Welcome Holy Paladins of the world! Are you excited for Blizzard’s next expansion World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor? We are! And that’s why we’re jumping into things straight away! Blizzard has released an early look at the new talents that we may receive when we Holy Paladins reach the new maximum level: 100. Have a read and let us know what you think!
Of course, these are very early talents that appeared to the public at Blizzcon last weekend. These talents may never see the light of day and could be changed drastically before going live. This post is purely for informational purposes and to see the direction Holy Paladins are headed in the next expansion.
The Light Within
- Holy (Bastions of Light)
- Passive
- Beacon of Light can now be placed on up to two targets.
- Protection and Retribution (Empowered Seals)
- Passive
- Your Seals also cause your Judgment to empower you with an additional beneficial effect:
- Judgment of Justice
- Increases your movement speed by 10% for 20 sec.
- Judgment of Insight
- Heals you for 3% of your maximum health every 2.00 sec for 20 sec.
- Judgment of Righteousness
- Increases your attack speed by 10% for 20 sec.
- Judgment of Truth
- Increases your attack power by 10% for 20 sec.
This is an interesting talent to start our talent review off with. For Holy Paladins, this gives us the ability to place our Beacon of Light on two targets at once. This would be great for circumstances such as one on each the main tank and the off tank. Or perhaps one on the main tank and one on yourself while you heal the raid. There aren’t any specifics yet as how it will exactly work, but we like the idea. We’re not sure if you can choose which Beacon you want to keep on a target and change from another, but I’m sure that will be worked out and specified before launch.
For something like 2v2 arena we could see this becoming a pretty strong talent. As no matter who you’re healing, you’re always healing the other!
Seal of Faith
- 623 Mana
- Instant
- Fills you with Holy Light, causing you to gain Faith equal to all damage dealt. Faith acts as spell power toward
the next healing spell you cast.- Holy
- While Seal of Faith is active, all damage dealt is increased by 30%.
- Protection & Retribution
- While Seal of Faith is active, all damage dealt is reduced by 30%.
A bit of a funny worded talent but basically can be compared to a Disc Priest’s Atonement ability. To simplify it: With Seal of Faith active, damage your enemies to boost the next healing spell. We won’t know exact numbers of the damage/heal, but we do know damage dealt by us is increased by 30%. It doesn’t appear to stack, it appears to be a your-next-hit-boosts-your-next-heal. This seems incredibly complicated. Are we expected to Hit, get the boost, Heal. Hit, get the boost, Heal? I feel sorry for those without macros if they choose this one! Requiring enemies to be targeted! It also requires us to be in the Seal of Faith stance, which means we can’t have Seal of Insight active, which takes away 10% haste immediately.
Honestly we can’t see this talent being in anyway attractive for a typical group/raid healer. It seems clunky and a stretch at most to reach that healing model that seems to be leaking from Atonement Disc Priests/Fistweaver Monks. There are some players who like a normal healing-only style, for those of us, another talent not available to us.
Of the two so far, the first talent of course appears to be the best, let’s take a look at the last talent point for Holy Paladins.
Divine Conviction
- Holy (Saved by the Light)
- Passive
- When you or your Beacon of Light target drop below 30% health, you instantly grant the injured target a
protective shield, absorbing up to 30% of their maximum health for 10 sec.- You cannot shield the same person this way twice within 60 sec.
- Protection (Holy Shield)
- Passive
- Increases your block chance by 10% and when you block, you deal 2000 Holy damage to your attacker.
- Retribution (Final Verdict)
- 3 Holy Power, Melee Range
- Instant
- Requires Melee Weapon
- Empowers your weapon with holy energy, and performs a devastating strike, dealing 250% weapon damage as
Holy.- Replaces Templar’s Verdict.
The third talent we take a sneak peek at is Divine Conviction: Holy(Saved by the Light), another adjustment to our Beacon of Light spell through a talent, much like the first, and it is a passive “always-on” talent. Basically it means when our Beacon of Light target drops below 30% health, that target gains a shield for 10 seconds. Pretty straight forward. It can’t be used twice on the same person within 60 seconds? Ok, makes sense.
So let’s use it a lot by Beacon swapping between many targets throughout the fight… Well, that’s an ok idea, but in reality, it’s not often that players other than the tanks will fall below 30% in succession. At least, if you’re topping off they shouldn’t really be anyway, so it’ll probably stay between the main tank and the off tank, providing shields to them IF they drop below 30%. If they don’t drop below 30%, have we got a wasted talent point?
We’re not sure if this is limited to just one Holy Pally, as in, can you have 5 Holy Pallies, all with their beacons on the same target (i.e. main tank) and if the tank drops below 30% they’ll gain 5 shields? It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
From here, we’re probably most excited about the first talent, The Light Within. This is really because I’m an old-school Holy Paladin healer who likes the idea of straight healing instead of DPS-to-heal or shield. All-in-all, we find these new level 100 talents sub-par, with 2 affecting current abilities (Beacon of Light) and 1 providing us with another Seal.
Comparing our excitement of the level 90 talents to level 100 talents, these level 100 talents are hardly a carrot on a stick.
What do you think about these new possible talents for Holy Paladins? Are you excited or a bit dissapointed? Are they headed in the right direction for healing? Let us know in the comments!