Retribution healer - Possible or Impossible?
 

I made this build of my several weeks ago and it heals just like pre-WOTLK holy.

My character's name is Allisande and she's on Earthen Ring.

This build prioritizes any crit and spellpower you can get. Intelligence is a bonus. MP/5sec is a definite must just as holy, but since the spell of choice is flash of light, its not as needed as much as a holy build who spends a ton of time casting holy light and holy shock.

I've been using this through all the instances up to UP/HOL. I have yet to run Circle of Time: Stratholme as a healer.
FYI: CS will be taken off once I hit 80 as I never expect to use it.

I am not saying this should ever be the main healer in a raid, mind you. This is meant to be similar to be a discipline priest.

Things to keep in mind that I'm not sure the forum knows about:
Sheath of Light procs stack, but only for the origional duration ( You cast holy light, it crits, leaving the proc. 6 seconds later you proc again, the two procs stack for 6 seconds, then goes to the 60% of the second spell for the remaining proc. )
As I have not yet hit Heroics, I spend a ton of time up close and person while throwing out FoLs / HLs when the need arises...unless the fight demands I not be. ( I learned this the hard way while dpsing on fleshhook. )

I do not want flaming or trolling, please leave constructive and positive feedback on my forum. Also, I am not looking for any "This build sucks, or you suck." It took me alot of courage just to post this.

If you want to use this spec to heal heroics, I see many problems coming your way.
Just looking at the talent tree, i really could not figure out your main aim. First, I thought you wanted some healing power for PvP, so you could DPS a bit, but increase your survivability as well. But you didn't take some essential PvP talents, so I'm guessing this is not your aim.
Then I thought you wanted to be a healer who could DPS a little, in heroics that is, but if you want to keep flash of light as your main healing spell, you'll need tons of spellpower, haste, and definitely nearly no DPS time due to you having to spam it like crazy still wondering why ou can not top your tank up. Also, I think you could face really serious prolems healing your party when your tank is getting healed.

Besides all that, I see some talent points which imo are wasted pretty much, such as your 2 points in "divine purpose" in ret tree. I didn't quite understand why you wanted it.

bottomline, I wouldn't recommend using this spec. The healing DPS paladins are used to be called "shockadins", which means mostly spells with stacking spellpower, not melee hits and for that, afaik, they never used two handed weapons, and your points in two-handed weapon specialization in ret tree are also irrelevant with shockadin effect. If I were you, I would go with the conventional talent tree templates. They have been tested out and found as best by many. You can play around a few talent points to best suit your needs, but your current tree would fail even in heroics which are considered to be cake due to easy content and easy epics to outgear them fast.

My build specifically is going down to Sheath of Light and maximizing its potential.

This isn't for pvp, this is for instances and heroics.

Its hard to say what I'm going for but the aim is clear: Healing. Not surviveability. My equipment is heavily stacked with crit and spellpower, yes, but base attack power and any that increase attack power also now increase my spellpower. At 78, my spell power is already over 1200, and my crit is 27ish %. Typically I can get over 1500-1660 if buffed with might or battleshout.

You are sacrificing the only way you have to heal aoe in order to have an Instant Flash of light. Sure, instant is faster than a normal flash, but it's 1 flash every GCD anyway. Plus you need to be meleeing to get the proc, which means you can't proc it if you are healing unless you have GCD to spare, or if the situation asks you to stay far away from melee (or at small range for judgment).

Sheath of light is the other talent that helps retri healing trough instances/pvp. It provides some spellpower from your ap, but still you can go much higher in spellpower just gearing for spellpower. The hot can seem nice, but it really doesn't justify 44 point into retri.
The pally style is spamming. It's nice to buffer damage with a hot, but your hot is not on demand, is not as strong as renew (which is at the moment not really a main spell for any pve raid specced priest) or even more the druids' hots. Plus, it's not like pallies needs to have a hot to keep up a tank since single target healing is what you are good at. And to fast heal the group Beacon is much more useful. I personally don't see why you would like to have this talent over almost half of the holy tree talents all togheter.


EDIT: all this from a perspective of Heroic/raid spec. If you wanna be hybrid specced to be able to main heal in instances while levelling and being able to solo quests in a more confortable way, than I have nothing to say since I have no way to evaluate how good or bad that spec can be compared to other possible levelling specs.

P.S.
You shouldn't compare your spec to a discipline priest if you have no idea what a discipline priest is now. Discipline is the MT healing spec for priests. We (I play one, yeah) provide additiona mitiagtion, a ton of damage prevention and than have penance, which is better than any other healing spell for it provides good heals for 3 times over a small cast time (lower than 2 seconds for me), and the total heal is lower than a holy light, but higher than a Greater Healing.
There may be some problems (starvation sometimes, usually not on raid bosses in my raids at least) and bug here and there (divine aegis), but discipline is a strong pve healing spec, not a backup/lesser healing spec.

I simply don't like Holy.

THe amount of M/5sec to keep myself at any decent amount of Mana is absolutely infuriating. The need to cast beacon of light every minute also infuriates me to no end. I end up OOM in seconds instead of over five minutes ( if a fight lasts that long ) with my current build. With seal of wisdom and judgements being cast, my mana hardly ever goes under the 70% mark.

I'm not gearing for attack power, at all. Attack power helps my healing when buffed with it.
The hot may not seem all that much but it is also the only HOT we can get , ever.

Yes, spamming is what I do... but I want to spam something that I can spam instead of using it once every eight seconds.

It looks like I'm simply going to have to go into Heroics with this build and see what happens.

EDIT:
Oh, and unlike Rejuv/Renew, Sheath of Light stacks. Again.

You should go read the holy topic a bit and see why your complaining about mp5 is exactly why you are going oom.

(hint: intellect)

In general, I feel you give up way too much for what you gain, defenitly if the aim of this build is to be a pure pve healer.

Doubt you'd get "you suck and so does your build" flame responses here, tbh.

As far as constructive feedback: as already pointed out, what you lose is more than what you gain. If you had said this is a pvp build, there might be some consideration given to it as a funky way to add survivability to, say, 5 mans.

For PVE it really would serve little to no purpose. This is not like a Disc priest, who still heal, have huge mana supplies and regen, but who bring a different set of talents to a raid. Not only would your heals be weak, you would run out of mana in a heartbeat. And it doesn't sound like your plan is to do much melee, which is needed to gain the instant FoL. In other words, mp5 is found on healing gear and AP/dps gear can't support any real healing in heroics/raids.

If you're looking for a role where you add some dps, but also heal, the best option is still retri - judgment of Light, which heals significantly (I would wager as much as running around with a dual holy/retri spec and going oom) and allows you to bring buffs like Kings and Retri haste/dmg aura.

The main flaw is that you're assuming heroics and raids need an optional secondary healer (as you say, you have yet to see heroics/raids in this build). They don't anymore. This may help in pre-80 dungeons when healers are not fully geared. By the time they start the 80 gear-up, however, and certainly when raids get going, the need for this 'hybrid' model of 'ok at some things, great at nothing' is all but annihilated. Even if Lich has not balanced everything entirely, they certainly have gotten rid of the need for retris to be self-sacrificial "healers" and mana batteries.

No, not your only hot. You can glyph flash of light if you really want a hot. Tought I'd personally advice you not to.
I just said what are the purposes of hots. The tank one has no meaning for a pally, due to the very nature of pally healing, the "I just throw there a hot to fill that group member healt pool" isn't possible due to the hot being a proc. Sure this second version can be useful, but your class is designed to spam 2 flashes and do the work 2 hot can do. As a priest with a levelling spc I used to renew because it was mana efficient i.e. for pallies flashing is mana efficient.

I know Beacon is trouble. Pallies can't go oom unless they use it. I personally had to train one of our guild holy pally so I know 100% what you are talking about. But the solution has come at lvl 71. Basically Divine Plea is your new anti-oom tool. You just use it every time it's up, it's the highest mana regen source for a holy pally: higher than crits, higher than replenishment, higher than jow.


EDIT: Both Replenishment and Divine plea are based on your mana pool, so the bigger it is, the higher mana you get back. That's the answer to every mana problem.

Why you would not cap out JotW is a bit much. If you want to heal while leveling up and early instances at 80 I would just suggest swapping gear and healing as a pure ret spec. For heroics you are going to be needing a tank that is a good bit better geared than you, as you will have to spam flash to keep him up and if he takes a spike it can be hard to recover.

I admit it was probably stupid not to get it and the ret portion of the tree is definately still under construction.

I should have a movie of my style up sometime relatively soon. But I don't know when.
My HPS is 700ish. I'm not sure how haste is important though. I was thinking spellpower and crit would be far more impotant than haste.

I hope you got that 700 figure wrong, because it seems really low even for your gear and level. For reference I was putting out 1000+ hps in Kara gear at 70.

Current paladins in 80 level epics can break 10,000 hps if the fight offers that much incomming damage.

To be honest I'm still not sure if you just want to do heroics with this spec, or to raid too.


Because for raiding someone already said you ain't gonna take the spot of a 100% healer. Sure your heals are as strong as those of a holy pally, a part for the Holy Guidance bonus, but you lack Light's Grace for some quick holy light if you need to spam it, you lack your "oh shit" button (Holy Shock, which should crit for 6-8k for a 10/25 man mix geared pally) and your only way to heal aoe. All this in order to get a dps you can't unleash.
The only plus I see for your spec, is that in a naxx run where you need usually 2 healer, you can be the 3rd healer that it may be needed on some encounter (4h mostly, sapphiron eventually i.e.). But you probably need to be in a guild to be able to run with that spec anyway since pugs usually prefear to avoid anything that doesn't seem standard for the fear you are a noob or because they are noobs.

As far for heroics, again, the only problem I see is the lack of aoe. If you can manage something like loken in HC without the need for your teammates to play the encounter in a perfect way, than you can heal in HC with that spec.

700 is without using holy light.

Hmm, let's ignore the flash spamming and the 700 HPS for now (bandages are 725 hps, assuming you have enough people to use them on ;) ).

What exactly is your aim with this build? I still haven't figured that out.

Let's make this clear: if you want a build for pure healing, this is not the one you're looking for. Sheath of light is not strong nor reliable enough for that.

If on the other hand, you want something you can use to heal instances and solo with, I can see some point in this discussion.

To piggyback my follow up questions on to this: if you ARE looking to be more or less a healer, is it as a main healer or as some sort of living "panic button" to fill out healing when it gets bad but otherwise dps somewhat?

I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that you were going for a hybrid theory where you could do both. Some of your posts since seem to suggest that you want to be a main healer but you can't stand holy pally as it currently exists.