Northrend on the Horizon

My paladin alt is on the verge of entering that frozen land in the great north of Azeroth. I finally gathered up the gold to get dual spec, and have to actually consider my talents for holy, as well as reconsider my erstwhile levelling prot-ish sort-of talents. My group mates trust me to hold aggro but I'm not a very professional paladin tank, that's for sure! I had to beat my mage buddy into playing as frost for most of our leveling time because it certainly made my job a tiny bit easier, along with he stayed alive longer to actually kill the massive amounts of crap we were pulling..

So I've gotten the Dual Spec and now I'm staring at the Holy tree in bafflement. Did I mention I haven't hit a healing spell more than ten times during leveling? Lifeblood doesn't count.. neither does Lay on Hands. (Sadly I have hit that one quite a few!)

So, with experienced healer eyes but brand new paladin eyes, this is sort of what went through my mind choosing talents:

Spiritual Focus vs. Seals of the Pure : Though I hate pushback talents on all my healers, given the nature of pally "stand there and heal it!" healing, and the alternative with seals that seem to have nothing to do with healing, Spiritual Focus was an easy choice to go deeper into the tree.


With my shaman and priest experience under my belt, Divine Intellect and then Illumination were easy choices to move on down the tree.

In level 4, I need something to connect to Divine Favor from Illumination. Improved Blessing of Wisdom is only 2 talents, so to find where to put 3, I had to jump back up the tree. No offense, but my pally isn't raiding yet, and I have no troubles healing instances I know she's geared/level appropriate for, so that improved Concentration Aura talent seems silly while I'm trying to learn my holy pally business. My eyes glazed over at the hands talent choice in that level too. Who knows I'm probably just one of those bad pallys.

So I found those other 3 talent points fit nicely in Healing Light, level 2 of the tree.

Moving on down, we grab Divine Favor and then Sanctified Light. I don't know much, but I know pallys like crit! Last point I dumped into Improved Lay on Hands in level three. The text of Pure of Heart really interested me, but didn't seem immediately apparent in usefulness. As I do some healing and deal with all the northrend debuffs, we'll see if I revisit that choice.

Filling up Holy Power seemed like a no brainer, and then we have our point in Holy Shock, leaving 4 points to play with. I liked the Light's Grace and have high hopes for it! One point left, back to Improved Lay on Hands I go.

Now we're at level 8. This whole level looks good. My first choice is just to move down the tree, so 5 into Holy Guidance we go. I'll reconsider Sacred Cleansing later, maybe.

Level 9 is another level full of goodies. I really wanted Divine Illumination, mainly from all the OOM hell of prot tanking lately. My blue bar has been pissing me off a lot. So, grabbed Divine illumination and put the other 4 points into Judgement of the Pure. This was a tough choice as there seemed to be an interesting mix of "wait I have to do what to the bad guys?" and "mmmmm yummy haste". But with nothing else obvious in the tree jumping at me, I'll stick with Judgement of the Pure. I really do need to become a better pally.



Infusion of Light is sexy and an easy choice as I was so damned determined to move on down the tree! Even I know that holy pallys do cast judgement on bosses and mobs, so the Enlightened Judgements seemed like one of those talents I should have, even if I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to be using it yet. The last point to get to the final level I put into filling up Judgements of the Pure on level 9.

FINALLY the bottom of the tree. I know I've got it good, having never pally healed before Beacon. Trust me I know. That doesn't stop the excitement at finally having it.

So there was my stroll through my chosen holy talents. 51/0/0 The rest is just icing on the cake, right? On one hand I want to get to Conviction in the ret tree, but I know that bubble is somewhere in the prot tree. I guess I get to do some experimenting, if I really do get to play holy some as I move towards 80. At level 68 my pally had 5 in Divinity in the Protection tree, and 3 in Benediction in the ret tree, though I'm considering putting those back in holy's Sacred Cleansing talent.



Fun times ahead!