[Wrath Classic] Holy Paladin Talents & Glyphs

I may not have played in quite some time, but I played the heck out of this expansion. So if you’re playing Wrath Classic (and I’m still wondering if I will), here’s a look at possible talent trees for you!

I should note that I am overwhelmed with nostalgia when looking at this calculator! (And, for the record, I’m using the Wowhead WotLK Classic Talent Calculator.) Also, in re-reading at least one of my blog posts from… 2009, it says that some failadin I was in a dungeon with had Blessing of Kings and improved Blessing of Kings in their spec — but that doesn’t exist in the calculator? Stuff from 13 years ago is a wee bit fuzzy. I presume some of the balance/quality of life changes are going to be live from the start?

Levels 70-80

Okay, so I’m assuming you’re healing your way to 80 primarily by way of dungeons. If that’s the case, here’s a good build to start with:

52 / 5 / 4

It’s not pretty, I know, I know, but I like having Aura Mastery and 2/2 Enlightened Judgements for the range even at level 70. I am the type of healer who stands wayyyy the hell in the back, much like I did as a hunter. There are so many great talents you can’t even touch yet, which is of the sad-making. Still, let’s go over these, shall we?

Holy Tree: 52 points

5/5 Spiritual Focus is a no-brainer, because as soon as you swap to Concentration Aura, you don’t get any pushback at all on spells. Way better than the damage bonus granted by Seals of the Pure.

5/5 Divine Intellect is next. Intellect is your main stat, period. No ifs, no ands, no buts. Anything that increases your intellect is worth it.

3/3 Healing Light increases the amount healed by your heals. Another no-brainer to take.

0/2 Unyielding Faith because this is largely a PVP talent, especially as it’s so low in the holy tree. Don’t get me wrong, it has its uses, but skip it for now.

5/5 Illumination is still worth it because mana back from a crit is still mana back from a crit.

2/2 Lay on Hands is a yes for me. It adds a big bonus to physical damage reduction and reduces the Lay on Hands cooldown by 4 minutes. (I had to actually look it up. The base cooldown for Lay on Hands is 20 minutes. If you get 2/2 Lay on Hands and use the Lay on Hands Minor Glyph to reduce it by an extra 5 minutes, you now have an 11 minute cooldown on Lay on Hands.)

1/1 Aura Mastery is my choice here, but you don’t super need it. That said, it should help out in The Nexus with the frost stuff at the end, when paired with Frost Resistance Aura. Any fight that fire, frost or shadow resist comes in handy, this is where you can use Aura Mastery. I still lament the fact paladins don’t have a nature resist aura because oooooh, Halls of Lightning would suck much less with it.

2/2 Improved Blessing of Wisdom is my choice, if only because I like to make sure I have one of my preferred buffs. If you’re running with an elemental shaman who’s going to drop improved Mana Spring Totem reliably, this may not be super necessary.

0/3 Improved Concentration Aura, just because we don’t need the improvement to be virtually unstoppable at casting, short of an actual stun or interrupt.

0/2 Blessed Hands makes me sad to skip just because I love Hand of Sacrifice with all of my heart and soul. But it’s something to pick up as you gain levels.

1/1 Divine Favor? Yes please! Guaranteed crit on your next FoL, HL or HS? Glorious. This was part of my “oh shit!” toolkit for ages. You need to run but the tank is about to die? DF, HS, instant Flash of Light, boom! (Instant Flash of Light? Yes. Patience, I’m coming to that.)

3/3 Sanctified Light is, uh, good. Holy Light and Holy Shock increased crit percentage chance by 6%? Bigger heals, more mana back.

0/2 Pure of Heart is more of a PVP talent, although I do have vague recollections of trying this out on Yogg Saron…

5/5 Holy Power means all your Holy spells increase their crit chance by 5%. Cheap of them to make us spend five points here, but yeah.

0/2 Purifying Power, as this is, again, more of a PVP talent or a talent for a niche fight… like Yogg Saron. (SO MUCH CLEANSING, OMG. Fadorable? Are you out there? WTB your dispells, even now.)

1/1 Holy Shock. Well, I’d be shocked (haha) if you didn’t take this one.

3/3 Light’s Grace is absolutely key, especially later in the expansion when we’re just dropping Holy Light bombs. That half-second is absolutely key and is the difference between your target living through Saurfang’s Mark or Algalon’s attacks or Sindragosa’s parry-hasted attacks. Trust me.

0/3 Blessed Life is more of a PVP talent again, except it also doesn’t entirely suck on some niche fights.

5/5 Holy Guidance is amazing and is yet another reason to stack unholy (hahaha, get it?) amounts of Intellect.

0/3 Sacred Cleansing is another PVP talent, but again, this is freaking amazing on Yogg Saron. (I’m sure there are other cleanse-heavy fights this expansion, but clearly Yogg made an impression on me. hahaha.)

5/5 Judgements of the Pure. Oh, I had a love/hate relationship with JotP. Love it for the haste, because that is super overpowered and awesome. On the other hand, finding a global to even judge something, anything, was sometimes really hard. (Twin Valks in TOTGC, Algalon, Saurfang, etc.) Still, this is sick in the face and you should endeavour to have like 95%+ uptime on this, no joke.

1/1 Divine Illumination because who doesn’t want a sweet throughput cooldown that will reduce the mana cost of all spells by 50% for 15 seconds on a 3 minute cooldown?!

2/2 Infusion of Light. So when I was talking about Divine Favor earlier, I was like “why do I remember having instant-cast Flashes of Light?!” This is the reason why. Divine Favor forces a crit. Infusion of Light means that after a crit Holy Shock, your next Flash of Light cast time is reduced by 1.5 seconds, making it instant. The way these three spells/abilities complement each other is just beautiful. (If you don’t need the instant FoL, it boosts your HL crit chance by 20% for the next cast, which makes another great “oh shit!” tool.)

2/2 Enlightened Judgements. Well, okay, this isn’t necessary, at least not at 70. But like I said, I like to stand waaaaaay the hell in the back and this allows me to judge something from wherever I am, basically.

1/1 Beacon of Light. Oh, Beacon of Light. I have such feelings about you. But obviously take it. And enjoy the 100% heal transfer.

Protection Tree: 5 points

Can you guess? :D Yes, 5/5 Divinity is what we want here right now. All healing done to and by you is increased by 5%.

Retribution Tree: 4 points

I go for 4/5 Benediction here. Why is that? Because it reduces the mana cost of all instant cast spells.

“But Kurn, that’s silly,” you might say, “we only have Holy Shock as an instant cast spell!”

Nope, we have: Judgements, Sacred Shield, Blessings, Beacon of Light (yo, that’s 35% of base mana, folks!), Aura Mastery, Cleanse, Divine Favor, Divine Illumination, Divine Plea, and, oh yeah, Holy Shock. (I’m probably forgetting some.) When you’re casting like mad(rana? haha) and your Sacred Shield needs to be refreshed AND your Judgements of the Pure need to be refreshed AND your Beacon is falling off AND your mana is low, you’ll be really glad you have points here. This is probably the first thing I’d max out at 71.

Kurn’s Suggestions for Talents to 80

• 71: Max out Benediction
• 72-73: You may or may not want to start putting points into Improved Blessing of Might. It really depends on what your group looks like and such. I like improved blessings myself, so I’d probably drop 2/2 in there. If you don’t need Imp Might, because you’re always with a warrior who’s keeping up Battle Shout or whatever, look into 2/2 Guardian’s Favor in the Prot tree, because we want to get a little further down there.
• 74-76: If you went for Guardian’s Favor, get 3/5 Anticipation. We do this to open up the third tier in protection, which holds Divine Sacrifice and Improved Righteous Fury. If you went for Imp Might, that’s cool, now go for Guardian’s Favor and a point in Anticipation. (Why Anticipation and not Divine Strength or something else? Because healers have an unfortunate habit of getting beat on by angry mobs. Anticipation is straight-up chance to dodge. If you’re facing the mob, they’ll have a slightly harder time hitting you, which may allow you to bubble/hearth or cast Divine Intervention on someone to save a wipe.)
• 77-80: 1/1 Divine Sacrifice and 3/3 Improved Righteous Fury if you have the points. If not, get Divine Sacrifice and 1/3 Improved Righteous Fury. Why Improved Righteous Fury? You should not use Righteous Fury all willy-nilly, but on fights with persistent auras and few to no adds, this is godly. I used this on Heroic Sindragosa… and other fights, I’m sure.

Level 80: Raiding Spec 1 (no DG, no Imp Might)

This spec presumes you have access to the equivalent of Improved Might, either through another paladin (a ret or prot) or a warrior. It also presumes it’s not a gimmicky fight that requires a ridiculous amount of cleansing or where Divine Guardian would come in super handy.

54 / 12 / 5

Basically, here, I just fill up Blessed Hands, then get Benediction topped out and add Divine Sacrifice. DS is not a bad cooldown on its own, but Divine Guardian is superior.

Level 80: Raiding Spec 2 (Divine Guardian)

This makes me sad because oh the things we cut out to have DG!

52 / 17 / 2

Like it hurts to drop to 2/5 Benediction. If your mana is suffering too much, you can steal from Enlightened Judgements for a point there and, depending on the fight, might want to get rid of Aura Mastery. This allows for a 2/2 Divine Guardian build. In Wrath, I would typically use DS/DS (it was DS/DG, really) in Heroic Putricide, on Heroic Valks, Heroic Sindragosa… yeah, it came in handy. You can also steal from Imp Wisdom if you have a reliable improved mana spring totem available.

Level 80: Raiding Spec 3 (CLEANSE ALL THE THINGS!!!)

59 / 7 / 5

Here, we drop to the basics in Prot and Ret, going with 5/5 Divinity and 2/2 Guardian’s Favor and 5/5 Benediction so we can go all in on:

2/2 Pure of Heart. This only affects you, but I don’t know about you, when there’s some curse on me and I can’t decurse, it’s happy times if it doesn’t last full duration.

2/2 Purifying Power reduces the cost of your Cleanse etc by 10%. MORE CLEANSING PLZ.

3/3 Sacred Cleansing is sick because it has a 30% chance to increase your cleanse target’s resistance to Diseases, Magic and Poison effects by 30% for 10 seconds. I remember testing this on Yogg where it’s basically CLEANSAPALOOZA and it made a difference.

Level 80: Raiding Spec 4 (Conviction)

51 / 5 / 15

If you don’t need Aura Mastery and want even more crits, look at Conviction in Ret. It increases your chance to crit with all spells and attacks by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Glyphs!

Geez, I almost forgot about Glyphs.

… oh lord. I forgot about these glyphs.

Major:

• Glyph of Seal of Light (5% more healing!) / Glyph of Seal of Wisdom (5% less cost on healing!)
• Glyph of Holy Shock (reduces the cooldown by 1 second)
• Glyph of Flash of Light (5% extra crit!) / Glyph of Holy Light (splash healing!)

Basically, these glyphs are on a per-fight basis except Holy Shock. I hate using a glyph slot on it but it’s a spell we should be using super freaking often. Unless you are seriously JUST Holy Light bombing, you should have the Glyph of Holy Shock.

As to the others, if your heals are lacking a little oomph, use Glyph of Seal of Light. If you’re overhealing like whoah or are running out of mana, use Glyph of Seal of Wisdom. Remember (and I had to look this up!) that you can judge anything as long as you have a seal up. So you can still judge light if you use Seal of Wisdom or judge wisdom if you have Seal of Light up.

Glyph of Flash of Light vs. Glyph of Holy Light… while it doesn’t matter at the start of the expansion so much, it will matter later on as paladins decide whether or not to sort of “specialize” in spellpower and Flash of Light builds or haste and Holy Light builds. In a 25-person raid with lots of clumped people? Glyph of Holy Light all the way. Otherwise, probably Glyph of Flash of Light.

Also, Glyph of Divinity doesn’t suck — it gives you and your target back mana when you use Lay on Hands. But again, probably situational.

Minor:

• Glyph of Lay on Hands: This is the only real game-changer in the minor glyphs.

I would recommend Glyph of Blessing of Kings (cost reduced by 50%, which is handy when you’re the pally buffing kings and someone gets rezzed in-battle), as well as Glyph of the Wise, which just reduces your Seal of Wisdom cost by 50%.

In closing…

I tend to like a deeper Prot build than a Ret build, and I’m big on utility. So if I’m not going to have Imp Might, I’m gonna aim for Divine Guardian in Prot and also have Blessed Hands and Aura Mastery and such if I can eke out the points.

How about you?