Paladin Class Overview

In the original version of World of Warcraft, Paladins were locked to being Alliance exclusively available to Humans and Dwarves. In World of Warcraft Forever Horde also gets access to Paladin through the newly added Undead Paladins making the class available to both Factions.

On top of the addition of Undead Paladins Blizzard has also changed and tuned racial abilities and passives to try and bring the choices closer in power. All races now have access to two unique active abilities, and two passive effects. The Weapon skill racials have been reworked to now grant increased Critical Strike chance for both melee abilities and spells, and Humans lose access to Mace Specialization which is now available to Dwarves, but keep their access to Sword Specialization. Below are a list of all racials presented during BlizzCon.

• Human — Humans offer the reworked Sword Specialization which gives 2% increased chance to Critically hit with melee and spells as long as you have a sword equipped. This is a very powerful racial as long as you have the option to use a sword. Humans also have access to Will to Survive which removes Stun effects on a longer cooldown. Humans second active racial is Perception which increases stealth-detection for a short period of time on a longer cooldown. Finally Humans retain The Human Spirit, increasing their Spirit stat by 5% which has some synergy with the new Reverence talent.
• Dwarf — Dwarves retain their iconic Stoneform ability which lets you remove and become immune to bleeds, poisons, and diseases for a short period of time on a longer cooldown. In WoW Forever it also reduces physical damage taken instead of increasing your armor. Dwarves also gain access to Mace Specialization which increases your melee and spell Critical Strike chance by 1% when you have a mace equipped. Dwarves also have access to Find Treasure, which now work alongside tracking spells such as Sense Undead. Their final racial is the new Big Game Hunter, increasing all damage dealt to enemy Beasts by 5%.
• Undead — Undead Paladin has access to many familiar racial abilities. Cannibalize now also lets you regain Mana on top of healing yourself by consuming enemy corpses. Underwater Breathing lets you keep your breath 4 times as long as other races, which can be very useful when you need to spend time under water. Will of the Forsaken removes all sleep, fear, and charm abilities currently on you, but no longer gives you a brief immunity to these effects. Their only new racial is Touch of the Grave, which gives all your spells and attacks a small chance to deal damage and heal you for the same amount.

WoW Forever brings a handful changes to already existing Paladin spells offering long sought after quality of life changes, as well as some new spells added to the toolkit. Below you will find just some of the changes. The list will be extended and updated as we progress throughout the beta.

• Holy Strike is added as a baseline ability giving Paladins access to a normal melee attack, with talents affecting it in all three talent trees.
• Judgement now no longer consume your active Seal, meaning you no longer need to recast seals.
• All Blessing buffs have gotten their duration increased to 60 minutes, greatly reducing the frequency of needing to rebuff your allies. All blessings are now taught by Paladin trainers, including Blessing of Kings which is no longer a talent.
• Seal of Fury gives access to a taunt effect, combined with buffs to threat generations, giving Paladins long sought after tools to help with threat management for tanking.

Paladin has undergone some pretty significant changes with WoW Forever. Tanking is now a real option, Retribution getting a significant rotation rework and proper spell options, and Holy (not just Holy Paladin, but all healers) gaining extra damage on gear to make them more useful in the overworld.

Changes to Holy Paladin in Forever have been aimed at increasing their ability to deal with AoE damage through Light's Vigil. This capstone replaces Holy Shock, which has been moved up in the tree. While we will not be able to say for sure until Beta, the expectation is that you will be able to cast this ability on a single player in each party. While it has a heavy cost, it has potential to be a very powerful way to deal with group damage as the expectation is you can quickly cast Holy Shock on each party as the cooldown will reset. Additionally, this ability can be used for damage, further amplifying a "Shockadin" playstyle for players who have always enjoyed it.

In addition to the above changes, these following changes should play a key role for players wanting to increase their healing or damage outputs:

• Infusion of Light — Holy Shock and Flash of Light critical strikes reduce cast time of your next Holy Light, which will help to give you the ability to quickly drop large heals while in significant danger.
• Voice of Truth — Grants you immunity so Silence and Interrupt effects for 6 seconds. This functions similarly to Concentration Aura and Aura Mastery from other versions of the game, allowing you to cast without worrying about being interrupted.
• Reverence — Allows a percent of your mana regen to continue while casting, helping to improve mana stability over the course of a fight.
• Consecrated Ground, Divine Precision, Holy Power, Improved Holy Strike — all increase your damage output, allowing you to live your Shockadin dreams.

In Forever, Protection Paladin gets access to its most desired feature: a taunt. Seal of Fury causes Judgement to taunt an enemy for 4 seconds. Due to Seals no longer being consumed by Judgment, you will not need to play a seal twisting mini game and can instead focus on having the best seal active at any given moment. Additionally, mana talents have been changed/added to help manage the mana costs that come with playing Protection Paladin. Below we will break down some of these new changes:

• Improved Seal of Fury — When the absorb shield provided by Seal of Fury is gone, you will gain back mana.
• Shield Specialization — Blocks have a 100% chance to restore a percent of your mana. While this effect can only proc every 3 seconds, it should play a massive role in allowing you to sustain your mana during combat.
• Swift Judgement — This ability will finish the remaining cooldown of Judgement while also making the next Judgment cast free. With this, you can quickly get a taunt off while not missing out on any damage that comes from holding Judgment to taunt.
• Templar's Bulwark — When activated, you will gain a massive absorb shield. This effect does apply Forbearance and cannot be cast while you have Forbearance. This is a massive defensive cooldown that you can use in moments of extreme danger.
• Iron Creed — Holy Strike now generates additional threat and will reduce damage taken. You will want to keep constant use of this ability in order to benefit from its effects.

Retribution has received several changes to their talents focused on increasing their rotational complexity slightly by iterating on the new Holy Strike ability, as well as many new talents with effects on your gameplay. The talent trees also opens up for two different popular Retribution archetypes. The new talent Twist of Light leans into the Seal-twisting archetype, where you weave Seals between auto-attacks to deal more damage. Another alternative build can drop Twist of Light and invest 21 points into Holy for Holy Shock leaning into the Shockadin archetype. Consecration is now available to all Paladin specializations, giving Retribution access to an AoE damage spell without needing to invest talent points for it.

Regardless of which archetype you prefer to play there are several strong new or reworked Retribution talents that empower the hybrid nature of Paladin, with talents both improving Holy spell damage and melee damage. Below is a list of all Retribution talents that have been changed, talents that remain unchanged and have only been moved slightly might not be mentioned:

• Benediction — Now reduces the mana cost of all instant spells and abilities by 2% per talent point, up to 5 points.
• Holy Conduit — Reduces the mana cost of Consecration, Holy Wrath, Exorcism, and Hammer of Wrath by 20% per talent point, up to 2 points.
• Vindication — Your attacks may now reduces enemy Attack power instead of Strength and Agility, also gives the player Attack power for 30 seconds, both effects increasing per talent point, up to 3 points.
• Sanctified Judgement — Gives an increasing chance for Judgement to refund a portion of the mana cost of your active Seal when used. 33% proc chance and 20% mana refunded per talent point, up to 3 points.
• Pursuit of Justice — Now gives 8/15% increased speed while mounted.
• Eye for an Eye — Now activates on all Critical Strikes against you, but the damage it reflects is lowered to 5% per talent point, up to 2 points.
• Sacred Arbiter — Increases Holy Strike damage by 10% and causes it to refresh all Judgement effects, including those from other Paladins.
• Crusade — Increases all damage dealt by 1% per talent point, and an additional 1% against Demons and Undead targets, up to 2 points.
• Two-Handed Weapon Specialization — Now increases damage dealt with two-handed melee weapons by 3% per talent point, up to 3 points.
• Vengeance — Now causes your Critical Strikes to give a stacking Physical and Holy damage up to 5 stacks. Each stack grants 1% increased damage per talent point, up to 3 points.
• Champion of the Light — Increase your Spell damage and healing by 33% of your Intellect per talent point, up to 3 points.
• Instrument of Law — Reduces the cast time of Hammer of Wrath by 0.5 seconds per talent point, and reduces all threat you generate by 10% per talent point when Righteous Fury is not active, up to 2 points.
• Twist of Light — When you replace either Seal of Command, Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Fury, or Seal of Justice with another Seal you gain a buff causing your next auto-attack to activate your old Seal once.