Raiding Playstyle
As a quick breakdown of what your playstyle should look like when raiding, use the following cheat sheet:
1. Use Holy Shock on cooldown. 2. Cast Hammer of Wrath on cooldown when available. 3. Use Crusader Strike to generate Holy Power (and reset Holy Shock if talented into Crusader's Might). 4. Spend Holy Power on Light of Dawn. 5. Cast Judgment on cooldown (for Judgment of Light healing and priority damage). 6. Spend Infusion of Light procs on Holy Light on your beacon target for double Holy Power generation. 7. Use Light of the Martyr for instant emergency healing if you have no Holy Shock or Holy Power and need a heal IMMEDIATELY. 8. Fill empty GCDs with dropping consecrate.
Overcapping Holy Power The worst thing you can do as a Holy Paladin is overcap your Holy Power (meaning use a Holy Power generator when you already have 5 Holy Power). Doing this will absolutely hemorrhage your hps, so make sure you're spending your Holy Power as you generate it. If there is absolutely no damage going out and everyone is topped, just throw WoGs on the active tank or use Shield of the Righteous for damage.
Not Pressing Holy Shock on Cooldown The most common issue I see is of players not using Holy Shock when it's available. Any time you have Holy Shock available you should be prioritizing it over any other spell you have (unless you are at 5 Holy Power, in which case you should use a Holy Power spender, then press Holy Shock). I'll mention here as well that proper crusader strike usage is important for getting the most out of Holy Shock when running the Crusader's Might talent, which makes Crusader Strike reset the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 second. This means if you have one charge of Crusader Strike on cooldown and you're one GCD away from having Holy Shock back up, you should fill with a different ability (like a holy power spender, judgment, hammer of wrath, etc), then use Holy Shock, then use your Crusader Strike so that you get the Holy Power AND the Holy Shock cooldown reduction.
Hard Casting Flash of Light One of the most common mistakes I see from Holy Paladins when reviewing logs is that players often fall back on spamming Flash of Light for healing. This is prevalent in both Mythic+ and raid, and in either situation will completely gut your healing. You should only ever use this on your beacon target to generate Holy Power when you're unable to be in melee for a few seconds and have no infusion proc, or you're just filling empty GCDs (everything else is on cooldown). If you need an emergency heal because someone is going to die in the next GCD and you don't have Holy Shock or Word of Glory available, use Light of the Martyr instead of Flash of Light. It heals for more and the heals goes out instantly instead of having to wait for the cast.
Not Using Cooldowns Enough Holy Paladins are a cooldown class and we rely on using them as much as possible for throughput. In general you want to be pressing these cooldowns on CD if there is any damage going out, espeically since our tier set is all about reducing the cooldown of wings. Don't forget also that since we're running Divine Purpose and Awakening, we get a lot of sustain outside our cooldowns as well so we can be even more carefree with using our actual wings cast. As a general rule, the longest you should ever hold your wings for is 20 seconds.
With the new tier sets, Word of Glory is back and stronger then ever as your 2 set makes the next Word of Glory you cast empower the healing of your next Light of Dawn and causes it to trigger twice. Meanwhile your 4 set will provide you with CDR to your wings every time you Light of Dawn so the general gameplay will be Word of Glory when your 2 set proc is available, then dump all your holy power into Light of Dawns until your 2 set is back up which means NEVER HOLD YOUR WINGS, lob that button on cooldown if there is even the slightest damage to heal. This should result in your Wings uptime being well above 50% for most fights.
As for playing around your 2 set, the first thing you should do is grab this weakaura to track it. If there isn't any major damage event happening in the next 30 seconds, you can simply send this on cooldown for the increased throughput, but any time you know big damage is coming you should have this prepped as the heal it does is absolutely massive. An important thing to note is that the 30 second debuff that prevents you from benefitting from it again starts when you Word of Glory, not when you spend the empowered Light of Dawn. Before any big damage event happens you should proc your 2 piece by using Word of Glory, then rebuild your Holy Power to 5 so that as soon as the damage occurs you can empowered Light of Dawn > Holy Shock > Light of Dawn. You also should keep in mind that while the double Light of Dawn cast does not give you an extra Awakening proc chance, it DOES give you double CDR on your Wings from your 4 set so make sure any time you spend your empowered Light of Dawn you're getting the full CDR benefit on Wings.
This patch everyone gets a free Covenant Legendary via the Unity Memory so in this section I'll discuss each of these powers and how they affect gameplay.
Kyrian
The Kyrian legendary Divine Resonance started out as a buggy mess when first released, but now works significantly better. After casting Divine Toll you'll send out 3 additional Holy Shocks over 15 seconds (one every 5). These will always prioritize healing unless your entire group is full health in which case it will go on your target. While it is not one of the strongest covenant legendaries, it does generate a significant amount of Holy Power so the key to playing around this legendary is making sure you don't overcap your Holy Power. Basically just spend your Holy Power at 4 and you'll never have any issues with this.
Venthyr
Radiant Embers makes Ashen Hallow stronger and more versatile which is all you could ask for from a covenant legendary. While it is not considered a particaularly powerful one, it does enable some interesting strats on certain fights. With this legendary you can either opt for a 45 second long Ashen Hallow, or cancel it early to refund some of the cooldown. This opens up the option of playing 30s Ashen at a 3 minute cooldown, which will be huge for some fight timers, but also lets you run out the entire 45 second ashen if you're cooldowning a particularly long and healing intensive spot. Most of the time you will probably opt for the longer ashen and not worry about the CDR, but it depends on the damage patterns of the fight so planning out your Ashen timing has never been more important!
Necrolord
Necrolords are having a lot of fun this patch due to the strength of the legendary power Duty-Bound Gavel. The second charge this gives allows you to basically have huge healing bursts for every single damage event. You can opt to bank charges for a really rough section of the fight or spread your healing out so you just have a constant stream of large Light of Dawns.
Night Fae
Don't play Night Fae :)
As a Kyrian Holy Paladin, you're living the good life with one of the most powerful and versatile short cooldowns we've ever had access to. It's extremely important however to keep in mind how to get the most out of your Divine Toll, as you can waste a lot of HPS using it incorrectly. The most common way people lose healing from this is through overcapping Holy Power. Always remember that Divine Toll will generate you 5 Holy Power when cast since it puts out 5 Holy Shocks, so before you press it you want to make sure you dump your current Holy Power. This means if you have 2 Holy Power and your Divine Toll comes off CD, you should use one generator (HS, CS or Hammer) followed by either Light of Dawn or WoG (which will drop you to 0 Holy Power), then you press Divine Toll. It's also important to remember that after Divine Toll you should immediately spend your Holy Power since you'll be capped.
Your ideal Divine Toll cast will be as follows: Dump all your Holy Power BEFORE you cast Divine Toll, then press Divine Toll > Holy Power Spender > Holy Power Generator > Holy Power Spender. Lastly, something to remember is that you definitely want to be using Divine Toll during your wings windows. Since it's on a 1 minute cooldown and wings is on a 2 minute cooldown, this means every other cast should be grouped with wings.
Rule of Law is a talent that increases the range of our healing abilities and the reach of our mastery by 50%. For Kyrian Paladins your usage of this ability is extremely straight forward: Always use one charge before casting Divine Toll and then spend your extra charges any time someone is out of range and needs healing. The reason Rule of Law is so strong with Divine Toll is because DT has a baseline range of 30 yards, which means sometimes you won't be able to cast it on players who are within range of all your other healing abilities. It's also a great pairing because DT is a smart heal that can go on any injured targets, including ones far away that would get significantly decreased effectiveness from your Mastery. Using Rule of Law makes it so that not only can you use DT on anyone within 45 yards, but any ranged healed from it will actually get a significant boost in healing from your mastery.
For any non Kyrians you have a bit more choice as to how you use this ability. I generally macro it into my Wings cast so i get a boost to my throughput within wings on any ranged targets I heal, and outside of that I tend to either use it when I get a wings proc from Awakening and want to heal ranged players, or when a player is out of range and needs healing.
Please note that while you can macro Rule of Law to Divine Toll, the initial button press will only be able to target a player 30 yards. However, even though the player you cast it on can only be within 30 yards, the other 4 holy shocks are eligible to players within 45 yards and all 5 get the increased mastery benefit, so the only downside to macroing RoL to DT instead of manually pressing RoL first is the restriction on the initial target's range.
In this section I'm going to answer the most common questions I get asked about the Maraads build.
What is the Maraad's Dying Breath build? The Maraads build revolves around the legendary Maraad's Dying Breath and the conduit Untempered Dedication to turn Light of the Martyr into a very efficient and powerful spot heal. The legendary increases the healing of your next Light of the Martyr by up to 50% after each light of dawn cast and also causes it to heal your beacon targets. Combine that with the Untempered Dedication conduit which increases the power of your Light of the Martyr by up to 35% and you can see why this build has such high spot healing potential.
What talents do I run? The only talent shifts in this build are Light's Hammer (or Bestow Faith) instead of Crusader's Might and Beacon of Faith instead of Glimmer of Light. Since you're losing Shock Barrier and weaving in far more Light of the Martyr casts, Holy Shock is less of a priority in this build which means Glimmer and Crusader's Might lose value.
What Covenant/Soulbind should I be? The Maraad's Build is only worth it to run if you are Venthyr or Necrolord as Kyrians lose too much throughput with this build compared to the meta build due to Divine Toll's synergy with Shock Barrier and Glimmer.
What's the stat priority? The stat priority for the Maraad's build is exactly the same as the meta build (int > haste > mastery > vers > crit).
How do you play the build? The entire playstyle of the Maraad's is practically the same as the meta Shock Barrier build, with the only difference being weaving in a Light of the Martyr in between each Light of Dawn cast without losing any Holy Power generation. This means if Holy Shock is available you should still prioritize that; you simply need to use your buffed Light of the Martyr before your next Light of Dawn.
Is this build viable for Mythic+ or PvP? Absolutely NOT! Do not run this build anywhere but raid.
When should I play this build? The downfall of this build is that you lose out on damage, which means it should only be used on fights where spot healing is essential to success. Any bosses with damage patterns that spike hard on certain players will prove to be a great choice for the Maraad's build.
Below is a detailed guide for how to play Holy Paladin in a raid setting.
Beacon of Light Place Beacon of Light on the target most in danger of dying without sustained healing. Usually, that will be a tank. On many fights, it’s worth the GCD to swap your beacon from an inactive tank to an active one, or to a non tank who will take heavy sustained damage.
Holy Shock Avoid delaying Holy Shock. Use Holy Shock to triage heal injured allies, who require an immediate heal to live, and to apply Glimmer of Light to allies who will take damage within the next 30 seconds. If no one needs immediate healing or Glimmer of Light, Holy Shock an enemy for DPS.
The most common mistake Holy Paladins make is delaying Holy Shock. Never start a cast if Holy Shock will become available during the cast. Avoid using an instant spell if Holy Shock will become available during the GCD of the instant spell, unless it is extremely important--e.g. you will overcap Holy Power.
In general, you should avoid overwriting Glimmer of Light. Try to Holy Shock targets without Glimmer of Light--assuming they will take damage within 30 seconds--in order to increase your Glimmer coverage and gain more value from the talent. However, don’t let someone die just because they already had Glimmer when you could have saved them with Holy Shock!
In general, I prioritize Holy Shock as follows: 1. Player who will die in the next GCD without a heal regardless of whether they have Glimmer of Light. 2. Player who will take sustained damage over the next 30 seconds and does not already have Glimmer of Light 3. Player who is injured and does not already have Glimmer of Light. 4. Player who will take damage over the next 30 seconds even if they already have Glimmer of Light, to refresh the buff. 5. Enemy targets.
The two most common mistakes with Glimmer are to fail to Holy Shock someone in danger just because they already have Glimmer of Light, and to Holy Shock someone who doesn’t need the up-front heal, or the Glimmer, just to have an extra Glimmer out.Holy Power Light of Dawn does more healing than Word of Glory if it will hit 4 injured targets. But because Light of Dawn transfers to Beacon of Light at half the rate of Word of Glory, Word of Glory does more healing than Light of Dawn if Light of Dawn will hit 3 or fewer injured targets.
Take advantage of the 5 Holy Power cap to pool Holy Power for when it can do the most healing. If you have 3 Holy Power and Light of Dawn can hit 4+ injured targets, by all means cast Light of Dawn. But if you have 3 Holy Power and Light of Dawn will only hit 3 injured targets, just pool for a few seconds waiting for 4+ injured targets. You don’t need to spend until you are at 5 and about to overcap by generating a sixth.
If you are about to overcap Holy Power and no healing is necessary, you can spend the Holy Power on Shield of the Righteous for additional damage.
Crusader Strike With Crusader’s Might, each cast of Crusader Strike reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 second. Keep Crusader Strike on cooldown to maximize your cooldown reduction on Holy Shock. But as long as one charge is on cooldown, you are not losing any uses and can bank the second charge for future cooldown reduction.
Crusader Strike both consumes a GCD and reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 second, so you should not cast Crusader Strike if Holy Shock’s remaining cooldown is less than 1 second plus 1 GCD. If you do, you are wasting a portion of the cooldown reduction of Crusader’s Might. Instead, you should cast any non-Crusader Strike GCD, then Holy Shock, then use the Crusader Strike for full cooldown reduction.
Judgment of Light Cast Judgment on cooldown when Judgment of Light charges are being consumed. If the charges on the boss have not been consumed, but will be a little while after Judgment comes off cooldown, it’s worth waiting for those charges to be consumed before casting Judgment. For example, if the boss has 15 stacks of Judgment of Light and Judgment is off cooldown, but the boss will damage the entire raid in 5 seconds, it is better to hold judgement until right after the damage event. That way all 40 stacks heal, instead of only 25 with the previous 15 having been wasted.
Hammer of Wrath Hammer of Wrath does no healing, but it generates 1 holy power for zero mana. If no one needs healing, use it on any target under 20% health for increased dps and to bank holy power for future healing.
Light of the Martyr Light of the Martyr does not transfer healing to your Beacon of Light, and loses half the upfront healing it does by injuring you. This makes it significantly weaker than any of your other heals. However, Light of the Martyr has three use cases. First, if you are unable to stand still to cast, your instant casts are on cooldown, and someone needs healing, you can Light of the Martyr them. Second, because Light of the Martyr does its healing at the beginning of the GCD (while Flash of Light heals at the end) if someone will die before a GCD can complete you can cast Light of the Martyr to save their life.
The most common mistake is to cast Light of the Martyr when you could have cast a superior healing spell. It is also common, although much less egregious, to never cast Light of the Martyr even in the rare situations when it is appropriate.
Rule of Law Rule of Law is an extraordinary spell, giving Holy Paladins the unique ability to heal targets up to 60 yards away. In every encounter, you should anticipate situations in which you need to heal targets more than 40 yards away, and reserver at least one charge of Rule of Law for those uses.
Rule of Law also increases your healing on anyone who is more than 10 yards away from you. If your targets aren’t stacked with you, and you need to do a lot of healing, use Rule of Law.
Aura Mastery Use Aura Mastery with Devotion Aura to mitigate dangerous hard-hitting mechanics in the encounter. It’s best paired with mechanics that prevent the raid from stacking. If the raid can stack Power Word Barrier or Spirit Link Totem are better, but when the raid is spread Aura Mastery is one of the only cooldowns that will help everyone.
DPS For single target DPS, cast Hammer of Wrath on cooldown->Judgment on cooldown->Holy Shock on cooldown->Crusader Strike on cooldown->Consecration. Spend holy power on Shield of the Righteous.
For AOE DPS, maintain Consecration on the mobs, then use Holy Shock to apply Glimmer of Light to as many targets as you can, while also weaving in Hammer of Wrath and Judgment on cooldown.
The cooldown of Consecration is shorter than its duration, so be careful not to overcast it. Only cast it as necessary to refresh before it expires, or to reapply to mobs that have moved out of the original ground effect.
