A Look at WotLK Paladins Part II: Holy

I've been a dedicated healing Paladin for a little over a year now. I had originally rolled my Paladin to fix two glaring shortages in my guild: a shortage of tanks, and a shortage of Paladins. These days, you can't throw a rock without hitting a Blood Elf Pally in the head, but right after Burning Crusade hit, every Horde guild in the world was hurting for some blessing action.

Anyway, after my second Karazhan run as a tank, we ended up with a different problem: a lack of healers. Being the good raid leader that I am, I cobbled together a passable healing set from reputation rewards and the auction house, and never turned back. I still throw on the old tanking gear when the occasion arises, but I'm pretty much Holy for life now, and I don't know that I'd go back even if I had the chance.

So, what does Wrath of the Lich King bring to World of Warcraft's most potent tank healers? Since Paladins (along with Hunters) were the last to have their new talents and abilities revealed, there was a lot of build-up and a lot of hype. Initially, of the 3 Pally trees, I was least impressed by what Holy had to offer. Fortunately, some recently revealed changes may just change that impression.

Let's look over the tree, tier by tier. Feel free to pull up the new talent trees and follow along!
- Tier 1: No major changes here. Improved Seal of Righteousness has been expanded to additional seals and moved up a tier, but this is of little use to a dedicated healer.
- Tier 2: Divine Intellect has been moved down a tier, but has also been buffed. Still an obvious choice for a Holy Paladin. Healing Light has been moved up to this tier, which, when combined with Illumination being moved up to Tier 3, will make it easier for Protection and especially Retribution Paladins to be effective off-healers
- Tier 3: Aside from the aforementioned Illumination change, note that Lay on Hands is now on a 30/22 minute cooldown (as opposed to 60/40), and it's armor bonus has been improved to 50% when fully talented. This talent is much stronger now - not only does not it not feel like such a huge waste if you blow it but still lose the fight, but the armor buff makes it a much better emergency button altogether.
- Tier 4: Improved Concentration Aura, which a lot of Holy Paladins specced into anyway, is now in the proper tree. Good deal, especially considering that Retribution will now be the more likely choice for a minor.
- Tier 5: The new "Blessed Hands" seems like a PvP oriented talent, making your Hands of Freedom and Protection more resistant to disruption. Not much a PvPer myself, so no comment here. A nice, if minor change is that Sanctified Light now also affects Holy Shock - which combined with the new Infusion of Light talent and improvements to Holy Shock, is a pretty nice buff!
- Tier 6: No change here. Holy Power all the way.
- Tier 7: No changes here either. However, it was recently revealed that Holy Shock has had it's healing buffed by about 75%, making it a significantly more powerful healing spell. The cooldown is also being reduced from 15 seconds to 6, which will make it far more reliable and a much more powerful grinding tool. I might not even have to spec out of Holy to level to 80! Perhaps best yet, Wowhead indicates that Holy Shock now has a 40 yard range (up from 20, which basically made it useless most of the time). If all of these changes make it through, the life of a Holy Paladin will get so much easier. Woo!
- Tier 8: Infusion of Light, with all the improvements to Holy Shock, can give a Pally a much needed emergency button. A crit Holy Shock followed by an instant Holy Light should get your tank back in the green in no time. It's a bit unpredictable, but could prove very useful.
- Tier 9: Sacred Cleansing is an interesting talent. I could imagine it being useful in some fights where a boss spams some sort of debuff, but it'd be rather mediocre the rest of the time, since most debuffs simply aren't applied that rapidly. Seems touchy, I'd like to see it in action. Enlightened Judgements is a nice move toward making it easier for a Holy Paladin to maintain a judgement. Running in every 20 seconds is just too much of a hassle, so even improving this by just 10 yards will make both judging and adding a little ranged DPS much more convenient.
Tier 10: Judgements of the Pure is nice, but seems dangerous for your mana conservation. The buff does last for 30 seconds, which is nice, but I could see getting distracted by trying to keep the buff active and screwing up your heals.
Tier 11: Beacon of Light. This is the answer to Paladin AoE healing, finally. Well, I don't really like it. The max rank is roughly a full quarter of my mana pool (I imagine it'll be less at 80, but still), and it's not affected by Illumination. What really kind of turns me off to the spell is it's limited range. It's only 10 yards around the target - since so many raid fights demand that the raid spread out, usually to 15 yards or greater, it seems it'll be often worthless, or worse still, dangerous - you tell your raid to group up only to be blasted by some AoE. I'd like to see the range increased to 20 yards, but maybe limit the healing to hitting only the 5 lower health people or something.

Lastly, the new level 80 Holy ability is worth a note. Sacred Shield is WotLK's answer to the lack of a Paladin heal over time spell. In some ways it's nicer than a HoT, as you're never really "wasting it" unless your tank isn't being hit. It's also nice in that it gives Holy Paladins something else to do aside from spamming Flash of Light. It's a very cheap spell as it stands now, so even if it's not affected by spell power, 35 mana will be worth the 2,000+ damage prevention it offers. If it is affected by spell power then it'll simply be amazing. Between this new ability, Beacon of Light, and to a lesser extent the Holy Shock/Infusion of Light changes, all the Paladin's concerns have been answered: we gain area healing, a heal over time, and a bit more mobility.

Perhaps the most interesting Holy talent isn't even in the Holy tree. Sheath of Light, a Tier 5 Retribution talent, combined with Ret staple Conviction (which now affects spells as well as melee attacks) offers a serious temptation to skip Beacon of Light altogether. If I were to be using this talent right now on my current level 70 Paladin, I'd be gaining about 125 extra spell power, and my Holy Light crit heals on tanks would be generating 4,200 point heal over times for free. I think going the Sheath route will be the best choice by far for Paladins who are primarily tank healers. Assuming there's no huge changes, I'll most likely be going with this build for my Paladin once we're back in the raid game.

Next up: a slightly less in-depth look at Protection.

-- Schmitty