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Tips and advice for paladins

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EDITED FOR 3.1


First off, I'd like to say that Rawr has got the be the best program ever. If you havent heard of it- i'd say get it. It lays out all the #'s perfectly for you and really gives you an idea of somthing like- "Is this item better for me than what I currently have?"

Download:

http://rawr.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=28313


Spells

  • Holy Light: Holy Light (HL), costs almost 5 times as much as FoL, but also heals for a much greater baseline.

The greater mana cost of one cast means that HL takes more advantage of illumination.

  • Flash of Light: Costs about 20% of what a HL would cost properly specced. It receives 113% of spell power per cast, if you have Healing Light which is pretty nice for just topping someone off, or if you're too low on mana to use a HL.
  • Holy Shock: Finally increased to 40 yard range which makes this the ideal "ohsnaptankgonnadie" spell. With some decent gear you could see HS crits of up to 9k. This isn't somthing your gonna wanna use every CD but combined with Infusion of Light which reduces HL spell casting time, it's really nice to have when there's not that much Raid damage going around.
  • Beacon of Light: Can you say omg situational? Well that's about what it is.. sadly.. A spell like this worked perfect for me back during fights like Thorim and especially on Freya/Cat Lady. The only problem is that you have to be within the 30 yard range of the target cast upon... oh, and that fact that it only takes into account *effective healing done* now. Imagine a fight where two tanks are taking loads of damage... well pop Divine Illumination, Beacon, and a quick HS+HL and bam! Epic win.
  • Sacred Shield: Casts a 30 second buff on the intended target absorbing 500 damage + roughtly 50% of buffed Spell Power as it stands right now, and then expire. Increases FoL critical chance by 50% which makes it a nice spell to always keep up. Definately not a priority on fights like Ignis where i've found theres just not room to waste a GCD for me.
  • Divine Plea: DP if you please.. Kinda nerfed since 3.1 but it's still an epic talent. I tried to use it every 60 seconds. Unfortunately that meant that 1/4 of the time I would be doing only 50% healing- which reduced my overall healing by about 12.5% but it's a needed sacrifice in my opinion. Fights that can last upwards of 5-6 minutes would make a Holy Paladin useless without this talent. Restoring 25% of your maximum mana every CD is somthing i'd never NOT use.
  • Divine Favor & Divine Illumination: Very nifty speccalbe talents...both of em haven't changed much since I can remember. Try to use em every CD.
  • Seal of Light: I prefered using this over SoW due to the fact that it kinda buffed my healing(Lol). If you constantly refresh your seal on the boss every 20 seconds of so (specced) It will account for roughly 15% of your overall healing. Especially on fights where there is a decent amount of Melee raid damage going on.
  • Aura Mastery: sucks. enuf said.
  • Divine Guardian: When active directs 30% of all raid damage to the Paladin... can't get much more epic than this. Normally I'd save it for when theres a large amount of burst damage coming. It's saved lives.. kinda like not contributing to forest fires.


Glyphs

  • Glyph of Holy Light: For obvious reasons... 10% more healing to all targets in 10 yards up to 10% of the Holy Light cast? Yes, please.
  • Glyph of Beacon of Light: Not all the new glyphs are pure win. This isn't so bad, though, it's a mana conservation glyph that effectively shaves off about a third of the cost of the Beacon. Increases duration of BoL by 30 seconds. It's nice to have.
  • Glyph of Seal of Light: 5% more healing added to all spells? Yes again, please.
  • Glyph of Holy Shock: Reduces the CD of HS by 1 second. If you're a Holy Pally these days and you're not using Holy Shock, you're doing it wrong.

For glyphs choose your poison. Theres several more that are relatively nice to have.. not much to go in the way of Minor's out there but I got by.


Flasks

Ahh.. the debate begins. A lot of people choose Flask of Distilled Wisdom over Frost Wyrm. Distilled Wisdom gives us +65 Intellect, and FW about 120 SP. This all goes back to what's better? Int > < Sp? The common consensus is that Distilled Wisdom is slightly better when taking into consideration the roughly 2:1 Int:SP ratio thingy and the fact that Divine Plea makes me Jizz in my Pants. ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr6uvBICic0 Now, in all seriosness *imo* +65 int is just a bit too much to give up for the SP. Plus the fact that it's like a lot cheaper to make(I was an Alch, lol.) made it appeal ever more. But with the free flasks nowadays for Vanguard, it's really up to you guys


Enchants

  • Helm- Rep.
  • Shoulder- Rep.
  • Cloak- Enchant Cloak Greater Speed(+23 Haste): Now haste sucks for a Holy Pally but until there's somthing better.. it's that or Spirit.
  • Chest- Powerful Stats: (+10 to all stats), or Exceptional Mana: (+250 Mana)
  • Bracers- Exceptional Intellect: (+16 Intellect). Don't go for the (+28 Spellpower) one.
  • Weapon- Gotta go with Enchant Weapon: Mighty Spellpower: (+63 Sp) is the best.
  • Shield- Enchant Shield Greater Intellect: (+25 Intellect). Need I say more?
  • Gloves- Exceptional Spellpower(+28) is really the only good one at the moment.
  • Legs- Spellthread.. bascially. Either (+50 SP & +30 Spirit) or (+50 SP & +30 Stamina)
  • Feet- Tuskarr's Viatlity: (+15 Stam & movement increase)


UI/Add-on's

I used Perfect Raid over Grid for the simple fact that I *grew up* with that. It may not be better, but it's green... and green is my favorite color =) it's bascially the same in everyway, just shaped differently. Healer buttons+ Clique is just win. No need to even use 1,3, and 4. Just hover over the name & click the designated mouse button. Spell timer is also really nice- it shows you heads up on when you need to refresh Judgement, Sacred Shield, and when your bigger CD's like DI, Divine Illumination, and Lay on Hands are gonna be up.


Spec's

  • 51/5/15- Nice amount of critical strike rating gained with this spec- somthing like 8% or so.
  • 51/17/3- Was kinda required.. and incredibly nifty. I found that it gimped my healing quite a bit, but taking into consideration the amount of lives it could save with Divine Guardian- it was well worth it.
  • 51/0/20- Never met a good Pally healer with this spec. The only people I ever saw with it were probably ones that just read a forum and followed blindly behind whoever came up with this. Sure it has its pvp/soloing advantages but raiding wise, it's not a very good choice.


Situationals

Intellect > Spellpower > Crit > Haste > Mp5(ticks every 2 seconds now apparently)

Once you can get to about 35% Holy Crit fully raid buffed you really dont need to worry about that anymore. Our gear comes with enough Int/SP on it to make it where worrying about gearing for that isn't neccessary. The only dilemna faced when it comes to Holy gear for 3.1 seems to be Haste or Mp5? To each his own. Preferences are yours. Mana is important but then again, so is cranking out the most healing in a short period of time also.


In a normal raid setting considering three of the bosses in Ulduar, Xt- Razorscale and Ignis: here were some of my numbers i've got saved on a Word document.

  • % of healing done: By spell-
  • Holy Light- 39.1% (53% Overheal)
  • Flash of Light- 22.4% (69% Overheal)
  • Beacon of Light- 19.33% (81% Overheal)
  • Holy Shock- 11.02% (80% Overheal)
  • Judgement of Light- 6.37% (44% Overheal)
  • Sacred Shield- 2.18% (94% Overheal)

As you can see my main spells were Holy Light and Flash of Light. Holy light was my main spell and mostly Flash of Light used on the trash, and at the beginning/low points of the fight. I always made a habit of if the tank was taking ~4000 or less damage that I would only use FoL on him and if it was ~5000-6000 a Holy Shock, and anything above ~6000+ was a HL. I used Beacon of light on the Razorscale fight during P1, and not at all during P2. Judgement of light was up almost constantly and my sacred sheild however little healing it did, the amount of damage mitigated more than payed off for the 1.3% mana loss per refresh.


When and How

Now, you may be asking yourself when and how should I use those spells, i.e. Lay on Hands, Divine Illumination, Divine Sheild+DG, Holy Shock, and Hand of whatever. Well, here i'll try to break it down spell by spell.

  • Lay on Hands: restores 100% of the paladins maximum health and 500 mana to the intended target- as a healer this is your "oh sh!t" button. In 10 and 25 mans alike, theres always those oppertunities when a tank is about to go down and your the only healer in range, or the only one with a spell and enough mana to cast it. Times like these are the perfect time to blow your 20 mins CD. Also dont be afraid to use it if the tank is about to take an extreme amount of damage, or in the process of doing so. It could save his life and consequently a raid wipe.
  • Divine Illumination: reduces the mana cost of all spells by 50% for 15 seconds. 3 Min CD. This is another one of those great spells that allows our mana conservation to really come into play. don't let it sit off cooldown for too long. I've done this before many times, but I normally try to use it if the raid damage is about to pick up dramatically, somthing bad has happened in raid (ex: off-tank dies, or more than one healers get shot down) which requires me to spam Holy Light+ HS combos. This could end up saving you roughly 10000 mana if you take into consideration heroism, judgement, and lights grace giving you a rough 1.45 second HL at a cost of 1100 mana.
  • Divine Guardian+Divine Shield: Redirects 30% of all raid damage to the paladin. 30 yard radius. Great combo for the initial pick-up on fights like Cat Lady, and for rough patches in fights like Thorim, XT. Always try to use this withing 2-3 seconds of some really heavy Raid AOE going on. If you think of it like this- 25 people in a raid all within about 30 yards, taking 10000 aoe damage, you'd effectively be taking care of 75,000 damage.

I recomend this macro- it's the one I would use on the initial Cat Lady pick-up but found to be quite nifty on many other occasions: 

/use Hand of Sacrifice
/raid warning Hand of Sacrifice used on MT
/use Divine Shield
/use Lay on Hands

It's really nice. I don't know much about making macros but that was perfect- Target Wulang, and press Shift+T.

  • Holy Shock: this is our new spell =]

well, not new per-se but before Wrath it really wasnt wise to go around using this more than once every 30 seconds or so. This is the perfect spell on the run. Our only Insta-cast and a very good one at that. Heals for a base 5.3-5.7k with roughly 2000 spellpower and crits from 8.1-8.7k. Has an additional 16% critical strike rating(10 through 2pc t7.5 set bonus, and 6 through talents).It's not very wise to use this every cd, but for fights like XT- where running away from the raid is important, this is a nice spell to have and use on anyone lower than 80% Health. Also really nice on fights like Hodir. I found myself using it almost every CD due to the stacking debuff only removed my jumping/moving.

  • Hand spells: Hand of Salvation- Use anytime a DPS/healer is about to or in the process of jacking aggro from the tank. Hand of Protection- A nice spell if a dps has taken aggro and is about to get two shotted by the boss or a trash mob. Remeber it prevents melee dps from attacking so if possible use it on casters. Hand of Freedom- use it anytime a tank is frozen/stuck in place. On fights like Vashj this was perfect, and still is so for fights like Hodir, and others. Hand of Sacrifice- *good* spell. Coupled with DS+DG it's amazing the amount of damage the tank will take less that he/she normally would have.

Best in Slot Paladin Gear

There is of course, a ton of gear Mail wise, that's very decent upgrades over Naxx gear. If you have any inhibitions of taking these or any other non-plate piece, dont be worried. As long as your not rolling over a Shaman or another class, take the gear. An upgrade is an Upgrade and as far as healing goes- every little bit helps.

As far as set bonuses go- the Teir 7.5 2 pc. set is better than than both Tier 8.5 bonuses combied. If possible, i'd save two pieces probably gloves and legs for the 10% critical strike chance. Dealing with about 400 mana per crit cast on average adds up over the course of the fight. With only a sacrifice of 52 spellpower, .88% crit, and 1.12% haste.

And so that's all folks, I made this for a fellow guild mate of mine who was in dire need of a basic outline of the Holy spec as a Paladin.

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