The Basics – Part 2: The Talents

So now that you have already mastered all your spells by reading this, its time to get into the bread-and-butter of the paladin class that makes us truly unique: The talents. My build is 51/20/0 check it out and i suggest to try it. Also a good source can be found in here.

Along the forums and internet blogs you will find different builds and discussions about them, but the only one that can tell you which talents are good is, at the end, yourself. This is a process of trial and error (in my case tooked me a lot of horrors *er i mean* errors). Here is what i think about each of the talents.

The Holy Talents:
Spiritual Focus: A must for healing PvE (and hell even PvP), combined with Concentration Aura will grant 100% free of pushbacks, no brainer here go 5/5

Seals of the Pure: Mostly seek by ret and maybe some disoriented tankadin, in your case as holy you dont need this talent 0/5

Healing Light: So, 12% increase healing on your main spells? Yes please! Gives us a raw benefit to our spells, so go all out here 3/3.

Divine Intellect: Even after the nerf, this talent is really good, 10% that stacks with kings and other int bonuses (like Mark of the Wild and Arcane Intellect), 5/5.

Unyielding Faith: A PvP talent, unless you are an arena junkie or BG addict then skip this for PvE 0/2.

Aura Mastery: For the effect granted with Concentration Aura some people think this is a PvP talent…well this baby has TONS of applications in PvE. Although its duration has been reduced to 6 secs (before it was 10, thx to Arenas gg), if used it wisely can grant a solid elemental raid-wide dmg reduction (Twins, Blood Queen, Sindragosa, etc) or an immunity to silence effects (Yogg, Faction Champs) when used with Conc Aura. Take it and love it 1/1.

Improved Lay on Hands: Grants dmg reduction and reduced duration, if you have another pally in your raid that goes 2/2 on imp. wis then you can go all out here, if not 1 point should be enough to pass into tier 5   1/2.

Improved Concentration Aura: This is more a PvP talent than Aura Mastery, no need to waste some points here 0/3.

Illumination: Ahhh this talent, it used to grant a lot of mana back (60% of mana per spell per crit), with the scaling in gear blizz had 2 options: or nerf it or change the itemization…they went for the 1st…meh, now a days is still a solid source of our mana regen.

Improved Blessing of Wisdom: I strongly recommend that at least 1 paladin in your raid goes all the way in here, 109 mp5 total with this is too good to pass, your other healers and arcane mages will love you! 2/2.

Blessed Hands: Very, but very situational talent. I am not a fan of talents that are used once every moon cycle, pick it at your own risk…0/2.

Pure of Heart: Reduced duration on curses, diseases and poisons? Of course it is a PvP talent (we can cleanse 2/3 of those) skip this for PvE please 0/2.

Divine Favor: 100% change of crit, for any burst damage and dont want to sit on a random number this is priceless. I personally have it macro with a Holy Shock to heal-on-the-run (and in the process guarantee a instant cast FoL) 1/1.

Sanctified Light: Solid 6% increased critical chance on Holy Lights and Holy Shocks, take it while is still there 3/3.

Purifying Power: Skip this at all cost! As a holy paladin you shouldnt be having mana problems 99% of the time, we have tons of other tools to mana save/regen 0/2

Holy Power: Awesome talent, direct and flat 5% increase critical chance with your holy spells, more hps and more mana back…do i have to say more? 5/5.

Light´s Grace: So every time you cast a Holy Light you reduce the next one in 0.5 secs, no-brainer talent here, plain buff to our HPS (Heals Per Second). 3/3.

Holy Shock: Some paladins hate our 31-point talent, in my opinion its a good to tool to heal on the move with a decent range (40 yards) and tied to other talents for buffs, it shouldnt be your main heal (unless you and your tank rediculosly overgear that content) 1/1.

Blessed Life: PvP based talent, could be used in some fight with heavy raid damage, but i am no fan of % based talents, dont pick it up unless you dont have any more choices to make after taking the mandatory ones. 0/3.

Sacred Cleansing: So…another PvP talent? a % chance to increase another % of resistance? please pass this talent, you will hardly notice it. 0/0.

Holy Guidance: Now this is a great talent, more int = more spell power, so for those like me that are int addicts this talent is godsend. Take it and love it. 5/5.

Divine Illumination: Basic and Mandatory Talent, 15 sec flat reduced cost of ALL spells casts (like Beacon), it is off the Global Cooldown (GCD), also makes our Tier10 bonus so OP. I usually save it for mana intensive burns while HL spam is needed.1/1.

Judgements of the Pure: Go all out here, free haste w/o any Diminishing Returns. This would make our haste cap of only 680, so even with full badge/conquest gear you would be on 1sec FoL. 5/5.

Infusion of Light: A talent tied to mostly all our commonly used spells, so makes it pretty much a must to take here. So even though you aint a Holy Shock fan you will need to take it. 2/2.

Enlightened Judgements: This baby can help you stay on a safe range of any Whirwinds or nasty cleaves, you would love to keep on judging every now and then to refresh Judgements of the Pure and to keep the mana returns of Seal of Wisdom (Judgement is considered a melee attack). 2/2.

Beacon of Light: OP, just that. Pick it, use it and master it. Great healadins excel cause they know how and when to cast Beacon. You can single hand heal a raid sometimes while your tank takes a beating cause of this spell. It has the longest range healing spell in the game, so you can even target someone out of your regular range and spam heals nearby and safe both targets. 1/1.

The Prot Talents:
I will only talk about the useful here:

Divinity: Solid 5% more healing (heck sometimes its overhealing) but its way better than the other option soooo. 5/5

Guardian´s Favor: 3 min CD on BoP…errrr HoP….damn names! Great talent wouldnt miss it to advance. 2/2

Stoicism: So you need 3 points to get to the next tier, is either this or dodge and with Chill of the Throne…well at least it can save your life while zoning in the instance and a pack of horde is waiting and drolling to kill ya. 3/3.

Divine Sacrifice: So only we and some tankadins can get this ability to function at full (due to its ties to Divine Guardian) but now it wont kill you so you can use it freely without the need of Divine Shield. Use it to mitigate any upcomming party (and with DG raid) damage, i see a lot of paladins that dont take advantage of this. 1/1

Improved Righteous Fury: Wont hurt to have a 6% damage reduction…BUT be very carefull when to pop this spell, you can easily draw healing aggro from ads and/or bosses, so this could backfire. 0-3/3

Toughness: Plain armor for damage reduction, you need points to get to the next tier so put what you need and move out. 1-4/5

Divine Guardian: Even with the nerf is still a powerful raid-wise damage reduction ability. Now you must use it wisely due to its short 6 sec duration. But still is powerful. Also a good buff to our Sacred Shield. 2/2.

Improved Devotion Aura: Most likely if you have a Tankadin he would take it, but most 10s dont have that luxury, so take it if you need it (or if you might have to). 3/3

So this is it, pick what you need and grab your caster plate, soon reviews on ICC bosses!

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