Holy Paladin DPS Guide — Shadowlands 9.0.5

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 different 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 to 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. It unfortunately is fairly weak and in most cases you will be better off using your Holy Power on healing spells unless no one absolutely needs healing.
• 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 in the moment.
• Judgment will buff your next Holy Shock or Crusader Strike by 30%. You will want to use this ability off cooldown when DPSing.
• 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 contribute 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 Hammer of Wrath off cooldown.
4. Cast Judgment off cooldown.
5. Cast Holy Shock off cooldown.
6. Use Crusader Strike if you have a charge and it will not clip the cooldown of Holy Shock.

If you are playing Awakening, you will want to avoid using Shield of the Righteous on single target as you will gain more damage from spamming Word of Glory and Light of Dawn to increase the chance of proccing Awakening for increased Avenging Wrath uptime and thus more access to Hammer of Wrath.

Covenant abilities and trinkets were not included in the rotation above. However, you will want to use those off cooldown when possible. If you are Venthyr you will want to make sure that all targets will be hit by your Ashen Hallow. If you are Kyrian, make sure to cast Divine Toll on an enemy in order for all of the Holy Shocks that come from it to hit enemies instead of allies.

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.

In other words, using Shield of the Righteous and Holy Shock on enemies is not a good idea when you are focusing primarily on healing. When you only need to DPS, then those abilities become good to cast on enemies.

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 = Versatility
4. Mastery

If you are interested in more information regarding any of the above, you can visit the dedicated pages we have for them by clicking their respective button below: