Theorycraft library
- No maintained Holy Paladin math model has existed for any Classic ruleset since 2019.
- Ret is the only paladin spec with mature open-source sims, and they encode spell data we can reuse.
- The formula rules below are the ones people get wrong, and they carry straight into Forever.
- IlluminationIlluminationAfter getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, Light's Vigil, or Holy Shock heal spell you have a 40% chance to gain Mana equal to 50% of the base cost of the spell.Requires 15 points in Holy · Requires 3 points in ReverenceMax rank not read from footage; showing rank 2 text. went 100% in Classic, 60% in TBC, 30% in Wrath. Forever reads as 50%.
- Everything here was collected on September 15, 2026. Links marked “public” open without a login.
The rules that carry into Forever
- Coefficients: direct spells scale with +healing or spell damage at cast time ÷ 3.5. Instants count as 1.5 seconds, so Holy ShockHoly Shock160 Mana | Instant | Enemy: 20 yd range | Friendly: 40 yd range | 10 sec cooldownBlasts the target with Holy energy, causing 129 to 139 Holy damage to an enemy, or 110 to 118 healing to an ally.Requires 20 points in HolyAll ranks read from demo footage. and Flash of Light are 42.9%, Holy Light at 2.5 seconds is 71.4%. HoTs use duration ÷ 15. AoE halves.
- Downranking: ranks learned below level 20 lose 3.75% per level under 20. The coefficient uses the spell’s base cast time, so cast-time reductions like Light’s Grace or Infusion of LightInfusion of LightYour Holy Shock and Flash of Light critical hits reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light cast within 15 sec by 1.0 sec.Requires 15 points in HolyThis rank read from footage; other ranks estimated. don’t lower it.
- Percentage talents multiply base only. Healing LightHealing LightIncreases the amount healed by your Holy Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Shock spells by 12%.Requires 5 points in HolyThis rank read from footage; other ranks estimated. adds its 12% to the spell’s base heal, not to the +healing contribution. Naive math overshoots.
- Mana regen: Spirit regen only runs outside the five-second rule, which is why paladins historically valued mp5 and Intellect over Spirit. Forever’s ReverenceReverenceAllows 30% of your Mana regeneration to continue while casting.Requires 10 points in HolyThis rank read from footage; other ranks estimated. changes that at 30% while casting.
- Crit as mana: with IlluminationIlluminationAfter getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, Light's Vigil, or Holy Shock heal spell you have a 40% chance to gain Mana equal to 50% of the base cost of the spell.Requires 15 points in Holy · Requires 3 points in ReverenceMax rank not read from footage; showing rank 2 text., crit is a mana stat first and a throughput stat second. Every era’s stat-weight argument for Holy comes down to crit versus mp5 versus Intellect.
Tools worth opening today
| Tool | What it does | Era |
|---|---|---|
| Legacy Sim | Per-rank HPS and HPM for Holy Light and Flash of Light with your +healing, crit and talents. The community standard. Public. | Classic |
| Ozgar’s Downranking Tool | Ranks every heal rank by efficiency, with the full derivation in its guide. Open source. | Classic |
| wowsims TBC Anniversary | Ret, Prot and a scaffold Holy sim. Source on GitHub with every paladin spell’s rank, cost and coefficient coded. | TBC |
| wowsims SoD | Shockadin through the Ret sim. Codes Shock and Awe as 200% Intellect, Sheath of Light as 30% attack power. Source. | SoD |
| Saintis/Overheal | Parses a combat log or a Warcraft Logs report into overheal curves and crit value versus +healing. Closest thing to “crit expected value from logs”. | Any |
| talentsforever data export | Every Forever talent and demo spellbook as JSON, CC-BY-4.0. The data behind this site’s trees. | Forever |
| Twist of Light rotation emulator | A browser toy that plays the echo rotation on a slow two-hander so you can feel the cadence. The Ret channel’s verdict: “not as elegant as twisting but lower barrier to entry”, and it wrongly lets Command proc Righteousness. Not a damage sim. | Forever |
Spreadsheets, all public
- Vault of the Silverhands, Holy Paladin BiS Calculator (2019). Item index from level 30 to Naxx with three stat-weight presets. The writeup on crit valuation is in its Warcraft Tavern thread.
- Holy Paladin crit vs mp5 vs +healing comparison (2019). Small, focused on IlluminationIlluminationAfter getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, Light's Vigil, or Holy Shock heal spell you have a 40% chance to gain Mana equal to 50% of the base cost of the spell.Requires 15 points in Holy · Requires 3 points in ReverenceMax rank not read from footage; showing rank 2 text.-adjusted stat equivalence.
- Urskrah’s single-target healing efficiency calculator (2019). Heal per mana and per half-second of cast for every class’s ranks.
- Zerotorescue’s Holy Paladin model (Legion). The methodology matters more than the numbers: cast ratios pulled from logs feed a stat-weight model, with an accuracy checker tab. This is the structure the Forever model follows.
- Despotus Ret DPS sheet (2019). Toggleable gear, seals, procs.
- Retherz/RPaladinDamage. A 1.12 addon that estimates Ret DPS in-game. The author is the person correcting coefficient math in the forum threads below.
Sims and their assumptions
- wowsims/tbc (2021): source. Seal twisting hardcoded with a 399 ms twist window before the next swing.
- wowsims/tbc-new (2026, active): source. APL-driven twisting; only Command and Righteousness are twistable; published stat weights per phase with spell damage worth about a third of attack power for Ret. Prot has default weights too. Holy is a 54-line shell with placeholder weights.
- TheSorm/RetSim: source. The C# sim Ret players cited in 2021 before wowsims caught up.
- hypernormalisation/zeal: main document and the Nightfall note. TBC Ret calculation tools with the seal-twisting equations written out. Posted in the Ret channel on September 16 as “mandatory reading for Forever Rets”, half joking; useful as the reference for what a twist window was worth.
- wowsims/classic (2026, alpha): source. Ret and Prot migrated from the SoD sim. Holy is an unlaunched stub. Open bug: Seal of Righteousness crits in the Ret sim.
- ClassicSim: source. Ret only; the promised healer support never shipped.
- Tyralon/healing_calcs: source. Python TBC and Wrath paladin healing stat-value sim. Read the code for assumptions; the README is one line.
- taubut’s raid healing simulator: source. A browser game, but its encounter damage scripts are reusable as damage profiles.
Long-form analyses people actually cite
- Holy Paladin Handbook for Classic WoW, 261 pages, December 2024, by a rank-one Era paladin. The most comprehensive current document.
- Icy Veins Classic Holy comment thread. The critique is more rigorous than the guide it critiques.
- Spell coefficients, downranking penalty, math vs reality. Where the “talents multiply base only” correction comes from.
- The Holy Light: paladin healing (2007). Downranking penalty tables and the Light’s Grace coefficient note.
- Askalon’s Light’s Bulwark. Real threat derivations for Prot.
- Retribution DPS Theorycraft sheets thread and the seal twisting mechanics explainer.
- Procs per minute and weapon speed for Seal of CommandSeal of Command65 Mana | InstantGives the Paladin a chance to deal additional Holy damage equal to 70% of normal weapon damage. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 sec. Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing 68 to 73 Holy damage, 137 to 146 if the target is stunned or incapacitated.Requires 10 points in RetributionAll ranks read from demo footage..
- Banana Shoulders on Intellect and Blessing of Kings, Normalize Illumination. The crit-as-mana derivations.
- Kurn, To Beacon or not to Beacon. Raw versus effective transfer math, relevant to Light’s Vigil comparisons.
- Amazon Basin paladin healing tables. Vanilla-era HPM per rank.
How to model a healer
- Ask Mr. Robot healer sims, parts 1 to 4. Damage profiles, effective healing, heal styles. The best general writeup.
- Blessing of Kings, Smart heals and healiocentric on Chain Heal. Why AoE heals overheal less.
- ParseCard, evaluating healer parses and the Warcraft Logs healing event fields. How effective healing is measured from logs.
- Mana regeneration formula. Spirit regen equals Spirit times the square root of Intellect times a level constant.
- Elitist Jerks archive and the Theorycraft Archive wiki.
Healer meta by era, from logs
- Classic: Wowhead’s phase-one healer tier list built from Warcraft Logs.
- TBC: Wowhead and Warcraft Tavern both land on one Holy Paladin per raid as the tank healer, with three paladins total for Blessings. timesaver.gg gives a concrete six-healer Black Temple comp.
- Season of Discovery: wowmeta’s daily Warcraft Logs tier list, Archon’s healer rankings, and Archon’s per-boss cast tables showing Beacon at about 75% overheal.
- Our own: the From the logs page, rebuilt daily from the Warcraft Logs API.
Forever-specific, days old
- talentsforever and its data export.
- Wowhead Forever talent calculator, to be re-datamined at beta.
- classicwowforever Holy guide and class change diff.
- Goldpip3/wow-forever-tools, a talent calculator, raid buff planner and DPS sim importing the talentsforever data.
- andycarlson13/foreversims, a Warlock sim with evidence-tiered claims, strict versus projected. The evidence-store pattern is the right template for a Forever paladin model.
- metammo talent overview: 470 talents, 119 new, 263 reworked, 81 removed.
- veldt1’s Forever item datamine, an early item dump from the beta client files, posted with the warning “not 100%”.
- Datamine sites the channels do not trust: foreverchanges.pro and daybreakforever.com both list Season of Discovery abilities such as Hammer of the Righteous as if they were Forever spells.
Full research briefs with every link are kept in the project repo under research/theorycraft/.