#0 - April 1, 2009, 10:28 a.m.
I initially wrote this for my guild, so note that it still needs a bit of work on the layout, not to mention it will needless to say have some points which someone will disagree with.
Feedback is very welcome.
Note it's a was primarily a guild one, so there are some jokes/puns you won't understand. But they're there purely for the sake of comedy value, and you won't be missing out on information. Other than knowing there's a paladin who chose Sacred Cleansing over Beacon... Yeah.
Please see "The part of the guide I didn't make" below for alternative views on different subjects of the guide. Any feedback which I think should be mentioned will be there, and if you skip reading it you will be missing out. This is not a "be all end all" guide, it's a reference which will give you pointers to help you develop your character. There's no "ultimate" holy paladin, it's much up to personal preference. While I might not agree with someone, maybe their style of healing will appeal to you more than mine does.
Lastly, thanks for everyone who added/will add feedback, you have/will definitely improve this guide.
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Attributes
Stamina : If you ever gem, enchant or in any way gear for stamina you're a -insert flame-. Your job is to heal, all stamina you get should come from gear you're actually upgrading (there's always some stamina on it). Don't look for this stat, survivability is not anything you have to worry about. If a mob is bashing you, the tank is doing something wrong and you'll die in one or two shots whether you have four stamina gems or none.
Do. Not. Gem. For. Stamina.
The one exception would be if we go to EoE and your hp is at 14k, but then you shouldn't go to it in the first place.
Intellect: Here's a real gem (pun intended), this is by far the most important stat. Short version : You get crit, spellpower and mana (as well as more mana regained with divine plea).
More in depth version: (source : elitistjerks)
100 intellect will give you :
-126.5 Intellect, with BoK and Divine Intellect
-1897 Mana at the start of the fight
-39.5mp5 from Divine Plea.
-21.3mp5 from Replenishment, with 90% uptime.
-25.3 Spell Power
-0.759% Spell Crit
Have a look at these stats. There's no other attribute which benefits us as much as intellect does. Stacking intellect will let you be more *careless* with your heals (spamwise) which actually reduces risk of tank dying. Last night at Patchwerk's frenzy I was at 60% mana, so I started spamming it a bit before it knowing that he would die before I would OOM. If I stacked spellpower over intellect, I might very well have been at 30-40%, and this might not have been possible.
Personally, I think the sweetspot in current content is around 20k mana. At that point you'll have enough not to OOM, and then you can stack other stats (crit and spellpower specifically) for more benefit. But do note that when Ulduar comes mana regeneration will be nerfed and fights will last longer, so don't ditch intellect gear. The more you have, the better.
Spell power: Increases the amount of healing you do. Holy Light gets more benefit than FoL from it, while FoL scales better as HL's wil often be overhealing. You should be aiming at aroudn 2k, at that point you won't need more (but every bit helps). You won't *need* to gem for it, as it should come naturally when you get some gear pieces, but gemming for spellpower isn't a bad choice. Do note that a lot of the spellpower will end up as overhealing, don't overdo it for your e-peen, unless you're sure it will benefit you.
Critical strike rating: 100 crit gives you 2.17% crit. If your heals crit you get 60% mana back. Holy Light consumes a lot of mana.
You should be able to figure this one out.
Very important stat, you should have at least 20% crit when entering Naxx, and you should keep increasing this stat. It scales well while gearing up, as the more mana you have the more mana you'll get back from crit.
Yes, most of our crits will end up in overhealing, but it's the mana you want back that's important. With a lot of intellect and a lot of crit you can spam holy light's day and night. Very important stat.
Mana per 5: Any paladin who played TBC will know that this was one of the major stats a paladin should use. Such is no longer the case. This is not useless, but for the same amount of item points crit will always end up giving more mana than mp5. With divine plea it's pretty much made redundant. Mp5 isn't useless, it just isn't useful. Skip this, but if the piece of gear is an upgrade in other areas, by all means go for it. Just don't sacrifice intellect, crit, spellpower or haste to get some more mp5. Please don't. If you gem for it it's to get a *good* socket bonus (such as 5 intellect) and you require a blue gem. In which case you go for the 9 spellpower 3 mp5 purple gem, NOT the pure mp5 gem.
Haste: 20.6% caps Flash of Light, so if you use FoL a lot there’s no point going over this cap. For raiding though, every bit helps and haste is an essential part of your healing attributes. Faster heals = Less chance of tank dying. Saves you on a lot of them really bad looking moments.
Spirit: Useless. Give it to priests and them lot. If you stack spirit you suck.
Strength, agility. No.
Essentially, you should follow this rule as a baseline:
Intellect > SP = Crit > Haste > Mp5
After reaching about 20k mana (you'll find your sweetspot) you can switch it around to prioritize crit and/or spellpower as more mana isn't necessarily needed for current content. But as a general guideline, use that. You can't go wrong with it. If you end up with 27k mana raidbuffed, that's perfectly fine.
An example of an ideal piece of gear:
Chestplate of the Great Aspects (drops from Sarth25). Has stamina, intellect, haste, critical strike rating and spellpower.
This is actually much better than the T7 and T7.5 chests, as they have sacrificed item stats for mp5. T7/7.5 Chest and Helmets are NOT the best in slots for a holy paladin.
As for Librams: Libram of Renewal (mana cost of HL reduced) is by far the best holy paladin libram. No questions asked, the Naxx25 man is a joke but you should be able to figure that out on your own.
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Glyphs
Major glyphs:
Since the glyph of FoL has changed from being craptastic, you essentially have five options for your major glyph.
Glyph of Holy Light (If you don't have this, reroll something else). It's our only AoE healing tool, and you won't believe how much it adds up while you're spamhealing the tank and there are 8 melee DPS standing around him. That's one Holy Light with 180% effectiveness. It will still be extremely useful after the nerf.
Glyph of Flash of Light: 5% crit on Flash of Light. It's good for heroics, but you won't be using Flash of Light much in raids (you shouldn't, anyway). It *can* be useful, but it's more a bonus than a necessity.
Glyph of Divinity: 2x more mana when using Lay on Hands, you get as much mana as target gets. This is your “oh **** I’m oom” or your reply to “SOMEONE INNERVATE ME” and the druid says “CD”. Get this ;)
Glyph of Seal of Wisdom: Your spells cost 5% less mana. Not much to say here, 5% less mana adds up. It'll help you last longer during mana intensive fights (say Sapph with two healers).
Glyph of Seal of Light: 5% more healing done. On paper it looks nice, but if you have a look on the overhealing metres you'll see that us paladins are often at 50%, sometimes higher sometimes a bit lower. In other words, this glyph will add to your overhealing. Good when you aren't geared, but after heroics it isn't very useful.
For minors:
Glyph of Lay on Hands: Reduces LoH CD by 5 min. There’s not much competition, this is the only minor that’s actually good.
The rest have no raid utility.
TLDR:
Majors: Glyph of Divinity, Glyph of Holy Light, Glyph of Seal of Wisdom
Minors: Glyph of Lay on Hands.
