Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Holy Paladins in The War Within 11.2.0

All sections for Holy Paladin PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Holy Paladins in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Holy Paladin PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Lightsmith
Hero Talents: Herald of the Sun
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Herald of the Sun and Lightsmith. Both Hero talents are equally as viable in their current states, to which can be swapped around based on what matchup you’re up against or preference. Now, let’s further explain how to best allocate your hero talents.

Quick Disclaimer: These builds are still in experimentation with the new Holy Paladin changes and are likely to change in the next few weeks.

Hero Talents: Lightsmith

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First off we have our preferred Lightsmith build. This build is best selected against compositions that require a variety of setup to kill, especially if you are experienced at throwing out Sacred Weapon before the Crowd Control lands. This temporarily allows you to transfer your HP to theirs as long as your teammate’s HP is low enough, reacting similar to Spirit Link Totem.

As for how this hero build works, this revolves around Holy Armaments to which we can alternate between Holy Bulwark and Sacred Weapon on ourselves or allies.

You can also apply a Sacred Weapon on an ally every time you use Avenging Wrath thanks to Blessing of the Forge, making it more reasonable to play Avenging Crusader, 1 minute wings instead of 2, for more Sacred Weapon uptime. Another reason we advise Avenging Crusader is because you are dealing more damage from our Holy Armaments.

Now, let’s explore the talents that require a bit more understanding to make use of them in arena.

Solidarity makes it more likely to apply our Holy Armament on our ally, granting us the same effects. If you proc a Holy Armament from Divine Inspiration on yourself however, this will affect a nearby ally as well.
Tempered in Battle is your strongest talent located in this Hero tree, specifically for the health transfer once you or an ally falls below 40% HP. This has been nerfed to only work once per application which lasts around 4 seconds upon activation. This only applies to targets affected by Sacred Weapon, meaning you want to place this on the opponent’s primary kill target. You can also distribute some over-healing as long as the person you’re over-healing is affected by Holy Bulwark, but isn’t as potent as the Spirit Link effect.

Hero Talents: Herald of the Sun

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Next up we have our preferred Herald of the Sun hero build. This is way easier to grasp as opposed to our Lightsmith build, making it highly recommended for beginner Holy Paladin players. Additionally, this provides us with stronger throughput coming out from our basic healing spells.

Additionally from our new 11.2 changes, this could potentially become our default loadout from our new Beacon of Light changes. If you aren’t familiar with the changes, Beacon of Light now heals targets from direct healing, and with Herald of the Sun resorting to that playstyle this could ultimately shift what Holy Paladins play in the meta depending on how massive the healing differential is.

Let’s look at the core talents chosen that make up this build.

Dawnlight is applied after using Barrier of Faith or Holy Prism, granting a stackable periodic damage or healing effect directly on targets, and radiates 8% of its direct damage and healing to nearby enemies or allies, respectively.
Blessing of An’she has a chance to proc a massive healing buff on our next Holy Shock from periodic healing effects, mainly with Eternal Flame and Dawnlight.
Sun’s Avatar enhances the effectiveness of Dawnlight by applying it to multiple targets after using Avenging Wrath. Additionally, you become linked to any active Dawnlights, dealing extra damage to enemies and healing to allies passing through them.

Alternatively, you can select Gleaming Rays instead of Morning Star if you want more direct healing out of your spenders if Dawnlight is active. This can provide a slight upper hand against setup based comps that deal a lot of burst damage, helping you recover easier once out of Crowd Control and during their burst sequence.

Paladin Class Talents

In the Paladin Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Some of most noteworthy mandatory talents are:

Fist of Justice as a hefty cooldown reduction on our Hammer of Justice.
Sacrifice of the Just which is a 15 second cooldown reduction on our Blessing of Sacrifice.
Divine Toll and Quickened Invocation, synergizing extremely well with our Rising Sunlight talent for more healing coming from our Holy Shock, while also having more ways to proc Blessing of An’she due to Sun Sear.

First is the selection between Repentance and Blinding Light.

Repentance is most typically used, as this allows for you to land follow up control off of a Hammer of Justice, Fear, or even a Cyclone if properly timed, and is a longer duration than Blinding Light. We highly recommend pairing this ability with Light’s Countenance to turn this into a spammable Crowd Control spell.
Blinding Light is available to have an instant cast AoE Crowd control, but most compositions for Holy Paladin have specializations that use the Fear Diminishing Returns. This requires Holy Paladins to have more coordination to gain value out of this spell.

There will then be a few points which can be moved around depending on the composition that you are facing.

For your flexible class talents, in the first and second tiers you can remove either A Just Reward, Blessed Calling, or Light’s Countenance, depending on the scenario, for any of our optional talents. This may vary in case you want more throughput or utility.

Holy Reprieve against heavy burst / setup compositions where you need to get your Forbearance cooldowns off more frequently. This can also be great when playing in Solo Shuffle with a Retribution Paladin.
Righteous Protection is super valuable against Unholy Death Knights, Assassination Rogues, and Shadow Priests, as it prevents the opposing team from applying poisons and diseases on your ally affected by Blessing of Sacrifice.

Holy Spec Talents

Most of the talents in the Holy tree are mandatory for optimal performance. Here are the core talents you’ll want to know about before directly heading into the arena.

Rising Sunlight reacting identical from Dragonflight, although this now delivers additional Holy Shocks after using both Avenging Wrath and Divine Toll instead of using Daybreak. This makes Divine Toll way stronger of a defensive healing cooldown, granting you more flexibility on how you respond to massive damage.
Righteous Judgment when paired with Consecrated Ground allows us to easily snare opponents from afar with a simple Judgment cast.
Light of the Martyr has completely changed from its original counterpart, as it is now a passive that gives us a 20% healing increase to our Holy Shock while above 80% health. Unfortunately, the downside of this is you receive a stacking healing absorb, similar to a Death Knight’s Necrotic Strike, while also losing the healing effect of Beacon of Light on yourself.
Blessing of Summer has experienced a massive change to how this spell works. If you want to deal more damage, you’ll want to always apply this on yourself, as a percentage of your healing is converted into damage while this spell is active, affecting nearby enemies. You can also use this to dish out more overall healing, as you’ll want to throw this on your teammate that deals the most damage. This is because a percentage of damage dealt will be converted as a heal onto nearby allies.

Additionally, we now receive talents such as Moment of Compassion and Divine Favor instead of Glistening Radiance with Flash of Light receiving significant buffs to its healing as well as it being instant cast as long as we have a Light of Infusion proc.

For your flexible class talents, we have a few adaptations worth making. It’s important to take in consideration that each talent tree requires a set amount of talent points in order to progress in the next tier of talents, meaning that some flexible talents will only be exclusive to specific tiers.

In our second tier, we suggest opting out of Divine Favor, depending on what bracket you are queueing or the composition you’re up against, to any of our optional talents.

Tirion’s Devotion which is more impactful in 3v3 rated matchups for increased uptime on Lay on Hands as well as additional Mana upon using it.
Protection of Tyr if you find yourself struggling to recover against compositions with heavy frontloaded damage. Primarily Demon Hunters, Windwalker Monks, and even Arcane Mages.

As for our Lightsmith build, we recommend exchanging Avenging Wrath for Avenging Crusader. This reacts similar to a fist-weaving playstyle, as you will be attacking with your Judgment and Crusader Strike more frequently to heal your allies.

Holy Paladin PvP Talents

After losing out on Hallowed Ground, Holy Paladin loses out on a lot of mobility. This now leaves open more options from our PvP talents we otherwise wouldn’t select in the previous patch.

Our default PvP talent loadout for Holy Paladin as of 11.2 is Searing Glare, Divine Vision, and Blessing of Spellwarding.

Searing Glare, as this will make any incoming spells immune from enemy targets. Using this spell on players with offensive cooldowns can help reduce current pressure on your team, or against control initiator classes to delay any incoming control. This can give you enough time to top your teammate or apply a preemptive cooldown.
Blessing of Spellwarding, which is best against caster based compositions, allowing you to immune any magical spells applied to the target while active.
Divine Vision, which excels at times where having more Aura Mastery uptime is potent. This is primarily used for more Devotion Aura uptime, providing you more defensive mitigation, but can also allow you more Concentration Aura uptime to assist yourself and teammates with casting.

For your last PvP talent slot, this slot will be swapped from / to any of our three default PvP talents depending on your matchup and current composition played, to any of our flex PvP talents.

Divine Plea is essential to prevent yourself from running out of mana during 3v3 matchups. This should be selected if you play a composition that relies on Dampening to secure wins.
Cleanse the Weak is useful against Elemental Shamans and Shadow Priests, allowing you to essentially dispel two targets at the same time, as long as the ally nearby is affected by the same debuff. This goes for Flame Shock, Shadow Word: Pain, and Vampiric Touch.
Denounce is best selected in 2v2 and adds quite a bit of damage over the duration of the game. Additionally, it can be used defensively as it prevents the target from landing crits from their abilities for 8 seconds.