Holy Paladin Guide for The War Within (2024)

Last updated on Jun 18, 2024 at 21:00by Mytholxgy22 comments

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

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

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

• Glimmer of Light — Removed from the game.
• Daybreak — Removed from the game.
• Rising Sunlight — After casting Avenging Wrathor Divine Toll, your next 2 Holy Shocks will cast2 additional times.

Along with these changes, Holy Paladin received significant aura buffsas well as buffs to Word of Glory and Holy Shock. This hasresulted in a playstyle where consuming Infusion of Light has becomesignificantly less important. The main gameplay will consist of pressing Holy Shock as much as possible and spending Holy Power as oftenas possible. When neither is possible, you will aim to drop Consecrationas a Herald of the Sun Holy Paladin in order to buff Eternal Flamethrough Strength of Conviction. Otherwise you will then proceedto consume Infusion of Light with Holy Light when healingis 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 HeroTalent Tree system, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondarystats when entering a new expansion.

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

Herald of the Sun introduces a new buff called Dawnlight. Thiswill deal healing or damage over time and is applied through Holy Power spendingabilities. The buff is activated by casting Holy Prism or Barrier of Faithand represents the first major shift to playstyle in the War Within. When usingthis hero talent, it is incredibly important that you are pressing either Holy Prismor 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 Dawnin larger group content, it does the same upfront healing as Word of Glory meaningthat you are simply gaining extra power to one of your key single-target heals.

The overall most important, powerful, and interesting interaction in the Heraldof the Sun talent tree comes from Sun's Avatar. This will cause you to emit beamsoff 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 willaim to have as many Dawnlights out as possible through constant usage of Holy Prism or Barrier of Faith, leading to extra passive healing as wellas 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 providingother passive bonuses for the player wielding either a Bulwark or Weapon.

When playing a Lightsmith Holy Paladin, there will be a large emphasis on spreadingout your buffs as much as possible and to the correct players. Whether that be playersdealing the most damage/healing or most in need of a shield, the better you areable 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 largegroup content as you will struggle to get enough Weapon/Shields out to havea large impact, but it does at the very least significantly buff Avenging Wrath,causing this cooldown to spawn an additional Sacred Weapon, as well ascausing 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 upconsuming 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 Lightprocs as much as possible to ensure you have as much coverage of Sacred Weapon aspossible.

While the overall power for this Hero Talent Tree is still to be determined and willlikely come down to how well it is tuned in comparison to Herald of the Sun, it is clearthat blizzard has made as many efforts as possible to increase the overall quality of lifethat this Hero Talent Tree has. Solidarity will allow you to also gain the benefitswhenever you buff an ally, and when buffing yourself, it will also buff a nearby ally. Makingthe spec much different from other typical buff abilities in the past where they did notalso impact the caster but simply the target. Furthermore, the extra healing and damageprovided by Armaments appears to be counting for the Holy Paladin that cased the buffrather than the player who made use of the buff. Similar to how Blessing of Summerhas functioned in the past and how Augmentation Evoker currently functions.

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

• Paladin Holy 11.0 Class Set 2pc — Holy Shock's healing is increasedby 10% and its cooldown is reduced by 10%. Relatively boring, but extra healingand more frequent use of our most key ability is never a bad thing.
• Paladin Holy 11.0 Class Set 4pc — Holy Shock increasesthe initial healing of your next Word of Glory or Light of Dawn by8%, stacking up to 4 times. Holy Power Spenders have fallen out of the meta inDragonflight, 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 receivedthroughout the development cycle, making them much more powerful overall and a keycomponent of our rotation and overall output.

These tier-set bonuses are both largely passive. You will, however want to make surethat you are pressing either Word of Glory or Light of Dawn often enoughto not let the Paladin Holy 11.0 Class Set 4pc exceed its cap of 4.

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