WoW Forever Paladin: What’s Changing
Protection paladin holds a special place on Kami’s channel. Back in Classic, it was the go-to for farming massive amounts of gold, with a Stratholme one-pull theorized before the English-speaking community did. This third episode of the reworked spells and talents series puts the WoW Forever Paladin under the microscope: Holy, Protection, Retribution, and what’s left of the farming after all these changes.
All the spells mentioned are in our Grimoire, in French and with their Vanilla version for comparison. The values are cross-checked against wowforevertalents.com and the Forever branch of Wowhead, and the full video is on YouTube. Spells that only change slightly, like a minor tweak to spell power scaling, aren’t covered in detail.
Holy Paladin: Holy Shock at 40 Yards
The first WoW Forever Paladin change that stood out to Kami: 
Holy Shock could reach up to 40 yards, according to the information shown in the video. For anyone who remembers its very short range on Vanilla, that’s huge. The spell now also scales at 42.9% of spell power, for both damage and healing.
That opens the door to an offensive Holy paladin, a kind of « caster paladin ». With dual specialization, you’ll be able to keep a healing build for groups and mess around with a damage version on the side. More on that below.
Consecration Without a Talent, but Bugged in Beta
Big news: 
Consecration is now learned without going through the talent tree. The spell deals 96 Holy damage over 8 seconds to all enemies in the area, and the first four to enter it take an extra 216 damage. Blizzard’s idea: keep a minimum of threat on the whole pack, without letting the paladin solo the entire thing.
One big catch: the spell seems bugged on beta. Several videos reach the same conclusion: damage varies depending on where the monsters stand, hitting harder in the center of the area and weaker at the edges. That’s not what Blizzard announced. Either a fix is coming, or the spell changed without any communication. We tested this behavior in our article on four-target Consecration.
New Spell: Light’s Vigil
Light’s Vigil applies to a target for 30 seconds. The next Holy Shock cast on them doesn’t trigger a cooldown. On an ally, it also heals their group for 14.3% of your spell power. On an enemy, it deals Holy damage and refunds you 75% of the Vigil’s mana cost.
Kami still finds it hard to gauge the spell’s real impact, since Holy Shock isn’t available at Kami’s level yet. On paper, a Holy Shock with no cooldown, usable against an enemy too, already sounds very strong, even if it only allows two in a row.
One-Hour Blessings and Judgement
Blessings have been buffed, and above all extended: they now last a full hour. 
Blessing of Wisdom, for instance, now restores 40 mana every 5 seconds for an hour, versus 33 for 5 minutes on Vanilla. Higher versions, like 
Greater Blessing of Kings, also last an hour. Anyone who has raided as a paladin knows exactly what that means.
Another very comfortable change: 
Judgement no longer consumes the seal. No need to recast it after every judgement, which saves quite a bit of global cooldown.
Reworked Holy Talents
Spiritual Focus now falls in line with other classes: a 70% chance that your healing casts won’t be delayed by damage. Combined with 
Concentration Aura, it feels close to how this works in recent expansions. 
Unyielding Faith no longer gives a chance to resist fear; instead it reduces the duration of fear and disorient effects by 30%, more useful in PvP.
Among the additions, 
Voice of Truth grants immunity to silence and interrupt effects for 6 seconds, with no specific aura required. Useful in PvP as well as against interrupting bosses. 
Reverence keeps 30% of your mana regeneration while casting. 
Purifying Power reduces the cost of Purify and Cleanse by 20%, and the cooldown of Exorcism and Holy Wrath by 33%.
Illumination has been slightly weakened. A critical heal no longer refunds 100% of the spell’s mana cost, only 50%. With a much higher crit chance than back in the day thanks to the new gear, the talent would have been too strong. Kami is still confident: a well-geared paladin will have close to infinite mana.
There’s also 
Infusion of Light, which speeds up your next Holy Light after a Holy Shock or Flash of Light crit, and Consecrated Ground, which adds 10% Holy damage against the first four enemies hit by Consecration. 
Divine Precision gives an 18% chance to hit with Holy spells, enough to land your judgements without stacking hit rating. It all wraps up with Light’s Vigil as the capstone talent.
Offensive Caster Paladin Build
For this offensive paladin, Kami improvised an approach. The centerpiece is 
Champion of the Light, which increases your spell damage and healing by up to 100% of your Intellect. With the new enchants and professions, stacking Intellect should be easy.
To that we add 
Divine Favor to guarantee a critical Holy Shock, 
Vengeance for damage, and 
Eye for an Eye, which now reflects 10% of the damage from any critical hit taken. 
Improved Holy Strike rounds it out with a more frequent Holy Strike. Everything hinges on Light’s Vigil: if it lets you chain Holy Shocks on an enemy, this build takes on a whole new dimension. Only high-level testing will tell.
Protection Paladin: Farming and Tanking
On the Protection side, the WoW Forever Paladin remains an excellent multi-target tank. Kami spotted a video of a level 20 paladin farming level 17-18 monsters: with Consecration and a bit of spell power, the player holds the pack and clears it without needing a single grenade. The damage roughly matches the old Kami Labs AoE grinding leveling guide, which should therefore still be viable on Forever.
The Vanilla tank paladin’s big weakness was single-target threat, and the lack of a taunt. 
Seal of Fury fixes that: its judgement deals Holy damage and forces the target to attack you for 4 seconds. With a shield equipped, every attack under this seal also grants you a small damage-absorbing shield. Kami has seen plenty of main tank paladins in Classic raids compensate with all sorts of tricks. They won’t need them anymore.
Hammer of the Righteous at Level 40
Another major addition for the WoW Forever Paladin: 
Hammer of the Righteous, available starting at level 40. It hits your target and up to three nearby enemies for three times your main-hand weapon’s damage per second, with a 6-second cooldown. The paladin in the video was already pulling six or seven monsters at once. From level 40 onward, expect much bigger packs cleared much faster.
Protection Talents: Righteous Fury and Blocking
Righteous Fury goes from 60% to 90% extra threat. 
Holy Shield has been reworked: a 20% block chance versus 30% before, but 221 damage blocked instead of 130. With Forever’s stronger gear, that balance makes sense.
Redoubt changes its whole logic. On Vanilla, you needed to take a critical hit to gain 30% block chance, an increasingly rare occurrence as defense rating climbed. Now, every melee attack taken has a 10% chance to grant that 30% block chance, for 10 seconds or 5 blocks.
There’s also a big improvement for 
Shield Specialization: 30% more damage absorbed by the shield, and every block restores 6% of your maximum mana, once every 3 seconds. Survival and regeneration in a single talent. 
Precision adds 3% hit chance, and 
Improved Seal of Fury restores mana when the Seal of Fury shield is fully absorbed, more so against higher-level enemies, up to 45% against raid bosses. 
One-Handed Weapon Specialization goes up to 10% damage.
Templar’s Bulwark and Reckoning
A new defensive talent, 
Templar’s Bulwark surrounds you with a shield that absorbs damage equal to 100% of your maximum health for 8 seconds. It applies Forbearance for one minute, and can’t be cast again while that effect is active.
Reckoning gives a 40% chance to gain an extra attack after a block, and 100% after taking a non-periodic critical hit. In the very first version of Vanilla, there was no cap at all: one player stacked up hundreds of attacks by letting a harmless monster hit them, then one-shot world bosses. The talent was later capped. Forever’s tooltip doesn’t mention any limit. Kami would love to see what the Blackrock Depths weapon that grants extra attacks with this talent does now.
Iron Creed increases Holy Strike’s threat by 25% at max rank. While Righteous Fury is active, Holy Strike also reduces damage taken by 10% for 6 seconds. Holy Shield caps off the tree as the capstone talent.
WoW Forever Paladin, Best Tank in the Meta
For Kami, the protection paladin looks set to be one of the best tanks in the meta. Kami will personally play a druid tank a lot, which brings buffs, resurrections, and an easy switch to damage for the raid. But with all the paladin’s current tools, the comparison tips in its favor. The PvE Protection Paladin build covers the full tree.
Retribution Paladin: Reworked Talents
In Retribution, the WoW Forever Paladin doesn’t change many spells: it’s all in the tree. 
Holy Conduit reduces the mana cost of Consecration, Holy Wrath, Exorcism, and Hammer of Wrath by 40%. Right above it, 
Sanctified Judgement refunds 60% of the judged seal’s mana cost, and is a prerequisite for Vengeance, essential in raids.
Pursuit of Justice gets a big jump: 15% movement speed, mounted included, up from 8% before. A permanent bonus of that size matters just as much in PvP as in PvE. 
Sacred Arbiter increases Holy Strike damage by 10% and resets judgement effects on the target, letting paladins refresh each other’s judgements. 
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization goes up to 9%.
Vengeance becomes less explosive: 3% physical and Holy damage per stack, up to five, for 30 seconds after a critical hit. It’s closer to the Wrath of the Lich King version, with a much longer duration. 
Instrument of Law cuts Hammer of Wrath’s cast time by one second and reduces all your threat by 20% when Righteous Fury is inactive. Blizzard has announced a more demanding threat system, so this talent could carry real weight. Champion of the Light rounds out the tree with its Intellect conversion.
Seal Twisting Built Into the Game
One last nod to the veterans: 
Twist of Light. On Vanilla, seal twisting exploited latency to stack the effects of two seals. Now it’s built right into the game: when you swap one seal for another, your next melee attack also applies the old seal’s effect. You’ll need to swap seals regularly, which might make the rotation a bit repetitive. Kami has never raided as Retribution and is waiting to hear your thoughts in the comments.
WoW Forever Paladin Builds and What’s Next in the Series
Three PvE builds are already up: Protection Paladin, Holy Paladin, and Retribution Paladin. Previous episodes cover the Druid and the Mage. Which class do you want to see next? Let us know in the comments.
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