Hello guys. It’s Librarian Husky here today, going to World of Warcraft here. It’s time for the Holy Paladin guide. Since birth, as a lonely child, I dreamed of playing Holy Paladin, and as soon as I reached the age of reason, patch 9.2 was announced. I mustered all my energy and pressed change specialization from protection to holy, and the grind began. I wanted to play Holy Paladin this patch mainly because the necro lord covenant, the double legendaries, the set bonuses, and how they combined have a powerful synergy.
So leaving jokes aside, I will talk about talents, PvP talents, legendaries, covenants, gameplay, and ideal body temperature, and if you watch until the end, I will also cover stat priority.
Talents
The main idea behind this guide is to stop wasting time and jump into the talent section. My default talent build looks like this. Bestow Faith, saved by the light, fist of justice, unbreakable spirit, divine purpose, awakening, and a beacon of Faith. There are, of course, variations. Repentance and Blinding Light are perfectly viable options and should be picked according to your composition.
Short example, if you have a lot of stuns on your team, you might not want or need first-of-justice talent. Repentance has an expected diminishing return with:
- Sap.
- Polymorph.
- Imprison.
- Mortal coil.
Blinding light has an expected diminishing return with blindness, fear, dragon’s breath, psychic scream, and so on. So pick what’s best for your team. For the level 35 tier, you can and should pick Cavalier if you need more mobility. Everything else should stay the same, in my opinion.
PvP Talents
The next stop is PvP talents. Divine Favor should be locked in, and the night’s Grace, Darkest before the Dawn, Blessed Handsor Ultimate Sacrifice should be picked depending on team composition and arena bracket. Darkest before the Dawn will give you even more healing output. Blessed Hands is powerful in warriors, Windwalker monks, and assassination rogues. This will help you setup up and be prepared for the next burst.
- Ultimate Sacrifice is perfect in 3v3, giving you an extra emergency button.
- Light’s Grace looks solid in 2v2 as it allows you to quickly build up holy powers when the enemy team has less pressure while also applying damage reduction.
Legendary Powers & Covenants
Moving on to legendary powers and covenants, you probably know by now that most Holy Paladins have switched from kyrian to Necro lord. This guide is honestly more rigid than the previous ones as it will mainly focus on the necro lord. However, I want to talk about the other covenants as well.
Kyrian will still be strong in RBGs and specific 3v3arena compositions as divine toll is, in the end, arcane school, and if you’re constantly being interrupted or trained, this can save you or your teammates.
- Notable legendaries for kyrian, obviously alongside Unity, are Maraad’s Dying Breathmostly for rated random battlegrounds and Shock Barrier for either RBGs or 3v3. These legendary powers have perfect synergy with Divine Toll and the DivineResonance the Unity legendary provides.
- Night Fae is also a niche covenant option in some 2v2 comps, maybe even some 3v3 comps, where your team tries to either one-shot or do overwhelming damage to the enemy team. The blessing of summer with the season of Plenty covenant legendary can dish out some insane amounts of damage.
This can work for meme comps that include but are not limited to. A convoke balance druid, an assassination rogue, or a marksmanship hunter. Just imagine (if you haven’t already seen this) a convoke balance druid with the blessing of summer and aura mastery or blessing of protection. They have the element of surprise. Please don’t play this.
Gameplay
Now, since we got that out of the way, it’s not a cake recipe. All of these combined have probably one of the best synergies in the game. The healing potential behind one word of glory is beyond understanding, so let’s explore this a little more. You get a two-stack buff once you throw your vanquisher’s hammer into someone’s face.
- Necrologies.
- Vanquisher’s Hammer.
- Unity or Duty Bound Gavel.
- Shadowbreaker Dawn of the Sun.
- Word of Glory.
- Light of Dawn.
- Mastery Lightbringer.
Light of Dawn
Next, when you press the word of glory, you will automatically cast the Light of Dawn. After this, targets that were healed by the light of Dawn are affected by your mastery as if they are within 10 yards. So just in case you did not heal everyone to complete, or the burst is not over, your following heads will be even stronger. And also, Shadowbreaker makes your word of glory receive a 50% increased benefit from your mastery.
- This Light of Dawn is on steroids. Shadowbreaker will increase its range to 40 yards.
- The first set bonus will increase its healing by 50% and cast a second time, and the darkest before the Dawn also increases its healing.
Never-ending story
Do you see? It’s like a never-ending story. Now, how do we make this as efficient as possible how do we manage all of this? Don’t randomly waste the vanquisher’s hammer; you might want to refresh the buff in some situations.
- In 99.99% of situations, no, this is not a domestic commercial. Your first global will be vanquisher’s hammer. You’ll deal some damage, get one holy power, have the buff ready, and expect some incoming damage.
- Remember that the recharge timer is 30 seconds, and the buff duration is 20 seconds, so not even in theory can you rotate this ideally or maintain the buff forever.
You must also already have three holy powers or more, and now the main question is, when do we password of glory? It’s not set in stone, but you want to use it when your teammate is as low as possible. Depending on your comfort zone, this could either be 20% or 50% if the enemy still has some crowd control.
Crowd control
Another example is, for instance, when you get out of crowd control. Is it better to already have the buff and the holy powers and use the word of glory to recover? Of course, it is, but you won’t always be able to if you mismanage your holy powers and hammer buffs or charges. Bestow Faith, Hammer of Wrath, Holy Shock, and Vanquisher’s Hammer generate holy powers, so abuse them when possible and sit around five holy powers for as long as possible. Having five holy powers acts like a safety net when you need a lot of healing or dampening is high. Let’s say you don’t get a divine purpose to proc. You have two hammer stack buffs and five holy powers.
- In this situation, you can turn the Word of Glory into a holy shock and another world of glory. This may look overkill in low dampening, but you will need this at higher levels of dampening, especially during enemy offensive cooldowns. Divine Purpose will help a lot, but it’s an rng talent in the end.
- Speaking of dampening, in my opinion, the Holy Paladin is the best dampen healer right now, meaning that your healing throughput is still decent at, let’s say…50% dampening, at least when compared to other healers.
I could talk about this a lot more and give you several other examples, but I don’t want this guide to go into any territory forever.
Stat Priority
Anyway…let’s talk about stat priority. I’ve seen many Holy Paladins stack critical strike after versatility until now. However, I am not going to do that. My Raycraft says versatility is better than mastery, which is better than critical strike and haste.
- Still, it would help if you got 3.55% haste for the 1.4-second global cooldown and get as much mastery and critical strike gear as possible after that.
- The main reason for mastery is how this stat works with Shadowbreaker legendary.
Don’t get me wrong. Crit is still very good. However, I want to stack mastery. That’s it. We did it. Guide complete. I hope everything mentioned here was helpful and will help you improve. Thank you for reading this guide. My name is Librarian Husky – I am your faithful companion in the world of World of Warcraft. Please check our World Of Warcraft Guides main mage for more valuable articles.