In this section I go over some of the more in depth and advanced facets of playing Holy Paladin, including how to play around your Hero Talents, Beacons, and more. I have also put together a document going over various spell interactions and that explains how a lot of mechanics and effects actually work for Holy Paladin. You can find that document by clicking here.
A lot of it is already explained in various places on this guide, but having it all in one place felt like a good idea.
Herald of the Sun
As Herald of the Sun it is very important to maximize our "Avenging Wrath" and "Awakening" windows due to "Sun's Avatar". Specifically, we need to maximize how many "Dawnlight" you have out for each given window. For this we need to line up our "Holy Prism" (or "Barrier of Faith") with those windows as we can apply a "Dawnlight" with your next two Holy Power spenders after casting "Holy Prism".
To maximize the value you get out of "Awakening", you always need to use "Holy Prism" together with any "Awakening" window. To do this I recommend you strive to cast "Holy Prism" on cooldown, unless you're very close to 15 "Awakening" stacks when "Holy Prism" comes off cooldown, and then just hold your "Awakening" proc until "Holy Prism" is ready next. The proc lasts 30 seconds, so "Holy Prism" will always come up before the "Awakening" proc wears off.
In Mythic+, it can sometimes be a good idea to separate your "Holy Prism" from your actual "Avenging Wrath" as you often don't need that much healing, and you might benefit more from the expanded coverage that you get from separating them.
Another very important thing to know is how "Sun's Avatar" works when you have a "Dawnlight" active on yourself. When this is the case you simply radiate "Sun's Avatar" damage and healing in 5 yard circle around you. This is often preferable to having it on other players as you are more easily able to control the healing and you can hit significantly more players if they are somewhat stacked. I would generally recommend you try to make sure you have one on yourself for every "Avenging Wrath" window.
As Lightsmith you get an extra spell to use, and it will alternate between Holy Bulwark and Sacred Weapon each time you use it. How you use these is pretty straight forward.
Holy Bulwark can be used on any player, you can prioritize squishy targets or tanks, but keep in mind that the proc from Divine Inspiration prefers proccing Holy Bulwark on tanks, so make sure you don't cast it on players who already have it running. Alternatively, you can also just track the two buffs on yourself and then just cast them whenever you don't have one running.
Sacred Weapon should be used on a DPS player if you want it to damage, or on a healer if you want it to heal. Just as with Holy Bulwark you shouldn't overwrite existing Sacred Weapons.
Sacred Weapon will generally deal the same damage regardless of which DPS you cast it on. As for using it for healing, it can be a good idea to not use it on a Discipline Priest since it will often proc damage for them and thus lose healing procs.
As for how you should prioritize these in your rotation, you really just press them on cooldown when it fits in your rotation. You should only really hold them for when you don't have the respective effect active on yourself and otherwise not think much more about it.
The Lightsmith talent Divine Guidance is also quite a powerful one. In dungeons it isn't something you need to think much about as you should be casting Consecration anyway. If you choose to play it in raids, then you need to prioritize casting Consecration whenever you have 5 Divine Guidance stacks.
The final important talent as Lightsmith is Hammer and Anvil. This is the talent that makes Crit better than Mastery as Lightsmith since its healing doesn't currently scale with Mastery and it requires Judgment to crit to do anything. With Hammer and Anvil your Judgment Crits will do a decent amount of healing to 5 allies within 20 yards of the target. That 20 yard radius strangely starts from the center of which ever mob you are hitting, meaning that it will hit absolutely no body on very large bosses.
Beacon Tips and Tricks (Click to expand)
Who should you put "Beacon of Faith" and "Beacon of Light" on? Do you want to move them around often?
The answer to these questions is not black and white and it will change between Raiding and Mythic+. The first thing to keep in mind is to never put a Beacon on yourself, not just because of Light of the Martyr, but also because of Beacon of the Lightbringer, and because you generally have a lot of self healing, including leech. The best DPS targets in both Mythic+ and Raid are Hunters, Boomkins, and Devastation Evokers.
Raid: The most obvious targets to put them on would be tanks, but the fact of the matter is that in modern WoW, tanks just don't need much attention from healers in Raiding. That is not to say that you should never have a beacon on a tank, but they are most often better used on a squishy ranged target. More often than not, if tanks make a mistake and die, your Beacon of Faith and Beacon of Light would not have made a difference to save them. If you need to heal your tanks, it is also usually better to keep the Beacons on DPS players and just heal the tanks directly.
The reasons we prefer ranged players over melee or tanks is not only because the Beacons themselves will overheal less, but also because of mastery coverage with Beacon of the Lightbringer. Additionally, Light's Protection provides 5% damage reduction to both your Beacon of Light and Beacon of Faith target.
Keeping Beacon of Faith and Beacon of Light on two DPS players, will let you and your co-healers ignore those two players for the most part, and will mean you can focus more on healing the rest of the raid.
As for whether we want to move them around, the answer is generally no. The global it costs to move is rarely worth it outside of niche situations. It is generally only worth it if you know the target you previously had Beacon on will be out of range due to the raid splitting up or something.
Mythic+: Your general Beacon targets in Mythic+ will also be two DPS players whenever there is any group damage happening. However, in Dungeons there are times where little or no group damage is happening and it is only the tank taking damage, in which case it is the correct choice to have a Beacon on the tank. 5% passive damage reduction is nothing to scuff at for a tank in high keys.
Beacon of Virtue
Beacon of Virtue is an extremely strong cooldown that has to be used as often as possible. It is of utmost importance that you fit your major cooldowns, like Divine Toll and Divine Favor in to these windows. With Light's Protection, the 5% damage reduction is applied to every target with Beacon of Virtue. So in Mythic+ you can grant the whole group 5% damage reduction for a big hit if you cast it immediately before the damage.
As Lightsmith, when consuming an Awakening proc, you want to cast Beacon of Virtue prior to casting the Judgment to make sure you get the guaranteed Hammer and Anvil proc inside it.
Another thing you can do with Beacon of Virtue is pre-cast spells in to it and still have them transfer their healing to the Beacons. To do this you simply cast a Flash of Light or Holy Light and spell queue Beacon of Virtue out of the cast. Keep in mind that, for whatever reason, this does not work if you cast the Flash of Light or Holy Light on yourself. This is not something you need to go out of your way to do for every Beacon of Virtue, but if it happens to line up, then it is a nice bonus. This also works with Beacon of Faith and Beacon of Light but isn't ever relevant.
Note that this does NOT seem to work when you have Divine Favor.
You should try to avoid casting Beacon of Virtue on ranged targets that are standing far away from the rest of the group as they might not have 4 other targets within 30 yards of them for Beacon of Virtue to apply to. This is especially important in Mythic+ where this can happen more often than you would think. In Mythic+ you can counteract this by always casting Beacon of Virtue on yourself and keep yourself centrally placed, usually in melee, and that way ensure you always hit all five players, but keep in mind to not carry this habit in to raiding where it would be a significant loss to always cast Beacon of Virtue on yourself.
The first thing to consider if you run into mana problems is to make sure you're using Mana Potions and Blessing of Winter, and the next thing to consider is if you are casting too many Holy Light. Holy Light is extremely expensive and you cannot afford to cast it more than couple of times a minute without Divine Favor, and on longer fights you might even have to forgo using it even with Divine Favor. The last thing to look at is to change away from Beacon of Virtue if you are playing that.
It is still very possible to have mana problems even if you are playing "Beacon of Faith", use Mana Potions and Blessing of Winter, and you are not casting Holy Light much, if at all. If this is the case, it is actually a good sign because it means you are playing well and filling every possible GCD. However, there sadly isn't a good or easy way to solve this issue with how Holy Paladin is designed.
The only way to save more mana in this case, is to begin casting Holy Shock offensively in healing down time as this refunds half its mana cost with the Light's Conviction talent. If this still isn't enough, you will need to skip casting it at all in periods of low healing requirement and instead just cast things like Flash of Light and Crusader Strike. In my opinion, this is incredibly poor class design, but it is sadly how things are right now. Holy Shock is simply too expensive, and it is in fact one of our worst spells when it comes to its mana efficiency.
HOW TO PLAY HOLY PALADIN
Avoid Wasting Holy Power as it is our main resource, spent on our strongest spells, "Word of Glory" ("Eternal Flame" as Herald) and "Light of Dawn". Even if you have nothing to heal, you should be spending your Holy Power to deal damage with "Shield of the Righteous".
ABC - Always Be Casting is a mantra that is important for almost all specs to follow. Essentially, it just means you should always be filling every possible global cooldown with a spell. Remember, it is better to be casting a suboptimal spell than to cast no spell at all. Of course you should follow the priority list to the best of your ability, just don't get stuck casting nothing at all because you are only trying to cast the best spells.
More Holy Shocks - "Holy Shock" is the driving force behind the whole spec. It is our main Holy Power generator, it procs "Infusion of Light", and it does great healing. As such, you should always strive to keep it on cooldown to maximize how many you cast.
BEST HOLY PALADIN ROTATION AND SPELL PRIORY
Herald of the Sun - Raid and Mythic+
TALENTS
HOLY PALADIN MAJOR COOLDOWN USAGE
ADVANCED HOLY PALADIN INSIGHTS
Lightsmith - Raid and Mythic+