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Why You Should Play Holy Paladin in Dragonflight (And Why You Shouldn't)
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Geposted
28.11.2022 um 01:21
von
clarius
Unsure what class to play in Dragonflight? Whether you're a returning player coming back to play the new expansion or a longtime veteran just looking to explore a new main or alt, we've got you covered.
We break down all the reasons you should consider playing Holy Paladin in Dragonflight and even throw in a few reasons why you might not. From new talents you'll pickup on the way to level 70, to the unique Dragonflight utility that will make you an asset to your allies, join us as we explore Dragonflight Holy Paladin!
Why You Should Play Holy Paladin in Dragonflight (and Why You Shouldn't)
Holy Paladin is a fast paced melee healer that specializes in spot healing. The playstyle revolves around building and spending Holy Power and should be familiar to anyone that has tried to play specs with other combo point systems. The spec at its core is rather basic, but it has a lot of room for improvement and a fairly high skillcap. The fact that you're essentially playing a melee dps while also having to keep your eyes on your raid frames can be overwhelming at first to new Holy Paladins, but mastering your positioning, rotation and target selection is what sets great Holy Paladins apart from bad ones.
Why You Should Play Holy Paladin in Dragonflight
Holy Paladin will continue to have a quite unique playstyle compared to other healers. They are the only healing spec to use a Combo Point system, they are one of only two healing specs that fights while standing in melee. Holy Paladin will still be the masters of passive tank healing through
Flamme des Glaubens
and
Flamme der Zuversicht
. They also brings strong and consistent healing, especially spot-healing, to your raid.
The talent trees provide a lot of varying build options for Holy, specifically we can play the traditional melee build where we focus on generating Holy Power through
Heiliger Schock
,
Kreuzfahrerstoß
and
Hammer des Zorns
, or we can create builds that shifts the focus more on spending
Lichtinfusion
procs to cast
Heiliges Licht
on our
Flamme des Glaubens
or
Flamme der Zuversicht
to generate Holy Power. Note that both builds will still be in melee as much as possible.
As always, Paladins bring a lot of utility to any group, a lot of it very powerful and unique.
Aura der Hingabe
, a 3% raid wide damage reduction.
Segen des Schutzes
, an external physical immunity that can also be used as a threat-dropper.
Segen der Aufopferung
, a strong external damage reduction that can be made even stronger through the talents
Opfer des Gerechten
and
Widerhallende Segen
. If both are picked it essentially makes
Segen der Aufopferung
a 1 minute cooldown ~41% damage reduction, which is incredibly strong.
Zurechtweisung
, a melee range kick.
Fürbitte
, a battle rez.
... and more.
Level 70 Talent Points for Holy Paladin
The extra talent points we get when leveling to level 70 in Dragonflight will come in very handy and will allow for much more freedom and agency in our talent choice and will make the spec feel more complete. All of the points will be spent on throughput options in both the class and the spec tree.
Here you can see an overview of how the extra talent points can be spent, with Green being mandatory picks and Purple being flexible talents that depend on the situation and whether you're going for a melee or caster build.
In the general class tree there is not much freedom of choice as we will spend the extra points to go down the left side of the tree to pick up
Göttliches Streben
,
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
. Especially
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
are incredibly powerful, and should be played around to keep up both buffs as much as you possibly can.
Siegel der Wohltätigkeit
is decent but could be dropped if you really need to pick up something elsewhere in the tree.
The spec tree is where we mostly feel how the extra talent points give us more options. Specifically we will now be able to pick
Erwachen
,
Flamme der Zuversicht
, and
Lichtschimmer
all at once, and still have 3 talent points to spare. How you spend these points depends a lot on which build you're going for. As an example you could go for
Macht des Kreuzfahrers
and
Himmlisches Erbe
if you're going for the so called "Melee Build". Meanwhile, as the "Caster Build" it would make more sense to go for
Infloreszenz des Sonnenbrunnens
for extra
Lichtinfusion
procs and
Segen des Sommers
to make up for the damage you lose for not playing the melee build.
Other interesting options could be
Anbrechender Morgen
if the raid is going to be very spread out and we will need more range on our
Licht der Morgendämmerung
to be able to reach enough players, or
Barriere des Glaubens
as the "Caster Build" if the tanks need the extra healing or if there are heavy dots going out on a few players at a time that need extra attention.
Holy Paladin Utility in Dragonflight
All Paladin specs get a battle rez,
Fürbitte
, as a new spell in Dragonflight. While in raids this isn't a big deal it is good to be able to bring it for M+. Additionally, in M+, we get
Segen der Aufopferung
on a 1 minute cooldown with
Opfer des Gerechten
, and with
Widerhallende Segen
it becomes a ~41% damage reduction. We also now bring a kick with
Zurechtweisung
talented.
Segen des Schutzes
is also still very powerful when used correctly, either to remove heavy bleeds, or to allow DPS to not have to worry about aggro while it lasts.
It is also now possible to get both
Blendendes Licht
and
Faust der Gerechtigkeit
.
Blendendes Licht
is very strong for stopping multiple mob casts at once, while
Faust der Gerechtigkeit
lowers the cooldown on
Hammer der Gerechtigkeit
significantly. This gives us a lot of mob control that can make a big difference when used well.
In Dragonflight, all Paladin specs will still have access to
Aura der Hingabe
, which is a very powerful raid buff. 3% damage reduction cannot be overestimated in a progression environment. But while all Paladin specs might get access to
Aura der Hingabe
, Holy is the only spec that also gets
Aurenmeisterschaft
which can boost
Aura der Hingabe
to a 15% damage reduction for 8 seconds.
Additionally, Retribution Paladins strongly prefer to use
Aura der Vergeltung
, and Protection Paladins can sometimes be hard to fit in to a raid as the tank spots are often used to fit in other raid buffs. This means that in general, Holy, is the easiest and most effective Paladin spec to slot in for
Aura der Hingabe
.
Damage while Healing
Holy Paladin is in a good spot when it comes to our damage output and we are blessed with the ability to do damage while we do our normal healing rotation. In recent expansions this has been recognized as more and more important within the broader community. Whether it be with
Kreuzfahrerstoß
,
Hammer des Zorns
,
Heiliger Schock
, or with
Weihe
and
Richturteil
(with
Goldener Pfad
and
Richturteil des Lichts
talented) Holy Paladin has a lot of options that can contribute both to healing and damage and it is very flexible in that regard.
Playstyles in Dragonflight
Over the course of Shadowlands, many paladins have grown familiar with the
Maraads letzter Atemzug
playstyle which puts heavy emphasis on spot healing through empowered
Licht des Märtyrers
s. This playstyle is still available in the talent trees and is likely to continue to be viable in a progress environment.
The more traditional playstyle of focusing more on spreading
Lichtschimmer
by optimizing your
Heiliger Schock
s with
Macht des Kreuzfahrers
has only become stronger in Dragonflight with
Geweihter Zorn
and
Erwachen
now available at the same time, where in Shadowlands these were on the same talent row. The Kyrian ability
Göttlicher Glockenschlag
will also be carried forward as a talent in Dragonflight.
A third playstyle that focuses on spending
Lichtinfusion
procs to generate Holy Power is also going to be an option in Dragonflight. This build is a bit unorthodox as you will primarily be casting
Heiliges Licht
on your
Flamme des Glaubens
or
Flamme der Zuversicht
to generate two Holy Power with each cast. This playstyle is possible because of
Turm der Strahlen
, and it is pretty unintuitive to veteran Holy Paladins, since casting directly on your beacons has always been a mistake due losing out on the healing transfer from the beacon itself. But the value of the extra Holy Power is sadly more than the healing you lose from casting directly on your beacon.
Why You Shouldn't Play Holy Paladin in Dragonflight
There are many reasons why Holy Paladin might not be something you will enjoy, and a lot of those reasons might be what someone else enjoys the most about Holy Paladin. The main dividing issues are the dependency on being in melee and the nature of being a Combo Point healer.
The Restrictive Nature of Holy Power as a Healing Resource
Holy Power is in its nature restrictive, that is the whole point of combo point systems. It is restrictive in an attempt to create "interesting" choices on a GCD to GCD basis. And at its core, Holy Power, does succeed in that attempt relatively well. The choice between whether to cast a generator or a heal someone with a spender is fine in theory.
However, it falls short when you think more about it and you realize that there is actually almost no choice to be made ever. The amount and the timing of your spenders is entirely decided by the cooldown of your generators. You do not make your decision about when to spend Holy Power based on when it is best used for healing. It is, in fact, dictated by when your generators, mainly
Heiliger Schock
, are ready. Your spenders are simply spells you weave in between your generators in an effort to maximize your overall spenders.
The whole Holy Power system for Holy Paladin has devolved in to "quantity over quality", more is always better. This is an issue because as a healer you naturally want to do what is best to keep people alive, and obviously your spenders are your best healing spells, but this intuitive healing mentality is in direct conflict with what Holy Power does.
This problem has arisen because too much additional power has been tied to generating as much Holy Power as possible.
Erwachen
,
Göttliche Bestimmung
,
Siegel der Wohltätigkeit
,
Nachbild
and
Unendliches Licht
all contribute to making quantity of Holy Power spenders more important than the quality of them.
Dusk and Dawn
While Holy Power is already very restricting,
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
only amplify this issue. They requires us to constantly hit both 0 and 5 Holy Power. So now we are left in a situation where we need to play to optimize our Holy Power generation while also being forced to play a mini game of keeping two separate short duration buffs up that requires us to ping pong between 0 and 5 Holy Power every 20 seconds.
When you are simply trying to maximize Holy Power generation, it is fine to spend that Holy Power at any point as long as it doesn't decrease the amount of Holy Power you can generate later. For example it was fine to just spend at 3 or 4 Holy Power at any point if that's what fit best at that point in your rotation, and you didn't cut in to the cooldown of your generators. But with
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
you are forced to hit both 5 and 0 Holy power every 20 seconds. This almost forces us in to a rotation of going 5 → 2 → 3 → 0 → 5 Holy Power, and then repeat this over and over. This completely removes any flexibility in our rotation, and this is disastrous for a role (healer) that, by the nature of its job, needs to be flexible.
Even if we ignore the
Segen des Abends
portion, which is sub-optimal at best, it still removes a lot of freedom of choice we have over using our spenders. The lack of agency about when we want to cast our most powerful heals is outright counter-intuitive gameplay as a healer, and will be off putting for a lot of players. This is still the case even with the recent duration increase.
I cannot overstate how bad
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
feel to play around as Holy. Even though the recent increase to its duration does make it slightly easier and more forgiving to play around, it still puts more rotational restrictions on a spec that is already extremely restricted. I do not see a way to make this talent "fun" for Holy without either tuning it so low that we wont play around it, or making it occur at lower Holy Power thresholds, but doing either of those would just make the talent play itself which isn't a solution either.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if enjoy playing a fast paced, melee healer that has a decision to make every global, then Holy Paladin might be the healing spec for you. If you do not enjoy Holy Power, a strict rotation, and a lack of burst healing then Holy Paladin is probably not for you.
Aura der Hingabe
, a 3% raid wide damage reduction.
Segen des Schutzes
, an external physical immunity that can also be used as a threat-dropper.
Segen der Aufopferung
, a strong external damage reduction that can be made even stronger through the talents
Opfer des Gerechten
and
Widerhallende Segen
. If both are picked it essentially makes
Segen der Aufopferung
a 1 minute cooldown ~41% damage reduction, which is incredibly strong.
Zurechtweisung
, a melee range kick.
Fürbitte
, a battle rez.
... and more.
Level 70 Talent Points for Holy Paladin
The extra talent points we get when leveling to level 70 in Dragonflight will come in very handy and will allow for much more freedom and agency in our talent choice and will make the spec feel more complete. All of the points will be spent on throughput options in both the class and the spec tree.
Here you can see an overview of how the extra talent points can be spent, with Green being mandatory picks and Purple being flexible talents that depend on the situation and whether you're going for a melee or caster build.
In the general class tree there is not much freedom of choice as we will spend the extra points to go down the left side of the tree to pick up
Göttliches Streben
,
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
. Especially
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
are incredibly powerful, and should be played around to keep up both buffs as much as you possibly can.
Siegel der Wohltätigkeit
is decent but could be dropped if you really need to pick up something elsewhere in the tree.
The spec tree is where we mostly feel how the extra talent points give us more options. Specifically we will now be able to pick
Erwachen
,
Flamme der Zuversicht
, and
Lichtschimmer
all at once, and still have 3 talent points to spare. How you spend these points depends a lot on which build you're going for. As an example you could go for
Macht des Kreuzfahrers
and
Himmlisches Erbe
if you're going for the so called "Melee Build". Meanwhile, as the "Caster Build" it would make more sense to go for
Infloreszenz des Sonnenbrunnens
for extra
Lichtinfusion
procs and
Segen des Sommers
to make up for the damage you lose for not playing the melee build.
Other interesting options could be
Anbrechender Morgen
if the raid is going to be very spread out and we will need more range on our
Licht der Morgendämmerung
to be able to reach enough players, or
Barriere des Glaubens
as the "Caster Build" if the tanks need the extra healing or if there are heavy dots going out on a few players at a time that need extra attention.
Holy Paladin Utility in Dragonflight
All Paladin specs get a battle rez,
Fürbitte
, as a new spell in Dragonflight. While in raids this isn't a big deal it is good to be able to bring it for M+. Additionally, in M+, we get
Segen der Aufopferung
on a 1 minute cooldown with
Opfer des Gerechten
, and with
Widerhallende Segen
it becomes a ~41% damage reduction. We also now bring a kick with
Zurechtweisung
talented.
Segen des Schutzes
is also still very powerful when used correctly, either to remove heavy bleeds, or to allow DPS to not have to worry about aggro while it lasts.
It is also now possible to get both
Blendendes Licht
and
Faust der Gerechtigkeit
.
Blendendes Licht
is very strong for stopping multiple mob casts at once, while
Faust der Gerechtigkeit
lowers the cooldown on
Hammer der Gerechtigkeit
significantly. This gives us a lot of mob control that can make a big difference when used well.
In Dragonflight, all Paladin specs will still have access to
Aura der Hingabe
, which is a very powerful raid buff. 3% damage reduction cannot be overestimated in a progression environment. But while all Paladin specs might get access to
Aura der Hingabe
, Holy is the only spec that also gets
Aurenmeisterschaft
which can boost
Aura der Hingabe
to a 15% damage reduction for 8 seconds.
Additionally, Retribution Paladins strongly prefer to use
Aura der Vergeltung
, and Protection Paladins can sometimes be hard to fit in to a raid as the tank spots are often used to fit in other raid buffs. This means that in general, Holy, is the easiest and most effective Paladin spec to slot in for
Aura der Hingabe
.
Damage while Healing
Holy Paladin is in a good spot when it comes to our damage output and we are blessed with the ability to do damage while we do our normal healing rotation. In recent expansions this has been recognized as more and more important within the broader community. Whether it be with
Kreuzfahrerstoß
,
Hammer des Zorns
,
Heiliger Schock
, or with
Weihe
and
Richturteil
(with
Goldener Pfad
and
Richturteil des Lichts
talented) Holy Paladin has a lot of options that can contribute both to healing and damage and it is very flexible in that regard.
Playstyles in Dragonflight
Over the course of Shadowlands, many paladins have grown familiar with the
Maraads letzter Atemzug
playstyle which puts heavy emphasis on spot healing through empowered
Licht des Märtyrers
s. This playstyle is still available in the talent trees and is likely to continue to be viable in a progress environment.
The more traditional playstyle of focusing more on spreading
Lichtschimmer
by optimizing your
Heiliger Schock
s with
Macht des Kreuzfahrers
has only become stronger in Dragonflight with
Geweihter Zorn
and
Erwachen
now available at the same time, where in Shadowlands these were on the same talent row. The Kyrian ability
Göttlicher Glockenschlag
will also be carried forward as a talent in Dragonflight.
A third playstyle that focuses on spending
Lichtinfusion
procs to generate Holy Power is also going to be an option in Dragonflight. This build is a bit unorthodox as you will primarily be casting
Heiliges Licht
on your
Flamme des Glaubens
or
Flamme der Zuversicht
to generate two Holy Power with each cast. This playstyle is possible because of
Turm der Strahlen
, and it is pretty unintuitive to veteran Holy Paladins, since casting directly on your beacons has always been a mistake due losing out on the healing transfer from the beacon itself. But the value of the extra Holy Power is sadly more than the healing you lose from casting directly on your beacon.
Why You Shouldn't Play Holy Paladin in Dragonflight
There are many reasons why Holy Paladin might not be something you will enjoy, and a lot of those reasons might be what someone else enjoys the most about Holy Paladin. The main dividing issues are the dependency on being in melee and the nature of being a Combo Point healer.
The Restrictive Nature of Holy Power as a Healing Resource
Holy Power is in its nature restrictive, that is the whole point of combo point systems. It is restrictive in an attempt to create "interesting" choices on a GCD to GCD basis. And at its core, Holy Power, does succeed in that attempt relatively well. The choice between whether to cast a generator or a heal someone with a spender is fine in theory.
However, it falls short when you think more about it and you realize that there is actually almost no choice to be made ever. The amount and the timing of your spenders is entirely decided by the cooldown of your generators. You do not make your decision about when to spend Holy Power based on when it is best used for healing. It is, in fact, dictated by when your generators, mainly
Heiliger Schock
, are ready. Your spenders are simply spells you weave in between your generators in an effort to maximize your overall spenders.
The whole Holy Power system for Holy Paladin has devolved in to "quantity over quality", more is always better. This is an issue because as a healer you naturally want to do what is best to keep people alive, and obviously your spenders are your best healing spells, but this intuitive healing mentality is in direct conflict with what Holy Power does.
This problem has arisen because too much additional power has been tied to generating as much Holy Power as possible.
Erwachen
,
Göttliche Bestimmung
,
Siegel der Wohltätigkeit
,
Nachbild
and
Unendliches Licht
all contribute to making quantity of Holy Power spenders more important than the quality of them.
Dusk and Dawn
While Holy Power is already very restricting,
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
only amplify this issue. They requires us to constantly hit both 0 and 5 Holy Power. So now we are left in a situation where we need to play to optimize our Holy Power generation while also being forced to play a mini game of keeping two separate short duration buffs up that requires us to ping pong between 0 and 5 Holy Power every 20 seconds.
When you are simply trying to maximize Holy Power generation, it is fine to spend that Holy Power at any point as long as it doesn't decrease the amount of Holy Power you can generate later. For example it was fine to just spend at 3 or 4 Holy Power at any point if that's what fit best at that point in your rotation, and you didn't cut in to the cooldown of your generators. But with
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
you are forced to hit both 5 and 0 Holy power every 20 seconds. This almost forces us in to a rotation of going 5 → 2 → 3 → 0 → 5 Holy Power, and then repeat this over and over. This completely removes any flexibility in our rotation, and this is disastrous for a role (healer) that, by the nature of its job, needs to be flexible.
Even if we ignore the
Segen des Abends
portion, which is sub-optimal at best, it still removes a lot of freedom of choice we have over using our spenders. The lack of agency about when we want to cast our most powerful heals is outright counter-intuitive gameplay as a healer, and will be off putting for a lot of players. This is still the case even with the recent duration increase.
I cannot overstate how bad
Abendrot und Morgenrot
and
Siegel der Ordnung
feel to play around as Holy. Even though the recent increase to its duration does make it slightly easier and more forgiving to play around, it still puts more rotational restrictions on a spec that is already extremely restricted. I do not see a way to make this talent "fun" for Holy without either tuning it so low that we wont play around it, or making it occur at lower Holy Power thresholds, but doing either of those would just make the talent play itself which isn't a solution either.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if enjoy playing a fast paced, melee healer that has a decision to make every global, then Holy Paladin might be the healing spec for you. If you do not enjoy Holy Power, a strict rotation, and a lack of burst healing then Holy Paladin is probably not for you.
For more information on playing Holy Paladin, please see our class guide updated for Dragonflight Pre-Patch Phase 2:
Holy Paladin
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