Classic Holy Paladin Healer Spec, Builds, and Talents

If you were looking for leveling builds, please refer to our leveling guide for Paladins.

This build focuses in picking up Improved Blessing of Might and Improved Blessing of Wisdom to give you both options when going into a raid. The main idea of this build is to at least 31 points into Holy to pick up Holy Shock, with the leftover points going into Protection for Blessing of Kings and Ret for Improved Blessing of Might. This gives you options for which Blessings and Auras to use, ensuring you will be able to give everyone their optimal Blessing. In a raid setting, you will know which Blessings you will be using, so if you are for instance not the dedicated user of Greater Blessing of Might, then you can safely skip out on Improved Blessing of Might and put the points elsewhere.

The main filler points in this build come from the choice of where to put your extra 4 talent points when you are at 31/11/5. You could choose Toughness for the armor, Deflection for the parry, or Benediction for the extra Mana efficiency on Seals and Judgement as alternative options. This build chooses to go with Unyielding Faith for the extra fear and disorient resist along with Improved Lay on Hands to make Lay on Hands a great tank cooldown. If you want to move the points around, you can take the 2 out of Unyielding Faith, but Improved Lay on Hands is quite important and worth the points. You will not need the Mana efficiency or the armor as much as you will benefit from having Lay on Hands be a strong tank cooldown.

Another potential area for change in this build comes with Lasting Judgement. This becomes useless if you are not allowed to use your Judgement of Wisdom on the target due to debuff restrictions, meaning you can move the points elsewhere. If you do need to keep Judgement up, however, then it is worth the 3 point investment.

The main purpose of this build is to go deeper into the Protection tree to pick up Improved Concentration Aura. This is incredibly important if you are grouped with casters in a raid since it will greatly help them deal with spell pushback, which could be a huge damage increase depending on the fight.

This spec is nice because it is also a great PvP spec. With points into Improved Hammer of Justice you lower the cooldown on Hammer of Justice to help you out in PvP, while lowering your damage taken through Redoubt, Toughness, and Shield Specialization. If you want one build to raid and PvP with, this is a great choice.

Respec costs are high, but going for a full Holy build can sometimes make doing content outside of raiding much more difficult. This is a great build that takes the most important talents for being a healer while also picking up enough talents for tanking either in dungeons or solo out in the world. This build also picks up Blessing of Sanctuary, and while it is the least important blessing for raids, it is still worth taking when you have 5+ Paladins in your raid group.