Arena Paladin Healing Guide

[issuesbunny]

Written by Grandeath of Nihlium.

This guide is written with the aim to help holy paladins out there with some tips for playing 5on5 arenas. Even though I try to be right about everything in the guide, I'm sure there are more than one thing in this guide that could be up for discussion. I have generalized and I have simplified, fair enough. I'm not assuming any foreknowledge either, so you will find a lot of basic stuff in this guide as well. Just take from this guide whatever you find useful, and ignore the rest!



The classical 41 holy 20 prot is a common spec. You can also find 43 holy 18 prot, but the specs are in these neighborhoods. Here is a suggestion for a 5on5 holy paladin spec:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Let's talk about some key talents, starting in the holy tree.

2.1. Holy tree:

Divine Illumination:
This 41p holy talent is a must in 5on5 because it will save you alot of mana in combination with chaincasting Holy light, which you will find yourself doing a lot.

Unyielding faith:
One of the most important things in arena is crowdcontrol, and one of the most common crowd control spells is fear. This 10% additional chance of resisting fears is very good for countering crowdcontrol.

Light's Grace:
This one should be a no-brainer, and while writing this, I asked myself which talents don't need explanation and which ones do. I'll be on the safe side and say fast which ones are no-brainers.
Divine Intellect, Spiritual Focus, Healing Light, Aura Mastery, Illumination, Divine Favor, Holy Power, Holy Shock and Holy Guidance.
I have Improved LoH for PvE reasons only. So don't take that. (Yes, I both raid and pvp with my spec).
Now what about Improved Blessing of Wisdom? I say skip it. I have it for PvE reasons only. In 5on5, with the amount of 4 dps 1 healer burst teams out there, the extra stats from BoK are more important than better mana regen from BoW because what kills you will most likely be burst dps and not because the arena lasted 5 mins.
Sanctified light:
If you have talent points left now, which you should if you didn't pick LoH and BoW like I did, then pick this talent for sure. 6% more crit chance from holy light means more healing done and mana back from illumination.

Now i have only 2 talents left to bring up, Pure of heart and Blessed life. Blessed life basically means you will take less damage over time. It's based on chance so sometimes you have no use for it at all. Pure of heart gives you up to 15% chance to resist curses and diseases. Now if you have one or a few talents left to spend, I say spend it in Pure of heart. Because in 5on5 arena as a paladin, resisting curse of tongue helps your team a lot more than sometimes only taking half damage.



2.2. Protection tree:

Guardians favor:
A must because Blessing of protection and blessing of freedom are 2 very important skills to use for protecting your teammates.

Spend 3 talents in toughness to get to the next tier.

Blessing of kings:
You need this blessing for increased stats, most importantly HP, on your teammates.

Improved righteous fury:
Buff yourself with this before all arenas to take 6% less dmg. It also serves as a buff you can place in front of more important buffs like fortitude. A lot of teams dispel/purge their opponents so make sure to have the most important buffs first, and then fill up your buff spots with less and less important buffs. For example warlocks underwater breathing and detect invisibility, or mages rank 1 amplify magic or dampen magic.

I put one talent in Anticipation to get to the next tier. Anticipation = avoidance = Not only less damage taken but also increased chance to avoid melee silence effects.

For 5on5 I put 3 points in improved concentration aura first. The last 2 points are something you can consider, do you want 10% increased resistance to stun effects from stoicism, or do you want 10 sec lesser cooldown on hammer of justice? The answer depends on your playstyle. If you are active with stunning enemy players with hammer of justice, then improved hammer of justice can be a better choice for you. If you are more defensive and focused about healing then stoicism might be your choice.



I use a medium amount of resilience on my gear, using 4 merciless gladiator armor items, the lvl 70 pvp trinket, the gladiator healing shield plus the healing mace. Rest of the armor slots are pve healing items. The holy paladin could of course get more resilience gear using pvp honor reward gear, but I find the increased resilience not needed. Our survivability is already very good. You want a decent amount of stamina for survival, and good healingstats mainly +healing for effective healing. The healingstats I'd rank according to importance as this: +healing > spellcrit > mp5. For those not getting much pve loot, I recommend all the items you can get through arena rewards and honor rewards.



Not much to explain. Buff everyone with blessing of kings because the increased stats, mainly HP, is very important in 5on5. Make sure you bless after any priest, mage and druid has buffed. If any buffs are to be dispelled, it's better if yours are than theirs. Also buff yourself with Righteous fury. When fighting in an arena, you will use blessing of protection and blessing of freedom on your teammates. Many times it's not wise to re-bless since you have more urgent things to do during a fight, but if you have time and mana then re-bless.

Be aware of that most teams have their burst in the beginning using pom pyro, bloodlust, trinkets and other cooldowns. So if the fight goes on for some time, consider blessing mana classes with blessing of wisdom, if you decide the mana regen is more important than the stats at that stage of the fight. Mana classes can always try to drink, but if I find that the priest in my team has very low mana during the fight, I usually put blessing of wisdom on him.



5.1. Holy light:

You can keep different ranks of holy light keybinded. I only use highest rank and rank 1, but other paladins use other ranks to heal a fair amount and keep the light's grace buff up, and that's something I'd recommend you try only if you feel like it. I use Holy light rank 1 on a random target to just get lights grace buff up. In 5on5 you will find yourself using a lot of holy light. When you predict you come to a situation, usually at the start of the arena when the teams charge, when you need to put out a lot of healing, I recommend popping Divine illumination and +heal trinket if you have, and start healing with holy light.

Don't be too afraid to overheal, as prehealing is important especially if it's a 4 dps team targeting one of your teammates. After the initial dps rush, you have to consider slowing down the heals to conserve mana.

From the moment you engage the enemy, you have to be aware of who the dps classes are, who are they targeting, how much damage are they doing, what crowd controlling are they doing. And when you have all these factors in your head, you can start deciding when holy light isn't needed and flash of light is enough. Then you use flash of light to conserve mana.

5.2. Flash of light:

The good thing about flash of light is that it's the most mana effective heal in the game. If you can keep people up with only flash of light then thats what you should use at that time. But keep in mind that in 5on5 arenas, against a burst team of 4 dps 1 healer which are common nowadays, then flash of light simply wont be enough healing per second to keep your teammates alive. A common arena game means using a lot of holy light in the beginning, then gradually using more and more flash of light as the burst from the enemy team has worn off. So yes, there is a place for flash of light in arenas, because of its great effectivness. Aim to use it as often as possible, but be careful about it and be aware of what kind of dmg that is incoming on your teammates. Also keep a rank 1 flash of light key binded, it's good sometimes in emergencies.

5.3. Holy shock:

Holy shock with its 15 sec cd, and not being as manaeffective as flash of light, is only used in special situations. When the survival of you or one of your teammates depends on fractions of a second. There are 2 situations where I find myself using holy shock. In both of these situations, I use divine favor (if ready) + holy shock to get that extra hp healed. Remember that divine favor doesn't get silenced/locked down, so you can use it even when silenced.

First one, and the most common one, is when I've been silenced and I'm waiting for my spells to get ready. I see my teammate HP goes lower and lower, maybe as low as 5-10% and I realise i won't have time to cast even a 1.5 sec flash of light before he will die. What I do then is make sure I'm in range for holy shock - remember it's only 20 yard range - I target him, and spam holy shock before it's ready until its ready and has gone off. Hopefully it landed before he died. Next thing I do is cast a flash of light.

Second situation is when a teammate goes low hp, might have dots ticking, I'm healing him but my heals fail to land because he's going out of sight to protect himself from another enemy spell. (I hate when they go out of sight :P ). He might be protected for the next few seconds, but lets say he's at 10% hp with dots ticking, then one spell or hit from an enemy who goes after him is enough to get him killed. I run after him behind the object he's hiding behind, cast holy shock, then flash of light.



6.1. Blessing of Protection:

Maybe one of the best things about having a paladin in the arena team. Use it wisely though, even with spec, it's 3 min cd, which means you'll most likely only be able to use one BOP per game. Also use it in good time. Against a 4 dps team which all focus one guy, you can't wait until 5-10% hp before you bop, because after the BOP he can still take spell damage. Also the server latency makes the BOP take slightly longer to land than might appear. So use BOP preemptively. Be aware of who the enemy is targeting. After you BOP, be ready for the enemy to change their dps to another target.

6.2. Blessing of Freedom:

Blessing of Freedom is not only good for offensive tactics, meaning putting freedom on the warrior so he can run freely without getting frostnova etc. You should also use it as a protective means. Let's say your priest or shaman got a warrior on him, and you have cooldown on BOP. Then you freedom the priest/shaman and tell your teammates to slow the warrior down with hamstring/crippling poison/frost shock. If the enemy team then gives blessing of freedom to their warrior, tell your shaman/priest to purge/dispel it and then slow the warrior down again. Your priest/shaman will now be free from taking warrior damage most of the time. Same goes of course for a rogue attacking.
6.3. Hammer of Justice:

Very good for buying some time for your teammate taking meleedamage. Stun the rogue/warrior that's going after your priest/shaman. But before you make that decision, consider the game as a whole and ask yourself if it's really needed. Because if it's not, you should use your Hammer of Justice offensive instead. If you have protected your teammate with blessing of freedom + slowdown then hammer of justice is not needed.



7.1. Hammer of justice:

Used with good timing, this ability can win games. You can for example stun healers when the target they heal are at like 50% hp or less. You can do this as a casual thing to do with your Hammer of justice if you can't find anything better to do with it. The most powerful thing you can do though, is to coordinate with the rest of the teams crowd controllers. One of my favorite interrupt combos is when I'm teamed up with a shaman. We interrupt the enemy healer by doing Earth shock -> Hammer of justice -> Earth shock -> Arcane torrent -> Earth shock. Of course some of our abilities can be resisted, and hammer of justice can be removed with pvptrinket. But the total possible time the healer will be unable to heal is pretty long. My 3on3 team has finnished alot of games with this interrupting. In a 5on5 team you might have classes to coordinate with that can silence/fear/blind etc.

Video - Stunning enemy healer

Hammer of justice can also be a way of somewhat increasing dps against an enemy. If you stun the enemy your team is dpsing, he can't dodge. And if your team is dpsing a mage, and the mage blinks, use your hammer of justice on him asap, that will lock him down and make him take a lot of damage.Hammer of justice is a very powerful ability in arenas, so play around with it and consider different ways to improve your games with it. Timing is everything.

7.2. Blessing of freedom:

Using blessing of freedom on a warrior/rogue means they can't be slowed down and will do more damage on their target. However don't bless your warrior/rogue with blessing of freedom unless it's really needed, because otherwise you'll want to keep blessing of kings on your teammates giving them increased stats which means more hp and more dps.

7.3. Cleanse:

Be fast with important cleanses. It's normal in arenas that your warrior or rogue gets sheeped/slowed down. The faster you cleanse it, the more dps they can put out and the higher chance you have of winning. If you face teams that dispel/purge the blessing of freedom that you put on your warrior/rogue, then cleansing them fast from their frostnovas etc is important. But be careful not to cleanse unstable affliction. And also don't cleanse normal dots. It's more important to heal up the damage. Remember though that it's better to put blessing of freedom on your melee, then to cleanse away their frostnova/crippling poison each time they get it.

7.4. Judgement of justice:

If you meet a team and you decide you wanna go for a class thats still mounted and might try to ride away, you use seal of justice and mount up. When you charge, you target that guy, judge him with judgement of justice and use hammer of justice on him. This will prevent him from riding away and lock him down.

7.5. Holy shock:

Since holy shock used in healing gear does pretty low damage it's nothing you should go around and spam enemies with every 15 sec. However, it's useful sometimes. Maybe your team has just crowd controlled their healers and you are trying to kill one of them before their healers are back to heal, then you can contribute to your dps with a holy shock. Holy shock is also good to use to kill totems you want down asap, to use on enemy healers drinking/trying to get out of combat, to use on evocating mages or someone bandaging. Also remember you can use Divine favor + holy shock to get that crit. But of course always remember that your main priority is to keep the team alive, not to deal damage.



8.1. Curse of tongues:

Seriously slows our heals down. Ask for a decurse if you have a decurser in your team. Else ask yourself if you can keep the team up with curse of tongues. If you decide you can't, use bubble. If possible go out of range from the warlock so he cant reapply it. If you decide you can keep the team up with curse of tongues, heal as usual except now you do a lot more prehealing.

8.2. Silence:

Silence from mages, shadowpriests and warlock pets. Most of these can't be avoided so you have to deal with them and prepare for them. That means make sure people are at 100% hp as much as possible so they can survive for the time you will be silenced. Of course use improved concentration aura which will reduce the duration of silences by 30%.

8.3. Fear:

When you get feared you can either use the pvp trinket or bubble to remove it. But first decide if its needed or not. Check how long the fear is, count it down while looking at your teammates HP and also how far away they are. If you decide they wont die before your fear is gone and you are back to heal them, then save your cooldowns for later. Fear is something that can be used very often by warlocks and priests, so don't panic and bubble/trinket instantly. Protect yourself from fears by keeping distance to warlocks, warriors and priests since they all have aoe fears. Your team doesn't want to clump up against any aoe fearing class.

Keep distance to warlocks is a general rule cause they are our greatest threat being able to both curse of tongues, fear and manadrain us. They can also silence with their pets, but we can't keep distance from that.

8.4. Manaburn:

This can be avoided pretty easily. If it's a priest manaburning you, then move away from the priest, go line of sight, go out of range, hammer of justice him, arcane torrent. Ask your teammates to crowd control the priest. You could bubble, but then the priest will just massdispel it if he's still not crowd controlled.
If it's a warlock manadraining then be aware that in many cases it's wise to cleanse the manadrain. If you are being manadrained, spam cleanse on yourself and run away from the warlock. Of course cleanse should not be used when unstable affliction is on target. You can use hammer of justice and if you are horde, arcane torrent, to buy some time avoiding manadrain. Go line of sight and out of range to avoid manadrain. Make your teammates slow the warlock down.

8.5. Sheep:

Pvp trinket or bubble if nothing else. If you play with a priest then he should dispel it. If you play with a shaman then you can for example first use pvp trinket, and then put blessing of sacrifice on someone who takes damage. Either the enemys main dps target, or just someone who has dots ticking. That will get you out of sheep. Use Blessing of sacrifice rank 1 to save some mana.



9.1. Divine Shield:

As paladins are among the hardest classes to kill in arenas, you can use your divine shield for other things than to save yourself from dying. A good example is to use it before you actually get silenced or any other crowdcontroll. When the teams engage, you pop divine shield, and can - unless massdispelled - freely heal your team without getting interrupted in any way. Works really good. As always, it's very important to know when to use this tactic and when not to use it. Check your opponent, get a feel for what they are able to do in terms of dps and crowd control, and make a fast decision to use divine shield or not when you engage.

9.2. Drinking:

Usually there won't be any need to drink. But sometimes the enemy team setup is of the kind that makes the game a fight of endurance and about healer mana. When that is the case, coordinate the healing with the other healer. Take turns in who is "mainhealing" and who is holding back and trying to get out of combat to drink. Use fakehealing, casting heals, stopcasting, to lure your enemies into thinking you are in combat, and then suddenly you are out of combat and getting some mana from drinking. Also, if you are sheeped or feared, and the other healer have the healing under control, then you can safely click your drink to get some mana right after the fear or sheep ends as you usually are out of combat by then.

9.3. Ressing:

Ressing is not a common thing in arenas. But you should be aware that it is possible, and that you will get chances to do it sometimes, and that your enemy will get those chances aswell. Just be aware that you actually can ress in arenas, that's the most important thing. Keep enemy ressers in combat, for both keeping them from drinking and keeping them from ressing.

9.4. Communication:

This is something that goes out to everyone doing arenas, not just paladins. The better you communicate the better you will play. Use voicecom! Some of the most important things to say on voicecom are these:

Silenced/feared/sheeped: Even though unit frames display these debuffs, say it on voicecom as well. You can buy some important time with that! If a dps class is silenced he doesn't have to say it, but if a healer gets silenced he say it so that the other healer and/or his teammates knows that he can't heal for some seconds and they can use evasive actions if needed, like vanish, blink, iceblock, aoe fear, etc. Anything that keeps the healers from healing should be announced.

Target BoP'ed/iceblock/divine shield: If the target your dps is trying to kill gets boped, then it needs to be dispelled/purged asap. If iceblock or divine shield then it can be massdispelled.

9.5. Prios:

You have to know what's most important in every situation. Usually there are more than one thing you need to do, but you need to decide which ability to use, which ability will benefit your team more than the other at that time. What if your shaman is down to 30% hp and your priest just got sheeped, do you cleanse the priest, costing you a global cooldown, or do you heal the shaman first? Prios is learned by experience by playing and facing alot of different teams many times. Use your brain and respect that your responsibility is to keep the team alive.



Thats about it! If I find things to correct or change in this guide in the future I will. I hope it is to some use for you out there! Good luck!

[heymyname]

nice... did you jsut copy/paste this or actually write it?

[issuesbunny]

Written by Grandeath of Nihlium.