Holy Paladin - A Beginner's Guide

So I know there's a large amount of holy paladin guides out there, but someone asked me a question in trade today that got me wanting to write this. How do you play a Holy Paladin? I couldn't really give a quick and simple answer, so i wanted to make a post to cover the basics, so when I get asked this, I have a reference to link to. It's the end of an expansion, and I know a large amount of this information is changing soon, but it's also the ideal time to begin playing with your alts and offsets, so here goes.




What to expect as a Holy Paladin

Before I get into "how to play", it's important to know what you're getting into. A lot of people will basically tell you to "gem int and spam holy light", and while there's some truth to that, it's barely scratching the surface. Holy pallies are incredible tank healers with an underestimated toolkit. With only 3 basic healing spells, and no real hots, it seems limited. A good holy pally will keep the tank alive with their heal spells. A great one will use their entire toolkit to become an irreplaceable utility machine. It's a specialization that can be as simple or complicated as you want to make it, and what you put in, it gives back. But, you have to start somewhere, so let's cover the basics.

The Spec

There's two holy specs that are considered viable, but when it comes to raiding, only the second one is widely used.

Option 1: This spec is not something I'd recommend for raiders. It's the Flash of Light spec. It's best use is if you're someone who is just looking to do heroics, and that's it. But, as someone who is just focusing on heroics, it works great. You don't need the powerful cooldowns in the prot tree, and the extra crit in ret can help offset bad gear a tad. I've included glyphs in this link; if you're just looking for a spec for heroics, go ahead and use this.

Option 2: This is the standard holy paladin spec. It has everything you need to keep the tank up through even the worst damage. While some may argue that Aura Mastery and Divine Sacrifice aren't useful, they're wrong. Both are incredibly powerful cooldowns, and in the right hands, they can save the day. I will explain some uses for them below. This spec also includes some floater points, and there's a few places that those can go. Here's some options:

Improved Devotion Aura - This is a good place for them. A straight 6% increase to healing as long as you have an aura up. However, it should be noted that this doesn't stack with similar effects, so if there's a prot paladin or a tree in the raid, these points aren't getting used, and you should look at some other options. I like this talent for 10 mans, but 25's I can usually expect someone else to be bringing the buff, so i look elsewhere.

Improved Blessing of Wisdom - The one point already in here is actually optional, and can be swapped out for improved concentration aura if you prefer. The reason this is optional is because it doesn't stack with a resto shaman's mana spring totem. If you pug a lot, it might be worth grabbing, and if you are in a steady raid, talk to the other holy pallies and the shaman, see if someone else has it improved all the way before you drop this.

Improved Concentration Aura - If someone else is providing Improved Blessing of Wisdom, this is a good place for the points. It's not required to have to not get pushed back, but it might be useful to someone else in the group.

Blessed Hands - Personally, I like this talent, and I fell it's underrated. But, I'm used to paladin healing, so i'm often watching omen and salving dps who are getting high. However, that's not the real reason this is a good talent. It's the 10% increase to your Hand of Sacrifice. That puts it in line with Pain Supression, but it's important to remember it makes you take more damage too, so you'll probably need to save your bubble.

Random Talent Tips:

-While you are speccing into Improved Righteous Fury just to go further down the tree, you can take advantage of it by healing with it on. This will give you 6% reduced damage taken, and you shouldn't pull agro off your tanks, even with it on. It's also useful to make sure that healing agro goes to you and not the squishy priest. Just be careful with it on fights with adds, if they're spawning a lot and your tanks are slow you might want to turn it off.


Glyphs

There's a few solid options for glyphing, but three really stand out.

Major:

Seal of Wisdom - This is a required glyph. On top of it being 5% reduced mana cost, this is already the seal that you will be wanting to use just because it's a good seal. The large amount of mana return that comes from seal of wisdom puts this glyph far ahead of the Seal of Light glyph.

Holy Light - This glyph is another must have. Since you are primarily using Holy Light, and primarily healing tanks, this glyph will splash some extra healing to the offtank and the melee. It does more healing than you'd think, and there's no competition for this glyph.

Beacon of Light - I love this glyph. I was skeptic at first, but there's a few reason why this glyph is so good. The first being that beacon is not a cheap spell. The less you have to apply it, the more mana you save. The second reason is that this keeps your beacon and your sacred shield from falling off at the same time. Having an offset there is useful to stagger the time that you're reapplying buffs instead of healing. If you use this glyph for awhile, you will hate how often you have to reapply beacon without it. It'l grow on you.

Holy Shock - This is the other glyph I've played with instead of beacon, but I've really only found it useful in high movement fights, so i stopped using it. It's still a fairly good glyph though, so it's worth mentioning.


Minor:

Lay on Hands -  The only good minor. Take it. Love it.

Blessing of Wisdom - This is nice if you only have a couple paladins, and need to spread buffs. You can use a 30 minute to get a longer buff on the other paladin, then replace your own with a 30 min BoW. Like if you have a ret and a holy pally in the group, the ret can do kings, you can do 30 minute might, then 10 minute wisdom yourself. Because of the glyph, it's a 30 minute buff for both of you.

Blessing of Kings - Really there just isn't many other options, but this glyph is kind of nice anyways if you need to rebuff someone who died in combat and got battle rezzed, Saves a little mana.


Gear

So now that you have your spec created and your glyphs picked out, it's time to ask yourself what stats to
look for on gear. What makes something an upgrade?

Haste - The first thing you should look for is Haste. Haste is an incredibly important stat. Were using a fairly
slow spell, so we want to get the most out of it.  How much haste is enough? You want, at the very least,
about 680. If you have a ret paladin and a shaman in the group, this will put your global cooldown at 1
second and your flashes at one second. However, you won't always have those buffs, and your holy light can
still get faster, so more doesn't hurt. I run anywhere from 750-950.

Intellect - This stat is the holy paladin's drug of choice. It gives us spellpower, crit, and increases our mana
pool which makes us gain more mana from divine plea, replenishment, and seal of wisdom.

Spell Power - This is usually the next thing I look for. Holy Light scales very well with spellpower, so it
doesn't need to be your first priority, but it is directly related to how hard your heals will hit, so don't forgo it
completely.

Mp5 - This is your big regen stat after Intellect. If you can find a haste/sp/mp5 piece, take it.

Crit - Although this stat was king early in the expansion, it's lost a large amount of it's shine. You shouldn't
really have to try for crit. If you aren't avoiding it, you won't have to worry about it. Your crit will go up well
enough on it's own from you just taking upgrades for other reasons.


Gems

Gemming your Holy Paladin is painfully simple, as long as you remember a few things about gemming itself:


-You do NOT need to match colors. Any colored gem can go in any colored slot. The colors are ONLY for
the bonus. If you match the colors, you get the bonus. If you don't, the gems still work, but you just don't get
the bonus. All you need to worry about is meeting the color requirements for your meta gem. As a holy
paladin, socket bonuses are never worth it.

-Bonuses can be filled by multi colored gems. An orange gem can be placed into a red OR yellow slot and
still count towards the bonus. Additionally, an orange gem counts as both a red AND a yellow for filling your
meta requirements.

-A prismatic gem counts as ALL THREE colors. So, if your meta requires one of each color, one prismatic
can do the job.


With these simple rules in mind, gemming is incredibly simple, to the point of being boring. Use an Insightful Earthsiege Diamond in your meta slot, then put a Nightmare Tear into your helm socket, as helmets usually
have the best socket bonus. Now, your meta is filled just but putting on your helmet! Fill every single other
slot on your gear with intellect gems.

Random Tips About Gear

- The t10 4 set bonus is garbage. Your time until healed on your target will be longer with it than without it, so use only the helm, and the shoulders. Get offset pieces for the rest.

- The best in slot libram is the Libram of Renewal, which can be bought for 15 heroism emblems. Don't worry about the item level, 10% off your main heal is huge. The only other real option is the Wrathful libram, but that's a little harder for most folks to obtain. Just remember how well holy paladins scale with spellpower, so the small amounts from the other librams just aren't worth it.

- For trinkets, your best option is going to be to always use at least one intellect trinket, then use a regen trinket. The easiest ones to get are the Sliver of Pure Ice off 10 man Marrowgar, or the Purified Lunar Dust for 60 frost emblems.

- Don't forget that Plate is not your only option. If you see mail gear with better stats, take it!


Playing your Holy Paladin
I want to go over each spells usual use, and then get into some tricks I've learned to help things along.

Spell Usage:

Holy Light - This will be your main heal. It's a nuke, but with the glyph splash, it's very nice. This spell will keep your tank alive. You will overheal alot, but, such is the folly of healing in this epansion. Mana shouldn't be a problem, if it is, see my post on mana management.

Flash of Light - This spell is more of a judgement call. If you know the damage is low, you can use it to save yourself some mana. Or, if you need a quick heal, it's a good go-to. But, understand that it doesn't scale nearly as well with spellpower as holy light, so if you even slightly think it won't do the job, use holy light. I mainly use flash when i have an instant cast proc from a holy shock crit, or to top off random folks in the raid during periods of low tank damage.

Holy Shock - While it might be tempting to use this on cooldown, it's really not in your best interest. There's 2 situations I particularly like this spell for, the first being movement, since it's our only instant heal, and the second being immeditately following a holy light if the tank was extremely low. It's instant, so a holy light followed by a shock is a quick 30k health back for the tank.

Beacon of Light - This should always, always be up. If there's only one tank, put it on the tank and spam heal the raid. If there's two tanks, put it on one and heal the other. there's no reason to not have beacon up.

Sacred Shield - Keep this up as much as you can. It absorbs a fair amount, allows your flash of light to put a hot on the target, and increases your flash crit chance. I like to put my beacon on one tank, and my sacred shield on the other.

Judgement of Light/Wisdom - Deciding which judgement to use is pretty easy. If there's no other paladins, use judgement of light. It's a phenominal amount of healing, and should be kept up 100% of the time. However, if there's another paladin, it's worth communicating with them to make sure both get put up. It's worth noting that the only thing that increases Judgement of Light's healing is the talent Divinity, so if only of the paladins has that, make sure that's the only putting up JoL.

Divine Plea - This is our main mana return, but be careful when you're using it. Make sure you have something to offset it with, like Avenging Wrath, or our t10 2 set bonus, or a trinket. A good time to use plea is between phases on a boss, or periods of low damage. If it's heavy damage and you have no offset, ask for an innervate instead.

Seal of Wisdom - This spell provides a ton of regeneration through melee attacks. There's no cooldown to how often it can happen. A good way to make sure you stay at the top of your mana pool is to stand in melee range to heal, and hit the boss a time or two after every few heals. Your haste rating increases your melee attack speed too, so it helps with this. Also, healing with mouseover macros or a mod that assists with click bindings will prevent you fram having to deselect the boss as a target.

Divine Illumination - With the t10 2 set bonus, use this in conjunction with Divine Plea. Without the set bonus, you can use it on cooldown, or just during periods of heavy damage when you're spamming holy light hard.

Aura Mastery - The biggest use for this spell is not doubling devotion aura or making you immune to silences. The biggest use is doubling magic resistance auras to reduce damage. Dragon about to cast a flame breath? Throw on fire resistance aura and aura mastery it for a huge reduction. Blood Queen just go up in the aur and start bombarding the raid with shadow damage? Shadow resist and aura mastery to help mitigate it. This is incredibly powerful, although learing when to use it takes some time.

Hand of Sacrifice - This is almost as powerful as Pain Suppression, but don't forget that it makes you take damage too! A good thing to do is to bubble when you use this.

Hand of Salvation - If you are getting used to healing and have some time to watch your threat meters, help out a dps by using this on them. The best time is to wait until they're just barely under the tanks threat. Since it is a percentage drop, the more threat they have, the more they drop.

Hand of Freedom - This spell works on a lot more boss fights than it gets credit for. On Rotface, the kiting tank might be slowed by running through slime, freedom fixes it. On Sindragosa, her breath slows down tanks so it takes them longer to get to ice blocks. Freedom fixes that too. If it slows you, freedom probably helps. It also helps on some weird things too, such as Icehowl in ToC. When he turns around and breaths, hand of freedom will take you out of that little stun it causes.

Lay On Hands - This spell is not something most paladins will use efficiently. It takes alot of practice and experience to know just when to pop it, but it can mean the different between a wipe and a kill if used properly. I can't really explain when the right time is, just try to use it and get used to it, and make sure it's keybound.

Divine Sacrifice - This spell got nerfed a few patches ago, but it's still beyond glorious. The key to it is that while Divine Sacrifice is only party wide, it triggers Divine Guardian, which is a raid wide 20% flat damage reduction. This is incredible!! For example, on festergut, when he does his pungent blight, if you pop this, someone who only had 2 spores instead of 3 will live. If your entire raid only had 2 spores and would have wiped, you can save them with this. It's only a 2 minute cooldown, and there's one last trick to it: a cancelaura macro. Divine Sacrifice is mediocre are best. You don't want to have to use a bubble to mitigate party damage, you want to save that for your hand of sacrifice. The real gem with divine sac is divine guardian, and that's triggered just by pressing the divine sac button. So, you can make a macro to cast divine sac, and turn it off, and divine guardian still works as normal! Here is the macro that every paladin shouldn't be without:

#showtooltip Divine Sacrifice
/cast Divine Sacrifice
/cancelaura Divine Sacrifice

That's all there is to it! Just press the button TWO TIMES and it will cast and cancel divine sac, but divine guardian (the 20% reduced damage) will still go up!

Misc Information
Addons
The default ui really isn't built for healing. However, if you must, check out my guide to healing with the default ui.

As far as healing addons go, I highly recommend Vuhdo, it simply is the best. I even have a guide on setting it up!

Really any raid frames will work, just make sure you're using some sort of mouseovers or click bindings so you don't have to target your heal target. My guide to the default ui will explain mouseovers better.


The Holy Paladin toolkit is a great deal bigger than people give it credit for, and using every utility spell you have is the difference between being good, and being great. If you have any questions, drop me a comment or an e-mail and I'll get back to you as quickly as I can! Also, I apologize for the lack of editing here. Blogger's text editor managed to delete half of this, so I rewrote it, and am too tired to go over it again.

/bubblehearth