The Holy Paladin overhaul in early July proved to be highly effective in revitalizing the specialization and aligning it more closely with the desires of its players. Keeping this in mind, we present our suggestions for mastering the role of the Light’s Healer in World of Warcraft: The War Within.
As the latest expansion is released, Holy Paladin has solidified its position as the top-performing healer in the game. The return to prioritizing Avenging Wrath has greatly improved its healing capabilities and overall gameplay, indicating that this specialization will be heavily utilized in both Mythic+ dungeons and raids.
Despite facing certain historical challenges such as limited mobility, the spec is not significantly hindered. The only current drawback is a lack of damage options, which could pose a challenge if healers need to assist with damage checks.
Changes to the Holy Paladin Class in The War Within
Experienced Holy Paladin players will observe several modifications to their playstyle compared to Dragonflight, but most of them are ultimately beneficial. Although the absence of Glimmer of Light and Daybreak may initially appear to weaken the spec, it has in fact created a more fluid and user-friendly gameplay. This shift places a greater focus on Holy Shock, which can feel repetitive at times, but remains highly efficient in its role.
The dynamic between Holy Light and Infusion of Light has undergone a significant transformation. Instead of boosting Holy Light’s Holy Power generation, Infusion now enhances its healing by 100%. This adjustment may result in more idle moments, but it also yields a remarkably potent healing effect when applied strategically. The main concern will be managing mana consumption, and it’s crucial to find ways to mitigate it in order to prevent running out of mana.
Abilities such as Light of the Martyr and Divine Favor have been transformed into passives, significantly reducing the burden on the player. This is a major factor in the spec’s current ease of play and accessibility, especially when compared to the complicated keymapping of past patches.
It appears that Blizzard is implementing a streamlining initiative to improve the functionality of the spec. The focus is on direct heals, accompanied by a vast array of cleanses and passive buffs to enhance its effectiveness.
Holy Paladin Talents and Build
In our pursuit to showcase the strengths of Holy Paladin, we have selected a talent build designed to excel in Mythic+ content. As with any World of Warcraft build, these suggestions can be adjusted to better suit different environments.
The majority of Holy Paladin players are expected to include Herald of the Sun in their complementary Hero Talent tree (more on that later), resulting in a focus on burst healing in most situations. However, even if you choose not to use Herald of the Sun, the following build is still highly optimized for Lightsmith.
Beginning with the Paladin class tree, the majority of the build will be recognizable to those who have previously played the class in Dragonflight. The focus remains on enhancing the critical utility of the class, setting it apart from many of its fellow classes due to its diverse array of advantages.
Emergency heals and additional toolkit options are swiftly provided through talent nodes such as Lay on Hands, Blinding Light, multiple Blessings, and the essential interrupt ability Rebuke. It is also essential to have extra potency options, as Holy Paladins can contribute significant output with Avenging Wrath, Hammer of Wrath, and Divine Toll.
The Holy tree showcases the Paladin class design well, with the Holy Shock ability being the foundation for the rest of the spec. This powerful heal not only generates Holy Power, but also has the potential to proc Infusion of Light when it lands a critical hit. This synergy allows the Holy tree to truly shine and fulfill its role as a primary healing spec.
The initial stages of the build focus on passive buffs, making Holy highly effective without requiring a lot of rotational effort. Abilities such as Extrication, Light’s Conviction, Beacon of the Lightbringer, and Awestruck provide substantial boosts to healing output and crit chance during combat.
In the initial stages of the build, it’s important to keep an eye out for two major active talents: Aura Mastery and Holy’s powerful AoE heal Light of Dawn. As the build progresses, the talent tree branches into two distinct halves, introducing additional active abilities to the rotation and enhancing their overall effectiveness. It also offers some damage-oriented options for situations where you may need to contribute more to the team’s offense.
The optimal choice in the center of the tree is Avenging Wrath: Might, as it provides a Critical Strike chance increase for both healing and damage. Additionally, this build focuses on optimizing resource management and generation. Nodes such as Glorious Dawn, Truth Prevails, and Rising Sunlight offer useful methods to conserve Holy Power and Mana through free procs or reduced costs.
Hero Talents
As mentioned briefly earlier in this guide, the majority of Holy Paladin players will likely opt to completely avoid the Lightsmith Hero Talent tree. Despite its interesting concept, it falls behind in Mythic+ dungeons and is unable to rival the crucial burst provided by Herald of the Sun in a raid environment.
After choosing the latter option, it may take some time to get used to incorporating the Keystone Dawnlight talent into your Holy playstyle. However, once you master it, the results are incredibly powerful. Your main responsibility will be to ensure that the Dawnlight status effect is active on your party members or enemies. Doing so will allow the ability to inflict substantial radiant damage.
When selecting different choice nodes, it is recommended to prioritize down-the-line extra buffs that do not complicate the spec’s gameplay. For example, Morning Star increases the damage or healing of Dawnlight (up to ten times), while Gleaming Rays provides potency buffs that are not reliant on maintaining stacks.
Illumine serves as a beneficial movement speed boost or decrease for both foes and companions. When making the ultimate decision, personal preference comes into play once more, with Lingering Radiance being considered the superior choice if you can effectively maximize Dawnlight. On the other hand, Blessing of An’She may not activate as consistently, but it still proves to be a powerful option regardless of its frequency.
In addition, we have provided an alternative Lightsmith build that heavily focuses on the powerful Holy Armaments Keystone talent. This enables a friendly target to use either a Holy Bulwark for damage absorption or a Sacred Weapon for damage boost/healing enhancement.
Despite its potential to be excellent, this tree does not need any further complicating of the Holy Paladin spec. However, some additional tuning is necessary for it to be truly competitive with Herald of the Sun.
Best Stats to Focus On
Unraveling the stat priority for Holy Paladin can be quite complex and may require some deciphering. There is a noticeable difference between prioritization in raids and Mythic content, with the latter requiring more noticeable shifts. Therefore, we will outline the priority for both, beginning with raid content:
- Intellect
- Critical Strike
- Mastery
- Versatility
- Haste
The stat of Haste holds significance in this scenario as it decreases the cooldown of your main healing ability (Holy Shock) and the casting time of other important spells in your rotation, such as Flash of Light and Holy Light. Though this can be beneficial, the challenges in The War Within require steady and potent healing, and you should not feel limited by the standard values. As a result, Haste is not prioritized in this situation.
The main advantage offered by Mastery is the focal point here, as it enables the specialization to experience a significant enhancement in its overall performance. Enhancing abilities across the spectrum will always be a dependable approach, especially in raiding situations where battles last for extended periods and abilities are frequently utilized.
In Mythic+, the landscape undergoes significant changes, and we advise the following actions:
- Intellect
- Critical Strike
- Haste
- Versatility
- Mastery
In Mythic+, we must decide between relying on the Mastery crutch or taking a chance on the potential for higher stats. Having shorter cast times and cooldowns is crucial in these fast-paced encounters, allowing us to keep up with constant changes. The need for quick reactions highlights the importance of maximizing our time, especially since mobility is limited in this spec.
Despite being undervalued in certain circles, versatility is a valuable choice. It can greatly increase the effectiveness of outgoing healing and also has the potential to reduce incoming damage by half, freeing up players to prioritize their allies rather than solely taking care of themselves.
Rotation
As is the case with all Healing specializations, it is important to be adaptable and able to quickly adjust to changing situations. However, there are some general guidelines that should be followed to ensure that you are prepared to use powerful healing abilities when needed.
Typically, it is recommended to use one of your expensive Holy Power abilities every time you reach the maximum of five (to prevent any potential loss of resource generation). For this spec, Beacon of Virtue and Light of Dawn are the main choices for AoE attacks, with the latter being particularly effective for healing a large group after receiving unavoidable damage from a boss.
Holy Light and Holy Shock are the primary single-target healing spells for this spec. The latter is especially effective for generating Holy Power. Additionally, utilizing damaging abilities such as Crusader Strike can also provide opportunities to increase Holy Power.
Considering all of those factors, a fundamental rotation to adhere to in Mythic+ would appear similar to the following:
- Ensure that Beacon of Virtue is consistently used from the beginning to the end of the Heart of Thorns dungeon runs.
- Holy Light tank heal to prove Infusion of Light
- Holy Shock to generate Holy Power
- Crusader Strike
- Judgment
- Holy Prism
- Back to Beacon of Virtue
- Hammer of Wrath
Keeping up with AoE heals should be sufficient in keeping your DPS players at full health, as long as there isn’t an excessive amount of unavoidable damage and the Tank successfully maintains aggro. Additionally, incorporating damage abilities will put you in a favorable position to quickly heal the Tank when necessary and alleviate some of the responsibilities for the rest of the group.
Holy Paladin Tier Set Breakdown
The Heartfire Sentinel’s Authority offers precise enhancements to the Holy Paladin’s setup. These benefits are particularly suited to this specialization compared to other Paladin roles, and are expected to significantly impact Mythic+.
The 2-piece set bonus increases the damage of Holy Shock heals by 80%, resulting in a reduction of two seconds for the cooldown of Light’s Hammer and one second for Holy Prism.
Once you obtain the 4-piece set bonus, Light’s Hammer will heal twice as frequently while active, providing three Holy Power each time. Furthermore, Holy Prism’s healing output is boosted by 40%, resulting in the generation of one Holy Power when used on an enemy and three when used on an ally.
Having the former is highly valuable, as it greatly enhances staple abilities and offers more concrete advantages compared to using different armor pieces. This is especially evident with Light’s Hammer, which is expected to be favored by all players, although Holy Prism will also have its role in shorter battles.
Gems and Enchants
The gem and enchant landscape is uncomplicated, especially when it comes to Holy Paladins. In fact, there is a clear top choice for each slot in the endgame. Below is a detailed list of the most optimal enchants to use.
| Slot | Best Enchantment |
|---|---|
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Authority of Fiery Resolve |
| Cloak | Enchant Cloak – Chant of Leeching Fangs |
| Chest | Enchant Chest – Crystalline Radiance |
| Bracers | Enchant Bracer – Chant of Armored Leech |
| Legs | Sunset Spellthread |
| Boots | Enchant Boots – Defender’s March |
| Rings | Enchant Ring – Radiant Critical Strike/Enchant Ring – Radiant Haste |
It is highly recommended to choose the Elusive Blasphemite as the primary gem slot for Holy Paladins. The boost in Primary Stat and added movement speed make it an essential and obvious choice for endgame activities.
This is our comprehensive guide to playing Holy Paladin in WoW: The War Within Patch 11.0.2. Take a look at our Healer tier list to assess the spec’s current performance. Additionally, if you’re thinking about switching roles, we offer a thorough breakdown of Tank and DPS specs as well.
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