Mists of Pandaria Classic Retribution Paladin Leveling

Retribution Paladin is one of the best classes for solo leveling in Mists of Pandaria due to their ability to quickly kill enemies but also their ability to stay active and self-sustain thanks to abilities like Word of Glory. Your primary goal while leveling as a Retribution Paladin is to always be fighting something, the best way to maximize your leveling speed is to constantly be gaining experience.

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 70% Movement Speed increase on a 45 second cooldown allow us to quickly move from one area of the map to the others or between camps of enemies to maximize our time spent in combat and gaining experience.
• 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, this is another strong choice as it gives some static movement speed but as a Retribution Paladin your goal is to spend your Holy Power, either on damaging abilities like Templar's Verdict to quickly work through a quest or Word of Glory to help keep yourself active.

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. Most mobs you encounter while leveling will be able to be stunned. This ability should be used almost on cooldown in order to minimize the amount of damage mobs you are fighting are able to deal.
• Repentance incapacitates your target for 1 minute. While this is a strong option we will be focusing primarily on killing as many relevant enemies as possible and avoiding pulling any unnecessary ones so the ability to crowd control a mob in this way does not directly benefit our leveling speed much.
• 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.

• Sacred Shield is our go to option in this tier. While leveling we want to mitigate as much incoming damage as possible to remain as healthy as possible so we can focus on dealing damage.
• Eternal Flame consumes 3 Holy Power and applies a heal-over-time effect to your target. This can be an interesting choice while leveling but we will ideally be using our Holy Power on Templar's Verdict to more quickly deal with our enemies, the best possible way to mitigate an enemies damage is by killing them.
• 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. A lot of this talents value is in healing other players, this is a great choice if you find yourself leveling with a Tank but in most solo scenarios the global cooldown you spend healing yourself with this Flash of Light would be better spent on a Word of Glory.

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. This is a great choice if you find yourself consistently leveling in groups but in most solo scenarios only Hand of Freedom and Hand of Protection will be able to benefit you.
• 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. As you are leveling it is very rare you will be in combat for an extended period of time so you will rarely be able to receive the full benefit of Sanctified Wrath. With Holy Avenger we will have considerably more access to our Holy Power spending abilities allowing us to self sustain with Word of Glory and deal damage with Templar's Verdict.
• 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 Hammer of Wrath by 50% while Avenging Wrath is active. Sanctified Wrath is a massive increase to our damage but while leveling you will rarely be in combat for the duration of your extended Avenging Wrath wasting a bit of the value of this talent.
• 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, Glyphs like Glyph of Inquisition are incredibly powerful but will only really benefit us once we reach level 81 and are able to learn Inquisition. Listed below are a rough outline of useful Major Glyphs while leveling.

• Glyph of Templar's Verdict causes you to take 10% less damage for 6 seconds after dealing damage with Templar's Verdict or Exorcism. This is a great choice while leveling as we will be constantly casting both Templars Verdict and Exorcism so it will act as a near constant source of 10% damage reduction.
• Glyph of Divine Storm causes your Divine Storm ability to heal you for 5% of your max health each time you cast it. While leveling you ideally want to be fighting multiple enemies so we will be utilizing Divine Storm quite often. The added healing from this can do a lot to keep you active and in combat.
• Glyph of Double Jeopardy causes your Judgment ability to deal 20% more damage if cast on a different target than your previous Judgement. This is your single largest damage increasing Glyph while leveling as you will almost constantly be fighting multiple mobs so you have plenty of opportunity to benefit from this Glyph.
• Glyph of Divine Protection reduces Physical and Magic damage by 20%. While leveling it is rare you will be taking a single type of damage for long so having the ability to mitigate both can help considerably while leveling.
• Glyph of Inquisition each time you land a killing blow the duration of your Inquisition is increased by 30 seconds. This is a great choice as Inquisition is one of your primary ways to increase your damage done as a Retribution Paladin, just keep in mind this will not benefit us until we learn Inquisition at level 81.

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.

As highlighted above Retribution Paladin is one of the most self sufficient specializations in all of the World of Warcraft. While leveling as Retribution you will not only have access to an incredible amount of self-healing and powerful self-sustaining cooldowns like Lay on Hands but you will also deal a considerable amount of damage in both single target and AoE, allowing you to vanquish both powerful elites or groups of smaller enemies.

The goal of your leveling rotation as a Retribution Paladin is incredibly simple: Generate as much Holy Power as possible without going over the cap of 5 Holy Power and spend that Holy Power with either Templar's Verdict or Word of Glory pending on if you need to be healed or if you are healthy and are trying to deal damage. As you level you will find yourself with more ways to generate and spend Holy Power. Highlighted below is an outline of how to most optimally do so to deal maximum damage while also self-sustaining.

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, Exorcism. If you find yourself out of Melee range make sure to use Exorcism or Judgement while closing the gap.
5. If you are fighting two or more enemies replace Crusader Strike with Hammer of the Righteous and Templar's Verdict with Divine Storm but continue to follow the logic mentioned.
6. If you are at risk of dying, cast Word of Glory to heal yourself
7. Keep Inquisition active at all times. This ability will only be available toward the end of your leveling journey so do not worry if you do not see it until level 81.
8. Cast Templar's Verdict/ Divine Storm (when you have 5 Holy Power.)
9. Cast Templar's Verdict/ Divine Storm (when you have 3 Holy Power but all of the previous conditions are met.)