A Holy Paladin heals one target at a time with Holy Light, and your mana bar sets the pace. You cast Holy Light (Rank 9) while your mana outpaces the fight and fall back on Holy Light (Rank 4) when it doesn't. Every critical heal hands back half the spell's base cost through Illumination, and Greater Blessing of Light adds 400 to each Holy Light on a blessed target.

Here you heal a single target, yourself, from pull to kill. On a one-minute single-boss fight that comes to 1,274.6 HPS, 4th of 5 single-target healers. The Party switch above covers group healing.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• Throughput while the mana lasts. Holy Light rank 9 heals about twice as much per second of casting as rank 4. On a one-minute single-boss fight you cast it from pull to kill and reach 88.3 % of the top healer's number.

• Crits refund mana. Every critical Holy Light returns half its base cost, 330 mana on rank 9. That makes spell crit your top stat: 1 % is worth 18.2 healing power on a three-minute single-boss fight.
• Blessing of Light. It adds 400 to every Holy Light, more than rank 4's own 299. Adding it to our benchmark raid on 11 October raised this guide's healing by 18 to 23 %.

Weaknesses

• One target at a time. Holy Light and Flash of Light each heal one player. Light's Vigil, the one party heal, costs 1,340 mana at rank 3 and loses to Holy Light on mana in every fight we simulate.
• Two-minute fights. You drop to 5th of 5 there and heal 79.0 % of the top healer.

• The filler rests on two rules. Rank 4 is a level-22 spell, and Blessing of Light's 400 is about a third of its heal. Blizzard's 1 October notes cut healing from ranks "vastly below" your level, with no formula, and our simulator applies no cut. If a cut reaches rank 4, the longer fights' numbers drop.
• Light has to be on your target. Our fights bless everyone you heal. Greater Blessing of Light is the fourth blessing of a four-paladin raid, so in a smaller raid your tank may not carry it.

On every fight

Fight length sets the rotation. On one minute you cast rank 9 back to back and still run dry at the end, so mana stats count even there. From two minutes on, rank 4 fills the gaps. A second and third boss make no difference to you, since nobody takes damage and your party stays the same. Clicking a fight in the table moves all five pages to it.

Races

For the Alliance, Human leads every pre-raid fight. Its Sword Specialization now gives 2 % crit to spells as well as attacks, and Sageblade, the pre-raid main hand, is a sword. The Dwarf's 1 % from Mace Specialization needs a mace, which no pre-raid set wears.

For the Horde, Undead is the only paladin race, and it has no racial that heals. Touch of the Grave only fires from damage. Cannibalize now restores mana, but it needs a corpse and ends the moment you act.

What a Paladin brings to the raid

Greater Blessing of Kings raises every damage build in the table, and Judgement of Wisdom helps the hunters most. The table measures damage, so Blessing of Light, the one your own Holy Lights need on their target, shows nothing.

Changes

Every update of the simulator or the game data adds a row with this build's new result here. The Updates page explains each one.