Cataclysm Classic Holy Paladin Talent Builds

Holy Paladin has a relatively restrictive talent build mostly due to the fact talents found outside of the Holy tree rarely offer any real benefit to your healing output or offer significant enough group utility to be worth sacrificing for.

This spec goes is focused on maximizing our healing output, as mentioned above there is not a ton of flexibility in this talent build as there are really just not a ton of talents geared towards healing outside of what we have already chosen. The talents we avoid in the Holy tree are largely focused on either doing damage or are more PvP focused though Blessed Life can be useful on very specific encounters.

In this section we will go over some of the key talents you will use when you are playing a Holy Paladin. Be sure to understand your most important talents as they are vital to play the build to its fullest strength.

• Judgements of the Pure — causes your Judgement ability to increase your casting speed and increase your melee Haste by 9% and increase the mana regeneration granted by your Spirit stat by 30%. This greatly increases the value of Spirit on your gear while also increasing your healing output while being a relatively easy to maintain buff thanks to talents like Improved Judgement and Enlightened Judgements.

• Protector of the Innocent — causes your targeted heals to also heal you for a small amount, this allows you to focus on healing other targets while still being able to maintain your own health.

• Divine Favor — increases your Spell Haste and Critical Strike by 20% for 30 seconds thanks to Glyph of Divine Favor. This is an incredibly powerful cooldown that will greatly increase your healing output while it is active, you can even pair it with Avenging Wrath to take full advantage of the Haste if you find yourself taking massive amounts of incoming damage.

• Daybreak — your Flash of Light, Divine Light, and Holy Light abilities now have a 20% chance to make your next Holy Shock not trigger a cooldown. Holy Shock is an important part of our healing kit due to its healing output but also the fact it generates Holy Power which is needed to cast Word of Glory and Light of Dawn.

• Beacon of Light — causes your Word of Glory, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Light of Dawn and Divine Light to heal the target with the beacon buff for 50% of the amount healed. Holy Light heals for 100% of the amount. This allows you to heal multiple targets at once, often times a Tank.

• Enlightened Judgements — grants Hit Rating equal to 50% of your Spirit and increases the range of your Judgement ability by 5 yards while also instantly healing you each time you cast Judgement.

• Sacred Cleansing — causes your Cleanse ability to also dispel 1 Magic effect greatly increasing the amount of debuffs you are able to dispel.

• Aura Mastery — increases the effectiveness of one of your Auras by 100% for 6 seconds. This is typically best paired with Resistance Aura but can be used with any of your auras to be able to overcome mechanics.

• Tower of Radiance — causes your Flash of Light and Divine Light abilities to generate a Holy Power when cast on a target with Beacon of Light active on it.

• Light of Dawn — consumes all of your Holy Power and heals 6 of the most injured party or raid members within a 30 yard frontal cone. This heal scales with the amount of Holy Power spent and should ideally only be used with three.

• Crusade — increases the healing done by your Holy Shock ability by 30%.

• Eternal Glory — causes your Word of Glory ability to have a 30% chance to not consume any Holy Power when used.

Prime glyphs are new to Cataclysm, giving you a third "row" of glyphs you can use on your character. While there are a couple of different options to choose from, there are some very clear front runners for each specialization.

• Glyph of Holy Shock — increases the Critical Strike chance of your Holy Shock ability by 5%. Holy Shock is an ability we will be trying to use as close to on cooldown as possible so the bonus healing from Critically Striking will be incredibly valuable.
• Glyph of Seal of Insight — increases the effectiveness of all healing abilities by 5% while Seal of Insight is active. Seal of Insight will nearly always be active so this might as well be a flat 5% increase to your healing.
• Glyph of Divine Favor — increases the duration of your Divine Favor buff by 10 seconds. Divine Favor is a massive throughput cooldown and the added duration makes it even more potent.

Major glyphs typically offer utility-based options and can be highly situational. For Holy there is only really one mandatory Major glyph, but the rest are largely situational or up to your discretion on which to use.

• Glyph of Divine Plea — is the only truly mandatory Major glyph as it increases the amount of mana generated by your Divine Plea ability by 6%.
• Glyph of Divinity — causes your Lay on Hands ability to also return 10% of your maximum mana. While you should still use Lay on Hands to save someone as opposed to as a mana cooldown this is an added benefit to an ability you should be using at least once every encounter anyway.
• Glyph of Lay on Hands — reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands ability by 3 minutes, allowing you to sometimes cast it multiple times on longer encounters..

Minor glyphs typically provide very minor benefits. Your choices will typically depend on what quality of life increase is the most meaningful for you.

• Glyph of Insight — reduces the mana cost of your Seal of Insight ability by 50%.
• Glyph of Blessing of Kings — reduces the mana cost of your Blessing of Kings by 50%.
• Glyph of Blessing of Might — reduces the mana cost of your Blessing of Might by 50%.