WoW Classic Paladin Leveling Guide 1-60

While Paladins are not exceptionally fast levels, they do offer a steady leveling pace combined with a free mount at Level 40 for a consistent, albeit slow experience. As a Paladin, you are going to want to level as Retribution for the damage since Holy and Protection just do not offer the same level of consistent damage that retribution will. While slow, Paladins do have self-healing, powerful cooldowns, and strong utility that make them relatively safe while leveling, and able to engage in world PvP when needed to protect themselves. They also will get access to some of their important buffs like Blessing of Wisdom and Blessing of Might early on, which make them great when paired with other people.

Paladins have uses for all the different specs, but Retribution will be the best by far for solo leveling while also allowing you to off heal when needed.

If you are planning to play in a group, Holy is a great option. You gain Consecration early, you can heal and support the DPS, and you bring powerful buffs.

If you want to tank, you can choose to play Protection Paladin. This will feel slow and clunky for solo leveling, but can be strong in dungeons.

To guide you in the class-specific quests you can do while leveling up, feel free to use the following guide.

Contrary to popular belief, leveling in a group can be extremely efficient, even better than solo leveling in some cases. While Paladins are on the slower side for solo leveling, they are considered to be a top tier leveling class when put into a duo or group. If you can find a Warlock or a Warrior to level with, you can support them without powerful buffs and healing while combining for a much higher kill rate than either of you would have been able to get alone.

One popular leveling strategy that has been developed in the beta over the last few months is dungeon grinding. Dungeons are much easier than people have historically been used to for Classic content, and with a solid group, dungeons can match or even beat the experience per hour that questing gives. Starting from Level 15 as Alliance for Deadmines, you can get into a group and potentially grind dungeons all the way to 60, if that is what you wanted to do. The ideal group comps fall into one of two categories. The first option is a spell cleave group that utilizes multiple Mages and potentially Warlocks to pull large groups of mobs at once, to AoE them down with longer recovery times between pulls. The second option is a melee-based group, mostly utilizing Warriors, that aims to pull consistently with little to no downtime due to the Warriors not needing Mana between pulls. You can make a dungeon group with any combination of classes and specs, but these two have proven to be the most efficient if that is your goal.

Paladins do not have many useful abilities that will be part of your "core" rotation while leveling. This means that you can choose to skip many more abilities than you normally would on other classes, but you will find that it is not needed and could potentially be a bad choice. Since Paladins get a free mount at Level 40 as a class quest, they do not need to save up money early for a mount, meaning they are free to buy more skills. It is better to ensure you have more skills, such as healing and utility spells, to ensure a smoother 1-60 experience than to try to save money early on.

• Seal of Righteousness
• Holy Light
• Devotion Aura
• Judgement
• Blessing of Might
• Seal of the Crusader
• Divine Protection
• Hammer of Justice — Just Rank 1
• Purify
• Lay on Hands
• Blessing of Protection
• Redemption
• Blessing of Wisdom
• Righteous Fury — If you are leveling in a group
• Retribution Aura
• Blessing of Freedom
• Flash of Light
• Divine Intervention
• Seal of Command
• Consecration
• Divine Shield
• Cleanse
• Hammer of Wrath
• Summon Warhorse
• Summon Charger

While leveling, you will either want to use Devotion Aura or Retribution Aura. Generally, Retribution Aura will be better and result in more damage, thus increasing your leveling speed. However, Devotion Aura is still nice to have for if there comes a time where you feel like you need the extra armor, so is generally worth taking the later ranks of. You can skip Devotion Aura if you want to save gold, however.

Eventually, at Level 30, you will get Sanctity Aura, which will become your best aura while killing a single enemy. With multiple enemies attacking you, Retribution Aura will be superior.

Early on you will use Blessing of Might as it is the first Blessing that you will get. At Level 14 you get Blessing of Wisdom, which will be better until you decide that Mana is not an issue anymore. This probably will not happen until the 30s or 40s, but eventually, you will want to swap back to Blessing of Might to get the extra Attack Power. Remember that a big part of leveling speed is minimizing downtime, and the extra Mana provided from Blessing of Wisdom can save you more time than the extra Attack Power from Blessing of Might, so it is up to you to decide when you want to make the switch.

One of the most common questions that Paladins have is which seal to use, as there is generally lots of confusion around seals, specifically Seal of Command. Seal of Command is a great seal, but does damage based off your weapon damage. Additionally, it only can proc 7 times per minute. This means that if you have a faster 2H weapon with a lower damage range, Seal of Command is not worth using. In that case, Seal of Righteousness becomes better due to its flat damage added per hit. With a faster weapon, you will proc the extra damage from Seal of Righteousness more often, making it much better. The specific cutoff you should be looking for is a 3.5-second weapon speed. If your weapon is slower than 3.5, then Seal of Command is better. If your weapon is faster than 3.5, then Seal of Righteousness is better. While using these seals you should always use Judgement on cooldown for the on-demand damage. On longer fights, specifically if you think an enemy will take more than ~30 seconds to kill, you can swap to Seal of the Crusader just to use Judgement and then promptly swap back to your previous seal. This will place a 10-second debuff on the target that increases their Holy damage taken, but will be refreshed be melee attacks.

Your leveling strategy as a Paladin is quite simple, just auto-attack enemies to death while using Judgement on cooldown. If you are too low, use Flash of Light or Holy Light between enemies to get yourself back up before going again. When your Mana is too low, drink. There is not a ton of nuance to the Paladin leveling gameplay while soloing, and the best way to level is to focus on just keeping your leveling speed consistent while minimizing downtime. If you find yourself using too much Mana you can delay Judgement slightly to make more use of your natural Mana regeneration between casts.

As stated above, the main thing to focus on is consistency to try to minimize downtime. Use Judgement on cooldown, keep your seal of choice up, and heal when you need to. Try to maximize your use of your natural Mana regeneration between Judgement casts, but sometimes you will need to drink. If you are going to heal, always do it in bursts to not affect your natural Mana regeneration as much. Remember that you should be following the 5-second rule, which is that you will only start naturally regenerating Mana after not casting for 5 seconds, meaning you can delay casting for longer if you feel like you are consuming too much Mana and need to regenerate more.

If your goal is to hit Level 60 as fast as possible, it is not recommended to pick up professions while leveling. However, some professions are very useful for either leveling or at Level 60 and can be worth the time investment while leveling. First Aid is a must-have profession at max level due to the no Mana cost healing it provides and learning it early on can be useful while leveling. Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning all are great choices for making gold towards your first mount, and can also be useful for helping to level other important professions later on, such as taking Mining to help level Engineering.

If you are going Holy at Level 60, it might be advisable to take professions that you can level without needing to kill enemies, such as Herbalism and Alchemy.

By the time you hit maximum level, it will be very helpful to read the rest of our guides. Pick Holy Paladin if you intend to heal at maximum level, which is the preferred specialization for a Paladin looking for a raid group, but Retribution Paladins are also viable raiding options. Protection Paladins are not as popular or as strong at 60, but can be useful to tank dungeons.

You are also welcome to catch up on what to do in PvP combat with our PvP Paladin Guide, and to start you epic mount grind with the help of the Goldmaking Guide for Paladins!