PvE Holy Paladin Talents, Builds, & Glyphs

The Mists of Pandaria expansion overhauled the talent options for every class and removed Prime Glyphs, leaving a more streamlined system for building out your character. For Holy Paladins, your choices will have a subtle, but still meaningful impact on your gameplay and performance.

PvE Holy Paladin

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Stat Priority & Reforging

Best Professions

Pre-Raid Gear

Rotation & Cooldowns

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Best in Slot (BiS)

Addons & Macros

Talents

Talents can now be changed out of combat as long as you have some Tome of the Clear Mind on hand. That means you can easily swap out talents on a fight-by-fight basis. This gives you greater flexibility to take advantage of niche talents when the situation calls for it instead of relying on a one-size-fits-all talent build.

Here is our recommended default talent build for the majority of content. Read on to find out about individual talents and what situations might call for different talent selections.

Level 15 Talents (Tier 1)

• Speed of Light
  This is an on-demand sprint that can give you a big boost of speed when you really need it. It’s even on a relatively short cooldown and has a low mana cost.
• Long Arm of the Law
  You won’t be using Judgment as much as your Retribution and Protection counterparts, which may be good or bad for this talent: good because the ability won’t be on cooldown when you need it, but bad because you won’t be getting much passive use out of this buff. Using this talent costs more mana than Speed of Light and offers a smaller buff. It also won’t be useful to you if there are no enemies in range for you to use Judgment.
• Pursuit of Justice
  The movement speed increase from this talent is constant, but much lower than the other two. It’s not a good idea to hold onto your Holy Power, so you will only be able to count on the base 15% movement speed increase at any given time. This can be a nice passive boost for fights where you either don’t need to move very much, or when you need to move quite a lot to the point that the other two active abilities aren’t practical.

Level 30 Talents (Tier 2)

• Fist of Justice
  This spell is just Hammer of Justice with the cooldown lowered to 30 seconds, which is pretty nice. You can use it often, it does not break on damage, and it can be used against any type of enemy (except bosses). All around much more useful in group content than the other two crowd control options in this tier.
• Repentance
  Taking an enemy out of the fight for up to a minute at a time can be pretty useful. Unfortunately this spell has a cast time, can only be used on specific types of enemies, and breaks on damage. It may have some niche use in dungeons when you don’t have Sap or Polymorph available.
• Evil is a Point of View
  Being able to send things running in fear isn’t as handy in instanced content where you’re likely to pull additional mobs. Your Turn Evil will still not be usable on all mobs with this talent, and again this CC breaks on damage, which is less ideal in a group.

Level 45 Talents (Tier 3)

• Selfless Healer
  Turns Judgment into a Holy Power generator that can give you a fast, free, buffed Flash of Light, Divine Light or Holy Radiance at 3 stacks (Flash of Light will even be instant-cast at 3 stacks). You probably won’t want to spend a GCD on Judgment often enough to get much use out of this, unfortunately.
• Eternal Flame
  Adds a powerful heal-over-time component to your Word of Glory that gets even stronger as you reach its Haste breakpoints. The HoT is very nice for smoothing out steady damage and providing an extra trickle of healing to your Beacon of Light target. You can have it up on multiple targets, adding to your burst healing potential when big damage spikes go out.
• Sacred Shield
  An instant absorption shield with 3 charges available, each taking 10 seconds to recharge, and lasting around 30 seconds, so you can have up to three targets shielded at a time. In most situations, Eternal Flame is going to do a lot more healing, especially since it also transfers through your Beacon of Light. You may find this feels better in dungeons where you won’t have a Discipline Priest smoothing out damage with their bubbles. It also has the advantage of not costing anything to cast – not mana, and not Holy Power, just a GCD.

Level 60 Talents (Tier 4)

• Hand of Purity
  This is a new Hand buff for Paladins that primarily limits the damage of DoT effects on the target. Typically it makes more sense to dispel DoTs instead, but there may be niche situations when dispelling is either not advisable or not possible, and then this talent becomes useful.
• Unbreakable Spirit
  Halving the cooldown on Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Lay on Hands will allow you to use all three twice as often. This is mostly a personal defensive option and is a good choice to fall back on if you don’t need the external cooldowns affected by Clemency.
• Clemency
  This talent allows you to use some of your cooldowns twice as often, this time by giving you a second charge of each before triggering the cooldown. This option affects all of your Hand buffs: Hand of Freedom, Hand of Protection, Hand of Sacrifice, and Hand of Salvation. Since you can use Hand of Protection on yourself, you will still gain some personal defense from this talent, and a lot of utility for your group. The most useful aspect of this talent is being able to put Hand of Sacrifice on the tank once every minute.

Level 75 Talents (Tier 5)

• Holy Avenger
  This cooldown causes your Holy Power generators (Crusader Strike, Holy Radiance, and Holy Shock, plus Judgement of you have Selfless Healer, and Flash of Light or Divine Light when used on your Beacon of Light target) to deal 30% more damage and healing as well as generating 3 times as much Holy Power for 18 seconds, usable every 2 minutes. This is your go-to talent for fights with heavy burst healing requirements, equally useful for tank healing or raid healing.
• Sanctified Wrath
  Increases the duration of your Avenging Wrath from 20 seconds to 30 and buffs your Holy Shock while Avenging Wrath is active to have a reduced cooldown and increased chance to crit. There’s nothing wrong with this talent, it just doesn’t compete with the other two options. You might still consider it for fights with movement-heavy phases where being able to Holy Shock a lot will help you keep up with healing on the move.
• Divine Purpose
  Your Holy Power spenders (Eternal Flame/Word of Glory and Light of Dawn) gain a one-in-four chance to proc this buff which allows you to cast your next spender for free as if it had 3 Holy Power behind it. This talent has an edge for mana usage, so if you’re struggling with mana this is the best option of the three. It’s likely to provide more healing over the course of a fight than the other two options as well. On the other hand, the random nature of its proc means that it may not happen when you need it. Holy Avenger allows for a greater degree of control.

Level 90 Talents (Tier 6)

• Holy Prism
  An interesting mixed healing and damage ability that lets you either heal 1 target and damage 5, or damage 1 target and heal 5. The splash heal is a smart heal, so you can use it on the boss and it will heal your melee teammates with the lowest health. You can also use it on a tank to keep them up while simultaneously helping take down some adds. It has the shortest cooldown of the three options in this tier and is the best for consistent use outside of burst windows. Great in dungeons where you can make good use of its flexible damage and healing component.
• Light’s Hammer
  Allows you to place a circle on the ground that heals and deals damage over time within a 10-yard radius. This ability can help you stack some extra healing during heavy raid damage. It slows enemies as well, which can be useful on its own. This should be your default choice for any fight where you need to pump out some extra raid healing at intermittent points.
• Execution Sentence
  This option can again be used for damage or healing, and since you’re a healer you’ll typically prefer the latter. It provides an escalating HoT on a 1 minute cooldown that can be dispelled to trigger its full healing if needed. In theory this can be a strong tank healing cooldown, but in practice it’s very awkward to use, and you have plenty of other options for tank healing.

Glyphs

Prime Glyphs are gone in Mists of Pandaria. You will still choose 3 Major Glyphs and 3 Minor Glyphs.

Major Glyphs

There are a few Major Glyphs for Holy Paladins that will be useful in the majority of content, and several alternatives that can be even more useful in the right circumstances.

Default Options

If you’re just looking to grab the 3 most straightforward glyphs for a Holy Paladin, here are your picks depending on the type of content you’re tackling.

• Glyph of Divinity
  You may wince at adding another 2 minutes to the cooldown for Lay on Hands, but it really makes no difference for most fights since you won’t usually be able to use it more than once either way. The extra mana it gives is therefore effectively free and well worth the glyph slot, unless you really don’t need the mana or really do need a different glyph.
• Glyph of Hand of Sacrifice
  Removes the drawback to using Hand of Sacrifice and makes it a straightforward external defensive. This glyph is especially useful if you have the Clemency talent and can use the spell twice as often. It obviously loses value if you’re not using Hand of Sacrifice much.
• Glyph of Illumination
  You’ll get less mana regeneration from Spirit through Holy Insight with this glyph, but every time Holy Shock crits it will return 1% of your mana. As of 5.4.8 in the original version of Mists of Pandaria, this glyph actually reduced the value of Spirit by a lot less than its text indicated, which makes it much more valuable if we get that version of it. Even if that’s not the case, it’s not optimal to stack high enough levels of Spirit to make this glyph obsolete. It gains value if used with the Sanctified Wrath talent and with higher levels of Haste and Crit that allow it to proc more often. Most importantly you will need to be using Holy Shock nearly on cooldown to get the most out of this glyph, so if you won’t be able to do that you should skip it and take one of the glyphs in the next section.

Situational Options

These can offer strong alternatives to the glyphs above depending on the content and your approach.

• Glyph of Avenging Wrath
  Causes your Avenging Wrath to double as a defensive cooldown for yourself, healing you for a percentage of your health over its duration. If you have the Sanctified Wrath talent, that duration will be longer, so you’ll gain more benefit from this glyph.
• Glyph of Battle Healer
  If you have an enemy in melee range that you can swing at, this can give you a nice steady trickle of smart heals on your teammates. The heals will be very small, however, and you won’t always be able to melee things as a healer.
• Glyph of Beacon of Light
  This glyph removes the global cooldown from your Beacon of Light, which means you can cast it at the same time as another spell, including in a macro. Useful for fights where you will be moving your Beacon around a lot, like if there are frequent tank swaps.
• Glyph of Denounce
  Denounce does some decent damage, even if you don’t need its debuff much in PvE content. If you are able to squeeze it in and have the mana to support it, using it (especially along with this glyph) can allow you to contribute a bit more damage to your group.
• Glyph of Divine Plea
  With this glyph, you gain half as much mana from Divine Plea but can use it twice as often. The pre-5.4 version of this glyph caused Divine Plea to not reduce your healing while active, and that was a much stronger glyph. With this version, you basically have to use the ability twice in the same window to get the same effect. It comes down to the pace of the fight and what feels better to you.
• Glyph of Divine Protection
  You can trade a bit of Divine Protection‘s magic protection for physical protection. The usefulness of this comes down to how much you need of either type of protection in a given fight.
• Glyph of Flash of Light
  Each Flash of Light you cast with this glyph will buff your next heal to the same target within 7 seconds. A very strong option for healing through intense single-target damage.
• Glyph of Light of Dawn
  Your Light of Dawn spell will heal 4 targets instead of 6, but will heal each of them for 25% more of their health. This is an overall loss in any situation where you will be able to heal 6 targets with the spell, but a nice boost if you only need to heal a smaller number of players. This glyph is practically mandatory for 5-player dungeons, and can be strong in 10-player raids, but should generally be avoided in larger groups.
• Glyph of Protector of the Innocent
  Gives you a small self-heal from every Eternal Flame or Word of Glory you throw out as long as they are cast on another player. A nice little boost to your own survivability that allows you to ignore your own health a lot of the time and focus on others.

Options to Avoid

These may seem like strong options for Holy Paladins at first glance, but they’re generally not as good and will only have limited or niche usefulness.

• Glyph of Blessed Life
  Gives you a chance to gain a charge of Holy Power when hit by a stun, fear, or immobilize, up to once per 20 seconds. You won’t be getting hit by these effects too much in PvE, and the chance is 50/50 so it’s not very reliable either.
• Glyph of Divine Shield
  You won’t typically use Divine Shield to remove DoTs in PvE content, so you won’t get much use out of this unless it happens by accident when you’re using the ability for something else.
• Glyph of Holy Shock
  Maybe okay if you’re messing around and trying to see how much damage you can do in farm content. Otherwise you don’t want to trade Holy Shock‘s healing power for more damage.
• Glyph of Word of Glory
  Similar to Glyph of Holy Shock, this glyph doesn’t do anything for your healing. Best to skip it for something that does.

Minor Glyphs

Minor Glyphs are mostly cosmetic, but there are some that can be useful for endgame content.

• Glyph of Contemplation
  This little roleplay spell puts a beam of light on your character, which might be useful to draw attention to your location on the battlefield, such as to mark a location for your group to stack.
• Glyph of the Falling Avenger
  You won’t need slow fall much in instanced content, but it can be very useful for navigating the open world.
• Glyph of Righteous Retreat
  Hopefully you’re not looking to bubble hearth in the middle of a dungeon or raid too often, but hey, sometimes you just need to get out of Dodge, and this is the best way to do it.