WoW Forever Paladin Leveling Guide & Talents

Introduction

Welcome to our Paladin Leveling Guide for World of Warcraft Forever. This guide will cover everything you need to know to level a Paladin in WoW Forever, including an overview of Paladin Strengths and Weaknesses, a Leveling Talents Build for Paladin, and the best Professions for a Paladin.

This guide was written by Jurdi, a Paladin main who has been creating Paladin guide content in Classic since 2021. He is also a moderator and theory crafter on the biggest classic Paladin Discord, Light Club.

Guide Contents:

• Strengths & Weaknesses
• Recommended Leveling Talents
• Playstyle and Core Abilities
• Best Leveling Gear For Paladin
• Key Spells & Levelling Milestones
• Best / Suggested Professions
• Other Paladin Leveling Info
• Maximising Rested XP

Strengths & Weaknesses of Paladin in WoW Forever

Recommended Specialization For Leveling Paladin

The Paladin is in a really interesting spot, as you can't really go wrong in any specialization you choose to level in. Early Talents heavily favour the Retribution Tree for Mana conservation, with early talents such as Benediction and Sanctified Judgement, and then get the very powerful Pursuit Of Justice ASAP.

The Protection Tree early on lacks notable power upgrades, but if you want to build off of early mitigation and eventual mana conservation, you can start going in there as well.

We recommend going straight into the Retribution Tree first to get the player buffs mentioned earlier. What is most important is getting a weapon for your player power upgrade. A weapon with +Spell Power and high Weapon Damage is ideal for any of the specializations, regardless if it's a one- or two-handed weapon.

You could also opt into the Holy Tree for Divine Strength -> Improved Seals -> Holy Conduit, but the earlier mana talents are what we favor in the Retribution Tree.

Power Spike: Early weapons such as Rhahk'Zor's Hammer or Scepter of the Abandoned will provide a significant increase in your overall damage and leveling speed.

Recommended Leveling Talents for Paladin

This talent build is recommended for the Paladin's leveling journey in WoW: Forever. We're focusing primarily on the DPS tree, Retribution, as it provides the most powerful talents, especially early on. We'll start by picking up Benediction for mana management, and then go into Sanctified Judgement followed by Improved Judgement. The goal here is to get Pursuit Of Justice as fast as possible for the 15% movement speed.

Afterwards, you can grab Seal Of Command for your new damage seal, then continue digging into the Retribution tree with talents such as Conviction and Sacred Arbiter, as both of these talents are just flag upgrades to the Paladins overall damage.

You'll find that the tree just continues to provide flat damage bonuses with Two-Handed Weapon Specialization, Vengeance, and Champion Of The Light. We'll put 1 point in Unyielding Faith to be able to grab our capstone talent: Unsealed Wrath. Although it's not the most exciting gameplay change, it is a very powerful addition to the Paladins power, as the only talent previously that slightly adjusted our rotation was Seal Of Command.

Afterwards, we'll go into the Holy Tree for more pure damage increase talents with Divine Strength and Improved Seals, and after grabbing Holy Conduit for additional mana benefits, we'll finish in the Protection Tree for Precision.

Alternatively, as you're leveling, after grabbing Pursuit Of Justice by level 21, you can opt into the Holy Tree for the three talents we grabbed for more strength and Seal Damage and continue to use Seal Of Righteousness over Command, and then grab Holy Conduit to have all available mana talents by level 32, and then continue down the Retribution Tree.

Dual Specialization Leveling Talents for Paladin

In WoW: Forever, Dual Specialization is in the game once a player reaches level 40. It costs 50 gold and can be purchase from any Paladin trainer. Since the Paladin's Journeyman Mount riding and mount is free for them at level 40, they can use their saved up gold on a second talent tree instead.

With that, you could also start building a Healing or Tanking offspec. Here's an example of how I would talent in the exact order if I wanted to level as Protection from 40 and onward. Notice how I'm skipping endgame talents such as Anticipation and putting them into Divine Intellect to increase my overall mana. At endgame, I would swap those talent placements.

For those interested in healing as well, although the healing tree does have powerful healing talents, we can still heal well so long as we have +Healing gear on us. But you can start going into the Holy Tree after you grab Pursuit Of Justice, as we mentioned earlier. Pursuit of Justice is just an incredibly strong talent that is very hard to ignore, especially in a game where a healthjy portion of your time is spent traveling.

With this version of PoJ being the Burning Crusade version of 15% versus the Vanilla version of 8%, it also exponentially increases its value. When you get your first mount, you will be at 75% movement speed, which will significantly decrease your travel time.

Paladin Playstyle and Core Abilities

Seals

The Paladin playstyle plays off of their unique seal spells. The Paladin comes with a variety of seals, from pure damage-dealing seals like Seal Of Righteousness, tank seals like Seal Of Fury, or utility seals like Seal Of Wisdom. These seals provide a unique effect whenever the Paladin melee attacks, and each Judgement also has its own unique effect that you can find on the tooltip.

Rotation

You acquire a healthy amount of your toolkit incredibly early as a Paladin, and actually seem to get everything except Hammer Of Wrath once you reach level 20. The Paladin rotation is simply that of a priority rotation, prioritizing our more powerful abilities or abilities with longer cooldowns. Because our Judgement is off of the Global Cooldown (GCD), and because Seals no longer get consumed by the Judgement in WoW Forever, we always prioritize it when it's ready to be cast. Holy Strike is our instant damage-dealing ability. Our rotation in a nutshell from level 1-10 will be:

1. Keep Seal Of Righteousness active
2. Judgement
3. Holy Strike

You will acquire Retribution Aura at level 16 and Consecration at level 20, which will contribute to your overall damage significantly. The latter will deplete your mana fast, so be conservative when casting it in open world content.

Blessings/Utility

The Paladin also plays off its high utility through healing spells, dispels, and their blessings. Paladins have two types of blessings: hour-long stat increases, or temporary utility blessings. Blessing Of Wisdom, Blessing Of Might, Blessing Of Kings are the hour-long blessings, and then we have our temporary utility blessings: Blessing Of Freedom, Blessing Of Protection, and Blessing Of Sacrifice.

Best Leveling Gear for Paladin

Weapon upgrades are important for all classes in WoW Forever. In this version of WoW, Blizzard has put an even stronger emphasis on gear to increase your player power since ability damage and spells are reduced across the board. Players in WoW Forever should look to seek weapon upgrades ASAP.

Acolyte's Silvered Chain Helm is on here instead of the DPS/Tank option as you only trade -2 Spell Power but also gain +21 Healing Power. That additional power makes heals much more significant on yourself versus obtaining 2 more spell power.

You'll notice not a lot of specific paladin flavored armor on this list, and that's simply due to there not being any offered from Dungeons or Quest rewards from 1-35. If you want to get specific paladin gear for that bracket, you will have to craft it through Blacksmithing/

Powerful Paladin weapon upgrades include Rhahk'Zor's Hammer, Scepter of the Abandoned, and The Stitcher (Horde Only). Once you obtain one of these weapons, you'll notice a significant increase in your player power. There is, unfortunately, no Mail Spell Power gear for Paladins outside of Blacksmithing.

If you want the best gear before moving on to Plate gear at level 40, you will need to craft it or look for Auction House gear under certain suffixes such as "The Knight" and "The Sorcerer".

Key Spells & Leveling Milestones for Paladin

In the table below, we have listed the spells you'll want to look out for as you level.

All Paladin Spells: Check out all of the Paladin Class spells by level to track what new spells or upgrades you have coming up and how much it will cost you.

As mentioned above, Seals and their respective Judgements are the bread and butter of the Paladin toolkit. However, WoW Forever has expanded the toolkit with the addition of Holy Strike, a new instant attack that deals weapon damage and Holy damage.

At Level 20, the Paladin toolkit is essentially complete, as we'll learn Consecration, which is now a baseline talent and not restricted to the Holy talent tree like it was in Vanilla WoW. Also at level 20, we'll learn Blessing Of Kings, another now baseline spell that all paladins will learn, and is not restricted to the Protection tree anymore.

Once we get further into our respective Talent Trees, we can learn some of our milestone abilities. For Holy, picking up Holy Shock will be a great damage dealer and instant heal, Protection Paladins will pick up Holy Shield as the 21 point talent, and our new powerful capstone; Shieldsworn, and Retribution Paladins will grab Champion Of The Light and Unsealed Wrath.

Best / Suggested Professions for Paladin

Typically, Engineering is always a great Profession for Paladins to talent into. However, in WoW Forever, we expect this game to attempt to balance and somewhat homogenize all the professions to break the meta away from what players know in WoW Classic.

Blacksmithing will have gear for all three specializations, and Mining will allow players to pick and gather the materials needed for Blacksmithing. Currently, Blacksmithing is the only way for Paladins to get Mail Spell Power gear outside of random BoE gear with Paladin flavored suffixes (of Holy Wrath, of Magic, etc), which is why for leveling, Blacksmithing gets higher value. We will update this guide when we learn more about professions in WoW Forever.

Maximizing Rested XP in WoW Forever

Players who obtain the Cozy Sleeping Bag can obtain an additional 3% Experience gain buff. This is an extensive quest chain that we cover in a dedicated Cozy Sleeping Bag Guide.

The Cozy Sleeping Bag along with Campfire buffs, such as the Camp Tent, and food such as Beer Basted Boar Ribs, can all increase the rate at which you earn experience.

Most foods that provided a stat buff in Classic WoW now also provide an additional 5% experience gain from mob kills. Campfires are a new system that give players stat buffs such as 2% Critical Strike Chance or +8% stats depending on what profession items have been placed near the platform.