Introduction

Content in This Guide

Introduction
Abilities
Talents
Gameplay
Stat Priority
Gearing
Macros and Addons

Welcome

Welcome to our guide for Holy Paladins in the Legion expansion of World of Warcraft. Our intent for this guide is primarily to help you learn how to become a better Holy Paladin, but we also want to make sure you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. We don’t want to just tell you what to do.

This guide purposefully has an almost overwhelming amount of information in it; we hope that providing you with so much material will allow you to learn something new regardless of your skill level or raiding prowess. We also understand that not all of you want to wade through the information to get the basics, which is why we try to keep the more basic information at the top of each page. We’ve also written more easily digestible guides on other fansites. If you just want a quick explanation of how to play a Holy Paladin, you can check out our Wowhead guide and come back if you want to learn more.

Class Overview

Paladins are stalwarts of the Light, focusing on defensive magic to protect their allies from enemies. Champions of righteousness and virtue, Paladins strive to punish those who threaten the innocent and cleanse Azeroth from evil. As bastions of honor, Paladins fight with zeal and fervor to uphold the tenets of the Light.

Holy Paladins utilize direct healing and low mana costs to sustain themselves and their allies in battle. Predominantly reactive healers, Holy Paladins focus on quickly restoring party and raid members to full life before moving to the next wounded ally. Their single-target, direct healing style is simple to learn but requires deep understanding to truly master. Holy Paladins are often a staple of raiding compositions thanks to their utility and consistent healing capabilities.

Strengths

Mana Efficient: Paladins have always been a healing class that excels at being mana efficient. Almost all basic healing abilities are low mana cost and spammable.

Excellent Tank healers: Beacon of Light allows Paladins to passively heal the tank while healing other members of a party or raid.

Utility: The Paladin’s Blessings are tremendously useful while raiding. Blessing of Protection and Divine Shield are often means to nullify potential deadly threats both to themselves and their allies.

Reliable: Paladins bring very steady and consistent healing due to their low mana costs.

Durable: Plate armor, Shields, Divine Shield, and Hand of Protection allow Paladins to withstand a lot of dangerous situations.

Weaknesses

Low throughput: Paladins have very little in their arsenal that allows them to heal the entire raid at once. What little Area of Effect healing the Paladin does have has a very limited range.

minus Low mobility: The only movement speed increase Paladins have is Divine Steed. Paladins do have a few instant-cast abilities to use when moving, but outside of Divine Steed, they move very slowly and have to spend a lot time casting spells while stationary.

minus Low skill floor: Paladins are notoriously uncomplicated. There are plenty of areas in which to master the Holy Paladin, but the base healing style can be considered dull by many players due to its simplistic nature.

Changes from Warlords of Draenor to Legion

The biggest change to Holy Paladins from Warlords of Draenor to Legion is the change to our inv_hammer_04 Mastery: Lightbringer. Our new mastery increases the effectiveness of our healing based on our proximity to whomever we’re healing; meaning we’ll spend a portion of our time near the boss with Tanks and melee DPS. This also means that we won’t have any absorption-based healing.

The second biggest change is the removal of Holy Power. We no longer have any form of builders or spenders. As such, Word of Glory and Eternal Flame were removed, but spell_paladin_lightofdawn Light of Dawn remains as a baseline ability with a 12 second cooldown that is reduced by haste; though Light of Dawn has reverted to being a frontal cone like it was in Cataclysm.

Another big change to all healers is the removal of Spirit as a stat. All healers recover 4% of their maximum mana every 5 seconds. There are a few trinkets that allow you to recover mana in various ways, but we should be seeing much less change in how to manage mana over the course of the expansion.

Our only new baseline ability is ability_paladin_lightofthemartyr Light of the Martyr, an instant-cast heal that sacrifices a portion of the healing as self-inflicted damage.