Holy Paladin

The Holy Paladin Guide
Last updated on 12/28/2008

I. Introduction

Theorycrafting Tools
While talking about skills can be useful, sometimes you need to crunch the numbers to see what wins out. This is where these tools can come in, to help you find out what gear is better for you. As far as I know there is no Holy Paladin spreadsheet updated for 3.0, but if there is please let me know and I'll include. Your only option now is to use Rawr, you can read more about it in the Rawr Healadin Module thread.

Acronyms
There are many acronyms in WoW, and Paladins are doing there part to keep that true. For the new Paladins out there this is to help you not be totally confused while reading posts.

* AW: Avenging Wrath.
* BoK: Blessing of Kings
* BoW: Blessing of Wisdom
* BoL: Beacon of Light. Was formerly Blessing of Light, but that spell no longer exists.
* CD: Cooldown.
* DF: Divine Favor.
* DI: Divine Illumination. For the purposes of this thread, it doesn't refer to Divine Intervention.
* DP: Divine Protection
* FoL: Flash of Light
* HL: Holy Light.
* HPM: Healing per mana.
* HPS: Healing per second.
* HS: Holy Shock.
* ICD: Internal Cooldown.
* IoL: Infusion of Light.
* JoL: Judgement of Light
* JotP: Judgement of the Pure
* JoW: Judgement of Wisdom
* LG: Light's Grace
* Mp5: Mana per 5 sec.
* OOM: Out of mana.
* SP: Spell Power.
* SS: Sacred Shield.
* WWS: WoW Web Stats.
* 5SR: 5 second rule.


Assumed Raid Buffs
With the changes to buffs so that they are almost all raid wide, it is safe to assume during discussion you will have these buffs (unless otherwise stated).

* 5% Spell Haste, from Wrath of Air totem.
* 3% Spell Haste, from Sanctified Retribution or Imp Moonkin Aura.
* 15% Spell Haste, from Judgements of the Pure.
* 5% Spell Crit, from Moonkin Aura or Elemental Oath.
* 144 Spell Power increase from Flame Tongue, or 280 from Totem of Wrath.
* 0.25% max mana per sec, from Replenishment, with 90% uptime.
* 10% increase to stats with Blessing of Kings.
* 91mp5 from Blessing of Wisdom, or 109mp5 with Imp BoW.
* 97 Intellect, from Arcane Intellect and Mark of the Wild.


II. Stats
For each stat I will try to demonstrate what 100 items points gives, which is equivalent to 5 epic quality Northrend gems. For most stats 1 item point is equal to 1 point in the stat. The exceptions are Spell Power (1 item point = 1.166 sp), Mp5 (1 item point = 0.4mp5) and Stamina (1 item point = 1.5 stamina).

Stamina
While this won't increase how much healing you do directly, a dead healer is not doing any healing. You won't need stamina for all fights though, but if you are going to get a piece with low (or no) stamina I would recommend keeping a set of gear around that has higher stamina. So you can throw them on for fights with heavy AoE damage. For 100 item points you get 150, which with BoK becomes 1650 health.

Intellect
Intellect has received a HUGE boost with WotLK mechanics, and 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.
* 4.7mp5 from Arcane Torrent, if you are a Blood Elf.
* 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.

Spirit
Despite being told while WotLK was still in its initial phases that they wanted to make spirit good for all healers, nothing ended up getting changed. Spirit still is as crappy as ever for Paladins, you are never out of the 5SR to gain any mana from it. 100 spirit gives you nothing .

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. Items with mp5 can still be really good. Just because of there higher ilvl, or not being any better itemized items of the same ilvl.

III. Abilities
Holy Paladins are no longer restricted to just casting two spells in combat. We got a few new good ones, and some old ones are now worth using. 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, and 4pcT7) 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. A common complaint of it is that it can't be relied on because of overheals not providing any healing. It also only works on Paladin healing abilities, so if you have a trinket (or something else) that heals then that won't proc BoL. 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.

A perfect example of using it while tank healing is in Illidan Phase 2. While you can't rely on it to keep the tank you are healing alive, you can use it to greatly help the other tank stay alive. So at the start of P2 I will cast it on the tank the I am not healing, and then just heal my tank as normal. Let me tell you, getting a 1.7sec 10k Holy Light crit (with AW) that heals my tank, and then heals the Beacon for 10k is amazingly awesome.

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
With WotLK this now effects healing, but is reduced to a 20% increase. In 3.0.8 its was changed to no longer cause a GCD, and to only cause a 30sec blackout period with Bubble. So its much easier to use while healing, and should be used often unless you think you might need Bubble in those 30 seconds.

Divine Plea
This spell gives an insane amount of mana back, 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 Favor
This is unchanged with WotLK, but with IoL it warrants no longer being relegated to just a HL macro. Saving it to use with HS for when the tank gets a big burst, for a combo with HL, can be very useful.

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
Is significantly better to use in fights now, since it no longer drains all of your remaining mana. 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. It costs 3 GCDs per 2 min to keep JotP up, and 7 GCDs per 2 min to keep JotP and Judgement debuff up. Either way though with 15% extra haste you will be able to get more total healing spells out even after "wasting" 7 GCDs.

JoL was also buffed with WotLK and is definitely worth keeping up, but it scales significantly better with AP then SP. So if you have a Ret or Prot pally in the raid it is better for them to do JoL and you do JoW. Conversely though the Ret/Prot Pally will have a much more reliable uptime on there Judgement, since sometimes you just can't spare the global, and some classes are dependent on 100% JoW uptime for their DPS cycle. So if you can't guarantee to keep up JoW, it might be better for you to do your weaker JoL.

Hand of Sacrifice
The new version of this spell for WotLK is now very useful for PvE. A good button to use to help keep your tank alive when he gets some burst on him. Be careful though, the tank can take a lot of damage which will the be transfered to you. If your tank has BoL on him, it can be useful to just heal yourself while HoS is active so you don't die.

Hand of Protection
Nothing new with this for WotLK besides a new name. 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.

IV. Gear
Most of the individual stats are discussed in the stats section. So this section is going to more geared for abnormal stats on items like meta gems, librams, and trinkets.

While there will always be one stat that is the best for you, that doesn't mean you should stack it with little concern for the cost. The more of a stat is on the item, the more items points it takes per stat point. For example, one item could have 10 intellect, or it could 8 intellect and 7 crit rating, while being the same item level. So it is in your best interest most of the time to have items with balanced stats, and use gems to stack a stat since they are exempt from this rule. Sometimes balanced items won't always be the best, or the distribution of stats on another item could be better, but in the general case balanced items are better.

Meta Gems
WotLK added a lot of new options for meta gems to choose from. For all the comparisons I am using 1400 Int and 25114 mana as a base, approximately mostly epic gear that is favoring Int. I also assume a 6 min fight, 4 Divine Pleas, and 90% Replenishment uptime.

[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] (5% chance to restore 600 mana with a 15 second ICD)

* 26.6 Intellect (After Kings/Divine Intellect)
* 399 mana at start.
* 399 mana from Divine Plea.
* 323 mana from Replenishment.
* 48 mana from Arcane Torrent, if you are a Blood Elf.
* 5.3 spell power.
* 0.156% crit.
* 4800 mana from proc. With ICD an average of 45 seconds per proc.
* Total: 5921 mana (+48 if Blood Elf), 5.3 spell power, 0.156% crit.

The proc is approximately 70mp5, varying on your ratio of HL to FoL. This is the best meta you can use.

[ZZOLD Design: Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond]
This is can be a good meta if you feel your burst healing is too low. Normally HL crits are big enough that the extra amount healed is often wasted, so that I find the extra HLs I can cast while using an IED better.

[Ember Skyflare Diamond]

* 28 Intellect
* 420 mana at start.
* 420 mana from Divine Plea.
* 340 mana from Replenishment.
* 50 mana from Arcane Torrent, if you are a Blood Elf.
* 30.6 spell power.
* 0.168% crit.
* Total: 1180 mana (+50 if Blood Elf), 30.6 spell power, 0.168% crit.

Though it looks good on paper, you will never get enough Int to have it come even close to Insightful.

[Beaming Earthsiege Diamond]

* 502 mana at start.
* 502 mana from Divine Plea.
* 407 mana from Replenishment.
* 60 mana from Arcane Torrent, if you are a Blood Elf.
* 0.457% crit.
* Total: 1411 mana (+60 if Blood Elf), and 0.457% crit.

Similar to Ember, it is in the same boat of 2% being too small of a benefit.

Librams

[Libram of Renewal]
This is a huge increase in output, because of how much mana it saves. It reduces the cost of your Holy Light spell by almost 10%, it is the best libram you can get. Remember that Illumination works off of base mana, so you will still get the same amount of mana back from crits.

[Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Justice]
This is a good Libram and works well with the style of FoL. It just can't rival the massive mana reduction on Libram of Renewal.

[Libram of Tolerance]
I don't see any situation where I would use it over Renewal. Since I can use the 113 mana I saved on a Holy Light to do a lot more than 265 healing.

Trinkets
Just a list for now, I'll add some discussion for them later.

[Living Ice Crystals]
[Forethought Talisman]
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
[Soul of the Dead]
[Darkmoon Card: Illusion]
[Darkmoon Card: Greatness] (+90 Intellect version)
[Embrace of the Spider]
[Je'Tze's Bell]
[The Egg of Mortal Essence]
[Forge Ember]
[Figurine - Sapphire Owl]
[Soul Preserver]

V. Glyphs
Personally at 80 I am going to use Holy Light, Divinity, and Seal of Wisdom for my Major Glyphs. Here are all of the options you have currently.

Glyph 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 Spiritual Atunement
You will need to get healed for 117,000 healing by another healer for this to return more mana then Divinity.

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.

VI. Consumables

Potions
While 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 Fed
These 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

Flasks

Flask 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.
Flask of Distilled Wisdom - Sadly this flask from Vanilla WoW is still half decent. I wouldn't use it over Frost Wyrm though.

Elixirs

Spellpower 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.

Mana/Wizard Oils
They discontinued these with WotLK, and any old ones you have will not work on your new WotLK weapons.

VII. 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.

VIII. Add Ons
A 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.

Pitbull (Unit Frames)
I find it much easier to keep track of your health and mana with this, then the insanely small bars in the default UI. This mod is also highly customizable, and can do almost anything you want it to do. XPerl is another popular Unit Frame addon. Both of these can also serve as your raid frames, but I find Grid does a better job.

Parrot (Scrolling Combat Text)
This addon helps me better keep track of damage incoming to me, and the healing I am doing then the default one. Another option is MikScrollBattleText.

Clique (Click Casting)
With a click casting addon you assign a mouse button (like middle mouse) to a spell, and whenever you press that button on a unit frame it casts that spell at that unit. I like using this with Cleanse, because I find I have better reaction times with it. Some people like assigning a button (or key-button combination) to all there heals, and using just that to heal.

PallyPower (Blessing Asssignments)
This AddOn will make your life keeping everyone blessed with the proper blessings much easier. While I am sure a lot of us have had their frustrations with PallyPower, it is significantly better then not using one. An alternative is ZOMGBuffs.

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.

IX. Talent Builds
Here are a few sample talent builds that will give anyone a good starting point, and are by no means the only builds you can go. All of them are just guidelines meant to give people an idea of where to start and then customize for themselves.

Paladin (51/0/20) - World of Warcraft: PvE without any Blessing talents
Paladin (51/5/15) - World of Warcraft: PvE with Blessing of Kings
Paladin (51/0/20) - World of Warcraft: PvE with Imp Might and Wisdom
Paladin (51/20/0) - World of Warcraft: A guideline PvP build.