Holy Paladin Healing Spec, Builds, and Talents — Shadowlands 9.2
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Holy Paladin in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2. We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for TBC Classic content, please refer to our TBC Classic Holy Paladin talents.
Talent Choices for Holy Paladin
Level | Choices | ||
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15 |
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25 |
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30 |
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35 |
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40 |
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45 |
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50 |
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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.
Venthyr Holy Paladin Raiding Talents
- Level 15:
Light's Hammer
- Level 25:
Judgment of Light
- Level 30: Any
- Level 35:
Rule of Law
- Level 40:
Divine Purpose
- Level 45:
Awakening
- Level 50:
Beacon of Faith
Necrolord Holy Paladin Raiding Talents
- Level 15:
Crusader's Might or
Light's Hammer
- 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 or
Beacon of Faith
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.
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 and tips.
Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Holy Paladins
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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.
If you struggle to press Bestow Faith off cooldown, then you will have better
results from using Crusader's Might.
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.
Tier 2 (Level 25) Talents for Holy Paladins
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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.
Tier 3 (Level 30) Talents for Holy Paladins
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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.
Tier 4 (Level 35) Talents for Holy Paladins
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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.
Tier 5 (Level 40) Talents for Holy Paladins
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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.
Tier 6 (Level 45) Talents for Holy Paladins
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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. Similarly,
Avenging Crusader
struggles with such a high Mana cost and not providing the same boost to HPS as
the other options on the talent row do.
Tier 7 (Level 50) Talents for Holy Paladins
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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.
Necrolord players will swap between all three talents depending on the
fight you are on on and the legendary you are using.
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.
PvP Talents (War Mode)
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.
General PvP Talents
Adaptation automatically removes loss of control effects longer than 5 seconds.
Relentless reduces the duration of crowd control effects by 20%, rather than removing them.
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.
Holy Paladin PvP Talents
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.
Changelog
- 21 Feb. 2022: Talents updated for 9.2.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Page updated for 9.1.5.
- 07 Aug. 2021: Adjusted talent recommendations slightly.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
- 13 Mar. 2021: Changed general-use recommendation of Holy Avenger to Divine Purpose.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 07 Jan. 2021: Updated talent recommendations to reflect changes in meta.
- 06 Dec. 2020: Talent recommendations changed slightly.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Talent recommendations updated for Shadowlands.
- 29 Oct. 2020: Updated talent recommendations.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Paladin Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Mytholxgy, who plays healer in Liquid. He is a Templar in the Paladin class discord. You can reach him on Twitter and watch him stream on Twitch.
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