Blessings are the primary form of buffing for paladins. There are three general categories of blessings: short, regular, and greater. The short blessings are sacrifice, protection, and freedom. The regular blessings are wisdom, might, light, salvation, sanctuary, and kings. Greater blessings are longer versions of regular blessings.

Despite my categorizing, blessings are all considered to be the same type of buff, so without exception you can only have one blessing on you per paladin. They are magic buffs so they can be removed by many spells including purge, dispel, devour magic, and arcane shot. Both spellsteal and death have an effect on blessings.

For raid blessing I use a UI add-on called PallyPower. It allows paladins to more easily coordinate blessings, assigning each paladin to one blessing per class and clearly displaying their assignment and remaining time on blessings. Clicking on a class frame will bless that entire class, hovering out to individuals and right-clicking will cast the regular blessing, useful when rebuffing after a handful of deaths.

Short Blessings:

Since these count as blessings, applying them to someone will remove their regular or greater blessing. Make sure you reapply the original blessing when the short one ends.

Freedom:
25 second cooldown; 8% of base mana
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, granting immunity to movement impairing effects for 10 sec. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

This blessing will remove all snares, except for the exceptions of course. Daze from mobs is not considered a snare, it is a physical debuff, so BoF has no effect on it.
This blessing is obviously best used against classes which snare you. A warrior may hamstring to keep you from getting to his healer. Hunters will try to kite you, however this blessing has become less effective recently due to the addition of a dispel effect to arcane shot.

Do not mix up stuns and snares. While they may sound as if they impair movement, BoF has no effect on them.

The talent Guardian’s Favor in the protection tree increases the duration of BoF by 4 seconds. Along with the other effect, this makes it a useful PvP talent, though it has little benefit in PvE.

Sacrifice
30 second cooldown; 135 mana
Places a Blessing on the party member, transfering 104 damage taken per hit to the caster. Lasts 30 sec. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

The damage reduction from this blessing is fairly small and rarely useful. However the damage taken by the paladin can be very useful in certain situations. Many forms of crowd control break on damage, so by putting this on a player that is taking damage the paladin can become effectively immune to that CC. In PvP this can be used to break sheep, blind, sap, and freezing trap. In PvE it can be used to break the repentance that is cast by Maiden of Virtue in Karazhan. This is very useful early on when a tank may not have enough health to survive without heals; this keeps a paladin healer ready for the entire fight.

This blessing cannot be cast while under the effects of CC, so it is important to cast it before you think you will need the CC break.

The damage from this blessing does not cause spell pushback. If you are protected by BoP or DS you will 'take' damage still, but it will all be zero. Immunity will not prevent the damage reduction on your target.

Protection
5 minute cooldown; 6% of base mana
A targeted party member is protected from all physical attacks for 10 sec, but during that time they cannot attack or use physical abilities. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time. Once protected, the target cannot be made invulnerable by Divine Shield, Divine Protection or Blessing of Protection again for 1 min.

BoP is one of our most powerful non-healing support abilities. While it is not ideal for a melee class, this blessing makes casters almost unkillable, by melee, until the blessing is removed or it wears off. Players do not always expect this blessing, especially in battlegrounds, so they are often slow to switch to less-invincible targets. In PvE this will prevent mobs from attacking the target, effectively making it a second taunt, assuming you are second on aggro.

BoP also removes all physical debuffs. In PvP this makes emergency healing much easier since it removes mortal strike in addition to preventing the warrior from continuing to damage your target. In PvE this can be used to remove bleed effects like the garrote from Moroes in Karazhan.

Despite the lack of an offensive dispel or many magical attacks, do not assume that a paladin cannot kill a BoPed target. Consecrate ignores BoP. For faster results, judgements of blood, command, and righteousness all bypass BoP. Hammer of Wrath can also still hit players. And if the player is trying to heal, Hammer of Justice, Repentance, and Arcane Torrent can all be used to interrupt the player.

The talent Guardian’s Favor in the protection tree reduces the cooldown of BoP by 2 minutes. Along with the other effect, this makes it a useful PvP talent, though it has little benefit in PvE. It is situationally useful for some PvE fights like Moroes (removing garrote from healers), so non-prot paladins may find it worth the points. A protection paladin will likely not have the points to spare.

Regular Blessings:

Might:
145 mana
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing attack power by 220 for 10 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

More attack power is great for physical DPS classes. While the non-scaling nature of the blessing may make it seem unimpressive, it remains a solid damage boost that should not be neglected. Warriors, shamans, paladins, hunters, rogues, and druids are benefit greatly from this blessing. Pets and minions (except the imp which does not melee) all benefit from BoM.

The ret talent Improved Blessing of Might increases the effect of this talent by 20%. For 5 talent points that gives 44 additional attack power. For soloing and small groups, this is insignificant and not worth the five points. However in a 25 man raid, this will be affecting a significant number of people and depending on the number of physical damage classes you bring to raids this could be considered worth getting.

Salvation:
6% of base mana
Places a Blessing on the party member, reducing the amount of all threat generated by 30% for 10 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

This is both the least-impressive-sounding blessing and also the most powerful for DPS. Aggro, not gear or skill, is often the primary limiter of damage. This blessing raises the aggro cap on damage by 43%. While your DPS might not be that high above the tank, this blessing should give a damage increase to any competent DPS, assuming the tank is in similar gear.

Warning: This blessing is not a substitute for common sense and watching ones aggro. An early string of crits or an unexpected aggro dump will still get reckless DPS killed.

Healers may request this blessing. Generally they should not need it. Healing generates low aggro, so if a healer has aggro, it is usually due to a tank failing to properly grab adds. Poor healing tactics while pulling may also cause aggro, but salvation will not help with that. In other words, if a healer has aggro, it is because someone screwed up and there’s nothing this blessing can do to fix that.

Wisdom:
150 mana
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, restoring 41 mana every 5 seconds for 10 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Think of this as BoM for casters. Instead of increasing damage, it increases their longevity. This blessing is especially important for healers. Caster DPS may prefer salvation instead.

The holy talent Improved Blessing of Wisdom increases the effect of this by 20% (8mana/5). Like imp BoM, this may be useful in large raids, but the effect is so small that it is not likely to prevent a wipe. Still, for a raid which wants every advantage possible, this talent could be appealing.

Light:
180 mana
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing the effects of Holy Light spells used on the target by up to 580 and the effects of Flash of Light spells used on the target by up to 185. Lasts 10 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Tanks will usually prefer Blessing of Kings but if that is taken care of and a raid has a large amount of paladin healing, this can make healing easier. This does not directly benefit non-paladin healers. Use this if you use a lot of holy paladins, otherwise you will be better off giving the tank another blessing.

The Libram of Souls Redeemed will increase the benefit for Blessing of Light by 105 to each spell. It is dropped during the Opera event in Karazhan.

Kings:
6% of base mana
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing total stats by 10% for 10 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

This is almost always the best blessing possible for a tank since stamina is one of the most important stats they have. For DPS this blessing will provide a scaling damage increase; though this means it is inferior to wisdom or might until their gear is excellent. Fights with lots of AoE damage may make the health increase more valuable than extra damage from another blessing.

This is often the preferred blessing in PvP where health is critical.

Do not be misled by the description though, BoK does not increase all stats by 10%. Instead it only affects the primary stats: stamina, spirit, agility, strength, and intellect. Secondary stats like attack power or mana/5 do not directly benefit from BoK. They may indirectly benefit from the increase to primary stats.

This is a good blessing for the minions of demonology warlocks since the warlock gains spell damage based on a percentage of their minion’s stamina and intellect.

Ten points in protection are needed to get BoK.

Sanctuary
180 mana
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage dealt from all sources by up to 80 for 10 min. In addition, when the target blocks a melee attack the attacker will take 46 Holy damage. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

This is a highly situational blessing. It is almost always inferior to other blessings. Use it when taking lots of low damage attacks.

While tanking this will give a small aggro increase to protection paladins. It does not scale with spell damage. Warriors will get a smaller benefit. Druids get no aggro benefit because they cannot block.

The damage reduction is insignificant when a boss hits for thousands of damage. It is also applied before armor, reducing the potential benefit. For example, a boss were to hit for 1000 damage (this is an intentionally small number to make it easier to explain) and the blessing applied after armor, a tank with 50% mitigation would take 1000 / 2 – 80 damage; 420. In practice the tank would take (1000 – 80) / 2 damage; 460. This becomes worse the tank’s armor increases.

While tanking multiple mobs which usually hit faster and slower, this can provide a more substantial damage reduction and more aggro due to the greater frequency of blocks. This can be applied to farming, allowing a protection paladin to kill large numbers of fast-attacking melee mobs with minimal loss of health.

The damage reduction is also applied individually to each tick of a Damage over Time spells, making fights a little easier against warlocks who often rely on DoTs.

Greater Blessings

Greater Blessings have the same effect as regular blessings, however they have significant advantages. They last 30 minutes instead of 10; allowing for less frequent buffing. They are applied to an entire class at a time, saving time while buffing. Their range is longer, making it easier to buff a raid that can't figure out how to collapse.

The downside is that not all of a class wants the same blessing. This will require the player to right-click their blessing to remove it or for a regular blessing to be cast to replace it. Greater blessings also have a higher mana cost and require an inexpensive reagent.

Hunter pets, voidwalkers, and felguards are counted as warriors while buffing so do not make the mistake of buffing the tank with kings, then giving the hunters’ pets might and overwriting the tank’s blessing. Succubi, imps,and felhunters are counted as warlocks.

If you find any errors or omissions, please point them out. Inaccurate guides aren’t very useful.

I’d like to thank wowhead for providing the spell descriptions and mana costs. Also the name of the hunter trap; I often confuse it with frost trap.

Mine.

This should be enough.

One more can't hurt.

[edit] Way too many. :(

I don't have time to read over it tonight like in detail detail zomg type thing (I think I'm confusing myself?), but it could help new Paladins or new 70s maybe? Looked good on a real quick skim though.

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c321/everettowen/Bump_hippo.jpg from the Zakkers.

Looks good, Kleps. I'll take this opportunity to plug my own guide to Blessings. Perhaps there's some info there you can use:

http://blessingofkings.blogspot.com/2007/11/guide-to-blessings.html

Bump.

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Q u o t e:

This blessing will remove all snares, except for the exceptions of course. Daze from mobs is not considered a snare, it is a physical debuff, so BoF has no effect on it.

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Not entirely accurate, as hamstring and wing clip are both considered physical debuffs, yet are removed by BoF.

Decent guide though altogether.

Guardian's Favor is useful in PVE imo. On long enough fights you can use BoP twice; Bloodboil, etc.

Might want to include that Blessing of Freedom does not prevent stuns and that you will get immediately stunned numerous times as soon as you use it.

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Q u o t e:
Might want to include that Blessing of Freedom does not prevent stuns and that you will get immediately stunned numerous times as soon as you use it.

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How does using blessing of freedom cause you to get "immediately stunned numerous times"?

Oh wait, it doesn't.

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Q u o t e:


How does using blessing of freedom cause you to get "immediately stunned numerous times"?

Oh wait, it doesn't.

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Simply been my experience that no matter where I am in a BG, if I pop Blessing of Freedom, 15 felguards, boars, and night elf warriors start humping my face.

bop also removes greater blessings from said player.

example: Healer has BoW on them, like usual. They somehow manage to start taking melee hits. If you BoP them, it removes said BoW. Reapply when able.

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Q u o t e:



Simply been my experience that no matter where I am in a BG, if I pop Blessing of Freedom, 15 felguards, boars, and night elf warriors start humping my face.

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I am sad that there are 15 people that are all perceptive enough to stun the person with BoF on, but it still doesn't "cause you to be stunned" when used. That could confuse people into thinking it was like Aspect of the Pack, which it is not.

And there are several raid fights where BoF is still helpful, along with BoS, so you can't leanthe descriptions too hard towards PvP. [even though it is probably used a lot more there]

Thanks for the comments. I am adding stuff in response.

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Q u o t e:



Simply been my experience that no matter where I am in a BG, if I pop Blessing of Freedom, 15 felguards, boars, and night elf warriors start humping my face.

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It is not because of BoF it is because BE Paladins are that damn attractive that every demon boar and Night Elf Warrior just wants us so bad.

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Q u o t e:


I am sad that there are 15 people that are all perceptive enough to stun the person with BoF on, but it still doesn't "cause you to be stunned" when used. That could confuse people into thinking it was like Aspect of the Pack, which it is not.

And there are several raid fights where BoF is still helpful, along with BoS, so you can't leanthe descriptions too hard towards PvP. [even though it is probably used a lot more there]

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Klep is writing a guide to blessings. I suggested that he include the fact that Blessing of Freedom doesn't prevent stuns because it is a fact that a lot of paladins don't know, given then name Blessing of Freedom. Try not to take things so literally.