Holy Paladin is in one of the worst states I’ve ever seen it in

Classes Paladin
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I’m saying this as someone who has raided on Holy Paladin across multiple expansions and tiers, often at a CE level. It is the class I have always resonated with, and have played since late WoTLK.

Let me preface, this is not a case of the spec being a little under-tuned. A full rework is required.

In Midnight raid content, Holy Paladin feels fundamentally unattractive to bring, and the recent buffs do not meaningfully change that. Blizzard acknowledged that Holy Paladin raid throughput was behind expectations (though, who knows what they expect for us at this point…) and although buffing spenders is a step in the right direction, the way in which they were buffed and the overarching issues around their use remain problems.

The issue is not just raw throughput. It is that Holy Paladin currently lacks a compelling raid reason to exist over Mistweaver Monk, Discipline Priest, or Preservation Evoker. When you look at current Mythic raid performance distributions, Holy Paladin sits well behind the pack. The argument is often: “Oh, well holy paladin is a good single target spot healer”. The damage profile of modern raids (bursts followed by stability) DOES NOT SUPPORT THIS NICHE. Mind you, other classes (monk…) currently fill this niche whilst being suitable to heal the overall raid damage profile. This gap is big enough that bringing a holy paladin to raid, especially at the CE level, can feel like you are handicapping your healing team for no reward.

Spenders

Holy Power spenders still do not feel impactful enough in raid. They are one-dimensional and boring. Even with the recent buffs, the spec’s healing loop does not deliver satisfying gameplay. Light of Dawn is still doing the bulk of our raid spending, because pressing eternal flame (spot healing) is generally not required AND is a net HPS loss by comparison. Even after its Midnight rework, LOD’s meaningful value is still concentrated into 5 targets for about 4% of their health pool each. For lack of better words, this feels awful. For a spender, in a raid environment, it does not move health bars in a way that feels impactful. Given spending Holy Power on Eternal Flame is often a throughput loss in raid, there is no real spender choice if you want to feel competitive.

Holy Light

Holy Light is so powerful that it is effectively propping the spec up in Mythic+, but that same reliance is part of what cripples us in raid. In smaller group content, Holy Light’s raw throughput is easier to leverage: beacon value is naturally stronger, and there is more room to recover mana between pulls. Being able to pump out gigantic over-healing holy lights to negate most dangerous mechanics is NOT good design.

In raid, Holy Light becomes a BIG part of the problem as to why holy paladins are in this situation. It heals hard, but it costs too much mana for how central it has become to our output profile. So what happens is that Holy Paladin can appear more functional than it really is when supported by sitting AFK between damage moments (because spending mana outside of holy light becomes non-ideal), innervates (so we can spam more over-healing holy lights to negate mechanics) and spamming holy lights on encounters involving absorbs. That makes the spec’s top-end logs performance look healthier than the underlying gameplay actually is.

Avenging Wrath & Aura Mastery

Wings no longer feels like a real raid cooldown. It hasn’t for quite a long time. It feels like a pseudo-cooldown. Pressing it does not create the kind of stabilising moment that other healers bring to raid damage events. Compare it to something like Mistweaver’s ability to repeatedly answer damage patterns with stronger, more meaningful buttons like Yu-Lon, or Celestial Conduit. Holy Paladin’s major cooldown should feel like a reason to bring the spec. Right now, it does not. A flat 15% healing/crit increase for a period of time (and 2 free Holy Lights which is the only real benefit of pressing the button) into an already weak spec does not feel powerful, or like it would assist a raid in moving health bars meaningfully.

AM is in a similar boat, being on a 3 minute cooldown and having been gutted to the point where it’s only providing a 12% raidwide DR. Sure, it’s strong on paper. But when a preservation evoker can spit on the raid every couple of minutes and WOW! everyone is at full health, it’s a terrible raid cooldown. Given there’s no real danger of a 1 shot that AM would help prevent in most cases, AM feels incredibly dissatisfying to use.

Beacons

Beacons are passive and often do not feel strategically meaningful in raid. Tanks are self-sufficient enough that beaconing them rarely feels like a real decision point, and Beacon of Virtue remains a poor raid answer because of the mana burden, the extra global, and the weak return for that cost.

Brought to Light

Brought to Light, a paladin class talent, artificially inflates Holy Paladin’s raid HPS on encounters with a lot of adds (e.g. dragons). For some reason, add deaths can pad our healing on certain fights. This can create a noticeable artificial increase in HPS, despite having nothing to do with Holy Paladin’s actual raid toolkit being healthy. Retribution and Protection Paladins can access this too, so it is not even a Holy-specific strength. If Holy Paladin is being balanced with any weight placed on that extra healing, then the spec is being propped up by encounter gimmicks instead of by meaningful raid throughput, impactful cooldowns, or good spec design.

The biggest design issue, though, is Judgment.

There is genuinely no reason to press Judgment in a raid environment. That is insane for Holy Paladin. The spec is supposed to have an offensive-healing identity, but in real raid situations it is usually better HPS to spend your globals and infusions on Flash of Light, OR LITERALLY GOING AFK TO SAVE MANA, rather than trying to force Judgment value. That is not because players are ignoring the design. It is because the Judgment-supporting talents do not currently pay off enough to justify the gameplay.

And this gets even worse when you look at how Empyrean Legacy has been handled. The nerf to Empyrean Legacy is single handedly the reason why judgment feels so bad to press. It made WOG/EF worth pressing, and spenders (every once in a while) feel ACTUALLY powerful. This change gutted much of the reason to weave Judgment into healing gameplay.

That also feeds directly into the hero talent problem. Lightsmith should be the more Judgment-oriented alternative. But in actual raid play, it has basically failed to establish itself as a competitive option because Judgment is so weak. While Lightsmith can work. It is suboptimal in higher and CE raiding environments.

So what?

I do not think Blizzard should look at Holy Paladin’s Mythic+ viability and conclude the spec is fine. Holy Paladin is not “fine overall.” It is being held together in 5-man content by an extremely powerful Holy Light profile that does not translate into healthy raid design. In raid, that same spell becomes part of the reason the spec feels mana-starved, externally dependent, and still behind healers with better cooldowns, better damage-pattern coverage, and better raid stabilisation. Holy Light being this strong is not solving Holy Paladin’s raid issues. It is helping create them.

Suggested fixes

  1. Make Judgment worth pressing in raid again. Rework or substantially buff Empyrean Legacy, Truth Prevails, Veneration, or related Judgment interactions so that weaving Judgment is an actual raid-healing gain and not a trap.
  2. Shift throughput away from Holy Light and into the rest of the kit. Holy Light should not be the spell carrying Holy Paladin in dungeons while also creating raid mana problems. Move more power into Holy Shock, spenders, Beacon interactions, or Judgment-linked healing so the spec is not balanced around one expensive cast.
  3. Give Holy Paladin a real raid cooldown moment. Avenging Wrath needs to feel impactful in raid, whether that means stronger healing amplification, stronger interaction with spenders, or some kind of added raid-stabilisation effect when activated. If that means completely deleting avenging wrath in its current form, I would support it.
  4. Make spenders feel like real payoffs. If Blizzard wants spenders to be our core gameplay loop, then Eternal Flame and Light of Dawn need to hit hard enough to justify that identity. I feel like we’re “flogging a dead horse” with this one, our feedback on this hasn’t changed since the introduction of holy power.
  5. Give Beacon gameplay a meaningful raid niche. Beacon of Faith should feel like a strategic choice, and Beacon of Virtue should either be more mana-efficient, hit meaningfully harder, or bring enough utility that it is not dead on arrival in raid.
  6. Give Lightsmith an actual raid reason to exist. If Herald is going to remain the throughput default, then Lightsmith needs a distinct and competitive raid advantage, most likely through stronger Judgment synergy or a more meaningful support niche.

TL;DR

Holy Paladin is still bad in raids even after the recent buffs. The buffs were too small, spenders still feel weak, Avenging Wrath does not feel like a real raid cooldown, Beacon gameplay feels passive, Empyrean Legacy gutted Judgment-based healing gameplay, and Lightsmith is effectively non-viable in raid compared with Herald of the Sun. Holy Paladin only looks decent in Mythic+ because Holy Light is so strong in small-group content, but that same Holy Light dependence is part of what hurts the spec in raid by making it mana-hungry and poorly structured. Blizzard needs to address the design problems, not just add small throughput buffs.

38 Likes
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I have to concur with everything here. I have been playing Holy Paladin off and on since Cataclysm at a normal+heroic raid level and this is fundamentally the most broken and disjointed I have ever seen the spec. This is a shame too because I absolutely love the design of our apex.

The big issues I have are
1.) Our spec talent tree is absolutely loaded with utterly dead-on-arrival talents that are either horrifically under-tuned, sloppily designed, or BOTH
2.) Infusion has been gutted by making it such a low % proc chance and removing crit interaction with it (why?? We’ve always been a crit healer spec)

I mean the fact that Veneration still has the old Flash / Holy Light crits resetting the cooldown of Judgment (formerly Hammer of Wrath) when Judgment only has a 5 second cooldown tells me pretty blatantly that Blizzard ran out of time and phoned it in for Holy Paladin talent design.

WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SPEC TALENT OVERHAUL

This is just my personal opinion, but I’d like to see Holy Shock be given a slightly longer cooldown so we aren’t just spamming Shock most of the time and then give Shock higher chance to proc Infusion and Shock crits an even higher chance to proc Infusion of Light. Return Holy Light to Infusion’s pool of spells to empower and its Infusion effect should be a powered up Resplendent Light, making it a potent splash heal when infused. Splash healing perfectly fits Holy’s identity of a triage healer that focuses on critically injured party members.

And we need a reason to press Word of Glory / Eternal Flame over Light of Dawn. Personally I think both should be powerful to press and then balance LoD by making it 5 holy power so our choice becomes more rapid single target stabilizers or slower but potent LoD’s.

(Also as a side note, Sun’s Avatar in Herald feels absolutely horrendous as a hero spec capstone. I never liked the dinky laser lights and removing the Dawnlight dump from Avenging Wrath utterly killed it for me. Please rework this.)

3 Likes
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I agree with everything except that hpal is ok in mythic. It is not ok at all.

7 Likes
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I only say it’s “ok”, not amazing. I’m at 3100 rating atm so managing…

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  1. I dont think reverting EL nerf would ultimately fix our spec. It will definitively carry HPS through passive healing but would ultimately make us depend on stacking crit and make us rely on RNG, something Hpal was moving away from for pretty much a whole expansion now and always ends up being problematic for healers.

Truth Prevails, Veneration and Greater Judgment could use some significant buffs though.

  1. Agreed in all points.
  2. Revert wings back to 20%. Make a better choice node for AM to make it impactful for raid in one, and limit to 5 man in the other one. AM could place absorbs on allies but limit them only to 5 person only for M+ for example.
  3. Not entirely true, spenders were buffed around ~40-50% or even more back in TWW beta if I remember correctly, then again some more for S3. Relatively speaking, we (and other healers more) are topping bars too quickly,
  4. Virtue mana cost was nerfed several times and it needs to be reverted, also I agree, either beacon transfer should be buffed, or pillars of light, and some extra benefit to justify the extra GCD cost.
  5. We have been asking for this since LS inception, only time when it was meta nearly all Hpal playerbase hated it. This hero talent needs to be reworked, it has always been either problematic or just underpowered.

Finally, Hpal still have bad choice nodes and dead talents, we need nodes that help separation between raid and m+ playstyle so each can be tuned separetely without hurting the other too much. Even beacons should have different transfer values depending on raid/m+ or Virtue/Faith.

also, please bring back triple holy shock (old rising sunlight) and 1 min Sac..

Absolute agree with both. Many talents contribute around 1% healing overall or are just useless. I dont understand why they took away infusions based on crit, if its too powerful then infusions FoL bonuses should be nerfed and our core kit buffed instead of relying on RNG procs.

Why?? the spec has been reworked many times already since DF and holy shock returning to being 1 charge or longer CD is just taking steps backs on previous DF/TWW and Midnight reworks. What else would you fill in between builders? More FoL and HLs?

3 Likes
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I just want to state that I am a casual hpal enjoyer, only been playing it since TWW season 1 and only ran keys up to like +10s back then.

I also have genuinely tried to like hpal this season, and i just cant get into it. I’m actually having trouble picking a similar healer alt (with a dps offspec that i would also enjoy) at the moment. Hpal was great because ret was fun to play as well, the other healers have pretty meh dps options.

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Holy Paladin right now is just disjointed and aimless. Even if they tuned our talents we would still have core problems. What are we? Are we a ranged spot healer? If so, why are we still coded as melee? Or are we meant to be an AoE (Light of Dawn) spammer and spot heal when only needed?

Blizzard needs to decide if we are a ranged healer, a melee healer, or have talent options to choose either, because at the moment we are a Franken-spec of old leftover designs cobbled together with underbaked filler talents and a DOA Judgment design.

Again this is just my opinion but I think they should lean into Paladin being a triage splash healer (something they have largely been pushing onto Holy Priest), but I also think talent trees have enough design space on them to also enable a melee healer playstyle (i.e. perma Crusader Strike and Lightsmith interacting with Crusader Strike).

Regardless Blizzard needs to pick something and build meaningful talents around that identity.

3 Likes
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I totally agree, I also don’t see what the point is to be herald of the sun if EF is only used for spot healing when people need it. A guildie told me that LOD is the only thing you need to heal with and that is why you go herald but that makes the spec crappy and boring. I may switch to lightsmith only because it is more fun to play with. I would reroll but makes it unfair to the raid group since I needed on gear in raid, so might as well play the spec that I find fun and keep going with it.

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So, I am not sure if you read the post. But I said Hpal feels fine in m+ because holy light and small group healing carries the spec there. Perhaps try trolling somewhere else, cheers.

2 Likes
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make judgement great again!

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hey thats my name!

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I think it would be cool if the HoT from Eternal Flame would radiate a small amount of healing around them. To me Holy Paladin has always been about being a shining beacon that brings succor to those around you. In fact they could even potentially merge EF with Dawnlight, but I’m splitting hairs here on exact spec design.

1 Like
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Clown plays with a team of good players and says this LOL

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Nothing was worse than the first Tier of BFA, worse state Holy Paladins have ever been in, we only survived that expansion because the players found the Glimmer build. A build Blizzard admitted they never intended but didn’t nerf it because it was the only thing keeping us afloat.

Also i never viewed Wings as a raid cooldown, it’s a self cooldown, i think it’s cooldown should be lowered to one minute to be on par with Ret but that’s it.

Besides that, i agree with everything else.

Aura Mastery in particular, i know mathematically it’s strong, but holy naaru is it boring. Visually and gameplay wise it might be the most boring ability in the entire game.

Auras in general are boring, just make them passives again and give us a visually cool yet still powerful raid cooldown.

I also think Holy Light should become an empowered spell.

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DF S3-S4 was also terrible. 15-20% behind in hps in raid. Pretty much all our utility got nerfed too, our tankiness, we had mana issues in both raid and m+.

The spec was so bad in both m+ and raid that it was alone in its own tier, and 20-30 ilvls lower MW could outheal a fully geared Hpal. Spenders didnt move bars, we had like 6 cooldowns that barely did anything, glimmer was useless, FoL was stronger than our spenders (like now) by a mile, everything about the class sucked and WE WERE JUST REWORKED A SEASON AGO. And this lasted two entire seasons withot barely any tuning.

When TWW was released holy shock and spenders had to be buffed like 100% and the class had to be reworked again.

This is literally every post every season here in the forums.

We are a melee spot healer with instant casts, the reason why LoD is current the way it is, is also because people have posted here for seasons to get rid of the old LoD cone and rework it into AoE and now its here and its classing with our old beacon playstyle.

Its the same as why FoL and HL still exists, to be not entirely forced into melee to generate holy power, turn hpal into melee and people complain about losing healing output, turn hpal into a ranged healer and throw away the play style and identity the spec had for several expansions now. The main issue of the spec right now is the spender/builder balance first and then the HPS tuning in 5+ man environments.

1 Like
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I tend to agree: Looking at past expansion Holy spendors always felt impactful, that they were strong, and that between Light of Dawn or Word of Glory/Eternal Flame you had two heals distinct and serve as a powerful spendor.

Light of Dawn really feels like go-to spendor now not because of the AOE but that it feels better than Eternal Flame. I rather miss Eternal Flame have a strong upfront heal and but really it was the HoT that made it so powerful and strong i felt. I could roll Eternal Flames on my party members knowing it was (varying on expansion) a good 10-30 second Hot that would keep healing them AND it would also slowly tricklt into the Tank/Beacon target.

Spendors really feel sad and weak right now.

I’ll agree with ya that It’s a good heal but way to much mana and at times can feel like you are waiting for people to take damage so you can effectively use it. Between Flasf of light being real weak and rally cheap ( which could lead to just sitting them spamming it but not feeling like your doing anything) or using Holy Light and dumping mana for a HUGE heal, there really need to be an inbetween or that these two spells need to be tweaked.

Like Flash of Light being slightly stronger (and mana cost to balance of course) and Holy Light being weakened slightly (mana adjusted of course). I’l also comment (even though there is a talent choice) that Holy Light really should just have the AoE component baked in naturally but that’s my bias as opposed to talenting it.

Honestly, and my bias of course, but i do not like any of what they have done to Judgement. The simple and purest form of it i liked was when you would judge an enemy and apply the Light Debuff to them where as allies attacked that target they would consume stacks to get healed.

It required a holy paadin to stay on top of it, which was fair and balanced, that allowed a form of “party/raid/AoE” heal to go out naturally to whoever needed it that was not at full health.

This new form of judegement they are trying, which has you taking some… what… 3-5 talents just to make it function and work, offers a minor heal to yourself and overhealing to others, a small absorb on the target, and… well.. honestly i don’t see/feel the impact of using it. Even with the additional talents of dropping an healing Consecration which feels SO WEAK that the extra talents to bump that up feel wasted as well. The old Consecration was a nice Set and forget i could drop under myself in melee or ranged and it was decent enough for an instance cast set and forget and the trickle healing was nice for beacons. but in this expansion it really feels so weak.

overall i agree with a lot of what you said, a few minor personal difference of playstyle, but the core of it i agree with you and the changes that need to be addressed.

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your ideas confuse me a bit here.

You want to increase the CD of our main builder, but then increase the spender of LoD? what is the builder than?

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Our main builders are Judgment, Holy Light, and Flash of Light (or Crusader Strike for melee builds). I would also be open to them adding something else to the mix.

I’m not saying Holy Shock should have a significant cooldown - but right now we are spamming it way too much. This was a problem when crits guaranteed Infusion procs because we were so flooded with Infusions that we would literally waste Infusions because hitting Holy Shock and spenders took priority.

This is why they had to gut Infusion proc chance to begin with - we hit Shock so often they either had to make Infusion a pitiful low chance to proc or nerf Infusion into the ground (and return us to ignoring Infusion procs).

Strong and more consistent Infusion procs and Holy Shock remaining a strong button to press together necessitates that Shock not be spammable. I’m thinking adding another 2-4 seconds or so to the CD (depending on balancing). This would also reopen the door to getting a talent back that reduces the CD of Shock during Avenging Wrath. If Holy Shock is longer it could also potentially generate more than one Holy Power per use.

2 Likes
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Yeah holy shock feels kinda a filler spell now, it’s weird having it up all time.

Increase the damage and healing significantly and increase the cooldown, the more damage and healing, more seconds increased.

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if we put shock in higher cd how we build hopo? with fol? because HL its expensive and judgment its worthless (less if u increase shock CD)

shock its at this state because we lost crusader strike.

and infusion proc guarenteed or how we do it?

in raid or m+ we have to move a lot , the only non casted heals are shock, infusion procs and spenders.

imagine doing the last boss of AA , or MC to name a few , where movement its 90% of the boss