WoW Forever Paladin Guide: New Abilities, Talents and Every Spec

Why Paladin is the class to watch

All three Paladin specs were reworked for WoW Forever, with the same goal across the board: make each one viable and more fun to play. Add that the Horde gets Paladins for the first time, through the Undead, and Paladin could easily become one of the most played classes at launch, a big change from its middle-of-the-pack place in Classic.

Everything here is from the beta and can still change. Forever is also a live game rather than a fixed patch, so expect balance changes after launch as well. The level 30 beta build already adjusted several Paladin numbers, and this guide uses the current ones.

New abilities

• Holy Strike — learned at level 6. An instant strike for part of your weapon damage plus Holy damage, on a short cooldown. For a class that spent vanilla mostly auto-attacking, it’s finally a button you want to press, and several talents build on it.
• Seal of Fury — learned at level 10, the tanking Seal Paladins never had. Your attacks deal extra Holy damage, and with a shield equipped each attack also gives you an absorb shield worth 50% of that damage. Its Judgement deals Holy damage and taunts the target for 4 seconds, from about 10 yards away.

Changes to the baseline kit

• Judgement keeps your Seal. In vanilla every Judgement consumed your Seal, so you paid to recast it each time. Now it doesn’t, and that changes Paladin mana more than anything else.
• Blessings last an hour, and the old talents that improved them (such as Improved Blessing of Might) are built in. Greater Blessings still cover the whole party or raid. Blessing of Freedom and Blessing of Protection are still Blessings too, so casting one replaces whatever Blessing your target had.
• Blessing of Kings and Consecration are baseline at level 20. Kings used to be a Protection talent.
• Consecration hits the first 4 enemies hardest. They take the full damage; anything beyond them takes a little. Blizzard wants Forever to move away from gathering huge packs and AoEing them down, and this is part of that.
• Lay on Hands is reported to be on a 20-minute cooldown on the beta, down from an hour.
• Divine Shield now halves the damage you deal while it’s up, instead of slowing your attacks.

Retribution

Blizzard has said it wants two distinct ways to play Retribution in Forever: classic seal-twisting, and a caster-leaning “Shockadin”.

Seal-twisting Retribution

The important talents are near the top and at the bottom of the tree:

• Holy Conduit — Consecration, Holy Wrath, Exorcism and Hammer of Wrath cost 40% less mana.
• Sanctified Judgement — Judgement returns 60% of the judged Seal’s mana cost.
• Vindication — now lasts 30 seconds instead of 8, so it’s easy to keep up.
• Seal of Command — unchanged: a chance on hit to deal extra Holy damage.
• Sacred Arbiter — Holy Strike deals 20% more damage and refreshes every Judgement on the target. With other Paladins judging Seal of Light, Seal of Wisdom and Seal of the Crusader, your Retribution Paladin keeps all three up by pressing Holy Strike, much like Crusader Strike in The Burning Crusade.
• Instrument of Law — cuts the cast time of Hammer of Wrath and lowers your threat while Righteous Fury is off.
• Champion of the Light — gives you spell damage based on your Intellect. The level 30 build cut it to 20/40/60% of your Intellect per rank, down from 33/66/100%.
• Twist of Light — the new capstone, and the talent that makes seal-twisting playable. When you swap Seal of Command, Righteousness, Fury or Justice for another Seal, your next melee attack still applies the old Seal’s effect. No more staring at a swing timer. It also makes Seals 20% cheaper.

From the Holy tree, the extra Strength, Seal damage and shorter Exorcism and Holy Wrath cooldowns round the build out.

One early concern is Windfury Totem. Seal-twisting has always relied on two Seals that can both trigger Windfury. Seal of Command can, because it’s a weapon attack; Seal of Righteousness adds spell damage, and it isn’t clear yet whether it can. If it can’t, twisting may fall short of what it was in The Burning Crusade, though Blizzard has likely accounted for this.

Shockadin

The hybrid build takes Holy Shock from the Holy tree, with Divine Precision next to it for spell hit, and Consecrated Ground, which makes your Holy spells hit 10% harder against enemies in your Consecration. From Retribution it takes most of the usual talents, with Champion of the Light being close to essential. Its nerf in the level 30 build hurts Shockadin the most.

For now Shockadin looks like it needs help from gear, such as a tier set or trinket that lets Exorcism hit any enemy type or resets Holy Shock. Blizzard says it wants the build to be real, so expect it to get that support.

Protection

Protection looks like the biggest winner of the three. Seal of Fury already gives it mana, mitigation and a taunt, and the talents build on all three:

• Redoubt — now triggers from any damaging melee attack against you, not only critical hits, so it’s far more reliable. The level 30 build lowered its block bonus a little.
• Shield Specialization — your blocks restore 6% of your maximum mana, at most once every 3 seconds, and your shield absorbs 30% more. As a shield tank you block constantly, so this ticks almost all the time.
• Improved Righteous Fury — reduces all damage you take by 6% while Righteous Fury is active. The threat bonus is now part of the base ability.
• Improved Seal of Fury — when Seal of Fury’s absorb shield is used up, you gain mana, more the higher level the enemy is. Ideal for dungeon and raid bosses.
• Swift Judgement — finishes your Judgement cooldown and makes the next one free, which with Seal of Fury is a second taunt. Players report a 1-minute cooldown.
• Templar’s Bulwark — an absorb shield worth 100% of your maximum health for 8 seconds, reported on a 5-minute cooldown. One of the strongest personal defensives in the game.
• Reckoning — a chance to gain an extra attack after blocking, and after taking a critical hit. That feeds straight back into threat and Seal of Fury.
• Iron Creed — Holy Strike makes 30% more threat, and with Righteous Fury on it also reduces your damage taken by 15% for 6 seconds. Keep Holy Strike on cooldown and it’s close to permanent.
• Holy Shield — close to vanilla: 30% more block chance for 10 seconds (up from 20% in the level 30 build), Holy damage to attackers, 4 charges.

Outside the tree, a shorter Holy Strike cooldown, extra parry, a shorter Judgement cooldown (more taunts), Holy Conduit for cheaper Consecration, and the reworked Vindication, which now works much like a Demoralizing Shout, all fit.

Put together, Protection has answers to every problem it used to have: mana from blocks and Seal of Fury, two taunts, good AoE and single-target threat, and big cooldowns.

Holy

Holy is still the strong, efficient single-target healer it always was, built around big heals, with some new tools:

• Voice of Truth — 6 seconds of immunity to silence and interrupts, on a 3-minute cooldown, much like Aura Mastery used to be.
• Reverence — 30% of your mana regeneration continues while you cast.
• Illumination — nerfed: a critical heal now returns 50% of the spell’s base cost, down from 100% in vanilla.
• Divine Favor — still guarantees a critical effect on your next spell.
• Infusion of Light — when Flash of Light or Holy Shock crits, your next Holy Light casts 1 second faster.
• Holy Shock — its cooldown is cut from 30 to 10 seconds, with a lower mana cost and better scaling.
• Divine Precision — spell hit, for the times you need to land a Judgement or Hammer of Wrath.
• Holy Power — 15% more critical strike chance on Holy Shock and Holy Strike, and 5% on your other spells.
• Light’s Vigil — the new capstone. A 1.5-second cast that marks a target for 30 seconds; your next Holy Shock on them has no cooldown and turns into an AoE: on an ally it heals their whole party, on an enemy it deals extra damage and refunds 75% of Light’s Vigil’s mana.

With Illumination halved and world buffs gone from raids, Holy won’t be as mana-rich as in vanilla, but it still looks very strong. One thing to test at higher levels is how Light’s Vigil and Illumination combine: if the refunds stack up, chain-casting Light’s Vigil might come close to paying for itself. From the other trees, the improved utility Blessings in Protection and a shorter Judgement cooldown from Retribution are enough.

Leveling as a Paladin

Retribution was already one of the faster early levelers in vanilla, and in Forever it gets stronger as you go: Holy Strike from level 6, Vindication that stays up for 30 seconds, and passive spell damage from Champion of the Light later on. Expect it to be one of the better leveling specs.

Protection can level too, especially from about 20–30 onward, once you have talents that return mana. Before that it’s slower than Retribution, but still much better than vanilla Protection. See our leveling guide for the rest of the route to 60.

Paladin in PvP

• Holy has strong tools: Unyielding Faith now cuts fear and disorient durations by 30% instead of giving a chance to resist, and Voice of Truth covers Holy Paladin’s old weakness to silences and interrupts. Light’s Vigil is built for groups, so it may matter less in PvP.
• Retribution is about big seal-twisting bursts, ideally with Windfury: little mobility, but heavy damage when it connects.
• Protection probably won’t deal enough damage to matter in PvP, which is just as well: tank specs that work in PvP tend to be miserable to fight.

How much has Paladin changed?

A lot. Holy looks very strong in PvE and serviceable in PvP. Retribution has more buttons, better mana and real spell-power scaling, with the Windfury question still open. Protection is the biggest winner: mana, mitigation, threat, AoE, cooldowns and two taunts, all answered at once.

The Paladin tier set from the Hyjal Summit raid is Justice; see every set in our tier sets guide.