Holy Paladin- New stats and spells and how to use them.

Introduction


Okay, first of all welcome to these forums, and if you’re new to the guild, then welcome there too!
With all the new class changes to Paladins in general, I thought I should make a guide on the pve Holy aspect, based on my own personal experience, opinions, and hours of trawling through forums on the internet.


Stats:

Holy Paladins, in terms of Healing per Second (HPS) and mana efficiency look mostly towards just 3 stats nowadays.
These are in order of importance, Intellect, Spell Power, Crit rating.
The reasons why are covered below.

Intellect:

Since the mechanic chances in Wotlk, Int has been heavily buffed, it’s now a Holy Paladins most effective stat, item point wise.
To give an example taken from the EJ forums, 100 Int while fully raid buffed will give:
• 126.5 Intellect
• 1897 Total Mana
• 39.5mp5 from Divine Plea
• 21.3mp5 from Replenishment
• 25.3 Spell Power
• 0.759% Spell Crit
This speaks for itself, all those good bonuses from one, relatively cheap stat.


Spell Power:

Let’s start with the obvious, Spell Power (SP) increases the amount healed by your healing spells, therefore it’s an increase in HPS. What makes it extra special is the spell coefficient on Flash of Light, at 113% of spell power, it scales better than almost every other 1.5s cast and because of its low mana cost, at higher levels of SP, its effectiveness becomes larger.


Crit Rating:

Contrary to popular belief, Crit isn’t the be all and end all stat for Holy Paladins, it hasn’t been since the Illumination nerfs, and isn’t in Wotlk either. Granted a Crit is 60% of base mana cost refunded, and half extra healed, but stacking spell power over Crit works out as more HPS, and stacking Int works out as more mp5, due to the new Divine plea spell covered later. Don’t get me wrong though, Crit is still a very nice stat, and should by no means be avoided, but other stats preferred.

Stats we no longer need:


Mp5:

As simple as I can put it now, just don’t touch this stat, it’s useless, on item point expense, Int returns so much more mp5 than actual mp5 does.


Haste:

Formerly considered a ‘must have’ by most Sunwell level Paladins, haste is now a bit of a wasted stat. The more haste you have the less a difference it makes, and with raid buffs and self buffs, a paladin operates with 26% haste before any from gear is even applied. The casts are fast enough already, there’s no need to speed them up further.



Spells and abilities:


So you’re in a raid now, you’ve been given your assignment by your raid leader, to follow out your assignment you have a vast array of both old and new spells. The Holy Paladin has transformed from a 2 button class in TBC to one with many things to think about in Wotlk.

A good Holy Paladin will have to use all his spells in an encounter, in the right order, using his discretion for when the right time is for each, and what to do while using the spells. Most falter at this point and it makes the difference between an ok Holy Paladin who can spam his tank, and an excellent Holy Paladin who helps hold a raid together.

The spells we use can be split into 2 categories, Healing spells and Support Spells.



Healing Spells:


Flash of Light:

1.5s unhasted Cast, low mana cost, moderate HPS.
40y range.
This is our ‘main’ healing spell, and will be cast the most often. Never get into the routine of only using this spell during a fight though, that’s the route to laziness, and your target dying. The great advantage this spell has over other healing classes is it has a higher spell coefficient than most 1.5s spells. Add to is the tiny mana cost and it becomes a powerful healing tool. It’s used to lay out a steady stream of HPS and should be spammed between casting all the other utility spells. We gain no spirit based mp5, even out of the 5s rule, so spamming is fine.



Holy Light:

2.5s unhasted cast
2.0s unhasted cast with Light’s Grace proc
1.5s unhasted cast with Infusion of Light proc
1.0s unhasted cast with both the above proc
40y range.

This spell is the main reason Holy Paladins are brought to raids, although most don’t know it as we aren’t really watched enough to realise the huge impact this spell can have. It stands out because no other spell in game has single target HPS to match it, when there’s intense damage on your target, a paladin will (for a short time) handle it with Holy Light where other healers would fail. The downside to this spell is its mana cost. At 26% of base mana, you won’t sustain this spell for long and should only be used when the situation becomes dire, unpredicted spike damage on a tank, a mob breaking lose into the raid, unexpected aoe wiping most of the raids health pool etc. A good Holy Paladin has to judge (excuse the pun) when this spell is absolutely needed, and when he can get away without using it. Many a wipe will be caused because the Paladin has chosen the wrong option and either his target has died or he’s gone oom too fast.



Holy Shock:

Instant Cast
40y range
6s Cooldown

Gone are the days that this was a terrible pve healing spell. With its range doubled, its cooldown more than halved, and its effectiveness increased, Holy Shock is now one of the best weapons in the Holy Paladins arsenal. Its healing is larger than a Flash of Light, but less than a Holy Light. However its mana efficiency is similar to that of Holy Light. Therefore it should be used sparingly.

In a calm and controlled encounter, where nothing is going wrong, this spell will probably never be used. On guild progress attempts, and particularly aoe heavy/difficult encounters, you’ll find yourself using this spell more and more.

There are several practical uses for Holy Shock. Primarily as a lifesaver tool. When a character is moments from death, no other class has a single spell instant heal available to save them. A low health target taking damage should be Holy Shocked immediately.

The other use for this spell is to add some much needed mobility to the Holy Paladin. Gone are the days of not being able to move and heal. With Holy Shock now being rolled into the Sanctified Light talent (6% more Crit) and already gaining 10% Crit from other talents, and the Infusion of Light talent granting an instant Flash of Light or 1s off your Holy Light cast when Holy Shock crits, Paladins can heal on the move. A technique I use while moving and healing, is to rely on Holy shock every time it’s off cooldown, stopping just enough time for a Flash of Light assuming no proc, and staying mobile if it procced. This was a Paladin can move from A to B with quite some speed while maintaining some HPS. It’s more than possible to go up to a minute or so fully mobile until having to plant to catch up with lost HPS.

Support Spells:


Lay on Hands:

Heals the Target for 100% of the Paladins total health and restores X of their mana.
Instant Cast
40y Range.
20min cooldown.

Many would consider this to be part of the ‘Healing spells’ category. Personally I don’t, due to the huge cooldown. More often than not you won’t be counting on this spell to save the day, because it will be on cooldown. But when it isn’t, if you use it right, it WILL be saving the day. An instant cast heal for up to 20k is has been known to keep tanks alive when healers have all moved to raid healing against instructions. It’s also usable on the move making it great for spam clicking while trying to get into range of your target.

A secondary application or this spell is to use the mana regen for personal gain/gain of another healer. If mana really is that desperate, the small amount restored by LoH could make the difference. Think twice before using it this way though.


Cleanse:

Cleanses the target, removing 1 Poison, 1 Disease and 1 Magic effect from the target.
Instant Cast
40y range.

This is one of the most effective spells we have and ever will have. Due to the various mechanics of other classes healing spells, the Paladin is the most likely class to never be more than 1GCD away from being able to cleanse a target. For this reason there is no reason why it shouldn’t be the Paladins job to dispel those harmful debuffs ASAP. Other than aoe applied debuffs, where a priests Mass dispel is superior, cleanse is unrivalled in its dispelling ability. For most effective use id recommend the ‘Decursive’ add-on.


Divine Plea:

Restores 25% of the Paladins total mana over 15s. While active healing done is reduced by 20%
1min cooldown
Instant Cast

This spell is the sole reason that mp5 is now pointless. More Int = more total mana = more back through this spell. However it’s not as easy for us as for druids here. Where they can happyspam their Innervate, we have to be careful with Divine Plea.

When NOT to use Divine Plea:
When you’re over 90% mana: Yes this first one is obvious, but some people will be in the opinion that they can use enough mana in 15s to get the full 25% back. You can’t unless you’re spamming Holy Light. If you’re doing this then something in the raid has gone wrong and you really don’t want a 20% mortal strike effect on all your targets. Which leads to the next point

When you’re spamming Holy Light: Holy light is already bad enough in terms one efficiency. Making it even less efficient is a terrible idea and misuse of the spell.

During any form of boss ‘enrage/frenzy’ effect of any heavy patches of raid damage: Again, healing debuff in these situations is a terrible idea, deaths while wings are up are your responsibility.

Assuming none of these are the case, then Divine plea should be spammed every time it’s off cooldown, starting when you get to 80% mana. Some ideal times to use it are:

When you have to move- you won’t be casting so much anyway
When the incoming damage is easily manageable
When you’re expecting a form of Stun/incapacitate and no healing would be performable anyway.



Bacon of Light:

Places a Beacon of Light on the target, all Paladin heals cast on friendly targets within 40 yards of the Beacon will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the Amount healed for 1 minute.
Instant Cast
40y range.

Bacon is the 51point holy talent. There is still much debate about the best use of it. Rather than go into what both sides would argue, I’ll write how I personally see is best to use the spell.

First point to note is never do I try to maintain 100% uptime on my Bacon, it simply costs too much mana instead it’s my ‘oh shit’ button for when something that happened that wasn’t in the plan and needs to be reacted to.

Examples include:
You’re assigned to heal a tank, no matter what happens, your tank must not die, while this is happening a bunch of retarded warlocks/mages get caught in an Aoe attack they really shouldn’t have, the assigned raid healers are going to struggle to heal this up alone. Give your Bacon to your tank and proceed to help heal the raid using Holy Lights. While doing this, NEVER take your eye off your tank (my Bacon is always in a focus frame) because the Bacon can be unreliable at times, especially when transferring raid healing to it, as over healing wont transfered. Be ready if your tanks get low to switch immediately back to him and use Holy Light to pick his health back up.

Your assignment is taking heavy damage throughout and you can’t leave them unattended for fear of them dying, meanwhile the person assigned to keeping you alive either dies or starts to fail at his job, rather than having to self heal, or move to a safer location, place the bacon on yourself and continue your job, all your healing will double back onto yourself.

There’s multiple tanks in the encounter, you’re doing your job just fine, when someone else messes up, suddenly there’s a tank with a dead healer, raid healers pay him more attention to compensate, however in most instances this isn’t enough by itself and raid members will start dropping, place your bacon on the other tank and continue with your job, happy in the knowledge you can do the job of 2 healers.

Bear in mind with Bacon that heals will not transfer to it if your Bacon isn’t in your line of sight, so while using Bacon, maintain LoS with both your assignment and your Bacon.


Sacred Shield:

When the target takes Damage they gain the Sacred Shield, absorbing 500 damage and increasing the paladins chance to critically hit with Flash of Light for 6 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds. Lasts 30 seconds.
40 yard range
Instant Cast.

The tooltip is misleading here, the shield doesn’t not absorb the first source of damage, but rather that triggers the shield, absorbing the next source. This makes it pretty useless to use on non-tanks unless the raid damage is fairly frequent. However it’s great for damage mitigation on tanks, and the FoL bonus it’s clearly intended to provide fast quick tank heals. Keep this buff up on whichever tank is taking the heavier damage through the fight.


Divine Favour:

When activated increases the critical strike chance of your next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Holy Shock spell by 100%.
Instant cast
3 minute cooldown.

Formerly this spell was used just to reduce the painful mana cost of a Holy Light, now due to the Infusion of Light changes, its most effective with Holy Shock, particularly while on the move, as you can guarantee a proc, allowing you to continue to move while having an instant Flash of Light ready.

A trick I use is to use it in conjunction with a Holy Light, but as the HL is casting, spam the Holy Shock button, due to server lag and spell queuing mechanisms, both spells will gain the Divine Favour buff and both will crit. Giving you a massive burst heal and a free Infusion of Light proc to play with.


Hand of Sacrifice:

Transfers 30% of damage taken from the target to the Paladin, lasts 12 seconds.
2min cooldown.
30y range.

This is a highly situational spell, but most fights have a use for it.
The safest use for the spell is when a hardish hitting boss is keeping your tanks permanently low, you need him topped up, but HPS and incoming DPS are so similar it’s just not happening, BoSac will allow the tank healers to win that battle and transfer the damage to the raid healers.

During boss ‘enrage/frenzy’ effects. This is a more dangerous use for the spell, as quite often you can get yourself killed. The tanks survivability goes up allot doing this, but make sure you announce on vent to your raid healers before you do it that you’ll be taking allot of damage.

When you're certain a tank/raid member is going to take a fatal blow. Be this a string of 10k hits onto the tank, or Illidans eye beam with blind tanks. Moving 30% of the damage away from them will let them survive the hit in most cases; it’ll probably get yourself killed though, especially as you won’t have time to announce it. This works best with Bacon if it’s already on you.

A final method is a sneaky mana regen method. I really don’t recommend this, but there will be times it will be needed. Put the hand on the person taking the most damage, for no other reason than to take damage yourself, get healed up by someone else, and get mana back through spiritual attunment. It’s not the best of things to do and raid leaders/healers won’t be appreciative, especially if you kill yourself, but it does work.


Hand of Salvation:

Reduces the targets threat by 2% every second for 10seconds.
2min cooldown
30y range.

More often than not a dps will request this from you, but allot of times dps don’t seem to notice they have a threat meter.
Tanks might notice and ask you to put it on someone, but don’t count on it, watch your threat meter (hard while healing I know), anyone getting too high, salv them.


Hand of Protection:

Protects the target from all physical damage and effects for 10s. While protected they cannot perform physical attacks or actions.
5min cooldown
30y range.

The best lifesaver tool we have. Someone overaggros, boss isn’t tauntable, get the hand on the culprit before they die, it’ll save them from the melee damage, and wipe their threat for the duration, their threat will return when it expires, but until then the tank has chance to re-establish aggro.

Can also be used to force a tank switch, but let the tanks know in advance if you play to use it like that, most often they will be the ones asking for it to be used like that.


Avenging Wrath:

Increases all damage and healing done by 20% for 20 seconds.
3 min cooldown
Instant cast.

The famous ‘angel wings’ spell. Become rather situational now, best times to use it include heavy aoe times, broken cc mobs putting raid healers under pressure, tank healing during soft enrages. The problem with the spell is it gives you forbearance for 2 minutes, and the danger of not being able to bubble isn’t something we enjoy. Best used once bubble is already on cooldown.


Judgement of Light/Wisdom

Gives attackers a chance to restore Health/Mana for 20 seconds
Instant Cast
40yard range.

When you judge, you proc Judgements of the Pure, granting you 15% spell haste for 1 minute, therefore its essential to judge the boss at least once every minute to maintain your buff. However the judgments are so potent its well worth rejudging every 20 seconds. To quote from EJ

‘It costs 3 GCDs per 2 min to keep JotP up, and 7 GCDs per 2 min to keep JotP and Judgement debuff up. Either way though with 15% extra haste you will be able to get more total healing spells out even after "wasting" 7 GCDs.’

Its often better to let a Retribution paladin keep judgement of light up however, because the healing from the spell scales better with attack power than spell power, so wisdom will more likely be used.


Using all these spells, at the correct time, in the correct fashion, makes a great Holy Paladin what he is, I hope this has helped any reader understand what Holy Paladins have to do in raids (omg they don't just spam flash of light?) and any lesser experience paladins to improve their game.

Thanks for reading. Ronab – Ghostlands EU.

Really nice and helpfull topic...thnks for this ronab

sweet topic, *clap* for Ronan