Holy Paladin PVE guide
Hello all and welcome to my humble attempt at a guide for the Holy Paladin in your life. Playing a Holy Paladin can be a lot of fun and you will have strong heals that can keep a tank up for multiple minutes without any outside help. There are two generally accepted ways of playing a Holy Paladin in a raiding environment. Each way focus on a certain spell in particular, Flash of Light or Holy Light.
[U]Flash of Light Spec[/U] Flash of Light spec is a spec that is more commonly used when someone is doing heroic's [B]or[/B] has high-end gear that can keep up with the huge amount of spell power needed to be viable in a end game environment.
Pro's -You will have very powerful heals -You will do less over healing because once you get enough haste(about 650ish), you will be casting Flash of Lights right at the GCD(Global Cool Down). -Your level 80 talent, Sacred Shield will protect the person that you have it on a lot more because it scales with spell power.
Con's -You cannot cast Holy Light very much without popping a cool down like Divine Illumination. -You will not be running around with 30-40k Mana raid buffed and thus are less flexible with your heals. A commonly accepted Flash of Light build is one that goes all the way down the Holy Tree, and then popping into protection quickly then then going deep into Retribution for an extra 8 percent crit.
[U]Gemming[/U] Gemming is pretty straight forward and doesn't require much effort in this build. You want to use either Insightful EarthSiege Diamond or Ember Skyflare. It's really a matter of preference. I prefer using Earthsiege because it gives me a bit more flexabilty with my Mana. The Skyflare is great if you're trying to get as much spell power as possible. You want to put Runed Cardinal Ruby's in every slot except to meet the meta gem requirement. A Nightmare Tear will do the trick as it counts as one of each gem and thus will fill the meta gem requirement.
[U]Glyphs[/U] For this build, there are two glyphs are that required in order to be successful and get the most out of it. -Glyph of Flash of Light- Gives an extra 5 percent crit to your Flash of Light. -Glyph of Seal of Light- All healing spells do 5 percent more and because you will be doing a lot less over healing in comparison, this is a great glyph to have! -The third choice is up to you, you can take Glyph of Holy Light or Glyph of Beacon of Light. They both can help in there own way. I wouldn't recommend Glyph of Divinity because Mana really should not be an issue. The only needed minor is Glyph of Lay on Hands for obvious reasons.
[U]Librams[/U] I personally recommend the PVP librams for the Flash of Light play style because they give a flat out increase to the Spell Power of your Flash of Light's, plus these only take honor, so as long as you got about 15k of it lying around, your're set! Also, you can looking into the badge librams but I don't find them as viable as the PVP librams, it's really up you though.
Flash of Light Spec can be a fun one to play and has a great potential if it suits your play style. I mean hey, who doesn't like seeing 10k Flash of Light crits and 28k Holy Lights?
[U]Holy Light Spec[/U]
While the main focus of the Flash of Light play style was on Flash of Light, the main focus of the Holy Light play style is, you guessed it, Holy Light. Holy Light is a powerful spell that can be though of a bit like a bomb. Flash of Light is your tactical strike while Holy Light is your BOMB spell that is going to heal for a lot and also has a bit of an aftershock.
Pro's - You're dropping big heals back to back to back... - You can solo heal two tanks in a raid environment while another heal gets a battle rez or you need to power through the rest of the fight while the other healers are busy i.e. P3 Anub. -You will be walking around Dalaran with 30k Mana unbuffed (everyone needs the ego stroked every once and a while) Con's -You heals don't heal for a much in comparison with the Flash of Light play style, your crits will be going for a lot less. - You can't heal as much on the go because your heals with take longer then the Flash of Light play style.
[U]Gemming[/U]
As similar to the Flash of Light build, gemming is very mind numbing in this build. The Insightful Earthsiege Diamond is required and a Nightmare Tear should be used to meet meta requirements and in the rest of your slots should be Brilliant King's Amber. Also, if your Haste is not yet at the 650ish mark then you might want to throw in a gem with a bit of Haste and Intellect.
[U]Glyphs[/U]
The Glyph of Holy Light- Required for this play style because every time you cast Holy Light, you do splash healing to the people around the person who you cast the spell on. The Glyph of Seal of Wisdom- This is required because it reduces the base Mana of your Holy Light (and all other spells) by 5 percent. The Glyph of Beacon of Light and The Glyph of Divinity- It's really a matter of preference here, if you find yourself no being able to spare the two CD's to refresh you Beacon and Shield at the same time then take Beacon of Light. If you find yourself stressed on Mana then take the Glyph of Divinity. With this, you cast Lay on Hands on yourself and your Mana bar fills right up.
The only needed minor is Glyph of Lay on Hands for obvious reasons.
[U]Libram's[/U] The Libram of Renewal is in my opinion the only viable glyph for this play style because it basically lets you cast Holy Lights for 1/10 times longer by reducing the mana cost by approx. 10 percent.
[U]Enchantements[/U] Well now that you figured out how to gem and what else to do, you need to enchant you gear! I will not be listing the enchantments here as they are pretty self explanitory once you figure out what they are. Here is a link to bananashoulders.com where you get find enchants that work well for a Holy Paladin- one thing to note, is that another valid enchant for your weapon if you are stacking intellect is +30 int.
[U]How to heal![/U] With healing there is not set rotation for either of the two builds. It's really about timing and knowing what is going to happen in a fight and when. For example, if you know in X amount of seconds, a boss ability is going to happen and the tank will take 30k damage, then you want to be prepared to heal him and should start lining up heals directed towards him a second or two before that big attack.
As a general rule of thumb for most fights in a raid situation, you want to cast Beacon of Light on one of the tanks and Sacred Shield on the other. Beacon of Light takes all heals that are done to other targets and heals the beacon target for the same amount. Please note that if you heal the person with the beacon directly, they will NOT get double healing.
With all builds you want to keep your Flash of Light HOT from the Sacred Shield up at all times and make sure to judge light every 10 to 20 seconds as it refreshed Judgements of the Pure and heals a raid member every time they do damage.
You should always be casting. Even if nobody is taking damage you can move forward at the last minute and cancel the heal but you should always have one lined up in case the tanks take damage. For example, the tanks might not need a heal for 3 seconds but then need big heal. If during those 3 seconds, you are precasting and canceling your heals, you will be able to respond faster when the tank does need a heal. Make sure to be proactive not reactive. Finally, when healing you will see a lot of overheal, this is expected from a paladin.
[U]Mana Regen[/U] This is more of a problem when you are using a HL build and constantly casting HL for the whole fight. Divine Plea is our main source of mana regen and should be used as such. Please note that when you cast DP, you gain 25 percent of you mana back over 15 seconds but at the same time you loss 50 percent of the healing that you can do. To counter act this, it's suggested that you using DP in conjunction with a cool down like Avenging Wrath or a on use trinket that increases you Spell Power. Also, the Tier 10 two piece bonus increases your healing by 35 percent each time you cast Divine Illumination. As a result of this, for all HL spammers, the two piece tier 10 should going for with there Frost as it is effectily another Avenging Wrath plus the reduction of mana cost adds even more to your mana regen.
Here is where I wrap up this guide and ask people for feedback and suggestions. See a spelling error or maybe word choice? Don't agree with what I wrote then speak up!
~Written by Acaldra of AIE, 2010 Patch 3.3.2 Please note and look at Holy Paladin.net and ferraro.blogspot.com as they influced me two write this guide.