Bored of activating seal of command then surfing the web for 25 seconds? Want something a little more exciting and interactive? Want to solo quests like
http://www.thottbot.com/?qu=348 easily at level 40? Try Pally AoE!
Strengths:
-Able to easily solo 4 mobs 2 levels above you, 5-6 equal level or lower, and end fights with nearly full mana and health.
-Very tough in PvP, especially against rogues, fury warriors, feral druids, and enhancement shaman.
-Tanking ability for instance runs.
Weaknesses:
-Fairly slow DPS against a single mob.
-Casters avoid your mitigation and therefore will toast you.
-Ranged are difficult to manage because you can only use SoL to heal if they are close enough to hit.
Let me first say that this guide is a work in progress. As you can see, I am fairly low level still on this toon. Nonetheless, with TBC looming on the horizon and a million pallies about to be created, I thought I'd share my leveling technique with everyone.
Pally AoE? People will surely think the concept is a joke at first. I assure you it is not. I myself have a 60 mage and leveled during the glory days of DM East lasher AoEing, and also the money grinding of the first pull in Strath. I did AoE grind leveling leveling as a mage but this is a whole new ballgame.
The basic idea is to have as much reflection damage and damage mitigation as possible and to fight (preferably) melee oriented mobs. The best possible are dual wielders, but anything that doesn't stun and cast a lot of diseases (cleanse drains mana fairly fast) will work just fine. After some practice you will be able to handle a couple ranged mobs or a caster or two mixed in but they complicate things enormously.
The current implementation of reckoning is what truly makes this tactic come alive. At 5 points, this talent gives you a 10% chance everytime you take damage to proc a buff that gives you 8 seconds where every time you swing you get an extra attack. Fairly yawn in a fight against one mob...but what if there are 5 mobs?
The build:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin/talents.html?000000000000000000000530513300000150000000000000000000000000000
This is what I consider to be the absolute bare minimum. You can cheese it a level or two ahead of time but this is where it becomes most efficient.
The gear:
You don't need super duper awesome gear for this. Mostly whatever you'd normally have would be fine. However, there are two essential things: As good a 1 handed weapon as you can find and a shield with a shield spike. The shield spike is very important. After that, if you can find damage reflection things that's great, otherwise don't stress. See bottom for more.
The buffs:
Retribution Aura(RA): Reflects damage every time you are hit.
Blessing of Sanctuary(BoS): This not only reduces damage taken by 14/19/24/80, but also deals 21/28/35/46 damage every time you block. Coupled with our shield spike (20-30 if you buy thorium), you're returning 40-76 damage every time you block.
Righteous Fury(RF): With our improved talent, this reduces incoming damage by 6%.
Seal of Light(SoL): Chance to heal yourself every time you swing. The bread and butter of Pally AoE.
The strategy:
I am going to assume you are level 35 at this point, so you are in my favorite murloc camp (more on this later). Body pull about 3 or 4 of them and activate SoL. Notice that with several mobs hitting you, reckoning stays up a lot of the time. Thus, you're getting two chances per swing to heal. If you're taking extra damage this fight don't be afraid to judge SoL and then reactivate. With reckoning up thats a potential 4 heals in one swing! Use consecrate once or maybe twice, but I tend to not use it a lot because if you do this correctly you should end the fight with nearly full health and mana, ready to do the next. That is what makes this tactic so efficient, if played carefully there is zero downtime between fights.
As you get higher, you will get Holy Shield. I use this quite a bit, but I normally wait for redoubt to proc first. Nothing irks me more than wasted holy shield charges. However, don't make the mistake of thinking this spell is entirely for damage. Don't forget that for those 4 charges you have an extra 30% chance to block, and every block means less damage you take. It is as much mitigation as it is damage. A nice suggestion from Cathela was to use rank 1 Holy Shield even after you gain higher ranks later because it still provides the migitation and also the proc damage from BoS and shield spike, while being a little more mana friendly.
Oh no! Something went wrong! I have adds, SoL didn't proc, reckoning didn't proc, there are casters/ranged, etc etc etc. Things do go wrong. However, DO NOT PANIC. Most likely you will be fine, you forgot you are a paladin! Wait till you get down to about 10% health and then bubble and heal! If they bring you down again, LoH and keep going! I have pulled off some crazy fights that I thought were completely lost just by sticking it out.
Q u o t e:
If you find yourself higher level and have a lot of +spell damage, consider using Seal of Wisdom/Judgement of Wisdom or some combination of SoL and SoW (i.e. judge SoL then use SoW), that way you can use consecrate more without sacrificing all your mana. If you have enough spell damage doing more DPS might be worth the occasional drinking.
Q u o t e:
Since consecrate receives such a huge coefficent from +spell damage gear, using a low rank consecrate (which will receive the full bonus just like the high would) with high +damage is an extremely mana efficient method of damage.
Misc. Tips:
-Make sure SoL is up at ALL times.
-Make sure you are swinging. If the one you are targeting is running away, swing at another one till it comes back or you are in range.
-Don't forget to judge SoL often, especially when it has <5 sec left.
-Don't spam consecrate. You want to have high mana at the end of the fight. However, don't forget that it is there...it can be great damage when you're fighting 6 things at once.
-Don't give up. Carry potions just in case, I find mana potions to be more effective.
-Be aware of the situation. Is this mob going to flee at 15%? Can it draw enough adds to kill me?
-Remember, every mob fighting you multiplies your DPS. If you have to fight one thing, look around and see if there are any other mobs you can drag your target over to just so they are hitting you. You'll find this greatly increases your efficiency.
-Up against a caster? Don't forget Hammer of Justice to stop the cast! If you are against a healer be sure to save your HoJ for when they heal.
Here is a video I threw together in about 20 minutes in badlands, its about 10 minutes of fights. It's not anything awesome, all I'm trying to show you is the build's effectiveness.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-141001081674108358&hl=en
A little commentary on the video:
I am level 42 in this video.
-First, 4 dual wielding ogres, all level 41. Notice I burn a lot of mana in the first fight. I just wanted to display the DPS power of the build in that first fight.
-The second fight is against 4 level 43-44 elementals, much more normal and is a very typical example of what you'll be doing. Notice my HP and Mana at the end.
-The third fight more of the same elementals. I included this to show how even a bad pull and very few seal of light procs don't really hurt you that badly. Even though I lose a lot more life in this fight than the others, I encounter little to no downtime because of it. Notice how I can drag them over and pick up another in the middle of the fight and that doesn't hurt either, something you'll never see a mage do.
-The fourth fight was just to show how tough this build really is. It's basically me taking on 6 mobs (Boss Thog'run and crew) including 2 ranged, 2 melee, and 2 casters all level 41ish and I don't even need to blow a cooldown.
-Notice in the last fight I encounter the bane of Pally AoE: The hero factor. Everytime someone sees a paladin fighting a bunch of mobs they immediately run over to try to save me for some reason. You have to ask them not to or they'll try to pull mobs off you.
KEY POINT:
- In every fight notice how I make sure ALL the mobs are in front of me whenever possible. This is because you cannot block (or parry?) when the attacker is behind you.
- Notice in fight 3 when I go to get the last elemental, I hit each of them first to make sure they don't leash like the first one did. Consecration does NOT stop them from reaching the leash point.
Another video submitted by Novara, this video shows my absolute favorite place, the Duskwallow Murlocs:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5182362007611609317
This new video is myself as a level 35 pally taking on 16 murlocs 4-6 at a time in one continuous fight.
NOTE: This video is not an example of the real grinding technique, this just shows how tough you can be. It's just for entertainment purposes. For normal grinding you only want to kill 3-4 at a time (or whatever you find your personal threshold to be that allows you to finish with full mana/health).
High Quality:
http://files.filefront.com/protvsmurlocswmv/;6568780;;/fileinfo.html
Google:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6753230440309157025&hl=en
About my gear in this vid:
I'm using mostly crappy greens I've picked up along the way. The only two items that matter are:
My shield is Vile Protector, from
http://www.thottbot.com/?qu=1049 which is the easiest decent shield before the SM shield at 39. It has a Iron shield spike.
My weapon is Sword of Omen, from
http://www.thottbot.com/?qu=1048 which is accessible at 33 for horde.
