Contents

1Intro 2Spec 3Healing Spells 4Cool downs 5Hand Spells 6Other Abilities 7Stats 8Enchants, Glyphs & Consumables 9Professions 10Rotations and Mechanics 11Appendix

[top]Intro

I am attempting to make sure everything in this post is confirmed, and that speculation is left to the discussion that will follow. Current as of 4.0.6, but as always I may have missed something, so please use diligence.

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[top]Spec

I would currently recommend 31/3/3 as a base spec, with 4 points left to put where you feel it most useful.
Possible options:

• Enlightened Judgments - Transfers to beacon, helps offset judging for mana
• Eternal Glory - Usefulness depends on WoG usage, devalued currently by LoD
• Blessed Life - Can generate free HP under certain situations
• Last Word - Also devalued by LoD
• Improved Judgment - Extra range can be nice for flexibility
• Pursuit of Justice - Larger run speed bonus, minor Holy Power gains

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[top]Healing Spells

Single Target Heals
Flash of Light, Holy Light, and our new spell Divine Light are all casted single target heals. They vary in mana cost, speed and power as per the chart below. Holy Shock generates 1 Holy Power at all times, while the Divine Light and Flash of Light require utilizing Tower of Radiance for Holy Power. Holy Light is the most efficient heal before the more complicated factors like Beacon, Holy power and Mastery.

This assumes the cast time reduction of Clarity of Purpose with untalented in parentheses.

Spell	Mana	Cast Time	Base Heal	Base Coef.
Flash of Light	7026.6	1.5	6907 - 7749	~0.8632
Holy Light	2342.2	2.5 (3.0)	4163 - 4637	~0.432
Divine Light	7729.3	2.5 (3.0)	11100 - 12366	~1.15306
Holy Shock	1873.8	1.5 eff.	2629 - 2847	~0.2689

Holy Power Heals
We now have 2 healing spells based on our new mechanic, Holy Power. Casting a spell that requires Holy Power will consume all of your current HoPo. The number consumed will determine the power of the spell. These spells have no hard cool down, and are instead limited by the rate you generate holy power. These spells do not cost mana.

Word of Glory
Word of Glory is an instant cast single target heal of medium power. Useful under certain conditions where LoD would be unfavorable, such as during GoAK, or when only a single non-beacon target needs quick healing. It is worth noting that WoG does indeed scale with both SP and AP at the same time. As of the current patch, the WoG tool-tip was updated to reflect all modifiers affecting it, but this has caused the tool-tip to always display the average value.

Word of Glory	Base Heal	Base Coef.(SP)	Base Coef.(AP)
1 Holy Power	2018 - 2248	~0.209	0.198
2 Holy Power	4036 - 4496	~0.418	0.396
3 Holy Power	6054 - 6744	~0.627	0.594

Light of Dawn
Light of Dawn is a cone based heal that uses the 'smart' targeting mechanic and has the following attributes. Light of dawn will require getting familiar with the cone targeting mechanic to use it to full potential. LoD has a 30 yard range, 10 yards shorter then the majority of our heals, but also the same range as BoSac. It will heal pets, and is currently transferring all heals to the Beacon target, resulting in many smaller heals that total a very large amount. LoD can and will heal yourself unless 6(5) other people need it more.

Light of Dawn	Base Heal	Base Coef.			LoD 6 Targets	Base Heal	Base Coef.
1 Holy Power	~ 605 - 673	~0.132			1 Holy Power	3632 - 4042	~0.792
2 Holy Power	~ 1210 - 1347	~0.264			2 Holy Power	7264 - 8085	~1.584
3 Holy Power	~ 1816 - 2021	~0.396			3 Holy Power	10897 - 12128	~2.376

Other Healing Spells

Holy Radiance
Holy Radiance is an AoE HoT, centered on the paladin that moves with him. HR has a base tick rate of 1s before haste, and base duration of 10s. Being a HoT this spell will scale very well with haste, and currently gets an additional 10% efficiency at 5% Haste, and every 10% beyond that. Holy Radiance has the potential for high efficiency and output. Use it any time you will be clustered for its duration, such as on the melee, as efficiency will drop significantly on players who are spread out. It is also beneficial to stack haste effects with this spell. 30s talented cool down means it can see fairly frequent use if the need arises. As HR scales with haste, both the total duration and number of ticks will change.

Haste Rating scaling of HR, assuming a base of Speed of Light, JotP, and 5% haste buff.

#Ticks	Haste	Needed	Rating	DF	Heroism	DF + Hero	Duration
10	0.0%	0.0%	0	0	0	0	10.00
11	5.0%	0.0%	0	0	0	0	10.48
12	15.0%	0.0%	0	0	0	0	10.43
13	25.0%	6.0%	773.1	0	0	0	10.40
14	35.0%	14.5%	1859.4	0	0	0	10.37
15	45.0%	23.0%	2945.7	320.4	0	0	10.34
16	55.0%	31.5%	4032.0	1225.7	146.4	0	10.32
17	65.0%	40.0%	5118.3	2130.9	982.0	0	10.30
18	75.0%	48.5%	6204.6	3036.2	1817.6	0	10.29
19	85.0%	56.9%	7290.9	3941.4	2653.2	76.7	10.27
20	95.0%	65.4%	8377.2	4846.7	3488.8	773.1	10.26
21	105.0%	73.9%	9463.5	5751.9	4324.4	1469.4	10.24
22	115.0%	82.4%	10549.8	6657.2	5160.1	2165.8	10.23
23	125.0%	90.9%	11636.1	7562.4	5995.7	2862.1	10.22
24	135.0%	99.3%	12722.4	8467.7	6831.3	3558.5	10.21

Beacon of Light
Beacon of Light is now only a 50% transfer of the healing value, before target based modifiers. Beacon heals will not produce the Illuminated Healing shield from the Mastery stat. Currently Protector of the Innocent, Enlightened Judgments, and Light of Dawn all transfer to the beacon, adding extra value to those talents, in addition to the normal casted heals. Seal of Insight heals are currently transferring to the beacon.
Lasts 5 minutes.

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[top]Cool downs

Cooldowns
We have several potent cooldowns available to help when the going gets tough.

Avenging Wrath
Avenging Wrath provides a powerful 20% additional healing, and damage, for a fairly cheap mana cost. The 3 minute cooldown can be talented to 2 minutes allowing more liberal use of this cooldown, which lasts 20 seconds.

Divine Favor
Divine Favor is changed from its mana saving form into a very powerful burst healing cooldown. 20% spell haste and crit makes this more powerful then AW in most situations. 3 minute cooldown with a 20 second duration, which can be glyphed for an extra 10 seconds.

Aura Mastery
Aura Mastery is still around, this time as a deep holy talent. 2 minute cooldown for 6 seconds of enhanced auras. You can choose from 4076 extra armor, double damage retribution aura, silence and interrupt immunity, 195 extra fire/frost/shadow resistance, or extra mount speed. Extra resistance and silence immunity will be the best options in most cases, as almost 25% extra damage reduction is very potent.

Lay on Hands
Lay on Hands has become a very powerful heal with the health scaling of cataclysm. At 10 minutes, this is a long cooldown and should be used when it will matter. Can be glyphed to 7 minutes, as well as being able to restore 10% maximum mana to the paladin, even when used on other players. Now causes the Forbearance effect on the target.

Guardian of Ancient Kings
Guardian of Ancient Kings is a new cooldown at 85. This spell summons an uncontrollable pet that will replicate your casted heals. At this time the following are the only spells valid for GoAK: FoL, HL, DL, HS, WoG. It is invulnerable, and lasts 30s or until 5 valid heals are used. The effect is a duplicate heal cast on the same target, as well as healing all targets within 10 yards of the target healed for 10% of the heal value, which can hit the original target as well. {todo: test for double dipping mods and target cap/DR}

Divine Plea
Our mana regeneration cooldown, 12% of maximum mana (18% glyphed) over 9 seconds, with a cooldown of 2 minutes. Reduces all healing output by 50% during this time, which is a major drawback that has to be considered. Possible options are using it with HoSac or in low damage phases of encounters.

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[top]Hand Spells

Only one hand per paladin can be on a target at the same time. You can have multiple hand spells up at any time, and you can also have multiple hand's on the same target, provided you have more then one paladin.

Hand of Freedom
Hand of Freedom removes and prevents debuffs that slow movement or root, even if they have other effects like damage. This can be very useful under these circumstances, always look to use this when it will help, and usually it will be on the tank or something with current agro.

Hand of Protection
Prevents all physical damage, removes all physical debuffs. This causes the target to be unable to use melee or ranged physical attacks. Mobs without a magical source of damage will ignore the target for the duration of the spell; it has no effect on threat levels. Causes the Forbearance effect.

Hand of Sacrifice
Transfers 30% of damage to you, up to your Max HP in value. While not technically a damage reduction cooldown, it is used as such due to our automatic and powerful self healing. The cooldown promotes using this under phases of increased damage, rather then constant usage. Can be used to 'bypass' mortal strike debuffs that would otherwise weaken the effect of other healing based cooldowns.

Hand of Salvation
Reduces the targets total threat by 2% per second, for a total of 20%. Potential use for niche tactics, usually to get slightly more raid DPS or to assist in transitions, threat drops, or adds.

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[top]Other Abilities

Seal of Insight & Judgment
Seal of Insight will be our main seal, mostly due to the glyph which adds 5% to our healing. This seal will also restore 15% of our base mana when judged, giving us a net 10% base mana gain after the cost of judgment. This yields 2342 mana back. Judging gives us 9% haste from talents, and should be used at least once a minute. Judging on cooldown will return 1,463 MP5.

Auto attacks made with this seal up can heal the paladin and return 4% of base mana, or 937 mana. {details}

Cleanse
Cleanse now only dispels one Poison and one Disease effect, and has to be talented to remove a Magical effect. This now has a non-trivial mana cost and as such may be desirable to glyph in certain situations. You can use cleanse even without a valid debuff now, which you will have to watch out for.

Blessings
Blessings now affect the whole raid with one cast, and they have been consolidated into Kings and Might.
Kings gives 5% Int, Stamina, Strength, and Agility, as well as +97 to all resistances. Blessing of Kings does not stack with Mark of the Wild. The resistance bonus does not currently stack with Resistance Aura and is assumed to be a bug.
Might gives 10% attack power, and 326 Mp5.

Forbearance
This is the resulting debuff applied to anyone affected by LoH, HoP or Divine Shield Currently lasts 1 min, and prevents application of the aforementioned abilities. This has the potential for issues in multiple paladin groups, and should be a consideration in strategies.

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[top]Stats

Short break down of the useful stats for Holy Paladins. Continuing with the tradition of comparing batches of 100 stats for ease of visualization.

Intellect
Intellect will provide Spell Power, Mana, and Spell Critical chance. Intellect has a 1.1025x modifier when buffed with Kings/Mark and wearing full Plate for the specialization bonus. Int will also increase your spirit based regen as well as regen based on maximum Mana. This is by far the best stat, and thus will be the primary focus of gems, trinkets, and enchants. Any Int gained after the fight starts is less potent then Int from the start of the fight You are unable to reforge for Intellect.

With 5% Plate Spec, 5% Kings, and 10% Spellpower buff, 100 Int will provide (assuming all regen abilities used on cooldown):

• 1653.75 Maximum Mana.
• 121.275 Spell Power.
• ~0.17% Spell Crit.
• ~8.27 Mp5 from Replenishment.
• ~8.27 Mp5 from Divine Plea.
• ~4.13 Mp5 from [Glyph of Divine Plea].
• ~1.38 Mp5 from [Glyph of Divinity] (plus ~0.59 Mp5 [Glyph of Lay on Hands]).
• ~4.13 Mp5 from Arcane Torrent racial.
• Additional Mp5 from Spirit based Regen. (see Spirit)

Spell power
Spell power comes primarily on weapons and from Intellect. It is currently the strongest stat for output and efficiency. Spell power also receives a 6% or 10% bonus from raid buffs, which further increases its desirability. Spell power cannot be reforged.

Haste
Haste is, in most cases at 85, the best stat for increasing output. Haste is desirable to reduce the GCD and cast times, which allows faster multi-target healing, as well as quicker emergency healing. Under full buffs, the GCD cap is 3489 haste rating, or ~27.24% haste from gear.

100 Haste provides:

• ~0.78% Spell Haste

Spell Crit
Crit suffers from poor rating conversion, as well as the 50% bonus heal being low. Some level of crit rating will be useful to keep Conviction up. With Light of Dawn and Protector of the Innocent producing Conviction, this further reduces the amount of crit we desire.

100 Crit provides:

• ~0.56% Spell Crit

Mastery
Mastery has a unique effect per spec, Illuminated Healing produces a shield for a base of 10% on most paladin heals with an additional 1.25% per Mastery, which is not to be confused with Mastery Rating. This shield lasts 8 seconds and is refreshed by smaller shields from mastery, and overwritten by larger ones. If we assume these shields are 100% effective, Mastery will be between Haste and Crit in regards to output. These illuminated healing shield are produced by FoL, HL, DL, HS, WoG, LoD, and LoH. As much as 50% or more of our healing is unaffected by mastery, reducing the effectiveness close to the level of Crit.

100 Mastery provides:

• ~0.697% additional shielding

Spirit
Spirit is used for mana regen and hit rating through enlightened judgments. Any increases to Intellect will also increase the mana returned by your spirit. There exists a fight length for all values of Spirit and Int where the regen from Spirit will surpass that of int. Spirit based regen is reduced to 0% in combat, with holy spec changing this to 50%. The current formula for Spirit regen can be found here and can be used to find the value of regen for your current level of stats. I have modified the formula for level 85 regen in-combat for Holy Spec.

• Mp5 In Combat from Spirit = 0.0025 + [Spirit * Sqrt(Intellect) * 0.0083625]

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[top]Enchants, Glyphs & Consumables

Glyphs
Prime Glyphs
[Glyph of Divine Favor]
[Glyph of Holy Shock]
[Glyph of Seal of Insight]
[Glyph of Word of Glory]

Major Glyphs
[Glyph of Light of Dawn]
[Glyph of Divinity]
[Glyph of Lay on Hands]
[Glyph of Beacon of Light]
[Glyph of Cleansing]
[Glyph of Divine Plea]
[Glyph of the Long Word]
[Glyph of Divine Protection]

Minor Glyphs
[Glyph of Blessing of Kings]
[Glyph of Blessing of Might]
[Glyph of Seal of Insight]

Enchants

Armor Enchants
Top 2 Enchants listed

Back	[Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect] / [Enchant Cloak - Intellect]
Chest	[Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats] / [Enchant Chest - Mighty Stats]
Feet	[Enchant Boots - Haste] / [Enchant Boots - Lavawalker]
Hands	[Enchant Gloves - Haste] / [Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery]
Shield	[Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect]
Wrist	[Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect] / [Enchant Bracer - Greater Speed]
Head	[Arcanum of Hyjal] / [Arcanum of Vicious Intellect]
Shoulder	[Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone] / [Greater Inscription of Vicious Intellect]
Legs	[Powerful Ghostly Spellthread] / [Powerful Enchanted Spellthread]

Weapon Enchants

[Enchant Weapon - Heartsong]	20s ICD, 25% proc chance*
[Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent]	45s ICD, 30-35% proc chance*

*Confirmation needed


Gems
Socket bonuses appears to be fairly weak, with the best being Int. +10 per socket, +20 per meta, and hitting the socket bonus is trading 10 int for 20 of a stat. This rules out a crit gem already, and Mastery as well. Haste will be worth it for pure HPS, but spirit will only be more mana on a certain fight length. We will end up needing 2 Yellow gems for the Ember meta, which naturally leads to Int/Haste.

Meta Sockets
Meta gems have varying levels of power depending on many factors like fight length, buffs, divine plea usage, and even character race. As fight length increases, the Insightful gem proc becomes more mana compared to 2% of max, but it will always be short 33 Int. [todo: add math}
[Ember Shadowspirit Diamond]
[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond]
[Revitalizing Shadowspirit Diamond]

Red Sockets
[Brilliant Inferno Ruby]

Blue Sockets
[Purified Demonseye]
[Sparkling Ocean Sapphire]

Yellow Sockets
[Reckless Ember Topaz]
[Artful Ember Topaz]
[Potent Ember Topaz]


Food
[Seafood Magnifique Feast]
[Severed Sagefish Head]
[Delicious Sagefish Tail]
[Basilisk Liverdog]


Potions and Flasks
Flasks
[Flask of Battle]
[Flask of the Draconic Mind]
[Flask of Flowing Water]

Elixirs
Elixirs are a poor choice now due to a lack of a solid guardian version. They do however cover some stats the flasks do not.
[Elixir of the Master]
[Elixir of the Cobra]
[Prismatic Elixir]

Potions
There are some interesting potions that will likey need further discussion. Note that you can pop an Int/SP potion before the pull and still use a mana potion later.
[Mythical Mana Potion]
[Volcanic Potion]
[Potion of Pure Genius]
[Potion of Concentration]
[Mysterious Potion]

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[top]Professions

Listed roughly in order of usefulness.

Leather-working - Draconic Embossment - Intellect
Net Gain: +130 Int, -1 Wrist Enchant

Jewel-crafting - Brilliant Chimera's Eye x3
Net Gain: +81 Int with current gems

Alchemy - Mixology
Net Gain: +80 Int

Blacksmithing - Socket Gloves/Bracers
Net Gain: +80 Int with current gems

Enchanting - Enchant Ring - Intellect
Net Gain: +80 Int

Inscription - Felfire Inscription
Net Gain: +80 Int

Engineering - Synapse Springs
Net Gain: +480 Int for 12s / min
Strength depends on longer fights and cooldown stacking due to not generating extra initial mana

Tailoring - Lightweave Embroidery
Net Gain: +580 Int for 15s, -50 Int Enchant
Assuming a reasonable 1 PPM, this rival's engineering, but is even more situational due to the loss of a passive increase.

Herbalism - Lifeblood
Net Gain: +480 Haste for 20s / 2min

Skinning - Master of Anatomy
Net Gain: +80 Crit

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[top]Rotations and Mechanics

The tower of radiance change leaves little in the way of flexibility, with most situations devolving into using Divine light like Holy Light in wrath, trading a weakened beacon for Holy Power and Holy Radiance. There are two considerations to make in this area. The uncommon 'Single Target' situation, where only a 1 person is being healing, and the AoE/Multi target situation, which is far more common in raiding conditions. At current gear levels, Tower of Radiance is only an efficiency talent, and only under 'Single Target' conditions. It is worth noting that ToR is more desirable under FoL conditions.

The AoE healing situation is fairly simple. LoD and Holy Radiance are still the only spells that actually hit multiple targets, and they are fairly straightforward. LoD is more or less point and shoot, and competes with WoG for priority, since you don't want to waste holy power generation. Holy Radiance is pretty much a spell you can use on cooldown with even just 6 people in the area of maximum effect. Treating Holy Radiance as a burst AoE heal will probably leave you disappointed, GoAK fills that role much better. {is there a cap on the number this hits?}

The basic order of business between the two styles is roughly the same. Beacon will be a sizable portion of healing, and is usually best served on a tank, which one will depend on your total setup and strategies. Healing will come from Holy Light and Holy Shock, with divine light replacing HL under higher healing requirements. Effective use of Holy Power will ensure Holy shock is useful, but diminishes as you approach the GCD cap from haste due to the loss in output outweighing the efficiency gain.


Mechanics

Dispels
I tried to find what I thought was a blue post about PvE dispel mechanics vs boss level debuffs, but I cannot find it. Is 88 level spell hit required? 85? It would be nice to have a definitive on this.

Modifier Stacking
The following is how our healing modifiers stack, obviously the WoG Glyph only applies to WoG, as Crusade only applies to Holy Shock.

Healing Modifier Stacking = Heal * (Spec + SoI + Crusade + WoG Glyph) * Divinity * AW * DP * Conviction
Haste Modifier Stacking = HasteRating% * JotP * SoL * HasteBuff

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[top]Appendix

Terms

AW	Avenging Wrath
BoK	Blessing of Kings
BoL	Beacon of Light
BoM	Blessing of Might
DF	Divine Favor
DL	Divine Light
DP	Divine Plea
EG	Eternal Glory
FoL	Flash of Light
GCD	Global Cool Down
GoAK	Guardian of Ancient Kings
HL	Holy Light
HoPo	Holy Power
HPS	Healing per Second
HPM	Healing per Mana
HR	Holy Radiance
HS	Holy Shock
ICD	Internal Cooldown
IoL	Infusion of Light
JotP	Judgements of the Pure
LoD	Light of Dawn
LoH	Lay on Hands
SoI	Seal of Insight
SoL	Speed of Light
ToR	Tower of Radiance
WoG	Word of Glory
HoF	Hand of Freedom*
HoP	Hand of Protection*
(Ho)Sac	(Hand of) Sacrifice*
(Ho)Salv	(Hand of) Salvation*

*Sometimes referred to as 'Blessing of'

Are those Light of Dawn numbers pre- or post- yesterday's nerf? I'm curious whether they've reduced the base heal from Holy Power, the spellpower coefficient, or both.

Pretty much the only macro I think is kind of useful right now would be Avenging Wrath/Divine Favour/Holy Radiance for 5 man heroics, possibly including a notification for the rest of your party to come cuddle. For raids the use of these cooldowns would probably have to be planned ahead though.

You might want to add /use 13 and /use 14 for clicky trinkets, if indeed you have some.

It's not necessity, just a quality of life issue I guess.

Tower of Radiance is nerfed(?) and Holy Light not generates any Holy Power.
Cataclysm Hotfixes - Updated Dec. 14 - World of Warcraft

Certainly a good start to a holy thread. The only immediate issue I notice is that your wording for some of the stats in the stats section tends to imply that holy light can still be used to generate holy power. For example:

This info is now misleading with the recent nerfs. Otherwise looking good!

Given the recent changes that were implemented yesterday, and assuming we come to the conclusion that using Crusader Strike is a viable and efficient way to generate Holy Power, does this make Blessed Life a more attractive talent since we'll possibly be healing in melee range more often and more likely to take some form of damage?

I would add an addons / macro section too. Maybe seasoned paladins don't need this, but it would be good for some newer ones to learn about mouseover macros / Clique, raid frames setup and various useful macros such as HoSac+DP and the like.

In some encounters were the party members take high, dmg what do you guys think best "rotation" would work.
Since HR (Holy Radiance) costs like 9.5k mana and you still have to keep the tank up with DL (Divine Light)

Because I felt that after the nerf that it became harder to get the HP (Holy Power) charges up so that the LoD (Light of Dawn) would manage to heal up the members enough.

And also.
I feel like my mana is going down rather quickly during encounters and I wonder what I shall do to fix this problem?
Reforge my armor or/and focus on what stats now in the beginning, when I have rather low iLvl on my spirit gear

Blessed life only impacts DIRECT DAMAGE, last I checked, therefore it is unlikely you'd gain any holy power during pve encounters, This seems far more useful for PVP.

Stacking Int still seems to be an appropriate strategy as long as you can find yourself in a group with Shaman and burn cooldowns on use. 2% mana meta gem would help this stratagem significantly as well (though I haven't gotten a helm with a meta socket yet). I purposely dumped spirit (via reforge) in favor of mastery/haste/crit (in that order). Mastery seems to give us a significant edge, especially when one favors Int/Mastery over all else. Bigger heals, more mana, bigger shields, all wins.

On another topic, I healed Omnitron 25 last night, and found myself comfortably above everyone in the raid in healing done. This is despite the nerf to HP generation and Light of Dawn changes. I was most surprised with Shaman healing, however, as they seem to have the ability to gain an upperhand on almost every fight due to the massive nature of their AoE healing (healing rain, totem, chain heal, etc). Very powerful tools, and one that relegates us back to tank healing in my opinion.

Is anyone else here still using the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond? I've done some napkin math to try and decide between it and the 2% mana meta, looking solely at mana regen. Rounding up, let's say that with raid-buffs, 2% of our max mana is approx. 2k mana. This would give us 20 mp5 from replenishment, and 12.5 from divine plea, plus 200 mana per fight from LoH. Meanwhile, wowhead comments have the insightful at 75 mp5 best case scenario with chain casting at 2 seconds per cast. Looking through WoL at fights without extended downtime like Magmaw's chained period, I was gaining somewhere around 40-50 mp5 from it.

I would assume that as our mana pools get larger, the Cataclysm meta with 2% max mana will win out, but as of right now, it looks like in a theoretical situation, insightful still returns more mana for us if we'd like to prioritize regen in our meta.

Well did you count the heal that was made on yourself ? And do you know what your HPS landed on ?
Because I was Main Tank healer on Magmaw yesterday 10 man before the nerf and I had around 10k HPS.

Didn't use that much AoE heals then so I dont know how well they work,

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Anyone that knows which stats of Haste/Crit/Mastery that is the best?
I heard that Haste boosts the overall AoE healing while Mastery is more usefull as Single Target Healing.

BUT, is Crit even usefull now in the beginning.? I mean, Crit has some pros like getting a critical heal with HS (Holy Shock)
procs Infusion,

But does anyone really know which stats Holy Pala should reforge into.

I'm using it on my 346 helmet, but to be honest, I haven't gotten that much mana from it. Feels like it's more usefull too go with the 2% mana meta gem.
And now with the nerf on HL makes paladin cast even less spells?! It will make the meta gem proc less?

Well, for an example,
If like two players go down around 30% hp and the tank is also very low, what is the best way to handle that situation.
And too slow healings will kill the two others but will make sure that the tank survive.

If i would use HS and DL on the tank then I would get 2 charges of holy power, and I would also pop Radiance with a cooldown. I want to keep healing the tank so I can stack up charges for LoD, but what if i get charges to slow,?

Then DL on the other members seems to be the best option = Mana will go down badly

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Btw, What kind of addons are you guys using. Would appreciate some tips and advices

@Nodrak
Are you going to write a section for addons and stuff like that.?

You can't really prioritize spirit, your gear has it, or doesn't. I didn't have any mana problems last night in 25s that mana cooldown management couldn't handle.

While "mastery sucks" on paper, its an incredibly useful stat to have. I could feel the difference with the shields up, and my meters don't lie. Paladin without them in my group who did within 2% of my healing on Omnitron, effectively healed for about 140k less then I did over the course of the fight. I'm currently running with 16.9 mastery rating.

You can reforge Spirit.

Unless I'm mistaken, Beacon cannot produce Illuminated Healing shields.

In my opinion, Crit is extremely underrated right now. It has great synergy with our Mastery unlike Haste, and while it's a slightly weaker throughput stat, it's "free" whereas Haste means higher mana spending. Extra HS crits are also always welcome.

I found Cataclysm healing to be far more reactive - at least in this first tier of raiding - and that really devalues Haste a lot; rarely these 0.1-0.2 seconds off a cast mean life and death anymore, and I don't see myself chaincasting nonstop very often. In periods of intensive healing we have 3 extremely powerful cooldowns to help us get the raid topped off, and since healthpools are so much higher compared to the power of our heals, Crits rarely overheal if you're smart about your targets.

While this might seem like a somewhat controversial approach to Holy Paladin gearing / playstyle, I've been consistently topping healing in our guild and I rarely find myself in a situation where I would think, "if only I had more Haste now...", whereas getting these 45k DL crits & HL crit procs is definitely a welcome boon.

I scribbled down some calculations some time ago, and if they were correct, then even if you use spirit to compensate the mana loss of haste, and now spend the item budget of spirit on crit, you won't make up for the loss of throughput going from haste to crit (by quite a fair amount). Regarding HS you are correct, of course.

Maybe you have too many healers in your raid? The process shouldn't be "heal - don't heal - heal", but "high hps + low hpm - low hps + high hpm - high hps + low hpm"

Healing meters are often disguiding, especially if you have too many healers. (Which I don't say you do, but it's possible)

We run 5-6 healers in our 25-man, sometimes upping it to 7 when learning a new fight - seems like a pretty standard amount. We usually have 2 Druids in the raid, and always have a Shaman so with some hots + ES on the tank, there's really no need for me to spamcast at it unless there is heavy raid damage going around as well and the hots go off the tank. I'm not saying I just sit around there doing nothing, but like, there are definitely plenty of times when there are breaks in healing - depending on which encounter it is, of course. [/quote]


Having spent majority of tBC and WLK telling everyone how meaningless healing meters are, I know exactly what you mean - but I really don't think that's the case here.


Thing is, every single of my items with the exception of the Dragonmaw rep neck has Spirit on it, and I still could use some more regen. My primary spell is most of the time DL, and I use HR extensively; there's just no way I could get more regen now to compensate for more intensive casting unless I started stealing innervates from Druids. I'll obviously switch to more Haste-biased gear at some point - probably around 4p T11 - but for entry level raiding, I feel Crit has been an excellent choice.

At any rate, I don't want to argue that this is the perfect way to go or anything; just putting it out there, as it worked perfectly well for me and I think most people discard Crit as bad far too easily.

Well 5-6 Healers are of course not too many. So as long as you're successful with your strategy, as you are, go on. (and report if you get to compare)

The "problems" you list about holy paladin mastery aren't very accurate. Firstly, I was under the distinct impression that smaller shields actually REFRESH the duration of larger shields, NOT overwrite them. If they do overwrite, then you have a point, but I'm fairly certain they don't.

Secondly, I think that in a raid environment you can pretty much guarantee that your shield won't be wasted. I've only seen 4 fights so far in Cataclysm 10/25m, but every single one of them has some form of unavoidable and fairly constant raid damage. I don't see a reason why that trend wouldn't continue.

Yes smaller shields do not overwrite bigger ones, they only refresh them.

Case in point:

I would agree it's a viable way to generate HP, however, if your reason for generating HP faster is so you can use LoD, you are essentially stacking with the melee to heal. In doing this, you would spend alot of time adjusting your position to use even use LoD. Alot of the time the tanks are in need of constant heals, I just dont see the practical use of CS in raids. You can still cast HL, and by the end of your cast, HS will be off CD, or very close to use.