Before you go out and smash your first trogg or kobold you’ll need a basic understanding of what your various stats are and how they will affect you. Leveling up only raises your stats a little bit so you’ll need to increase them with equipment. It would be nice if you can raise them all evenly, but equipment doesn’t do that and individual pieces have two or three stats at best. So it is best to try to pick the stats that fit your play style (healing, melee, ect) and load up on those. Stats can be broken into three groups. Stats, Attributes and Modifiers.
But before you learn about stats you need to learn about the battle engine in Warcraft. It is broken into two intermixed groups, percentage and damage. The percentage system is always consulted first because it determine chance to hit, dodge, parry and crit chance. Once those factors have been established the damage system takes over and determines how much damage is dealt. Think of it like a real life fighter. First they swing and may make contact or miss. If they make contact then the amount of strength they have determines how badly their opponent is injured.
Since computers have limited intelligence the only way they can adequately replicate “skill” and still have a semblance of randomness is with percents. For this example let’s look at your chance to hit a target. Against an enemy with an equal level you have a 95% chance to hit. When you swing your weapon the game picks a number between one and one hundred by rolling a one hundred sided dice and if it is less then ninety five you will connect. According to the law of percents this means that if you swing your weapon one hundred times ninety five of them will hit and five will miss. Now let’s look at your chance to get a critical strike with a critical strike percentage of 25%. If you have won a chance to actually hit, the computer rolls another one hundred sided dice and this time if the number is twenty five or less you will land a critical strike. This time the law of percents says that out of one hundred hits you will land twenty five critical strikes.

After the percentage system has run its course its time to determine how much damage is dealt. This system has two stages, attacker damage dealt and enemy damage mitigated. Damage dealt can also be divided into two steps, white damage and green damage. White damage is your base damage from your weapon or base damage from your spells. It gets this name because the base damage of weapons and spells is printed in white text. Weapons and spells have a minimum and maximum amount of damage they will do on an attack. Every swing or cast will pick a number between the two and that will be your base damage. The choice is completely random and can’t be influenced in any way, and in order to make it more understandable their average is displayed as damage per second or DPS. Green damage gets its name from the fact that all modifier stats have green text. This is your final damage because it takes your white damage and adds on the effect of stats like strength or attack power. In general it is what you will focus on the most when determining your damage output. Once you have unleashed your damage you are effectively done and now the focus shifts to your opponent. First the game determines whether or not the enemy will dodge or resist the damage. If they do then your attack has been neutralized and the process starts over again. If it connects with the enemy it then takes your green damage and subtracts some based on the enemy’s damage mitigation. This is determined primarily by the amount of armor they have, it is not a set amount but a percentage with a more detailed explanation in the armor section.
Now that you understand the battle system it’s time to learn about stats, attributes and modifiers. The five basic stats are simple because their main function is to increase your attributes or modifiers. Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intelligence and Spirit each have a specific role and if you load up on one more then the other it will influence what type of paladin you will be. Since the primary purpose of stats is to increase the effectiveness of your attributes their explanations are rather straightforward.
Attributes are things like Defense, Armor and Attack Power. They are all dependant on your stats and are a bridge between stats and the battle engine. Each of these are increased by your stats but they can also be increased directly by items as well.

Modifiers deal directly with the percentage system and determine your chance of hitting, dodging and landing a critical strike. Most of their values come

directly from your stats, but there are also pieces of equipment ingame that will increase them as well. In the 2.0.1 patch this was changed from a straight percentage system to a rating system where a certain number of rating would equal an extra one percent. As you increase in level your rating requirement will rise as well so you don’t hang onto items below your level.
Stats
Strength
The primary purpose of strength is to increase your melee damage. Each point will increase your attack power by two, which is then used to increase your green damage. Unlike other stats strength and attack power do not scale with level so items with large amounts will last longer then pieces with stats like agility or intellect. If your goal is to cause a great deal of damage then you will want to load up on strength as your primary stat.
I should also mention that strength is useful for tanking since it increases your chance to block with a shield. However, when you are tanking it is better to focus on block and stamina instead and strength will be your secondary priority.
Agility
Agility has three purposes which all directly impact the percentage system. The first and most important is that it increases your chance of getting a critical strike. The amount is dependant on level but at level seventy you need 25 agility to get an extra 1% critical strike chance. Critical strikes are one of the best ways to deal melee damage so agility will usually be your second most important stat after strength when trying to melee.
The second use for agility is that it will increase your chance to dodge an attack. Just like a critical strike, at level seventy you will need 25 agility to get an extra 1% dodge chance. Dodge is a secondary priority for a paladin unless they are doing a lot of tanking, so don’t load up on agility just for this.

The final use for agility is that it increases your armor. Every point of agility will give you two extra armor. But since we have access to such high amounts of armor already this is really rather minimal.
Stamina
Stamina is a very simple stat. For each point of stamina you have you will gain an extra ten HP. It may not seem like much but with thirteen equipment slots it will add up significantly. Plate and mail armor also typically have high amounts of stamina because of it is designed for front line fighters. Getting armor with stamina alone is not a good choice though. Instead try to get pieces that have another stat like strength or intellect. Nearly every paladin build will want as much stamina as they can get.
Intellect
Intellect is mainly used for casting and spells. Its first and primary purpose is to increase your mana pool. Every point of intellect will give you 15 extra MP. Much like stamina it will increase dramatically if you spread it out over your equipment slots. It’s second purpose it to increase your chance to get a critical strike with spells. At level seventy you will need about 80 intellect for an extra 1% critical strike chance with spells. Since you need so much, if you are aiming for a crit heavy build, such as a illumination/divine favor build you should focus on straight up spell crit.
Finally, the higher your intellect the quicker your skill with weapons will rise. This is less useful then you think and the intellect you have on you is more then enough for this.
Spirit

Spirit is a complicated stat. Its only purpose is to increase your health and mana regeneration, but it will not do it regularly. Every two seconds or “tick” you will gain a portion of your health or mana back depending on how much spirit you have. Health is one forth of your total spirit every two seconds. And mana is one forth your total mana with an extra eight tacked on. The tricky part is that whenever you cast a spell you mana regeneration is paused for five seconds. This is sometimes known as the five second rule and is a huge problem for healers and casters. If you intend to do a lot of healing mana regeneration is a must, so you must find a way to get around the rule.

The best solution for a paladin is to use gear that returns a set amount of mana every five seconds. Usually this is called “mana per 5” gear but you won’t see much of it till the higher levels.
Attributes
Armor
The primary purpose of armor is to reduce the damage you take from physical attacks by a percentage. The formula for how much is reduced is (your armor/(your armor + ((85*level) + 400))). The formula is rather complicated but at level one, one hundred armor will reduce the damage you take by twenty percent. At level sixty, one hundred armor will reduce the damage you take by two percent. And at level seventy it will reduce the amount of damage you take by 1.79%. Armor is the key to your survivability as a paladin so you will want to get as much as you can.
Defense
Defense is another stat used to reduce melee damage. One point will increase your chance to dodge, parry, block an attack with a shield by .04%. So you will need twenty five points in defense to get a 1% increase to your dodge, parry and block chance. Twenty five points will also reduce your enemies chance to hit, critically strike or deal a crushing blow by 1%. (beast version of critical strike.) You can probably see that while armor reduces the amount of damage you take, defense tries to prevent you from taking damage at all. The problem is that the amount of defense you will need in order to have a noticeable effect is very large and it means you will have to give up on other stats. Defense is primarily a stat for hardcore tanks anyway so it is usually better to just focus on armor. If you are going to tank you will want to aim for about 490 defense rating at a minimum. At this point enemies will no longer be able to crit you, but any more isn't necessary.
Attack power
Attack power is your most important stat when determining your melee damage. You may remember from above that your damage is first determined by your white damage, the maximum and minimum amount of damage your weapon will deal. Since it is so random

the game provides you with an average of how much damage you will deal called Damage Per Second or DPS. The purpose of attack power is to increase your white DPS by 1.0 point for every 14 points of AP. However, much like spell damage the slower your weapon the larger the bonus you will receive from your AP. This is because slower weapons cause larger bursts of damage then faster ones, and the damage from AP will spread out more. The exact attack speed/AP ratio is only known by blizzard, but every full second seems to add about one forth more DPS. For a paladin your AP is determined by this formula. (Level*3)+ (strength*2) – 20.
+Magic damage.
Magic damage is one of the best stats you can get in the game, especially in the end game. It takes the damage or healing from a spell you have cast and then adds a bonus onto it, making your spells more potent. For a paladin you will need to focus on two set groups. +Spell damage increases your damage from all offensive spells like seals and judgments and increase the amount of healing from your healing spells. The other option is +healing equipment that will only increase healing not offensive spell damage. +Healing equipment will typically have higher numbers then regular spell damage so you will want to gather as much as you can if you will be focusing on healing.
An important thing to remember about spell damage is that your spells will not get the full bonus. There are several factors like casting time, damage over time, AOE and whether it is a channeled spell. So if you have one hundred spell damage, your Holy Light spell will only get an additional seventy points. Since Flash of Light has a lower casting time it will only get an extra forty points. Here is a list of the spells paladins have and how much a percentage they will receive from spell damage.
Seal of righteousness- 11%
Judgment of righteousness- 50%
Seal of Command- 21%
Judgment of Command- 45%
Consecration-35%
Holy Shock- 45%
Hammer of Wrath- 45%
Exorcism- 45%
Holy Wrath- 20%
Holy Shield- 20%
Holy Light- 70%
Flash of Light- 45%

Magical resistances.
Magic resistance doesn’t come into effect until level sixty and then it is only necessary if you plan on doing forty man raids. The main point of resistance is to reduce damage by elemental and magic attacks much like your armor and defense skill reduces physical damage. But instead of reducing by a set percentage, resistance gives you a chance to reduce a set percentage. Most players get their first taste of resistance when they go to the Molten Core so we will use that for an example. While in the core a Firelord hits you with a flame blast for one hundred damage (In reality they hit for much MUCH harder but this is just to simplify things.) With zero fire resistance you will always take one hundred points of damage. But with a higher rating you will have a chance of reducing either 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% of the damage you will take. Now let say that the fire lord hits you with his fire blast but you have 50 fire resist (A very small amount). This means that instead of a 100% chance of taking damage, you only have a 54% chance. Since this formula contains so many layers here is a table showing what you can expect for different levels of resistances.

Modifiers.
% chance to Hit with melee.
Every time you fight a mob you have a percentage to miss it depending on the difference between your level and the monsters level. So this stat will lower your chance to miss. For example, when fighting a mob equal to your level you have about a five percent chance to miss. Adding an extra one percent to hit will lower your miss rate to 3%. In general you will only need an extra 6% tops as a paladin and getting more would be overkill. You will need about 16 hit rating for an extra one percent. If you are going to be a tank though you will need much more, in small groups you should have about 9-10% hit and in raids about 16%
% chance to hit with spells.
This works almost exactly like the chance to hit with melee. Each percentage will reduce your chance to miss with spells. But in addition your spells also have to deal with any resistances the mob might have. This stat is primarily used by mages and pure offensive casting classes. Since paladins have nearly no offensive “spells” and +hit doesn’t affect supportive spells like heals you don’t need to worry to much about loading up on this stat. You will need 22 spell hit rating for one extra percent at seventy.

+Dodge
This increases your chance to dodge a melee attack by a percentage. Tanks and DPS primarily use it though so there is no real reason to make it a priority if you are going to play a support role. You need 19 dodge rating for one extra percent at seventy.
+Parry
This works like Dodge except that it lets you parry an attack with your weapon. Just like Dodge it is only worthwhile for frontline fighters, but it is less useful since it requires that you have your weapon drawn and some attacks can’t be deflected. You need 31 parry rating for one extra percent at level seventy.
+Melee Crit
Whenever you swing your weapon you have a chance of landing a critical strike. In addition to your crit chance from agility you can also get crit chance from armor as well. In melee this will be one of the best melee modifiers you can get since your normal DPS is rather low. Seal of the Crusader is also affected by this and not spell crit, so if you are a retribution build you will definitely want to load up on this. You will need 25 crit rating for one extra percent at level seventy.
+Spell Crit
This works like Melee critical hits but with spells. If you plan on doing any casting then this is a great stat to have, especially if you are doing a lot of healing. Healing paladins specialize in spell criticals because of the Illumination talent so they will want to load up on as much of this as they can. You will need 25 spell crit for one extra percent at level seventy.