Holy Paladin Guide

Holy Paladin Class Guide

Written by: Pardeux of <Peachy Keen> of US-Stormreaver

Passive Abilities

Holy Insight

This ability is the new passive that lumps instantly makes your paladin into a healer when you select the holy specialization. We are keeping the passive 50% mana regen from spirit and in MoP Spirit will be a more attractive stat.

Boundless Conviction

Allows the storage of up to 5 holy power. This will give us incentive to save some holy power for times when we will need it more. Ex when we need 2 quick light of dawn or Word of Glory.

Daybreak

Revamped to allow Holy shock to splash after a holy radiance. This will make Holy shock not only more efficient but will mean that you want to include it in an AOE healing rotation rather than only casting holy radiance. AOE rotation will become HR->HS->HR->LoD->HS->HR.

Tower of Radiance

Unchanged, gain holy power when healing the beacon target directly. This allows us to single target tank heal efficiently with divine light and word of glory.

Mastery:Illuminated Healing

Direct healing spells still cause absorption shields. Note that nearly every spell is now considered direct healing. This is very valuable now.

Infusion of Light

Unchanged, this makes using holy shock on cooldown even more attractive than it already is.

Primary Abilities

Beacon of Light

All AOE heals transfer to beacon but for only 15% of the amount healed. All other heals are 50% transference (excluding Holy Light which is 100%).

Holy Shock

Cheap 6 second CD ability that generates holy power. You should attempt to use this on cooldown.

Holy Light

Cheap efficient heal. Transfers 100% to beacon so this should be used on a non tank target as a filler cast

Divine Light

Expensive big heal, use on tanks or when raid member needs topped quickly

Flash of Light

Expensive fast heal, use sparingly only when you need to save someone in the next 1.5 seconds.

Secondary Abilities

Denounce

Replaces Exorcism and has the built in ability to prevent critical strikes, this will be useful in pvp as it was in cataclysm.

Sacred Cleansing

dispel removal that every healer get, now has an 8 second cooldown.

Word of Glory

Unchanged, Single target free heal that consumes holy power.

Holy Radiance

Expensive AOE heal. No longer has a hot portion making it completely a direct heal. Splash from the ability also counts as a direct heal. In MoP the fights are a little less stack friendly than in current Dragon Soul. This is also more expensive so expect to use it less than you currently do.

Light of Dawn

Works similarly to current ability. Hits 6 targets but now only transfers 15% to the beacon target making it less attractive if the tank needs significant healing.

Cooldowns

Divine Favor

Still our most powerful throughput cooldown. Now 3 minute cooldown.

Avenging Wrath

Still a great throughput cooldown with +20% healing done. Cooldown increased to 3 minutes.

Devotion Aura

Improved Aura Mastery. Cooldown increased to 3 minutes but every paladin spec can use this now.

Guardian of Ancient Kings

Works similarly but now will stack 10% haste per heal as well. Some talents will also enhance you while guardian is out making this a more powerful cooldown than it currently is.

Lay on Hands

Unchanged, great for an instant save in an emergency healing situation.

Divine Protection

Now reduces magic damage by 40% and can be glyphed to reduce physical damage. 1 minute cooldown.

Hand of Sacrifice

Going unchanged, Very useful to use on a tank to mitigate periods of massive damage

Hand of Protection

Going unchanged, use when a caster draws aggro or to mitigate massive physical damage on a non tank.

Hand of Salvation

Going Unchanged, use to prevent high threat players from getting aggro.

Divine Plea

Going unchanged, mana return CD, should be used every 2 minutes.

Blinding Light

New Cooldown but seems to only be useful for PVP or as an AOE crowd control for adds in raid.

Divine Shield

Unchanged, Total immunity to damage what more could you want?

Talents

15

Speed of Light

Long Arm of the Law

Pursuit of Justice

These are all movement speed talents. These fall to personal preference but I will likely be using speed of light, this will give a heavy burst of speed every 45 seconds. Some fights may long arm of the law more so, especially if you need the speed more often than once per 45 seconds, be prepared to use that one when needed.

30

Fist of Justice

Repentance

Burden of Guilt

This tier is all about choosing a crowd control. For raids fist of justice is probably the best as it will increase your stun/interrupt range by 10 yards. Repentance will be a good choice for trash mobs in raids and 5 mans, and Burden of guilt would be really useful in PvP coupled with Long Arm of the Law from Tier 1.

45

Selfless Healer

Eternal Flame

Sacred Shield

This tier is a close match up between sacred shield and eternal flame. Eternal flame will be similar to a druid's Lifebloom and will heal for a lot on a tank who constantly takes damage. However it consumes holy power so heavy AOE healing fights this may not be as desirable since holy power will be better spent on Light of Dawn. Sacred shield is a potent choice that will be cast and forget for 30 seconds. It will also be more viable for fights where tanks swap more frequently than once/30 seconds. The difference will be do you want a proactive or reactive heal? Are there multiple tanks taking significant damage? The answer should change on a fight per fight basis and, if Blizzard balances them properly, your play style. From experience in raids so far Eternal flame performs very well if there isn't a need for your holy power to all go into LoD and more than one tank is taking heavy damage.

Selfless Healer seems like it would have a lot of PvP utility and in raid it my make Flash of Light more viable but the other two (I think) will prove to be more beneficial in a raid setting.

60

Hand of Purity

Unbreakable Spirit

Clemency

This Tier will be extremely fight dependent. Hand of purity will have uses on fights with high periodic damage (and in arena) but the other two will have more utility on most encounters. Unbreakable spirit will give you more frequent access to Lay on Hands, Divine Protection, and Divine Shield (I estimate ~40-45% more access based on average HP generation per minute in a fight). So Divine Shield should be usable twice as often and DP at least 30% more often. This will be really useful if you need the bubble immunity every 2.5-3 minutes. Note that with the lay on hands glyph this may provide an extra mana cooldown as well. From experience I am still only able to use glyphed Lay on Hands once per encounter. Clemency effects your hand spells and this will allow you to use Hand of Sacrifice on two targets simultaneously (might want to bubble with that) or in succession for a very long tank cooldown. For most fights I think Clemency will perform better. I use Hand of Sacrifice a lot so it really will depend on how often the tanks will need my hand of sacrifice (or the raid needing other hand spells) for me to consider Unbreakable spirit.

75

Holy Avenger

Sanctified Wrath

Divine Purpose

Every choice in this tier will increase your healing output substantially. Holy Avenger increases healing of any ability that generates holy power, this is very attractive for Holy Radiance and Divine Light on a tank. This will also will allow you to use a holy power ability every other heal if desired. For heavy AOE healing fights this will be the best talent choice and perhaps will win out even on non AOE fights. Sanctified wrath will be useful if you need an extra 10 seconds on Avenging Wrath and want a shorter Holy Shock CD but I believe the other two abilities will provide more holy power throughout the fight. Divine Purpose is a pick and forget talent. It will allow you to use a HP ability twice 25% of the time. Over the course of the fight this will have RNG associated with it but will be very potent if you don't require the burst healing that Holy Avenger will provide. Use Divine Purpose for any fight that doesn't require a controlled bursts of healing.

90

Holy Prism

Light's Hammer

Execution Sentence

I know I sound like a broken record but this tier also provides raw healing that will depend on the raid situation to determine which is best. Holy Prism will behave like a more potent Light of Dawn (but with a HoT component) every 20 seconds. Light's hammer is better if the raid can be totally stacked at least once per minute. Execution sentence will be extremely potent for a single target heal. If the fight requires a lot of burst tank healing then Execution Sentence will win out. For AOE fights it will depend on the positioning of the raid. I am currently using Light's hammer due to the scaling with divine favor (and 25 players) and it's usefulness in the current raiding tier. The raid can be stacked enough for it to be very effective.

Glyphs

Divine Plea

This glyph is probably one that every paladin will end up taking. Sacrificing 5 seconds of cast time to avoid 9 seconds of reduced healing seems like a great trade off. We will see if it works out but currently you search for a lower damage period to use plea. Also with haste effects this is a faster cast so it is very good.

Divinity

For +2 minutes on the cooldown and getting +10% mana this will be worth it. This glyph with Unbreakable spirit will still allow you to use Lay on hands twice in a 7 minute+ encounter and would net 20% mana return. This mana boost should not be overlooked.

Protector of the Innocent

Nice extra heal for when you would use Word of Glory anyway. This will probably be my #3 pick.

Illumination

I will release a blog posting about this but I ran the numbers and at 7k+ spirit thresholds this glyph will not win out. It will be close or slightly out perform in the most optimal holy shock per minute settings. I will be skipping this one

Battle Healer

Good in theory don't think it will work in practice, we do not find ourselves white hitting a boss very often and when we do the damage is poor. For a stacked up pure AOE fight this may be a useful option.

Divine Protection

On physical damage fights (with minimal magical damage) this glyph would be useful.

Flash of Light

If you take the Selfless Healer talent then this glyph will synergize well, otherwise I do not see paladins using Flash of Light enough in a raid setting to justify this glyph.

Blinding Light

If you need to stun adds somehow this would be a great AOE crowd control glyph to use.

Stat Priorities and Reforging

Intellect-This will no longer be required to increase mana pool but will still increase throughput. this should still be considered one of the top stat choices for gearing

Spirit-This will now be vital to our mana regen, which will suffer with the loss of intellect being a regen stat as well. I will be prioritizing spirit at the same level as intellect in my gearing. Also until Regen is comfortable I will be gemming and enchanting spirit over intellect.

Haste-There should no longer be haste plateaus (except for eternal flame, and light's hammer) for Tier 14 and haste will be less important since Holy Radiance no longer has a hot portion. Eternal flame and Light's Hammer will be the only HoTs and haste will still make casting faster. From what I have read haste is close to mastery in priority. My current experience is showing haste to be AT BEST tied with mastery. I will be testing this more and updating this portion. Itemization for MoP favors Mastery, I believe it will be better than haste.

Mastery-Due to the changes mastery will become better than haste. Mastery is gaining stat weight since it seems to apply from every heal now. Stacking more will be more HPM, more efficiency, and more proactive healing. Note that mastery does proc off of Holy Radiance Splash and Holy Shock splash (from the daybreak passive ability). Illuminated healing is a much bigger player in our overall output now.

Crit-Holy shock criticals cause Infusion of Light, which increase throughput. Crit also used to keep up conviction but in MoP we will not need to worry about that anymore. It will lose weight from conviction being removed but stays similar to how it is now.

Intellect >= Spirit > Mastery > Haste >Crit

Gems

Red

Blue

Yellow

Enchants

Helm

Shoulders

Back

Chest

Wrist

Gloves

Pants

Boots

Weapon

Shield

Race/Professions

Blood Elf-Arcane Torrent is the best horde racial, for min/max every raiding paladin should be Blood Elf.
Human-Human Spirit probably provides the best min/max option on alliance side.

Currently I am running Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting which isn't the BiS profession in DS because they didn't improve the margin between JC only gems and epic gems, however in T14 this will become the best/most versatile combination again. Any combinations of the following professions will give you the best +intellect for a pve build:
Blacksmithing
Inscription
Jewelcrafting
Leatherworking
Enchanting
Alchemy

Tailoring and engineering provide good boosts but they are not static. I prefer the static stat professions and JC with BS allows you to optimize secondary stats such as haste and spirit when necessary.

Gear Choices for T14

T14 2 Piece

Reduces the mana cost of your Holy Radiance spell by 10%. This should be useful for casting more AOE healing on the raid and increasing overall output.

T14 4 Piece

Reduces the cooldown of your Holy Shock spell by 1 sec. This may make the sanctified wrath talent more appealing and will synergize well with using holy radiance more often (since holy shock will AOE heal after casting an HR).

The set bonus' imply that paladins will be using holy radiance and AOE healing somewhat often. Other healers have some AOE abilities but I think shamans will be the best single target tank healing choice for T14. The 4 piece also will bring more mana efficiency since we can generate more holy power per minute. Coupled with Sanctified wrath it may be viable to work in the illuminated healing glyph but my numbers still suggest that this probably won't be the case.

Spirits of the Sun

Best in Slot trinket from Tsulong, get as soon as possible.

Qin-xi's Polarizing Seal

Static Spirit with int proc, depending on mana regen this would be a great trinket, especially coupled with spirits of the sun to have one trinket with constant throughput and bursty regen and one trinket with solid regen and burst throughput. This drops from The Emperor's will.

Jade Courtesan Figurine

Raw intellect and spirit on use, great for mana efficiency. A great in Slot trinket, might be a jewelcrafting recipe?

Scroll of Revered Ancestors

This comes from being revered with Shadow-Pan, this will be a great starter trinket that you can get before stepping into raids. As a Holy Paladin you should get to revered for this trinket. Likely shares a lockout with Jade Courtesan Figurine so you cannot sue them simultaneously.

Relic of Chi Ji

Spirit with spirit proc. Darkmoon Card for healers, probably the secondary starting raid trinket for healers.

Thousand Year Pickled Egg

Int with haste proc, could be really useful if mana is not a problem. Will come from Brewfest so be sure to get it if you don't have a 470+ in your second trinket slot yet.

Empty Fruit Barrel

Comes from heroic Stormstout Brewery, this will be good to grab for a fresh level 80 healer to help with further heroic grinding.

Best in Slot List

Helm

Chest

Legs

Weapon

Neck

Wrist

Boots

Shield

Shoulders

Gloves

Ring 1

Trinket 1

Back

Belt

Ring 2

Trinket 2

Intellect

14,984

Spirit

8,288

Mastery

3,977

Haste

3,255

Crit

1008

UI/Addon Recommendations

Vuhdo- All healers should be running Vuhdo for raid healing frames. It allows lots of customization and setting click binds for each heal. Comparable addons are Grid and heal bot.

Power Auras-Useful for tracking Holy Power and Infusion of Light, Daybreak, trinket, enchant, and other procs.

Bartender-I prefer this to organize my bars and it (like nearly all UI addons) allows for easy keybinding on custom bars.