WoW Classic Protection Paladin Leveling Talent Build from 1 to 60
On this page, you will find our Protection leveling guide for WoW Classic. Make sure to use the slider to make the guide adapt to your level. For more general leveling information, please refer to our Paladin leveling guide. We also have an Holy Paladin leveling guide and a Retribution Paladin leveling guide.
If you were looking for TBC Classic advice, please refer to our TBC Classic Protection Paladin leveling guide.
Foreword
Paladin is one of two classes that can play every role, with Protection being their tanking specialization. Protection Paladins excel at dungeons due to their high AoE damage and threat, making Protection an alright choice for doing dungeons on your road to 60. However, for solo leveling, Protection will be extremely slow, and you would be better off playing Retribution.
Level by Level Rotation, Talents, and Trainer Skills
Talent Tree
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Protection Paladins excel at AoE, mainly because of
two talents: Holy Shield and
Consecration. Once you have both
of these, tanking dungeons will be quite easy, with the only issue being that you
will need to stop frequently to get mana back. This tree offers lots of other defensive
talents such as
Redoubt and
Shield Specialization, which
are required to tank as a Prot Paladin. Some of the defensive talents are not worth
the investment while leveling, such as
Toughness, but you can move
points around to take it if you want. Lots of the other talents are also taken assuming
you are in a group, such as
Guardian's Favor and
Improved Righteous Fury.
These are only worth taking if you are in a group, and can be skipped if you are confident
that you will only be playing solo. Outside of the Protection tree, you absolutely
need
Consecration and
Benediction, but the rest of the points
are yours to do with as you please. If you know you are going to be doing lots of
dungeons, starting off in Holy to go for
Consecration immediately is
also a viable path.
Leveling Rotation
- Keep
Seal of Righteousness up.
- Use
Judgement on cooldown if you have the Mana for it, keeping in mind that you will need to reapply your seal after.
- Keep up
Holy Shield.
- Use
Consecration on cooldown for more than 1 target, if you have the Mana.
- Melee.
Do your class quest to get Redemption.
This will not benefit you while you level alone, but is invaluable if you ever level
with other people or do dungeons.
This is the first level where you could possibly learn
Holy Shield. If you started out in Holy to get
Consecration, you
should consider paying the gold to swap specs and get
Holy Shield immediately.
Holy Shield is one of the best and most important talents that you will pick up
as Protection, and is worth getting as soon as possible.
Paladin Quests
- The first Paladin-only quest becomes available at Level 12.
- At Level 12, you can do the Redemption quest.
- At Level 20, you can do the Sense Undead quest, which also
rewards a strong 2H weapon:
Verigan's Fist.
- At Level 40, you can do the Paladin mount quest.
Leveling Stats
Choosing what gear to wear is usually pretty straightforward since upgrades will be obvious most of the time. However, when given the choice, you are going to want to try to get Strength for more damage and Spirit for better recovery. Your basic priority will be:
- Strength;
- Spirit;
- Intellect;
- Stamina;
- Agility.
Strength is your most straight forward damage increase and will provide the most value. Spirit is a strong recovery stat, which will be more efficient than just going for more max mana or health through Intellect or Stamina. Spell power is also not a bad choice, but is rare to come across. Specifically you could pick up +Holy Damage pieces for even more damage. Having a high mana pool is important though, so Intellect is also a worthwhile investment if you can pick up lots of it on a piece.
List of Trainer Skills to Buy
Paladin specs benefit from upgrading roughly the same skills, so our list of skills to buy from trainers is the same, regardless of the spec. For this reason, you will find that list in our general Paladin leveling page.
How to Advance as a Paladin at Level 60
Well done on hitting maximum level in WoW Classic! Now that leveling is over, you can learn more about level 60 gameplay by reading our Protection Paladin Guide, which covers every facet of gameplay at 60 in detail.
The best individual pages to read through are as follows.
- The Protection Paladin Talent builds guide has the best builds for Level 60 covered.
- Our PvP Paladin guide is where you can find PvP builds for all 3 specializations, as well as various tricks and tips for PvP combat.
- Goldmaking Guide for Paladins is a page with details on where / how to farm gold quickly as a Paladin when you are Level 60.
- The Protection Paladin Rotation guide is where you can read on how to optimize your PvE damage and how to prioritize your abilities.
- DPS Paladin Stats guide contains detailed information on all Paladin stats, including a list of their priority for damage dealing.
- Our Gear guide for Protection Paladins lists all the optimal pieces of gear that you will want to farm at Level 60, in order to optimize your damage.
Changelog
- 18 Nov. 2024: Page updated for Classic Anniversary.
- 05 Oct. 2019: Page added.
Classic Dungeon Guides
Classic Profession Guides
Classic Race Guides
Classic Class Overviews
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This guide has been written by Abide, TBC veteran for nearly a decade. Abide is a Warrior tank and multi-class expert currently playing on Faerlina as Horde. You can find him in the the Icy Veins Discord. You can also see him live on Twitch.
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