talen that extra useful kick.
Improved Seal of Righteousness
Increases the damage done by your Seal of Righteousness by 15%.
First off, this skill is a pre-req for Holy Shock which makes many people get it automatically, whether they are going to use it or not. Beyond that, a first glance at this skill makes it seem somewhat interesting. Extra holy damage builds more aggro and causes a bit more damage, and this talent affects both the seal and the judgement. If one isn't going for Holy Shock or Sanctity Aura, then it's useful to look at how often this skill will be used. The comparison is between Seal of Command and Seal of Righteousness. There are several good posts (add link later) on comparing and showing the two seals, but Theras sums it up nicely: "It would be wiser to suggest that this seal is used more with low damage weapons rather than fast weapons. The testing that has been done in the days since you wrote this guide indicate that Righteousness will fire off at an average of 12 times per minute regardless of weapon speed. Once the damage of your weapon (on the character screen) surpasses an average of approximately 295 it becomes far more effective to use Seal of Command than Righteousness. Some talents may affect the point at which point each skill is more effective, but I find that a good threshold for the average paladin." So basically figure out of you are going to USE SoR and then decide whether to get this or not. No matter how you look at it, this is still one of my favorite talents since I'm an advocate of Paladins being a holy damage machine.
Improved Flash of Light
Reduces the Mana cost of your Flash of Light spell by 12%
Another must have for healer builds. This talent makes those quick cheap heals even cheaper. Any mana reducing talents are useful since the paladin is constantly using mana for other abilities. Only useful for Healer builds, most builds pass this talent up since there are better places to put talent points in order to be useful.
Improved Concentration Aura
Increases the effect of your Concentration Aura by an additional 15%
Improves your Concentration Aura to a 50% chance to not be interrupted. Although the talent increase is quite good, it's usefulness is questionable. Like most paladin auras, Concentration Aura is situational. If your casters are constantly being hit then this aura is useful so that they can get their spells off...but on the other hand they might want Devotion Aura in order to stay alive longer. Useful when trying to get off a heal, this talent may or may not be useful in your build. As a comment about the Aura itself, Concentration will stack with Spiritual Focus in an additive manner, so that even with an unimproved aura, The bonus for Concentration and a fully specced Spiritual Focus will make it so your Holy Light/Flash of Light are never interrupted. This only prevent interruption from damage, you're still vulnerable to specific stuns/interrupts.
Divine Wisdom
Increases your total Mana by 10%.
More mana gives more ability to heal or use mana heavy skills. A very good talent, and worth getting for if going for a Healing or a Holy build. A 10% increase to 3000 mana may not seem like a lot, but that extra heal or holy shock can make all the difference.
Sanctity Aura
Increases Holy damage done by party members within 30 yards by 10%. Players may only have one Aura on them per Paladin at any one time.
A must for Holy damage builds, also a pre-req for getting Holy Shock. Amazingly useful when combined with Exorcism, Seal of Command, Seal of Righteousness, or any other holy damage dealer. In a group of other Paladins and Priests, this talent can increase group DPS significantly (10% increase to ALL holy spells). One will have to think about the tradeoffs with other Auras, but if you are this deep into the Holy tree, you are most likely already dealing heavy holy damage. This Aura can also be turned on briefly, cast a exorcism/holy shock, then turns back off for a quick damage boost.
Improved Seal of Light
Increases the amount healed by your Seal of Light by 15% and the duration of your Judgement of Light by 30 seconds.
As opposed to most talents which increase the effectiveness on both the seal and judgement side, this one has a different effect for each side. Your Seal of Light will heal you for more with each hit you make, allowing you to regenerate your health that much faster, and can be a lifesaver at times. Your Judgement of Light allows the judgement to stay for 60 seconds on your target as opposed to the normal 30 seconds. This allows for mana conservation, or the ability to judge a few seals of righteousness while you continue to attack. Although not mandatory in Holy builds, it is useful and usually a playstyle decision.
Divine Strength
Increases your Strength by 10%.
If you're this deep into the Holy Tree, you are not specced for physical damage, so purely holy builds may skip this. Comparable to Blessing of Kings since this is passive and does not take up the blessing slot which BoK does, but this only increases one stat. A Holy damage build benefits from this skill since Seal of Command works off physical damage. Higher strength also equals more damage blocked with shields and more ability to keep aggro when attacking monsters. This skill does add to both base strength and strength from items so if you have equipment heavily leaning in that direction, you will get even more benefit. Divine Strength is playstyle talent, and generally obtained unless specced purely healing, or focusing purely on holy damage and not physical attack power; the points may be better off elsewhere.
Holy Shock
Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 365 to 395 Holy damage.
This is the ranged attack. This is the reason so many Paladins invest into Holy. This is a very good PvP skill, and a useful PvE skill. However this damage comes with a low range, high mana cost, and very high cooldown. A slightly overrated ability, one should never make a Holy Build based around this talent, only as a complementary build to this talent. That being said, this ability is great for burst damage, and for surprising your enemy in PvP. It will take down runners (though some people argue this is what Judgement of Justice is for) and it is a great puller. This ability is the single highest aggro inducer for the Paladin, and combined with a Judgement of Fury, will keep the monsters nipping at your heels.
3. Protection Talents
Improved Devotion Aura
Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 25%.
At early levels, this talent seems excellent, but its usefulness decreases and by the time you hit 60, this talent is very questionable. It gives an additional 183 armor to your devotion aura. With 6000 armor, that's an extra 0.75% DR. For a mage's 1000 armor, That could be another 2%DR, so it's more effective for the cloth classes. Not the best talent in the world, useful only for heavy protection builds or for additional armor in 2-handed builds. Some people say that if your goal is simply to go down the protection tree that Redoubt is better as a first level skill.
Redoubt
Increases your chance to block attacks with your shield by 30% after being the victim of a critical strike. Lasts 10 seconds or 5 blocks.
A good talent for any 1H protection build. The extra blocking you will get from this talent will more than make up for the damage caused to you by the critical hit. This is a pure 30% addition, not a percentage of your block rate already. A necessary skill for any shield users with protection. Most people believe that if you simply wish to head down the protection tree, this is the better of the two abilities, but in general it depends on your playstyle and if you're using a 2Hander or not.
Improved Blessing of Protection
Reduces the cooldown of your Blessing of Protection by 120 seconds.
Very useful, since it gives you your physical shield every 3 minutes instead of 5. This can help a great deal in parties with a lot of cloth or leather users who keep getting attacked. Extremely useful in PvP, since it allows you to shield yourself or others that much more often. Just remember that it only
blocks physical damage, not spells. Most protection builds should get this talent, although some prefer to simply not get into situations where this is required and use the points elsewhere.
Toughness
Increases your armor value from items by 10%.
A huge increase in armor. Due to your armor levels at level 60, this will boost your DR about 2.5-3%, which means you gain a large amount defensively. This talent is a must have for all protection builds. This thread explains toughness extremely well.
Blessing of Sanctuary
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage dealt from all sources by 24 for 5 minutes. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.
If you're going into the protection tree, get this. This reduces ALL sources of damage so that even less gets to you from spells, melee, and other effects. However this damage reduction is done before other damage reduction is factored in, i.e. before armor is accounted for, so for someone with 50% Damage Reduction, this will only reduce damage by 12 points. Not as useful as a first glance shows, it is still a very good blessing for the main tank in instances, as well as for others to increase their survivability. Rogues and pets are especially good targets for this. This talent is also used in a retribution aura build, where you want a group of monsters to beat on you or someone else constantly, tanking damage and yet dealing piddly damage. Extremely useful in PvP against quick damage dealers like rogues, less useful against slow heavy hitters.
Improved Seal of Fury
Increases the amount of threat generated by your Seal of Fury and Judgement of Fury by 15%.
This increases the effectiveness of your tanking ability. A better Fury will draw better aggro, and a judgemented fury will cause that much more aggro from your holy damage. Believe it or not, the extra 15% DOES make a difference, I have seen it. If your role is as primary tank, get this. Remember that the group as a whole needs to practice good aggro management since even improved talents won't hold aggro if the mage goes nuke crazy.
Shield Specialization
Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 25%.
A decent skill for all defensive and protection builds. It increases the effectiveness of your blocking, but not by a huge amount. The block has to occur first, which means Holy Shield and Redoubt are necessary to get the most use out of this skill. Also a 25% increase comes to about a 10-15point block. Very useful on fast hitting mobs, not so useful on heavy hitting slow mobs. Also required for Holy Shield. A good strength stat and a good shield helps the effectiveness of this talent since the amount of damage absorbed is based on both of those items.
Improved Blessing of Freedom
Increases the duration of your Blessing of Freedom by 5 seconds.
This skill tends to be more of a PvP skill than a PvE. The additional time to get away or move around can be critical. Many effects have other ways to break free such as equipment or other spells. Although useful in PvP, the paladin still lacks the ability to close with an enemy, however it is useful to keep the enemy from pounding on him. Usefulness is dependant upon your playstyle, but there might be a better place to invest five points.
Improved Seal of Justice
Increases the frequency that your Seal of Justice stuns the opponent by 5 per minute.
A bit more useful than players might state, this skill is still not the best in the world. Both monsters and players become immune to stuns after a three stuns, so all the extra hits are now useless. By increasing the frequency of hitting, you gain a higher chance of actually stunning your target in one or two hits as opposed to four or five, so it is useful in both PvP and PvE. Most people don't consider it worth investing in unless they're heading towards Repentance.
Reckoning
Gives you a 100% chance to gain an extra attack after being the victim of a critical strike.
Not so useful if all your are interested in is absorbing damage, but extremely useful for adding that bit of extra hatred to the monster so that you keep aggro. Extra damage is always nice as well, although if you are this far into the protection tree, damage is not your forte. However for fighting fast attacking monsters and players like rogues, this adds that extra umph. Unfortunately this skill seems to be bugged from several reports at the moment, otherwise this would rate higher.
Holy Shield
Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 seconds and deals 130 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Each block expends a charge. 4 charges.
The bread and butter of the defensive paladin. Increased chance to block whenever the paladin wishes. Low cool down time. Damage dealt for every block which increases aggro that much more and keeps the monsters attacking you and not the mage. The only downside is a rather high mana cost, but that's a small price to pay for such an excellent talent. A must have for every defensive build, when combined with Shield Specialization and Redoubt it makes the paladin quite hearty indeed.
Improved Blessing of Salvation
Increases the duration of your Blessing of Salvation by 10 minutes.
This talent will increase the duration of one of your blessings by 5 minutes per point. Many people opt not for this because of the reasoning that all other blessings have a five minute lifespan still, so since you're recasting blessings anyways, what's one or two more? The talent points could be spent elsewhere. The place where I can see this talent being useful is in extremely long Boss encounters(lasting 5 minutes or more obviously), especially raids, where the paladin wants to salvation a bunch of people and then forget about them. Most of the other blessings aren't a huge issue if they fade in a fight, but loosing salvation can mean the end of a mage or a rogue.
One-Handed Weapon Specialization
Increases the damage you deal with one-handed melee weapons by 5%.
Not the most incredible talent in the world. If you proceed this far into the tree you might as well get this since you'll be using 1H/shield all the time anyways, and extra damage leads to shorter fights and more aggro. Not a massive damage booster though.
Repentance
Puts the enemy target in a state of meditation for up to 6 seconds. Any damage caused will awaken the target. Only works against Humanoids.
Crowd Control at it's finest. Much more useful in PvP than in PvE. Going 1v1, this can be an extra "shield" for you to toss off an uninterrupted heal. It can also stop a player who is kiting or a rogue who keeps moving. It's comparable to Gouge or Polymorph, although for a lesser amount of time. There is a large number of usese for this in PvP. In PvE situations, this has much less utility. It can stop runners assuming you forgot to judge justice, and it can interrupt casters as well. Not as useful in PvE but still quite useable. This talent very much worth getting if you have dug this far into the tree.
4. Retribution Talents
Improved Blessing of Might
Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 20%.
Very useful for lower levels, not so useful for higher levels. The dps increase from this attack increase is not that great: 2.3DPS. Although more damage is always nice, unless you're going for an extreme damage build, it's worthyness of 5 talent points is questionable. However it still adds more dps than an Improved Judgement of Crusader adds to SoR. A good alternate for a retribution build if one isn't getting BoK perhaps.
Benediction
Reduces the Mana cost of your Retribution spells by 15%.
Now this is a talent, the 2nd best of all the first tier talents right behind Spiritual Focus. This reduces the cost of your retribution spells across the board. A must have for consecration builds, and extremely useful for all other builds. Remember, Judgement is a retribution spell. Very nice if you are casting Seal of the Crusader, and especially if judging it for extra holy damage. I would pick this over Improved Blessing of Might if you simply want to climb the retribution tree.
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 5%.
Does what it says. Get it if you're going for heavy damage with two handed weapons, otherwise forget it.
Improved Seal of the Crusader
Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Seal of the Crusader and the Holy damage increase of your Judgement of the Crusader by 15%.
More damage, and more holy damage. All holy damage builds will probably have this skill as it increases the power of the judgement that much more. JoCr adds 20% to Seal of Righteousness, so 15% more damage is some, if not a lot. If your goal is pure damage and you don't use the judgement, Improved Seal of the Crusader and Two-Handed Specialization are about the same in terms of damage increase, it's you judgement call on which to get, although getting both is still good. For one handed builds this skill helps build aggro and cause damage that much better.
Deflection
Increases your Parry chance by 5%.
Oddly enough this is in the retribution tree as opposed to the protection tree. This is quite likely THE best passive defensive talent the paladin has. In general this effectively doubles your chance to parry, which cuts down on the number of times the monsters will hit you. Even better than Toughness in my opinion since not getting hit 5% of the time is even better than taking 2.5% less damage from all hits. All defensive builds must come down this far into the tree to get this talent. Check the description of Toughness for a link to a useful thread comparing these two skills.
Vengeance
Gives you a 15% bonus to Physical and Holy damage you deal for 8 seconds after dealing a critical strike.
First lets look at what it takes for this talent to proc. This talent is useful only if going for a build with high agility and conviction. The Paladin's chance for a critical hit is 5% base, and will most likely hit 8-10% by level 60 without trying for specific equipment. Conviction will give you another 5%, and if you use the right equipment you can get your critical rate even higher, even over 20%. For a heavy damage build, this is an excellent skill since you'll be trying to get criticals anyways. And a 15% increase to both your physical and holy damage is great. Some people will use Seal of Crusader until they hit a critical, then switch to a Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command depending upon what weapon they're using to deal that extra holy damage. Note that ALL holy skills get the holy damage increase, including holy shield, consecration, and retribution aura. A very useful skill across the board, assuming your crit rate is high enough to make use of it.
Seal of Command
Fills the Paladin with the spirit of command for 30 seconds, giving the Paladin a chance to deal additional Holy damage equal to the damage of the Paladin's weapon. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy for 30 seconds, causing 82 Holy damage any time the enemy becomes stunned. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.
This seal is Seal of Righteousness's counterpart. Whereas that is used with low damage one handers, this seal shines with high damage two handed weapons (or even the more powerful one handers). The damage from this seal can be increased by Judgement of Crusader, making it even more powerful. This damage "acts like" physical damage in that the holy damage can cause a critical, and be dodged/parried/blocked or just plain miss. Even with all of these issues, Seal of Command is still one of the highest rated damage dealing skills in the Paladin's armory. The same as I added comments from Theras in SoR, here are comments from him here:
"Again, the speed of your weapon doesn't really factor into the proc rate, so you can remove that part of the analysis. As mentioned above with Righteousness, I tend to use Command on weapons with an average damage of greater than 295 on the character panel. Before avoidance is calculated, it will proc about 4.8 times per minute. Being pessimistic, I lowered that to 3.8 for comparison purposes against Righteousness (to assume a 15% avoidance rate, and 10% critical hit rate). It is also very important to note that Rank 5 Seal of Command does not generate a higher proc rate or more damage than Rank 1 Seal of Command. Thus if going for straight damage, you only need to expend 110 mana per minute to keep up steady damage, while Judgement of the Crusader + Seal of Righteousness requires 970 mana per minute to keep up. This frees you up to fire off, say, two Consecrations (and thus adding another 768 damage per target in range). The bottom line is, if you have a very high damage weapon, Seal of Command is the best damage Seal we have."
Judgement of Command is an interesting effect, one which is not used very often but has it's place all the same. Since mobs and players become immune to stuns after a certain number, this isn't as useful as one would usually think and isn't my first choice for a seal since I could judge Seal of Light or others. This skill comes into play more in PvP where stuns are constant and players go down quickly.
Anticipation
Increases your Defense skill by 10.
A so-so skill, it does do more than meets the eye. It increases block/parry/dodge each by 0.4%, and it also lowers the chance for an opposing monster or player to hit you and cause a critical hit on you. Useful as a defensive skill, but considering there are so many items out there with +Defense on them, there are certainly better skills to spend five talent points on.
Improved Retribution Aura
Increases the damage done by your Retribution Aura by 25%.
If you love your Retribution Aura, then you will love this talent. If you dislike it, then this talent is worthless to you. If you are one of those people who uses Retribution Aura extensively, then an additional point of damage per point of talent is very nice. This talent goes along well with the paladin's AE retribution aura build. More useful for those who use a shield than two-handers because of the extra damage you're taking by not using devotion aura. Not so useful in raids or boss encounters, very useful for grinding or fighting many monsters at once.
Consecration
Consecrates the land beneath the Paladin, doing 384 Holy damage over 8 seconds to enemies who enter the area.
The Paladin's only area effect spell, if you come this far into the into the retribution tree you better get this. A very nice way to cause aggro to a large group of mobs, it also causes a decent amount of damage as long as the monsters stay near you. Not very useful in PvP as most players will run from you. However very effective in large groups of enemies. Holy damage increasing skills will affect this such as vengence and sanctity aura. Useful for most situations.
Precision
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 3%.
Not much to say about this. Some people skip this skill in their retribution builds, but a higher chance to strike always equals more damage which equals more threat and faster dead monsters. A good talent.
Conviction
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 5%.
Again, not much to say about this. If you're this far into the tree, get this skill. More crits = more damage. Note that this will also cause Vengence to proc more often so you will gain more than a pure 5% critical strike rate.
Blessing of Kings
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats by 10% for 5 minutes. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.
The ultimate blessing? The jury is out on this. Is it the best overall blessing? Sure. If you go far into the retribution tree this skill is certainly worth picking up. When cast on anyone this provides and increase to damage, health, mana, dodge/parry/block, mana regen, crit rate and spell crit rate. Any class with an agl build loves this blessing. However it does all this in relatively small amounts. For a more general class like a Paladin or a Druid this is very useful, but for other classes this is of limited use. Tanks will want Might or Sanctuary. Casters will want Wisdom or Salvation. The main tank will want Light. Blessings are very situational and although this is an excellent blessing for normal grinding and questing, in instances and against bosses, other specialized blessings can be more useful. Like any other blessing, watch the situation.
1. Introduction and FAQ’s
2. Holy Talents
3. Protection Talents
4. Retribution Talents
1. Introduction
About this guide
The purpose of this post is to group together all suggestions in the Paladin Forum and in other guides into a complete guide to Paladin Talents. Please note that this guide is under heavy revision and isn't perfect at all, I'm willing to take any and all suggestions. All Talent descriptions will refer to being fully specialized in that Talent, or highest rank if you learn a skill from it.
Any comments and changes and suggestions and notes of, "Actually this talent rocks because..." and, "I don't like this talent because..." are accepted.
FAQ’s
A. What are the Paladin Talent Trees, and what do they focus on?
Holy - The Holy tree is concerned with healing, Holy damage, and increasing your Mana reserves.
Protection - The Protection tree is used to increase your survivability, help protect other players, and increases threat management.
Retribution - The Retribution tree mostly deals with damage dealing, either by giving new abilities or increasing the effectiveness of skills you already have (with a few notable exceptions).
B. Which tree is the best tree?
All of them; there is no best tree. Each one offers very good abilities all of which complements the paladin's play style. A better question to ask yourself would be, “What kind of Paladin do I want to be?”
C. I'm just starting out and am confused! Help!
If you are beginning a new Paladin, your first five talent points should go into Spiritual Focus. This will help you in every way in your quest to reach level 60, since it allows you to reliably heal in combat (especially so once you receive Concentration Aura). Most Paladin talent builds you encounter will include Spiritual Focus for that very reason. However, from there on your path is entirely your decision.
Many paladins will rush into Retribution to get Seal of Command and Consecration as soon as possible to enhance their damage generation or reduce their required Mana investment in battle, while others will invest another six points into Holy to get the “free heal” every two minutes from Illumination and Divine Favor. The Protection tree is rather weak for solo play until you have 25 or more points invested (level 39 minimum if you have Spiritual Focus). Thus, unless your major focus is being the main tank in a consistent partnership or group of friends, you would be better off investing your points in Retribution or Holy.
Our power is above average up until level 40 (where our abilities begin to plateau) so talent choices beyond the first five points are not a major issue until then. At that point the 1 gold to redo your talents is easy to obtain, and you can build a paladin that best suits your play style.
D. Should I go with one-handed or two-handed weapons?
Both would be ideal. A smart paladin knows when it’s time to use a shield, and when it’s time to whip out their war hammer. I suggest picking up the Weapon Quick Swap UI mod found here:
LINK REMOVE CAUSE OF FORUM
E. What Seal and Judgement combinations are best?
Well, there really is no best Seal combination, but there certainly are a number of combos you may find useful.
Judgement of the Crusader + Seal of Righteousness - Use of this combo will increase a basic level 60 Seal of Righteousness from 67.5 average damage per proc to 106.7. Your Seal’s pre-avoidance DPS will subsequently increase from 13.5 to 21.3. Certain talents will increase this combination’s effectiveness substantially.
Judgement of Light or Wisdom + Seal of the Crusader - Judgement of Light and Wisdom have a flat chance to proc per swing, rather than most of our abilities that proc a certain number of times per minute. Increasing your swing speed by 40% will also increase the rate at which they heal your Health / Mana by the same, while still maintaining a tolerable DPS.
Judgement of Wisdom + Seal of Wisdom - The Mana regeneration provided by this combo is unsurpassed, especially when coupled with Blessing of Wisdom. This generally only gets use when you are trying to solo elites your level or greater, or are burning Mana exceptionally fast in a group. The downside is that you take a good five minutes to kill any single target, making it extremely inefficient for gaining experience or farming for cash. However, if you somehow end up as the last man standing against one target, this could mean the difference between five minutes of downtime and re-clearing an instance.
Judgement of Fury + Seal of Righteousness - Paladins that are their group’s tank will find this combo exceptionally useful. Judgement of Fury greatly amplifies the amount of threat generated by your Holy damage abilities, of which Seal of Righteousness is one. This Seal combination -- coupled with Holy damage talents like Consecration, Holy Shield, and Holy Shock (among others) -- will all but guarantee you are the person your target is hitting.
Judgement of Justice + Seal of Anything - Judgement of Justice prevents your target from fleeing, which can be invaluable in groups, or when soloing in tight quarters against Humanoids. It’s not really a “combo” per se, but still exceptionally useful. =)
F. What does each of the five stats do?
Strength - Increases melee attack power and damage blocked with a shield.
1 Strength = 2 Attack Power = ~0.14 DPS
(Shield block formula required!)
Agility - Increases Critical Hit rate, Dodge rate, and Armor.
1 Agility = ~0.05% Critical Hit rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = ~0.05% Critical Hit rate (at level 60)
1 Agility = 2 Armor
Stamina - Increases Health.
1 Stamina = 10 Health (Note: Stamina gained at level up does not increase Health)
Intellect - Increases Mana, and Spell Critical Hit rate.
1 Intellect = 15 Mana (Note: Intellect gained at level up does not increase Mana)
1 Intellect = 0.01% spell critical rate.
Spirit - Increases Health and Mana regeneration rate.
(Formula required for Health and Mana regeneration!)
G. Which stat is the best stat?
Like talent trees, the best stat combination is one that defines the type of Paladin you want to be. A deep Protection paladin will probably prefer Stamina and Agility to Spirit, while a Holy paladin will jump at the opportunity to pick up more Spirit and Intellect. And neither of those two will care terribly much about Strength, but a Retribution Paladin sure will.
That’s not to say that you should neglect any given stat, but that your priorities will vary depending upon your talent build and play style.
H. What does Skill X do?
Thottbot and Allakhazam both have excellent information on what each skill does, as do several other World of Warcraft-related websites. However, this guide covers the math behind any skills that are affected by talents.
I. What profession should I be?
The Profession question is unfortunately beyond the scope of this guide. Most Paladins choose Blacksmithing or Engineering as their Profession, although nothing is stopping you from being a Tailor, for example. More information can be found elsewhere on this forum.
2. Holy Talents
Improved Lay on Hands
Gives the target of your Lay on Hands spell a 30% bonus to their armor value from items for 1 minute.
When you use lay on hands on someone, it usually means they're in a very near death situation, so giving them full health plus an armor boost can be a huge lifesaver. This is especially useful when used on the tank, as it gives them a minute of that much less damage, possibly giving healers time to recharge slightly. However, this talent is situational. Because of the long cooldown time on Lay on Hands, this talent will not be used as much as some others. Revelation greatly boosts this talent's utility.
Spiritual Focus
Gives your Flash of Light and Holy Light spells a 70% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage.
This talent is almost a must have, no matter what build you make. Being able to heal when monsters are pounding on you no matter what the situation is always a good thing. Some heavy damage builds which assume the paladin will never be the main tank can overlook this talent, but for the most part this is a must have talent.
Improved Holy Light
Increases the amount healed by your Holy Light spell by 12%.
A useful talent, it increases your heal average from 1292 to 1447, an increase of 155 health. Gives your already mana hungry holy light spell a boost to efficiency. A must for healer builds.
Revelation
Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands and Divine Intervention spells by 20 minutes.
In long instances, this can give you one or two more lifesaving heals. In solo play, this means you can be a bit more reckless since you have your "third life" available more often. A good talent for two points, even one point has a big impact.
Illumination
After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light or Holy Light spell, gives you a 100% chance to gain Mana equal to the base cost of the spell.
This talent is usually taken only when you are taking Divine Favor as well. Our int values are usually far too low to expect critical heals on a regular basis, unless you are making a point to put a lot of points into intellegence. That being said, a critical heal that takes no mana is an extremely good thing, considering how mana hungry Paladin heals are. With Divine Favor, you are able to be assured of using this ability once every two minutes, which makes this talent absolutely...divine. Note that this doesn't make the heal a no-mana cost heal. You still need the mana to cast the heal, as the mana is drained then returned to you. Also note that it does stop your mana regen just like any other spell.
Improved Blessing of Wisdom
Increases the effect of your Blessing of Wisdom by 20%.
At it's highest rank, Blessing of Wisdom will restore 30 mana every 5 seconds. This talent kicks it up to over 36 mana. This is an additional 72 mana every minute. All caster classes love Blessing of Wisdom, and enjoy this talent even more, and the extra mana per regen isn't horrible. The question lies in the utility of this blessing. Generally while whittling through normal mobs or normal elite mobs, an unimproved Blessing of Wisdom will serve fine since most of the time the party has time to rest after an encounter. During very long encounters, such as instance bosses, the weak casters want Blessing of Salvation so that the tank can hold aggro better. If there is more than one paladin though, this is not an issue. Healer and mana intensive holy builds will get this talent, other builds generally will not. Note that this is also a pre-req for Divine Wisdom, one reason many people get this talent.
Divine Favor
When activated, gives your next Flash of Light or Holy Light spell a 100% critical effect chance.
An absolutely divine talent. No healer build should be without this. Works extremely well with illumination. See Illumination's description for its utility. Some have asked exactly how the talent combo of DF/I works. Illumination is a Passive Talent, Divine Favor is an instant cast spell. To trigger this combo, you cast Divine Favor first, you then get the Divine Favor effect which either lasts for 8 seconds, or until you cast a Holy Light/Flash of Light. If you successfully cast your healing spell in that 8 seconds, then you will gain a critical heal effect. Illumination then steps in (passively) and returns mana that you just used to cast the healing spell. So Divine Favor works perfectly fine without Illumination, Illum. is just used to give this talen that extra useful kick.
Improved Seal of Righteousness
Increases the damage done by your Seal of Righteousness by 15%.
First off, this skill is a pre-req for Holy Shock which makes many people get it automatically, whether they are going to use it or not. Beyond that, a first glance at this skill makes it seem somewhat interesting. Extra holy damage builds more aggro and causes a bit more damage, and this talent affects both the seal and the judgement. If one isn't going for Holy Shock or Sanctity Aura, then it's useful to look at how often this skill will be used. The comparison is between Seal of Command and Seal of Righteousness. There are several good posts (add link later) on comparing and showing the two seals, but Theras sums it up nicely: "It would be wiser to suggest that this seal is used more with low damage weapons rather than fast weapons. The testing that has been done in the days since you wrote this guide indicate that Righteousness will fire off at an average of 12 times per minute regardless of weapon speed. Once the damage of your weapon (on the character screen) surpasses an average of approximately 295 it becomes far more effective to use Seal of Command than Righteousness. Some talents may affect the point at which point each skill is more effective, but I find that a good threshold for the average paladin." So basically figure out of you are going to USE SoR and then decide whether to get this or not. No matter how you look at it, this is still one of my favorite talents since I'm an advocate of Paladins being a holy damage machine.
Improved Flash of Light
Reduces the Mana cost of your Flash of Light spell by 12%
Another must have for healer builds. This talent makes those quick cheap heals even cheaper. Any mana reducing talents are useful since the paladin is constantly using mana for other abilities. Only useful for Healer builds, most builds pass this talent up since there are better places to put talent points in order to be useful.
Improved Concentration Aura
Increases the effect of your Concentration Aura by an additional 15%
Improves your Concentration Aura to a 50% chance to not be interrupted. Although the talent increase is quite good, it's usefulness is questionable. Like most paladin auras, Concentration Aura is situational. If your casters are constantly being hit then this aura is useful so that they can get their spells off...but on the other hand they might want Devotion Aura in order to stay alive longer. Useful when trying to get off a heal, this talent may or may not be useful in your build. As a comment about the Aura itself, Concentration will stack with Spiritual Focus in an additive manner, so that even with an unimproved aura, The bonus for Concentration and a fully specced Spiritual Focus will make it so your Holy Light/Flash of Light are never interrupted. This only prevent interruption from damage, you're still vulnerable to specific stuns/interrupts.
Divine Wisdom
Increases your total Mana by 10%.
More mana gives more ability to heal or use mana heavy skills. A very good talent, and worth getting for if going for a Healing or a Holy build. A 10% increase to 3000 mana may not seem like a lot, but that extra heal or holy shock can make all the difference.
Sanctity Aura
Increases Holy damage done by party members within 30 yards by 10%. Players may only have one Aura on them per Paladin at any one time.
A must for Holy damage builds, also a pre-req for getting Holy Shock. Amazingly useful when combined with Exorcism, Seal of Command, Seal of Righteousness, or any other holy damage dealer. In a group of other Paladins and Priests, this talent can increase group DPS significantly (10% increase to ALL holy spells). One will have to think about the tradeoffs with other Auras, but if you are this deep into the Holy tree, you are most likely already dealing heavy holy damage. This Aura can also be turned on briefly, cast a exorcism/holy shock, then turns back off for a quick damage boost.
Improved Seal of Light
Increases the amount healed by your Seal of Light by 15% and the duration of your Judgement of Light by 30 seconds.
As opposed to most talents which increase the effectiveness on both the seal and judgement side, this one has a different effect for each side. Your Seal of Light will heal you for more with each hit you make, allowing you to regenerate your health that much faster, and can be a lifesaver at times. Your Judgement of Light allows the judgement to stay for 60 seconds on your target as opposed to the normal 30 seconds. This allows for mana conservation, or the ability to judge a few seals of righteousness while you continue to attack. Although not mandatory in Holy builds, it is useful and usually a playstyle decision.
Divine Strength
Increases your Strength by 10%.
If you're this deep into the Holy Tree, you are not specced for physical damage, so purely holy builds may skip this. Comparable to Blessing of Kings since this is passive and does not take up the blessing slot which BoK does, but this only increases one stat. A Holy damage build benefits from this skill since Seal of Command works off physical damage. Higher strength also equals more damage blocked with shields and more ability to keep aggro when attacking monsters. This skill does add to both base strength and strength from items so if you have equipment heavily leaning in that direction, you will get even more benefit. Divine Strength is playstyle talent, and generally obtained unless specced purely healing, or focusing purely on holy damage and not physical attack power; the points may be better off elsewhere.
Holy Shock
Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 365 to 395 Holy damage.
This is the ranged attack. This is the reason so many Paladins invest into Holy. This is a very good PvP skill, and a useful PvE skill. However this damage comes with a low range, high mana cost, and very high cooldown. A slightly overrated ability, one should never make a Holy Build based around this talent, only as a complementary build to this talent. That being said, this ability is great for burst damage, and for surprising your enemy in PvP. It will take down runners (though some people argue this is what Judgement of Justice is for) and it is a great puller. This ability is the single highest aggro inducer for the Paladin, and combined with a Judgement of Fury, will keep the monsters nipping at your heels.
3. Protection Talents
Improved Devotion Aura
Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 25%.
At early levels, this talent seems excellent, but its usefulness decreases and by the time you hit 60, this talent is very questionable. It gives an additional 183 armor to your devotion aura. With 6000 armor, that's an extra 0.75% DR. For a mage's 1000 armor, That could be another 2%DR, so it's more effective for the cloth classes. Not the best talent in the world, useful only for heavy protection builds or for additional armor in 2-handed builds. Some people say that if your goal is simply to go down the protection tree that Redoubt is better as a first level skill.
Redoubt
Increases your chance to block attacks with your shield by 30% after being the victim of a critical strike. Lasts 10 seconds or 5 blocks.
A good talent for any 1H protection build. The extra blocking you will get from this talent will more than make up for the damage caused to you by the critical hit. This is a pure 30% addition, not a percentage of your block rate already. A necessary skill for any shield users with protection. Most people believe that if you simply wish to head down the protection tree, this is the better of the two abilities, but in general it depends on your playstyle and if you're using a 2Hander or not.
Improved Blessing of Protection
Reduces the cooldown of your Blessing of Protection by 120 seconds.
Very useful, since it gives you your physical shield every 3 minutes instead of 5. This can help a great deal in parties with a lot of cloth or leather users who keep getting attacked. Extremely useful in PvP, since it allows you to shield yourself or others that much more often. Just remember that it only
blocks physical damage, not spells. Most protection builds should get this talent, although some prefer to simply not get into situations where this is required and use the points elsewhere.
Toughness
Increases your armor value from items by 10%.
A huge increase in armor. Due to your armor levels at level 60, this will boost your DR about 2.5-3%, which means you gain a large amount defensively. This talent is a must have for all protection builds. This thread explains toughness extremely well.
Blessing of Sanctuary
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage dealt from all sources by 24 for 5 minutes. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.
If you're going into the protection tree, get this. This reduces ALL sources of damage so that even less gets to you from spells, melee, and other effects. However this damage reduction is done before other damage reduction is factored in, i.e. before armor is accounted for, so for someone with 50% Damage Reduction, this will only reduce damage by 12 points. Not as useful as a first glance shows, it is still a very good blessing for the main tank in instances, as well as for others to increase their survivability. Rogues and pets are especially good targets for this. This talent is also used in a retribution aura build, where you want a group of monsters to beat on you or someone else constantly, tanking damage and yet dealing piddly damage. Extremely useful in PvP against quick damage dealers like rogues, less useful against slow heavy hitters.
Improved Seal of Fury
Increases the amount of threat generated by your Seal of Fury and Judgement of Fury by 15%.
This increases the effectiveness of your tanking ability. A better Fury will draw better aggro, and a judgemented fury will cause that much more aggro from your holy damage. Believe it or not, the extra 15% DOES make a difference, I have seen it. If your role is as primary tank, get this. Remember that the group as a whole needs to practice good aggro management since even improved talents won't hold aggro if the mage goes nuke crazy.
Shield Specialization
Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your shield by 25%.
A decent skill for all defensive and protection builds. It increases the effectiveness of your blocking, but not by a huge amount. The block has to occur first, which means Holy Shield and Redoubt are necessary to get the most use out of this skill. Also a 25% increase comes to about a 10-15point block. Very useful on fast hitting mobs, not so useful on heavy hitting slow mobs. Also required for Holy Shield. A good strength stat and a good shield helps the effectiveness of this talent since the amount of damage absorbed is based on both of those items.
Improved Blessing of Freedom
Increases the duration of your Blessing of Freedom by 5 seconds.
This skill tends to be more of a PvP skill than a PvE. The additional time to get away or move around can be critical. Many effects have other ways to break free such as equipment or other spells. Although useful in PvP, the paladin still lacks the ability to close with an enemy, however it is useful to keep the enemy from pounding on him. Usefulness is dependant upon your playstyle, but there might be a better place to invest five points.
Improved Seal of Justice
Increases the frequency that your Seal of Justice stuns the opponent by 5 per minute.
A bit more useful than players might state, this skill is still not the best in the world. Both monsters and players become immune to stuns after a three stuns, so all the extra hits are now useless. By increasing the frequency of hitting, you gain a higher chance of actually stunning your target in one or two hits as opposed to four or five, so it is useful in both PvP and PvE. Most people don't consider it worth investing in unless they're heading towards Repentance.
Reckoning
Gives you a 100% chance to gain an extra attack after being the victim of a critical strike.
Not so useful if all your are interested in is absorbing damage, but extremely useful for adding that bit of extra hatred to the monster so that you keep aggro. Extra damage is always nice as well, although if you are this far into the protection tree, damage is not your forte. However for fighting fast attacking monsters and players like rogues, this adds that extra umph. Unfortunately this skill seems to be bugged from several reports at the moment, otherwise this would rate higher.
Holy Shield
Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 seconds and deals 130 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Each block expends a charge. 4 charges.
The bread and butter of the defensive paladin. Increased chance to block whenever the paladin wishes. Low cool down time. Damage dealt for every block which increases aggro that much more and keeps the monsters attacking you and not the mage. The only downside is a rather high mana cost, but that's a small price to pay for such an excellent talent. A must have for every defensive build, when combined with Shield Specialization and Redoubt it makes the paladin quite hearty indeed.
Improved Blessing of Salvation
Increases the duration of your Blessing of Salvation by 10 minutes.
This talent will increase the duration of one of your blessings by 5 minutes per point. Many people opt not for this because of the reasoning that all other blessings have a five minute lifespan still, so since you're recasting blessings anyways, what's one or two more? The talent points could be spent elsewhere. The place where I can see this talent being useful is in extremely long Boss encounters(lasting 5 minutes or more obviously), especially raids, where the paladin wants to salvation a bunch of people and then forget about them. Most of the other blessings aren't a huge issue if they fade in a fight, but loosing salvation can mean the end of a mage or a rogue.
One-Handed Weapon Specialization
Increases the damage you deal with one-handed melee weapons by 5%.
Not the most incredible talent in the world. If you proceed this far into the tree you might as well get this since you'll be using 1H/shield all the time anyways, and extra damage leads to shorter fights and more aggro. Not a massive damage booster though.
Repentance
Puts the enemy target in a state of meditation for up to 6 seconds. Any damage caused will awaken the target. Only works against Humanoids.
Crowd Control at it's finest. Much more useful in PvP than in PvE. Going 1v1, this can be an extra "shield" for you to toss off an uninterrupted heal. It can also stop a player who is kiting or a rogue who keeps moving. It's comparable to Gouge or Polymorph, although for a lesser amount of time. There is a large number of usese for this in PvP. In PvE situations, this has much less utility. It can stop runners assuming you forgot to judge justice, and it can interrupt casters as well. Not as useful in PvE but still quite useable. This talent very much worth getting if you have dug this far into the tree.
4. Retribution Talents
Improved Blessing of Might
Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 20%.
Very useful for lower levels, not so useful for higher levels. The dps increase from this attack increase is not that great: 2.3DPS. Although more damage is always nice, unless you're going for an extreme damage build, it's worthyness of 5 talent points is questionable. However it still adds more dps than an Improved Judgement of Crusader adds to SoR. A good alternate for a retribution build if one isn't getting BoK perhaps.
Benediction
Reduces the Mana cost of your Retribution spells by 15%.
Now this is a talent, the 2nd best of all the first tier talents right behind Spiritual Focus. This reduces the cost of your retribution spells across the board. A must have for consecration builds, and extremely useful for all other builds. Remember, Judgement is a retribution spell. Very nice if you are casting Seal of the Crusader, and especially if judging it for extra holy damage. I would pick this over Improved Blessing of Might if you simply want to climb the retribution tree.
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 5%.
Does what it says. Get it if you're going for heavy damage with two handed weapons, otherwise forget it.
Improved Seal of the Crusader
Increases the Attack Power bonus of your Seal of the Crusader and the Holy damage increase of your Judgement of the Crusader by 15%.
More damage, and more holy damage. All holy damage builds will probably have this skill as it increases the power of the judgement that much more. JoCr adds 20% to Seal of Righteousness, so 15% more damage is some, if not a lot. If your goal is pure damage and you don't use the judgement, Improved Seal of the Crusader and Two-Handed Specialization are about the same in terms of damage increase, it's you judgement call on which to get, although getting both is still good. For one handed builds this skill helps build aggro and cause damage that much better.
Deflection
Increases your Parry chance by 5%.
Oddly enough this is in the retribution tree as opposed to the protection tree. This is quite likely THE best passive defensive talent the paladin has. In general this effectively doubles your chance to parry, which cuts down on the number of times the monsters will hit you. Even better than Toughness in my opinion since not getting hit 5% of the time is even better than taking 2.5% less damage from all hits. All defensive builds must come down this far into the tree to get this talent. Check the description of Toughness for a link to a useful thread comparing these two skills.
Vengeance
Gives you a 15% bonus to Physical and Holy damage you deal for 8 seconds after dealing a critical strike.
First lets look at what it takes for this talent to proc. This talent is useful only if going for a build with high agility and conviction. The Paladin's chance for a critical hit is 5% base, and will most likely hit 8-10% by level 60 without trying for specific equipment. Conviction will give you another 5%, and if you use the right equipment you can get your critical rate even higher, even over 20%. For a heavy damage build, this is an excellent skill since you'll be trying to get criticals anyways. And a 15% increase to both your physical and holy damage is great. Some people will use Seal of Crusader until they hit a critical, then switch to a Seal of Righteousness or Seal of Command depending upon what weapon they're using to deal that extra holy damage. Note that ALL holy skills get the holy damage increase, including holy shield, consecration, and retribution aura. A very useful skill across the board, assuming your crit rate is high enough to make use of it.
Seal of Command
Fills the Paladin with the spirit of command for 30 seconds, giving the Paladin a chance to deal additional Holy damage equal to the damage of the Paladin's weapon. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy for 30 seconds, causing 82 Holy damage any time the enemy becomes stunned. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.
This seal is Seal of Righteousness's counterpart. Whereas that is used with low damage one handers, this seal shines with high damage two handed weapons (or even the more powerful one handers). The damage from this seal can be increased by Judgement of Crusader, making it even more powerful. This damage "acts like" physical damage in that the holy damage can cause a critical, and be dodged/parried/blocked or just plain miss. Even with all of these issues, Seal of Command is still one of the highest rated damage dealing skills in the Paladin's armory. The same as I added comments from Theras in SoR, here are comments from him here:
"Again, the speed of your weapon doesn't really factor into the proc rate, so you can remove that part of the analysis. As mentioned above with Righteousness, I tend to use Command on weapons with an average damage of greater than 295 on the character panel. Before avoidance is calculated, it will proc about 4.8 times per minute. Being pessimistic, I lowered that to 3.8 for comparison purposes against Righteousness (to assume a 15% avoidance rate, and 10% critical hit rate). It is also very important to note that Rank 5 Seal of Command does not generate a higher proc rate or more damage than Rank 1 Seal of Command. Thus if going for straight damage, you only need to expend 110 mana per minute to keep up steady damage, while Judgement of the Crusader + Seal of Righteousness requires 970 mana per minute to keep up. This frees you up to fire off, say, two Consecrations (and thus adding another 768 damage per target in range). The bottom line is, if you have a very high damage weapon, Seal of Command is the best damage Seal we have."
Judgement of Command is an interesting effect, one which is not used very often but has it's place all the same. Since mobs and players become immune to stuns after a certain number, this isn't as useful as one would usually think and isn't my first choice for a seal since I could judge Seal of Light or others. This skill comes into play more in PvP where stuns are constant and players go down quickly.
Anticipation
Increases your Defense skill by 10.
A so-so skill, it does do more than meets the eye. It increases block/parry/dodge each by 0.4%, and it also lowers the chance for an opposing monster or player to hit you and cause a critical hit on you. Useful as a defensive skill, but considering there are so many items out there with +Defense on them, there are certainly better skills to spend five talent points on.
Improved Retribution Aura
Increases the damage done by your Retribution Aura by 25%.
If you love your Retribution Aura, then you will love this talent. If you dislike it, then this talent is worthless to you. If you are one of those people who uses Retribution Aura extensively, then an additional point of damage per point of talent is very nice. This talent goes along well with the paladin's AE retribution aura build. More useful for those who use a shield than two-handers because of the extra damage you're taking by not using devotion aura. Not so useful in raids or boss encounters, very useful for grinding or fighting many monsters at once.
Consecration
Consecrates the land beneath the Paladin, doing 384 Holy damage over 8 seconds to enemies who enter the area.
The Paladin's only area effect spell, if you come this far into the into the retribution tree you better get this. A very nice way to cause aggro to a large group of mobs, it also causes a decent amount of damage as long as the monsters stay near you. Not very useful in PvP as most players will run from you. However very effective in large groups of enemies. Holy damage increasing skills will affect this such as vengence and sanctity aura. Useful for most situations.
Precision
Increases your chance to hit with melee weapons by 3%.
Not much to say about this. Some people skip this skill in their retribution builds, but a higher chance to strike always equals more damage which equals more threat and faster dead monsters. A good talent.
Conviction
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 5%.
Again, not much to say about this. If you're this far into the tree, get this skill. More crits = more damage. Note that this will also cause Vengence to proc more often so you will gain more than a pure 5% critical strike rate.
Blessing of Kings
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats by 10% for 5 minutes. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.
The ultimate blessing? The jury is out on this. Is it the best overall blessing? Sure. If you go far into the retribution tree this skill is certainly worth picking up. When cast on anyone this provides and increase to damage, health, mana, dodge/parry/block, mana regen, crit rate and spell crit rate. Any class with an agl build loves this blessing. However it does all this in relatively small amounts. For a more general class like a Paladin or a Druid this is very useful, but for other classes this is of limited use. Tanks will want Might or Sanctuary. Casters will want Wisdom or Salvation. The main tank will want Light. Blessings are very situational and although this is an excellent blessing for normal grinding and questing, in instances and against bosses, other specialized blessings can be more useful. Like any other blessing, watch the situation.
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