Paladin woes (at level 11!)

[Arvandor]

Maybe I've just been spoiled by how involved my deathknight is, but hitting Judgement every 10 seconds and then watching white attacks is almost as exciting as playing my hunter (which has been level 23 for over a year now).

I love tanking so much, I decided to go for one of the more "proper" (read: shield wearing) classes (had a bear in TBC, and now a deathknight WotLK), and went with paladin because I loved the versatility of my druid... But I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't enjoy a warrior more, despite how painfully difficult it will be to level one.

Thoughts?

[jettzypher]

i played a pally to 18 and couldnt stand it anymore. whereas ive rolled 2 other warriors before on other servers and lvled them past that in far less time and enjoyed it. im sure pallys good later on in life, but to me the end doesnt justify the means. i couldnt play a class that boring at the start. however, since theyve upped xp gains and lowered requirements, you should be able to lvl it to a decent lvl quickly and manage some enjoyability from the class.

[Arvandor]

Hmmm, I just dunno. I've tried a pros/cons type angle, and it hasn't seemed to help, unless someone can add to it.

Warrior pros
-General badassery
-Shield face slam (see point above)
-Still best MT (... they are right?)
-More involved (no concecrate/holy shield/afk, craploads more keybinds and things to think about)

cons
-Painful as sin to level (oogly downtime, rough time with adds and group quests, etc)
-No versatility (if I need a change of pace, my options are severely limited)
-Gimped in PvP currently (I never PvP, so it shouldn't matter, but I seem to think about it anyways)
-Already have a level 70+ prot warrior in the guild.
-As boring as I fear Paladin will be, if I decide to go dps, I fear fury will be even more boring than ret (albeit cooler than ret), despite my awesome level 11 impressions (level 11 is srs bsnis)

Paladin pros
-Hot toon (belf female yay!)
-Versatility (easy leveling with little downtime is a huge plus)
-Wicked in PvP currently (see note on PvP above, I also play on an RPPVP server)

cons
-Mana (as much as I hate the rage system, I'd rather deal with being rage-starved than going OoM)
-Frail looking caster tank that relies on the power of some other being to not get crushed, read: lack of badassery (belfs just look ... wrong tanking. I prefer a big thick meathead like a Tauren or Orc, even if it means suffering with staring at cow ass for however long I play the character)
-Boring as sin to level: judge > sleep(irl) > judge > next mob (I fear this problem will only get exacerbated as mobs take longer to kill)

Actually... When I write it out instead of just trying to do mental juggling, the choice seems more clear. I think I'm going to work on my orc warrior instead of my belf paly.

[juspugit]

Wow, you're still living in the burning crusade, and an early period at that.

Warriors are easy to lvl, paladins are far more involved than you think.

Hum, dunno what to say rly...

[jettzypher]

rage starvation isnt that big of an issue. if youre tanking youll have more than enough rage and fury has a few good abilities for generating rage too (improved berserker rage, etc). i honestly dont think lvling warriors is that hard; so long as you take the fury path all the way up to at least 60, that way you can do as much dmg as possible. the current talents make prot easier to lvl, however their best talents dont exist until later in the tree (devastate, dmg shield, SW, etc) so its advised to not use it until later on in the game.

either way, +1 to choosing your warrior.

[Meeks]

Maybe I've just been spoiled by how involved my deathknight is, but hitting Judgement every 10 seconds and then watching white attacks is almost as exciting as playing my hunter (which has been level 23 for over a year now).

I love tanking so much, I decided to go for one of the more "proper" (read: shield wearing) classes (had a bear in TBC, and now a deathknight WotLK), and went with paladin because I loved the versatility of my druid... But I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't enjoy a warrior more, despite how painfully difficult it will be to level one.

Thoughts?

Leveling a paladin is tedious work. You do not get an attack for a long, long time. The way I leveled my paladin was ret until I was high enough to get blessing f sanctuary then swap to prot and aoe grind till mid BC content then back to ret the rest of the way.

[Lore]

Remember that your Death Knight starts at level 55.

When your Paladin gets to 55, you'll have a bunch of other buttons to push.

[Alent]

and then go afk until the 2 minute buff wears off.

[Nixxo]

I was the same way you are about pallies at early levels. It was so boring at first, I leveled 4 pallies to 18 then stopped, deleted it then eventually made another.

Just level ret til 60ish, maybe even 70ish. I myself leveled holy til 74. Just deal with the boring stuff til it gets more fun. Now that i'm 80 i love it, I am prot btw, switching at 80 :P

Ret once you get CS/DS is a breeze, lots of fun, quick kills, barely anydown time and nice big crits. Take that to 80, roll some heroics and get some tanking pieces with off-set rolls/crafted items and enjoy tanking as prot, worked great for me.

Rukiaz~prot pally,
Windrunner.

[kolben]

I'll chime in and say that leveling a warrior is no pick nick either. Especially at level 11, you are dog meat anytime you get more than 3 mobs on you that are close to your level. Leveling solo as a warrior you have a lot of downtime, and will die very often. Still, I've leveled about 4 now past 60 so it's worth the trouble imo.

Leveling protection now wouldn't be too bad, but you are talking a minimum of level 50 to have enough talent points. And that's what it's really all about, you have to get to the 50s or so on any tanking class to get enough talent points to start resembling what you admire.

My paladin is now 63 and should ding 64-65 tonight. Trust me when I say that with a little gear and enough talent points they are very fun to play. You just have to survive the dull and horrible first 30-40 levels which was true of any of the classes I've played so far including Warrior, Druid and Paladin.

As for the boring judgement thing. For a warrior it's "Not enough Rage" "Not enough Rage" "Not enough Rage" Rend -> "Not enough Rage" hehe

[Krumgork]

I've played both up to the 60s, at least. My paladin is higher but I gave up on my warrior somewhere in Ungoro Crater.

I can this about those levels. Paladin is MUCH easier to level. A quest that comes to mind is the one at the dwarven quarry where you have to go in the cave. With my warrior, I almost couldn't use charge because I'd get 2 or 3 more adds and I'd die. I was shotgun pulling and killing them one at a time. Ugh! With the paladin, I'd run in and judge light and call it a day. 2, 3, 4? Who cares? I'm getting healed with every hit and have back up heals in case things get crazy.

Wait until you get to 20 to compare. Tank Deadmines and see which one you prefer. That's not the best case scenario, but it's better than working up to 80 to find you don't like it. With a paladin tank, you'll be running into packs of mobs and consecrating to keep aggro. You'll generally live through it okay and keep your party safe. You'll have a couple of buffs to throw to people and a bubble to save a caster if you need it.

With the warrior, you'll have a plethora of buttons to mash - none of which will hold aggro on more than one mob. Sure, there's thunderclap and cleave but if a dps so much as sneezes at the wrong mob he'll pull aggro. On the plus side, you'll have shield block which pretty much makes you immortal every 45 seconds or whatever. It'll be fun to pull a pack of mobs, pop shield wall, and watch every attack be blocked. Then you'll try to hold aggro and lose it. Then you'll run around taunting and praying you get enough rage to throw a sunder armor on the mob attack your healer.

Good luck.

[Worldie]

I'll make it simple. Until 50+, paladins suck to level. I leveled two and half (third i stopped at 40+), and until 50 it's really 2 buttons every X seconds.

At 60+ you finally get some skills to actually use

[Arvandor]

Well, after putting an hour or so into my warrior last night (he's level 14 now), I must say, that at least in the teens, warriors are alot more fun.

I even made it through some very bad pulls with a mouseover rend macro, liberal use of spamstring, and running away.

I also made myself a neat little macro for switching to 1h/shield + shieldbash. Though sometimes it seems like it would take a while for the equip change to take place. Why is this? It occured to me tonight, that maybe it waits for heroic strike to finish if it's queued up... If this is the case, could I add a /cancelattack command of some kind to the beginning of the macro to speed things up?

[gacktt]

Try leveling a warrior withour heirloom + crusader enchants, you will barely, just barely, beat an equal level mob from 1-40, any adds will kill you.

You have no real attack till whirlwind, and that one is lackluster.

Actually, even with twink enchants a warrior will still get his ass kicked by an equal level caster mob.

[iofe]

A warrior is boring aswell at lvl 11, i mean you can put up rend and then heroic strike once in a while.

It will get better with later on with the paladin i guess.

[Firebug]

"sometimes it seems like it would take a while for the equip change to take place. Why is this? "

The reason is that whenever you switch weapons it triggers a global on all your other abilities.

[Arvandor]

Try leveling a warrior withour heirloom + crusader enchants, you will barely, just barely, beat an equal level mob from 1-40, any adds will kill you.

You have no real attack till whirlwind, and that one is lackluster.

Actually, even with twink enchants a warrior will still get his ass kicked by an equal level caster mob.

I don't have any twink stuff, and I have no problem with mobs my level. I can charge from one mob to the next and only need to heal every 5-10 fights. I can even take mobs 2-3 levels above me, and can brute force one add. Two adds and I have to be clever with rend and hamstring to do it, and have maneuvering room.

Just like palys have no real attack until... What, crusader strike?

I have a shieldbash macro that says otherwise.

A warrior is boring aswell at lvl 11, i mean you can put up rend and then heroic strike once in a while.

I'm level 16 now, and fights generally go. Charge -> rend -> thunderclap* -> heroic -> hamstring if it's a runner, and as always watch for overpower. * - Thunderclap + white hit does comporable damage to heroic strike, but still allows the rage generation from the white hit. I like it.

Which is sure a whole lot more enjoyable than JoL -> heal/hammerstun if needed. My warrior also drops stuff a helluvalot faster.

[nips]

Paladins are fun to level if you like to alt-tab pron while killing 20 mobs at once in the slowes way possible.
Warriors are fun to level if you use a ton of gold to give him the best gear possible.

Otherwise if you plan to level in a normal fashion, doing quests and not trolling the ah for gear. Well then they both are pretty awfull to level compared to most other classes(except priests maybe..)

Personaly i liked to level my warrior more since paladins only got 2-3 buttons to push most of the time.

[Arvandor]

Otherwise if you plan to level in a normal fashion, doing quests and not trolling the ah for gear. Well then they both are pretty awfull to level compared to most other classes(except priests maybe..)

I'll probably try to keep him in decent weapons, but the rest of the gear can stay green for all I care. So far he's been easier than my mage (who is level 20), as he kills just about as fast, if not faster, and has less downtime. At least at these levels =P

Personaly i liked to level my warrior more since paladins only got 2-3 buttons to push most of the time.

This was basically the whole point to this topic. Moar buttons plx!

Edit:

any adds will kill you.

Things must have changed alot since you last leveled a warrior. I found out that if I switch to 1h+shield and pull three mobs, not only do they die faster than it would take me to chain-kill them with a 2her (gogo revenge), but I also end with more health after taking 3 at once than if I'd chain killed all three with 2her (didn't pop shield block either). In fact, if dual-wield isn't a significant increase in my ability to crush face, I'll be leveling fury speced in defensive stance with 1h+shield for the time being.