With the Cataclysm Pre-Patch, many class talent and ability changes arrive for WoW Classic. There are plenty of new and overhauled spells and systems. Holy Paladins will have most of their Cataclysm toolkit available at level 80, including some new spells and a new resource bar to manage.
What’s New
Holy Power
You have a new resource to manage in the Cataclysm Pre-Patch in addition to your mana pool. This resource is Holy Power, which shows up as an extra bar under your unit frame that lights up as you gain charges. Some of your abilities will generate Holy Power and some will spend it. You can have up to three charges at a time. Your next Holy Power ability will consume all of the charges you have, increasing its effect for each charge spent.
You’ll have two abilities that cost Holy Power at level 80:
By default you’ll only have two abilities that generate Holy Power, but your Tower of Radiance talent will add a couple more:
- Crusader Strike
- Holy Shock
- Flash of Light (when cast on your Beacon of Light target)
- Divine Light (when cast on your Beacon of Light target)
Mastery: Illuminated Healing
Cataclysm comes with an overhaul of the stat system, including an entirely new stat in the form of Mastery. Mastery works differently for every specialization. For Holy Paladins, it causes your healing spells to place an absorption shield on their target, effectively increasing the overall healing you do with each cast. The higher your Mastery stat, the more damage each shield will absorb.
There is no gear available with Mastery in the Cataclysm Pre-patch, so aside from Reforging you won’t be able to make use of this stat until Cataclysm Classic launches in full.
Walk in the Light
The Holy specialization gets a bonus to its healing and no cooldown on your new Word of Glory spell by default.
Meditation
Holy Paladins now get this passive ability that was once a talent exclusive to Priests. Note that this ability specifies “mana regeneration from Spirit.” Spirit is a much more important stat for all healers in Cataclysm due to the removal of the MP5 stat.
Plate Specialization
Cataclysm adds armor type specializations to reduce the competition for specific items. You’ll always want to opt for plate in every gear slot so you maintain this bonus. No matter how good that one piece of cloth gear might seem, it’s not worth losing an extra 5% to your Intellect.
Abilities
Along with Holy Power and your Mastery effects, you’ll have a few brand new abilities in the Cataclysm Pre-Patch.
Light of Dawn
This spell is your primary Holy Power spender, and it gives you a true AoE heal for the first time. It heals more for each charge of Holy Power it spends, so you’ll want to use it with 3 charges saved whenever possible. Unique among healing spells in the game, this one is a frontal cone, so you will need to position yourself properly to maximize its effect.
Word of Glory
This is your other Holy Power spender in the Pre-Patch, a single-target heal that also adds a small HoT to the target. Most of the time you’ll want to save your Holy Power for Light of Dawn, but this spell can be just as useful in certain fights and content.
Divine Light
You get one more new heal to flesh out your kit at level 80. While you’ll still have Holy Light, it’s no longer your big heal for heavy damage. Rather, that spell now becomes your most efficient heal when you want to conserve mana, while this new spell effectively replaces it.
Changed Abilities
Many abilities will see minor changes in Cataclysm, but a there are a few that are significant to your gameplay as a Holy Paladin.
Holy Shock
This spell will be more important going forward since it’s one of your Holy Power generators and also has improved synergy with your other spells through your Infusion of Light and Daybreak talents. You’ll usually want to use it on cooldown.
Crusader Strike
This ability was previously exclusive to Retribution Paladins, but is now a baseline spell for all Paladins. It generates a charge of Holy Power, so any time you don’t need to be casting a heal, you can use this to deal some damage and build up charges. It does cost some mana, so you’ll want to avoid using it if you’re worried about getting too low.
Judgement
All of your Judgements have been combined into one ability, so you don’t have to worry about which one to use. With one point in Enlightened Judgements, this ability will always hit. The Judgements of the Pure talent also gives you a buff when you use Judgement, so you’ll want to cast it at least once every minute to maintain that buff.
Single Target Healing
Beacon of Light has gotten a nerf with Cataclysm, duplicating only 50% of your heals except for Holy Light. For steady, efficient heals on a tank and a second target, Holy Light is therefore the way to go. As mentioned above, Holy Shock is worth using on cooldown for Holy Power and to proc your talents. Otherwise, you can use Flash of Light for quick heals and Divine Light for heavy healing. Whenever you have 3 Holy Power charges, cast Word of Glory to spend them and get a mana-free heal.
AoE Healing
At level 80 you only have one AoE heal available, and that’s Light of Dawn. You’ll want to do the same thing you do for single-target healing, but cast Light of Dawn instead of Word of Glory when you have 3 Holy Power charges.
Cooldowns
Lay on Hands
This cooldown gets even more useful now with Glyph of Divinity and Glyph of Lay on Hands, which cause it to also give you some mana as well as reducing its cooldown so you can use it more often.
Divine Plea
This is still your best tool for regenerating mana, but it does halve the effects of your heals while it’s active, so you won’t always want to mindlessly cast it on cooldown.
Divine Favor
A great personal Haste/Crit buff that you can use to compensate for the healing reduction of Divine Plea or just to put out some fast, big heals when the situation calls for it.
Avenging Wrath
Avenging Wrath gives you (flightless) wings, along with a buff to your damage and healing. This cooldown can also be used to counter Divine Plea or just as a straight buff to your healing.
Divine Protection
This personal damage reduction buff has a short cooldown and should be used often so you can focus on healing your teammates instead of yourself.
Divine Shield
The classic “pally bubble,” you’ll want to save this for emergencies, or use it in conjunction with Hand of Sacrifice as a tank cooldown.
Aura Mastery
Combining this ability with the appropriate aura can mitigate a lot of damage for your group, or completely counteract a Silence effect.
Talents
Cataclysm brings the first talent tree revamp to WoW Classic. You’ll now need to commit to a tree and put 31 points into it before you can dip into another tree. As mentioned earlier in this guide, selecting the Holy tree will give you a few baseline abilities:
In addition, you’ll only get one point every two levels from 10 to 80, with each of the last 5 levels granting an additional point. At level 80 you’ll have 36 points to spend, while you’ll have 41 at level 85. The talents themselves have been moved around and compressed, with most only having one or two ranks and none having more than three. You won’t see many “filler” talents that can easily be skipped. Most of the Holy tree is now non-optional, but there are still a few choices to be made.
In the first row, you’ll skip Arbiter of the Light, which is more of a DPS talent. To get to the next row, you’ll put your points into Protector of the Innocent and Judgements of the Pure. The former keeps a steady stream of healing on yourself so you can focus more on other targets, while the latter buffs your haste and mana regeneration.
In the second row, you’ll definitely want to put points in Clarity of Purpose to reduce the cast time of your main single-target heals (even though you won’t get Holy Radiance until level 85). At least one point in Last Word is needed to reach the next tier. Blazing Light isn’t useful to you as a healer and should be skipped.
In row three, you’ll also skip Denounce, another talent that doesn’t help your healing at all. The rest of the row is much more valuable. Divine Favor is a strong personal cooldown that increases your haste and crit. Infusion of Light buffs your Holy Shock‘s crit chance and causes those crits to speed up your next cast-time heal. Daybreak improves this synergy further by giving your cast-time heals a chance to let you use Holy Shock without triggering its cooldown.
In row four, one point in Enlightened Judgements is enough to hit cap your Judgment spell so it always lands. As a bonus, this talent will also increase the spell’s range and cause it to heal you when you cast it. The rest of this row will almost always be taken. Beacon of Light is a staple of Paladin healing, although it’s been nerfed a bit in Cataclysm and only transfers 50% of any spell except Holy Light, which is still 100%. Next in the row is Speed of Light, boosting your spell haste and increasing your movement speed when you activate Divine Protection. Then you can pick up the ability to dispel magic with Sacred Cleansing (magic dispels are no longer baseline for your Cleanse spell).
You’ll want to put points into everything in row five. Conviction is a solid buff to your healing that you will find to have a very high uptime, even without stacking Crit. Aura Mastery is a powerful raid cooldown that can double the effects of your auras for a short time, or make your group immune to silence and interrupts if you have Concentration Aura active. Next, become a Paragon of Virtue to reduce the time on three of your cooldowns: Divine Protection, Hand of Sacrifice, and Avenging Wrath.
Moving on to row six, every Holy Paladin will want to put three points in Tower of Radiance to get Holy Power charges from their heals. Blessed Life is not needed unless you really want to maximize your Holy Power generation. There are better talents to put your remaining points in.
Your capstone at the end of the tree is Light of Dawn, your powerful new AoE heal. The only time you might skip this is if you’re not going to be healing more than a couple of targets (such as in arenas).
Once you have spent at least 31 points in the Holy tree, you’ll be able to access the lowest tier of the Retribution and Protection trees. You won’t be able to reach the second tier in those trees until level 85. Divinity in the Protection tree is a must-have, granting a significant bonus to your healing. After that you’ll only have two points left to spend at level 80. Crusade is the best place to put them since it significantly buffs Holy Shock, one of your core heals. Eternal Glory is also a decent talent, but you won’t have the points for it yet.
Glyphs
Like the talent trees, glyphs also see an overhaul in Cataclysm. You’ll now have three tiers of glyphs: Prime, Major, and Minor, and you’ll get to choose three of each to use in your build. The new Prime Glyphs are the most powerful while the Major Glyphs are more situational and Minor Glyphs are smaller quality of life improvements.
Prime
Glyph of Seal of Insight
You will always want to use this glyph. It buffs your healing while your Seal of Insight is active, which should be always.
Glyph of Divine Favor
Another glyph you’ll want to have equipped at all times. Divine Favor is a big buff and this glyph increases its duration by half.
Glyph of Holy Shock
There isn’t another “mandatory” glyph for the third Prime slot, but this one is a pretty good option. Increasing the crit chance of your Holy Shock is nice, especially since it will trigger Infusion of Light.
Glyph of Word of Glory
If you’re going to be using Word of Glory a lot, you might opt to use this in place of the glyph above. But for most Holy Paladins it won’t be worth the slot.
Major
Glyph of Divinity
With this glyph, your Lay on Hands ability doubles as a mana cooldown. This glyph absolutely deserves a permanent place in your build. Usually by the time you use this cooldown things are getting a bit hairy and you’ll be very happy to have the extra mana. You can even use it specifically for the mana in a pinch.
Glyph of Divine Plea
This glyph is another essential one for your mana. Divine Plea is already a strong mana cooldown, and this makes it even stronger.
Glyph of Lay on Hands
Your third Major Glyph is less set in stone than the other two, but this option makes a lot of sense alongside your Glyph of Divinity, since it will allow you to get the benefits of Lay on Hands more often.
Glyph of Divine Protection
Most of the toughest raid damage mechanics will be magic and not physical, so trading the physical protection component of Divine Protection for even more magic protection can be a huge boon to your survival.
Glyph of Beacon of Light
Your Beacon of Light lasts for five minutes when cast, so you won’t get much mileage out of this glyph unless you need to change your Beacon target frequently.
Glyph of Cleansing
Another situational glyph that makes your Cleanse cheaper to cast for any fight that requires you to use it a lot.
Glyph of the Ascetic Crusader
This glyph makes your Crusader Strike cheaper to use, which is nice if you’re able to fit it in for damage or want to generate more Holy Power.
Glyph of Light of Dawn
This glyph is not good for raid content and probably not even worth it for smaller group content. Light of Dawn is strong specifically because you can hit a lot of people with it.
Glyph of the Long Word
This glyph gives your Word of Glory a HoT component at the cost of some of its upfront healing. It doesn’t increase the spell’s overall output in any way. You’re better off skipping it.
Minor
Glyph of Insight
There are only three Minor Glyphs that offer anything worthwhile, so these are an easy choice. This one reduces the mana cost of your Seal of Insight, which you’ll want to maintain at all times.
Glyph of Blessing of Kings
The other two glyphs reduce the mana cost of your Blessings, which is helpful for rebuffing people mid-combat. This one affects Blessing of Kings.
Glyph of Blessing of Might
The only other Minor Glyph that’s useful to you, reducing the mana cost of your Blessing of Might.
Stats
There are some big changes to stats in World of Warcraft with the Cataclysm Pre-Patch. For one thing, Spell Power and Healing Power are mostly gone, replaced by pure Intellect. Intellect increases your throughput as well as your mana pool and your crit chance and will be the most important stat for you as a Holy Paladin.
MP5 has also gone away with the Cataclysm, leaving Spirit as your only choice for mana regeneration. This also means you’ll be competing more with other healers for Spirit gear.
Haste can be a tricky stat for healers, increasing your throughput but also increasing the speed at which you spend your mana. It’s therefore better not to stack Haste until you feel comfortable with your mana pool. That said, Haste can make you feel extra powerful, since you can get spells out faster and even lower your global cooldown. For Holy Paladins this is doubly true since most of your spells are hard-cast.
Critical Strike gives you a chance at some free extra healing with each cast. In general that’s not as useful for a healer as a DPS, since you’re usually aiming to heal just the right amount to top someone off and any extra is wasted as overheal. But as a Holy Paladin, your crits proc your Infusion of Light and Conviction, so even if it leads to overheal it can still be useful. Mastery offers more reliable healing, but Crit pulls ahead in terms of its other benefits.
Mastery is a new stat in Cataclysm that has unique effects for each specialization. For Holy Paladins, each point of Mastery increases the absorption effect of your Illuminated Healing shields. This amounts to free extra healing, making Mastery an efficient stat to focus on when mana is tighter. However, there won’t be any Mastery available on gear in the Pre-Patch, unless you reforge your gear for it.
With all of this in mind, your stat priority will generally be:
- Intellect
- Spirit
- Haste
- Critical Strike
- Mastery
Remember, this is not set in stone and certain gear levels, groups, fights, or any number of variables may shift this around.
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