Holy Paladin Pve Guide(updated version)

[JimmyTheGoat]

Disclaimer: Yes i know there is a very similar thread on this forum, the reason for me making this thread is because i wasn't able to update the old thread i had made due to me being logged in as a guest, therefor i bring you the almost the same guide, but with a few tweaks
Guide to the holy paladin

Table of contents:
1) Introduction
2) Spec and Glyphs
3) Gear and Gems
4) Food and Flask's
5) Professions
6) Macro and Addons and programes
7) Spells and Healing styles
Sources

1.) Introduction
So you have maybe just rolled a paladin or are thinking about it? Maybe you allrdy have a paladin and are considering changing spec to holy? or maybe you are just looking for some ekstra tips on gear etc to help you out in a PvE environment?
Warning: If your allready an elitist who clears icc on hc mode every week you will not learn anything from this guide, its meant for newcommers to the holy spec.

2.) Spec and Glyphs
Okay first of all, lets get you speced right, there are some variants out there but these are the ones I'll advise you to take.
Divine Guardian 10man version: This spec here will be your typical ICC 10man hardmode spec were you might not have all the classes you hoped for so instead you bring some more utility(imp devo is for the 6% more healing).
Divine Guardian 25man version: Close to the same spec as before, again alot of utility from Divine Guardian which is a raid saver if you combine it with bubble. The only difference here comes from not taking imp devo aura as you should have another class buffing this.
Divinity-Ret:In this healing spec are we taking the 5points in divinity and gaining alot of crit but instead we are loosing the utility of divine guardian. Its more of a casual raid/heroic spec where the 2 listed above focuses more on hardmodes.
Holy-retNow i know you guys are gonna hate me for this one but I'll still list it. Its full focus on getting alot of ekstra crit and some movement speed which can be situational usefull. Its not really that good compared to the other specs.

The first 3 specs are recommend to try out and see what fits your playstyle.

Now for the Glyphs, first of all there are a few interresting glyphs and it should really depend on your playstyle which you pick, I'll advise the following 5major glyphs:
Glyph of Holy Light: Makes the 5 nearest targets take an additional 10% of your holy lights healing, in a 20k Holy light this makes it heal a total of 30k with 10k comming from an aoe heal which is something we paladins are lacking.
Glyph of Flash of Light: Improves the crit chance of your Flash of Light by 5%. A flat bonus to your fav spam heal, this will become less usefull on stress full fights and alot of ICC fights since you tend to throw alot of Holy Lights around instead.
Glyph of Beacon of Light: Increases the duration of your beacon of light by 30seconds. A neat glyph that can help you keep your beacon up, this is very handy on healing intensive fights for you to save a GCD. Also it will give you some more mana in a fight since you dont have to buff it that often.
Glyph of Seal of Wisdom: Reduces the mana cost's of your heals by 5% while your seal of wisdom is active. This is a very nice glyph for a mana intensive fight and those 5% might mean more than you think. Using either this or Glyph of Seal of Light is strongly recommend
Glyph of Seal of Light: Increases your Healing done by 5% while seal of light is active. A Nice glyph when you end up being more limited by how much you heal instead of running oom. Personally i would strongly recommend using either this or glyph of seal of wisdom in one of your slot's.
Glyph of Holy Shock: Reduces the cooldown of your holyshock by 1 second. It has it usefullness on fights where your moving alot and ofcourse also in pvp. But Generally i wouldn't recomend this glyph.
Glyph of Divinity: Your Lay on Hands grants twice as much mana as normal and also grants you as much mana as it grants your target. Very situational if you are sure the tank ain't gonna get bursted then you can this glyph and LoH yourself for an ekstra ~8k mana.

For minor Glyph I'll just list those that are usefull in pve:
Glyph of Lay on Hands: 5min of your favorite tank save? Sure.
Glyph of The Wise:Reduces the mana vost of your Seal of Wisdom. Pretty neat when using Glyph of Seal of Wisdom. Else it's not really all that usefull.
Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom: Increases the duration of your blessing of wisdom when you cast it on yourself. If you for somehow manage to not be able to buff your with wisdom while still managing to have a kings from another paladin, this is very usefull.
Glyph of Blessing of Kings: Reduces the manacost of your Blessing of kings and Greater blessing of kings by 50%. A semi usefull glyph for rebuffing a BR/ss'ed target during a fight.

This should cover spec and glyphs.
3.) Gear and Gems
Now basically i can tell you one thing about pala healers and their stat to stack. INT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111oneone1337!!!!!!leetwtf!1?

Basically everytime you consider taking another gem and you ask another paladin the question" What do you gem for?" he should be shouting this to you cause really thats the singel best stat any paladin healer can stack.

Here is a copy from EJ on what 100int will give you:

121 Intellect, with BoK and Divine Intellect
1815 Mana at the start of the fight
37.8Mp5 from Divine Plea, if it is used on CD.
18.1Mp5 from Replenishment.
4.7Mp5 from Arcane Torrent, if you are a Blood Elf.
24.2 Spell Power
0.726% Spell Crit

This is why INT is the most powerfull stat we can stack atm.

Basically you want to be using Brilliant King's Amber gems in all of your gear with the exception being 1x Nightmare Tear for activation of your Insightful Earthsiege Diamond which should allways be your meta socket.
Ofcourse this will all depend on your current gear setup cause if your not getting heals out fast enough/not strong heals enough, you should switch to Haste or spellpower gems.

This could be a decent gear setup which can be farmed entirely in heroics:
Pala Hc Gear
(epic win troll):Whatt??? Thats a 200iLevel libram!!!! OMG ROFLZORX nqqb guide writer!!!
me: Well unfortunatly that libram is still very viable due to the strong mana reduction on HL which is what i recommend spamming, go visit EJ if you dont feel satisfied.

For enchant's I'll just make a quick copy paste from EJ:

Enchant choices (from head to toe):
Head - 50 sp 10 Mp5 or 50 Spell Power and 20 Critical Strike Rating
Shoulder - 24 sp 8 Mp5 or 24 sp and 15 Critical Strike Rating
Cloak – 23 Haste
Chest - 10 to all stats or 250 Mana
Bracers – 16 Intellect or 30 Spell Power
Gloves – 28 Spell Power
Legs – 50 Spell Power
Shield - 25 Intellect
Weapon - 30 Intellect or 63 Spell Power
Boots – Run speed or 12 crit/hit

For further questions about "Is x better than y or z?" I will refer to rawr(see below).

4.) Food and Flask's
For being an effective holy paladin and allways doing your best you got to know which food and flasks to bring to the raid.

Flask's:
Flask of the Frost Wyrm: 125+spellpower, this is a neat bonus if your heals are comming up short.
Flask of Pure Mojo:45mp5. Another neat flask if your running oom on any fight.
Flask of Distilled Wisdom: 65+Int. A neat flask all around. It's an old Pre-TBC flask but its still viable today due to the buff to int for paly's. This should be the flask of which you use if you can afford it since it gives you the most overall benefit. So unless your running oom or not healing powerfully enough then go for this.

I wont bother listing elixirs for this since there ain't much difference and you shouln't be using this thread for min/max'ing.

Food: This is basically just for what you think you need, I'll list the best here:
Firecracker Salmon or Tender Shoveltusk Steak 46sp and 40 sta.
Imperial manta Steak or Very Burnt Worg 40haste and 40sta.
Mighty Rhino Dogs or Spicy Fried Herring 20mp5 and 40sta.
Poached Nettlefish or Spiced Worm Burger 40crit rating and 40 sta.

5.) Professions

Basically I'm gonna do this short and with a quick quote from EJ to begin with.

Alchemy
Mixology gives 47 Spell Power, 20 Intellect or 20 Mp5 depending on Flask used and you get double duration. Other conveniences: [Endless Mana Potion], Crazy Alchemist's Potion which is the same mana as Runic along with health and a random potion, and the ability to make your own uncut gems. In addition, you can use [Flask of the North] to gain 47 spell power if you don't want to use a normal flask.
Blacksmithing
Socket Glove/Socket Bracer - Gives you 40 Int or whatever stat/ranting you want via two additional gem sockets.
Enchanting
Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpowerx2 - Gives you 46 Spell Power.
Engineering
Hyperspeed Accelerators - This use effect can be used during Divine Plea to lessen the downside of Plea and for burst parts of encounter such as Phase 3 Festergut. Other useful tools: Nitro Boosts gives 24 crit rating and a 5s burst of speed and 27 spell power to cloak instead of Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed. Assuming you use a Mana Potion Injector, Engineers will get 25% more out of Runic Mana Potions used inside the Injector.
Inscription
Master's Inscription of the Crag or Master's Inscription of the Storm - 46 Spell Power increase over The Sons of Hodir exalted version.
Jewelcrafting
Dragon's Eye Gems - Gives you 42 int or additional item points with the stats or rating of your choice via three dragon's eye gems.
Leatherworking
Fur Lining - Spell Power - Offers you a 46 spell power upgrade over the regular spell power enchant.
Tailoring
Darkglow Embroidery - gives 44 Mp5 over time Or Lightweave Embroidery - gives 73 sp over time instead of Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed.
Skinning
Master of Anatomy - 40 crit rating.
Mining
Toughness - 60 stamina.
Herbalism
Lifeblood - Small self-only HoT that is off the GCD.

So clearly if you are gonna roll a pala and are wondering what proffesions are best? Then go with Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting, also these proffesions allows for the best selection of stats should you want to change spec later.

6.) Macro's Addons and Programs

First of all i would like to introduce you to a program called Rawr. What this program does is it can load your armory(suppose you play on normal servers) and then it can tell you what upgrades you can take etc and when it will be better to stay with your normal gear. Basically just learn to set it up and use it, cause its very usefull.

Next up is the addons:
First of all I would like to present you with what i would say is the 2 most important addons: Grid and Clique

Grid is an alternative Raid unit frames that places every person in a handy grid aswell as showing their hp, incomming heals etc etc. Whats good about Grid is that its very small and doesn't require alot of space on your screen, even while raiding 25man's. Here is a picture from me doing voa 10 with grid.


Clique is an addon that allows you to cast on specific clicks, like if i shift click on the tank I throw a holy shock, here is an example of how clique can be set up:



There is as far as I know 2 other addons that have these 2 build in functions, the first one is Vuhdo It functions just like grid+clique but it got a few nice touches like buff/debuff tracking and such.(Havn't tryed this out yet).

The other addon is Healbot. I'm pretty sure everybody have heard about this addon before. Its a neat addon with a few twirks and it's very easy to setup. All in all a good addon if your new to healing and addons in general.

Pallypower is the next addon, its not so much important as it is usefull. It will keep track of all your blessings and allow an easy rebuff, it's easy to configure,here is an SS of how it looks:



Another important addon is DBM(aka Deadly Boss mods)

Basically it will tell you about everything important in an encounter in an easy way.

The last of the addons i would recommend is Class timer. This addon will keep track of all the buff/debuffs you have placed on a target in a nice bar way.
Here is a picture of my full UI from a VoA 10.


Now basically I'll just talk abit about what you want from your UI:
First of all you want the info, you want to know what it is going on, who is loosing health/going to lose health.
Second you want is a clear view of the game, you still want to be able to see the game, and not only the addons.
Third you want something that looks nice(you define nice, it's individual so find something that suits you).
Basically these 3 things here are insanely important when you chose on which UI you want to go with. Cause if either of them lack, you can end up dying from standing in some stupid fire, let the dps die for close to no reason at all, or eventually go tired of the game because of the looks.


7.) Spells and Healing styles

First of all the spells:
Holy Light Our Greater heal which got the highest Healing Per Second
Flash of Light Our fast and mana efficient heal.
Holy shock Our mana expensive and Instant cast heal.
Beacon of Light This tool effectively allows up to keep a tank up while doing alot of group healing.
Sacred Shield Our shield effect. It procs every 6th second and absorbs some damage.
Cleanse Our dispell ability.
Divine Plea One of our major ways of gaining mana back. This spell also gives us a 50% healing reduction.

Now for the different styles we are seing 2 styles: The Flash of light style, and the Holy Light style, this guide have so far being written upon the Holy light style of healing and i will just mention the flash of light style quickly.

The flash of light style buffs sacred shield and the flash of light hot alot and actually makes them quiet stable buffs however the healing output is lower than when you just go for the holy light playstyle and you will run oom very quickly if you start spamming holy light. So basicall you will be spamming FoL and throwing a few Holy shocks on spikey damage as it lands. Divine plea shouldn't be a real issue here due to FoL's low cost but if it turns out to be then go for a trinket+wings and then just spam FoL.

Holy light style:
Here we are focusing on using HL as much as we can to keep people up. Its more mana intensive than the other styles but also results in a higher healing output. SS is still worth keeping up just for the absorb effect. You will use Flash of Light when the pressure on an encounter ain't that high while spamming Holy Light as much as possible when it gets tough. Most of the time you will be set on the tank healing. Here it can be a good idea to beacon the Off tank while spam healing the Main tank. Ofcourse you shouldn't listen to me here but to the raidleader who tells you if he wants you to do for an example some group healing instead. You shouldn't really care about over healing as you most likely are gonna be doing that alot, but it's okay as long as you dont go oom. All in all you will just be using Holy Light more than Flash of light, but every depends on the encounter and your setup.

Most importantly is to think smart, as i once saw a person say:

Paladin's dont got smart heals like Priest's with their Prayer of Mending, so instead we have to be smart healers.

Try to imagine this, the tank have just tanken in a 15k hit and you start casting Holy Light, While casting the boss decide to do some random damage and low-aoe damage. Here you let your Holy light go off and with the glyph you have taken care of some of the melee aswell. you instantly do a holyshock on one of that targets that have taken some random damage and since you were lucky and got a crit you fire up an instant Flash of Light on another target.

This is ofcourse a very rare case but the idea is that you have to use your heals when you think they serve the purpose better. The whole reason behind the Fol vs HL is because raid damage and also tank damage will start to be higher so thats why HL wins out in the end, since it heals for more. But to use HL properly you actually have to gem for int, and alot of it, this is why the split betwenne fol and HL is there.

About divine Plea: This is our blessing and now also our curse. It empowers a -50% healing done on us generates a staggering 25% mana. Basically always when your using this, unless damage is very low, then you want to be firing up abilities such as a + spell power trinket, Avenging Wrath, or bubble + Blessing of Sacrifices/Divine Guardian, Divine Illumination(if you got the 2pT10 bonus).

There is also a very good guide(non-class specific) here on mmowned, its here: All credits too the author of that thread.

For addition tips and tricks you can go visit EJ's guide(link is at the bottom).




8.) Sources
I forgot most of them but here is the one i can remember:
Holy Paladin Compendium for 3.3 - Elitist Jerks
All of the people who posted in the first topic with good critisme.

P.S if you want me to post my full UI for you too download then I'll do it just request it
P.P.S Sorry for all the grammar errors it's getting really late where I'm from so i hope you can understand.

[Amirite]

Great effort! +Rep

[Stecky]

Very good guide. Thanks =)

[JimmyTheGoat]

Thanks to both of you Also on a side note, I've being thinking about writing a similar warrior tanking guide, if people are interested then just post/pm me
Also criticism is always appreciated(if it's constructive criticism that is )

[abhorsenjay]

+Rep good effort