Holy Paladin Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Holy Paladin. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Holy Paladin spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Holy Paladin, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Holy Paladin has received some changes that will significantly alter how the spec plays in the next expansion. The most notable changes will be listed below:

• Glimmer of Light — Removed from the game.
• Daybreak — Removed from the game.
• Rising Sunlight — After casting Avenging Wrath or Divine Toll, your next 2 Holy Shocks will cast 2 additional times.

Along with these changes, Holy Paladin received significant aura buffs as well as buffs to Word of Glory and Holy Shock. This has resulted in a playstyle where consuming Infusion of Light has become significantly less important. The main gameplay will consist of pressing Holy Shock as much as possible and spending Holy Power as often as possible. When neither is possible, you will aim to drop Consecration as a Herald of the Sun Holy Paladin in order to buff Eternal Flame through Strength of Conviction. Otherwise you will then proceed to consume Infusion of Light with Holy Light when healing is needed, or Judgment when no major healing is necessary.

While nothing changed for Holy Paladin's core features, The War Within still has major implications for all specs thanks to the Hero Talent Tree system, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondary stats when entering a new expansion.

Holy Paladin gets to choose between the Herald of the Sun and Lightsmith Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

Herald of the Sun introduces a new buff called Dawnlight. This will deal healing or damage over time and is applied through Holy Power spending abilities. The buff is activated by casting Holy Prism or Barrier of Faith and represents the first major shift to playstyle in the War Within. When using this hero talent, it is incredibly important that you are pressing either Holy Prism or Barrier of Faith as much as possible to trigger Dawnlight.

Eternal Flame also returns in the form of a talent through Herald of the Sun. While its individual power may not be enough to shift players away from Light of Dawn in larger group content, it does the same upfront healing as Word of Glory meaning that you are simply gaining extra power to one of your key single-target heals.

The overall most important, powerful, and interesting interaction in the Herald of the Sun talent tree comes from Sun's Avatar. This will cause you to emit beams off your character and these beams will connect to any players with Dawnlight on them. The overall healing and damage this provides is massive (even after multiple nerfs) and returns Avenging Wrath to a much more powerful cooldown. In terms of gameplay, you will aim to have as many Dawnlights out as possible through constant usage of Holy Prism or Barrier of Faith, leading to extra passive healing as well as a much stronger cooldown.

The Lightsmith Hero Talent Tree adds a new ability to the spec called: Sacred Weapon. This ability allows you to buff other players with Holy Bulwark and Sacred Weapon. Many of the talents in the Hero Talent Tree further amplify this ability while also providing other passive bonuses for the player wielding either a Bulwark or Weapon.

When playing a Lightsmith Holy Paladin, there will be a large emphasis on spreading out your buffs as much as possible and to the correct players. Whether that be players dealing the most damage/healing or most in need of a shield, the better you are able to select the correct target, the better your overall performance will be. It is hard to imagine that this Hero Talent Tree will be competitive in large group content as you will struggle to get enough Weapon/Shields out to have a large impact, but it does at the very least significantly buff Avenging Wrath, causing this cooldown to spawn an additional Sacred Weapon, as well as causing your Holy Power abilities to echo.

It is worth noting that Lightsmith has multiple interactions with Infusion of Light. Whenever you lose an Armanent, you will gain Infusion of Light and when you end up consuming an Infusion of Light, it will reduce the cooldown of your Armament. This will mean that you will need to ensure that you aren't wasting Infusion of Light procs as much as possible to ensure you have as much coverage of Sacred Weapon as possible.

While the overall power for this Hero Talent Tree is still to be determined and will likely come down to how well it is tuned in comparison to Herald of the Sun, it is clear that blizzard has made as many efforts as possible to increase the overall quality of life that this Hero Talent Tree has. Solidarity will allow you to also gain the benefits whenever you buff an ally, and when buffing yourself, it will also buff a nearby ally. Making the spec much different from other typical buff abilities in the past where they did not also impact the caster but simply the target. Furthermore, the extra healing and damage provided by Armaments appears to be counting for the Holy Paladin that cased the buff rather than the player who made use of the buff. Similar to how Blessing of Summer has functioned in the past and how Augmentation Evoker currently functions.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Holy Paladin in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Paladin Holy Season 1 2pc — Holy Shock's healing is increased by 10% and its cooldown is reduced by 10%. Relatively boring, but extra healing and more frequent use of our most key ability is never a bad thing.
• Paladin Holy Season 1 4pc — Holy Shock increases the initial healing of your next Word of Glory or Light of Dawn by 8%, stacking up to 4 times. Holy Power Spenders have fallen out of the meta in Dragonflight, with them being so weak that you would rather just not spend Holy Power. This tier set helps to address that along with many buffs that Spenders have received throughout the development cycle, making them much more powerful overall and a key component of our rotation and overall output.

These tier-set bonuses are both largely passive. You will, however want to make sure that you are pressing either Word of Glory or Light of Dawn often enough to not let the Paladin Holy Season 1 4pc exceed its cap of 4.

Overall, this tier set is fairly mediocre. It offers a fair amount of power but not as much as other specs and is largely uninteresting. While it isn't the worst tier set in the game, it is far from the top.

Strengths

• Much stronger healing cooldown thanks to both Hero Talent Trees buffing Avenging Wrath.
• Holy Power spenders have significantly improved, increasing both our single target and AoE healing ability.
• Core gameplay remains intact while adding some of the most unique and interesting passives/abilities in the game.
• Power has been redestributed in the spec, taking some out of Beacon of Light and giving it to other abilities.

Weaknesses

• One Hero Talent Tree focuses entirely on buffs, a gameplay mechanic that is unenjoyable to many.
• High button bloat that only increases with the new Hero Talent Trees.
• Infusion of Light continues to be a core gameplay element and casting is likely to continue, a negative in many eyes.
• Uninteresting tier set bonus.