The Holy Paladin Guide
I. Stats
Stamina
It is not needed much but it is quite useful when there are Boss fights that do a lot of AOE dmg
Intellect
Intellect is now the best stat for Holy Paladins by far. Let me list what 100 Intellect gives you:
126.5 Intellect, with BoK and Divine Intellect
1897 Mana at the start of the fight
39.5mp5 from Divine Plea, if its used on CD.
21.3mp5 from Replenishment, with 90% uptime.
25.3 Spell Power
0.759% Spell Crit
This gives you a lot of mana, which lets you cast a lot more Holy Lights and be more liberal in using them. If you stack this stat you will be able to spam Holy Light during most fights.
Spell Power
Increases how much healing your spells do at a rate dependent on each spell, exact values are given in the spells section. FoL scales really well with Spell Power because it has a low mana cost, but gets more benefit from Spell Power then most 1.5sec spells. So once you get to higher gear levels its low amount of base healing won't really matter, since 75% of the healing it does is from Spell Power. 100 Item points gives you 120 Spell Power, which increases each FoL by 134, and HL by 223.
Critical Strike Rating
Critical Heals end up healing for 50% more and cost 60% less mana, and 100 Spell Crit gives +2.17% crit rate at 80. Crit scale really well, but it starts out not being that great compared to other stats. This graph shows you how much effective mana is gained when you add 1% crit at varying initial crit rates. As you can see crit scales geometrically with itself, because you spend the extra mana from crit heals casting more heals which can crit. So going from 48% to 49% crit gives you twice as much mana as going from 0% to 1% crit. It also scales with how big your effective mana pool is.
Crit Rating is a good stat, especially at high gear levels. Though Intellect gives you 1/3 of the amount of Crit for the same item points, while also giving you all the additional mana.
Haste Rating
Increases how fast your heals cast, but they cost the same amount of healing per mana. 10% Spell Haste does not mean your spells cast 10% faster, rather it means in a given time period you will cast 10% more spells. So the cast time after haste is calculated by (Base Cast Time)/(1 + Spell Haste). The more haste you get the less cast time it will reduce, but it will increase how many spells you can cast by the same amount. Its important to note that all haste effects (Wrath of Air, Sanc Ret, JotP, and Gear) stack multiplicatively. So with all of them you only need 20.6% haste from gear to get haste soft capped (50%, for 1sec GCDs). 100 Spell Haste at 80 will give you 3% haste. With the amount of mana we have now and that people rarely die if a HL reaches them. Haste increases the chance that HL will reach them in time, and increase the amount we can put out.
Mana per 5 sec
Gives you the specified amount of mana over 5 seconds, wether or not you have been casting a spell. This stat is pretty crappy now, with Divine Plea intellect is better then it in every single way by far. 100 item points will give you 40mp5, which is 2880 mana over 6 minutes. Even though it isn't a great stats, you can't just ignore it though.
II. AbilitiesHoly Paladins are no longer restricted to just casting two spells in combat. At level 80 a Paladin has 4394 base mana, which is a 48% increase over level 70. This is a brief run down of all the skills.
Holy Light
With how much mana you can have now, because of Intellect and Divine Plea, this is your main spell that you can spam most of the fight. Holy Light receives 188.5% of spell power per cast if you have Healing Light, which was buffed by 25% with WotLK. There are a lot of new mana reduction effects (Libram, GSoW) that if you have all them brings the HPM for HL and FoL very close. Remember that the amount of mana returned by Illumination is unchanged, so these effects are even more powerful. HL will very often overheal with how much we can cast it now, but that is okay. Unless you are going OOM before the fight ends, it doesn't matter how much it overheals.
Flash of Light
This is now used when mana is tight, or if there is a lull in a fight and not much is needing healing. It receives 113% of spell power per cast, if you have Healing Light. This was buffed by 25% with WotLK, so it scales even better with +healing now.
Holy Shock
Yay! This spell has sucked for so long, it used to only deal damage, and now it is finally a good healing spell. This spell got greatly improved in WotLK, to heal for a lot more, have a 40 yd range as a heal (finally), and a 6 sec cooldown. Along with Infusion of Light, which makes it so whenever you crit with Holy Shock, your next FoL is instant or your next Holy Light is 1 sec shorter cast time. It receives 90.5% of spell power per spell casting, if you have Healing Light. This is great a spell to use when you are moving and can't cast anything else, or the tank took a huge burst and they will likely die before you can get a Holy Light off. It is around as efficient as Holy Light, so I wouldn't use it in place of FoL if you don't need the extra hps or an instant heal.
Beacon of Light
This is the spell that we were given to help us deal with being able to heal multiple targets at the same time. This is no CoH or Chain Heal, but its not meant to be. It can be much better, or it can be worse, it depends on the situation. This only takes into account effective heals, so if you heal someone for 4k, but they are only down 3k then the BoL will get healed for 3k. If you place the Beacon on tank and go to raid heal you will need to watch the tanks health still and be ready to toss Holy Lights on him when needed. It can be a huge mana sink to keep it up, but it can be very worth in a lot of situations. But don't feel like you need to have 100% uptime on it, sometimes it just won't be effective when you only have 1 target that can use heals.
Sacred Shield
First I will clarify how SS works, when you cast the spell on someone they gain a 30 second buff. Nothing happens until the target takes damage, when they do they will take the full amount, but will gain a second buff. This new buff will absorb the next 500 + 75% of your Spell Power damage and then expire, while it is active it will also increase the crit rate of FoL by 50%. This 2nd buff lasts a maximum of 6 seconds, and can only occur every 6 seconds. The ICD on the proc is shared between all SS's on the target, so it doesn't stack between multiple Paladins.
This is most effective on Tanks since they take damage often, but can also be useful on group members if you know they are going to be taking damage more often then every 6 seconds.
Avenging Wrath
Should be used often in sticky situations when u need faster and bigger heals unless you think you might need Bubble in those 30 seconds.
Divine Plea
This spell gives an insane amount of mana back, 25 % of your mana back to be exact and makes Intellect an amazing stat. You do lose healing output, but the extra amounts of Holy Lights it lets you cast makes it worth it on all but trivial fights.
Divine Illumination
Nothing really changed with DI, try to save it for when you are going to be casting a lot of Holy Lights or have to renew BoL. But, don't let it sit off cooldown for too long.
Lay on Hands
Its uses are pretty obvious, save it for when the tank gets a huge burst and will likely die before a cast time spell reaches him. If you cast this on yourself with Glyph of Divinity and Glyph of Lay on Hands you will get 4680 mana back. Which is a substantial amount mana if you won't need to use it on the tank.
Judgement of Wisdom/Judgement of Light
With Crusader Strike no longer refreshing Judgements and JotP, a Holy Paladin needs to actually judge on a regular basis. There are two main different strategies you can use for judging, you can either be trying to keep a 100% JotP uptime, or to keep 100% uptime on the Judgement debuff. Either way though with 15% extra haste you will be able to get more total healing spells out even after "wasting" 7 GCDs.
Hand of Protection
Its good to use on someone when they pull aggro. Can also be used on tanks in some fights when you need to force a tank transition.
Hand of Salvation
This now gives 20% threat reduction over its duration. A dps will likely call for you to use it on them when they are close to pulling aggro.
III. GlyphsGlyph of Holy Light
With 3.0.3 this Glyph got change, so the initial target of the heal can no longer get a proc from the Glyph, and how much it procs for is different. If your heal doesn't crit, it will proc off of effective healing amount if its less then 50% overheal, otherwise it will proc off total amount. If it does crit, it will proc off of effective healing amount if its less then 66% overheal, other wise it will proc off total amount. It does not smart heal, but rather heals 5 random targets in range. Which greatly diminishes the effect compared to CoH, but it can be very effective at healing when the whole raid takes damage. It can do a substantial amount of healing in some fights (I have had up to 15% of healing done), so I wouldn't go anywhere without it.
Glyph of Flash of Light
This is getting changed to +5% FoL crit chance in 3.0.8. Reduces the average cost of FoL by 9.21, and increases the average amount healed by 2.5%. The Glyph I would consider using this over is Glyph of Divinity. I don't currently cast FoL enough to make it better then Divinity though, but with low gear levels or long fights it can be better.
Glyph of Seal of Wisdom/Glyph of Seal of Light
Both really good glyphs, especially since you will be keeping a Seal up anyway for JotP.
GSoW ends up reducing the average mana cost of Holy Light by more then 5%, because it doesn't change the amount of mana returned by Illumination. With Libram and 4pcT7, GSoW takes the mana cost from 1102 to 1044. Crits restore an average 344 mana, with 45% crit rate. That takes the average cost for HL without SoW to be 758, and 700 with it. That is a 7.6% average mana cost reduction.
GSoL will be better if you are having issues with not having enough burst healing, otherwise GSoW lets you output a lot more healing.
Glyph of Divinity
A good Glyph with no downside. If you cast LoH on yourself with this you will get double the mana returned. Which will make it great for fights where you are crunched on mana, and don't need the burst heal of a Lay on Hands.
Glyph of Cleansing
Not a good Glyph, since if you are spending a lot of GCDs on cleanse you won't have mana issues.
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Lay on Hands - A big increase to LoH mana for a minor glyph, use this one.
Glyph of the Wise - Great Glyph to use with Glyph of SoW. Saves the cost of approximately 1 FoL per cast.
Glyph of Blessing of Kings - If you have Kings, this makes your life easier, and there is no better 3rd minor for raids.
IV. ConsumablesPotionsWhile you can only use 1 per fight now, you do have some choice about which that will be.
Runic Mana Potion - The good old bland mana potion. Thankfully they also greatly reduced the range of mana restored.
Potion of Nightmares - This got changed from its former brethren, so that it lasts 6 seconds and is no longer dispellable. Can definetly see being able to use this easily in many fights for the extra 1200 mana over Runic. I will carry a stock of both of these along with me.
Potion of Speed - This could be useful in some fights if you know there will be 15 seconds where you will need to totally maximize output.
Potion of Wild Magic - Same idea as Potion of Speed, but I don't see any reason to use this one over a Potion of Speed though.
Well FedThese are the 4 relevant different buff types, but you can get different food that give the same benefit. Just chose them how you would your gems.
Firecracker Salmon
Imperial Manta Steak
Mighty Rhino Dogs
Spiced Wyrm Burger
FlasksFlask of the Frost Wyrm - A solid throughput increase, my flask of choice for WotLK.
Flask of Pure Mojo - With how poorly Mp5 has scaled to WotLK content I don't see any reason to use this over Frost Wyrm.
ElixirsSpellpower Elixir
Elixir of Deadly Strikes
Elixir of Lightning Speed
Elixir of Mighty Thoughts
Elixir of Might Mageblood
Spellpower/Mighty Thoughts could beat out Frost Wyrm (67 SP vs 45 Int), but is more expensive to keep up while learning a boss.
V. Trade Skills
Listed are the benefits you get from being each profession. With WotLK enchants can require you to have the profession to receive the stats, so you can no longer level Enchanting (or any other profession) for ring enchants and then drop it.
Alchemy
Mixology - 37 Spell Power or 13mp5 depending on Flask used. Also reduces how much gold you spend on consumables.
Blacksmithing
Socket Glove/Socket Bracer - Gives you 38 Spell Power, 32 Int, 32 Crit, 32 Haste, or 12mp5.
Enchanting
Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpowerx2 - Gives you 38 Spell Power.
Engineering
Hyperspeed Accelerators - Which is pretty crappy for healing, it averages to 23 haste rating, and the normal spell power enchant is better then that.
Unbreakable Healing Amplifiers - Decent helm to start off with, but can be replaced easily with [Helm of Purified Thoughts] from AC rep.
Herbalism
Lifeblood - Small amount self healed, but it is off the GCD.
Inscription
Master's Inscription of the Storm or Master's Inscription of the Crag - 37 Spell Power increase over The Sons of Hodir version.
Jewelcrafting
Dragon's Eye Gems - Gives you 33 to a stat, 39 spell power, or 15mp5. These gems are prismatic, so they let you achieve some socket bonuses and meta requirements while only using one gem type.
Sapphire Owl - A really good trinket that is better then many epic trinkets.
Leatherworking
Fur Lining - Spell Power - Offers you 37 spell power upgrade over normal enchant.
Mining
Toughness - This is pretty useless.
Skinning
Master of Anatomy - 25 spell crit.
Tailoring
Darkglow Embroidery - 18.75mp5 on average at the cost of Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed.
VI. AddOnsA good UI for a healer is essential, you can be much more effective at healing with it then the stock UI. Here are some suggestions for AddOns.
Grid (Raid Frames)
Grid is a raid frame addon that I highly recommend for any healer. It makes it much easier to see the health of everyone in your raid, and is very customizable to fit your needs.
Healbot
The Best Healing a Holy Paladin can want u can put all your spells on the clicks and use the addon only for healing
ClassTimer (Spell Timers)
Keeps track of the time left on all of your buffs/debuffs like Beacon of Light and JotP. Being able to see the time left on these spells at a glance makes it significantly easier to keep them up.
Talent Builds
Here Is A link Of a talent build I recommend u to use
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