Paladin Season 2 Dragonflight Tier Set Bonuses Reviewed - Guide Writer First Impressions

Posted 2023/03/20 at 11:51 PM by Jaydaa

Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set bonuses

We've datamined Dragonflight Tier Set bonuses for all 38 specializations in the Patch 10.1 PTR. Check out all the bonuses and armor models below.

Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set Bonuses & Models for All Classes & Specializations

Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set bonuses. Check out all of our released opinion articles below.
First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set Bonuses

Death Knight Tier Set First Impressions
Demon Hunter Tier Set First Impressions
Druid Tier Set First Impressions

Evoker Tier Set First Impressions
Hunter Tier Set First Impressions

Mage Tier Set First Impressions
Monk Tier Set First Impressions

Paladin Tier Set First Impressions

Warlock Tier Set First Impressions
Warrior Tier Set First Impressions

First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 2 Tier Set BonusesHoly Paladin Season 2 Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Paladin Holy 10.1 Class Set 2pc - Holy Shock's critical strikes heal for 15% more and reduce the cooldown of Light's Hammer by 2 sec, or Holy Prism by 1 sec.

4-Set - Paladin Holy 10.1 Class Set 4pc - Light's Hammer heals 100% more frequently and generates 0 Holy Power every 4 sec. Holy Prism's healing is increased by 80% and it generates 1 Holy Power if cast on an enemy target, or 3 if cast on an ally.

Protection Paladin Season 2 Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Paladin Protection 10.1 Class Set 2pc - Avenger's Shield causes targets struck to burn with Heartfire, dealing an additional 20% of damage dealt over 5 sec. Heartfire heals you for 100% of the damage it deals.

4-Set - Paladin Protection 10.1 Class Set 4pc - Judgment critical strikes can trigger Grand Crusader.

Retribution Paladin Season 2 Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Paladin Retribution 10.1 Class Set 2pc - Judgment and Hammer of Wrath deal 10% increased damage and 20% increased critical strike damage.

4-Set - Paladin Retribution 10.1 Class Set 4pc - Judgment increases the damage enemies take from your Holy Power spenders by an additional 5%. Hammer of Wrath applies Judgment to enemies.

Comment by PrimalcruxHammer of Wrath will be fun in pvp, that's about it. The Ret 4pc needs to be reworked, obviously.Comment by pawpurrtruly, the ret set seems designed by someone blind to the rework; i'll eat my holy hat if it's not a placeholderComment by KirillusI still cant get over how $%^& those tier colours are. There are more DK-coloured sets than Paladin-coloured sets there ffs/

That said, Protection bonuses I like.Comment by SeniaaYeah idk what they are thinking with that Prot 4pc. Crit is by far your worst stat and even if it was 100% on crits it still won't amount to THAT many resets since you aren't going to give up guaranteed survivability in the other 3 stats for a slightly higher proc and a miniscule amount of parry.Comment by TiwieLooks like a battlemage get-up, interesting but too early to make articles about set bonuses when players can't even test them on ptr yet...Comment by RexhanSeems that they only focused Holy Paladin set for PvE ... since nobody plays LH on PvP.

Might we have any feedback of why choosing LH? Fixed positioning makes PvP a worse experience as a healer, specially if they stun/cc you since you are the healer.

Not even mentioning Holy Prism, which is undertuned and doesnt perform that much.Comment by Juniperxd
With the cooldown reduction from the 2-Set we will be able to get out a Light's Hammer roughly every 40 seconds...
granting 6 additional Holy Power per minute
Holy PrismHoly PrismComment by greeneggret 4pc is stinky.

hopefully their set is just a placeholder while they were finalizing the rework and we'll see an updated setbonus in a few weeks after the rework gets some tuning done on live servers.Comment by DraekenLooks like a battlemage get-up, interesting but too early to make articles about set bonuses when players can't even test them on ptr yet...Comment by 1910828After all the logic blizz have posted about not wanting tier sets to distract from talent changes, why is everyone so surprised that the specs who got reworks are getting tier sets that don't impact their rotations?

Druid, ret paladin, and shadow priest - all get talent reworks between 10.05 and 10.1, all get fairly basic 10.1 tier sets. Not a coincidence.Comment by kevlarzHaving tested the prot pala 2 set over the weekend with m+ testing, it is garbage. It isn't even close to a 4% dps increase like this article states. It did 1.6% of my dps overall (only just out-dpsing the lingering frostspark from the embellishment belt). This was closer to 1% of my damage on single target only. There are some fundamental issues with the bonus.

For starters it can not crit, secondly there is no pandemic style override - at the moment if you cast a new AS it will just override the old buff and you'll get no value from the old buff. The DoT also does not scale with haste, meaning it will tick every 1 second regardless of your haste %.

The other big problem is that the 4set is also largely poor.

The prot pala VoTI 2 set bonus offers you and your nearest ally 6% versa, which is easily much more powerful than either of these set bonuses. Unless they make some tweaks to the new tier set, you will just see prot paladins running the old 2-set bonus combined with the new 2-set bonus. Such a shame when the game looked to finally be going in the right directionComment by ThalanilBy the same approximation of CDR from the 2-set, we should be able to cast Holy Prism once every 10 seconds. Comment by JuniperxdBy the same approximation of CDR from the 2-set, we should be able to cast Holy Prism once every 10 seconds. Comment by Quik1silverThank you for the Holy Paladin review Clarius. "Unwarranted reintroduction of holy power" - best line in your review imho (only slightly joking). I've gotten used to it by now, but I always hated hp.

I agree with what you said about hp generation from LH being similar to Divine Resonance. I am so excited for 10.0.7 to get to NOT choose divine resonance; then I read this and got really sad because if LH ends up being the way to go I'll need ANOTHER weak aura counter to track hp generation from LH now, which is why I HATE divine resonance. It's like they listen and give us QoL improvements, but then immediately take that away. As a holy paladin I already have 3000 procs to keep track of, I don't also need to be paying attention so I don't accidentally overcap my hp. Hopefully the additional 10.0.7 change to Dawn and Dusk will mean I don't need to get to 5 hp too often (other than to now pop my wings...).

My only criticism is that you looked at Kurog as the fight to determine what % increase we're getting. Kurog is a very stationary fight where you can get maximal usage from LH. Most fight designs have a lot more movement, and a lot less stacking potential, so I worry about how impactful the healing from either of these spells will be in 10.1 (LH because no one stands in a healing circle for long, and prism because...does it actually have a heal component?). I'm curious what the % increase be if you were to look at LH healing in a fight like Eranog or Raz? I suppose we did have a decent number of fights with parts where most people are standing still this time around.

We'll have to see, but I may end up using Prism just to generate lots of consistent holy power, although your point about the number of GCDs it uses and how much mana it will eat does concern me. It would feel a lot better to have a tier set that actually feels good to use. Also I completely agree about taking away the crit requirement on holy shock; druids get straight up healing increases, why not us?

The PvP player base concern about choosing spells that aren't used in PvP is a valid concern. I don't PvP but I can understand how underwhelming this tier set would be for them. I did just think of a potential solution if some PvP only effects were added to the 2 spells. Both LH and Prism do dmg to enemies and healing to allies, it could make it fun to also add a blessing of freedom effect to both spells. For allies in LH or hit by Prism it removes snares/slows and gives a 50% speed bonus for 3 seconds; for enemies in LH or hit by Prism it slows their movement by 50% for 3 seconds.

Other than that I agree with you about looking at these kinds of spells in our toolkit. I do hope they listen to your feedback and update them before 10.1 hits (and while you're updating the range of Holy Prism, update it for Divine Toll too; having 1 spell with a 30 yard range becomes really awkward when trying to heal that one hunter that is 35 yards away...sorry, the hunter is 45 yards away, I meant the one boomkin that is 35 yards away)! - EDIT: Seems Divine toll is now 40y, as is Prism; tyvm!Comment by Xernathfinally! priest can be paladins and paladins can be priests without experiencing new character. Priests now are literal plate wearers tooComment by UnavalibleRets 4 set is like using butter as your sharpening stone :, (Comment by baneozanThe iconic golden plate and crimson red colours given to Priest instead of Paladin.
The iconic large and in charge Warrior of Light wearing massive plates given to Priests instead of Paladin...

What were they thinking...and the colours of these sets! Dear Lord can you make the colours anymore dull and lifeless!