[Holy] Talent analysis

In this part I will be giving my opinion on the different talent builds. I will go trough the whole holy talent tree, and have a look at the 20 first points of both protection and retribution in order to complete our specs. I will also add to each talent how much points I put in them for Shibi’s spec.

So, if you don’t feel like reading the whole talent analysis but still want a decent healing spec, feel free to check out Shibi’s future spec (51/20/0)


Spiritual Focus (5)
Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Flash of Light and Holy Light by 14%-70%.
Pushback reduction can come in handy in panic situations: paladins are the only healers that can wear plate, so you will taking much less damage from mobs hitting you then other classes. Together with concentration aura, this will give you a full pushback immunity, meaning you can keep on healing at the same speed even if you have minor mobs (no interrupts or stuns) hitting you. Max it out in all cases.

Seals of the Pure (5)
Increases the damage done by your Seal of Righteousness, Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption and their Judgement effects by 3%-15%.
Extra damage. Now that’s just what we need as healers... no. Unless you want it for solo questing, taking this talent will nerf your healing, so for a pure healing spec leave this out.




Healing Light (3)
Increases the amount healed by your Holy Light, Flash of Light and the effectiveness of Holy Shock spells by 4%-12%.
Extra healing. Must have.

Divine Intellect (5)
Increases your total Intellect by 3%-15%.
Extra mana is a paladin’s god. Take all you can have: you get healing bonus from it and your divine plea will restore more mana.

Unyielding Faith (2)
Reduces the duration of all Fear and Disorient effects by 15%-30%.
Handy for PvP, not worth the points for PvE




Aura Mastery (1)
Increases the radius of your Auras to 40 yds.
Think about it. Your healing has a 40 yard range, and you should be healing mostly at max range. What’s the use of an aura that’s only benefic to you? Take it.

Illumination (5)
After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock heal spell, gives you a 20%-100% chance to gain Mana equal to 60% of the base cost of your spell.
As a paladin you will be critting a lot, meaning each time you crit you are basicaly healing for 40% mana cost, which is good. We like mana efficiency.

Improved Lay on Hands (2)
Gives the target of your Lay on Hands spell a 25%-50% bonus to their armor value from items for 15 seconds. In addition, the cooldown for your Lay on Hands spell is reduced by 2 min-4min.
Used to cost all the paladin’s mana making it a absolute ultimate heal for the paladin, usualy the last one of the fight unless pots were used. This being changed it is now a very good emergency instant cast huge heal to save partymembers that are (very) low on health. It’s a very good talent to have, and it will take Lay on Hands cooldown from 20 down to 16 minutes. And the armor bonus is also very usefull if cast on the tank.




Improved Concentration Aura (3)
Increases the effect of your Concentration Aura by an additional 5%-15% and reduces the duration of any Silence or Interrupt effect used against an affected group member by 10%-30%. The duration reduction does not stack with any other effects.
Here again, it’s good for pvp (maybe) but you don’t need it as a healer. The DPS shouldn’t be taking damage if they do their job, and you have enough with the base 35% from concentration aura to be pushback immune.

Improved Blessing of Wisdom (2)
Increases the effect of your Blessing of Wisdom spell by 10%-20%.
It’s good if you have talents left, but not a vital talent to the build even though extra mana regen might look good. (You lose about 14 mp5 compared to the full talent if you skip it.)




Pure of Heart (2)
Reduces the duration of Curse and Disease effects by 25%-50%.
Good for pvp as well, but points are needed elswhere for a pure PvE healing build.

Divine Favor (5)
Requires Illumination 5
When activated, gives your next Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock spell a 100% critical effect chance.
Must have. Not because of Divine Favor, but because it is a requirement for holy shock.

Sanctified Light (3)
Increases the critical strike chance of your Holy Light and Holy Shock spells by 2%-6%.
Extra crit rating means extra healing and more mana efficiency. Gief.

Blessed Hands (2)
Reduces the mana cost and increases the resistance to Dispel effects of all Hand spells by 15%-30%.
Using your hands should be avoided as much as possible, as it is a pure emergency button for people that are not doing their job by pulling agro off the tank. Again, mobs will rarely try to dispell your hands, meaning this is a pvp talent as well.




Purifying Power (2)
Reduces the mana cost of your Cleanse, Purify, and Consecration spells by 5%-10% and increases the critical strike chance of your Exorcism and Holy Wrath spells by 10%-20%.
Crit rating on Exorcism and Holy Wrath... extra damage, do we want that? And only against undead? For 2 points? No thank you. Even the mana cost reduction isn’t worth the change.

Holy Power (5)
Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy spells by 1%-5%.
Crit rating on heals. Good. More spells at half mana cost and more healing.




Light's Grace (3)
Gives your Holy Light spell a 33%-100% chance to reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light spell by 0.5 sec. This effect lasts 15 sec.
Usefull when you have to chainheal with holy light (for example when everyone is taking damage, as paladins have no AoE heals spamming Holy Light can save the day.

Holy Shock (1)
Requires Divine Favor 1
Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 340-1,402 Holy damage to an enemy, or 481-2,599 healing to an ally.
Instant cast heal, when it crits you can get a instant cast Flash of Light? Gief!

Blessed Life (3)
All attacks against you have a 4%-10% chance to cause half damage.
Good for pvp or solo questing, but our points are needed elswhere if we want to max out our healing.




Infusion of Light (1)
Requires Holy Shock 2
Your Holy Shock critical hits reduce the cast time of your next Flash of light spell by 0.75 – 1.5 secs and your Holy Light spell by 0.50 - 1 secs.
Each time you use Holy Shock it gives a chance to lower

Holy Guidance (5)
Increases your spell power by 4%-20% of your total Intellect.
We need loads of intellect to get our mana pool decent. Now that intellect increases our healing as well? Awesome talent, must have.




Sacred Cleansing (3)
Your Cleanse spell has a 10%-30% to increase the target's resistance to Disease, Magic and Poison by 30% by 10 sec.
Might be a handy spell on mobs that chaincast debuffs during the whole fight, but 3 points is a lot of points that only get usefull on a very few mobs. Personally I dislike it. Handy for PvP tho.

Divine Illumination (1)
Reduces the mana cost of all spells by 50% for 15 sec.
Good spell to have. Good for when the whole group is taking damage and you know you will have to spam holy light, to avoid ending up oom too quickly.

Enlightened Judgements (2)
Increases the range of your judgement spells by 15 – 30 yards and increases chance to hit by 2%-4%.
Makes the use of seal of light easier by letting you judge it from max healing range, give a chance to all players to heal for a small amount each time they hit the judged target.




Judgements of the Pure (5)
Your Judgement spells increase your casting and melee haste by 2%-10% for 1 min.
Faster casting, and you should have it up for the whole fight if you are keeping judgement of light up. I took it, depends on how you feel about it. You can skip this and take the curse and fear resistance improving talents, that’s how you feel about it.




Beacon of Light (1)
The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all targets within a 40 yard radius. Any heals you cast on those targets will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed. Only one target can be Beacon of Light at a time. Lasts 1min.
Handy spell when you’re dealing with tank+offtank situation. Healing both with 1 spell means you are basicaly healing 2 times as much for the same mana cost, and we like that.

Blessing of Kings (1)
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats by 2% for 10 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.
Best blessing you will have to throw on warriors or druid tanks, but keep in mind that Blessing of Kings is worth nothing without Improved Blessings of Kings, which makes it a 5talent points spell.

Improved Blessing of Kings (1)
Requires Blessing of Kings 5
Blessing of Kings 4 Increases the effectiveness of Blessing of Kings by an additional 2%-8%.
Must have talents if you take Blessing of Kings.

Divine Strength (3)
Increases your total Strength by 3%-15%.
Fairly useless as a healer as your main concern will be to stay away from melee. Not much melee AP needed, unless maybe for solo questing. Doesn’t weigh out the adventages of Blessing of Kings.





Stoicism (3)
Reduces the duration of all Stun effects by an additional 10%-30% and reduces the chance that your spells will be dispelled by an additional 10%-30%.
Few mobs stun often: as a healer you shouldn’t get hit by bosses, and normal mobs usualy die fast enough to not stun you twice. (you can bubble out of the first stun if it’s needed. In my opinion this is a pvp talent.

Guardian's Favor (2)
Reduces the cooldown of your Hand of Protection by 60 sec-120 sec and increases the duration of your Hand of Freedom by 2 sec-4 sec.
Can be handy if you are fast enough to cast Hand of Protection when someone is getting realy hurt (doing it on the tank will cause a wipe in 100% of the cases!). Just keep in mind Hand of Protection will only protect your target against physical damage, not spells!

Anticipation (5)
Increases your chance to dodge by 1%-5%.
Can turn in handy when you are taking damage, even though you won’t notice that big of a difference unless you realy are taking a beating. Can be usefull for solo questing when you’re not in an instance tho.




Improved Righteous Fury (3)
While Righteous Fury is active, all damage taken is reduced by 2-6%.
You don’t plan to heal with righteous fury on, do you?

Toughness (5)
Increases your armor value from items by 2%-10% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 6%-30%.
Reduced damage and shorter slowing effects, good to put points in in order to reach the next row but not vital.




Divine Guardian (2)
When Divine Shield is active 15%-30% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin.
You should avoid using your shield, as it is your last line of defence against assaults on your person. If you use it, you might need it later when it’s on cooldown and end up in wiping the party while you could have helped it. In my opinion this is not a talent to take. The 2 other ones are way more interesting.

Improved Hammer of Justice (3)
Decreases the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice spell by 10 sec-30 sec.
Stuns a mob that is attacking you or a target, buying you some time to heal yourself when needed. I recommend putting 2 points into this instead of maxing it, and max Improved Devotion Aura instead. 40 sec cooldown on your Hammer instead of 60 can be a life saver in some cases.

Improved Devotion Aura (3)
Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 17%-50% and increases the amount healed on any target affected by your Devotion aura by 2%-6%.
Extra healing, max this for it is good.




Deflection (5)
Increases you Parry chance by 1-5%.
Just as usefull as Anticipation, if you plan to take damage it’s a possibility. PvP and solo grinding maybe?

Benediction (5)
Reduces the mana cost of all instant cast spells by 2-10%.
As a healer your instant cast spells are fairly limited, being judgement of light and holy shock. I’d recommend skipping it (from healer point of view, that is).




Improved Judgements (5)
Decreases the cooldown of your Judgement spells by 1-2 sec.
The only judgement you should be using is Judgement of light, which needs a refreshment every 9 seconds, so you don’t need the cooldown reducement.

Heart of the Crusader (3)
In addition to the normal effect, your Judgement spells will also increase the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by an additional 1-3%.
This could be a boost to the party’s DPS, take it if you realy want to go holy-retri.

Improved Blessing of Might (2)
Increases the attack power bonus of your Blessing of Might by 12-25%.
Another fairly decent spell, improving the AP boost and thus the party’s DPS.




Vindication (2)
Gives the Paladin's damaging attacks a chance to reduce the target's attributes by 10-20% for 15 sec.
Do we attack when healing? Usefull in PvP and solo gameplay...

Conviction (5)
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with all spells and attacks by 1-5%.
Do we attack when healing? Usefull in PvP and solo gameplay, but that’s about it.

Seal of Command (1)
Gives the Paladin a chance to deal 62-64 additional Holy damage. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 sec. Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing Holy damage. This attack will always be a critical strike if the target is stunned or incapacitated.
A dps move that deals the most damage when wielding a big slow twohander... Healing weapons are mostly fast onehanders... enough said. Use it if you don’t know where to put your points, for PvE.

Pursuit of Justice (2)
Reduces the duration of all Disarm effects by 25-50% and increases movement and mounted movement speed by 8-15%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.
You don’t need your weapon while healing, usualy. And running faster... You have to stick with the tank anyway. Why running faster then him?




Eye for an Eye (2)
All criticals against you cause 10-20% of the damage taken to the attacker as well. The damage caused by Eye for an Eye will not exceed 50% of the Paladin's total health.
Lets hope you don’t take hits... and especialy not crits... PvP and solo questing use mostly.

Sanctified Seals (3)
Increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and attacks by 1-3% and reduces the chance your Seals will be dispelled by 33-100%.
Mobs usualy don’t dispell, but 1-3% crit rating on your healing spells is a good thing to have.

Crusade (3)
Increases all damage caused by 1-3% and all damage against Humanoids, Demons, Undead and Elementals by an additional 1-3%.
Solo gameplay only, for we don’t deal damage.