Understanding The Paladin’s Blessings – Part 1: The Most Important Raid Blessings

Interest ya’n a pint? In this video, Bhelock and I go over the 2 most important raid blessings that a Paladin has access to: Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Salvation. From the raiding scene to 5 man dungeons, we go over the important aspects of those 2 blessings that make the first part of our mini series on blessings.

For those who prefer to read, here is a summary:

Blessing of Kings

The famous original Blessing of Kings, the king of all blessings, the most important blessing for every raid member, and the first blessing of this series. Blessing of Kings can be obtained at level 20, as long as you put all of your first 21 talent points into the Protection tree. Although it is not something that I advise personally, it can be done to get the buff as soon as possible. But the buff at earlier levels isn’t better than Blessing of Wisdom, and therefore isn’t a priority over Consecration or Seal of Command/Pursuit of Justice.

This blessing is famous for increasing a player’s total stats by 10%. It costs 8% of base mana, which is about 120 mana at level 60, has a 30 yards range, is instant cast, doesn’t have a cooldown, has a 5 mins duration, is categorized as a holy spell, doesn’t involve any particular mechanic and is of a magic dispel type. The base spell is free as is comes from the talent tree, but the Greater Blessing of Kings is bought at level 60 for 4g 60s. Just like any other blessing, players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Now imagine that you are in a 40 man raid, the Priests are buffing Prayer of Fortitude, Druids are buffing Gift of the Wild, Mages are buffing Arcane Brilliance, you have your well-fed buffs, you have the Warlock’s imp buff, you have potions, elixirs, scrolls and finally, on top of all that, your Blessing of Kings, it’s fantastic!

And when you are in a raid, you are going to use Greater Blessings. These cost more mana, have a 40 yards range and require a Symbol of Kings to use. The difference with a Greater Blessing, other than its duration, is the way you buff your teammates. It will give the buff to every party or raid member of the same class, meaning that you only need to target 8 people in total, one for each class, to get your raid fully buffed with Kings. As far as Symbol of Kings are concerned, I personally like to have 2 stacks in my bags to avoid running out of reagents.

When you are going to run 5 man dungeons, Blessing of Kings is not as important as the environment is completely different. In a raid, like we just said, everyone has lots of buffs because they tend to save them for that occasion, but in a 5 man, it’s not necessarily the case, so optimizing for a smoother run is better.

Personally, as a healer in a 5 man dungeon, I will buff Blessing of Light on the tank and Blessing of Wisdom on me. This combo makes is very easy to heal as you increase your mana regeneration and you increase the potency of your heals on the tank, who will take most of the damage anyways, therefore it saves you mana at the same time. And on the DPS, I will either buff Might or Wisdom or Salvation if threat is an issue.

Blessing of Salvation

This Protection spell is available at level 26 for 60 silver. And you only need to buy it once, along with its Greater Blessing of Salvation for 4g 60s at level 60. Note that this blessing isn’t a necessity while leveling and its general info is just like for Blessing of Kings. This blessing is the second most important one in raid because it reduces a player’s threat by 30%, whether it comes from healing of dealing damage. This is really important because players need to watch their threat meters to ensure they do not steal the aggro.

By reducing their threat by an astounding 30%, that means more damage or healing before reaching the same thresholds. Classes with aggro reducing abilities such as Rogues and Hunters don’t need it as much, but high DPS Warlocks definitely need it, even over all other buffs sometimes.

Now, what if you have a Feral Druid tank in your raid and you want to give Blessing of Salvation to the Resto Druids? Or if you have a Protection Warrior but you want to buff the Fury Warriors? Obviously the tanks do not want reduced threat, but the Greater Blessing of Salvation will be applied to everyone that shares the same class. In that case, you can buff the Warriors and Druids with Blessing of Salvation, then immediately cast Blessing of Sacrifice on the tanks to remove Blessing of Salvation, as the new blessing will remove the old one. Tanks can also use an addon called ‘Block Salvation’ to remove it automatically for them.

If you are the Paladin assigned to buffing Salvation, it is important to be aware of the fight’s mechanics as some fights require you to not buff Salvation on specific classes or people. For example, if your Hunters need to kite mobs, then do not buff Hunters, and so on.

In a 5 man dungeon scenario, then, Salvation isn’t as important, just like in the case of Kings. Depending on the party’s composition, Salvation might even be useless. If your DPS aren’t all that geared, then it is not necessary. I generally only buff Salvation on Warlocks in 5 man as they can pull a lot of threat easily, or buff it later on if I see that the tank has problem holding threat or if the DPS is simply too high.

I hoped you enjoyed and learned something today, as knowing your blessings is is a crucial aspect of playing the Paladin class. and definitely stay tuned for the next video of the series that will be about Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Freedom, who are quite different from the others. Until next time, have a good one and stay blessed!