Mists of Pandaria Classic Protection Paladin Leveling

Protection Paladin is an incredibly steady spec to level as and while leveling as a Tank may not be the quickest you will rarely find yourself in a situation where you are at risk of dying. Is it recommended that you level as Retribution but if you are interested in leveling as Protection the most efficient way to level will be by spamming 5-man dungeons.

Below also includes a breakdown of each of your options talent wise while leveling. In Mists of Pandaria you will unlock a new row of talent selections every 15 levels, starting at level 15. The goal of our talents recommended is to maximize your up time and damage so you can quickly progress through each zone.

This tier of talents is dedicated to mobility. While leveling making your way from enemy to enemy can make up a significant amount of your journey so optimizing your movement can greatly reduce time spent on each level.

• Speed of Light will be our default choice on this tier. The ability to gain 70% movement speed every 45 seconds will help you quickly move from group of enemies to group of enemies and especially inside of a dungeon it will get you from pull to pull quickly to maximize your time spent in combat.
• Long Arm of the Law will increase your movement speed each time your cast Judgment, this is another option to consider if you find yourself in one specific area grinding mobs for a considerable amount of time as it will allow you to quickly move from pack to pack.
• Pursuit of Justice provides movement speed based on your current Holy Power. While the flat movement speed increase does add up over time we ideally as a Protection Paladin want to be constantly spending our Holy Power on Shield of the Righteous or Eternal Flame so we will never really receive the full benefit.

This tier of talents focuses on our crowd controlling abilities. While leveling having access to crowd control can be the difference between life or death so it is important to understand how each of these can benefit you on your leveling journey.

• Fist of Justice is our default choice as it replaces your Hammer of Justice ability with a shorter cooldown version of itself and with 10 additional yards of range. As a Tank especially while leveling your goal is to minimize incoming damage and using your Stun on cooldown will do just that.
• Repentance incapacitates your target for 1 minute. As a Protection Paladin especially our goal is to pull large groups of enemies and AoE them down. This talent does not do much to contribute to this other than possibly crowd controlling a ranged enemy that we have not yet managed to group with the rest of the pull.
• Evil is a Point of View now allows us to cast Turn Evil on Humanoids and Beasts. Similar to Repentance our goal while leveling is really to be killing enemies as quickly as possible, this can be a great tool if we find ourselves in a situation where we have pulled too many mobs but it can also cause them to aggro more mobs while they are under the effect of Turn Evil.

This tier of talents focuses on self sustain and mitigating incoming damage. While leveling one of the single largest ways you can increase your leveling speed is by keeping yourself active and avoiding any unnecessary down time so properly understanding each of these abilities will help you stay in combat.

• Eternal Flame consumes 3 Holy Power and applies a heal-over-time effect to your target. This will be our default choice for this tier as Eternal Flame scales incredibly with Bastion of Glory and casting Eternal Flame on yourself increases its duration by 50% making it an incredibly efficient cast.
• Sacred Shield is another strong option while leveling but will often struggle to compare to Eternal Flame in a situation where you are taking constant damage.
• Selfless Healer causes each of your Judgments to grant you a buff reducing the Mana cost and Cast time of your next Flash of Light while also increasing its effectiveness. This is a great way to help your group if you find yourself constantly in 5 man parties its something to consider if you rarely find yourself at risk of dying but your primary goal should be keeping yourself alive and Eternal Flame does that much better.

This tier of talents is centered around our utility and defensive cooldowns. The best way to mitigate your time spent eating or healing yourself is to prevent incoming damage by utilizing abilities like Divine Protection.

• Unbreakable Spirit reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield, Divine Protection and Lay on Hands abilities by 50%. This will be our primary choice while leveling as abilities like Divine Protection should be used early and often so we can remain as healthy as possible while fighting to minimize down time.
• Clemency grants a second charge to your all of your Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Freedom, Hand of Protection, and Hand of Salvation abilities before incurring their cooldowns. If you end up leveling primarily in dungeons than this will be a great choice but in a situation where you find yourself solo leveling than Unbreakable Spirit will often be the better choice.
• Hand of Purity reduces the targets damage taken by 10% and and periodic damage taken by 80% for 6 seconds. This is an incredibly niche use spell that unfortunately will not see much use while leveling. The primary reason for taking this talent is the periodic damage reduction and while leveling you are unlikely to face any encounter that does enough periodic damage to warrant this.

This tier of talents will focus on bolstering our ability to do damage by increasing the potency of our cooldowns or allowing us more access to Holy Power spending and generating abilities.

• Holy Avenger increases the damage and healing of your Holy Power generating abilities by 30% and causes them to generate 3 Holy Power. This is our default choice while leveling due to the nature of encounters while leveling. This talent allows us to get out quite a few casts of Shield of the Righteous which will make up most of our damage while leveling and it is rare an encounter while Leveling would last long enough to receive the full benefits of Sanctified Wrath.
• Sanctified Wrath extends the duration of our Avenging Wrath by 50% (10 seconds, totaling in 30 seconds of up time.) and reduces the cooldown of Judgment by 50% and causes it to generate and additional Holy Power while Avenging Wrath is active. Sanctified Wrath is often the largest damage increase of the talents found in this tier but most enemies you fight will die far too quickly to gain its full benefit.
• Divine Purpose gives you Holy Power spending abilities a 25% chance to make your next Holy Power spending ability to be free and behave as if it was cast with 3 Holy Power. This is another strong choice if you are willing to gamble with the procs. While Holy Avenger will over the course of your leveling experience be much more consistent you can find yourself getting enough Divine Purpose procs to make it worth it but it is considerably less predictable and leveling is all about staying active.

Glyphs in Mists of Pandaria are a much smaller part of the leveling process than previous expansions but having an idea of what they do and how they can benefit your character can greatly increase the rate at which you level, highlighted below are some options that you should consider while leveling.

While leveling your Glyph choices will vary considerably depending on what level you are and how you decide to level. Almost every Glyph slot is open to personal preference while leveling a Protection Paladin with one exception being Glyph of the Alabaster Shield which is too large of a damage increase to be ignored.

• Glyph of the Alabaster Shield causes your successful blocks to increase the damage of your next Shield of the Righteous by 10% stacking up to three times. While leveling you will often be fighting multiple mobs and constantly blocking, greatly increasing the up time of this buff and as a result the damage of your Shield of the Righteous.
• Glyph of Hand of Sacrifice causes your Hand of Sacrifice to no longer redirect the damage to the Paladin. This Glyph will only benefit you if you are leveling with another person or constantly in dungeons but if so it is an incredible way to help mitigate damage on an ally without having to take any damage yourself.
• Glyph of Final Wrath causes your Holy Wrath ability to deal an additional 50% damage to targets with less than 20% health. This is a massive damage increase while leveling as you will almost constantly be pulling multiple mobs.
• Glyph of Double Jeopardy causes your Judgment ability to deal 20% more damage if cast on a different target than your previous Judgement. As mentioned in previous glyphs you will almost certainly be fighting multiple mobs while leveling so this is a great way to increase your kill speed.
• Glyph of Divine Protection reduces Physical and Magic damage by 20%. This changes your Divine Protection ability from a purely Magic damage defensive ability to now split the damage reduction half Physical and half Magic. While leveling it is rare you will constantly be fighting against the same damage type so being able to mitigate both will cause Divine Protection to be considerably more useful.

Minor Glyphs as mentioned above will only offer you quality of life or cosmetic benefits in Mists of Pandaria so listed below are the only two options that may actually impact your game play.

• Glyph of Righteous Retreat causes your Hearthstone to be 50% faster while Divine Shield is active. While leveling this can help us escape otherwise sticky situations.
• Glyph of the Falling Avenger adds a slow fall effect to your Avenging Wrath. This can help you traverse what would otherwise be an impossible gap to get across, though keep in mind Divine Shield and Hand of Protection both stop fall damage so it can be a bit redundant.

Protection Paladin is one of the most self-sufficient classes in the game either while leveling or at end game. While your kill speed may at time be lacking you have tons of tools like Holy Wrath and Hammer of the Righteous to deal with large groups of enemies making up for the extra time spent in combat. As a Protection Paladin your goal should be to spend as much time in combat as possible with as many mobs as possible without dying.

Your focus on leveling as a Protection Paladin is quite simple: generate as much Holy Power as possible to maximize the amount of Shield of the Righteous casts to deal as much damage as possible while also keeping Eternal Flame active on yourself. The best way to do this is by utilizing your Holy Power generating abilities like Crusader Strike, Judgment on cooldown while never going above your Holy Power cap as any Holy Power generated once you are capped will be completely wasted. Highlighted below is a general list of priorities to consider while leveling.

The priority order is as follows:

1. Keep Seal of Righteousness active when fighting two or more enemies, if you are fighting a single enemy use Seal of Truth.
2. Keep Blessing of Kings active.
3. Cast Avenging Wrath/ Holy Avenger early and often, it is better to get partial benefit from these than leave them off cooldown for an extended period of time waiting for the perfect moment.
4. In this order, use these abilities to generate Holy Power if you will not go past the cap of 5 Holy Power: Hammer of Wrath, Crusader Strike, Judgment. If you find yourself out of Melee range make sure to use Avenger's Shield or Judgement while closing the gap. With a Grand Crusader proc Avengers Shield is your top priority.
5. If you are fighting two or more enemies replace Crusader Strike with Hammer of the Righteous.
6. Keep Eternal Flame active at all times, this is ideally cast with 5 Bastion of Glory stacks.
7. Cast Shield of the Righteous (when you have 3 Holy Power but all of the previous conditions are met.)
8. Cast Holy Wrath on cooldown.
9. Cast Consecration on cooldown to deal damage and start its cooldown.