Healadin - Holy Paladin blog

2011-02-19T02:47:00.001-08:00

Outdated info - Blog discontinued.

Flash of Light vs. Holy Light

2009-11-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: This is not my work. I shamelessly copied this from http://www.ferarro.blogspot.com/ for being such a great summary post.

With Icecrown Citadel right around the frosty corner, many guilds have dove into ToC's Heroic modes, which offer a much higher requirement for not only gear, but skill, reaction time, and the willingness to attempt and learn new strategies. For tanks, this essentially means doing a bit more number-crunching on min/max values and trying to balance Block Value and Dodge while possibly squeezing in some elemental resists depending on the fight; Not to mention learning new positions and synching up with the off-tank's movements. For DPS, it's cutting the fat from useless +Hit and +Expertise and gearing/gemming up with as much +STR/AGI as they can get away with. They also have to research the fight and know when to blow their cooldowns and trinkets, since hard modes usually consist of very specific windows to "burn" the boss during it's weakened state.

Healers - and more specifically, Holy Paladins - have an all new fight on their hands. It's not as simple as just tossing gear with more stats on yourself (although that helps). Healing in WoW is most definitely a game-within-a-game, for better or for worse, and with the exception of Paladins Judging every 20-30 seconds, there's virtually zero interaction with the boss outside of running away from it. In fact, if there are no tangible movement issues - i.e. Patchwerk - you could theoretically black out the entire screen except for Grid or Healbot or whatever mod you use and just play Click-A-Box. Newer raids like ToC may have improved on this by forcing us to move out of something bad (fire) or move towards something good (someone on fire) but still, some increased offensive interaction would be refreshing. But that's another article.

Point is, the game-within-a-game known as healing has an additional game with itself: Namely, choosing gear and gems. The current debate right now for Holy Paladins is whether to go with the Spell Power heavy build and spam Flash of Light like the old days, or stack massive amounts of Intellect for a huge mana pool and bomb your friends with Holy Lights till the cow level comes home and drops The Grandfather. So which one is better? Which one fits your play style? Which one will benefit your guild more? Well, first, we'll break each one down individually and see what needs to be done to obtain them. Then we'll compare the two with pros and cons and I'll throw in my evaluation at the end and then you can decide for yourself.

Let's get to it.

Flash of Light Build

► What you'll need:

• Red Spell Power-only gems. Preferably the epic Runed Cardinal version; And if you're a Jewelcrafter, you can pop in three Dragon's Eyes as well. Bonus.
• Ember Skyflare Diamond for your helmet's Meta socket.
• Glyph of Seal of Light. Mana won't be an issue in the least, since you'll be spamming FoL. And you're rarely overheal in comparison to Holy Light bombing, so the extra 5% is fantastic.
• Glyph of Flash of Light. 5% crit to the spell you're completely leaning on. Required.
• One of the Arena Librams. Every Holy Paladin Arena Libram increases the power of Flash of Light, and they're super easy to get. This one is currently the best, but you could even pick up this one for 15,300 honor (hey, that's like two Alterac Valleys if you're Alliance).
• The Hard mode Holy/Ret spec. Because you picked up the FoL Glyph, you can forgo the last bit of 3% crit in the Ret tree and pick up Divinity in the Prot tree.

With the Glyph and raid buffs, you'll be pushing around 45-50% crit, so anything beyond that isn't really gonna be noticeable. But Divinity + Seal of Light will not only add 10% to your FoL heals, but also improve the heals recieved by 5%, which is absolutely crucial when it comes to Hard modes and things like healers keeping you up through Penetrating Cold. Also, now that you're in Hard modes, go ahead and pick up Aura Mastery. It's actually useful now. =)

Flash of Light healing is just like it sounds: a lot of fast, popping, jolt healing, essentially playing whack-a-mole with your UI. And when you heal the MT with Heroism/Bloodlust up, it's just a blur of green numbers. You're gonna jump back in time and know what it was like to heal Molten Core and Blackwing Lair back in vanilla all the way to Kil'Jaeden in Sunwell. Remember, your mana pool doesn't have to be enormous for this build. Spamming Flash of Light isn't a particularly mana-intensive thing. When I went SP/FoL a month ago, I only had 30k mana (down from 40k) and I didn't miss it a bit. In fact, towards the end of fights, I still had about 78% of my mana, so I popped Divine Illumination and went to town with Holy Lights just for kicks. And with 4578 SP, 51% crit, Heroism, a trinket and Avenging Wrath, it was pretty hilarious. That's not to say you should use Holy Lights whenever you want. In fact, because your mana pool will be so much smaller with this build, avoid Holy Light as much as possible and use sparingly.

+Haste isn't too much of a big deal with this build, since your Flash of Lights are typically under a second anyway in raids, and you can't cast any faster than the global cooldown (1.5-1 second) will let you. Generally speaking, +Crit is more helpful with the FoL build. Think of it this way: If a boxer's jabs are gonna be the same speed no matter what, he might as well make his jabs stronger. As long as you're around 650 Haste, you're fine.

Also, as a final note, be aware that this build requires moderate-to-high level gear to be truly effective. We're talking around Tier 9 (232) and comparable trinkets. This isn't a strategy to test out if you're still tackling Ulduar normal modes or having trouble with Faction Champs. Going full SP/FoL while in blues is just a waste of gems, enchants, Glyphs, and time. And with the smaller mana pool it's a much less flexible build, so you'll have to stick to your specialization as much as possible, which is Flashing. The entire philosophy behind the FoL build is predicated on being close to 3k Spell Power unbuffed or with just Kings. In other words, you can put high-octane jet fuel in a Ford Model T, but you'll only go as fast as it's limit. Wait till you own a Zonda before you starting tricking your Paladin out. It's a very risky build, and one that takes a decent amount of gold, research and skill to use, but the reward can be incredible, easily pushing past 12K HPS on any fight.

Holy Light Build

► What you'll need:

• Yellow pure-Intellect gems. Again, epic King's Amber version if possible, and three Dragon's Eyes for the Jewelcrafters out there.
• Insightful Earthsiege Diamond for your Meta socket.
• One red and one blue gem, due to the Meta gem's requirement. For the red, use the orange Int/SP Luminous gem. For the blue, use the green Int/Mp5 Dazzling gem. or even better, a Nightmare's tear.
• Glyph of Seal of Wisdom. An absolute must. Holy Lights cost 1,274 mana every second and a half or so, so shedding 5% off of each cast adds up. Over an 8 minute fight, let's say you cast 130 HL's. That's 165,620 mana. This Glyph alone just net you over 8,281 mana.
• Glyph of Holy Light. Considering you'll be using HL almost as often as LeBron James travels while driving to the basket, this Glyph is amazing. With the proper positioning, it can end up being 15-20% of your total healing by fight's end.
• Glyph of Divinity. It's like a free mana bar. C'maaan.
• Libram of Renewal. I know, it's sad. A year later and our best Libram is still from Naxx. Going back to that theoretical 130 HL casts, this Libram saves you a whopping 14,690 mana. That's like half your mana pool with this build. If you don't have it, spend the 15 Heroism badges and buy one. There is no substitute.
• The Hard mode Holy/Prot spec. There's a little wiggle room with the last three points; You can toss it in Improved Devotion if your raid doesn't have a Prot Pally in it, or you can throw the final points into Benediction for your Holy Shocks. Or max out Improved Blessing of Wisdom if no one else has it. The point is, dig down in Prot and pick up Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian. 99.9% of your Holy Lights are going to be overhealing, so you don't need the 8% crit from the Ret tree. Trust me, your non-crit 18k HLs will cover it.

Healing with Holy Light is akin to dropping bombs that do splash damage - except in this case it's splash healing. While Flash of Lights can get down to around .8 second casts in raids, Holy Lights take much longer but do far more healing. For this reason, +Haste becomes a necessary stat for you. As I mentioned before, pretty much every Holy Light you cast is going to overheal your target. So whether you heal someone for 11,000 or 22,000, if they only needed 8k, then it doesn't matter. However, Holy Light has a pretty lengthy 2.5 second cast time, and in Hard modes, two and a half seconds is a healing eternity. Which is why +Haste is a wonderful stat to look for when picking up new loot. To use a previous analogy, if a boxer's uppercut is going to knock the guy out no matter what, he might as well make them faster. If you can find a way to push your +Haste beyond 700, you're in good company.

Basically, this is far and away the safest build and one that I recommend to every Paladin either leveling up, just hitting 80, or stepping into raids for the first time. It works wonderfully for any level of gear or skill. There's no real weakness to it and it has a ton of advantages; The most obvious strength being your gigantic mana pool. Having that much mana lends itself favorably to being able to adapt to different kinds of healing in different situations; If you don't need big heals, spam Flash of Light to your little heart's content. With raid buffs and other procs, you might even actually gain mana doing this. And when the fight goes into overdrive, it's great to pop Divine Illumination/Avenging Wrath/Trinket in sync with Heroism/Bloodlust and start dropping Holy Light warheads on the raid and tanks every second. Then you can laugh at the Druids, Priests and Shamans crying while signing a big fat check for them made out to, "I Heal Better Than" in the amount of, "Your Mom".

Also, it should go without saying that due to your huge mana pool, Divine Plea is going to phenomenally effective, returning 7,500 - 10,000 mana every minute, depending on your max amount.

Overview

Mathematically speaking, the differences between the two are fairly noticeable. So let's check them out real quick from a simple gem perspective.

Your typical T9 set has eight sockets:
Helm (1 Meta, 1 regular)
Shoulders (1)
Chest (2)
Gloves (1)
Legs (2)

For giggles, let's add a belt socket (via 1 Eternal Belt Buckle), and a Wrist socket (1). That's a total of ten (10) sockets to gem, right? So!

Going with the Flash of Light/Spell Power build, we use:
Six +23 Spell Power gems = 138 SP
Three +39 SP = 117 SP
The Meta = 25 Spell Power.
Altogether, the gems give you +280 Spell Power.

Going with the Holy Light/Intellect build, we use:
Four +20 Intellect gems = 1518 mana, .60% crit, and 20SP
Three +34 Intellect gems = 1935 mana, .78% crit, and 29SP
The Meta = 395 mana, .16% crit, and 5SP
One orange gem (to activate the Meta) = 190 mana, .08% crit and 2SP
One green gem (to activate the Meta) = 190 mana, .08% crit and 2SP
Altogether, the gems give you 4228 mana, 1.7% crit, and 58 SP.

Bottom line, you're essentially trading about 200 Spell Power for 4000 mana and vice versa - give or take, depending on the rest of your gear (trinkets, enchants, etc).

Now the question becomes, "Is it worth it?" Well, as I mentioned before, that depends on your gear. Once you get decked out in ilvl 245s, 4,000 mana actually turns out to be... not that big a deal. And since the FoL strat doesn't exactly demand a lot from your pool, having 4k less isn't a noticeable. You do limit yourself by sacrificing flexibility for your specialization, though, so if you decide to go with the Flash strat, know your limits and play accordingly - meaning, don't spam HL/Shock combos like it's free. It's like playing a first person shooter and choosing between a shotgun (Holy Light) or a sniper rifle (Flash of Light). If you play to your weapon's strength, you can be a beast. The best part is, as long as you're geared, gemmed, glyphed and played correctly, either way can produce high-end results, even on hard modes.

Walkthrough of the important Holy Paladin Stats for both Mana regeneration and Throughput

2009-11-19T03:43:00.000-08:00

Mana regeneration Stats

For the Holy Paladin mana regeneration while casting is affected by three stats. Intellect, Mp5 and Crit rating. Let's do an itempoint comparison to see what you get from each stat. If you find this post too long or too complicated there is a TL:DR version below.

Intellect:

100 itempoints of Intellect will give you in terms of mana (with kings):

1815 initlal mana and increase to your max level.
37.81 Mp5 worth of Mana from Divine Plea (on cooldown)
18.15 Mp5 worth of Mana from Divine Plea (used once per 2 minutes)
16.3 Mp5 worth of mana from Replenishment (90% uptime)
0.72% Crit rating 24 spellpower.

Additionally these are possible

7.56 Mp5 from Mana Tide Totem, on CD per Shaman
18.15 Mp5 from Revitalize (Maximum Average, 100% WG and Rejuvination)
4.54 Mp5 from Arcane Torrent on CD (if you're a blood elf)
72.6 Extra mana per Seal of Wisdom proc.

The mana from Crit will depend on your casting model. This is per minute scenarios.
A: 40 HL
B: 30 HL + 14 FoL
C: 20 HL + 25 FoL + 2 HS
D: 10 HL + 30 FoL + 10 HS
E: 0 HL + 44 FoL + 10 HS

To start with, these scenarios assume you're at the Haste soft-cap and that you're keeping up beacon, judgement and SS. (If you're not at the Haste soft cap you'll be casting less than this and the value of crit will go down further).

The Value of Crit in terms of Mp5 for these Scenarios:

A: 9.1 Mp5
B: 7.6 Mp5
C: 6.2 Mp5
D: 5.4 Mp5
E: 3.9 Mp5

So in total: 100 itempoints of Intellect is worth: 1815 initial mana + 24 SP + 36 - 93.5 Mp5 + 72.6 extra mana per SoW proc.

Crit Rating:

Ok, so lets look at Crit rating. For the same amount of 100 itempoints we get 2.17% crit. Using the four scenarios I already detailed under intellect that gives us:

A: 27.5 Mp5
B: 22.9 Mp5
C: 18.7 Mp5
D: 16.3 Mp5
E: 11.6 Mp5

So in total: 100 itempoints of Crit rating is worth: 11.6-27.5 Mp5 worth of mana returns. But I remind you that this is at the Haste soft cap. Without any haste at all you would be casting 20.6% fewer heals and it would decrease the value of crit down to 9.2 - 21.8 Mp5.

Mp5:

Mp5 doesn't require any complicated models or anything. For 100 itempoints you get 50 Mp5.

Mana Regeneration Stat Summary

If we bring that together you get for 100 itempoints spent on:

Intellect: 1815 initial mana + 24 SP + 36 - 93.5 Mp5 + 72.6 extra mana per SoW proc.
Mp5: 50Mp5
Crit rating at 676 Haste: 11.6 - 27.5 Mp5
Crit rating at 0 Haste: 9.2 - 21.8 Mp5

So it's obvious that Intellect here has the largest potential for mana returns, with Crit being the least interresting.

Throughput Stats

The throughput stats for a Holy Paladin is Haste, Crit Rating and Spellpower. To examine the values of these stats we need a Test dummy, a generic holy Paladin.

With raidbuffs naked a Holy Paladin will end up at about 18% Crit. Since we get intellect on all our gear as long as you're not naked you will have more crit than that. With Intellect from gear and no crit rating you'll end up between 20 and 25% Crit. Let's assume 22% as an average value.

Let us furthermore assume that whatever gear he is wearing will net him 2200 sp raidbuffed. Beyond this the generic Paladin has zero haste. All other stats are irrelevant to this comparison.

Let us furthermore assume that he has only specced down the Holy tree. The additional crit in the retri tree and the extra healing from Divinity in prot tree etc. is not limited by what stat you prefer. You can spec into them regardless and because of that we'll ignore them.

A lot of Holy Paladins attemt to get and surpass the Haste soft cap so let's use that point as a basis for our comparison. To get the soft cap you'll need 676 Haste. If the itempoints were spent on Crit rating would give you 14.67% Crit. If you spent it on additional spellpower it would net you 811 more.

Thus the Haste and Spellpower focused Paladins will have the following crit amounts:

FoL: 22%
HL & HS: 28%

While the Crit Paladin will get:

FoL: 36.7%
HL & HS: 42.67%

To determine just how much throughput you'll be able to achieve with this you need to know the size of the heals for each Paladin. Note that I am applying the crit rating directly into the size of the average heal.

That means each spell the average heal is:

Haste Holy Light: 12004
Crit Holy Light: 12777
SP Holy Light: 13853 Haste

Flash of Light: 4025
Crit Flash of Light: 4291
SP Flash of Light: 5105

Haste Holy Shock: 5790
Crit Holy Shock: 6163
SP Holy Shock: 6677

Now we just have to know how often you can cast the spells.

Cast times

HL with Crit / SP: 1.68s
HL with Haste: 1.33s

FoL with Crit / SP: 1.26s
FoL with Haste: 1.0s

Keeping up Beacon, Judgement and SS will take 6 GCD per minute or 6s for the Haste paladin and 9s for the Crit and SP Paladin. That will have to be deducted from the avilable time for casting actual heals.

For one minute of casting, how many heals can be achieved?

Holy Light:

Haste Paladin: 40
Crit Paladin: 30

Flash of Light:

Haste Paladin: 54
Crit Paladin: 40

Holy Shock:

It's obviously limited to the cooldown, so all builds will at best get 10 per minute.

These numbers are of course assuming that no cast is in conflict with keeping up Beacon, SS or Judgement.

Furthermore since we're assuming that we keep up SS, we might as well assume maximum FoL Hot use (which is 5 per minute), assuming you're casting FoL at all.

So for straight up spam one minute of casting will yield the paladins the following amount of Raw Healing.

Holy Light:

Haste Paladin: 480 160
Crit Paladin: 383 310
SP Paladin: 415 590

Flash of Light:

Haste Paladin: 217 350 + 20 125 (FoL HoT) = 237 475
Crit Paladin: 171 640 + 21 455 = 193 095
SP Paladin: 204 200 + 25 525 = 229 725

Holy Shock:

Haste Paladin: 57 900
Crit Paladin: 61 630
SP Paladin: 66 770

So as you can see.. the Haste Paladin has the capability of doing more healing than both the Crit Paladin and the Spellpower Paladin and by a fairly large amount at that.

The only spells where the crit or sp paladin will do more with is for Holy Shock and the FoL HoT but they are both limited use. Any combination of spellchoices for healing will give you more throughput using Haste rather than the other two stats in an itempoint comparison.

There is another consideration to make. Once the Haste Paladin has reached the soft-cap he will have peaked his output on Flash of Light. There is no way for him to get any more healing without getting other stats. Getting more haste will however still give more healing for Holy Light. Just for comparison let's see what the raw healing achievable will become if you're able to double the amounts of Haste / Crit and SP that the Generic Paladin had above.

It would mean that the Haste Paladin would have a HL casttime of 1.10s, allowing 49 casts, rather than 40. The Crit Paladin will get another 14.67% and the SP Paladin another 811 spellpower.

Holy Light:

2x Haste Paladin: 588 196
2x Crit Paladin: 404 880
2x SP Paladin: 471 030

Flash of Light:

2x Haste Paladin: 217 350 + 20 125 (FoL HoT) = 237 475
2x Crit Paladin: 180 560 + 22 570 = 203 130
2x SP Paladin: 247 400 + 30 925 = 278 325

Holy Shock:

2x Haste Paladin: 57 900
2x Crit Paladin: 65 100
2x SP Paladin: 75 640

What's notable is that for Holy Light the Haste Paladin pulls away and increase the gap to the other two. 25.3% lead to 45.3% when compared with Crit and 15.5% lead to a 24.9% lead compared with Spellpower.

As we know the Haste Paladin was already peaked for Flash of Light, but even with twice the amount of itempoints Crit rating can't overtake. The Spellpower Paladin will however do so by a fair amount. By that I would conclude that up to the Haste cap you will benefit more by focusing on Haste rather than Spellpower or Crit. Beyond the Haste cap however it will depend on how you're casting. If you're predominantly casting Holy Light then stick to Haste, otherwise Spellpower might be worth considering.

I hope you've had a good read.

TL:DR

Mana returns for 100 itempoints spent on:

Intellect: 1815 initial mana + 24 SP + 36 - 93.5 Mp5 + 72.6 extra mana per SoW proc.
Mp5: 50Mp5
Crit rating at 676 Haste: 11.6 - 27.5 Mp5
Crit rating at 0 Haste: 9.2 - 21.8 Mp5

Throughput achievable for a 2200sp Paladin spending itempoints on 676 Haste or 14.67% Crit or 811 spellpower, while keeping up Beacon, SS and Judgement.

1min Holy Light spam:

Haste Paladin: 480 160
Crit Paladin: 383 310
SP Paladin: 415 590

1min Flash of Light spam:

Haste Paladin: 237 475
Crit Paladin: 193 095
SP Paladin: 229 725

1min Holy Shock (cooldown limited):

Haste Paladin: 57 900
Crit Paladin: 61 630
SP Paladin: 66 770

Clearly Haste is the superior stat. At this point Haste has reached it's peak for Flash of Light since the casting time can't be reduced further. If you assume twice the amount of itempoints spent on each stat in the above calculation you will find that for Holy Light will pull away. 25.3% lead compared with Crit increase to 45.3% lead and a 15.5% lead to Spellpower increase to a 24.9% lead.

For Flash of Light the situation is naturally different.

FoL:

2x Haste Paladin: 237 475 (same as before)
2x Crit Paladin: 203 130
2x SP Paladin: 278 325

Crit still can't overtake Haste, but Spellpower is clearly better for Flash of Light.

Tier 10 stats

2009-11-18T02:58:00.000-08:00

The stats for the first 2 t10 sets are finally out, keep in mind that some of these *could* be placeholders as things on the PTR tend to change a lot.

Itemlevel 251: Lightsworn Garb

Lightsworn Garb

Itemlevel 264: Sanctified Lightsworn Garb

Sanctified Lightsworn Garb

Itemlevel 277: Sanctified Lightsworn Garb (Heroic)

Sanctified Lightsworn Garb (Heroic)

Setbonus

For the sake of being complete I'll add the setbonus on the tier 10 here as well:

(2) set: While your Divine Illumination is active your healing spells are 35% stronger.

(4) set: Your Holy Shock causes your next Holy Light you cast within 10 seconds to have 0.3 seconds reduced cast time.

New colours on paladin t10:

Consumables

2009-11-17T01:38:00.000-08:00

So because I noticed several people having problems with consumables, mainly because they're cheap or because they just don't know what's best for them. Below you'll find a list of what food, flasks, potions and elixirs are available for our use, as well as a list of what you should use.

Consumables Summary:

Flask Summary:

Flask of the Frost Wyrm: good if you need extra spellpower and for FoL "spammers"
Flask of Distilled Wisdom: Really good if you're an Int stacker, but subpar to the Guru's Elixir & Elixir of Mighty Thoughts combo.

Double Elixir Options:

Guru's Elixir & Elixir of Mighty Thoughts – This is likely the best combo for an int stacking paladin since it gives slightly more mana than the Vanilla WoW Intellect flask.

Elixir of Deadly Strikes & Elixir of Mighty Thoughts – Need more mana

Spellpower Elixir & Elixir of Mighty Thoughts – Extra Power & Extra mana

Food Summary:

Fish Feast - If you want more spellpower and if you want to be cheap (Not advisable)

Firecracker Salmon & Tender Shoveltusk Steak - Best for extra spell power

Imperial Manta Steak & Very Burnt Worg - If you have high stats already and want to pump out more healing or if you're low on haste, not advisable beyond haste softcap (676 haste rating) imo.
Spiced Wyrm Burger & Spicy Blue Nettlefish - For more crit (Doesn't give the same regen as mp5 food).

Spicy Fried Herring: mp5 food, very good if you reached the haste softcap and also because mp5 is better than crit for HL "spammers" since 3.2

Subpar food: if you're cheap you can get one of the lesser foodbuffs provided in Wotlk, although you will be looked upon as cheap and unmotivated by your raidleaders

Potion Summary:

Runic Mana Potion – What you will mostly use
Potion of Nightmares – Use if you can get away with being stunned for 6 seconds.

If you're an alchemist you might want to try Crazy Alchemist's Potionsince it can proc an extra potion (speed pots, wild magic pots or an extra mana pot are a nice surprise)

Miscellaneous:

Dark Rune – Works moderately well if you need more mana

Here is some more info on the seperate consumables:

Lesson #1 on consumables:

Raiding isn’t cheap. You shouldn't be either: First of all, I have to say that raiding isn’t cheap. I throw in the alternatives for you to look over or for you to get for content that you outgear. If you don’t use the best consumables available for your toon, then a reality check is in order. Cheap raiders make poor raiders. If you’re going to skimp on your consumables, you should not be raiding.

Flasks:

Flask of the Frost Wyrm

The benefit of this powerful Flask is it increases your Heals done per Cast which in turn increases your heals per second and increases your efficiency by increasing your heals per mana.With Mixology it becomes +162 spell power for 4 hours.This Flask adds the following +heals per cast:

Flash of Light: +157.5 or +204 with Mixology
Holy Light: +271.25 or +351.5 with Mixology
Holy Shock: +131 or +170 with Mixology

Note: Mixology assumes that Flask of the Frost Wyrm is also learned. Does not take into account your current Critical Strike Rating, which will also increase your average heals per cast. The more crit you have, the higher this Flask will assist you.
The biggest downside to this Flask is our continual use of Divine Plea and it used continually will reduce the effectiveness of this flask by 25%. This fights against the whole purpose of increasing our +spell power. That being said, every flask that we use, Divine Plea will have the same effect for 15 seconds on our spell power.

Flask of Distilled Wisdom Holy Paladins should have Divine Intellect, so we’re going assume you have that. This Flask has a little controversy behind it. With many people saying it’s the best and others against. Lets dissect it.Without Mixology it becomes +74.75 Intellect for 2 hours.With Mixology it becomes +97.75 (Normally 85 Intellect) for 4 hours.This Flask adds the following +heals per cast:

Flash of Light: +18.75 or +24.5 with Mixology
Holy Light: +32.50 or +42.25 with Mixology
Holy Shock: +15.5 or +20.5 with Mixology

This Flask also gives you:

+1121 Base Mana or +1466 with Mixology
+0.45% Crit or +0.585% Crit with Mixology
+280.25 Mana (23.35 mp5*) every Divine Plea or 366.5 Mana (30.5 mp5*) with Mixology
Extra mana back based on the crit. Calculated below.

*Assumes you use Divine Plea every time its on cool down. The extra mana given by crit is broken down by spell used:

Flash of Light: 2.75mp5 or 3.59mp5 with Mixology
Holy Light: 8.6mp5 or 11.15mp5 with Mixology
While Flask of Distilled Wisdom is a very powerful flask, it is situational and its best use it determined by your gear level and your style of healing. If you are finding that you are running out of mana, this little powerhouse can add lots to your arsenal. If you are finding no troubles keeping up with your mana without this flask, use another flask instead.

Flask of Pure Mojo

With Mixology it will become 51 mp5 for 4 hours.
This is indeed a poor Flask for Holy Paladins. Trust what other people are telling you. This Flask has to be compared to Flask of Distilled Wisdom as its effect is the closest to what this flask is trying to achieve for you. However, it adds no additional crit, adds nothing to your healing and falls quite a way behind the Flask of Distilled Wisdom for mana regeneration. It will add 458 mana to your mana pool per minute. This puts the Flask of Distilled Wisdom a minimum of 2 and a half minutes ahead of Flask of Pure Mojo without taking into consideration of the return of mana from crits.

When boss fights go for a long time is where this Flask will overtake Distilled Wisdom for its mana benefit. Unless you’re on a learning fight where its going for absolutely ages, don’t use it. There is no point in using this Flask for fights for a minority of fights. The majority of times when you’re up to that fight, you’re geared up enough not to need Flask of Pure Mojo.

Battle Elixir’s

Spellpower Elixir
This Elixir adds the following +spell Power per cast:

Flash of Light: +73 or +97 with Mixology
Holy Light: +125.75 or +167 with Mixology
Holy Shock: +61 or +80.75 with Mixology
With Mixology it becomes +77 spell power with Mixology (Tested 3.0.3)

Elixir of Deadly Strikes
With Mixology it becomes +61 Crit for 2 hours.45 Crit Rating = 0.98% Crit61 Crit Rating = 1.33% CritLook at Stats to how crit effects your Holy Paladin

Elixir of Lightning Speed
With Mixology it becomes +61 Haste for 2 hours.45 Haste Rating = 1.37% Haste61 Haste Rating = 1.86% Haste

Guru's Elixir
With Mixology it becomes +26 to all Stats for 2 hours.Holy Paladins with Divine Intellect talent get a bonus 15% to intellect, so we’re going to work with that.Without Mixology its all Stats by 20 except Intellect, which for Holy Paladins is +23, for 1 hour. With Mixology it becomes all Stats by 26 except Intellect, which for Holy Paladins is +30 for 2 hours.

Guardian Elixir’s

Elixir of Mighty Thoughts

Holy Paladins with Divine Intellect talent get a bonus 15% to intellect, so we’re going to assume you have that.Without Mixology it becomes +51.75 Intellect for 1 hour.With Mixology it becomes +70 Intellect (+64 normally) for 2 hours. (Tested 3.0.3)
This Elixir is a surprising powerhouse considering you can also bundle it with a Battle Elixir. It has a reduction of only 27% of the effects of Flask of Distilled Wisdom. Couple this elixir up with Elixir of Deadly Strikes, you’ll have about the same mana regeneration rate with a slightly higher heal per cast.Stacks with a +2% Intellect Meta Gem for an extra Intellect statStacks with Kings for 10% extra boost

Elixir of Mighty Mageblood

Use: Regenerate 24 mana per 5 sec for 1.00 hour. Guardian Elixir. Same problem with the Flask of Mighy Mojo.

Food buffs:

Fish Feast

Firecracker Salmon & Tender Shoveltusk Steak.

Mighty Rhino Dogs & Spicy Fried Herring.

Spiced Wyrm Burger & Spicy Blue Nettlefish.

Potions:

Runic Mana Potion

Potion of Nightmares

This one is a little more tricky and can only be used in certain circumstances. The best is when the healing requirement is low or there is a break inbetween phases. It will stun you for 6 seconds while you get the mana and health back. If you can work it in for some bosses, it’s well worth it.

Potion of Wild Magic

There really isn’t an encounter in the game so far that would require these, but keep them in mind for when you need super hard healing in a burst. The closest thing that I can think of it using them when a boss has enraged.60 Crit Rating = 1.3% CritThis potion adds the following +heals per cast:

Flash of Light: +226
Holy Light: +390
Holy Shock: +189
Notice no Mixology since there are no Mixology bonuses for potions.

Potion of Speed

Same as above. It’d be nice to note that this is about the same benefit that you get from the Holy Talent Judgements of the Pure. 500 haste rating = 15.25% haste.

I hope you'll follow the things I mentioned on the top of this page concerning the use of the best consumables possible, believe me when I say that it requires little effort for a great benefit to your raid, and your raidleaders will thank you for your effort.

Blessings

2009-11-14T05:44:00.000-08:00

The Rules of Paladin Blessings:

Rule #1: Get PallyPower
Rule #2: Bring enough reagents to a raid or instance. 300 or more.
Rule #3: Not every buff is equal to each class.
Rule #4: If you’re usually assigned a buff to do, get the improved version of it.
Rule #5: A paladin who refuses to buff gets boot.

Now, because I noticed a lot of paladins having huge amounts of trouble with buffing a class with the right buff I will list the order of buffs wanted for each class:
Left is most wanted, right is least.

Death Knight: Kings, Might, Sanctuary

Druid: Balance: Kings, Wisdom

Druid: Feral Tank: Kings, Might, Wisdom

Druid: Feral DPS: Kings, Might,Wisdom

Druid: Resto: Kings, Wisdom

Hunters: Might, Kings, Wisdom

Mages: Kings, Wisdom

Paladin: Holy: Kings, Wisdom, Might
Paladin: Protection: Kings, Might, Wisdom
Paladin: Ret: Might, Kings, Wisdom

Priests: Kings, Wisdom

Rogues: Might, Kings

Shaman: Restoration: Kings, Wisdom

Shaman: Enhancement: Might, Kings, Wisdom

Shaman: Elemental: Kings, Wisdom

Warlocks: Kings, Wisdom

Warrior: Protection: Kings, Sanctuary, Might

Warrior: DPS: Might, Kings

The difference between Blessings and Greater Blessings:

The difference between, for instance Blessing of Kings and Greater Blessing of Kings is that the first lasts 10 minutes (no reagent) and the latter lasts 30 minutes (1 symbol of kings/buff)

Blessing of Wisdom

Blessing of Wisdom.

Gives all members of the raid or group that share the same class with the target the Greater Blessing of Wisdom, restoring 109 mana every 5 seconds for 30 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.
The opinions that most players seems have is that Blessing of Wisdom isn’t very sexy, or even that useful. They seem to think that it doesn’t effect the raid much. It does have a very real effect on the casters of a raid.

Improves Blessing of Wisdom is found fairly deep within the Holy Tree. With this, you'll find that only Holy Paladins take this talent.
It should be noted that Holy Paladins must take the talent Improved Blessing of Wisdom unless another has been assigned it. The effect on the raid is quite significant, even by this little extra buff. The extra benefit to the raid from the talent Improved Blessing of Wisdom, assuming you have about 15 casters in your 25 Man raid, it’s the same as having an extra 27000 Mana available for your raid in a 7-minute fight. That’s a lot of extra heals and DPS just cause you took Improves Blessing of Wisdom.

Blessing of Kings

Blessing of Kings is a spell that you learn from your trainer. It went from being a talent to a spell in 3.1.0. If you haven't learned it, go to your Paladin trainer and learn it now!

This Blessing increases your base stats by 10%.
The stats that Blessing of Kings increases are: Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intellect and Spirit.
It does not directly increase: Armor, Bonus Spell Power, Hit Rating, Crit Chance, Haste Rating or Mana Regeneration.

The majority of classes now prefer Kings as their primary blessing. The better gear that every person in your group or raid gets, the more Kings is worth.

Blessing of Might

Blessing of Might.

In the Retribution talent tree is Improved Blessing of Might, Rank 1, Rank 2.
+859 Attack Power. This is the preferred Blessing for Melee classes, such as Rogues, DPS warriors and DPS Death Knights.

Blessing of Sanctuary

Blessing of Sanctuary.

This is a Protection Talent deep within the Protection tree. It's a talent that is taken by the Prot Paly.
This blessing is particularly great for tanks. Its not bad for the rest of the raiders too. If there are 4 paladins in a raid, there is no reason not to have this on the raid.

How to spec as a Holy Paladin

2009-11-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

Holy Talents

The Holy tree is still very straightforward. There are 51 talent points that directly improve your ability to heal. Everything else in the tree are PvP talents. In my opinion, Improved Lay on Hands and Improved Blessing of Wisdom are very important for PvE healing and all the other talents are not. Here is the spec so far:

51/0/0

Where to put the other 20?

Classic Ret Build - 51/0/20

I could certainly keep the exact same build I have now and go exclusively into the Ret tree. This gives me the 8% extra crit, the improved run speed, the cheaper instant casts, an improved might, and a potential dps increase for the raid. All of these are very tempting. Lets look at the alternatives though.

Do I really need to Pursue Justice? - 51/2/18

This build gives up Pursuit of Justice for 2% more healing. Now, you could make a good argument that 15% increased movement speed increases your healing and reduces damage. Plus, its just very convenient. But, if you really want the movement speed increase, you could get Tuskarr’s Vitality for an 8% boost and give up your 0.26% Crit. Either way, 2% healing is a straight boost to healing in every fight, so this build wins out over the classic Ret build.

3% Crit or 3% more heals? - 51/5/15

How about going even more into Prot? To analyze this build, we need to figure out what’s better, 3% stronger heals or 3% more crits. Its actually not that hard to theorycraft. Each percentage increase of crit will increase your average healing by half a percent. This is because crit heals add 50% to the heal amount. Think of it this way: if you have 100% crit, its the same as getting 50% increased heals all the time. 3% crit averages out to 1.5% increased heals. In addition, each percentage of crit reduces the mana cost of your heals. If you have 100% crit, your heals will all cost 30% less mana due to Illumination. Doing the math, 3% crit will reduce the average cost of your spells by 0.9%. Lastly, Holy Shock crits proc Infusion of Light, which means you’ll get more instant Flash of Lights or crit-powered Holy Lights. To extend the Holy Light theorycrafting, Holy Lights you cast directly after a Holy Shock will have a 0.6% increased chance to crit if you have Sanctified Seals. Flash of Light will have a 3% increased chance to be instant cast after a Holy Shock. So, in summary:

Divinity
3% increased heals
More consistent and reliable healing bonus

Sanctified Seals
1.5% increased heals
0.9% cheaper heals
More Infusion of Light procs
More Tier 8 2-piece Set bonus procs

Aura Mastery can be quite useful in PvE in combation with a resistance aura on fights where this is a lot of AoE fire/frost/shadow damage applied at a specific time. Multiple Paladins could coordinate the use of their auras and Aura Mastery.

What about all prot? - 51/20/0

This spec is the cookie cutter spec for 3.2 At first glance, it seems you get a flat 11% boost to healing instead of an 8% boost to crit. But, the 6% boost you get from Improved Devotion Aura is wasted if there is a Prot Pally or Resto Druid in the raid.
Divine Sacrifice is nice, but its limited to 165% of your health and its mostly useful when Divine Shield is off cool-down (which makes it an unlimited amount absorbed).

Divine Guardian is nice, but Sacred Shield can only be applied to the tank. This talent will cause Sacred Shield to absorb about an extra 450 damage every 6 seconds (every 4 seconds with the Tier 8 4-piece bonus).

Toughness, Stoicism and Guardian’s Favor are mostly wasted talent points and only situationally useful.

Others

If you’re really adventurous, you could go for a crazy hybrid healing spec like 24/4/43 or 28/43/0, but I’m not even going to go there.
So, in summary, my spec of choice is 51/20/0 Let me know if you’re planning on going with something different!

Glyphs

2009-11-12T04:05:00.000-08:00

The best glyphs for a Holy Paladin listed below. I will say that there is some variation possible but not a lot, I'll mark where you can use a subsititute.

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Holy Light

This glyph is mandatory for every Holy Paladin because it's extremely useful in any AoE situation, and we all know there's a buttload of those!

Glyph Of Holy Light

Glyph of Seal of Wisdom

This would be the second glyph of choice if you go for the Holy Light healing style. This glyph takes 5% mana cost off every spell you have.

Glyph of Seal of Wisdom

Glyph of Divinity

A less useful glyph in my eyes, but a decent glyph nonetheless. This glyph will give you the same mana your LoH granted your target. So 1800 if used on another mana user and 3900 if used on yourself.

Glyph Of Divinity

Glyph of Seal of Light

This is a great glyph as subsititute for the Glyph of Seal of Wisdom IF you do not use the Holy Light healing style but the Flash of Light healing style. This glyph increases the effect of your healing spells by 5%

Glyph of Seal of Light

Glyph of Beacon of Light

This is one of my preferred glyphs, not only because it increases the duration of your Beacon of Light by 30 seconds but also because it saved you some mana and a GCD. This also prevent Beacon dropping off at the same time as Sacred Shield so you don't have to spend 2 GCD's not casting any healing spells.

Glyph of Beacon of Light

Glyph of Holy Shock

This is a fairly decent glyph and has its uses on fights that involve a lot of movement. This glyph lowers the cooldown of your Holy Shock by 1 second.

Glyph of Holy Shock

Minor Glyphs

I will not go in further detail on the subject of minor glyphs because they are all pretty lackluster and thus you are free to choose whichever you want because it won't affect your gameplay much.

Useful addons

2009-11-12T03:48:00.000-08:00

A good and clean UI is the gateway to better performance wether it is healing, tanking or dpsing. I will list a few of the most used Addons for a Holy Paladin or even most healing classes as well as post a link where you an find them.

Healbot continued

This is a healing addon that allows you to bind spells to your mouse or keys. When you click the box of someone in your raid/party it will cast the spell you bound to that button on the person you clicked. This is a good, clean addon that doesn't require ages to set up.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/heal-bot-continued.aspx

Grid + Clique

This is essentially the same as healbot but it is a lot more customisable than Healbot.

Grid: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid.aspx
Clique: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/clique.aspx

Decursive

This small addon shows little frames for each member in your group and allows you to dispell them with one click of your mouse. It will automatically bind your decursing spells to your mouse keys (left click and right click).

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/decursive.aspx

Pallypower

A buffing addon which is a must for any self-respecting Holy Paladin. It allows you and your raidleader to set up the buffs for every paladin in the raid, thus eliminating much of the chaos that Paladin buffs bring. It's also really easy to monitor who is missing a buff.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/pally-power.aspx

Who Taunted

An addont that I recently started using and which I found very useful. It shows a chat message with the name of the person who taunted and with what spell, but it also shows if a taunt failed or missed. This addon is quite useful for tank healing.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/who-taunted.aspx

Classtimer

This addon allows you to set up bars for the duration of spells, buffs, debuffs for easy monitoring. This is especially useful for your debuffs on a target or your buffs on your focus target (Ex. Beacon of Light on your focus)

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/classtimer.aspx

Others

Naturally, there are a series of substitutes for the addons I mentioned and also a rather large database of other addons that are useful in a raid situation (I'm thinking of Bartender, DBM, X-perl, Quartz, Dotimer, Recount, Retingbuster, Omen, Atlas, etc). It is nearly impossible to list all of them here but I figure that I mentioned the most commonly used healing addons here.