Holy Paladin & Holy Priest Changes in the Mists of Pandaria Classic Beta

Luxrah • Published June 14, 2025

Following the announcement of the first set of class changes yesterday, Blizzard has added some additional adjustments to Holy Paladins and Holy Priests for the Mists of Pandaria Classic Beta.

Holy Paladins have seen a change to their Seal of Insight, which will now restore 4% of their base mana when it hits. Their Devotion Aura has been buffed as well to reduce all damage taken by 20% rather than only Magical damage, putting it more on par with other healers’ defensive cooldowns.

For Holy Priests, their Holy Word heals have both been buffed: Holy Word: Serenity by 40% and Holy Word: Sanctuary by 60%, with the latter also seeing its mana cost reduced. Their Mastery: Echo of Light has also been changed to heal every 1 second instead of every 3. Divine Hymn has received a buff as well to heal up to 50 targets regardless of group size, so every 3 minutes the Holy Priest will be able to put out some massive healing on every ally in range, including all of your team’s pets. For all priests, the target caps on their three capstone AoE talents – Divine Star, Halo, and Cascade – have been removed for both damage and healing, allowing you to hit every target in range with these abilities as well. Cascade has been returned to 4 bounces after the last set of changes reduced it to 3.

References

Linxy
Source

We’ve added the following changes to the Beta:

General
- Damage over time effects should no longer fall off prematurely when a damage over time extension is used.
Classes
- Developers’ notes: The below are additional adjustments following yesterday’s changes. These are subject to the same rules as before where they do nothing in PvP and they also are subject to change.
- Paladin
  - Holy
    - Seal of Insight now has a chance to restore 4% of the Holy Paladin’s base mana when striking a target in a non-PvP environment. [5.4 Revert]
    - Devotion Aura cast by a Holy Paladin will now reduce all damage by 20% (was Magical damage only).
      - Developers’ notes: Changing Devotion Aura to reduce all damage makes it beneficial in more situations and aligns with other damage reducing abilities like Power Word: Barrier.
- Priest
  - General
    - The target caps on Divine Star, Halo, and Cascade have been returned to being uncapped for damage and healing.
      - Developers’ notes: We are still keeping Divine Star’s reduced healing for Discipline Priests but we want these abilities to feel impactful in larger raid groups still. If adjustments are still necessary to bring in Discipline Priest power it will be done in other ways. This was already partially reverted on Beta, but we’re doing it completely now for all effects.
    - Cascade returned to 4 bounces.
  - Holy
    - Holy Word: Serenity Healing increased by 40%.
    - Holy Word: Sanctuary Healing increased by 60%.
    - Holy Word: Sanctuary mana cost decreased by 33% and now costs 2.5% of base mana (was 3.8%).
    - Mastery: Echo of Light will now deal its healing every 1 second (was every 3 seconds).
      - Developers’ notes: This was originally intended in Mists of Pandaria but due to latency issues it was changed to 3 seconds. We are going to try this out to see if it works with modern tech the way that it was meant to be.
    - Divine Hymn now heals up to 50 targets regardless of raid size.
      - Developers’ notes: This was including pets in its original targeting, and instead of just making pets get the short end of the stick here – we moved this to hitting all targets. It’s a 3 minute cooldown and wasn’t that appealing compared to other cooldowns that exist. We feel this is a good direction for Discipline Priests being great with mitigation cooldowns, and Holy Priests having throughput cooldowns that reward the Priest for finding moments to get a full channel off in a fight, or in the case of Holy Word: Sanctuary – placing it in an area that players will be standing in for at least 30 seconds.