A Compendium of Holy Paladin Questions I would like to know the answers to

[Tyranader]

Okay so I'm playing my Paladin again for the first time since Firelands and I am enjoying it immensely and I am in the process of doing LFR and stuff to gear it up and I am hoping to do some Flex runs at some point with it 514 iLevel at the moment so still looking to improve it. Anyway I have 3 questions, mainly regarding 2 talent choices of mine. Eternal Flame and Divine Purpose and one other question.

Numero Uno...

Divine Purpose, Should I keep this talent or should I switch out to Holy Avenger. I'm abit kinda on the fence about Holy Avenger because I am not sure when I should be using it and if it is really any better than the other 2 choices.

Question B...

Eternal Flame or Selfless Healer. I've been doing some reading and stuff and looking at some Holy Paladin Armories and I have seen that some of them have taken the the Selfless Healer Talent and I was wondering why? I tried to do some googling but really couldn't find anything other than a few guides or people who have made posts online telling you to take Eternal Flame or your a scrub and I just wanted to know why some Paladins have gone down this route and is there any downsides to taking that over Eternal Flame? or is there any benefits to taking Selfless Healer over Eternal Flame and if I wanted to go down that route what would I need to do because Eternal Flame spamming I kind of find it annoying considering that whenever I heal something most of the time Eternal Flame is my Top on Overhealing and has done less healing that what it has Overhealed.

Questing The III...

What in gods name is up with my Regen? I am sitting at 12,198 Unbuffed Spirit and I go through all of my Mana faster than Water going down the toilet and I spend half the fight unable to cast ANYTHING and I was wondering is there anything I can do to Improve my Mana Regen at all?

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ctair/advanced

Thanks in advance for your answers.

[Deja Thoris]

Take holy avenger. If you know fights you know when damage is coming, that's when you pop CD's and HA is exceptionally strong. DP can proc when you don't need it and not proc when you do. That makes it useless.

I use EF, its the nature of HoT's to overheal. Part of it goes to the beacon so that's a win. I just find selfless healer and judging clunky as hell. It's a playstyle choice tho I'd imagine EF trumps SH from a numbers PoV.

Pallies are spirit hungry. Until you reach 15-16k you will have to be extremely attentive to your mana and use divine plea religiously (excuse the pun)

[Deleted]

Hello dude, I'm talking as a 12/14 heroic 10man holy pal, so some of my advices may not be acurate concerning late heroic content or depending of your kind of raid.

1 - You'll have to switch depending of the encounter, holy avenger is good when you need to handle with big raid damage bursts (and goak/wrath/DF are not enought), and divine purpose is for others. It's pretty personnal, just learn every fight and think about when you might need a CD every 2 minutes or so. I prefer have a burst healing cooldown on Sha of Pride whereas I go with divine purpose on Nazgrim because it help to roll 3hopo flames on breakbones targets and tanks.

2 - Eternal flame for every single fights except Thok. You might find sacred shield usefull on some bosses if your tanks both takes heavy single damage and you cant keep them alive (garrosh, juggernaut, shamans..). I find selfless healer only good when you can't cast, spamming judgement to get buffs is really time consuming, and in the end not that effective.

3 - Your amount of spirit seems right, this must be a problem of mana management. As a paladin, you must look when you're in conservation phase (low damage incoming, you spam holy shock on CD to generate hopo and holy lights on tanks or light debuff targets) and when you're in burst phase (high-damage incoming, you spend high cost spells on tanks/raid to keep them alive, with cooldown(s) up). Learning how to manage mana consumption and regen is just matter of practice, the better you know the event and when to burst/eco, the smoother it will be. Of course, remember to spend your divine plea as soon as you reach 80% of mana or so, and every time it's up again.


Btw try to get the 3506 haste cap, it gives you a good amount of throughput and you're pretty close to it. I don't see anything really wrong on your armory, every piece of gear will help much since you're pretty light on this at the moment. When you'll become more at ease with you regen, try to get progressively rid of all that spirit enchant/gemming, int-mastery-haste are really intersting stats for a holy paladin.

Good luck !

[Tyranader]

Hello dude, I'm talking as a 12/14 heroic 10man holy pal, so some of my advices may not be acurate concerning late heroic content or depending of your kind of raid.

1 - You'll have to switch depending of the encounter, holy avenger is good when you need to handle with big raid damage bursts (and goak/wrath/DF are not enought), and divine purpose is for others. It's pretty personnal, just learn every fight and think about when you might need a CD every 2 minutes or so. I prefer have a burst healing cooldown on Sha of Pride whereas I go with divine purpose on Nazgrim because it help to roll 3hopo flames on breakbones targets and tanks.

2 - Eternal flame for every single fights except Thok. You might find sacred shield usefull on some bosses if your tanks both takes heavy single damage and you cant keep them alive (garrosh, juggernaut, shamans..). I find selfless healer only good when you can't cast, spamming judgement to get buffs is really time consuming, and in the end not that effective.

3 - Your amount of spirit seems right, this must be a problem of mana management. As a paladin, you must look when you're in conservation phase (low damage incoming, you spam holy shock on CD to generate hopo and holy lights on tanks or light debuff targets) and when you're in burst phase (high-damage incoming, you spend high cost spells on tanks/raid to keep them alive, with cooldown(s) up). Learning how to manage mana consumption and regen is just matter of practice, the better you know the event and when to burst/eco, the smoother it will be. Of course, remember to spend your divine plea as soon as you reach 80% of mana or so, and every time it's up again.

Btw try to get the 3506 haste cap, it gives you a good amount of throughput and you're pretty close to it. I don't see anything really wrong on your armory, every piece of gear will help much since you're pretty light on this at the moment. When you'll become more at ease with you regen, try to get progressively rid of all that spirit enchant/gemming, int-mastery-haste are really intersting stats for a holy paladin.

Good luck !

1 I changed to Holy Avenger and I guess I'll give it a go when it isn't 1:45 AM : P.

2 Okay, I'll stick with Eternal Flame, but I still do not get when I should use it except keeping it rolling on the tanks the entire fight, most of the time I end up using Light of Dawn because when I use Eternal Flame I feel about as Effective as a Wet Towel and I can't figure out why that is it just feels like it's hard to keep rolling on targets and all I end up doing is just trying to keep the Eternal Flame on the entire raid and running OOM very fast in the process and not to mention most of the HoT Portion of Eternal Flame just turns into Overhealing.

Also What is it with Thok, I've seen that posted in a few places Eternal Flame except for Thok, what is so different about Thok?

3 I've been told by a few paladins I asked this questing to that I have 6 - 8k Less spirit than what I should have to not go OOM and that was the cause? And Also I was told you should always be casting Holy Radiance if you want to be doing somewhat decent.

Also I didn't notice that I was near a haste cap, thanks. I just reforged my shoulders and Wrist into Haste to hit that cap and changed to the Jade Spirit Enchant on my weapon, Only reason I had Windsong on there is when I got the weapon I had spent literally all my Gold on Trillium and Spirits of War to craft the legs aha and Windsong was like 40 Gold lol XP.

EDIT: Also I've seen a bunch of Paladins Reforging and Gemming Haste instead of Mastery. I thought Mastery was largely better than Haste and you shouldn't be going out of your way to gear for haste unless your near a haste cap.

[abulurd]

I'm one of those paladins that's reforging and gemming haste instead of mastery. I find the playstyle to be a lot more fun, and my healing isn't holding us back. I'm currently at the 5th extra tick of eternal flame, and my DL and HR are at 1.7 seconds. It's pretty bad ass.

I personally am a fan of the Divine Purpose playstyle (I'm a wanna be resto drood mum), and for most fights its extremely viable. The thing to take note of with holy avenger, is that if you don't have a specific plan for when to pop it, you'll end up never using it, at which point divine purpose would be better.

So far as your spirit goes, its a tad low, but until you get the legendary meta, its hard to play a holy pally in content that you're not quite at the ilvl for. Getting a better trinket set would be extremely beneficial to you also, its worth it to spend the valor on the shado pan trinket, or try to get into a normal ToT run for the horridon trinket. Those are amazing for your regen.

Best of luck in your gear and your boss kills

[Tyranader]

I'm one of those paladins that's reforging and gemming haste instead of mastery. I find the playstyle to be a lot more fun, and my healing isn't holding us back. I'm currently at the 5th extra tick of eternal flame, and my DL and HR are at 1.7 seconds. It's pretty bad ass.

I personally am a fan of the Divine Purpose playstyle (I'm a wanna be resto drood mum), and for most fights its extremely viable. The thing to take note of with holy avenger, is that if you don't have a specific plan for when to pop it, you'll end up never using it, at which point divine purpose would be better.

So far as your spirit goes, its a tad low, but until you get the legendary meta, its hard to play a holy pally in content that you're not quite at the ilvl for. Getting a better trinket set would be extremely beneficial to you also, its worth it to spend the valor on the shado pan trinket, or try to get into a normal ToT run for the horridon trinket. Those are amazing for your regen.

Best of luck in your gear and your boss kills

All the guides I've looked at they tell you to go Mastery and Eternal Flame and I was wondering what the benefits and disadvantages are to Mastery/Haste and Eternal Flame/Selfless Healer.

[Deleted]

All the guides I've looked at they tell you to go Mastery and Eternal Flame and I was wondering what the benefits and disadvantages are to Mastery/Haste and Eternal Flame/Selfless Healer.

You go for selfless healer on thok because of his interrupt mechanic. You can't repeatedly cast holy radiance, which makes your hpower generation too slow for eternal flame to be of much use, whereas with selfless healer you are not affected as much.

Mastery vs haste just comes down to how much benefit you gain per point. Mastery somewhat mitigates your overhealing (which you will do a lot of). With haste you'll also need more spirit.

[Freia]

I personally am a fan of the Divine Purpose playstyle (I'm a wanna be resto drood mum), and for most fights its extremely viable. The thing to take note of with holy avenger, is that if you don't have a specific plan for when to pop it, you'll end up never using it, at which point divine purpose would be better.

Nope never had that problem, ever.

[Pancaspe]

As far as mana goes, if you are a BE, don't forget to use your racial on CD.

[Bonfiggy]

Your questions are kind of all over the place, so I'll try to drill down a little on the ones that haven't been touched.

Eternal Flame Vs. Selfless Healer: - This is largely playstyle, but in 10 mans, the Min/Max consensus does seem to be that EF wins out over SH, as it's pretty easy to keep 3+ EFs rolling at any given time, which is 30% of the raid. SH shines with the proper mindset, extremely good positioning, OR in a 25 man setting. Because there are 25 people available to soak a Light of Dawn instead of 10, the likelihood that you hit your cap of folks with the cast goes way up.

*** Side note - if you're specced EF, you should NEVER EVER cast LoD. Maybe a few times per raid, and ONLY if it means saving multiple people with that cast. But, the fact remains, if you cast LoD with EF talented, you're gimping your own HPS in a substantial way.

Haste Vs. Mastery: Haste is valuable up to certain "breakpoints". There are 3 that are worth noting for this tier. 3,506, 7,170, 10,867 - each breakpoint adds another tick to your Eternal Flames. Which breakpoint is up to you and your healing composition, but most paladins seems to fall in the middle. In between breakpoints, haste isn't worth quite as much and mastery should win out there.

[Deleted]

The second haste cap of 7170 is worth going for when you have the gear for it. I'd say around ilvl 535-ish. Gives you two extra ticks of EF.

Holy Avenger is pretty much the go to talent for all fights in Soo. DP is full of RNG, and is best used when you have really low gear for the free procs.

Same with Eternal Flame, it's the go to talent of that tier in the tree. The only reason I can think of that you saw paladins with the SH talent, must be because they logged out with it after doing Thok. It's only really useful for that fight. Or maybe they were 25m raiders. Might be better there.

Don't oom yourself trying to EF the whole raid. You can only keep it up on the whole raid during HA anyway. Just don't use it on a target that already has the hot, unless it's a tank that needs immediate healing. Keep it spread on the raid, but don't try to overdo it.

Make use of the beacon glyph, it's really powerful. Whenever you switch to FoL a low hp target in your raid, pop beacon on him. Free holy power. Other than that, just keep it on the current tank.

Don't use LoD ever, unless you MUST use it to save several people. Thok is an exception, where LoD shines in the stationary phase.

Use Plea on cooldown. Even if you are at 85% mana. As long as you don't regen to full.

Use Holy Shock on cooldown. It's your prio number one heal as long as you don't have 5 holy power. This cannot be stressed enough.


This is all a 10m PoV. This might differ in 25m.

Feels like I've found the perfect balance of haste/spirit/mastery (for me) at least. I reforge to as close to 7170 haste as I can, and as close to 14k spirit as I can. Rest goes to mastery.

[Xs]

Firstly I'll say, you would have gotten a better response posting this in the "Fix my Heals" or "Holy Paladin Guide" threads, but none the less...

1. Holy Avenger is the go to talent for Holy Paladins, and pretty much Paladins in general now. You want to try and use it to get out EFs across the raid at the beginning of the fight or making sure you have it for any large spike periods, as it allows us to excel at what we do best, high efficiency 'bomb' style healing. Malkorok is a good example of it really showing off how good it is, same idea with Thok.
   
   
2. EF vs. SH - Generally EF is seen as the better spec, but SH is perfectly viable and if your guild is progressing on Thok it can help substantially taking a temporary dip into the SH water, as EF drops off towards the later parts of phase 1. A lot of guides you're reading may be out of date or misinformed though, EF has been the go-to all of this expansion so far and depending on who the guide is aimed at, its usually easier to just go along with that theme than try to give someone a choice that makes a substantial difference to how the rest of the guide is written. For reference though, SH is just drop as much spirit as possible and focus Mastery > Int > Crit > Haste, in SoO normal gear you'd be looking at ideally around 8-9k Spirit.
   
   
3. You're having mana issues because you don't have the other forms of regen that most Paladins have. Things like the Legendary meta gem are worth up to 10k Spirit on their own, and the proper trinkets can be 3k+ Spirit each. Until you can get any of these I'd recommend you ignore intellect socket bonuses and just gem pure +320 Spirit gems, its better to have too much Spirit and crank it down till you're comfortable, than have too little and adjust your play style to something sub-optimal. Also as you said, a vast portion of your heals are going into overheal, therefore any intellect is just going to become more overheal, until you get to the point where you can't go oom.

[Deleted]

[*]You're having mana issues because you don't have the other forms of regen that most Paladins have. Things like the Legendary meta gem are worth up to 10k Spirit on their own, and the proper trinkets can be 3k+ Spirit each. Until you can get any of these I'd recommend you ignore intellect socket bonuses and just gem pure +320 Spirit gems, its better to have too much Spirit and crank it down till you're comfortable, than have too little and adjust your play style to something sub-optimal.[/list]

This especially is really solid advice. Gemming spirit, ignoring socket bonuses is pretty much what pallys should do with low gear. Don't think there's any other healer as mana hungry as we are

[Tyranader]

Thanks for the responses guys. I think I get it now.

You're having mana issues because you don't have the other forms of regen that most Paladins have. Things like the Legendary meta gem are worth up to 10k Spirit on their own, and the proper trinkets can be 3k+ Spirit each. Until you can get any of these I'd recommend you ignore intellect socket bonuses and just gem pure +320 Spirit gems, its better to have too much Spirit and crank it down till you're comfortable, than have too little and adjust your play style to something sub-optimal. Also as you said, a vast portion of your heals are going into overheal, therefore any intellect is just going to become more overheal, until you get to the point where you can't go oom.

Well I replaced all my gems with Spirit Gems because they where pretty much all Int + Spirit Gems to get the Int Socket Bonuses and I gained roughly 1.5k Spirit from that.

I'm working on the legendary but I am on the 3000 Valor Point quest and I just got it so it's gunna be 3 weeks before I can move on ><.

This especially is really solid advice. Gemming spirit, ignoring socket bonuses is pretty much what pallys should do with low gear. Don't think there's any other healer as mana hungry as we are

I've noticed that, my Disc Priest can heal perfectly fine and never drop below 75% Mana and it only has a little more spirit than my paladin.

[Xs]

This especially is really solid advice. Gemming spirit, ignoring socket bonuses is pretty much what pallys should do with low gear. Don't think there's any other healer as mana hungry as we are

Resto Druids are quite mana hungry when they want to start really ramping up the numbers, but they get it a bit easier in the earlier stages with clearcasting and not needing to spam high cost spells to pump out their free stuff.

- - - Updated - - -

Well I replaced all my gems with Spirit Gems because they where pretty much all Int + Spirit Gems to get the Int Socket Bonuses and I gained roughly 1.5k Spirit from that.

I'm working on the legendary but I am on the 3000 Valor Point quest and I just got it so it's gunna be 3 weeks before I can move on ><.

Every little helps you'd be surprised how big the difference will feel now, since its not just passive regen but also Divine Plea regen.

I've noticed that, my Disc Priest can heal perfectly fine and never drop below 75% Mana and it only has a little more spirit than my paladin.

Disc Priests get it very easy, since they're effectively spamming their version of "Holy Light" to do the majority of their healing.

[Tyranader]

Resto Druids are quite mana hungry when they want to start really ramping up the numbers, but they get it a bit easier in the earlier stages with clearcasting and not needing to spam high cost spells to pump out their free stuff.

- - - Updated - - -


Every little helps you'd be surprised how big the difference will feel now, since its not just passive regen but also Divine Plea regen.


Disc Priests get it very easy, since they're effectively spamming their version of "Holy Light" to do the majority of their healing.

Oh yeah I forgot that Divine Plea's regen is based upon your Spirit.

And yeah still I am finding my Paladin <3 more fun than my Disc Priest who effectively was DPS half the time due to Atonement which I am not a big fan of.

When did they Remove the Mana Gain from using Judgement I swear that was a thing back in Firelands either that or I am going crazy.

And on a Side note I am just a smidge below 14K Spirit Now, I just got the Tier Legs from Xuen on the Timeless isle 4 days after I spent god knows how much gold on Trillium and Spirits of War on the damn crafted legs ><!

- - - Updated - - -

WOW. You guys where right, I just Did Protectors in SoO and Switching to mainly Eternal Flame My Healing output was a lot better. Also changing all my Gems to Spirit Gems has helped quite a lot, I still went OOM and had to switch to Holy Lighting near the end of the fight, but my Mana lasted longer this time and I only used Light of Dawn like 3/4 times : D!

Thanks for the help guys.

[Deleted]

I didn't play holy much in Cata, so don't remember if judge gave mana. Judgement used to give haste I think at least. Our seal of light used to give mana up until SoO though. Don't really understand why they removed that, as smart play was rewarding, dumb play with it was punished.

[PosPosPos]

I didn't play holy much in Cata, so don't remember if judge gave mana. Judgement used to give haste I think at least. Our seal of light used to give mana up until SoO though. Don't really understand why they removed that, as smart play was rewarding, dumb play with it was punished.

Melee autoattacks to regen mana hardly requires "smart play".

[Deleted]

Melee autoattacks to regen mana hardly requires "smart play".

You're really narrow minded if you think so.

[Xs]

I didn't play holy much in Cata, so don't remember if judge gave mana. Judgement used to give haste I think at least. Our seal of light used to give mana up until SoO though. Don't really understand why they removed that, as smart play was rewarding, dumb play with it was punished.

They removed it because it basically forced Holy Paladins to use certain UI mods to heal, along with fucking up certain mechanics because Holy Paladins classed as ranged not melee