Paladin Leveling Guide from 1 to 90

Welcome to our Paladin leveling guide! Here you will find all you need to about leveling a Paladin efficiently. In addition, you may wish to check out our General Leveling Guide, complete with detailed information on XP, mounts, addons, consumables, tips, and more.

Paladins are one of the stronger leveling classes. They have exceptional utility and self-healing which allows them to be efficient when going through the leveling process. Their biggest weakness would come in the form of low mobility.

Both Retribution and Protection are viable leveling specs. As Holy will lack damage, you will want to stay away from it outside of group play. Protection will allow you to be nearly invincible when pulling enemies. It has competitive AoE damage but will suffer when fighting bosses or having to deal single-target damage. Retribution on the other hand will deal strong damage regardless of situation, but it lacks the survivability that Protection has. Which spec is better will vary on the situation, and you will in most cases want to play the spec you are more comfortable with.

Retribution is the DPS specialization for Paladin, focusing on heavy burst damage through short yet powerful cooldowns and heavy-hitting abilities that consume Holy Power. While Retribution will have much longer dungeon queue times than the other Paladin specs, the increased damage allows it to be by far the fastest questing spec. The additional healing and utility you have access to also means that you are quite safe from danger when doing solo content.

Leveling Information

Retribution Paladin Leveling

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Protection is the tank specialization for Paladin. As a tank, you control your group's pace and are often the one dictating the speed at which you're leveling based on the amount of enemies you decide to attack at once. Protection provides a bit of extra healing, strong utility, and fantastic AoE damage, allowing you to excel in both group and solo content. By tanking, you will also gain a significantly reduced queue time in Dungeon Finder, making it much easier to level through dungeons.

Leveling Information

Protection Paladin Leveling

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Holy is the healing specialization for Paladin. While it is much slower at leveling in solo content, it excels in group content where you can rely on other players to deal the damage while you focus on keeping them alive through powerful single-target heals. Holy Paladins also bring excellent utility to make difficult encounters feel more manageable, while still outputting a bit of damage through abilities like Holy Shock and Consecration to help speed up your group. An additional perk of healing means that your queue times will often be much shorter than if you were DPSing, allowing you to level through dungeons at a much quicker and consistent pace.

Leveling Information

Holy Paladin Leveling

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When purchasing Heirloom Items for Leveling in general, we recommend picking the Heirloom items that have the highest amount of Haste possible. Haste speeds up the spec in almost every way, allowing you to quickly breeze through your rotation, and move on to the next mob more quickly.

Itemization

Leveling Heirlooms

Learn how to use Heirloom gear to level your characters as fast as possible!

Heirlooms Guide

• At level 1, you unlock Crusader Strike, which gives you 1 Holy Power when used on an enemy. You must be in melee range.
• At level 2, you unlock Shield of the Righteous, which deals damage to targets in front of you and provides armor. It costs 3 Holy Power to use.
• At level 3, you unlock Judgment. It does damage at long range, and after reaching level 10, it will generate 1 Holy Power when used by a Retribution or Protection Paladin.
• At level 4, you unlock Flash of Light, which serves as your quick heal. It is very expensive but has a short cast time.
• At Level 5, you unlock Hammer of Justice, which allows you to stun your target for 6 seconds.
• At level 6, you unlock Consecration, which deals damage to enemies caught within its radius for 12 seconds.
• At level 7, you unlock Word of Glory. This ability has different uses depending on your specialization. But, in every case, it is one the heals available to all specs. It costs 3 Holy Power to use.
• At level 8, you unlock Judgment, which increases the damage of Judgment by 50%.
• At level 9, you unlock Hand of Reckoning, which forces your target to attack you. In solo content, you can use this to pull enemies, in all specs.
• At level 10, you unlock Divine Shield. This ability will allow you to go immune to damage and harmful effects for 8 seconds.
• At level 10 you also unlock Sense Undead which will show the location of nearby undead targets on your minimap.
• At level 13, you unlock Redemption, which allows you to resurrect a dead ally.
• At level 19, you unlock Intercession, which is a resurrection ability that can be cast in combat once every 10 minutes.
• At level 70 you will gain access to Hero Talents. Each specialisation has access to two:
1. Herald of the Sun: Holy and Retribution.
2. Lightsmith: Holy and Protection.
3. Templar: Retribution and Protection.
4. At level 80 you can enter content in the Midnight expansion, where you will gain three more Class talent points, three more hero talent points, as well as four spec talent points you can allocate into the Apex Talent.

Class Guides

Paladin Class Guides

Finished leveling your character? Check out our max level guides!

All Paladin Guides

Mytholxgy, Panthea, and Bolas

Guide Authors

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This guide has been written by Mytholxgy, a former RWF progression raider and analyst for Pieces and Liquid. He is also a Templar in the Paladin Class Discord, as well as one of the class experts in the Evoker Discord. You can reach him on Twitter and watch him stream occasionally on Twitch.

This guide has been written by Panthea, who raids in Catalyst and is the author of TankNotes. He plays all tanks and is a Moderator for the Hammer of Wrath Paladin Discord. You can follow him on Twitter.

This guide has been written by Bolas, a long time Retribution Paladin enthusiast, theorycrafter, and high-end raider in the #1 Oceanic guild Honestly. You can find him in the Paladin Discord as bolas.ret.