PvE Holy Paladin

Holy Paladins in Mists of Pandaria are powerful burst healers, wielding The Light to help their allies survive even the heaviest assault. They have a few new tricks up their sleeves in this expansion to complement their already broad assortment of cooldowns and utility spells. This guide will cover all of the fundamentals of building, gearing, and playing your Holy Paladin so you can heal your way through every dungeon and raid that MoP Classic brings.

Changes in Mists of Pandaria

Class specializations have become more streamlined in Mists of Pandaria, with trimmed-down talent trees and the removal of Prime Glyphs. Some abilities have been made baseline and others have been removed or reworked. Most of the Holy Paladin’s spells will be familiar if you played Cataclysm Classic, but there are also some new abilities and mechanics to get used to.

Your Light of Dawn no longer has a positioning requirement and instead does its healing in a 30-yard radius around you. The Eternal Flame talent allows you to add a heal-over-time component to your Word of Glory for an improved single-target Holy Power spender, adding a powerful HoT to your arsenal.

Auras are gone, and your remaining Seals have taken their place as toggleable abilities on your bars. Most of your cooldowns are still there, and you’ll even add a couple more through talents, including some new AoE heals.

It’s worth remembering that WoW Classic expansions launch with class tuning that reflects the final patch of the original expansion. So even in Phase 1 of MoP Classic, the Holy Paladin’s talents and abilities will be in the same state they were in for Patch 5.4.8. One example of this is Divine Plea, which was changed late in the expansion to remove its 50% healing reduction, making it more of a straightforward mana regeneration cooldown with no downside.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

• Powerful Burst Healing:
  You have a plethora of healing cooldowns at your disposal, which you can stack or space out to cover intermittent periods of heavy raid damage. The new Boundless Conviction passive ability allows you to store more Holy Power than before, which makes it possible to spend more if it in a short period when you need it. Spreading Eternal Flame on multiple targets and stacking Illuminated Healing shields allows you to get out ahead of damage spikes and further pads your healing during big spikes.

• Strong Utility:
  While your toolkit has been trimmed down a bit over the years and auras are now completely gone, you still have a variety of useful spells that aren’t just for healing or dealing damage. Your various Hand buffs can provide threat reduction, damage reduction, and freedom of movement. You can stun, disorient, interrupt, taunt, and fear mobs, and with talents you also have access to an AoE slow and Repentance. You also have useful raid buffs and a dispel.

• Stacking Absorbs:
  Your Mastery, Illuminated Healing, allows you to stack absorption effects on your healing targets. Absorption effects are more efficient than other heals because they prevent the damage from ever happening and tend not to overheal as much. They can’t be sniped by other healers, and they can be placed on targets even if they have full health, giving the target a chance to survive mechanics that might otherwise be a one-shot.

• Sturdy:
  You’re practically a tank, with your Shield and Plate armor and your many defensive cooldowns. You can even use Divine Shield to ignore all mechanics while you keep healing like a champ for eight seconds straight. If that’s not enough, you can take Glyph of Protector of the Innocent and melee swing at the boss for heals from your Seal of Insight.

Weaknesses

• Gear Dependent:
  Early in the expansion when you don’t have as many stats on your gear, Holy Paladins may struggle to keep up with other healers. They only have one mana regeneration cooldown and rely heavily on Spirit. They also scale significantly with throughput stats, which feed their many important procs. Without those procs, the class feels a lot weaker.

• High Complexity:
  Excelling as a Holy Paladin requires managing two different resources, Holy Power and mana. You’ll also be juggling numerous procs and cooldowns, Beacon of Light, Mastery shields, and Eternal Flame or Sacred Shield. To get the most out of your burst healing, you have to know the fights and know when to use your cooldowns to their greatest effect. You’ll also need to keep an eye on what your teammates are doing if you want to take advantage of your Hand spells and other useful externals.

• No Easy DPS Offspec:
  Most other healers have an option for a DPS offspec that can use most of the same gear. This isn’t true of Holy Paladins since your only option is Retribution, which requires Strength gear. This isn’t a problem that affects your performance in dungeons or raids, but it’s worth mentioning for the sake of your solo activities and also because it makes you a poor candidate if your raid needs a flex healer who can occasionally DPS.

Best Races

In Mists of Pandaria, there are 3 Alliance races and 2 Horde races who can be Paladins. Racial traits are less impactful in this expansion than they were in earlier versions of WoW, but they can still affect your gameplay as a Holy Paladin.

Alliance

The best Alliance race for Holy Paladins is Human thanks to The Human Spirit, which buffs your Spirit for crucial mana regeneration.

• Draenei: Gemcutting, Gift of the Naaru, Heroic Presence, Shadow Resistance
• Dwarf: Crack Shot, Explorer, Frost Resistance, Mace Specialization, Stoneform
• Human: Diplomacy, Every Man for Himself, Mace Specialization, Sword Specialization, The Human Spirit

Horde

The best Horde race for Holy Paladins is Blood Elf due to their mana restoration ability, Arcane Torrent.

• Blood Elf: Arcane Affinity, Arcane Resistance, Arcane Torrent
• Tauren: Cultivation, Endurance, Nature Resistance, War Stomp