[Holy Paladin] What's your grindiing gear?
 

I leveled my pally from 60 - 70 as holy spec, just using whatever spelldmg plate i was able to get my hands on. It wasn't terribly difficult as healers were in so high demand for instances and a huge bulk of my xp came from instancing.

I'm kinda stuck with the 41/20 arena build as my arena team is doing relatively well in our battlegroup. And with the 2.10 patch, my pally has found a whole new need to grind/quest all over again.

Not having the experience to lvl as ret, I've been curious as to whether for just grinding, what kind of gear are you pallies using to kill stuff? I've collected 5/5 righteousness and just enchanted spelldmg on the it and used that with a Greatsword of Horrid Dreams + Dragonheart FlameShield and just SOR + Consecrate(Rank 1) all this while.

I've been wondering whether it would be better to use the ret gear with spelldmg (Ruby Helm of the Just, Breastplate of Righteous Fury, Ornate Boots of the Sanctified etc - the re-coloured red colored tier1 items) for grinding mobs. I also managed to pick up the Despair 2hander from Opera in Karazhan on my pally.

Basically I'm very confused whats better for me to use for grinding mobs with the choices that I currently have available, keeping in mind that I can't really spec my pally out of 41/20 and also what kinda Spelldmg > AP ratio would be if I was to grind with Retgear (a la red-colored tier1 / PVP "Scaled" Armor) or should i just stick with stacking spelldmg and spellcrit (Righteous / PVP "Lamellar" armor)?

I use straight spelldamage gear and don't even look at attack power or strength or agility, to be honest, and I am specced 41/20 on my pally as well (for arenas). In fact, your gear setup for grinding is the same as mine except I use that shield from the netherwing quest line and sometimes wield an oathkeeper I had drop.

It is all way, way too slow for my tastes, especially after spending so much time on my mage, so the best grinding gear I have found is the prot specced warriors in my guild who are in the same pickle and do not want to respec in between raids. I usually just make myself availble for them, and with two of us, things go much smoother. Not to mention, there really is not much in the game as far as quests that can kill a prot warrior and a holy pally.

I usually just judge crusader, consecrate, and have righteousness up and ret aura, and holy shock every chance.

Using SoR/JoR as your main damage seal, you get 9/10% of your +dmg as seal DPS, and 7.3% of your +dmg as judgement DPS (when judging every cooldown).


This means you get somewhere around 1 DPS per 7 +dmg. On the other hand, 14 AP (7 Str) gives you 1 white DPS (mitigated by armor, but does not require mana).


Knowing this, you'd get the highest DPS (and presumably best grinding) out of items that give the highest combined offensive stats. (MP5 is also something to consider, since it means you can use abilities more often)



For example, look at Righteous Helm (http://www.thottbot.com/i28285) and the Ruby Helm (http://www.thottbot.com/i27505).
Righteous gives you 23 +dmg and 6 mp5. (ignoring sockets)
Ruby gives you 28 +dmg, 10 mp5, and 25 Str.


Clearly the Ruby Helm gives you higher damage stats, so it'd probably help your grinding more. The defense stats on Righteous could help you live longer, but you'd also take longer to kill things, and paladin downtime isn't a big deal in the first place. (BoW, make use of your spirit, heal yourself every once in a while, and you'll never have to stop)


And don't overlook mana regen. http://www.thottbot.com/i28108 is probably the best grinding trinket in the game for mana users if you can kill things fast enough.

I've been 41-20 holy for a couple of months now which can make quests painful from time to time as people have pointed out. However I've managed to collect about 850 spell damage plate set that I will use for just about everything except instance healing and PVP. The spell damage gear is definitely worth the time it took to collect. SoR/JoR combined with Holy Shock can chew threw mobs at a fairly decent pace with this level of +damage. I normally don't even bother with a 2h weapon and stick to the Sword+Board.

A two-hander does 20% more SoR damage than a one-hander, which makes a two-hander generally the way to go for single-target grinding. You do lose some mitigation without a shield, but Fiola's right about downtime not being a big deal for a Holy paladin. For multi-mob grinding obviously a caster mace/sword and shield is the way to go.

I was lucky to get a Hammer of the Naaru on our first Maulgar kill and gemmed/enchanted it for spelldamage. A 124dps weapon with 96 spelldamage is a fun toy to play with.

As I'm currently leveling a Paladin alt to 70 (I'm at 64 having just started on Sporeggar), I'm also curious to see the most efficient grinding / questing builds.
Since I entered Outlands (this was a retired 60 with no talents since she's been logged out for 2 years) I specced 10/45 Prot and randomly threw together a set of solo gear. I try to AoE grind / quest as much as possible, and can usually take on 6-7 green level mobs at once without using LoH or potions.

Normally I'll put on blessing of sacrifice, ret aura , mount up and round up my mobs. Then I'll judge light and put seal of light up and pop my dodge trinket. Then I'll just spam holy shield and consecrate. Before my seal fades, ill switch to the next highest hp mob, judge light on it, seal light again, then keep spamming holy shield and consecrate. When things get hairy I'll pop divine shield, and a max rank holy light, then go back to AoEing.

I'm wondering if this is the most efficient way to grind, or if going shockadin (or even ret) would surpass it, and if so, at what spell dmg I should respec.

Link to armory:
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...n&n=womanscorn

Thanks for any insight

You should incorporate bandaging into your routine unless you're not having mana problems spamming consecrate and holy shield.

Normally I end up with an empty mana pool after a 6 pull anyway, so saving 700 mana isn't gonna speed much up I don't think =)

I am 44/17 I use a +SD/+crit set that balances Sta, Mana, and Avoidance to multi-grind. My server is slow (we are one of the top guilds and we are just getting to VR/Magtheridon).