Lightsworn: Holy Paladin talents in Legion

As players are eagerly hopping onto the Legion servers to check things out, community dataminers have been hard at work digging up the dirt on our new spells and abilities. The full Legion Holy Paladin Talent Calculator is up and running over at Wowhead, and oh boy, ours is a doozy, folks.

Take almost everything you know about our current talents and toss ’em out the window! Here we go!

(As always, remember that this is early, early information, and that everything about these talents might change before Legion is released.)

Tier 1: Buffs…or Hammer?

Well, so much for talent tiers having a singular theme! Holy Bolt is a substantial buff to Holy Shock, which will be one of our main heals in Legion due to it being buffed to make up for the removal of Holy Power. A solid, straightforward choice. Crusader’s Might will appeal to melee-loving Battle Cleric Paladins, and its Lightbringer mastery buff shouldn’t be too hard to maintain — it lasts 10 seconds, with Crusader Strike having a 4.5-second cooldown.

Rounding out our first tier is Light’s Hammer, an intriguing inclusion. Despite going from a level 90 talent to a level 15 one, Light’s Hammer is actually better than before. It heals for the same amount and has the same 1-minute cooldown, but it no longer has its ridiculously steep 51.9% of base mana cost (it’s free in Legion), its range has increased to 40 yards, and perhaps most significantly, it no longer competes with Holy Prism. Light’s Hammer won’t be great on every fight, but it’ll certainly shine when your raid is able to stack up for raid-wide damage, especially since we’ll now be able to have both it and Prism at the same time.

Tier 2: Defensive

Unbreakable Spirit will be as great as ever, and will probably be most players’ default choice. On the other hand, Beacon of Hope does give us something new, an instant long-range movement ability! I’m sure we’ll run into situations where a teleport will be a life-saver, especially if we’re able to use its time/damage-delayed activation to pull off Alter Time-ish tricks.

Shield of Vengeance seems…odd. The tooltip indicates that it might be for Retribution? And it’s based off Attack Power? Regardless, if this does remain a Holy talent, don’t get distracted by the damage-dealing effect — the real benefit here will be having a second short-cooldown defensive ability. Having both Shield of Vengeance and Divine Protection sounds pretty appealing, though Shield will have to absorb a decent amount of damage to be more valuable than Unbreakable Spirit’s reduced cooldowns.

Tier 3: Crowd Control

Repentance and Blinding Light are exactly the same, but Fist of Justice has been nerfed. Unlike the current version of this talent, which gives Hammer of Justice an increased 20 yard range and reduces its cooldown to 30 seconds, the Legion version will instead make our Judgments reduce Hammer’s cooldown. No increased range and requiring three Judgments just to get our stun back to a 30-second cooldown makes me a sad Paladin.

Tier 4: Auras

Here’s the bad news. The current version of Devotion Aura is no more. Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure, etc. The good news is we’re getting some new auras that can be empowered with our new Aura Mastery spell (which old-school Paladins will recognize) to be raid cooldowns in their own right.

All three of our level 60 talents are personal auras with a 10 yard range, meaning we’re going to have to be watch our positioning and move to where they’ll be most beneficial. Devotion Aura (same name, but different effect) and Aura of Light seem rather straightforward — Devotion Aura will actually prevent damage, but only magical damage, while Aura of Light will be effective against all types of damage, including physical abilities such as Kormrok’s Smash. It’s also worth noting that unlike our Mastery, Aura of Light grants a bonus to all healing, not just our own.

As for Aura of Mercy, I can’t wait to be regenerating 1% health every 5 seconds, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Actually, Aura of Mercy seems like it’s currently incomplete — its toolship shows as being an activated 3-minute cooldown ability, but it’s missing any sort of duration. Assuming the thematic flavor is correct, a constant regeneration aura might be interesting, though 1% every 5 seconds seem rather underwhelming.

Tier 5: Power

Blizzard, I thought we were friends. How could you make us choose between Sanctified Wrath and Holy Prism for our level 75 talent?? (Technically Divine Purpose too, but let’s be real — players will always be wary about relying on the tender mercies of RNG.)

Sanctified Wrath is exactly the same and will remain a strong talent, especially given Legion’s buff to Holy Shock. With the removal of Holy Power, Divine Purpose has been updated to now affect Light of Dawn and Holy Shock, which is a definite improvement — more Holy Shocks equals more Infusion of Light procs. That being said, being able to utilize Avenging Wrath‘s increased healing when you choose will always make Sanctified Wrath a superior choice, since Divine Purpose will rarely come through with a string of procs at exactly the right moment.

Of course, having Holy Prism also on this tier presents us with quite the dilemma. Prism has been a staple ability for us for two entire expansions, and the very idea of giving it up seems inconceivable! On the other hand, Sanctified Wrath has been amazing for us in Warlords of Draenor, partially because the other choices were stinkers, but mostly because it’s just really damn good. It allows us to easily hit our Crit soft cap, nets us 50% more Infusion of Light procs, works perfectly with Libram of Vindication…the list goes on.

Ugh! We’re ages away from Legion and I’m already dreading having to choose between these two favorites. I think I’m leaning towards Prism, though. Instant-cast, short cooldown, and one of our few AOE heals; it’s simply too valuable a tool in our arsenal to do without.

Tier 6: Quality of Life

After the previous tier, I’m almost relieved that our level 90 talents are small convenience choices. Stoicism seems the obvious general choice here, especially considering that Blizzard is clearly pretty keen on Light Tap being a major part of our toolkit. Mind you, if you find yourself not casting it very often, because it’s not necessary or simply because you hate the spell itself, then there’s obviously no point in choosing Stoicism.

On fights with heavy AOE healing, Daybreak (not to be confused with the current version, which won’t exist in Legion due to Holy Radiance going away) might prove very useful — it depends on how quickly we have to AOE heal, and what our other AOE healing options are. (For example, if we take Light’s Hammer, maybe we won’t need Light of Dawn on a shorter cooldown.)

Judgment of Light seems awful. 15% of spell power isn’t very much, and it’s untargeted, non-smart healing, meaning it’ll likely end up healing people who don’t need it. Pass.

Tier 7: Beacons

Beacon of Faith is back and as amazing as ever, but it’s got some new competition in our level 100 talent tier this time around. Beacon of the Lightbringer turns our Beacon of Light target into a second Lightbringer emanation point, as well as buffing our Mastery bonus by a sizable amount.

I like the dynamic between these two talents — Beacon of Faith when you have two targets taking steady, heavy damage, or Beacon of the Lightbringer if your ranged and melee are clumped together in two distinct groups. Keep in mind that Beacon of the Lightbringer will not be nearly as effective if your ranged players aren’t hugging you closely, or if you’re in melee.

Beacon of the Savior sounds like a great option for having some fun or chipping in some damage on farm bosses, when healing is light. However, although I love that we’ll have this as an option, it likely won’t ever truly compete with the utility and multi-target healing potential of the other Beacon talents.

Conclusion

Our Legion talent tree is a wild, untamed beast. We’ve got healing spells competing with throughput cooldowns, we’ve got defensive abilities on the same tier as a teleport, and roughly a third of our talents are based around being a melee healer and/or our new proximity-based Mastery, both of which are huge unknown and untested elements at this point.

I do think our new talents will be a lot of fun, though — talents should be situational and swapped out based on what you’re up against! Heavy AOE fight? Load up with Light’s Hammer, Aura of Light, Holy Prism, and Daybreak. Fighting a boss with dangerous movement and pushback abilities? Counter with talents that bolster your mobility and instant-cast heals, such as Holy Bolt, Beacon of Hope, and Stoicism! Really digging the Battle Cleric flavor? Try a melee/offense-heavy build with Crusader’s Might, Aura of Light, Judgment of Light, and Beacon of the Lightbringer.

I can’t wait to start tinkering with our new talents. How about you?