85 Holy Paladin Guide

by palaranger and greedyfox

How are Holy Paladins different from other healers?

Holy Paladins are very one dimensional in Cataclysm in terms of healing, we rely heavily on partners being able to prevent casted CC such as fear and polymorphs when we’re getting chain CC’d. Whilst CC’d our healing is very pre-emptive making any target a kill opportunity or at least a good chance at getting us to use defensive cooldowns. In Cataclysm we lost our Sacred Cleansing ability  (dispels on friendly targets had a chance to resist 30% all casts made for the next 7~ seconds) and our Sacred Shield buff (absorbed 1-1.5k damage every 6 seconds). To make up for the CC vulnerability, we are able to heal for larger amounts than other classes. And because heals now crit heal for 200%, some Paladins favour to reforge spirit to crit to take advantage. (covered later)

Things to think about

• Healing: At the moment Paladins have very strong instant healing aswell as castable healing. Since Paladins dont really have a efficient damaging spell with an okay mana cost (exorcism with a cost of 7026 mana) your better of useing your global cooldowns and casts on pure healing and dispels.
• Fake casting: Paladins is the class with the most to lose if they get interrupted in holy school. Sure we can crusader strike to prepare a Word of Glory, or Judgement to heal ourselves, but thats about it. Learning how to fakecast is not something you can learn over night, the best tip i can give you for learning a good system is to spam arena, it will eventually come to you. Tip: the spell Turn Evil can be used on Warlocks Fel Hunters to avoid that Spell lock during critical times.
• Defensive Dispels: The most important thing as a paladin is to keep your team dispelled. If your team can roam around freely they can do more damage and also line of sight if needed.
• Pressure: Playing with a Holy Paladin its very important to keep the pressure up, with the amount of instant heals combined with dispels your team should be able to force the opposite team to go defensive giving you alot more free time to avoid crowd control.
• Playing Defensive: This is something you want to avoid but eventually your gonna be in a position where playing defensive is the way to go. While playing defensive using pillars and other line of sight objects is key, being able to los the opponents damage and kiting together abusing the fact that paladins have alot of instant healing is good.
• Positioning: Keep in mind where you are standing you dont wanna get hit by any unnecessary crowd controls. Remember giving your team more uptime by dispelling them will help them interrupt castable cc aswell.
• Clever use of Spells:  Paladins have a big arsenal of spells, some of them can be used in incredible ways if you are creative. (hand of sacrifice just before cc lands etc.)

 

Aura Mastery

Aura mastery can be used on every aura except crusader aura in cata.

• Concentration aura combinded with aura mastery will make you immune to spell locks but this we allready know. But did you know that if you have to land a dispell on a target with unstable affliction you can prematurely aura mastery to become immune to the 4 second silence that comes with dispelling Unstable Afflication.
• Resistance aura combinded with aura mastery will sky rocket your resistances to a whopping 390. Most players out there will not have more then what the neck or cloak gives you(240 spell penetration). This extra resistance will give u a slight chance to resist frost,fire or shadow spells and also reduce the damage taken by them.
• Devotion aura combinded with aura mastery will double the amount of armor and give you a 8152 armor increase. My Paladin has 38222 passive armor and thats 59.45% damage reduction to melee, with aura mastery ill get 42298 armor and 61.87% reduced damage taken. Not alot but vs Kfcs it could save your life (KFC= Warrior Hunter Healer)

Bindings

Here you can see my bindings and UI, I have spells that I’m most likely to use with no modifiers (shift/control + number). I’d recommend you to do the same because it reduces the reaction time between playing twister with your fingers on the keyboard.

Here is my second, and last action bar (you can do this by default by shift + scroll to see other bars). I’ve put Blessing of Might/Kings on this bar because rebuffing during combat is more important than you may think. It offers dispel protection on Hand of Freedom, Sacrifice, and Blessing of Protection, and obviously helps you and your arena/battleground partners.

Glyphs

These are the most commonly used Holy glyphs, the only variants being Glyph of Divine Plea for Glyph of Beacon of Light, and Glyph of Blessing of Might instead of Glyph of Justice. The cost of Beacon of Light unglyphed is 1405 mana, whilst the Divine Plea glyph gives me 6200-6800 mana extra varying on whether Power Torrent has procced. To make Beacon of Light more useful in an arena environment your enemies would have to swap targets 5 or more times within two minutes which I feel is unlikely in most situations.

Talents

Multi-purpose Holy Spec 

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator#bc00!bPgZhWQQSd!jg!Yg

This is a standard Holy spec, things to note are the increased range on Judgement which is great for when you can’t come away from the pillar too much without risk of getting CC’d, and also good for avoiding saps by getting in combat. This spec is also good for RBG’s to get judgements off without increasing your vulnerability of becoming an easy switch target.

Note: You only need one point in Enlightened Judgements to meet the hit cap.

Denounce Spec 

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator#bc00!bPgThWQWSd!jg!Yg

This spec is intended for defensive play, though it can be used offensively. It’s most useful against melee such as Warriors, Rogues, Feral Druids, and Retribution Paladins (mainly classes with no ranged interrupt).

Denounce can also be useful for offensive play – use exorcism on a healer and it will prevent him from crit healing.

Rated Battleground Spec

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/tool/talent-calculator#bc00!bPgZhWQQSd!ag!Yhd

This is a commonly used Rated Battleground spec due to the 2 minute reduced CD time on Blessing of Protection for a caster on your team. Mainly, This spec is mainly used for when your flag carrier needs to move, making the 4 extra seconds on Hand of Freedom extremely useful if given dispel protection. (remember to rebuff often!)

This spec left 1 open point which I chose to put into Rule of Law over Divinity, play style preference.

 Addons

Juked – a very useful and easy to set up addon. It tracks interrupts as mentioned and you’re able to add more cooldowns to this list such as AoE fears, scatter traps, etc. It also helps me to know when to fear a Warlock’s pet, i.e. there’s no use in wasting the fear diminishing returns on the Warlock’s pet if it doesn’t have counter spell up.

For more info on addons, check out the addon guide here: http://hydramist.tv/portfolio/addons-guide/

 

 Gems

Meta: Fornlorn Shadowspirit Diamond (54 int 10% silence duration)

Red: Brilliant Inferno Ruby (40 int)

Blue: Purified Demonseye (20 int 20 spirit)

Yellow: Willful Ember Topaz / Potent Ember Topaz (20 int 20 resil/20 int 20 crit)

Yellow sockets are debatable on whether you choose the 20 resilience over 20 crit. I chose the 20 resilience because I don’t like to rely too heavily on RNG. I would only recommend using the + 20 crit if you plan on reforging spirit into crit. It’s simply too lack-luster otherwise and I would much rather prefer the passive bonus.

Enchants

Head and Shoulders – PvP enchants from the vendor

If you’re reforged to crit you can also get the PvE enchant that improves your crit chance (gained through Exalted with Deepholm/Hyjal)

 

Cloak – 50 Intellect

Note that you can also choose 50/65 Critical Strike rating depending if you’re reforging to full crit. I chose 50 intellect because I’m spirit reforged. If you have Tailoring I would definitely use either the Lightweave(580 Intellect, 45 second ICD) or the Darkglow(580 Spirit, 45 second ICD again) embroiders. Go for Lightweave if you play RBG’s, or are crit reforged, Darkglow if you are reforged to spirit.

 

Chest – Peerless Stats or Resilience

Because Paladins need to run with a PvE mana regen trinket, I lost over 359+ resilience. To make it up I chose 40 resilience. If you are running with a double PvP trinket I would recommend Peerless Stats because of the way resilience scales. Link for resilience scaling: http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/170696-resilience-the-math/

 

Bracers – 50 Intellect or 50 Spirit

I chose 50 Intellect because it works well with a class with Replenishment in Rated Battlegrounds. It also adds to how much Divine Plea will generate based on my total mana.

 

Gloves – Mastery or Haste

I picked the 65 mastery because of the buffs Illuminated Healing received when 4.2 came. Haste is also near useless for instant casts,  (which Paladins have a lot of) only lowering GCD and mastery would show to be the most useful because it benefits both instant and casted heals.

 

Legs – Powerful Ghostly Spellthread

95 Intellect and 55 spirit instead of 80 stamina, self expanatory.

 

Boots – Lavawalker

Lavawalker gives 35 mastery and a minor speed increase to your movement speed. Again, this will always triumph over the 30 stamina minor movement increase version.

 

Weapon – Power Torrent or Heartsong

It’s a personal preference which one you choose. Power Torrent gives 500 intellect, however it can also proc when you don’t need it, i.e. partners are on 100% or you are CC’d. This is why people choose Heartsong (200 spirit, 45 second ICD) because of the high uptime it has and you will always need spirit unless you’re at full mana. Bear in mind that the increased intellect from Power Torrent will also give you a good amount of regen so it’s probably the best choice if you can afford it.

I chose Power Torrent because again it works nicely with Replenishment in Rated Battlegrounds. Some Paladins even choose Hurricane (450 haste) which is great for reducing your global cooldown for faster dispells, however just like Power Torrent it can proc when you don’t need it.

 

Shield – 40 Intellect

50 mastery isn’t worth taking over this.

Reforging

Crit Reforging

These are the stats I gained from crit reforging – note that I lost nearly 700 mp5 for 6%~ crit. If you’re going to spec for crit it’s most recommended to only do it if you play a comp such as TSG, or Kitty Cleave where you aren’t aiming to wear the opposing team down through long games. I would also recommend speccing into Rule of Law (+ 15% Word of Glory crit chance 3/3)

Spirit Reforging

 

 

 To get this you reforge the headpiece, gloves, legs, crit ring, and weapon to spirit.

 

 

Gear: Off Pieces

It’s highly recommended to choose all of the “of Meditation” off pieces due to the high mana cost of heals since Cataclysm. Note that you don’t need to choose any pieces of Diffusion or Accuracy unlike other healers so it would be a waste if you got anything else.

As a reference, here are the stats you can expect from all the Ruthless offpieces and main set with spirit reforges. It gives 2654 mp5 in combat (without Blessing of Might), and on top of using Judgement on every cooldown (which gives 3514 mana) you can conserve mana very easily, allowing you to cast Flash of Light when the opposing team are bursting without having to be too concerned about mana.

As you can see I’m using the Core of Ripeness trinket, just because it’s free. A better option would be to buy ‘Darkmoon Card: Tsunami’ if you have 8,000g~ at your disposal. This is because the Tsunami doesn’t require a ‘use’ effect and Core of Ripeness can easily fall behind if not used exactly every 2 minutes when it comes off cooldown.