In this article, we list your Holy Paladin (WoW MoP 5.3) core abilities and how they should be used together (rotation). We also explain when to use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties that playing a Holy Paladin will face you with.

The other articles of our Holy Paladin guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

For 10-man raiding, this guide has been reviewed and approved by Smirk, a Holy Paladin who raids in Paragon.

For 25-man raiding, this guide has been reviewed and approved by Atismund, a Holy Paladin who raids in Envy.

1. Rotation↑top

Healing is in great part based on your ability to react to the damage that the raid takes, and as such there is no set rotation. Rather, you must understand what spells are best suited to the different situations that can occur during a raid encounter.

Holy Paladins are good raid healers, and at the same time they can be good tank/single target healers. In the sections that follow, we will treat both roles.

1.1. AoE/Raid Healing

AoE/raid healing (with Beacon of Light support on one of the tanks) is currently the role at which Holy Paladins excel.

To pull off this playstyle, you will need to have taken the Eternal Flame talent, and you should be gearing for Mastery Rating. Then, you will have to follow a series of steps, much like a checklist.

1. Apply Beacon of Light on the tank who is taking the highest amount of sustained damage.
2. Cast Eternal Flame on as many raid members as possible.
   • Cast Eternal Flame with 3 Holy Power.
   • Cast it primarily on players who will benefit the most from the initial heal (that is to say, they will not be overhealed). If no one is in immediate need of healing, cast it on players who are going to take damage (most likely the tanks).
3. Generate Holy Power to fuel your Eternal Flame usage, as follows:
   • Stand in melee range of the boss and use Crusader Strike on cooldown (do not worry if some Crusader Strikes miss).
   • Cast Holy Shock on cooldown (prefer those raid members on whom it will not overheal).
   • Cast Holy Radiance on stacked raid members, in case there is raid damage, or Divine Light on the Beacon of Light tank otherwise.
     • If the raid damage is truly heavy, then replace Crusader Strike with Holy Radiance altogether.

Three notes are in order.

Firstly, if you cannot be in melee range to use Crusader Strike, you will have to make much more extensive use of Holy Radiance for Holy Power.

Secondly, you can use Light of Dawn instead of Eternal Flame if there at least 6 targets that will not be overhealed (or at least, not too much) by it, although do note that if you are facing heavy raid damage, this may be insufficient.

Thirdly, if there is no raid damage, you should try to keep your Mastery shields up on as many players as possible. Simply stack them with Holy Shock and Holy Light, and keep them refreshed with Eternal Flame (each HoT tick refreshes the shields).

1.2. Tank Healing

Tank healing is not your strength, but if you are required to perform this role, you can do so quite well. If you are tank healing, then you must use Sacred Shield instead of Eternal Flame.

• Keep Sacred Shield and Beacon of Light up on your assigned tank. Do not hesitate to move your Beacon of Light around (especially if you are using Glyph of Beacon of Light).
• Low damage
  • Make extensive use of Holy Light on any raid members that require healing. It provides decent healing and has a low mana cost. The healing done by this will also heal your Beacon target.
  • Use Holy Shock (on cooldown) and Word of Glory on raid members who will not be overhealed.
• Moderate damage
  • Continue using Holy Light on other raid members.
  • Start casting your Holy Shock and Word of Glory on your assigned tank.
  • Use Divine Light on your assigned tank if their health drops too low.
• High sustained damage
  • Make extensive use of Divine Light, Holy Shock, and Word of Glory on your assigned tank.
  • Forsake Holy Light, as its low throughput will cause you to fall behind in healing.
• Emergency situations
  • Use Flash of Light, but only if you feel that the target will die before you have a chance to complete a Divine Light cast on them.
  • Healing with Flash of Light will drain your mana very quickly and should not be used lightly.

Note that you can choose to spend your Holy Power on Eternal Flame instead of Word of Glory, if you prefer. This will provide your Beacon of Light target with a nice stream of healing.

1.3. Additional Actions To Perform

As a Holy Paladin there are a number of spells and abilities that you should use regularly during any encounter.

• Always use Holy Shock when it is off cooldown (try to minimise overhealing, though).
• Try to melee the boss whenever possible in order to regenerate as much mana as possible from Seal of Insight.

1.4. Seal

You should always use Seal of Insight.

2. Cooldown Usage↑top

As a Holy Paladin, you have several healing cooldowns. You should use them as we explain below:

• Divine Favor temporarily buffs your spell haste and your critical strike chance, making it very useful when you need to temporarily increase your healing output.
• Avenging Wrath temporarily increases your healing output by 20% and is very useful during periods of high sustained damage.
• Guardian of Ancient Kings should mostly be used to provide you with a great burst of single target (tank) healing, but it can also be used as a raid healing cooldown with some success. Each time your Guardian replicates a heal, you gain 10% increased spell haste, stacking. The buff lasts only a few seconds, 7 seconds, but each new stack refreshes its duration.
• Lay on Hands should be used to save dying raid members, especially tanks.
• Hand of Sacrifice transfers 30% of the damage taken by the target, over 12 seconds, to you. The effect is automatically canceled if the damage you take is 100% of your maximum health. This cooldown is excellent for reducing the damage taken by the tank, or other raid members. You must, however, be aware of your current health and of the damage of the abilities being used against the target.
• Devotion Aura is a raid cooldown, and it should be used at a time designated by your raid leader, or as part of a rotation with the other healers.
• Hand of Protection can be used to clear harmful physical damage debuffs and bleeds from the target. Be mindful of the fact that bosses will not attack targets affected by Hand of Protection, though, so only cast it on the current tank if the off-tank is prepared to take over.
• Hand of Salvation is useful in temporarily removing a target's threat. It is especially useful on the tank which has just been taunted off of by the other tank. If the "old" tank has a high amount of Vengeance, it can be very hard for them to continue attacking the boss without over-aggroing the "new" tank, so Hand of Salvation helps a lot with that.

You also gain various abilities from your talents. We cover these in a later section.

3. Beacon of Light Target↑top

You should place your Beacon of Light on the target that is going to need it the most, even if you are assigned to heal the raid or another raid member. Generally, it is best used on one of the tanks (whichever is taking more damage) or someone in your raid who will be taking constant damage throughout the encounter.

4. Optional Read: Mastering Your Holy Paladin↑top

While the information presented above should enable you to perform very decently as a Holy Paladin, there are many things that you need to perfectly understand if you are to play your character to its full potential. In particular, you need to know the mechanics of all your procs and spells.

4.1. Pooling Holy Power

Thanks to Boundless Conviction, a passive ability, you can have up to a maximum of 5 Holy Power at one time. However, no ability that consumes Holy Power can consume more than 3. This means two things:

• You have to worry less about capping your Holy Power.
• You can pool Holy Power in preparation for a damage burst. For example, you can cast two 3-Holy Power Light of Dawns in the space of 3 global cooldowns.

We strongly advise trying to keep 1 or 2 charges of Holy Power in reserve for emergencies or times of need. Naturally, if you need to do a lot of healing, this is not possible, but otherwise you should attempt it.

4.2. Procs

Holy Paladins have two procs that they need to watch out for: Daybreak and Infusion of Light.

4.2.1. Daybreak

Daybreak, a passive ability, causes your Holy Radiance casts to make your next Holy Shock heal players in an area around the target, instead of the target itself, for an amount of healing depending on how much the original target would have been healed. You can have up to two Daybreak procs (or charges) at one time, and the healing done is 75% of the original heal per charge.

This proc is very useful, since you should only be using Holy Radiance on players who are near other players, and only during times when you want to do AoE healing. Therefore, it is very easy to simply use the Holy Shock on the same person you used Holy Radiance on. You can, of course, use it on other players for different reasons.

4.2.2. Infusion of Light

Infusion of Light causes your Holy Shock critical strikes to reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light, Divine Light, or Holy Radiance by 1.5 seconds. This proc is extremely beneficial, and should only really be used with Divine Light or Holy Radiance, and not Holy Light, unless there is practically no damage to be healed. Due to the very low cast time of your Holy Light while this proc is active (0.7-0.8 seconds) it is not really possible to cancel your cast, so you should have a way to track this proc through use of an addon (such as Power Auras).

4.3. Beacon of Light Subtleties

Beacon of Light provides the benefit of free healing on a secondary target (and should certainly be used with that in mind). The amount of healing that the Beacon target receives depends on the spell used, as follows:

• Holy Light: 100%;
• Flash of Light, Divine Light, Holy Shock, Word of Glory (and Eternal Flame), and Execution Sentence: 50%;
• Holy Radiance, Light of Dawn, Light's Hammer, and Holy Prism: 15%.

Additionally, it is important to keep track of the fact that through Tower of Radiance (a passive ability), healing your Beacon target directly with Flash of Light and Divine Light will generate Holy Power quickly. This enables you, at least every 3rd Divine Light (assuming you had no time to weave in any Holy Shock between your Divine Lights due to the high tank damage) to use Word of Glory.

4.3.1. Beacon Assignment

If you are assigned to raid healing, then cast your Beacon of Light on the raid member that takes the most damage (usually a tank) and occasionally heal them if needed.

If you are assigned to tank healing, then cast your Beacon of Light on the tank that takes the most damage and heal them directly with Divine Light or Flash of Light, using Word of Glory to dump your Holy Power and conserve some mana.

4.4. Denounce

Denounce deserves a special mention. This spell can be a useful and much-needed DPS boost during progression content, provided that you can spare the mana required for it.

4.5. Mana Regeneration With Divine Plea

Divine Plea is a mana regeneration cooldown that allows you to regain 12% of your maximum mana over the course of 9 seconds, at the cost of a 50% reduction to the efficiency of all your heals for the same duration. On a two minute cooldown, this ability is somewhat situational, and while some fights do not allow for any breathing room to cast this, most of the time it is possible to use it during a time when the healing required is low.

That said, we strongly advise you to use Glyph of Divine Plea. This will turn your Divine Plea into a spell with a long cast time, but there is no more healing reduction, and you get all your mana back at once. Using this glyph is preferable in the vast majority of situations, since it is rather easy to find a 4-second period of time (that is roughly how long the cast will be, taking into account your Haste).

In case you are not using the glyph, there are a few things to keep in mind. It is a common and incorrect practice to use healing cooldowns such as Avenging Wrath or Divine Favor during Divine Plea in order to counter part of the reduced healing you are doing. You should not do this in any case because Divine Plea's penalty will diminish the effectiveness of your healing cooldown, effectively wasting it. Furthermore, if you find yourself in need of extra healing from your spells during Divine Plea it means you have used Divine Plea at the wrong time. For those situations where something unexpected happens during your Divine Plea, and which requires you to heal without the penalty, it is useful to have a macro to cancel Divine Plea.

4.6. Abilities and Cooldowns from Talents

4.6.1. Tier 3 Talents

Sacred Shield should be kept up with 100% uptime on a target that is taking regular damage, such as a tank.

Eternal Flame should also be kept up with 100% uptime on the tank or on a target that is taking constant damage. You can also use additional Holy Power (or Divine Purpose procs) to place it on secondary targets.

Selfless Healer requires that you stack it up to 3 times by judging. You can keep 3 stacks in reserve (by judging at least once every 15 seconds), which will provide you with a supercharged Flash of Light to use in an emergency.

4.6.2. Tier 4 Talents

Hand of Purity should be used on a target that is affected by a powerful DoT. Usually, this will be the tank, or another raid member who is being targeted by a specific ability.

Clemency allows you to use your Hand spells twice in a row. Simply exploit this to the maximum when you use your Hands in the encounter.

Unbreakable Spirit works passively, so it is not of any concern to you.

4.6.3. Tier 5 Talents

Holy Avenger should be treated as a healing cooldown. Simply use it during a time of intense damage, and enjoy the extra Holy Power you gain.

Divine Purpose procs will simply be used passively.

Sanctified Wrath increases the duration of your Avenging Wrath, an effect that occurs passively and does not concern you. To make full use of this talent, you will need to also use Holy Shock on cooldown (3 seconds) while Avenging Wrath is active, something that is not always possible.

4.6.4. Tier 6 Talents

Holy Prism should be cast on the boss, or another enemy target that is near to raid members. This can be especially useful when the boss or an add has an aura that damages nearby players.

Execution Sentence can be used as a minor healing cooldown. Try to use it as many times as possible.

Light's Hammer can also be used as a minor AoE healing cooldown. Just use it when you want a bit of burst to your AoE healing.

4.7. Tips

Here are a few useful tips to conclude this guide on the Holy Paladin play style:

1. Use Holy Shock and Flash of Light on your Beacon target before the fight (and then drink) to start with 5 Holy Power charges.
2. Pre-heal the tank before the fight starts, in order to build up the shield from your Mastery (it will stack up to a shield equal to 33% of your maximum health, so a nice amount).
3. Use Divine Shield to totally bypass encounter mechanics to either save you time, or save your raid DPS/movement, or allow you to stand still and channel heals when your raid's health is low.
4. Use Guardian of Ancient Kings to conserve mana in times where the tank is taking large but steady amounts of damage by letting him get to low hit points and healing him with a Divine Light, then waiting until he is low again and doing the same.
5. Use Hand of Sacrifice on the tank at the same time that you are using Divine Plea, to counter some of the healing penalty that you are suffering by lessening the damage that the tank takes.
6. Use Divine Protection or Divine Shield when using Hand of Sacrifice on someone, in order to reduce the amount of damage taken by you from Hand of Sacrifice.
   • Note that the damage you take through Hand of Sacrifice is of the same damage school as the damage taken by the target themselves. Therefore, you should think about what damage they are taking, and whether or not Divine Protection will be useful.
7. Crusader Strike can be used to generate Holy Power.

5. Changelog↑top

• 23 May 2013: Removed mention of using Eternal Flame with 2 charges of Holy Power in 25-man content, since this is no longer optimal.
• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: made a few small adjustments to account for the change to Daybreak (it now has up to two charges, and it no longer heals the original target).
• 04 May 2013: Made a few updates.
  • Added a distinction between how much Holy Power to use Eternal Flame with in 10 vs 25-man.
  • Added a mention of keeping Mastery shields up on raid members when there is no raid damage.
  • Added a mention that pooling Holy Power is recommended.
  • Added a short section about Denounce.
  • Made a few other small tweaks.
• 30 Apr. 2013: Made several updates.
  • Revamped the Rotation section, splitting it into raid healing and tank healing.
  • Added Hand of Protection and Hand of Salvation to the cooldown list.
  • Made it clearer that you should use Glyph of Divine Plea.
  • Added a mention that the damage transferred to you through Hand of Sacrifice retains its damage school.
  • Added using Crusader Strike for Holy Power to the list of tips.