Table of Contents
1. Talents
2. Weapon choices
3. Armor choices
4. Blessing Choices
5. Profession Choices
6. Enchants + Gem Choices
7. Healing Basics
8. Your Role in Karazhan
9. Your Role in Gruul's Lair
10. Mods + Macros
11. Links
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1. Talents
Talents for a healing paladin are pretty straightforward, and there really aren't many decisions to be made. For a raiding build, my suggestion is
here. If you want to see exactly what I do, find Dromand on the Armory - Most of the time I'm using a 28/33/0 build for raid healing and OTing. For now, stick to the basics:
Holy Talents
Tier 1:
Divine Strength: (0/5) No. You're not hitting stuff.
Divine Intellect: (5/5) It's your only other option, and useful to boot.
Tier 2:
Spiritual Focus: (5/5) Maxed, this allows for 70% chance to avoid pushback, so with Conc aura up, you won't get pushback.
Imp SoR: (0/5) Ok for tanking, terrible for healing.
Tier 3:
Healing Light: (3/3) If I have to explain why, go play Pong.
Aura Mastery: (1/1) A 33% increase to our aura radius, for 1 talent point. No-brainer.
Imp LoH: (0/2) Terrible talent. LoH is always your /last/ resort.
Unyielding Faith: (1/2) Not a particularly useful PvE talent really, but that last point's gotta go somewhere.
Tier 4:
Illumination: (5/5) Obvious, I hope.
Improved Blessing of Wisdom: (2/2) BoW will be the blessing you use on casters most often (other than Salv), so improving it is very handy. If nothing else, this will be the blessing you use on yourself 95% of the time
Tier 5:
Pure of Heart: (0/3) Total crap.
Divine Favor: (1/1) Required to progress down that line, and a fantastic talent.
Sanctified Light: (3/3) When you're using Holy Light, it's because someone's in deep trouble, and +6% crit is a very good thing to have at that point
TIer 6:
Purifying Power: (0/3) Very meh. Cleanse isn't mana-intensive, and you won't be spamming the others.
Holy Power: (5/5) Yes.
Tier 7:
Light's Grace: (3/3) You won't be using Holy Light a lot, but when it's needed, it's
needed. This talent is literally a life-saver.
Holy Shock: (1/1) Frankly, kind of weak. You're rarely going to want to waste the 1.5s global coodlown to cast this over a FoL. In 2.4, it will be likely be substantially stronger, so worth picking up now and seeing how it goes.
Blessed Life: (3/3) 10% chance for half-damage is nice. Not huge, but not too bad.
Tier 8:
Holy Guidance: (5/5) +healing? Yes.
Tier 9:
Divine Illumination: (1/1) This is a good starter talent, although once your gear level improves to the T5 level, it's honestly a bit of a waste. Paladins have the best longevity of the healing classes, so this is rarely useful for me. If you don't plan on doing a healing/OTank build, it's definitely worth taking.
Protection Talents
Tier 1:
Improved Devotion Aura: (0/5) No. No. No. This is an incredibly marginal increase.
Redoubt: (5/5) Yes. Blocking an attack prevents it from being a crushing blow, which is very handy if you happen to pull aggro, and it'll slightly reduce damage from incoming attacks.
Tier 2:
Precision : (3/3) +3% hit to spells is handy. As a paladin, you're often going to want to be judging enemies, and 3% hit is great for that. And zomg holy shock! :p
Guardian's Favor: (2/2) Yes, a fantastic talent. Reduces the cooldown on BoP, which is hugely useful in a raid.
Toughness: (0/5) 10% more armour wouldn't save you in healing gear. Not worth it at all unless you're doing a hybrid spec.
Tier 3:
Blessing of Kings: (1/1) Yes. Not absolutely necessary if other paladins in your raids have it, but for 1 TP, it's worth getting.
Improved Righteous Fury: (3/3) Increases the +threat from RF to 90%, which is needed if you want to off-tank. Also, it provides a flat 6% damage mitigation, which is handy in raiding all the time. And as a final bonus, if something breaks from the tank, it's most likely to come after you instead of one of your squishier brethren.
Shield Spec: (0/3) Hybrid only.
Anticipation: (1/5) Have a spare point, this is the most useful for it. No more than you have to spend unless you're going hybrid.
Tier 4:
Stoicism: (0/2) Strictly a PvP talent.
Imp HoJ: (0/3) Just not worth the points.
Imp Conc Aura: (2/3) A fantastic talent for some boss fights, especially Malacrass in ZA. Being able to give your healing group a +45% resistance to pushback is nice, but the reduction in silence time is just fantastic (Gruul!), especially since your only other caster-useful auras are resistances.
Tier 5+:
Without using a hybrid build, you will never get above T4.
Retribution Talents
No. The only builds that use Ret talents are (obviously) Ret, and full-tank (for parry).
Hybrid Healing/Tank Build
I'm including basic info on this build here, since it's a viable raid heal build, and slight variations of this are what I use most of the time. The talents are listed
here. Essentially, the goal is to get high enough in Prot to get Holy Shield, which is needed for any serious tanking. Compared to a full-holy spec healer, your healing doesn't actually suffer much - you're down 2% crit, around 150-200 healing (depending on your Int), and no Light's Grace and Imp BoW. You still get Illumination, which is the key holy talent, and most of the other good stuff. For
tanking, you're short 5% parry, 5 Expertise, 10% stamina, and Ardent Defender. I've main-tanked Karazhan with this build for a long time, and can OT anything in any instance I've needed to. For those new to Holy, I'd definitely not recommend it, but it's worth looking at once your gear is solid (for both tanking+healing).
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2. Weapon Choices
Well, this section will be pretty short, because as a holy paladin, your options really aren't that varied, heh.
The most common weapons to start are listed
here.
They're all +227 healing maces, with the Penitent and Lightsworn being available from non-heroic instances, and the Essence Focuser is dirt cheap on the Auction House.
Once you've got one of those, your next most likely option is the
Gavel of Pure Light, which is available for 191g after getting
Exalted with the Sha'tar. If you've got the cash to spare, an
Ancient Scepter of Sue-min is comparable, or
Hand of Eternity which is better (but likely expensive).
After that, well, things get hard.
Gladiator's Salvation is 25200 Honor and 20x EOTS Marks. That's a lot of honour to get, but it's a guaranteed result.
Merciless Gladiator's Salvation is 2739 Arena points. Again, lots to get, but guaranteed.
Shockwave Truncheon is your next best bet - 8% drop from Heroic Murmur in Shadow Labyrinth. SL is a tough heroic, but if you can get a solid group, it's the one to go for while you're going through Kara.
Shard of the Virtuous is a 10% drop from Maiden in Kara, which means that on average, if nobody is rolling against you, it'll take 2.5 months of doing Kara every week to get.
Light's Justice is better, and from Prince Malchezaar.
And that's it until ZA/SSC.
Along with the weapon, get the best shield you can manage with +healing, or go with a +healing offhand if you're really not worried about temp-tanking in healing gear (I used the off-hand from Shade of Aran for a while myself).
Crystal Pulse Shield is the most common starter-shield.
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3. Armor Choices
As a holy paladin, you're looking for a few things in armour:
+healing
+spell crit
+mp5
+int
+stamina
That's it. Spirit does NOT help you - as a holy paladin, you are almost never going to stop casting. Spirit is a non-stat. +healing is important, but so is +crit, thanks to us receiving 60% of our mana back on a healing crit. This makes us the best long-term healers in WoW - our heals aren't as high, but we can just go on forever. mp5 helps this a lot, and while I don't recommend sacrificing +healing/crit to get it, anytime you can add it to your gear it's going to help you. Int gives you a larger mana pool and spell crit, and obviously stam helps you stay alive in raid encounters.
The exact ratios you use will largely depend on your individual needs, so I can't really lay out an exact formula for item stat weights. Essentially, you want enough spell crit to ensure you're not running dry on mana, and after that, focus more on +healing.
Frankly, there's a lot of easily-available paladin gear. Here's a good start:
thottbott.
The only item I consider truly a
must to have is PvP ornamented gauntlets. Even Season 1 gauntlets (10,500 Honor + 20 AV marks) are better than anything at all you can get in PvE prior to end-game content. The reason for this is that they've all got +2% crit chance to Flash of Light. That's the equivalent to over +40 spell crit rating, and 95% of the heals you'll cast as a paladin will be FoL. Even doing a terrible Arena team is worth it for the S2 gloves, which are under 1k Arena Points - achievable in a month of doing 10 games a week. 3 weeks if you get a half-decent team
Reputation I recommend:
Aldor vs Scryer: I prefer Aldor, simply because of the shoulder enchant for Aldor is preferable, imo. Really, either works. It also gives you the Vindicator's Hauberk, which is great for an early tank set.
Keepers of Time: No healing gear, but the Timewarden's Leggings and Continuum Blade are staples for paladin tanking, and you'll want a tank set eventually for AoE tanking trash.
Lower City: Revered, for the Lower City Prayerbook. Note that these are NOT unique! Use two until you can get better healing trinkets.
Ogrila: Revered, for the Apexis Cloak (+57 healing!)
Sha'tar: Exalted, for the Gavel of Pure Light. This'll take you a while, but worth it. See weapon stuff above.
Thrallmar: Revered, for the Glyph of Renewal, which you'll put on every helm you ever use.
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4. Blessing Choices
The first and foremost rule of Blessings: Give people what the raid leader tells you to. If at /all/ possible, accommodate people with blessings if the RL hasn't given you a specific assignment. Most raids will use the PallyPower mod to do this.
Tanks: Blessing of Kings is the first choice for raiding, every time. Blessing of Light is always helpful, especially if there are multiple paladin healers.
Healers: Blessing of Wisdom mostly, or Blessing of Salvation if you have two paladins, or healers are having.. trouble :p BoK is more useful than Salv in most raid encounters.
DPS: This is where you'll get the most variation, both from specs and from personal preference. Simply put, ask, unless you already know for sure what they'd prefer. Salv is going to be the first option for nearly all of them (hunters being the only common exception), and then Might for melee or Wisdom for casters. Sometimes Kings. Rarely anything else.
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5. Profession Choices
Well, to be honest, your profession choices aren't going to have too major of an impact on your healing.
Alchemy: The
Alchemist's Stone is nice, but ideally you shouldn't be using many mana potions.
Mad Alchemist's Potions are about 240 less mana returned on average than a super mana, but the special buffs can be quite useful. And they're dirt cheap to make :p
Blacksmithing: There's almost nothing here for you. There are no BoP healing items at all.
Enchanting: Frankly, I don't recommend /anyone/ get Enchanting anymore. It's not profitable, and at this stage in the game, the long-time enchanters have more enchants available than you ever will.
Engineering: This is my favored profession for every darn class there is. The reason for that is simple: goggles. For the paladin healer, that's the
Justicebringer 2000 Specs. Compare that to the
Tier 5 helm. Frankly, it's also just a lot of [i]fun[/u]. The
Goblin Rocket Launcher is fantastic for tanking (pulling and tons of +stam), and the various gizmos and gadgets are useful and fun. Bombs have saved me many a time
Herbalism: This is, honestly, my preferred gathering profession. But Logros, you said I should be an engineer! Yes, yes I did. I've done both extensively, and herbalism just makes more money. Sell the herbs, buy the metal. As an engineer, you're not going to need a high supply of repeatedly-consumable reagents for your important pieces of gear - most of them are trinkets, or your goggles. But you'll always find a use for potions, so harvesting materials and then finding a friendly Tribe alchemist is a great way to get them. And Herbalism just isn't as oversaturated as mining is.
Jewelcrafting: If you're thinking of using this to make money, you're very likely to be very disappointed. All the well-selling jewelcrafting recipes are blue BoE, costing 400g+ per, and without having a wide variety of them, you're not going to be able to sell enough gems to make a substantial amount of money. The trinkets available through JC are mediocre, and the epic gems are nice, but they're Unique, making them very, very limited use.
Leatherworking: No. Nothing for you here.
Mining: See Herbalism comments. Mining's not bad at all, and it'll make Engineering less work to level up, for sure.
Skinning: I recommend taking this and herbalism while you're leveling up, then dropped skinning when you're ready to get your engineering high enough to the point where it's useful to you.
Tailoring: No. Nothing for you here.