WoW Classic Protection Paladin Leveling Talent Build from 1 to 60

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.

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.

1. Keep Seal of Righteousness up.
2. Use Judgement on cooldown if you have the Mana for it, keeping in mind that you will need to reapply your seal after.
3. Keep up Holy Shield.
4. Use Consecration on cooldown for more than 1 target, if you have the Mana.
5. 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.

• 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.

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:

1. Strength;
2. Spirit;
3. Intellect;
4. Stamina;
5. 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.

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.

Protection Paladins do not benefit tremendously from weapon upgrades, but they are still good. They are the most important upgrades that you get while leveling, and especially with fast weapons they also will increase the rate of your Seal of Righteousness procs. Knowing what weapons to get and where is important, so check out the Paladin weapons guide below.

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.