Holy Paladin Healing Spec, Builds, and Talents — Shadowlands Pre-Patch 9.0.1

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 Tranquil Mind and Codex of the Tranquil Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.

The current best build for Holy Paladin revovles around using the Glimmer of Light talent. If you are interested in seeing how this build plays and the rotation for it, please check out our dedicated rotation page below.

• Level 15: Crusader's Might
• Level 25: Holy Prism
• Level 30: Any
• Level 35: Rule of Law
• Level 40: Holy Avenger
• Level 45: Sanctified Wrath
• 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.

• Crusader's Might will allow your Crusader Strike to reduce the cooldown of Holy Shock.
• Avenging Wrath reduces the Holy Shock cooldown in half while active.
• Divine Purpose gives a chance to not place Holy Shock on cooldown when cast.

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, tips, as well as Azerite trait rankings.

✔ Crusader's Might

✔ Bestow Faith

? Light's Hammer

• Crusader's Might causes Crusader Strike to reduce the cooldown of Holy Shock and Light of Dawn by 1.5 seconds.
• 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).
• 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.

For pure healing output with the Avenging Crusader build, the best talent in this tier is Bestow Faith.

Crusader's Might is a viable progression talent on many fights, especially fights with very predictable damage or mechanics. It is also essential to the healing potential of the Glimmer of Light build

Light's Hammer could be used on encounters where a large number of stacked raid members will sustain damage. It is quite poor on fights where the raid must spread out or move out of the active area. It is also fairly expensive compared to the Mana-efficient Bestow Faith.

For dungeon content, we recommend Bestow Faith as the default choice, with Crusader's Might as a possible option in case you want to deal additional damage (in addition to its healing benefit) or if you are using the Glimmer of Light build.

? 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.

In raids, both Holy Prism and Judgment of Light are viable choices. Holy Prism will provide the most HPS, but will come with the added Mana cost. It does also provide a damage option, giving it more versatility than Judgment of Light. In most cases, you will take Holy Prism unless you are concerned with running out of Mana. Unfortunately, Saved by the Light will likely get outshined by its counterparts and will only be picked in very niche situations.

Mana is not really a concern in Mythic+, as you can constantly drink between pulls. Because of this, Holy Prism will be the go-to choice, as it provides the most HPS and gives you flexibility to use for damage or healing, depending on what the situation calls for.

? Fist of Justice

? Repentance

? Blinding Light

• Fist of Justice causes your Judgment to reduce the remaining cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10 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 might be worth taking instead, but only if there are survivability issues that require more frequent use of Divine Shield or Divine Protection.

Finally, 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 Cavalier by default, especially for Mythic+ content. Unbreakable Spirit has the same caveats as for raid content, while 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 the next Holy Power ability free and deal 20% increased damage or healing.
• Holy Avenger is an active ability that causes your Holy Power generation to triple for 20 seconds.
• Seraphim costs 3 Holy Power and increases your Haste, Critical Strike, Versatility, and Mastery. It lasts 15 seconds and has a 45 second cooldown.

For both Raiding and Mythic+, Holy Avenger will be the go-to talent. The talent got a rework heading into Shadowlands, but it remains just as powerful as it was throughout BFA. Given that a lot of emphasis is placed on Holy Power abilities, being able to spam them during the Holy Avenger window makes it an extremely strong cooldown. It has the ability to be used for both damage and healing, as you can spend the Holy Power however you would like.

✔ 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.

Sanctified Wrath is the superior talent for both raiding and Mythic+. It gives you strong control over where your healing goes and has strong synergy with Glimmer of Light. It also provides more damage than Avenging Crusader does, making it a stronger choice when damage is also factored into the equation.

Awakening has received some positive changes heading into Shadowlands, but it is heavily RNG reliant, which is something you want to stay away from when healing. Consistency is key.

✔ 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.

Glimmer of Light is the superior talent in the Shadowlands pre-patch, as it will stack with the Glimmer of Light Azerite trait, causing you to do even more Glimmer healing than in Patch 8.3. Because of this synergy, none of the other talents will really compare for raiding and Mythic+.

In Battle for Azeroth, there will be the option to enable "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.

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.