The Paladin is a front-line holy class in Scars of Honor built around three roles you mix from a single talent tree: a blocking Templar tank, a fire-focused Inquisitor, and a partial-support lean that buffs and sustains the party without being a full healer. This guide is drawn from the developers' Paladin talents stream and community write-ups, so treat everything below as early playtest material that is still being balanced.
Caveat: Scars of Honor is in an early 2026 playtest/alpha. The Paladin tree, spells, exact numbers, and even whole systems shown on the developer stream are work-in-progress and explicitly subject to change. Where this guide describes design intent from the developers (founder/creative director Venelin and senior designer Kokou), read it as "developer design intent, subject to change," not confirmed live behavior.
The three roles
The Paladin is designed around three primary play styles, and the talent tree lets you double down on one or mix them:
- Templar / Tank — focuses on blocking, damage mitigation, threat generation, and shield-based attacks.
- Inquisitor — a damage dealer that leans on fire damage, consuming burning stacks, and the Sanctified Fire damage-over-time effect.
- Support lean — buffs, damage absorption, and self-sustain. The developers were explicit that this is "not a full-blown healer," more of a quasi-support that keeps party members healed or protected while you also deal damage.
The senior designer framed the mixing directly: you can be tank-support, damage-support, or "support-support" — it is up to the player's agency which path they take through the tree.
The talent tree
The Paladin tree was completely redesigned for this iteration. The headline change: instead of picking only one major node at the start, you now choose two starting nodes out of six major options. This lets you double down on a role or build a hybrid without sacrificing your first starter node. Each class has its own unique tree (unlike a shared tree across all classes), and the developers expect the combined trees across all classes to reach a couple of thousand nodes.
The Paladin tree currently sits at around 150 nodes. The developers noted other classes such as the Mage are larger (around 300), and that the Paladin tree was condensed down; they also said it may grow again as new talent effects get reallocated. Node shapes carry meaning:
- Starting nodes — larger, with a distinct frame, to draw your attention; these are the six role-defining choices.
- Small nodes — minor stat upgrades (such as strength and dexterity). Individually minor, but you collect many on the way to the big ones, so they add up.
- Medium nodes — modify a specific skill's behavior: cooldown reduction, damage increase, range, mana-cost reduction, or granting an aura.
- Square nodes — grant brand-new active abilities (for example Avatar of Sanctification).
There are typically multiple paths to reach the same node, so you can respec and re-route to the same spell in different ways. There is a talent refund/respec system, and the developers leaned toward community-shared builds and guides rather than in-game preset builds.
Starting talents (community pick rates)
The community database Scarshead lists the Paladin's starting talents with their effects and community pick rates:
- Radiant Banner (throw a banner: allies gain Armor and Resistances) — 60% pick rate, by far the most popular.
- Restorative Aegis (Aegis grants Health Regeneration) — 15%.
- Silencing Smite (Shield Smite silences for 1 second) — 10%.
- Sunbreaker (holy fire; consume stacks for big damage) — 5%.
- Defensive Dodge (Dodge grants a Holy Shield) — 5%.
- Precise Vindicator Strike (Vindicator Strike grants +1% crit for 10 seconds) — 5%.
Blocking
Blocking is an active mechanic, not a passive stat. Holding the shield ability projects a shield in front of you even if you do not have a physical shield equipped — the Paladin can carry one but does not need to. The shield is only active while you hold the button; release it and the projected shield drops. While held, it fully protects against incoming projectiles from the front.
Blocking also drives a play style: a successful block can trigger an on-block "active block" state that empowers your next attack. In the demo, an empowered Shield Smite dealt more damage and applied a silence after a successful block, rewarding you for timing blocks to absorb projectiles before following up. The Restorative Aegis talent adds a health-regeneration heal-over-time effect while you hold block.
Threat and taunt (PvE)
Threat and aggro apply only in PvE, not PvP. The developers described three ways aggro works:
- Every spell you cast generates threat against your target, and different spells are tuned to generate different threat amounts (one spell might make 30 threat per hit while another makes 300).
- Taunt takes the highest threat value currently on the target and adds a large bonus on top (the stream cited figures like 2,000 or 8,000), securing aggro for the tank. Example given: if an ally has 1,000 threat as the top, casting taunt gives you that 1,000 plus another large chunk, putting you well ahead instantly.
- If you spam damage hard enough, you can still pull aggro off the tank — so the tank's play style is to keep pressing taunt and threat abilities to hold aggro.
Taunt is described as PvE-only; the developers did not want it in PvP because forcing a target switch would behave like another form of stun.
Key spells
These are the abilities shown on the developer stream. Effects and numbers are work-in-progress.
- Vindicator Strike — the Paladin's basic attack: up to three consecutive strikes in a cone in front of you, the third dealing increased damage, with each strike on a separate button press. The talent Holy Vindicator Strike makes it deal about 30% more damage and converts it to a holy spell, so it scales with holy-damage stats and benefits from "all holy spells" talent rules. Note: Vindicator Strike is the two-hander basic attack; one-handers use a different basic attack (Decisive Strike, whose third hit heals you over time).
- Blazing Sweep — a fiery cleave that hits enemies in front of you and applies Sanctified Fire, the Inquisitor's signature damage-over-time effect, to all enemies hit. The developers said there will be many interactions tied to consuming or having Sanctified Fire on a target.
- Avatar of Sanctification / Avatar of Justice — a transformation that empowers your abilities with holy might (described as roughly 6 seconds on a 120-second cooldown, castable while crowd-controlled), granting bonus damage and critical hit. Note: in the tree it appears as "Avatar of Sanctification" but the tooltip read "Avatar of Justice." Talent modifiers include Blessed Avatar (cooldown −10s), Exalted Avatar (mana cost −5), Glorious Avatar (grants Oath of Glory and +10% strength, vitality, and dexterity), and Urging Avatar (+15% movement speed for the duration).
- Final Verdict Absolution — a holy judgment that creates an area granting absorb-shield bubbles to allies around you (including yourself). It is an absorb shield, not full immunity — positioning matters to catch as many allies as possible.
- Oath of Sanctuary — a channeled ability that makes a chosen ally immune to all damage types for the duration (around a 40-second cooldown). You cannot cast it on yourself, you are rooted in place while channeling, and the channel can be interrupted. A short debuff prevents the same ally being re-targeted immediately to stop chaining. The developers flagged it as potentially too strong and possibly not in the final game.
- Radiant Banner — a skill-shot banner thrown at a location; once planted it casts an AoE that grants armor (and resistances) to allies standing inside it. Walking out of the area removes the bonus. In PvP, the opposing faction can destroy the banner.
- Healing Hand — the Paladin's heal; can be cast on an ally, not just yourself. Intended as sustain, not full healing. Talents can let Vindicator Strike reduce its cooldown, so attacking more lets you heal more often.
- Shield Smite — slams the target with your shield for damage; the Reverberating Smite talent makes it stun for 1 second. A successful block can empower it (more damage, plus a silence in the demo).
- Blessed Hammer — hurls a hammer at the target for holy damage and a ranged stun (around 2 seconds), and it deals triple critical-hit damage. Visuals and icon were called placeholder.
- Bulwark Crash — described as the tank's "ultimate": slam your shield down, dealing damage to all enemies around you.
- Heavenly Dive — leap to a chosen location, slowing and damaging enemies on landing. The developers said they were likely to move this to the Warrior because the slow and the jump feel more like a Warrior ability; they plan a future mounted gap-closer for the Paladin instead.
- Cavalcade of Light — an ultimate that summons a holy cavalry to repeatedly strike an area and pull targets toward the center; the pull was acknowledged as buggy/under review.
- Final Verdict Castigation — deals damage to all enemies around you and stuns them (around 1 second) on roughly a 60-second cooldown, and also applies Sanctified Fire. The stun lands on a short delay to give counterplay; this is an old spell (originally from a "Demon Brazil" event) whose radius was reduced because it was too large.
Haste
Haste in Scars of Honor reduces cast times, cooldowns, and the global cooldown. Because the Paladin casts a fair number of abilities, haste can be a useful stat for the class. This was discussed at a high level on the stream; exact values were not given.
Not a full healer
The developers were clear: the Paladin is not meant to be a full-blown healer you spam heals with. Healing Hand and the absorb/immunity tools make a real support lean possible, but the class is built to deal damage and protect rather than to be a primary healer. (On the stream, the developers noted Priest is the class coming next and is a divine heal/shield/smite class.)
Subclass naming discrepancy
The Paladin's three subclass archetypes are tank, fire DPS, and support. The third (support) archetype is named differently across community sources: Scarshead calls it Crusader, while all.gg and LagoFast call it Justicar. Neither name has been confirmed by an official source, so both are listed here without picking a side. (all.gg/LagoFast list the trio as Inquisitor, Templar, Justicar; Scarshead uses Templar, Inquisitor, Crusader.)
Featured build
Here is a real community build you can open and adjust in our planner — a "Mobile Tank" Paladin, credited to wheresmyvirginity1 (via ScarsHQ):
Mobile Tank — Paladin talent tree
Sources
