Blessing

A blessing is a powerful single-target short term buff that can be applied to friendly players and some non-player characters (NPC's). Blessings are unique to the Paladin class and along with Auras, Hands, and Judgements provide the main utility of the Paladin class.

Blessings can be applied to most friendly targets, drastically increasing their combat abilities. All regular Blessings last for 10 minutes. There can only be one blessing per paladin per person at a time, meaning a single paladin can only cast one type of blessing on another player. The same blessing from multiple does not stack.

Available blessings

There are two blessings available to Paladins. The available blessings are as follows:

	Blessing name	Description	To acquire	School	Ranks
	Blessing of Might	Places a blessing on the friendly target, increasing attack by 10% and restoring 1 mana every 5 seconds for 1 hour.	Level 4	Retribution	10
	Blessing of Kings	Places a blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats for 1 hour.	Level 20	Holy	1

Greater blessings

REMOVED BY PATCH 4.0.1

Greater blessings are longer-lasting versions of normal blessings. Greater blessings last for 30 minutes and will buff all same-class members of your raid or group as your target. Requires 1 [Symbol of Kings] per each blessing cast and requires the corresponding rank of the normal blessing in order to be trained. (Greater Blessing of Might rank 1 requires Blessing of Might rank 6 to have been learned.) For example, if you target a rogue and cast Greater Blessing of Might, all rogues within range will receive Greater Blessing of Might.

Line of sight is irrelevant when casting this other than with your specific target. If another rogue was around a corner you would not be able to target it as a receiver of your buff, but he will receive the buff if you target another of the same class that is within your line of sight.

Usage

Different classes tend to favor certain blessings. Tanks will usually prefer Blessing of Kings for the additional health while healers will request Blessing of Wisdom for the additional mana regeneration. In a raid it is common to have multiple Paladins, allowing the use of more than one Blessing on each class. It is important to coordinate with the other Paladins to determine the best Blessings for each member of the group.

History

• Many blessings have been scrapped, such as Blessing of Light.
• Originally all blessings lasted for only 5 minutes. If you wanted to buff a whole 40-man raid, by the time you ended the buffing, first members had only 2-3 minutes left on their blessings, making paladins more like walking buff machines that effecient healers/DPS'ers.

Hands

Main article: Hand (spell)

In Patch 3.0.2, blessings have been significantly reworked. Blessing of Light has been removed altogether, while Blessing of Salvation has been folded into a category of short-term blessings known as Hand spells, which also includes the spells formerly known as Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Sacrifice. As such, paladins' buffing assignments have been significantly simplified since the number of blessings to be assigned is smaller in addition to not needing to worry about overwriting one's assigned buff when giving a target one of these temporary spells.

Cataclysm changes

This section concerns content exclusive to Cataclysm.

• The functionality of Greater Blessings will be combined with normal Blessings in Cataclysm, making all Blessings last for 1 hour and apply to all same-class members of your raid or group as your target. As such the Greater Blessings spell will be removed and [Symbol of Kings] will no longer serve a purpose.
• Blessing of Sanctuary becomes a passive effect for the paladin instead of a buff.
• Blessing of Wisdom and Blessing of Might are combined, increasing attack power by 10% and granting a various amount of mana regeneration.
• Blessing of Kings increases all stats by 5% along with magical resistances.