Jormomma and I were talking about Paladin talents last night. I thought I would whip up a recommendation for you guys to look at. Glorygirl wanted some ideas for her paladin. She wanted to be a good support healer and also take a look at better DPS.

Regardless of wanting to do more healing or more DPS, pick these talents first:

Critical for Pally Survival:
5/5 Divine Intellect
5/5 Spiritual Focus

Start working on your DPS:
5/5 Improved Blessing of Might
3/3 Improved Seal of the Crusader
2/2 Improved Judgement
1/1 Seal of Command
5/5 Conviction
4/5 Deflection
(You are now at 20 points in Retribution)

SPLIT HERE: Pick a path to spend the rest of your talent points as you level up. The two paths will make you a strong healer or better DPS. The strong healer template will make you an excellent addition to instance dungeon groups. The strong dps route will allow you to solo grind and do quests much much faster. Both routes allow you to get to Illumination, which is the key talent that makes paladin healing so efficient.

PATH 1: STRONG HEALER PATH. You will make an excellent endgame healing paladin. As of the recent patches, the Holy tree was reworked so that several of the higher level talents augment Holy damage nicely. Going deep into Holy gives you Holy Shock instead of Crusader Strike. In practice, they are very similar. It’s a tough decision now which path to take.

**ALL Holy Talents**

3/3 Healing Light
2/2 Unyielding Faith or 2/2 Improved Lay On Hands (your choice)
5/5 Illumination
(You are now at 20 points in Holy. Illumination is *the* quintessential talent to get to in order to be a good healing Pally. It allows you to spam Flash Heals non-stop almost forever. Divine Favor is nice if you have an extra point)
1/1 Divine Favor
3/3 Sanctified Light
1/2 Improved Blessing of Wisdom (a filler point to get to next tier of talents)
5/5 Holy Power (Increases Illumination Procs and DPS)
1/1 Holy Shock
2/2 Purifying Power
2 more filler points in Holy (pick what you want. I’d pick Pure of Heart)
5/5 Holy Guidance
1/1 Divine Illumination

PATH 2: STRONG DPS PATH – Much better for soloing and leveling up. You will still be able to heal pretty good too.

**Retribution Talents**
5/5 Deflection (take the last point from 4/5)
3/3 Two-Hand Weapon Specialization
1/1 Sanctity Aura (more Holy DPS when solo)
3/3 Sanctified Judgment (very good talent)
2/5 Vengeance
3/3 Sanctified Crusader (another great DPS talent)
1/1 Repentance
3/5 Vengeance (add 1 more point here to get to next Tier talents)
5/5 Fanaticism
1/1 Crusader Strike

**Holy Talents**
3/3 Healing Light
2/2 Unyielding Faith or 2/2 Improved Lay On Hands (your choice)
5/5 Illumination
(You are now at 20 points in Holy. Illumination is *the* quintessential talent to get to in order to be a good healing Pally. It allows you to spam Flash Heals non-stop almost forever. Divine Favor is nice if you have an extra point)

SUMMARY of Strong DPS Build with decent healing.
Holy (20 points)
5/5 Divine Intellect
5/5 Spiritual Focus
3/3 Healing Light
2/2 Unyielding Faith
5/5 Illumination
Protection (0 points)
None
Retribution (41 points)
5/5 Improved Blessing of Might
2/2 Improved Judgement
3/3 Improved Seal of the Crusader
5/5 Deflection
5/5 Conviction
1/1 Seal of Command
3/3 Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
1/1 Sanctity Aura
3/5 Vengeance
3/3 Sanctified Judgement
3/3 Sanctified Crusader
1/1 Repentance
5/5 Fanaticism
1/1 Crusader Strike

SUMMAR of Strong Healing build with decent DPS
Holy (41 points)
5/5 Divine Intellect
5/5 Spiritual Focus
3/3 Healing Light
2/2 Unyielding Faith
5/5 Illumination
1/2 Improved Blessing of Wisdom
2/3 Pure of Heart
1/1 Divine Favor
3/3 Sanctified Light
2/2 Purifying Power
5/5 Holy Power
1/1 Holy Shock
5/5 Holy Guidance
1/1 Divine Illumination
Protection (0 points)
None
Retribution (20 points)
5/5 Improved Blessing of Might
2/2 Improved Judgement
3/3 Improved Seal of the Crusader
4/5 Deflection
5/5 Conviction
1/1 Seal of Command

What no love for the protection tree? For all the buffs given to Pally's to try and be an off tank has this still proven to be fruitless? Granted I'm only at 61 but I'm 30-40 points into protection and am doing quite well. My battles tend to take quite a long amount of time but I live.

Or are those suggestions just because Glorygirl wanted healing/dps and not tanking?

That's right.  When we were talking I tried to narrow it down to what they really wanted to do when they were playing their Paladin.  I asked about tanking, but it came down to wanting to be like the Warden class in Dark Age of Camelot -- playing the role of a heavly armored support healer and buffer.

Protection did get some great boosts recently to help Paladins really hold aggro and tank.  I tried a 41 point protection build between the class changes and release of TBC.  It was a huge improvement over the prior ability to tank before the talents were updated.  And throwing your shield at the horde was a lot of fun :-)

I asked this for Bluubury, aka Glorygirl from DAoC. Her and Tref both played a Warden there. Its a hybrid class..they hit like wet noodles and heal ok. Very close to the pally here. Her finally build gave her the ability to swing back in fourth between jumping on the assist train, or hanging back playing bodyguard for the healers. Beacuse of her char. looks human and a small shield even though it was a medium she would get taged for being a healer, which the bad guys found out really quick that she hits back, and it hurts.

So after talking with Tref about her play style he came up with some ideas for her to check out.

Thx Treffers, now if i can get her to play more often lol.