My Ideal Holy Paladin Talents

Classes Paladin
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I’ve spent a few weeks putting together what I’d consider to be ideal talents for a holy paladin; this includes the class tree as well as the holy spec tree. Neither tree is complete, nor are they meant to be, but I tried to bring in as many cool passives and active abilities as I could think of, and I tried to place them well.

I was aiming to make hybridization possible, allow the Holy spec tree to support either a melee playstyle or a hard-casting playstyle, and prioritize the fun-factor first and the cool-factor second.

There are tons more details about these trees, but I’ll live up to my name if I start talking about them here. So instead, I have two videos that each explain the placement of each icon, and almost every icon has a chapter that’ll let you jump right to the ones you care about:

  1. The (Color-Coded) Class Talents:
  1. The Holy Spec Talents:

I figure I had to have made some mistakes with these trees—probably a few serious mistakes. That’s the reason I’m posting: I need to know what I did right and what I did wrong!

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Denounce! :smiley:

I like what I see but a few comments:

  • There is no way they put Beacon of Light in the Class Tree, and I don’t see them reworking it.
  • The passives at the end of the tree aren’t exciting enough to make for final talent.
  • IDK if they would put Holy Shock that shallow in the class tree, since it might become a mandatory spell for Ret to take otherwise.
  • There’s no way that they put Lay on Hands or Bubble that deep in the tree. In fact, I think both abilities will be baseline.
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Thanks for your feedback; these are the kidns of things I need to hear.

You’re probably right about this. I put it where I did because…well, “ideal”…partly.

The other part of it is: when we pick a spec, we automatically get the first two things in the spec’s column for free. Holy Shock and Beacon of Light seemed like good things to get automatically.

You’re talking about Divinity, Vengeance, and Divine Strength?

Come to think of it, I made a mistake in thinking that the deepest talents needed to be in between the columns, in any case.

I’m surprised you said “Ret”; I was thinking Protection might find it mandatory for the self-healing. And I thought Ret more or less had every GCD used up already, though I might be going off of outdated information…

If they don’t put Beacon at the base of Holy’s spec tree, they’ll probably put Holy Shock there, but that begs the question of what they’ll put at the root of Holy’s column in the Class tree…unless it’s Denounce, of course, which most definitely would have its positive aspects!

I sure hope they don’t put Holy Light at the base of Holy’s column in the class talents; that’d be worthless for the melee playstyles. That’s one of the reasons I put Holy Light in the spec talent tree, in a part of the spec talent tree where a melee player wouldn’t need to spend any points.

I’d like it if they were baseline. Hard telling; they may end up putting LoH at the shallowest part of Holy’s column, since it’d be useful for melee and caster playstyles alike, and if I had to pick one Holy ability that a Ret or Prot paladin would want to pick up, it’d be LoH.

In retrospect, that’s a really, really good reason to put LoH shallow in Holy’s column. (Assuming it’s not baselined like you said, which would be even better!)

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Ret actually has quite a few gaps in its rotation that it could easily fit this in. Not to mention that Crusader Strike isn’t worth hitting(other than when you have nothing else) So Holy Shock would fill in nicely. Plus its ranged, so would help when out melee.
Speaking of which, I never understood why Holy Shock was never a baseline ability for paladins. Consecration and Crusader Strike did, although Avengers Shield didn’t, so I suppose there is that.

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IIRC, it almost became baseline going from WotLK to Cata. Then Blizzard changed the rules about how specs worked, needed a spell they could give Holy paladins for choosing the Holy spec at level 10, and picked Holy Shock. Word of Glory was what paladins got baseline in lieu of Holy Shock.

Thanks for the info; I’m probably going to do another draft of this with Holy Shock at the root of the Holy spec tree, Beacon of Light right below that, and Lay on Hands at the root of Holy’s column in the class tree.

I’m toying with the idea of putting Light of Dawn right below Lay on Hands, but I’m wondering if there’s a wiser thing to put there, e.g. Cleanse Toxins? Or should Cleanse Toxins be baseline? Either way, I’ll likely have a shallow Sacred Cleansing talent in Holy’s tree that gives Cleanse Toxins the ability to dispel magic debuffs.

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The base of Holy’s tree will probably be Holy Light & Hand of Sacrifice.

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Ehhh, I hope not: I feel like Holy Light belongs in an area of the spec tree designed to cater to hard-casting builds. I mean, what use does a holy paladin who uses the melee playstyle even have for Holy Light? I’m hoping Blizzard has plans to meticulously avoid forcing players to spend talent points on things they’ll never actually use.

I figure something like Holy Shock belongs at the shallowest part of the Holy spec tree, since—as other players have stated—it won’t work in the class tree, and both melee and hard-casting playstyles make use of Holy Shock.

Holy Light can be really, really shallow in the tree—there’s no reason Hand of Sacrifice can’t be shallow in the tree, for that matter. But I don’t think Holy Light should be the base per se.

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It would be interesting if Blizzard made it so you could spec into either a hard casting spec or a melee spec and have them both perform at the same level. I really really hope that they don’t put dead talents in any of the trees, having our covenant spells in the trees would be awesome.
The new talent trees really do give Blizzard the chance to bring back old talents, tier set bonuses, azerite traits, and corruptions, and the sky is the limit. I’m hoping for the best, well see what happens.

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I tried to put the stuff I remember as being the best into the holy spec tree, but unfortunately, I stopped playing BfA about the time corruptions became a thing. I don’t think I know which corruptions were best for Holy :confused:

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Was the go to corruption for holy paladins. I highly doubt Blizzard would bring them back but it would be interesting to play with them again, without the negative attachments.

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I’m going to be putting together a second draft that takes the feedback I’ve gotten here into account.

What I’m thinking are the strong points of my trees are:

  1. I actually have about two or three new abilities
  2. Building the tree so both hard-casting and melee playstyles are supported is generally a good idea
  3. Returning passives and abilities are pretty good, including Denounce, WoD’s version of Holy Radiance, Tyr’s Deliverance, and the Daybreaks
  4. I avoided placing talents that would be useless in places where they’d be required to get abilities that are actually useful (no one said anything about this, so I’m assuming, here).

And the bad points I need to fix in the next draft:

  • Holy Shock can’t be in the class tree because it’d be a must-have for Ret
  • LoH and Divine Shield should be either really low in the talents or (better yet) baselined
  • My Beacon rework is unrealistic
  • The passives at the deepest part of the class tree aren’t interesting enough to be where I put them
  • I should have a deep Ret ability alongside Light’s Hammer for Holy and Holy Wrath for Prot (I’m tentatively thinking Justicar’s Vengeance)
  • Divine Storm might be better in the Ret spec tree, especially if I add a buff for Shield of the Righteous that makes it deal decent damage

Is this a decent summary of the strong and weak points? And am I leaving anything important out?

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