World of Warcraft: Forever Protection Paladin Leveling Guide

Tanks typically make strong levelers due to their ability to deal high amounts of damage while being much more durable than other specializations, even when regularly pulling multiple enemies at once. Protection Paladin is no exception.

Through abilities like Consecration and Retribution Aura you are able to deal quite a lot of damage to multiple enemies at once. Unlike other Tank specs, you will also have access to a ton of healing abilities such as Flash of Light, making it even easier to live through dangerous moments that other specs cannot.

Quite possibly the largest benefit of playing Protection Paladin is the ability to tank in dungeon groups. Oftentimes tanks are the hardest role to find when forming groups, meaning that you should have an easy time getting into a group whenever you have quests to complete or need a break from questing. And, if push comes to shove, you can still deal damage or even heal, at least at lower levels when talent points barely affect how strong you are.

In this page we will be providing recommendations for your specific level. This can help you to decide how best to spend talent points, where to quest, and what items you should keep an eye out for while on your journey to Level 60. That being said, much of Forever is about the journey itself, and we encourage you to deviate from our recommendations if you find yourself wanting to explore on your own. There are a ton of things that have still yet to be discovered, and exploring the unknown is half the fun!

The above build is made with leveling and entry level end-game content in mind. Pathing through Retribution early on is very important as you will gain access to Pursuit of Justice for increased movement speed, greatly improving your ability to get around the world. From there, the focus swaps back to the Protection side of the tree, with talents that improve both your survivability and help sustain your expensive mana costs.

Within the Prot tree most of the selected talents are taken with little room for alternatives. That being said, the Ret tree has a choice very early on between Benediction and Deflection. Benediction can help make Consecration much easier to maintain early on, while Deflection will provide more value later on when you have less mana concerns and are spending more time actively tanking. Either choice remains competitive though, and is up to personal preference.

The Protection Paladin rotation is fairly straightforward but, with the biggest emphasis being on managing your Mana. Consecration offers a ton of damage, especially in AoE settings, but it has a very high Mana cost. In order to maximize your damage output you will need to cast it as much as possible while also ensuring you have enough Mana to complete the rest of your rotation.

• Seal of Fury – should be maintained at all times. This provides you with a boost to your survivability while also giving Judgement the ability to taunt mobs.
• Consecration – should be cast as long as Mana allows. This will provide you with a ton of damage and AoE threat, and therefore safety for your group. The expensive cost can make it difficult to maintain for long periods of time though. You should only be keeping it active when you can afford it, and ensure you have enough Mana at the beginning of each new pull.
• Judgement – unleashes the seal you have active. Because we are using Seal of Fury, this will cause Judgement to deal extra damage, but more importantly, it will also taunt mobs. While you want to use Judgement as much as possible for damage, you should also be trying to use it to maintain threat and get aggro on enemies that you may have lost threat on.
• Holy Strike – can be cast on cooldown for extra damage.
• Exorcism – can be cast when fighting an Undead or Demon.

It is important to keep in mind that Swift Judgement can be used to reset the cooldown of Judgement, allowing you to quickly taunt an enemy when you have Seal of Fury active.

Additionally, it is important that while playing Protection Paladin you are aware of some of the utility you have at your disposal. These abilities can help you to get out of dangerous situations or keep players alive in desperate moments.

• Divine Intervention is one of the more iconic Paladin abilities, allowing you to sacrifice yourself in order to remove your target from combat. Typically this is used when your party or raid is about to wipe. You will cast the ability on a Healer so that after the wipe they can start resurrecting players without needing to run back from the graveyard.
• Lay on Hands will cost you all of your remaining mana, but it will also full heal a target. This can be the difference maker in a player living or dying during a very dangerous moment. Skilled players are able to use this to save pulls at the expense of their Mana.
• Blessing of Freedom grants your target immunity to movement impairing effects. If your target is already rooted or frozen in place, casting it will remove these debuffs. This ability is extremely valuable in PvP situations specifically, but also has its uses in regular PvE content, i.e. when a melee DPS is rooted in place while out of melee range.
• Blessing of Protection causes the target to become immune to any physical damage for its short duration. However, when you cast this on a player, they will be unable to attack or deal physical damage. Typically this is best used on casters or healers who have aggro and need to continue healing or get enemies off them.
• Mass Salvation reduces the amount of threat a player generates. Previously this ability was called Blessing of Salvation and could not be applied to another player who had another Blessing active already. However, it has been changed and you are now able to apply it to it multiple players at once.

While leveling you will often be in situations where you do not have much choice for your stats, and are instead just equipping whatever you have available. Thankfully, Protection Paladin can benefit from every stat. Whenever you can, you will want to prioritize Stamina to give you a bit of extra tankiness, while also targeting Spell Power for extra damage.

Early during leveling, you can focus on Weapon Damage, Hit, and Critical Strike, as auto attacks will be a large percentage of your damage. Spell Power only begins to gain value once you have Retribution Aura and Consecration.

The below list will reflect how you should prioritize stats.

1. Stamina
   • Increases your maximum Health. While you may not need the extra Stamina to live during leveling, as quest mobs are typically not as dangerous as dungeon pulls or raid bosses, it can still be very valuable.
2. Spell Power
   • Spell Power increases the damage of every Protection Paladin ability. While Spell Power will offer little value for your survivability, it adds a ton in terms of damage and threat.
3. Strength
   • While it may fall behind Spell Power in terms of Damage, it offers extra damage to auto attacks and Holy Strike, which makes up a nice amount of damage.
4. Block
   • Provides you with a chance to block enemy and ranged attacks. This stat offers strong defensive power and has great synergy with Shield Specialization.
5. Hit Chance
   • Reduces the chance that your attacks will miss. While you are unlikely to see many Hit Chance items while leveling, it is a highly valuable stat whenever you can find it.
6. Defense
   • An incredibly important stat for survivability, Defense increases your Dodge, Block, and Parry chances, while also reducing your chance to be crit or crushed by high-level enemies.
7. Armor
   • Reduces physical damage taken. When tanking a large amount of melee attacks or physical damage in general, this can be even more valuable then Stamina.
8. Intellect
   • Intellect increases your Mana pool and Spell Critical Strike chance.
9. Agility
   • Increases quite a few stats: Critical Strike, Armor, and Dodge. This is a decent stat, but not as important as other ones.

Forever has introduced overhauls to many of the questing zones, significantly increasing the amount of quests and items you can gain. With so many new revamped zones, it can be confusing when deciding where to invest your time into or where to travel. Our slider below will recommend zones for your level, factoring in the number of quests available and the proximity to dungeons for each level range.

In most cases, you will want to fully progress through each zone. Near the end of quest chains you can often find quests that task you with completing a dungeon. These quests reward massive XP and powerful items. You will want to make sure that you consult our Dungeon Hub as it will help you to ensure you are not missing any potential quests before completing a dungeon. It can also provide you with faction specific quests that you may not have been aware of previously.

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Loch Modan/Darkshore
  • The Barrens
• Available Dungeons:
  • Hall of Thanes
  • Ragefire Chasm

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Westfall/Darkshore
  • Silverpine Forest
• Available Dungeons:
  • Hall of Thanes
  • Ragefire Chasm and Ruins of Lordaeron

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Westfall/Redridge Mountains
  • The Barrens/Stonetalon Mountains
• Available Dungeons:
  • Hall of Thanes
  • Wailing Caverns

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Redridge Mountains/Duskwood
  • Hillsbrad Foothills/Stonetalon Mountains
• Available Dungeons:
  • The Stockade
  • Shadowfang Keep and Wailing Caverns

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Ashenvale/Duskwood
  • Ashenvale/Duskwood
• Available Dungeons:
  • Blackfathom Deeps and The Stockade
  • Blackfathom Deeps and Shadowfang Keep

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Wetlands/Ashenvale
  • Hillsbrad Foothills/Wetlands
• Available Dungeons:
  • Excavation Site: Wetlands and Blackfathom Deeps
  • Excavation Site: Wetlands and Blackfathom Deeps

• Zones to Quest in:
  • Wetlands/Ashenvale
  • Wetlands/Thousand Needles
• Available Dungeons:
  • Excavation Site: Wetlands and Gnomeregan
  • Excavation Site: Wetlands and Razorfen Kraul

Listed below are a few important items we recommend picking up during your journey, as they offer not just a small upgrade compared to many of the other items that are available, but stand out as guaranteed rewards or particularly powerful options for you to grab.

• 2-Handed Weapons
  • Ironforge Greathammer is available for Alliance players only by completing the Old Ironforge Incursion quest.
  • Rhahk'Zor's Hammer drops in Deadmines and is one of the only early weapons with increases to Spell damage.
  • Smite's Mighty Hammer drops in Deadmines and provides a large amount of Strength early on.
  • Alliance players can obtain Verigan's Fist through the The Test of Righteousness questline while Horde players can get Wolfsbane through Old Fire-Eye.
  • Corpsemaker offers a very high amount of strength and weapon damage that can make it worth equipping if you get access to it. This drops from Razorfen Kraul.
• One Handed Weapons
  • Durgen's Crescent Axe can be obtained from Hall of Thanes and is a decent early weapon.
  • Scepter of the Abandoned is an extremely powerful weapon that drops from Ruins of Lordaeron.
  • Butcher's Cleaver drops from Shadowfang Keep with a nice amount of stamina on it.
  • Blade of Silverlaine is of similar power to the Scepter of the Abandoned but instead drops from Shadowfang Keep.
  • Debt Collector is an extremely powerful weapon that drops from Shadowfang Keep. If you can get your hands on it, you will be using it for an extended period of time.
• Shields
  • Worn Turtle Shell Shield drops in Wailing Caverns and can be helpful in maintaining some of your early mana costs.
  • Kresh's Back drops in Wailing Caverns and provides extra defense that is very rare early into leveling, and useful if you ever plan on tanking early content.
  • Commander's Crest drops in Shadowfang Keep and has a decent amount of Strength and Stamina attached to it.
  • Arctic Buckler is available to Horde players only through the Blackfathom Villainy quest.
  • Painwalker Buckler drops in Scarlet Monastery and provides unique bonuses that increase your damage output as well as returning some extra mana.
• Helms
  • Helmets are not available at this level unless through crafting. For this reason, at level 25.
• Armor Pieces
  • In Forever, Professions have been revamped and now reward very powerful items relative to the level they are usable at. With Blacksmithing, you can craft a number of strong items such as Crusader's Silvered Chain Helm, Sterling Silver Shoulders, Crusader's Silvered Chain Shirt, and Crusader's Silvered Chain Leggings.
• Jewellery, Cloaks, and Trinkets
  • One of the strongest early rings come through faction dependent questlines. Horde can grab Seal of Sylvanas with a quest in Shadowfang Keep called Arugal Must Die, while Alliance can pick up Seal of Wrynn via An Audience with the King at Level 16.
  • At Level 20 you can complete the second step of the Friend of the Library Quest, to grab Field Researcher's Loop.
  • Worgenbane Talisman provides a small amount of mana and drops from Shadowfang Keep.
  • Through the quest Jarl Needs a Blade, you can obtain a solid ring: Reedknot Ring.
  • Alliance players can obtain Cloak of the Divine Storm through the A Strange Artifact quest chain. There is unfortunately no similar quest for Horde players, but this item is incredibly powerful and something you will use for a while.
  • Scorn's Icy Choker is a very powerful neck available through Scarlet Monastery.

The Forever Beta only allowed players to reach Level 30 meaning that we are unfortunately unable to provide specific advice on content and gear after Level 30. You can check back to this page once Forever has been fully released to see updated recommendations for the last 30 Levels.

The process of reaching Level 60 on Forever can take quite a while. To make that journey a bit easier we have provided you with some tips to maximize your time and efficiency:

• Keep Water on you.
  • In order to maximize your damage and keep yourself healthy through healing spells, you will need Mana. If you are out of Mana, your leveling speed will decrease significantly by just waiting for that Mana to regen. Keeping water on you is crucial to limit these periods of time to a minimum. Having food can also be helpful, but it is much less important due to the abundance of healing tools you have.
• Pick up Professions Early
  • Professions play a large role in Forever, especially if you plan on crafting gear with Blacksmithing. You will want to pick your professions as soon as possible and keep them up to date. It is highly recommended to start with Mining so that you can save yourself as much gold as possible when it comes to leveling Blacksmithing or Engineering (or both) later on.
• Log out in Rested Areas
  • It is incredibly important that you are logging out in rested areas at all times. While it can seem insignificant at the time, doing so will accumulate rested experience while you're not actively playing, and it will add up over the long run, especially if you are taking breaks for extended periods of time. Always look for the closet inn and take an extra few minutes to make your way there at the end of your gaming session.
• Fully complete Questing Zones
  • When you are in a zone that contains a dungeon, quest chains will often end with having you complete objectives inside that dungeon. These quests will provide a massive XP bonus and reward very powerful items. You should always aim to get all dungeon quests before completing the zone's dungeon and moving onto your next questing area.

Level	Important Ability/Class Quest/Game-Altering Talent
10	Lay on Hands unlocked
20	Alliance players can obtain Verigan's Fist through The Test of Righteousness Horde players can obtain Wolfsbane through Old Fire-Eye
30	Cloak of the Divine Storm can be obtained for Alliance Paladins
32	Improved Seal of Fury (Talent) unlocked
34	Divine Shield unlocked
40	Mount Class Quest available
43	Reckoning (Talent) unlocked
60	Epic Mount Class Quest available

Choosing your professions can be quite difficult as there are a ton of good choices available. It is highly recommended that you are picking up at least one gathering profession early on to help fund your profession leveling later. Mining is typically the best choice as it will give you materials that are used for Blacksmithing and Engineering. These are two of the strongest profession choices at max level for Protection Paladins, and getting a head start on one of them can be very valuable early on. Herbalism can also be a great choice if you plan on going Alchemy later on to craft your own elixirs, flasks, and mana potions.

Outside of your core professions, you can also pick up First Aid, Cooking and Fishing. Each of them can offer you different bonuses, buffs, or items to make life easier while questing.

More WoW Forever Paladin Guides

Holy Paladin Healer Guide Protection Paladin Tank Guide Retribution Paladin Melee DPS Leveling Holy Paladin Healer Leveling Retribution Paladin Melee DPS Guide

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