Holy Paladin Post-Patch Review — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] really struggled to get into the Holy Paladin. It was the second healer I've ever played, and I loved it back in Shadowlands season 2 and 3. The Dragonflight talent rework wasn't too kind to it, and thus a rework that came

[00:16] in partway into Dragonflight when Augur release pushed it into a meta of tournament play, but it was clunky and unsatisfying. It had always left me wishing I was playing another healer. I know The War Within made it more

[00:29] playing into its strengths as a mixed ranged and melee healer. season for Midnight haven't been perfect, with the buffs recently to Holy

[00:41] Paladin, I actually think I might be falling back in love with this healer. biggest melee healer fan in the world, and yet I'm okay with our now somewhat missing Crusader Strike. I think they genuinely cooked here. Let's talk about

[00:56] it. My name is Bow of the Healer. The core of Paladin remains the same. You use Holy Shock and Judgment to build up Holy Power, and you spend it on Word of Glory or Light of Dawn. Word of Glory and its upgraded version Eternal Flame

[01:11] on Herald of the Sun hero talents is a strong instant cast single target healing spell that cleaves given your Beacons of Light. Light of Dawn, our AoE heal, it used to be a cone, it's now a hula hoop, and over the years it's been

[01:25] such a bad move that players didn't even put it on their bars at times, but I'm happy to report, especially with the talents for it, it's actually a pretty decent heal so long as there's four to five players to actually heal with it.

[01:37] But because of the way these moves are balanced, my least favorite part about Paladin is now working in a way that I'm in love with, the building and spending aspect of Holy Power. Holy Shock is an instant cast damaging

[01:51] or healing spell that you get charges of. This builds Holy Power and was one of the more frustrating parts of the kit. Either Holy Shock itself felt bad, or it was only good in cooldowns, or sometimes in rare scenarios it was just

[02:05] better than Word of Glory. You never want your combo point system to be building up isn't fun, and spending isn't fun. You want it to be a good give and take. You want it to feel like those tools are working with each other. Not

[02:19] only is Holy Shock fun to use now, and it feels like it's a well-balanced heal between your other larger spells, the payoff of spending your instant cast Word of Glory or Light of Dawn feels genuinely worthwhile this time around.

[02:32] Also, it's important to note, for those of you really missing Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, it is a decent replacement. It's not as good as having both, but Shield of the Righteous can be talented to cool down your Holy Shock. So, if

[02:45] basically always have a button to press, which feels really good. That was initially when I was first checking out the Holy Paladin rework, but yeah, if to always feel like there's something to press. But let's say you need more

[02:59] healing right now, and you don't have any Holy Shock charges, or you need something more powerful. You have the slow casting Holy Light. It is an insane amount of mana, and it's a really long cast time, but the healing is extremely

[03:13] powerful, and you do get a Holy Power for your trouble. I need to make this crystal clear. You could technically only heal with Holy Light, but you're going to basically destroy your mana bar, and the cast

[03:26] times can make that a little difficult every once in a while. But good tactical uses of the spell are extremely beneficial. Flash of Light is really not much to write home about. It's a much faster

[03:39] casting spell that is mana positive compared to Holy Light, but it does almost nothing for healing. However, it does give you Holy Power still. When you look at it this way, it's a ramping tool that allows you to slowly heal the team

[03:53] while staying mana positive, pulling your Holy Shocks, and preparing for a major healing event. But that's not all with Flash of Light. Holy Shock has a chance to grant you an infusion of Light, which with the way that most

[04:07] players talent gives you two powered up spells. Judgment will now grant two Holy Power and prevents significantly more damage done by the target, or Flash of Light becomes a respectable, very strong instant cast heal.

[04:21] Every single spell now on Holy Paladin feels like it has a purpose. I can tell you moments where ramping or slow healing with Flash of Lights or Holy Lights was worthwhile. I have saved entire teams by burning my mana bar on

[04:35] Holy Lights, but because I was able to get my mana back through careful triage and Holy Power usage, it never felt like a crutch. It felt like a good tool that I could use to save my party in the moment. [music] Now, part of the reason

[04:48] our healing feels better is that our triage is better. One of the best reasons our triage is better is our apex talents. Let's first talk about the basic version of this, beacons. Beacon of Light has two different talents.

[05:00] Either you can get two beacons that you can hand out to your teammates, they will receive healing whenever you do healing anywhere else, but you can also go Beacon of Virtue. This is a short cooldown move that gives out five

[05:12] beacons to hurt players, and allows you to AoE heal for a couple of seconds. But these days, I don't really use Beacon of Virtue. I'm almost always using double beacon, and that's because our apex talent is essentially a third beacon. It

[05:26] target. It'll move around based on certain spells we're using. I'll have lot of benefits to this one, and I'm not going to go over every single part of it here. But what this means is you get one layer of your triage game essentially

[05:41] cut out, making your life easier. And you do get bonus healing on the target that has this beacon on them, so you get more beneficial healing on the target who's potentially the lowest health-wise. And that's really what

[05:55] stitches the whole package together for me. Having this extra triage help, your beacons are cleave healing, the spenders and the builders both feel good in their own right, hard casting spells feels like it fits in very nicely with the

[06:08] rest of the kit. It's no longer a clunky beast like it was back in Dragonflight. It now feels smooth and intentional. I also need to talk about my favorite button, Shield of the Righteous. Shield of the Righteous does a good damage and

[06:22] gives you some of your mana back. It's a Holy Power spender that's there for when you don't need the healing anymore. The sound effect remains incredible, and you can seriously crank with it if you have enough targets in front of you

[06:35] and Holy Power to pump with. It's not off the global cooldown like Prot Paladins, but I understand that this is probably for balancing purposes, but it's a good fun button even if it costs a global cooldown. Now, all of the

[06:48] footage that you've been seeing has been from Herald of the Sun, the hero talent that plays a lot like old Shadowlands Paladin that I fell in love with. Herald of the Sun gets Divine Toll. You slam a bunch of Holy Shocks into enemies or

[07:01] allies, granting you a bunch of Holy Power, and doing a respectable amount of damage or healing. A 30-second cooldown makes it feel like you always have an ace up your sleeve for a tense situation. I'm either planning this move

[07:14] to heal through a major healing event, or I'm using it to catch up because of a mistake that happened. Your major cooldown is either Avenging Wrath or Avenging Crusader. Avenging Wrath is exactly as it's always been. It's a

[07:27] 2-minute cooldown, and for 30 seconds you get 15% damage, healing, and critical strike increases. It's strong, like ridiculously strong. You also get two instant cast Holy Lights when you pop this major cooldown,

[07:41] which is going to fix just about any problem you run into in a dungeon. But exclusive to the 2-minute Avenging Wrath. Avenging Crusader is a 1-minute that also provides these two instant cast Holy Lights, but instead of

[07:56] providing you a bunch of beneficial stats, it gives you Crusader Strike back. This returning melee skill does require you to be in melee, but it uses its own resources, so it's not shared with anything like Holy Shock. It heals

[08:09] based on damage done in targets that need healing, and it still provides one Holy Power. What makes this so useful is that you're kind of flooded with Holy Power options, and you can keep sending Holy Power moves back to back to back

[08:23] because you have so many resources to build Holy Power with. For me, I tend to prefer Avenging Crusader, mostly because in pugs it tends to have a lot of use in those hands-on-deck style of healing situations where you really need to make

[08:38] sure you can cover for the mistakes and the carelessness of some pugs that you play with. However, in coordinated play, it's all 2-minute Avenging Wrath down the board. I get it. When you're in a plus 20, 30 seconds of super strong

[08:52] healing coverage is probably something you can't leave home without. But for those of us who are in the puglands, I think this is a fairly open-ended choice that you get to have. Now, combine those 2-minute cooldowns or 1-minute cooldowns

[09:05] with our 3-minute Aura Mastery, a 12% damage reduction within a 40-yard range, yeah, you start to feel genuinely unstoppable as a healer. The big trick to Paladin is about managing your resources, so you don't dip into your

[09:20] cooldowns unless necessary. Holy Power can't be wasted if you're not using it correctly, so it's important to know when you can pull a lot of it, and when you don't have a ton of it, you maybe need to play a little bit safer with it.

[09:32] But when you get it right, it's very smooth. I don't know if I would main Paladin, but I keep wanting to play it whenever I'm not playing it. All the remaining clunk that I feel with the spec now feels like it's a skill issue

[09:44] on my part that can be solved by playing smarter, using my heals more effectively, or [music] our incredible external defensive game I've barely talked about. I know I already mentioned Aura Mastery, the 3-minute 12% DR, but

[09:58] you also have Blessing of Sacrifice, which is an external damage reduction. Blessing of Protection is a physical immunity. Please never give that to the tank. You will kill the entire party. Lay on Hands is a full heal that can be

[10:10] talented to grant armor, and you have Divine Shield, an invulnerability that's just for you that allows you to ignore mechanics and just pump heals. Play it right and you feel truly unbreakable as a Holy Paladin.

[10:25] missing. That would be the thing that makes me the happiest, but Hammer of Justice does a good job bridging the gap. A 5-second stun does wonders both gap. A 5-second stun does wonders both in pugs and in coordinated play. I do

[10:39] Crusader Strike and always being able to go into melee and do melee things. But given the mastery of the spec is proximity to our targets or one of our beacons of light, it allows for more

[10:53] flexible positioning among your teammates. You're only really running in Righteous, but if you mess up that positioning, it's not the end of the world. It feels like a healer that fits amongst the resto shamans, the druids,

[11:06] and the priests. It doesn't step on Mistweaver's paws with its part melee identity, nor does it step on the claws of Preservation Evoker with its positioning identity. It's unique and honestly, I think it's worth a try if

[11:19] you've never given it a try. And while I'm at it, prot paladin is get prot paladin to feel a little bit better, make it a touch easier to play by not having to play it perfect all the

[11:31] time, I think that paladin as a class is going to be in a really good place. An excellent starting spot for people who want to be able to DPS, heal, and tank all on one class. So, I'm kind of hoping for a future like that. And that's going

[11:45] to do it for this one. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video, and of course, I want to hear from you as well. If you're a Holy Paladin enjoyer, a Holy Paladin player that's maybe taking a break, or somebody

[11:57] new who's checking out a new healer, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you so, so much for watching, and I will see you all in the next one. Take care, you all in the next one. Take care, friends.