Warcrafter’s Guide to the Paladin — Holy Specialization
This guide is not necessarily designed as a traditional “BiS list” or scaled against “Absolute optimisation”. Be that as it may, the gear, talent, and glyph suggestions are built on a fairly long time of playing paladins (since the original vanilla release), in addition to a bit of active testing, adapting to YggdrasilWoW, and a bit of simulator testing from a few off-the-shelf simulator programs. This guide is primarily catered towards PvE play, but contains a few tidbits for PvP too, from my experience, achievement hunting lol.
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Race Selection
Human
- Every Man for Himself — Useful for PvP. Limited PvE relevance for Holy.
- The Human Spirit — The spirit bonus is entirely useless for a Holy Paladin.
- Diplomacy — Useful if you’re an achievement hunter doing rep farms.
Dwarf
- Nothing particularly relevant for Holy. Stoneform has some niche PvP use.
Draenei
- Heroic Presence — +1% hit. Not critically important for Holy, but a nice bonus for your Judgements to land.
- Gift of the Naaru — A small HoT. Minor, but a free heal is a free heal.
- Shadow Resistance — Mildly useful in some endgame encounters.
Blood Elf
- The only Horde option.
- Arcane Torrent — Returns 6% mana, which is genuinely significant for a Holy Paladin in long fights or when you’ve been moving a lot.
- Arcane Resistance — Minor benefit in PvP and some PvE situations.
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Stats
Intellect
Your core and primary stat. Intellect increases your total mana pool, and thanks to Holy Guidance in the talent tree, you also gain up to 20% of your Intellect as Spell Power — which, when you have 2k Intellect or so, is quite a big deal. This is what you’ll primarily be gemming.
Haste Rating
Reduces your cast time for spells, which is especially valuable on movement-heavy fights like LK or Halion 25 Heroic (cutters, defiles, etc.). Worth gemming some of this, but it comes at the cost of Intellect — see the stat targets below for how to balance the two.
Crit Chance
Makes your very big heals become extremely big heals — effectively 50% more healing with a 30% mana cost refund, due to the Illumination talent.
Spell Power
Found throughout your gear by default and needed in large quantities. You will never want to explicitly gem this. Spell Power does not affect all spells evenly, and the raw output is better served by maximising Intellect instead. You can add it through enchants in some places.
Mp5 (Mana per 5 seconds)
Literally the most useless stat you have. Serves zero purpose due to the playstyle of a Holy Paladin. Do not gem this.
Stamina, Spirit, Strength, and everything else
Entirely of no significance to a Holy Paladin.
Stat Priority
Intellect > Haste > Crit > Spell Power
Stat Targets
- Intellect: 2000 or higher
- Haste: 1200 or higher
- Holy Crit: approaching 45% or higher at BiS level
- Spell Power: 3100 give or take
- Mana Pool: at least 35,000
- Hit Rating: only what you get from one set of pants, Heroic Presence if Alliance, and non-faction-specific raid buffs
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Gems
- Meta: Insightful Earthsiege Diamond
- Blue socket: Nightmare Tear (smartly placed in a blue slot)
- Remaining sockets: 20 Intellect or 20 Haste gems, balanced to reach the stat targets above
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Talents
These talents cover all the core functions that a Holy Paladin needs and represent the setup I like to use. That said, this is subject to change depending on your playstyle.
Some players value Improved Concentration Aura. Others spec into the Protection tree to reach Improved Devotion Aura — a playstyle that typically revolves around using Divine Sacrifice. There are definitely spec setups more efficient than others, but many ways to achieve the same end goal.
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Gear
Regarding Val’anyr — generally, Bloodsurge is almost always a better option in most use cases. However, on YggdrasilWoW there is an updated Val’anyr which does perform meaningfully better than the Bloodsurge almost universally.
The pants are the only item with hit on them that I’ve kept, so that auto attacks and Judgements can actually connect.
The Libram can be swapped out for others depending on the situation. There’s an argument to swap Phased Regen for Cerise Coiled Ring Heroic from ICC 10 Heroic, but I use this setup for personal preference. Other alterations can include the Algalon 10-man trinket, among others.
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Enchants
| Slot | Enchant | Where? |
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| Head | Arcanum of Burning Mysteries | Knights of the Ebon Blade Exalted |
| Shoulder | Greater Inscription of the Storm | Sons of Hodir Exalted |
| Chest | Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats | Enchanter |
| Cloak | Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed | Enchanter |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracers - Exceptional Intellect | Enchanter |
| Gloves | Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower | Enchanter |
| Pants | Sapphire/Brilliant Spellthread | Tailor |
| Boots | Enchant Boots - Icewalker | Enchanter |
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon - Major Intellect | Enchanter |
| Shield | Enchant Shield - Greater Intellect | Enchanter |
These enchants are a good guideline and starting point, but can be altered according to min-maxed preferences and profession choices.
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Professions
- Jewelcrafting — More Intellect gems. Goes without saying.
- Blacksmithing — Two bonus sockets for additional Intellect or Haste.
- Engineering — Utility and a mini-Heroism from the gloves.
- Leatherworking — Powerful wrist enchant.
- Enchanting — Ring enchants are a solid boost.
- Tailoring — Cloak enchant worth considering.
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Glyphs
Major Glyphs
- Glyph of Beacon of Light — Makes your Beacon last longer, saving refresh timers.
- Glyph of Holy Light — The AoE splash is irreplaceable. An absolute must-have.
- Glyph of Seal of Wisdom — Reduces the overall mana cost of the seal, helping greatly with mana control.
Minor Glyphs
Nothing exceptionally important here other than possibly Glyph of Lay on Hands. The rest is free rein — I just use the Blessings glyphs.
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Consumables
Elixirs
Elixir of Lightning Speed and Elixir of Mighty Thoughts are hands down the best options. Frost Wyrm Flask isn’t terrible if you have to use it — Distilled Wisdom would even be preferred over it. But those two elixirs will far outstrip most other consumables for a Holy Paladin.
Food
Imperial Manta Steak is probably your best bet. Fish Feast is fine in a pinch.
Potions
If raiding with a well-set group you’ll rarely need mana potions. Potion of Speed is a solid alternative — essentially a micro-Heroism. Swiftness or magic resistance potions have utility for survivability or positioning in specific fights.
Scrolls
Scrolls of Intellect serve little purpose since Mage Intellect outstrips them.
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Abilities & Spells
Seals
Use Seal of Wisdom — stay in melee range of the boss and auto-attack to recover mana.
Beacon of Light
Maintain 100% uptime on the main tank (or off-tank depending on your approach and situational awareness).
Sacred Shield
Put this on the highest damage-taking target, usually the MT, and drop a Flash of Light on this person roughly every 12 seconds. This applies a HoT via Sacred Shield. Always expect a Paladin to use their own Sacred Shield on themselves — this allows you to contribute a HoT with your Flash of Light even if the Sacred Shield on the tank isn’t your own.
Judgement of Light
Used by the Holy Paladin alone on CD to maintain 100% uptime. If there are two Holy Paladins, coordinate between yourselves.
Holy Shock
Use smartly while moving and repositioning. I macro Divine Favour + Holy Shock together to ensure it crits and gives a boosted instant Flash of Light or more powerful Holy Light.
Primary Heal
Holy Light in most cases. In certain exceptional situations like Random Heroics, Flash of Light may be preferable due to the nature of damage taken.
Utility
Always keep utility spells handy and use them properly — Hand of Sacrifice, Salvation, Protection, and Freedom are very important.
Positioning
It makes an amazing difference to use slightly unconventional movement patterns as a Holy Paladin compared to the melee DPS group. Get into the habit of playing with your positioning during certain fights to maximise uptime and output.
Cleanse
One of the most powerful dispels in the game. Can dispel practically anything — the only exception being magical curses.
Divine Intervention
Keep reagents around. In an extreme crutch, you may be the only person who can dispel certain impossible-to-dispel debuffs like Professor Putricide’s Mutated Plague. More commonly, it can save your own and a friend’s repair bills in the event of a wipe — just don’t use it as a first resort, lol.
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Guide by @Zeleot on YggdrasilWoW.
