How Good Are the Paladin Hero Talent Tier Sets in The War Within Season 3?

Posted 2025/07/03 at 7:31 AM by Wowhead

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First Impressions of the War Within Season 3 Tier Set BonusesPaladin Tier Set Appearances for War Within Season 3Vows of the Lucent BattalionRaid FinderNormalHeroicMythicHoly Paladin Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses First Impressions

Herald of the Sun
Herald of the Sun Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses

Herald of the Sun 2-Set Bonus - Dawnlight's healing and damage is increased by 30% and you gain Solar Wrath after Avenging Wrath fades causing Sun's Avatar's effect to linger for an additional 10 sec.
Herald of the Sun 4-Set Bonus - Solar Wrath increases the effectiveness of your Holy Power spenders by 15% and grants you 2 Dawnlight.

Implementation & Gameplay
The 2-Set on its own is essentially just 30% increased Dawnlight healing, which is a little underwhelming when compared to other 2-Set bonuses such as the Lightsmith one. The 2-Set might be what gives you Solar Wrath, but Solar Wrath doesn't do much until you also get the 4-Set. Once you do get the 4-Set however, Solar Wrath becomes an interesting mechanic.

With the 4-Set, you gain the ability to apply 2 additional Dawnlights when Avenging Wrath expires, or 1 when it's an Awakening version. These Dawnlights aren't applied on their own, but you have to apply them yourself by casting Holy Power spenders, just like you do after casting Holy Prism. Combined with Solar Wrath from the 2-Set, this massively increases how much uptime we have on Sun's Avatar.
If you consume an Awakening proc while Avenging Wrath is already running, it simply adds the two together, and you get 20 seconds of Solar Wrath and the ability to apply 3 Dawnlights when Avenging Wrath expires.

This is great from a gameplay perspective, because using an Awakening proc during Avenging Wrath makes the Avenging Wrath last a total of 30 seconds, which also happens to be the cooldown of Holy Prism. Assuming you used Holy Prism at the start of your Avenging Wrath, which you should, it will now be ready again when Avenging Wrath expires, which will let you apply a total of 5 Dawnlights, and all of these will also create Sun's Avatar beams.

For your standalone Awakening windows, it also helps a ton by giving you a time window where you can cast Holy Prism without losing Sun's Avatar uptime. Currently in Season 2, you want to use your Holy Prism right before or after activating Awakening, but with this set bonus you can activate Awakening up to 8 seconds before your Holy Prism is off cooldown, which means you won't have to sit on Judgment as much.

On top of all this, the 4-Set buffs Solar Wrath to also increase the healing of our Holy Power spenders by 15%. You can expect to have around 25-30% uptime on Solar Wrath, so it will be a great bonus to our spenders.

Strengths & Weaknesses
The Herald of the Sun tier set doubles down on the strong stacked burst Herald of the Sun already provides. It does this by giving us more uptime on Sun's Avatar and more Dawnlights. This is obviously also a weakness of the tier set, as Herald of the Sun already struggles when people are too spread out, and this only increases our reliance on having people be stacked as much as possible.

On a good fight that suits Herald of the Sun, the 2-Set and 4-Set combined will provide a 13-15% healing increase, but it will perform much worse on fights where people are too spread out or where the damage timers don't line up with potential Solar Wrath timings.

Feedback
I am a quite sad and frustrated that nothing has been done to address the issues Herald of the Sun has with spread burst healing, but nonetheless, I still think this tier set is very fun to play around with, and I am definitely looking forward to using it. The only change I would like to see, would be to have the Dawnlights from Solar Wrath apply to allies on their own in the same way Avenging Wrath applies them to allies automatically. When Avenging Wrath expires and you have 0 Holy Power ready to go, you are sometimes unable to apply the Dawnlights before Solar Wrath is already about to expire.

I appreciate that it was intentionally made this way to give us agency over who we apply the Dawnlights to, but in practice it would just feel cooler and more responsive if the Sun's Avatar beams appeared right away. Especially when you consume Awakening during Avenging Wrath as talked about above, where you have 5 Dawnlights to apply, it can feel like a slog to get through them all.
Otherwise, I think the tier set is a ton of fun, and it's clearly well thought out.

Lightsmith
Lightsmith Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses

Lightsmith 2-Set Bonus - Hammer and Anvil healing is increased by 15% and it can also be activated by Crusader Strike at 100% effectiveness.
Lightsmith 4-Set Bonus - Hammer and Anvil also grants a stack of Masterwork, causing your next Holy Armament to cast one Lesser version of itself on a nearby ally for each stack.

Implementation & Gameplay
The 2-set doubles down on the randomness that plagues Lightsmith. It synergizes well with Avenging Crusader as that talent lets you cast Crusader Strike and Judgment more often, but it also further increases our reliance getting crits with those spells which speaks in favour of Avenging Wrath. I expect that both versions of Wings will be viable with this Tier Set. You're going to want to cast Crusader Strike and Judgment as much as possible and you can expect Hammer and Anvil to come out to around 20% of your overall healing on average.

The 4-set is strange, and it has some striking issues with its current design. You gain a stack of Masterwork when you get a Hammer and Anvil proc, and you use these stacks to apply Lesser Bulwark or Lesser Weapon to random allies when you cast Holy Bulwark or Sacred Weapon. Right now Masterwork has a cap of 5 stacks, which you can easily hit before your Sacred Weapon or Holy Bulwark comes off cooldown, and this will result in wasted stacks. This could largely be fixed by making Divine Inspiration consume Masterwork stacks, but that would instead take agency away from the player. I think the best solution is simply to have any excess Masterwork stacks be consumed automatically right away, like Frost Mages Mastery: Icicles.

The most significant issue, however, is that the Lesser Weapon all go on DPS players. As a healer in raids, you would like your Lesser Weapon to prioritize healers so they actually proc healling, but just as with Sacred Weapon itself, that isn't the case currently. There was a brief period back in Season 1 where Sacred Weapon did go on healers, but that was sadly reverted. I would like to see that functionality return for both Sacred Weapon and Lesser Weapon.

Strengths & Weaknesses
The main strength of this Tier Set is that it inherently makes Hammer and Anvil more reliable as you will have more chances to proc it, but that is also going to make it feel even worse when you get unlucky streaks of no crits. The other strength is that because all the Lesser Weapons go on DPS players, it actually does quite a lot of damage, but that's about the only thing it does.

The largest weakness is that it is all completely random. It is random if you can crit with Crusader Strike and Judgment, it is random who Hammer and Anvil heals, and it is random who Lesser Bulwark goes on, though it prioritizes tanks where such a small shield has barely any impact.

You can expect 11-13% healing increase from the 2-Set alone, but the 4-set is only around 1% of your overall healing and it is effectively worthless from a healing standpoint. Here you can see it did a whopping 25k healing per second in raid testing.

Feedback
Design wise, I think the 2-Set is fine. Being able to get those super strong Hammer and Anvil procs more often is going to feel great if you get lucky, but Blizzard still needs to fix the range issues on Hammer and Anvil. The 20-yard radius starts at the center of the target's hitbox which means that, even on standard sized bosses, it will only heal melee players, and on large bosses it will heal literally no one. This is going to make Lightsmith unplayable on bosses like Fractillus.

If Lightsmith ends up being the meta Hero Talent for Holy Paladin, then the whole spec will simply be unplayable on those bosses as you would lose more than 20% of your healing just because the boss is too large. The radius should be increased to 40 yards and should center on the Paladin. It has been an issue since day one of the expansion, but now that we have a whole tier set built around it, the current functionality is simply unacceptable.

Lightsmith vs. Herald of the Sun
Apart from the Lightsmith 4-Set, I think both Tier Sets are quite fun, and they feel like good additions to their respective Hero Talents. Even though the vast majority of Holy Paladins have been playing Herald of the Sun in Season 2, the two Hero Talents are actually pretty close to each other, and I expect that we are going to have the strongest Tier Set dictate which Hero Talent will be meta in Season 3.

The Herald of the Sun tier set requires very specific damage patterns and boss design to work well. Assuming the range issues with Hammer and Anvil are fixed or changed, Lightsmith does not rely on specific fight design or specific damage patters, but it simply does a bunch of random and uncontrollable healing all the time.
In an ideal world, Herald of the Sun would be strongest when players can be stacked when we need them to, and Lightsmith would be strongest when this wasn't the case, but we will have to see how it plays out as we get more tuning and changes over the PTR cycle.

Protection Paladin Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses First Impressions

Lightsmith
Lightsmith Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses

Paladin Lightsmith 11.2 Class Set 2pc - Hammer and Anvil's damage is increased by 15% and it can also be activated by Blessed Hammer/Hammer of the Righteous at 100% effectiveness.
Paladin Lightsmith 11.2 Class Set 4pc - Hammer and Anvil also grants a stack of Masterwork, causing your next Holy Armament to cast one Lesser version of itself on a nearby ally for each stack.

Implementation & Gameplay
The Season 3 Lightsmith tier set bonus for Protection Paladin is quite interesting. Our gameplay should remain fairly unchanged, Blessed Hammer on AoE does quite a lot of damage now and the extra Holy Armaments from the 4p really stack up fast and can do some fairly strong damage/absorbs.

Strength & Content
Lightsmith tier set is lends itself towards Mythic+ content. The extra procs of AoE and absorb shields on allies are much more powerful and noticeable in Mythic+ content.

Feedback
The Season 3 set bonuses for Lightsmith Protection Paladin are fairly simple and a bit lackluster for anyone looking for something new or to spice it up. Both effects are essentially passive and you won't notice much outside of your damage going up.

Templar
Templar Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses

Paladin Templar 11.2 Class Set 2pc - Your Empyrean Hammer deals 20% increased critical strike damage and its critical strikes have 50% chance to grant an additional stack of Light's Deliverance.
Paladin Templar 11.2 Class Set 4pc - Hammer of Light deals 35% increased damage to its primary target, strikes 3 additional secondary targets, and can now be cast 1 more time after Eye of Tyr.

Implementation & Gameplay
The design of the Templar Protection Paladin tier set for Season 3 is quite strong. It has significant synergy with the entire hero tree, allowing us to essentially double the effectiveness of some powerful Hammer of Light related affects such as Shake the Heavens, Undisputed Ruling and Sacrosanct Crusade. It does ever so slightly change our gameplay, delaying your second Hammer of Light for at least 6 seconds to maximize uptime on Undisputed Ruling. We will also lean slightly heavier on crit and haste, however those were already top priority for DPS.

Strength & Content
The Templar Season 3 Protection Paladin tier set excels in both Raid and Mythic+. Hammer of Light being able to hit more targets and giving us huge initial burst threat as well as a powerful defensive use more frequently is a big win. The tier set plays around what the Templar tree does best, hammers, lots of hammers.

Feedback
This is a pretty satisfying tier set to use. The ability to burst things down, the increased ease to maintain as close to 100% uptime on Shake the Heavens as possible. Defensively, it doesn't quite do enough. Sacrosanct Crusade happening more frequently is quite solid but apart from that, it feels a little lacking defensively, which is an aspect where Prot Paladin could use a little boost in, especially for Mythic+.

Lightsmith vs. Templar
Whilst the general opinion of Lightsmith is fairly low due to it's odd mechanics, the tier set boosts it's AoE/M+ capabilities significantly so we may see it overtake Templar as the best Mythic+ Hero tree for Protection Paladin in Season 3. I believe Templar will still remain the best raid Hero talent for us and have overall more consistency. Neither set bonus is particularly insane or gamebreaking, they both provide a significant DPS increase but lack something to make them overall powerful or interesting.

Retribution Paladin Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses First Impressions

Templar
Templar Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses

Paladin Templar 11.2 Class Set 2pc - Your Empyrean Hammer deals 20% increased critical strike damage and its critical strikes have 50% chance to grant an additional stack of Light's Deliverance.
Paladin Templar 11.2 Class Set 4pc - Hammer of Light deals 35% increased damage to its primary target, strikes 3 additional secondary targets, and can now be cast 1 more time after Wake of Ashes.

Implementation & Gameplay
This bonus leans in to the things Templar already cares about - Empyrean Hammer and their crits, and more Hammer of Light casts. An extra cast of Hammer of Light is useful, but it does feel a bit awkward to play with when you need to build all the way back to 5 Holy Power from 0 after the first cast, which is not normally an issue for the first cast because of the generation from the Wake of Ashes cast first. Ret will have far fewer Empyrean Hammer procs with the nerf to Divine Hammer uptime coming in Season 3, so adding some extra effects that trigger Light's Deliverance more often will make up some of that loss.

Strength & Content
This set bonus is another one that will probably fun enough to play with, but is numerically pretty weak. Early estimations for the damage increase for the set is around 1-2% for the 2pc and 5-7% for the 4pc on single target, which even being generous and using the upper end of those ranges is a total increase of less than 10%, below what most specs seem to gain in Season 3. The 2pc is slightly better on AoE since Wrathful Descent is so important for Templar's AoE damage, but 20% crit damage is worse than it reads in practice - "critical strike damage" refers to only the extra damage you deal as a result of a critical strike, not the entire damage of a spell critting, so the actual effective damage increase to a Empyrean Hammer crit is less than 10%.

Feedback
The design of the bonuses seems fine overall - it helps you do more of the things that Templar already does, and Hammer of Light is a button people like to press more often, even despite the 5 Holy Power cost awkwardness for the second cast. The main issue is that it just doesn't really increase your damage very much. The nerf to Divine Hammer has hit Templar very hard, since this was a huge source of Empyrean Hammer procs in Season 2, and it hasn't been compensated for sufficiently as far as Ret's damage is concerned. It seems very weird from a design standpoint to be massively reducing the number of Empyrean Hammer procs and effective Light's Deliverance stacks, only to turn around and add a new set bonus that marginally increases Light's Deliverance stack generation again, only not anywhere nearly close to what it was before. It's hard to get excited about a new set when the end result of getting it is just a much worse version of what you're already playing on live.

Herald of the Sun
Herald of the Sun Season 3 Tier Set Bonuses

Paladin Herald of the Sun 11.2 Class Set 2pc - Dawnlight's healing and damage is increased by 30% and you gain Solar Wrath after Avenging Wrath fades causing Sun's Avatar's effect to linger for an additional 5 sec.
Paladin Herald of the Sun 11.2 Class Set 4pc - Solar Wrath increases the effectiveness of your Holy Power spenders by 15% and grants you 1 Dawnlight.

Implementation & Gameplay
The design of Herald of the Sun seems to be that the tree is almost entirely passive effects, and these bonuses play into that theme - they have essentially zero impact on your actual gameplay. Whether that's a good thing or not will depend on how much you enjoy the base Ret rotation without any extra effects like Templar has. It's worth noting that the effects are all tied to Avenging Wrath / Avenging Wrath which can have a variable cooldown depending on the talents you use - how this works in practice is that it gives you 5s of Solar Wrath and 1 extra Dawnlight per 30s of cooldown Avenging Wrath / Avenging Wrath has. Since Ret almost always uses Radiant Glory, this just means you'll get the base values mentioned here.

Strength & Content
These bonuses are also numerically weak. Early estimations for the damage increase for the set is around 7% for the 2pc and 1% for the 4pc on single target, which like Templar is also a total gain of less than 10%. An extra Dawnlight proc is just not very useful for Ret when we already effectively have 100% uptime on it on single target, and our spenders are not a large enough portion of our damage for a low uptime 15% buff to be meaningful at all - the power is basically entirely in the extra Dawnlight damage and Sun's Avatar uptime.

Feedback
I think it's a reasonable decision to give a passive tree a passive set bonus, but the set could really use a damage buff. Herald of the Sun has seen very little play past early Season 1 this expansion, and although the nerf to Divine Hammer might help it draw closer to Templar, these bonuses definitely don't. It almost seems more designed for Holy than Ret, since they are always going to have multiple useful targets to apply Dawnlight to while we are never going to be hardcasting Eternal Flame to put up a HoT on an ally if our main target already has 30s of Dawnlight up.

Templar vs. Herald of the Sun
Both of these bonuses just need to meaningfully increase our damage. The changes to Divine Hammer coming in Season 3 is a massive nerf to Ret's damage, as we already saw when we got an early taste with the 11.1.7 bug affecting it, and there hasn't been any compensation buffs for these changes. As a result, Ret was already in an extremely weak position, but include some set bonuses on the weaker end while some other specs have bonuses worth 2 or 3 times as much and the situation is looking incredibly dire.

It's also strange that these bonuses are so unimpressive for damage considering the current damage breakdown Ret has. About 40% of Ret's total damage can be attributed to Hero talents, so you'd think that set bonuses specifically buffing them would be relatively more valuable for a spec that relies on them so heavily compared to most. The focus on non-Hammer of Light Holy Power spender damage on both the Season 2 and Season 3 bonuses is much worse than it reads as a result of this breakdown too, since for Ret regular spenders don't really contribute all that much to your damage directly. Although the gameplay itself doesn't need significant changes, Ret has been long overdue for a rebalancing of where its damage comes from in order for spender damage to actually begin to matter again rather than being dominated by randomly procced passive Hero talent effects.

Comment by ArwahldI didnt sleep last night so my brain is working at less than 50% hence why I need to ask because the review didnt say much or I didn't read well enough, but are prot pallys gonna be good for higher keys and M raiding or not? I feel like wet noodles each time i join a +12 compared to my DK and Warr right nowComment by TyranuelI absolutely love the lightsmith tierset and how it will play . I just want to heal by doing the dps rotation and have a couple of targeted utility spells and decent spot heals . Lightsmith is literally just that

Edit : The only thing that I would like to be changed is for LS to be more oriented around giving people shields , similar to mop mastery or how disc plays now . So maybe instead of healing the hammer of anvil gives and absorbComment by RaktonerWill the changes to Templar make Critical Strike more desirable for Rets than Mastery?Comment by 1sixthsHow good are the wowhead writting nonsense article. ClickbaitsComment by SeniaaI didnt sleep last night so my brain is working at less than 50% hence why I need to ask because the review didnt say much or I didn't read well enough, but are prot pallys gonna be good for higher keys and M raiding or not? I feel like wet noodles each time i join a +12 compared to my DK and Warr right nowComment by ArwahldI didnt sleep last night so my brain is working at less than 50% hence why I need to ask because the review didnt say much or I didn't read well enough, but are prot pallys gonna be good for higher keys and M raiding or not? I feel like wet noodles each time i join a +12 compared to my DK and Warr right nowComment by SwinkyyWill the changes to Templar make Critical Strike more desirable for Rets than Mastery?Comment by bobodanWill the changes to Templar make Critical Strike more desirable for Rets than Mastery?Comment by Farishi see bolas i disregard. do better @wowheadComment by DawncrownThe damage of the paladin spenders was pathetic throughout the expansion, Radiant Glory completely trivialized Avenging Wrath and removed its kill pressure, the build with divine hammer does not synergize well with the ranged buffs of dragonflight to compensate for the lack of mobility and even so with these structural flaws in the kit they preferred to keep almost 40% of the damage focused on empire hammers, a completely passive and boring damage. This was a terrible expansion to play paladin.Comment by FultimatFComment by KVTRFNdoes anyone know how to use Holy Armaments with mouseover on raid/partyframes, i.e. vuhdu? i've tried known macros, tried just using the holy armament spell itself but its all %^&*ed and doesn't work. know macro only works for the either bulwark or weapon, whatever is currently active and holy armament doesnt register at all.