Paladins as healers

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General advice

Holy talents and builds

Main article: Paladin_builds#Holy

The Holy talent tree is very powerful and makes the paladin a very strong healer; Light's Grace allows you to quick-fire Holy Light heals for larger burst healing effectiveness, and Holy Guidance will increase your overall spell damage and healing based upon your current intellect.

Spell crit rating will help a healing set quite a lot if you have the Illumination talent from the Holy tree. Any build having Holy Shock will include (as a matter of course) Divine Favor; Divine Favor gives a guaranteed crit to your next heal or Holy Shock, and can increase HPS in that manner.

Gear

Holy paladin healers benefit most from gear with spellpower, intellect, critical strike rating and haste rating. mp5 is also valuable, but is not as important to paladins as other classes. Stamina and armor are also good to have for better survivability. Most paladins use a one-handed weapon (mace or sword) and a shield with good healing stats. Some prefer a non-shield off-hand item with good healing stats. Paladin healers can use all types of armor (cloth, leather, mail or plate). While it is generally best to use plate when possible, for the extra armor and therefore survivability it provides, you should not neglect lower armor classes with better healing stats.

When possible, gear with critical strike rating should be chosen, because it facilitates both an increase in your healing output (by increasing the chance that your heals will "crit" and heal an extra 50% of their usual amount) and mana regeneration, through Illumination.

Unlike other healing classes, spirit is not an important stat for paladins. Because paladins lack healing-over-time effects, instant cast heals, and "clearcasting" or during-casting passive regeneration talents, most paladin healers will not be outside of the "5 second rule" for any significant periods of most fights and spirit does not provide meaningful regeneration for them. Furthermore, spirit gives paladins no side bonuses that some priests and druids have such as a bonus to healing; instead, Paladins get that bonus from intellect.

Buffs

It is important to know whom to buff how.

Tanks will benefit most from the stamina and agility bonuses provided by Blessing of Kings. If another paladin has already used Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might will help them maintain a high level of threat on their target.

Physical DPS classes will typically benefit most from the attack power granted by Blessing of Might, but there are some cases where the stat increases from Blessing of Kings can be more valuable. Mana users (like retribution paladins or hunters) will also benefit from Blessing of Wisdom.

Most magic-based DPS classes and healers should get Blessing of Wisdom to help them keep an adequate mana pool and decrease downtime, but there are certain cases (like warlocks with Fel Armor) where Blessing of Kings will provide more benefit.

The short duration of paladin blessings can be ideal for situations where players are likely to die quickly or have buffs dispelled from them, specifically in PvP battlegrounds. However, paladin buffs cannot be applied to an entire party or raid as many other class buffs can. The short duration blessings must be applied to each individual player, and the longer duration "greater" blessings must be applied to each individual class. While it is true that applying a 10 minute blessing to one character is generally more mana-efficient than applying another class's 30 minute buff, the cost of buffing a 40 player raid in Alterac Valley is significantly higher to paladins.

Raid jobs

In raid environments healers are often divided into group healers and tank healers. Paladins generally excell at healing tanks due to the high efficiency of Holy Light. They lack the party and raid healing abilities of some other classes, as well as healing-over-time (HoT) effects and have only one low-efficiency instant-cast heal (Holy Shock), but they can serve adequately as raid healers, mostly by spamming Flash of Light and using Holy Shock in emergency situations.

Healing basics

Paladin mana management works very differently from other healing classes, who mostly depend on spirit. A paladin's best mana return mechanic is Illumination. Additionally (and as of patch 3.0.2), most paladins rely on Divine Plea. These talents make intellect and critical strike rating much more attractive stats to paladin healers than the spirit and "mp5" other classes prioritize. The 50% healing reduction caused by Divine Plea makes Flash of Light very inefficient (in terms of HPS) while the spell is active, so it is generally better to stick to Holy Light, and in raid situations many paladins now use this as their primary heal. In raid situations, paladin healers also frequently use Lay on Hands (combined with certain glyphs and talents) to restore mana to themselves when they run out.

At lower gear levels and without the benefits of raid-wide mana regeneration buffs, your basic healing spell is more likely to be Flash of Light. With adequate gear (and assuming the tank you are probably healing is also adequately geared) for the situation, you can generally spam it in order to keep your assignement's health topped. In situations like this, Holy Light will generally be reserved for times when the HPS of FoL is not adequate to keep up with damage. Holy Light has a relatively long casting time, so it is important to use it before you fall too far behind or you may not be able to finish casting it in time.

In urgent situations, it may be wiser to use a combination of Divine Favor and Holy Shock to trigger Infusion of Light, which will give you another instant cast FoL or an increased critical chance on your next HL. This is highly mana inefficient, of course, so it should be reserved only for situations where you do not have enough time to complete a more efficient heal.

In dire situations, Lay on Hands will provide a very large, instantaneous burst heal to your target. This can be a potent tool when a battle starts to go downhill. This ability has a fairly long cooldown, so choosing when to use it can be difficult.

It is also important to consider your various damage mitigation abilities. Divine Shield will prevent you from taking any damage for 12 seconds, allowing you to focus on healing the other members of your party in peace, or giving you valuable time to restore your own health. Sacred Shield can absorb damage for your target while increasing your HPS output and mana regeneration. The amount of damage absorbed will scale with your own spell power, making this a highly effective tool for holy paladins. Hand of Sacrifice can also be used to transfer damage from your healing target to yourself.

Because paladin healers must use direct-healing spells, they cannot always wait to see how much damage their healing target has taken before deciding which heal to cast. This results in "spamming" (usually of Flash of Light), or chain-casting and in turn, paladin healers are sometimes criticised for "overhealing" (which is essentially wasting mana by healing a target for more than the amount of damage he has taken). Overhealing that doesn't make you run out of mana is fully acceptable. Remember — it is always better to overheal than underheal and suffer wipe after wipe.

Gear Enhancement

A paladin's primary stats for healing are spell power, intellect, crit rating and haste rating. Spell power will increase the amount healed by every healing spell you cast. Intellect provides more mana as well as increasing your critical effect chance, having high intellect (and therefore more mana) also makes Divine Plea more effective. Crit rating also increases your critical effect chance, which increases the average amount healed and also restores mana (through Illumination). The enhancements listed below are generally considered the best available high level holy paladins:

Weapon - 63 spell Power
Shield - 25 Intellect
Gloves - 28 Spell Power
Ring - 19 Spell Power (Enchanters Only)
Cloak - 23 Haste
Chest - 10 Stats
Bracer - 30 Spell Power
Boots - Ice Walker
Legs - 50 Spell Power + 30 Stamina (Sapphire Spellthread)
Shoulders - 24 Spell Power + 15 Crit (Sons of Hodir Exalted)
Helm - 30 Spell Power + 20 Crit (Kirin Tor Revered)