Holy Paladin DPS Guide — The War Within (11.1.5)

Despite our primary job being keeping our group alive, healers are also responsible for contributing some damage when they are able to do so safely. In most cases, you will not want to focus on damage until you are fully confident in the Holy Paladin healing rotation. Most streamers and top-tier players will play slightly differently in that sense because they have mastered the specialization and feel more comfortable with DPSing. It is recommended that until you feel comfortable with healing on Holy Paladin, you do not focus too much on how much damage you deal.

In every form of content, doing more damage and killing an enemy faster will help reduce the overall healing required as well as the chance of mistakes occurring. The less time an enemy is alive, the less time you have to deal with the mechanics. Even in raiding, where you are unable to contribute as much damage, your damage can be the difference between 0.1% wipes and killing the boss.

The most important rule when DPSing as a healer is to keep in mind that no one should EVER die because you were DPSing instead of healing them.

• Holy Shock can be used offensively to damage an enemy. While it is one of our harder-hitting abilities, it is also one of our stronger healing abilities. Because of this, you may want to avoid using Holy Shock on enemies in periods of danger. If everyone is safe, however, you can use it on an enemy for the DPS increase.
• Consecration is your primary way of dealing damage in AoE situations. You will want to try to keep this down as much as possible when facing multiple enemies.
• Shield of the Righteous is your other form of dealing AoE damage. It consumes 3 Holy Power to damage enemies in front of you.
• Crusader Strike is a core ability for both Healing and DPSing; as this ability generates 1 Holy Power, you will use it regardless of whether you are focusing on healing or DPSing at the moment.
• Judgment is another core ability that will be used for healing, but it also does decent damage and provides 1 Holy Power.
• Hammer of Wrath is one of our strongest DPS abilities. Just like Crusader Strike, it is a core ability for Healing as well as DPSing. You will want to use this off cooldown as much as possible.

DPSing as Holy Paladin is extremely simple since most of our abilities for DPSing also contributes towards our healing. Thus, they are fundamental parts of the Holy Paladin rotation to begin with.

1. Keep Consecration on the ground. This is especially important in AoE situations.
2. Cast Shield of the Righteous if you have the Holy Power available to do so.
3. Cast Judgment off cooldown if using the Righteous Judgment talent.
4. Cast Hammer of Wrath off cooldown.
5. Cast Holy Shock off cooldown.
6. Use Crusader Strike if everything else is on cooldown.

The key to dealing damage as a Holy Paladin is to maximize Consecration uptime through both the cast and Judgment (with Righteous Judgment talented). From there, you will want to spend Holy Power on Shield of the Righteous when you are about to cap and then proceed to press the remaining DPS abilities. In Mythic+ and open-world content, many players will deal less damage, simplified from not having good consecration uptime, which is why it should always be your top priority.

Weaving damage spells into your healing rotation is extremely important in becoming a good player. In most cases, you do not want to impact your healing rotation in order to DPS. You only want to cast DPS abilities when there are no healing ones to cast. Obviously, if no one is taking damage, then there will be no need to even bother with casting healing spells.

• Use your regular healing rotation but try to keep Consecration on the ground and Judgment on cooldown.
• When weaving in damaging abilities, Shield of the Righteous will not be as good given the fact it does very little healing for its cost. Generally, you will want to use that Holy Power on healing spells.
• Casting Holy Shock on allies will be better than enemies unless no one is in need of immediate healing.

The only significant change in our stats is Mastery losing value. Every other stat we have provides us with damage increases. Mastery does not. Because of this, you will want to try to avoid having Mastery on your pieces in small group content. In raids, it is still acceptable to have Mastery because it is such a good stat for increasing our healing.

1. Intellect
2. Haste
3. Critical Strike
4. Versatility
5. Mastery

If you are interested in more information regarding gearing your Holy Paladin, you can visit the dedicated pages we have for them by clicking their respective button below: