Holy Paladin Healing Spec, Builds, and Talents — Shadowlands 9.1

Level	Choices
15	? Crusader's Might	✓ Bestow Faith	✓ Light's Hammer
25	? Saved by the Light	✓ Judgment of Light	? Holy Prism
30	? Fist of Justice	? Repentance	? Blinding Light
35	? Unbreakable Spirit	? Cavalier	✓ Rule of Law
40	✓ Divine Purpose	? Holy Avenger	? Seraphim
45	✗ Sanctified Wrath	✗ Avenging Crusader	✓ Awakening
50	✓ Glimmer of Light	✓ Beacon of Faith	? Beacon of Virtue

Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area (such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Still Mind and Codex of the Still Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

For information regarding the rotational aspects of Holy Paladin, please visit our dedicated rotation page.

• Level 15: Bestow Faith
• Level 25: Judgment of Light
• Level 30: Any
• Level 35: Rule of Law
• Level 40: Divine Purpose
• Level 45: Awakening
• Level 50: Glimmer of Light

The talents listed above will provide you with the best spot for both large and small group sizes. The only real change you could make is replacing Rule of Law with Unbreakable Spirit for small group content. This will give you increased uptime on your defensives, which is more often needed, as you can normally reach the entire group when doing small content.

For raiding specific tips and advice, please consult our dedicated Holy Paladin raiding page, which you can find below. This will have boss specific talents, tips, and even raiding Azerite trait ranks.

If you are interested in how your talents and playstyle might change in Mythic+, please look at our detailed page for it below. There you will find recommended talents as well as tips.

? Crusader's Might

✔ Bestow Faith

✔ Light's Hammer

• Crusader's Might causes Crusader Strike to reduce the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 second.
• Bestow Faith is an active ability with a 12-second cooldown. It places a 5-second buff on an ally, which heals them at the end of the 5 seconds (but which does nothing until then). You gain 1 Holy Power when you cast the ability.
• Light's Hammer is an active ability with a 1-minute cooldown. It allows you to place a hammer on the ground at the targeted location, which lasts for 14 seconds. Every 2 seconds, it damages enemies within 10 yards, and heals up to 6 allies in the same radius.

This is by far our most competitive talent row. Realistically any of the the three talents can be used and in some situations one might be better than the others. Bestow Faith will be strong in every form of content and will likely be the preferred option. It gives a large amount of Holy Power every minute and still adds decent healing.

Crusader's Might is on nearly equal footing to Bestow Faith and can be taken over it if preferred. Even after nerfs to the talent, it still has very strong synergy with our talents as well as allowing the class to have a very smooth rotation. One of the weaknesses that Bestow Faith has is that it can clutter GCDs. Crusader's Might does not suffer from this problem.

Light's Hammer is a niche choice in most cases. It provides large AoE healing on a 1-minute cooldown. The biggest issue with Light's Hammer is the Mana cost and the fact it does not do anything to help with your Holy Power. It also requires your party and raid members to stay within the small radius to get full value out of the talent, which is not always possible. It still remains strong in the right situations where the raid is stacked and taking constant damage.

Any time you are using the Maraad's Dying Breath Legendary, you will want to use Light's Hammer.

? Saved by the Light

✔ Judgment of Light

? Holy Prism

• Saved by the Light provides your Beacon of Light target with a shield when they drop below 30% health. It can only be activated once every minute.
• Judgment of Light causes Judgment to apply a debuff with 25 targets to the target, called Judgment of Light. When the target is attacked, the attacker is healed and one charge is consumed.
• Holy Prism is an active ability with a 20-second cooldown. It allows you to target an ally or an enemy. When cast at an ally, it heals the target and damages 5 enemies within 15 yards of them. When cast at an enemy, it damages them and heals 5 allies within 15 yards of them.

Both Holy Prism and Judgment of Light are viable choices. While Holy Prism provides competitive HPS, it does not flow very well into the Holy Paladin rotation and can leave the class feel very clunky. It also has a mana cost that comes with it. Judgment of Light on the other hand plays very smoothly and has a mana cost of 0. In most cases you will want to take Judgment of Light for both Raiding and Mythic+.

Unfortunately, Saved by the Light will likely get outshined by its counterparts and will only be picked in very niche situations.

? Fist of Justice

? Repentance

? Blinding Light

• Fist of Justice causes each Holy Power spent to reduce the remaining cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 2 seconds.
• Repentance is an active ability with an 15-second cooldown. It is a form of crowd-control that incapacitates the target for up to 1 minute. Damage done will break the effect. Repentance can only be used against Humanoids, Demons, Undead, Dragonkin, and Giants.
• Blinding Light is an active ability with an 90-second cooldown. It disorients all enemies within a 10-yard radius around you for 6 seconds. Non-holy damage done to them will break the disorient effect.

The talents in this tier are completely situational, and you should choose them based on the requirements of the encounter.

That said, you will generally prefer Blinding Light for the additional interrupt; in Mythic+ dungeons especially, the mass interrupt is extremely useful. Alternatively, it can be nice to use Repentance for crowd-control in some situations, but Blinding Light is typically better.

? Unbreakable Spirit

? Cavalier

✔ Rule of Law

• Unbreakable Spirit passively reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Lay on Hands by 30%.
• Cavalier causes your Divine Steed to have 2 charges.
• Rule of Law is an active ability with 2 charges and a 30-second recharge time. It increases the range of your heals and your Mastery: Lightbringer by 50% for 10 seconds. Regarding the Mastery range increase, your Mastery causes your healing to have full effectiveness on targets that are within 10 yards of you, with the effectiveness decreasing the farther away they are beyond that point. While Rule of Law is active, the maximum effectiveness radius is extended by 50%, to 15 yards, and only after that does your healing start to decrease.

In raids, we believe that the best choice is Rule of Law, which not only provides you with increased maximum range, but more importantly also increases the maximum effectiveness radius of your Mastery: Lightbringer to 15 yards. Note that this is also the only talent in this tier that increases overall healing done.

Unbreakable Spirit is a viable choice if you are worried about your survivability and you do not need the range/Mastery benefits that Rule of Law provides. That being said, it is extremely strong in Mythic+ and small group content where the group is generally well stacked.

Cavalier is a poor choice for raid content in general, but it could work for fights where you absolutely need increased mobility.

In dungeons, all three talents are viable, but we recommend taking Unbreakable Spirit by default, especially for Mythic+ content. Rule of Law will only prove useful in exceptional cases where the group is spread out.

✔ Divine Purpose

? Holy Avenger

? Seraphim

• Divine Purpose causes your Holy Power spending abilities to have a 15% chance to make your next Holy Power spending ability free and deal 20% increased damage and healing.
• Holy Avenger provides a 3-minute cooldown that triples all Holy Power generation for its 20-second duration.
• Seraphim is an active ability with a 45-second cooldown and costs 3 Holy Power. It grants 8% Haste, Critical Strike, Versatility, and 12% Mastery for its 15-second duration.

Our level 40 talent row is extremely competitive it not unreasonable to see any of the three talents played. It is hard to know for sure what will pull ahead until Castle Nathria actually opens and we have the opportunity to collect more data.

Holy Avenger is still incredibly powerful with Light of Dawn doing a large portion of our healing. As long as the damage your group is taking will be long enough to match the duration of Holy Avenger, this talent will remain competitive.

Divine Purpose falls into a similar category of Holy Avenger, Light of Dawn does a lot of our healing and Divine Purpose just helps to give us more casts of that ability. It also has the added benefit of not requiring extended damage windows, we can make use of it no matter when it occurs.

Seraphim unfortunately will not see much use as it lines up poorly with Avenging Wrath, Ashen Hallow, and Divine Toll. No matter your covenant choice, you will have to hold the ability for a decent chunk of time for it to aline with a strong cooldown.

✘ Sanctified Wrath

✘ Avenging Crusader

✔ Awakening

• Sanctified Wrath increases the duration of Avenging Wrath by 25%, and reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 50% while Avenging Wrath is active.
• Avenging Crusader is a two minute cooldown with a 20 second duration that replaces Avenging Wrath. When Avenging Crusader is active your Judgment and Crusader Strike have their cooldowns reduced by 30% and any damage you deal with them will heal 3 injured allies for 250% of the damage dealt, each.
• Awakening gives Light of Dawn and Word of Glory a 15% chance to trigger the Avenging Wrath buff for 10 seconds. If Avenging Wrath is already active, the duration will be extended by 10 seconds.

Changes to Awakening in Shadowlands has caused the ability to gain significant power. While it is still heavily RNG reliant, the higher uptime it provides to Avenging Wrath has caused it to surpass Sanctified Wrath. In most cases you will want to select awakening for raiding and mythic+.

With increased Mana costs to most Holy Paladin abilities in recent patches, you will want to avoid using Sanctified Wrath in every situation as it will make you run out of Mana extremely quickly.

✔ Glimmer of Light

✔ Beacon of Faith

? Beacon of Virtue

• Glimmer of Light causes Holy Shock to leave a buff on the target for 30 seconds when used on an ally. If used on an enemy, it will instead put a debuff on the target. Whenever you Holy Shock, all targets with Glimmer of Light are healed or damaged. You can only have Glimmer of Light on up to 8 targets.
• Beacon of Faith is an active ability with no cooldown. It allows you to place a second Beacon of Light on a different target. The second Beacon target will receive the same healing as the first one, but both beacons have 30% reduced efficiency (when compared to not using this talent).
• Beacon of Virtue replaces Beacon of Light. It has a 15-second cooldown, and it lasts 8 seconds. It allows you to place a Beacon of Light on the target, which also affects 3 injured allies within 30 yards. All 4 targets are healed for 40% of all healing you do for the 8-second duration. Your Flash of Light and Holy Light casts on these targets will refund 25% of their Mana cost.

Your best talent will likely come down to legendary choice, covenant, and what type of content you are doing. Glimmer of Light gives you the most consistent healing regardless of covenant choice or legendary. If you are Kyrian, you will want to run this talent nearly always. If you are Venthyr, Beacon of Faith can be extremely strong in situations where both of your tanks are taking high damage or if you are playing the Maraad's Dying Breath or Radiant Embers legendaries.

Beacon of Virtue will not see much play time in raid but it can be used in mythic+ if you are struggling keeping the entire group alive.

Enabling War Mode grants the following benefits:

• PvP talents are enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at max level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at max level. However, doing so will enable PvP combat, and the possibility of being attacked by members of the opposite faction while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

1. Adaptation automatically removes loss of control effects longer than 5 seconds.
2. Relentless reduces the duration of crowd control effects by 20%, rather than removing them.
3. Gladiator's Medallion is an ability that removes all movement impairing and all loss of control effects when used.

We recommend Adaptation for levelling and questing with War Mode active since it will trigger automatically when you are in a long crowd control.

While the talents below might not be the best for purely open world PvP combat, we believe them to be a solid compromise for both PvE and PvP combat in a small group if you have War Mode enabled.

• Light's Grace provides an incredibly powerful boost to your Holy Light as well as a damage reduction.
• Avenging Light will increase your damage while you heal yourself or your group.
• Divine Favor gives you a large emergency heal on a relatively short cooldown.