Holy Paladin Healing Spec, Builds, and Talents (Legion 7.3.5)

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Class Overview
  • 2. Patch 7.3 Changes
  • 3. Patch 7.2.5 Changes
  • 4. Patch 7.2 Changes
  • 5. Contents
  • 6. ChangeLog
• +Easy Mode
  • 1. The Basics
  • 2. Talent Choice
  • 3. Stat Choice
  • 4. Basic Playstyle
    • 4.1. Single Target / Tank Healing
    • 4.2. Raid Healing
  • 5. Cooldown Usage
  • 6. ChangeLog
• +Spell Summary
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Main Resource
  • 3. Basic Abilities
    • 3.1. Utility
  • 4. Important Procs
  • 5. Cooldowns
  • 6. ChangeLog
• ×Builds and Talents
  • 1. Talent Choices
  • 2. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents
  • 3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents
  • 4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents
  • 5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents
  • 6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents
  • 7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents
  • 8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents
  • 9. ChangeLog
• +Artifact Traits and Relics
  • 1. Artifact Progression
  • 2. Relic Choice
  • 3. ChangeLog
• +Netherlight Crucible Relic Paths
  • 1. General Optimization Advice
  • 2. Tier 2 Upgrade Priority
  • 3. Tier 3 Upgrade Priority
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities
  • 1. Rotation / Playstyle
    • 1.1. Single Target / Tank Healing
    • 1.2. Raid Healing
    • 1.3. 5-Man Healing
    • 1.4. A Word on Light of the Martyr
  • 2. Cooldown Usage
  • 3. Optional Read: Mastering Your Holy Paladin
    • 3.1. Mastery: Lightbringer
    • 3.2. Infusion of Light
    • 3.3. Artifact Ability
    • 3.4. Abilities and Cooldowns from Talents
      • 3.4.1. Tier 1 Talents
      • 3.4.2. Tier 2 Talents
      • 3.4.3. Tier 5 Talents
      • 3.4.4. Tier 6 Talents
      • 3.4.5. Tier 7 Talents
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Stat Priority
  • 1. Basics
  • 2. Getting a Better Understanding
    • 2.1. Statistics Explanations
  • 3. ChangeLog
• +Gems, Enchants, and Consumables
  • 1. Gems
  • 2. Enchants
  • 3. Consumables
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Macros and Addons
  • 1. Macros
    • 1.1. Generic Macros for Paladins
      • 1.1.1. Blessing Mouseover Macros
      • 1.1.2. Lay on Hands Mouseover Macro
      • 1.1.3. Divine Shield
    • 1.2. Specific Macros for Holy Paladins
      • 1.2.1. Beacon of Light Mouseover Macro
      • 1.2.2. Mouseover Cleanse Macro
  • 2. Addons
    • 2.1. Generic Addons for Paladins
      • 2.1.1. ElvUI
      • 2.1.2. Boss Mods: Deadly Boss Mods or Bigwigs
      • 2.1.3. GTFO
      • 2.1.4. Parrot or Mik's Scrolling Battle Text
      • 2.1.5. Recount / Skada / Details!
      • 2.1.6. Weak Auras
      • 2.1.7. Raeli's Spell Announcer
      • 2.1.8. Exorsus Raid Tools
    • 2.2. Specific Addons for Holy Paladins
      • 2.2.1. Grid and GridClickSets
  • 3. ChangeLog
• +Gear, Legendaries, and Best in Slot
  • 1. Best in Slot List
  • 2. Trinkets
  • 3. Tier 21 Set Bonuses
  • 4. Legendary Items
    • 4.1. Raiding
    • 4.2. Mythic+
  • 5. Loot Competition
  • 6. ChangeLog

General Information

On this page, we present the viable talent choices for Holy Paladins in World of Warcraft Legion 7.3.5. We detail what each of the talents do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other pages of our Holy Paladin guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Reviewer

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Rhyno, a Holy Paladin moderator from the Hammer of Wrath Discord channel and a member of the Convert to Raid superguild on Aerie Peak-US.

1. Talent Choices

Level	Choices
15	✔ Bestow Faith	? Light's Hammer	✔ Crusader's Might
30	? Cavalier	? Unbreakable Spirit	✔ Rule of Law
45	? Fist of Justice	? Repentance	? Blinding Light
60	✔ Devotion Aura	✔ Aura of Sacrifice	✔ Aura of Mercy
75	✔ Divine Purpose	✔ Holy Avenger	? Holy Prism
90	✘ Fervent Martyr	✔ Sanctified Wrath	✔ Judgment of Light
100	✔ Beacon of Faith	✔ Beacon of the Lightbringer	✔ 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.

2. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents

✔ Bestow Faith

? Light's Hammer

✔ Crusader's Might

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

For pure healing output, 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.

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).

3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents

? Cavalier

? Unbreakable Spirit

✔ Rule of Law

• Cavalier causes your Divine Steed to have 2 charges.
• Unbreakable Spirit passively reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Lay on Hands by 30%.
• Rule of Law is an active ability with 2 charges and a 30-second recharge time. It increases the range of your heals, of your Mastery: Lightbringer, and of Tyr's Deliverance 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 the 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.

4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents

? 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 a 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 Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids, and Undead.
• Blinding Light is an active ability with a 90-second cooldown. It disorients all enemies within a 10-yard radius around you, and 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 (like Ilysanna Ravencrest is in Black Rook Hold, or when you value the fact that Repentance can allow you to skip some trash packs), but Blinding Light is typically better.

5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents

✔ Devotion Aura

✔ Aura of Sacrifice

✔ Aura of Mercy

• Devotion Aura is an aura that causes allies within 10 yards to take 20% reduced damage, split over the number of allies affected by the aura (2 allies means that each one takes 10% reduced damage, and so on). During Aura Mastery, all allies within 40 yards benefit from the full damage reduction (20% for each player).
• Aura of Sacrifice is an aura that redirects 10% of all damage taken by allies within 10 yards of you to you, whenever you are above 75% health. During Aura Mastery, 15% of the healing you do (not counting overhealing) is replicated to all the allies within 40 yards.
• Aura of Mercy is an aura that causes you to heal 3 injured allies within 10 yards every second for a modest amount. During Aura Mastery, all allies within 40 yards are healed, and the healing amount is doubled.

All 3 talents in this tier are viable, depending on the situation.

If a particular event may kill raid members, the 20% raid-wide damage reduction provided by Devotion Aura during Aura Mastery is both unique and invaluable. If no damage events call for the raid-wide damage reduction of Devotion Aura, Aura of Mercy provides significant amounts of free healing over the course of the encounter, and useful raid healing during Aura Mastery.

Aura of Sacrifice is one of the highest HPS cooldowns in the game, being able to provide massive amounts of healing during Aura Mastery, if combined with throughput cooldowns such as Avenging Wrath and Holy Avenger. It shines when the encounter has phases during which burst healing is required. The damage redirected to you is generally negligible.

In Mythic+ dungeons, Devotion Aura is typically most useful, because with at most 5 and as few as 1 or 2 players inside the 10-yard aura, each affected member will gain significant damage reduction. It can be particularly useful for high-end Mythic+ with extremely high tank damage, by simply staying near the tank to provide constant 10% damage reduction.

6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents

✔ Divine Purpose

✔ Holy Avenger

? Holy Prism

• Divine Purpose causes Light of Dawn and Holy Shock to have a 15% chance to not trigger their cooldowns, and to make their next cast (within seconds) free of cost.
• Holy Avenger is an active ability with a 90-second cooldown that increases your haste and the healing of your Holy Shock by 30% for 20 seconds.
• 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.

For progression, we recommend Divine Purpose for Mana sustainability, or Holy Avenger for another healing cooldown.

Holy Prism is competitive, but rather lackluster in terms of actual results; it is basically another Light of Dawn in terms of healing output — a little less in fact, as it is not buffed by any Artifact traits — for the cost of roughly a Flash of Light. Holy Avenger and Divine Purpose, on the other hand, both scale with Artifact traits.

In Mythic+ dungeons, again, all 3 talents are viable, although we believe Holy Avenger is the best choice for high end Mythic+ progression, as it allows you to rotate between Holy Avenger and Avenging Wrath and have a cooldown up for every single trash pack.

7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents

✘ Fervent Martyr

✔ Sanctified Wrath

✔ Judgment of Light

• Fervent Martyr causes casts of Holy Light and Flash of Light to reduce the Mana cost and damage taken from your next Light of the Martyr by 25%. This effect stacks up to 4 times.
• Sanctified Wrath increases the duration of Avenging Wrath by 25%, and reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 50% while Avenging Wrath is active.
• Judgment of Light causes Judgment to apply a debuff with 40 charges to the target, called Judgment of Light. When the target is attacked, the attacker is healed and one charge is consumed.

Judgment of Light is the best raid-healing talent in this tier, whereas Sanctified Wrath is best in Mythic+ content.

Fervent Martyr is never worth taking.

8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents

✔ Beacon of Faith

✔ Beacon of the Lightbringer

✔ Beacon of Virtue

• 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 20% reduced efficiency (when compared to not using this talent).
• Beacon of the Lightbringer causes your Mastery: Lightbringer to increase your healing the closer the target is to either you or your Beacon of Light target, whichever they are closer to. Moreover, Beacon of the Lightbringer passively increases the healing and the range of Light of Dawn by 30%.
• 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 30% of their Mana cost.

For progression raiding, both Beacon of Faith and Beacon of the Lightbringer are good, with both putting up strong showings on most fights. Beacon of the Lightbringer should be considered if a specific mechanic forces the Holy Paladin to stand in the ranged group instead of the melee group, as this helps keep Mastery effectiveness up. Beacon of the Lightbringer is also a good idea if the fight provides excellent opportunities for Light of Dawn usage. Otherwise, we recommend Beacon of Faith.

For Mythic+ dungeons, Beacon of Virtue is highly recommended, and we consider it by far the best talent in almost every situation.

9. ChangeLog

+ show all entries - show only 10 entries

• 28 Aug. 2017: No changes needed for Patch 7.3.
• 15 Jun. 2017: Updated the number of times that Fervent Martyr can stack to from 2 to 4.
• 12 Jun. 2017: Made various updates to talent discussions and updated the page to account for Patch 7.2.5 changes.
• 28 Mar. 2017: Updated tier 5 talent section and Judgment of Light description.
• 18 Jan. 2017: Made a pass and updated several talent tier discussions, most notably to give more weight to Aura of Sacrifice (tier 4) and to better explain the choice of tier 7 talent.
• 10 Jan. 2017: Updated talent descriptions to account for Patch 7.1.5.
• 06 Nov. 2016: Updated tier 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 talent discussions.
• 25 Oct. 2016: Updated Rule of Law, Aura of Sacrifice, and Sanctified Wrath descriptions to account for Patch 7.1 changes.
• 29 Aug. 2016: Updated for Legion's launch.
• 04 Aug. 2016: Added Cavalier talent in place of Divine Steed.
• 20 Jul. 2016: Fixed an error where we had mixed up some comments about Aura of Mercy with Rule of Law.
• 18 Jul. 2016: Updated for the Legion pre-patch.