Paladin skills are separated into three categories: Holy, Protection and Retribution. Each category provides very different skills than the other two. Holy skills focus an healing and preventing damage to group members. Protection skills make the Paladin a viable tank, allowing him to mitigate incoming damage while keeping enemies focused onto him. Retribution skills are tailored for damage dealing.

Notable Holy skills are Illumination, Holy Shock and Beacon of Light. While Illumination is a passive skill, allowing the Paladin to recover mana on spell criticals, Holy Shock and Beacon of Light provide additional healing tools. The Protection tree offers several new skills for the Protection Paladin. Divine Sacrifice allows the Paladin to redirect raid damage to himself, giving a nice survivability boost to the whole raidgroup. Blessing of Protection is a buff reducing incoming damage. The Holy Shield skill greatly increases the Paladin's chance to block incoming physical attacks. Avenger's Shield and Hammer of the Righteous deal damage to several targets, and allow the Paladin to keep the enemies' focus. Retribution gets a new crowd control skill: Repentance allows the Paladin to put an enemy target to sleep for a certain amount of time. Crusader Strike and Divine Storm are instant melee attack skills, greatly increasing the Paladin's damage out put once they are learned.

An important Paladin skill is Avenging Wrath. While it's technically a Retribution Skill, all talent specs make use of this ability. The Holy Paladin is able to use this skill to greatly increase his healing throughput while a Protection Paladin can produce some respectable snap aggro. The Retribution Paladin is able to use this skill to increase his damage. Certain talents allow this skill to be used more often.