World of Warcraft Forever’s Paladins tank with a new Seal of Fury whose Judgement taunts from 10 yards, principal game designer Kris Zierhut said during the World of Warcraft: Forever Deep Dive panel at BlizzCon 2026. Zierhut walked through the class on a single slide of four spell tooltips.
Holy Strike returns at level 6
“Paladins back then had an ability called Holy Strike that got cut before the game was shipped. We brought it back,” Zierhut said of the 2004 beta. Every Paladin learns it at level 6. The Rank 8 tooltip reads 20 mana, melee range, instant, 12 second cooldown: an instant strike that causes 40 percent weapon damage plus an additional 36 to 46 Holy damage. “Every one of the three Paladin trees has ways to improve Holy Strike.”
Judgement (91 mana, 10 yard range, instant, 10 second cooldown) unleashes the energy of a Seal on an enemy and no longer consumes it. “No more seal busy work,” Zierhut said.
Seal of Fury does three things
“We’ve added a new seal called Seal of Fury that is our answer to tanking Paladins. And yes, you can tank as a Paladin.” The Rank 7 tooltip (200 mana, instant) fills the Paladin with divine fury for 30 seconds, so melee attacks deal an additional 37 Holy damage. Since the bonus is flat, “the faster the weapon you use, the more damage it’ll do.” While a shield is equipped, each attack also grants an absorb shield equal to 50 percent of the Holy damage dealt.
The third piece is the taunt. Judging the Seal causes 163 to 178 Holy damage to an enemy and taunts it to attack you for 4 seconds. “Growl and Taunt have a five yard range and Judgement has a 10 yard range. So Paladin’s got a little bit more reach to reach out and grab something and bring it to the fight than the other tanks have.”
Consecration caps its heavy damage at four
Consecration “came to dominate” tanking runs in Burning Crusade, Zierhut said, and the team wanted to keep “that tactical combat where you can’t just pull the whole dungeon at once.” Rank 5 (565 mana, instant, 8 second cooldown) now does 96 Holy damage over 8 seconds to every enemy who enters the area, and only the first four take an additional 233 damage over 8 seconds. “You’re going to have enough threat on those first four targets, but not all the rest.”
The slide showed only the top rank of each spell, so the levels at which lower ranks are learned were not given, and the panel did not say whether Seal of Righteousness or the other existing seals change.