Chingu

I see a lot of excellent deep posts focusing on Protection & Retribution Paladins, but I'm looking for info that will help max my Holy potential.

Background: I want to main heal, but I don't want to completely nerf my damage potential when solo questing.

I just respeced to 45/11/5, but I'm not sure if it's the optimal build for healing. I can't post my exact spec right now, but here's the synopsis. I pick up the 5pt talent in Ret to reduce mana cost on seals and I have the Dev, Shield & Kings from the Prot tree. I wonder if the 5 points in ret should be moved back into the Holy/Prot tree? I have 2/5 SoR & 1/2 BoW. Otherwise, the Holy Tree is maxed for healing talents.

I recently hit lvl 70 and have been main healing a lot of 5 mans up to Shattered Halls. I find that unless there is an off healer (shadow priest/feral druid) I can't always keep up with some AOE bosses & large mobs.

I carry 3 sets of gear:
Healing - DPS - Tanking. Healing focuses on high int w/ + healing. (8K mana +1300 Flash Heals +5100 Holy Light)
DPS focuses on high int w/ +Spell Crit + spell dmg.
Tanking focuses on stam/int/def for small instances only (10.5K armor, 8K health, 7K mana)

How do I calculate my overall spell crit?
How do I calculate my damage w/ +spell dmg?
Is +Spell Crit > +int > +Spell Dmg

Thanks for any replies.

 

Phantom

If you want to balance healing and soloing potential, you need to actually balance it. Right now, you're skewing too far over into total clearic/support type. Which is fine, if you wanna be the best support in a group, but not needed.

I'd suggest 40 points in holy, going down far enough to get 5 points in holy guidance. Holy tree would look like this:

5/5 Divine Intellect
5/5 Spirtual Focus
3/3 Healing Light
2/2 Improved Lay on Hands
5/5 Illumination
2/2 Improved Blessing of Wisdom
1/1 Divine Favor
3/3 Sanctified Light
5/5 Holy Power
1/1 Holy Shock
3/3 Light's Grace
5/5 Holy Guidance

Now you want some power and efficiency from Ret:

5/5 Benediction
2/2 Improved Judgement
3/3 Improved Seal of the Crusader
5/5 Conviction
2/2 Improved Retribution Aura (mainly people underestimate this talent)
3/3 Crusade
1/1 Sanctity Aura

You can drag 2 points from Holy Guidance to put in Improved Sanctity aura, but that's up to you. It would help you heal your group better. You don't need Kings or improved Devo aura. In a raid, a prot pally will cover kings, and it's not needed in 5 mans. You'll lack Divine Illumination, but honestly, it's not needed. Paladins are already crazy mana efficient. Someone did the math behind Divine Illumination awhile ago, and it's overall effect is about the same as taking a mana pot.

This will max your holy potential. If that is your goal, then tanking has to be a distant objective.

I think a paladin gets 1% spell crit per 50 int. Could be wrong, though. For healing, copious amounts of +heal first. Mana/5 and spell crit next for healing longevity. Int is a 4th concern. If you want to calculate your spell crit, check your character sheet under the spell section and it will tell you.

 

Ragnor

Pretty much agree with the above poster, as an accurate list of all the talents you want to maximize healing, though I consider imp loh and imp bow more utility talents rather than direct improvements to your healing.

Also as mentioned above you could go x/5 Holy Guidance and get imp sanctity aura (6% healing for everyone affected by the aura) in ret which may turn out to provide more healing power (depending on your gear) but it depends how often you're going to be able to use imp sanct aura over devo, concentration or a resistance aura.

Unless you're going deep prot with the intent to tank/offtank OR you have no other kings paladins, points in prot aren't going to be that useful imo.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Aramul

It's about 1% per 80. With no spell crit gear on I have 348 int and 7.69% spell crit. With no gear on I have 91 int and 4.47% spell crit.

(348 - 91)int / (7.69 - 4.47)scrit = ~79.8 int/scrit

 

Ragnor

It's a spell crit rating remember so it's modified by level, from your calculation it looks to be around 80 @ lvl 70 we know it's alot lower than that at 60.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Shallistra

Figured I'd give this thread a little kick-start in the form of a topic to discuss, so here we go~


Rolling a BE Paladin has been - and I kid you not - a refreshing experience after playing an Alliance Paladin for so long. This is mainly due to the fact that a vast majority of Horde know very little about Paladins and I had a chance to explore avenues I had not really considered before due to the fact with their tenure as an Alliance-only class, Paladins had well-established roles and were expected to stick with them. While leveling up I've encountered near total ignorance when it comes to Paladins, ranging from amusing to irksome. Now I know that horde players can just as easily play alliance, but that fact has not really made itself apparent from my experience thus far. Paladins by and large are met with skepticism as to their talent builds outside of Retribution, perhaps because the majority of us are Retribution and there are not many examples to draw off of of other specs.

After toying around with the different specs seeing how Paladins could fit best in the grand scheme of things Horde-side (at least on my server) I've landed once again in This Build.

Gearwise, my default set is that of a Shockadin, focusing on spellcrit/spellpower/int/stam, and I'm finding it is working very well. It carries over fine for main healing and with all the choice shockadin gear available, crit rates soar providing a great deal of mana efficiency for Holy Light. It has gotten to the point where I hold off on casting to make room for crit heals and they land often enough that I can rely on that. This creates exceptional healing power/efficiency since as a Paladin, every percent spell crit is an exponential improvement over the one previous. Obviously I'm not gonna get the monster heals that come off Paladins with +1500 healing, but I'm satisfied sitting at +700 heal/+400 spell damage pre-raid.

As for stacking healing/mp5 gear, it seems rather redundant. Even without that gear you spend most of your time as the only healer sitting fat and happy at near full mana even with average joe tank; most bosses don't even go through half of your mana pool. I haven't had the opportunity to find a place in heroic groups due to the fact that Paladins are treated as an unknown here and people tend to go with what is familiar and comfortable. Even in regular instances, I had a hard time starting out due to lack of awareness. If they were looking for a tank, I'd ask to join and get the "we need a warrior or druid", and I was generally treated as a backup healer and groups wouldn't move until they found a second healer...usually a Holy build priest of assorted variants.

On the subject of tanking, it's a subject I've been mulling over recently. Specifically the difference between a full blown prot tank and the build I am using right now. The differences, while significant enough, seem to balance out with one another in terms of utility and the difference scenarios faced by tanking Paladins.

Given equivalent gear for their respective strengths as tanks, these are the only differences I can discern:

Prot Heavy:

Avenger's Shield - Good initial multi mob agro, but you lose the ability to use it after the initial pull.
Holy Shield - Good single mob mitigation. It gets eaten within two seconds on multi-mob pulls and you lose the increase in block value. You also cannot really control where the charges land in order to stave off potential loose mobs (as if they would fall off anyways).
Ardent Defender - A++ AE grinding talent, turns you into a monster when soloing or doing normal instances/weak trash mobs in heroic/raid scenarios. Utility falls off when mobs hit so hard they can leapfrog the ability and kill you outright.
Reckoning - Very nice DPS/Threat boost on whatever you happen to be attacking, especially with SoR up. Procs often tanking 4+ mobs, and seemingly not enough when only dealing with 3 or fewer...obviously mob attack speed needs to be taken into account, but this is what I have found in instances on average.
Sacred Duty - 6% more stam from items.
BoK - Nice for raiding, at least one paladin will have it...unless you only have one paladin on your raids.
Spell Warding - Some take it, some don't. Arguable utility.

Holy Heavy:

Holy Shock - This is a lot of agro. Instantly. At range. Compared to Avenger's Shield, it is arguably better as it doesn't have a deadzone. I've had times when someone would attack before mobs would enter my consecration area. Holy Shock would nab them immediately...Avenger's shield would keep getting interrupted even with the 0.5 second cast time. It works as an instant self to buy time in hard situations as well.
Holy Guidance - More threat, roughly ~100 spell power over what Prot can achieve if both subjects are wearing equivalent tanking gear appropriate to their specs.
Unyielding Faith - Sort of like spell warding in terms of how useful it actually is.
Combined Healing Talents - Helpful in a pinch, even if it does screw around with mitigation.

On a related note there is a principle difference on how each spec deals with easier content. A Holy Paladin will switch in more spell damage gear to increase threat/damage generated so the group can pull off higher dps and make for a faster run. A Protection Paladin will can run into multiple groups of mobs like a madman and as long as healers are paying attention you end up with a psychopath tanking 10-20 mobs and generating some rather absurd dps through porcupine gear/talents, reckoning, seal of wisdom and consecrate. Both work very well, Protection has more fun and is certainly more mana efficient due to having double attacks for SoW and high block values on equivalent gear.

Summary? Well I guess as someone who has played all specs in their current incarnation, the upper tier Prot talents, while nice, do not merit the sacrifice in versatility/utility in the Holy tree (unless I feel like running around like a maniac in some normal instance). There is not enough gain in net mitigation and a loss in threat generation for the tanking role that Paladins are supposed to (by most accounts) excel at, which is AE tanking, to justify the expenditure in points from my point of view. Of course you can't AE tank in most Heroics, but Holy offers unrivaled threat generation, allowing your group to really open up on stuff. Does this increase in kill speed make up for the reduction in mitigation in terms of healer resources? I'm sure someone will find out sooner or later.



Obviously all of the above posting is my own view on things, your mileage may vary.

 

Ragnor

It's a real shame holy shield is so far down the prot tree as it's essential for serious boss tanking because the 30% block helps with the whole push crushing blows off the hit table ideology. :(

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

• moz

I mostly agree with the selection of choices in Holy, however after using this build for a while I am not sure I'd give up the points in prot in exchange for those in Ret. For instance loosing toughness is a hard sell, and things like redoubt, irf and ihoj are just too good to give up.

The reduced mana cost on judgements is nice, but iSoC doesn't strike me as being particularly useful with the gear I run with -- similarly with vindication (usually using a low-dps +dmg/heal weapon). I guess it depends a lot on play style, but the versatility that those points in prot give me are much appreciated and I don't think I'd trade them for the firepower in Ret with the gear I have.

 

Szoszi

*oh, paladins are very gear depend. forget that class.
*really? can rogue/lock/mage/hunter nuke with grey weapon/equipment?
*true. every class are gear depend. But paladins need talents to match their gear and role.

lvl60paladin with Sulfuron and 1600AP is (was) imba DPSer (why paldin bids on dps mail/plate?) had retri tree.
lvl70paladin with prot tree and warrior gear is a good tank in 5man instances.
me at lvl63 healed over Shettek Halls (with lvl64 warrior tanking). +1k healing and 41 holy talents make me ultimate healer. How am I at lvl70? I heal more than LoHands...

for farming/dpsing my old judgement set still ok for me. My teammate has more than +700spelldmg now (I sent him to mage forum). Easily outdamages me. He likes 2k holy damages and I fear his consecration too. We both are full holy. And with huge diference in our dmg. He grinded spelldmg gear, while I banked/sharded them. We are both great healers due to our talents while prot/retri paladins complained about running out of mana when we did healspam in AQ/Naxx. I used 1-2manapot/fight while they used 3-4 or more.

From holy tree I love Divine Illumination. To spam Holy light for 420mana? IMBA :)
And Blessed life. Would like an animation for that to see when it saves me. i hope it does.

 

Shallistra

I have mixed feelings about Divine Illumination. I suppose it depends on how often you find yourself needing to spam heal. I find it only really comes into play in PvP and Heroics...everywhere else it just sits there on my action bar taunting me. It's certainly one of those talents that shine when you need it, but on the other hand it's a panic button that's 41 points into a tree - and panic buttons, at least for me, tend to get saved up to the point I never used them for an entire instance. Silly thing to do for something on a three minute cooldown >_<

 

Phantom

I actually agree with you, about the utility of Holy Shock. It does far outweigh Avenger's Shield (though I love getting plenty of aggro on 3 mobs from the get go). As long as people wait until all mobs are around me before doing anything, nothing should be pulled off, so using holy shock to get something back isn't really needed.

The main problem is, a paladin who seriously wants to tank, needs to get as much mitigation as you can get, and that means Holy Shield. If I could get Holy Shield and Holy Shock, I would. But since I can't, once I'm that far down, it's only 10 more points to Avenger's Shield which is a decent second choice. I wanted so much for Holy Shock to become base, or even Holy Shield, so I could use both. For a 41 point talent, Avenger's Shield needs to be improved slightly. Removing the cast time and/or dead zone would work wonders.

But if you only plan to tank 5 mans non-heroic, then yeah, 31+ holy works great.

 

Shallistra

I was actually in a group yesterday that without Holy Shock, it would have constantly had deaths. It was stacked with moonkin/fire mage and they didn't know the meaning of manage agro. Even with Salvation on them the Druid tank could not keep agro against the casters, no matter what he tried. I got curious since we had two healers in the group and stepped in to tank, and even without salvation the crazy ass druid and mage could not pull agro off of me.

In the end it worked out to something like me hitting incoming mobs with holy shock/judgement of righteousness then the druid taunting it off so he had good stack of agro to work with agains the casters that nuked on incoming. I would offtank and heal when needed and we ended up working through the run at a pretty good clip.

I have my gripe at length about Holy Shield and Paladin tanking in general on the other Paladin thread, so I'm not gonna repeat it here.

 

Aggememnon

I've got a question for you holy / shockadin build paladins out there.

What weapon do you use for when you are going damage? I am currently 40/0/21 for raid healing and pvp, with about 700 ish +dmg I can do some decent solo dmg or add to a 5 man.

I am at a loss about what to use for a 1 hander, or if I should use a 2hander. Most of my dmg seems to come from holy shock, SoR, JoR etc.

Do I go for a sword with huge +dmg, or a high dps 1hander/2hander?

Thanks in advance,

Agge

 

• goss

I was initially unimpressed by Divine Illumination, but I love it now. I tend to use it one of two ways...either spam Holy Light for massive throughput, or use it like a mana pot, I pop DI and start Flashing - my mana will go up while I continue to heal. I save it for specific things in Kara, but in 5 mans or heroics, I basically just pop it every cooldown. While not tremendously sexy as a 41 point, its really a nice addition to the holy tree.

 

Fiola

Compare a +dmg weapon with an equivalent "regular" 1h weapon:

Continuum Blade: 41.4 DPS, +121 dmg
http://www.thottbot.com/?i=54484

Bloodskull Destroyer: 71.7 DPS, +22 AP (~1.5 DPS)
http://thottbot.com/?i=59932

(Focusing only on the DPS stats, since that's what you seem to be concerned with)


So you trade 31.8 physical DPS (or 445.2 AP, if you wanna think of it that way. It's the same thing for a paladin, unless you have CS) for 121 +dmg.

Using just SoR and JoR, you'd get ~16% of +dmg as DPS (around 6 +dmg per DPS), so 121 +dmg would give 20 DPS. Consecrate would give another 11% of +dmg as DPS, so that's another 13~ DPS when spammed. That adds to 33 Holy DPS.


If you spam all of your abilities, you'd get about equivalent damage from a 1h +dmg weapon as with a 1h "DPS" weapon. (And the damage is unmitigated by armor) For 2h weapons, I don't recall anything usable by a paladin that sacrifices weapon DPS for +dmg, so the 2h "DPS" (93 base DPS for a L70 blue) weapon would add more damage than a +dmg 1h.


So get a +dmg 1h, and a "DPS" 2h weapon. That should cover all combat situations. (If you're not taking hits and want to add more damage, whip out the 2h, otherwise stick to the 1h/shield)

 

Aggememnon

Thanks Fiola, I was theorycrafting something like that, but I was unsure if my math was correct.

I had recently been 20/0/41 , with a crafted Thunder and had really enjoyed my dps in raids but I felt I was giving up too many other paladin traits, and I seemed to have to heal half the time anyways.

I am really pleased with my new spec so far, I can heal incredibly, do decent enough damage to go on a 5 man with another healer, and soloing / grinding is MUCH more efficient.

 

Shallistra

I changed my mind about Divine Illumination after playing around with it a bit. With the spell critical rates Paladins can achieve in TBC, and the fact that Illumination returns base mana cost rather than modified, the talent can be seen as "15 seconds of really freaking cheap healing" 50% spell crit on paper will land you with 15 seconds of free healing on a 3 minute timer, and this value is achievable with some work.

In the worst case scenario, you can never crit a heal, in which case you spend 420 mana per heal. In the best case scenario, you land 7 crits in a row and regain 2940 mana.

This talent is well worth the extra point, imo. The only problem is that I have to drop BoK for it >_<

 

◊ Lord BEEF

While English may not be your first language, don't make it look like abbreviations and acronyms are.

 

• Cynic

Excuse my Paladin ignorance, but wouldn't you simply use Divine Illumination everytime its up and you're not full mana, sort of like a unlimited mana pot?

This is of course barring the fact you *knew* ahead of time you were gonna be coming up on a difficult encounter where you needed it, but I think saving it for an "oh shit" button is wasting potential of this skill. Heck who knows, maybe using it early would allot you time to use it twice?

edit: goss, didnt see your post, glad we agree heh.

 

• goss

Yeah, exactly. On trivial content its just less downtime. When you're facing difficult healing circumstances, its an excellent "oh shit" button that lets you pump out a lot of hp/s without blowing your entire mana bar.

 

Bowra

I definitely find DI useful in getting the most out of our horribly inefficient spells. It is clutch in certain circumstances, and almost a necessity in others as discussed: in a raid, you need to maximize your utility, and you're certainly not doing that unless you pop this whenever it's up.

 

Shallistra

It's not exactly an HPS increasing tool; your max HPS does not go any higher than it does if you didn't have the talent activated. It does do wonders for endurance in spammy situations, though.

 

Amera

All of this should really be in the main paladin thread for cleanliness.

 

Ngita

I would have to agree with Phantom even if I think he is overestimating improved retribution aura.

As for Divine illumination if you spend a point their it means you cant spend a point somewhere else. In my case that point would be Sanctity Aura. 10% constant damage while soloing vs a 15 seconds every 3 mins mana saver. In 5 mans for example, shadow lab last night I dropped below 50% mana twice in both cases because I was holy shocking ,casting exorcism frequently during boss fights.

Szoszi at this point I find it disapointing that after 40 odd level 70 5 mans and some limited karazhan success I still consider 5 piece Judgement to be part of my hybrid soloing gear.

 

Phantom

Well, it was more that there wasn't anything to spend those 2 points on, to get to the next tier. Vindication hardly works anymore, and Pursuit of justice is replaced by a boot enchant and crusader aura.

But don't underestimate Ret aura. Assuming imp ret aura(39 damage) and a 2.0 mob attack speed, you'd need to do 390 holy damage in 2 seconds to match it. On 2 mobs, you'd need to do 780 holy damage in 2 seconds. If you're the only person benefitting from the Sanctity damage, it's usually better to use Ret aura.

Of course, it's all situational, and the best use would be to toggle between the auras. Hit sanctity right before Holy Shock and a Judgement, then switch back. There's probably a spell damage threshold where you'd get permanent benefit from keep sanctity on all the time, but I'm not sure what it is. I don't feel I've hit it with 600+ spell, though.


Yes, hard to break that bonus, isn't it? Which 5 pieces are you using? I was using Head, Chest, Gloves, Belt, and Legs until 70. Here's what I replaced:

Head - X-52 Technician's Helm (quest reward in Netherstorm)
Chest - Leone(sp?) Breastplate (quest reward in Blade's Edge)
Gloves - Gloves of the Righteous (drop from Kargath, Shattered Halls)
Belt - Khorium Belt, crafted
Legs - Khorium Leggings, crafted

I ended up with slightly less spell damage (less than 20), but that was remedied with a spell thread enchant on the leggings. I lost a little strength (un-important unless you're ret, and Judgement is bad for Ret anyway), but gained a ton more stamina, Intellect, and mana regen. Sitting at roughly 170 mana per 5 with gear, and 230 with imp blessing of wisdom on. Depending on what I'm tanking, it's given me the freedom to mix and match without worrying about set bonuses.