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.

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Protection Paladin Talents Level 10 to 19

Protection Paladin Talents Level 20 to 28

Protection Paladin Talents Level 29 to 38

Protection Paladin Talents Level 39 to 50

Protection Paladin Talents Level 51 to 60

1. Levels 10 to 14 — 5 points in Divine Intellect
2. Levels 15 to 19 — 5 points in Improved Seal of Righteousness

Here we will aim to pick up either Divine Strength or Divine Intellect, with the former being better for early leveling, and the latter being preferred to increase our mana pool while tanking dungeons. Improved Seal of Righteousness will give us a huge boost to our Seal of Righteousness damage, which will be the main source of our killing power early on.

1. Level 20 — 1 point in Consecration
2. Levels 21 to 25 — 5 points in Redoubt
3. Levels 26 to 28 — 3 points in Precision

At level 20 we can finally take Consecration, the main reason we have placed talent points into the Holy tree. Consecration will be our main source of AoE damage from here on our, allowing us to pull multiple mobs at a time, as long as you have the mana! With our AoE damage learned, we will now start picking up Protection tree talents, grabbing Redoubt to increase our block chance, and Precision to increase our melee hit chance. While melee hit rating may seem like a low priority for Protection Paladins, you must land your melee attack to deal damage with Seal of Righteousness, making this a solid choice.

1. Levels 29 & 30 — 2 points in Guardian's Favor
2. Levels 31 to 33 — 3 points in Improved Righteous Fury
3. Levels 34 to 38 — 5 points in Anticipation

We'll start here with some utility, grabbing Guardian's Favor to improve our Blessing of Freedom and Blessing of Protection, greatly helping us while AoEing or in dungeons. Improved Righteous Fury will greatly improve our threat generated while Righteous Fury is active, which is the only way we generate threat in group game play environments. We'll finish these talents with 5 points in Anticipation, granting us 10 Defense skill, which is the main stat tanks desire to improve their survivability (alongside Stamina).

1. Levels 39 & 40 — 2 points in Shield Specialization
2. Level 41 — 1 point in Blessing of Sanctuary
3. Level 42 — 1 point in Shield Specialization
4. Levels 43 to 45 — 3 points in Reckoning
5. Levels 46 to 50 — 5 points in One-Handed Weapon Specialization

We'll pick up Shield Specialization, increasing the amount of damage we absorb with our shield while blocking; this talent gives us a large survivability boost while tanking multiple mobs. At level 41 we unlock Blessing of Sanctuary, giving us a both a damage increase and survivability boost; this is the blessing you will use on yourself while AoEing and tanking dungeons. We'll put only 3 points into Reckoning here to unlock talents further down, as 3 points will still give us a ton of extra attack procs while tanking multiple mobs at once. We finish this section off with 5 points in One-Handed Weapon Specialization, which increases the damage of melee attacks and Seal of Righteousness damage (both melee attacks and Judgements) by 10%.

1. Level 51 — 1 point in Holy Shield
2. Levels 52 to 56 — 5 points in Benediction
3. Levels 57 & 58 — 2 points in Improved Judgement
4. Levels 59 & 60 — 2 points in Deflection

At level 51 we finally get Holy Shield, greatly improving our AoE threat, damage, and survivability. You will want to keep this spell on cooldown while AoE tanking, and you can keep using Rank 1 only to help save mana, allowing you to use Consecration more often. Benediction is our next, and final, major talent; the 15% mana cost reduction on applying all Seals and Judgements quickly adds up, allowing you to use more AoE spells. Improved Judgement and 2 points in Deflection are our recommended final talents here as you finish your leveling journey!

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 while AoE or tanking multiple mobs.
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.

• 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.

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.