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WoW: Forever Paladin changes
Every Paladin change in Blizzard's official WoW: Forever beta development notes, newest build first. 44 lines across 4 builds. Each line links to the official post.
What changed for Paladins, in brief
- Holy Strike reworked (Sep 24): smoother weapon-damage scaling per rank (up to 50%), a 10 sec cooldown, and Improved Holy Strike removed. Holy Power adds 15% crit chance to it.
- Retribution Aura: it scaled with spell power (Sep 24) but was using the target's spell power. That was fixed on Oct 8, and it went back to Vanilla base damage with a 6% spell-power ratio.
- Spell-power tuning (Oct 15): fixed Seal of Righteousness getting almost double spell-damage benefit. Consecration's coefficient is cut to 0.042 per tick, and Champion of the Light lowered to 10/20/30% of Intellect.
- Threat: Righteous Fury Holy threat went to 60% (Sep 24), then back to 90% (Oct 15).
- Protection: Holy Shield block 30% and Redoubt 4–20% (Oct 1). Reckoning now stores up to 4 charges, as in Classic Era (Oct 15).
- Blessings: Blessing of Salvation is replaced by Salvation and Mass Salvation, which are not exclusive with blessings, plus Revoke (Oct 15).
Summary written by Friday from the official notes below. The full verbatim list follows. See also: all beta changes by class · what to test in the Oct 19 stress test.
2 line(s) are marked uncertain: their class was inferred, not stated by a heading. Check the source.
Beta build notes — October 15, 2026 (16 changes)
Full build notes · Blizzard source post
General Paladin changes
- Seal of Fury is no longer overwritten by Power Word: Shield. source
- Blessing of Salvation and Greater Blessing of Salvation have been replaced with Salvation and Mass Salvation. These are applied in the same manner as the blessings were, but are not exclusive with blessings. source
- Paladins now also learn Revoke when Salvation is learned. Revoke removes target party or raid member’s Salvation or Mass Salvation. source
Developers’ notes: This is to restore the functionality of giving the Paladin more finesse and control over who has Salvation active and who doesn’t.
- Judgement of Righteousness and Judgement of Fury now have the correct spell power coefficients for instant cast spells. source
- Fixed an issue causing Seal of Righteousness to gain almost twice as much benefit from Spell Damage than intended.fix source
- Fixed an issue where Judgement of Righteousness had an incorrect Spell Damage coefficient.fix source
- Consecration’s Spell Power Coefficient per tick has been changed to 0.042 (was 0.095). source
- Righteous Fury’s Holy damage threat generation increased to 90% (was 60%). source
- Seal of Fury Rank 3 is now correctly available for training at level 26 (was incorrectly level 25). source
Holy
- Fixed an issue where using a focus macro to cast Light’s Vigil was causing it to not go onto the appropriate target.fix source
- Fixed an issue causing Infusion of Light to grant Holy Shock 50% increased damage against enemies.fix source
Protection
- Shield Specialization Mana restored to the Paladin lowered to 4% with a 3 second internal cooldown (was 6% with a 3 second internal cooldown). source
- Reckoning: This talent has been adjusted so you gain a charge of Reckoning each time it triggers. Your next melee swing (auto attack) will trigger all accumulated charges for 1 extra attack each. You may have a maximum of 4 charges. source
- This restores the Classic Era functionality of storing up to 4 charges and delays all the triggers until your next swing so that it does not cause the auto attack timer to be reset by instant attacks. source
Retribution
Beta build notes — October 8, 2026 (5 changes)
Full build notes · Blizzard source post
General Paladin changes
- Fixed an issue with Retribution Aura that caused it to use the target being struck’s spell power instead of the casting Paladin’s spell power.fix source
- The base damage of Retribution Aura has been returned to the Vanilla WoW values (about a 33% reduction) and the spell power ratio has been reduced to 6% (was 13.3%). source
Protection
- Reckoning: Now has a 1.5 second cooldown on how often it can be triggered. source
- Fixed an issue where Seal of Fury was granting Mana back to the Paladin even if the Improved Seal of Fury talent was not active.fix source
- Improved Seal of Fury and Shield Specialization no longer generate threat when restoring Mana. source
Developers’ notes: Paladins restoring enough Mana to sustain combat while tanking was causing more threat to be generated than intended.
Beta build notes — October 1, 2026 (4 changes)
Full build notes · Blizzard source post
Protection
- Redoubt’s chance to Block changed to 4/8/12/16/20% (was 6/12/18/24/30%). source
- Holy Shield’s chance to Block changed to 30% (was 20%). source
Retribution
- Champion of the Light’s Intellect to Spell Damage ratio changed to 20/40/60% (Was 33/66/100%). source
Developers’ notes: Champion of the Light had a tooltip issue saying it increased Healing; it did not. This tooltip has been removed.
General Paladin changes
- Retribution Aura uses the target’s spell power instead of the Paladin’s.known issueuncertain source
Beta build notes — September 24, 2026 (19 changes)
Full build notes · Blizzard source post
General Paladin changes
- Retribution Aura will now dynamically update its values based on the caster’s spell power. source
- Fixed a bug causing the Flash of Light cast animation to not play at the end of the spell cast.fix source
- Fixed various issues with Consecration.fix source
- Fixed an issue where Consecration would fail to apply its increased damage effect to some targets.fix source
- Fixed an issue where Consecration’s Z axis wasn’t functioning consistently.fix source
- Fixed an issue where Consecration could pull targets vertically above or below the caster.fix source
- Holy Strike’s % of weapon damage per rank changed to 25%/29%/32%/36%/39%/43%/46%/50% (was 25%/25%/30%/30%/35%/35%/40%/40%). source
Developers’s notes: This increases Holy Strike’s damage at all points while leveling, and increases how much it contributes to your rotation. Early ranks of Holy Strike didn’t always feel like an upgrade when purchasing a new rank, and we wanted to adjust that.
- Fixed a bug with Echo of Justice, causing it to have a higher than intended chance to activate.fix source
- Righteous Fury: Holy threat increase increased to 60% (was 90%). source
- Aura flyout for Paladins.uncertain source
Holy
- Holy Strike’s cooldown lowered to 10 seconds (was 12 seconds). source
- Improved Holy Strike removed from the Talent Tree. source
Developers’ notes: Even though there are sometimes cases where talents feel ‘required’ by classes, like Relentless Strikes for Rogues, having one that reduces the cooldown of a core ability so early on in a healing talent tree made this feel like a talent that was required. So we’ve removed it and made its behavior baseline.
- Light’s Vigil’s tooltip has been reorganized to make it more clear that the damage component is the only version that returns some of the Mana cost. source
- Holy Power now increases the Critical Strike chance of Holy Strike by 15% and retains all of its old effects. source
Retribution
- Vengeance now activates off of non-periodic critical strikes. source
- Vengeance’s maximum stacks lowered to 3 (was 5). source
- Two-Handed Weapon Specialization’s damage increase reduced to 2/4/6% (was 3/6/9%). source
- Sacred Arbiter now increases the damage of Holy Strike by 20% (was 10%). source
- Twist of Light now additionally reduces the Mana cost of your Seal spells by 20%. source
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