Protection Paladin Leveling Guide from 1 to 90 — 12.0.5

Leveling as a tank is very forgiving. You can consistently pull all of the enemies you need for a quest objective in one big clump and comfortably survive it leading to a faster questing experience.

As a tank you are also priviledged to fast queue times for dungeons if you want a break from questing. They give a large chunk of experience when you complete them and help reinforce your end game playstyle as open world questing is not consistently challenging.

Another minor advantage you have as a Paladin while leveling is that you can safely fall from great heights by using Divine Shield just before landing to avoid all of the fall damage!

One final tip before we go into the guide is use Recuperate after you have left combat and are at low health. It is faster than healing yourself up if you do not have Holy Power for Word of Glory.

Leveling Information

Beginner Leveling Guides

If this is your first character, or want to know more about the leveling process in Midnight, we've got you covered with these two guides!

Basic LevelingMidnight Leveling

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level but two secondary stats on it instead of one.

When using Heirloom items priortise items with Haste. These items scale with your level meaning that you will not need to replace them as you level.

Itemization

Leveling Heirlooms

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

Heirlooms Guide

When leveling in Midnight, many of the consumables you used throughout the War Within will continue to be valuable. You may opt to change your secondary stat enchants to speed variants such as Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Speed (Bracer) and Enchant Cloak - Chant of Burrowing Rapidity (Cloak) and use the speed food buff Exquisitely Eviscerated Muscle.

Using Tempered Potions as you fight your way through quests will also speed up your leveling journey and always having a combat flask active such as Flask of Alchemical Chaos.

Goblin Glider Kit can be a lifesaver when jumping off large cliffs or when you want to cover a long distance.

Gunshoes are a highly recommended item for leveling. They provide an extremely large movement speed increase. It is a bonus comparable to what you get when flying. It is highly recommended you stock up on these items when leveling.

The Gunshoes will not let you stop moving as long as they are active. Using this macro twice will click the buff off and allow you to stop.

If you are just starting your journey into Midnight, we have a Level 80 import string for you. You can follow the point-by-point allocation of the below tree once you start gaining levels in Midnight.

1. Steed of Glory increases the duration of Divine Steed by 2 seconds, which means you can travel a lot further per Steed charge, allowing you to quickly get between two places. Note, however, that it does cause you to knock back enemies that get close to you, which can be a negative aspect if you are trying to gather them up to AoE.
2. Warrior of Light makes Shield of the Righteous deal 30% more damage at the cost of less Armor granted. This is generally fine for outdoor content since tanks usually do not struggle to survive in outdoor content.
3. Aura of Reckoning will give you passive additional damage after you are hit 50 times.

To help with understanding what changes for your spec as you level up and progress through the talent tree, use the slider below to select your current level. Each time you level up, move it along, and the section will level up with you!

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

Protection Paladin rotation is a priority system, which means you do not have a strict rotation, but rather, when two abilities become available at the same time, you prioritize which one to press according to the rotation below.

When you first create your Paladin, you will only have one ability available to you: Crusader Strike. Once you reach level 10, you can officially specialize in Protection.

1. Cast Consecration
2. Cast Divine Toll.
3. Cast Hammer of Light
4. Cast Judgment to generate Holy Power. This will be Hammer of Wrath if you are under the effects of Avenging Wrath
5. Cast Shield of the Righteous when you have 3 Holy Power (or more).
6. Cast Avenger's Shield to deal damage to multiple targets, this spell goes highest in priority for damage against 3+ targets.
7. Cast Crusader Strike.
8. Your Crusader Strike will now become Hammer of the Righteous or Blessed Hammer.
9. Cast Hammer of the Righteous/ Blessed Hammer.

Active mitigation comes into play most of the time when leveling since we get Shield of the Righteous already at level 2. This means that we can spend our Holy Power on dealing AoE damage while also reducing physical damage taken by increasing our Armor.

Starting at Level 10, the Dungeon Finder opens up, and you can now queue up and test your tanking capabilities. Tanking at this level should not be too complicated, but it can definitely be very frustrating as other players will generally try to rush through it since it is such a low level. This means you may not learn a lot about tanking the first few dungeons, but keep playing, and you will learn while leveling.

Class Guides

Paladin Class Guides

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

All Paladin Guides

Panthea

Guide Author

Follow Panthea

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.