Hey All Kaisinel here back with a new guide my first Guide basic paladin Guide can be found here. For this guide i am going to go over some advanced stuff like Gear set up Ability paths and what not to socket what to socket what skills to upgrade shit like that. so plz be calm and patient it will take me some time to fill in everything that i need to fill in i have a full time job and i am just on the last stretch to lvl 45 this guide will be much bigger so i will reserve some extra spots so i can put it all in a single thread. With that Said the first Topic On my List is Paladin stance Combo's i lightly touched over stances in my original guide but here i will try to go as in depth as i possibly can i hope you enjoy this guide and take note.
Stance Switching and when to do it
As a paladin you will be bouncing between being a 5th DPS and a Main Healer that's our stance switch niche we like all class also have a few conversion effects to help us survive the transition. But you know what lets be honest now a few of our conversion effects are kinda good but for the most part aren't that game changing accept maybe the sacrifice conversion's CC immunity because you know shit gets real in mass PvP when your healing a full raid and you need to not get hit with a stun or silence.
10 second CD on switching a lil to much:
We have a thread on this in the forums but IMHO no its fine as is and i know a lot of you want to be able to keep dat branded debuff on targets 100% of the time in heal mode but lets just be frank your in heal mode to heal and you should be DPS'ing when you don't have to heal because having 5 dps is better than 4 in some cases. With that said if your in a static group and they know the instances then they will get more use out of you being a 5th dps and swapping to occasionally patch them up or cast a CD for a incoming Tank Buster. But in all honesty your team mate's should be at least paying attention to their surrounding and watch out for telegraphs/traps because you cannot heal THEIR stupidity ya dig.
Switching For Buffs and Tank Busters:
Now switching for certain buff combos is more frequent when you Run Interruption/Sacrifice Build because only with this combo do you have a target for that crit buff in interruption that's not actually in any of its combos and that's SP. Now when your going ham doing single target boss dmg you will also be watching your allies health bars and you let them get just low enough you can hit sacred go into branded chain and pop that crit buff then swap and have SP crit healing 4k or more a tick the first 2 or 3 ticks of SP should easily full heal your party letting you quickly self heal and swap back to DPS stance. Next is the mitigation combo and its a nice dmg absorption shield to your target allie you can swap back to cast this on a allie or if you see that your tanks about to get hit with a skill that deals more dmg then you can other wise heal out right.
How to Spirit Rune your paladin
Right Now i say the most important offensive spirits on paladins are Eagle Owl Crow and Hawk and for defensive runes you want rock and tree spirit.
Eagle: Ability Power
Crow: Ability Power and Critical Hit
Owl: Ability Power and Hit
Hawk: Ability Power and Acceleration
Old Tree Spirit: Vitality and Physical Defense
Rock: Vitality and Block
PvP Builds: In PvP the most important thing for you to stack Is Hit so Owl will be your main spirit but also stack Block because Block also has a secondary stat tied to it called shield absorption and it reduces the dmg you block even more. And hit is what you need to counter Dodge Resistance Parry Ect as it lets you land your DoTs and CC on enemy players.
PvE Builds: PvE is a bit more flexible you will still need a fair amount of hit to make sure mobs don't resist your dots so you can still do your dps with out any of your skills missing. But you can virtually slot what every else your build may need weather its crit acceleration or Block
None stance skills and Weapon Bonuses
Wrath Of God: Boost Spell dmg and Attack dmg By 25% for 20 seconds.
Enhancement 1: Adds 15 more seconds to the CD and boost the DMG bonus By 5%
Enhancement 2: Shorten's the duration to 10 second adds an additional 25% dmg bonus Adds 20 more seconds to the CD
Enhancement 3: Adds 10 more Seconds To the duration decreases the dmg bonus by 10% shortens the CD by 20 seconds
Weapon Bonus 1: Reduced Cool down By 20 seconds
Weapon Bonus 2: Man Cost reduced by 10%
Sacred Ground:
Enhancement 1
Enhancement 2
Enhancement 3
Weapon Bonus 1 CD Reduced by 5 seconds
weapon Bonus 2: Mana Cost Reduced by 25%
Endure:
Enhancement 1
Enhancement 2
Enhancement 3
Weapon Bonus 1: CD Reduced by 5 seconds
weapon Bonus 2: Mana Cost deduced by 50%
Transcend:
Enhancement 1
Enhancement 2
Enhancement 3
Weapon Bonus 1: CD Reduced by 5 seconds.
weapon Bonus 2: Mana Cost reduced by 25%
Concentration:
Enhancement 1
Enhancement 2
Enhancement 3
Weapon Bonus 1 CD Reduced by 5 seconds
weapon Bonus 2: Mana Cost reduction by 25%
Purify:
Enhancement 1
Enhancement 2
Enhancement 3
Weapon Bonus 1: CD reduced by 10 seconds
weapon Bonus 2: Mana cost reduced by 25%
Resurrection:
Enhancement 1
Enhancement 2
Enhancement 3
Weapon Bonus 1: CD Reduced by 60 seconds
weapon Bonus 2: Mana cost reduced by 50%
Holy Explosion:
Enhancement 1
Enhancement 2
Enhancement 3
Weapon Bonus 1 CD Reduced By 5 Seconds
weapon Bonus 2 Mana Cost reduced By 50%
Ability Paths
Ability paths are the next best way of customizing your character they offer a variety of experience and crafting buffs as well as flat stats bonuses for your character. There is one path i highly recommend going down for paladin and its because you can use it for both pvp and pve and it has a jack tone of block and resistance stats in it and its the top right path that leads up into the 500 shield absorption bonus which is quit frankly Alot of dmg mitigation. Here i put a pic of my current path in an attachment below now lets go over the paths individually.
Top Right Path
This is a defensive path but there two potential game changing nodes for us in this tree one of them being a 10% boost to crit dmg the other being the Slvl20 node for 500 shield absorption you can also get over 200 block just from this tree alone so its worth it.
Top Left Path
Bottom Right Path
Bottom Left Path
Stance Combo's and Skill Rotations
If you read my other guide you will know paladin stances don't all get along or go well with each other we operate on some sort of holy trinity/rock paper scissor BS but heres the short version we have 2 types of stances 300 Energy Stances and High Energy stances. Now the 300's use high wisdom and the mana regeneration side stat to get back energy faster then they can use it buy the time your done casting your mana will be back to full this is because the mana regen stats work at its best with low base energy. Any way high mana stances use High Wisdom and Int to maintain a high mana pool. Note i have the videos almost ready for this section and it will be flushed out in a day or two.
Viable Stance Combos:
Protection&Healing:
DPS Rotation:
Heal Rotation:
Build In Action:
Interruption&Sacrifice:
DPS Rotation:
Your rotation will always be branded into fanaticism into your sacred verdict chain because your dots deal pitiful dmg when not buffed by the 50% crit buff. From there own you have 2 options and the option are Execute Spam Or Chastise spread spam.
Execute Chain: For single target High health elites and boss mobs.
Chastise Chain: For pack of mobs mixed In with multiple or single high health elites
Heal Rotation:
Sacrificial plea is your main heal in this build and you have 2 ways of going about using it you have your normal benevolence chain Into SP for that bump in ability power. Or you can use the skill buy stance changing from dps to heal and forcing the skill to crit heal with fanaticism for a massive party wipe prevention. You also have your normal Single target heal chain for when you need to focus on the tank.
Benevolence Chain: Target Tank Cast Blessing into Benevolence into retribution chain or SP
Tank Buster Prevention: Blessing Into celestial protection Into Retribution chain
Build In Action:
