Thread: PvP Healing as a Paladin and You: What you need to know. (Updated for 3.3)

Didn’t see any sort of guide in the previous pages so I thought I might as well make one.

PvP Healing as a Paladin and You: What you need to know.

This is the 3.3.0 updated version of how to Prot Holy Paladin and Pure Holy Paladin.

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Pure Holy
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With there now being no point in going into the Protection tree for healing, Holy is the only option for healers of the paladin variety. Holy Paladins are some of the strongest healers out there right now in terms of healing power and survivability.

Advantages:
Holy Paladins are one of the hardest healers to actually CC (Not lockdown) through their use of Trinket, Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Sacrifice, Pure of Heart for a few seconds off Hex, Aura Mastery for a few uninterrupted heals, and Divine Shield when all else fails. They have quite possibly the best mana management in the game if you are careful, and can outlast any other healer when played right in mana.

Disadvantages:
Major weakness of the Holy Paladin is being locked down and controlled. Many good opponents use focus interrupt macros, which from now on will be your worst enemies, in order to counter casted spells you try to get off. CC in general is troublesome for Paladin's, even though there are a lot of tools to counter it. Once those tools are on cooldown, a paladin most likely will not be able to bring their partners back.

Stats and Gear:
Intellect: For me, Intellect is a very important stat. Maintaining your mana pool at around 21k unbuffed is a good choice. Intellect will give you almost every stat you need, Spellpower through Holy Guidance (You did pick that up, didn't you?), Critical hit chance, and Mp5 technically through Divine Plea. With 21k mana (~1100 Int) you should be getting ticks of over 1k mana per Divine Plea tick. I prefer stacking it through gems rather than trinkets in order for me to be able to wear Battlemasters.

Spellpower: Second only in Int to what you should stack, always be on the lookout for ways to get more Spellpower. Aim for around 2700-3200 Spellpower all together. You should not be gemming for Spellpower unless you have enough PvE gear to be able to reach 21k mana without needing to gem more Intellect. With 3k Spellpower you should be critical healing for 10k Holy Shocks and 7k Flash of Lights.

Haste: With all the haste that is now found on PvE gear, Haste has become quite the useful stat. The thing with haste is that you need a lot for it to be useful, so for optimal efficiency, don't start stacking haste until you have a decent amount of PvE gear (245 ilevel+) Faster heals are quicker burst counters, I'd say 400-500 haste would be an ideal amount. If you can't get PvE gear, don't fret, just stick to PvP gear solely then as PvE gear otherwise isn't worth much. Something I must add though is, aim to keep the 4 set PvP bonus, meaning you should only gear PvE haste gear that doesn't interfere with the 4 piece bonus (Neck, Belt, Bracers, Boots etc)


Mp5: Intellect is still a better regeneration stat than Mp5 at this point. Mp5 is definitely more useful than Critical Strike Rating now however. You should go for the Mp5 Neck and Cloak ideally now. If possible, get one of these http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47041 (And/or it's heroic version), which is in my opinion a best in slot trinket piece for any healing paladin. You will not be disappointed when you never go oom, ever (Unless you stand in the open and get mana burned).

Critical Strike Rating: Ever since the Illumination nerf, crit has become an oddball stat for paladins. Do you still stack it? How much should you? I’d say maintaining a 20%-30% crit chance is where your crit should be. It’s not as valuable a regeneration stat in my opinion as it is now a burst healing stat. You should still be picking enchants that give bonuses to crit, but don’t outright stack it as much anymore.

Resilience: Resilience can go either way for a paladin, especially since they buffed it. You can go down to around 700 resilience in favor of stacking Haste PvE gear, which is ideal. You can also choose the 1050-1100 resilience route and decide to never die yourself. If you have the PvE gear available to you, go with the 700 resilience route, haste is a good stat that you do not want to miss out on.

Stamina: While Stamina is not a Pure Holy Paladin’s best friend, you do want Stamina. You should never really gem for pure stamina, as the amount you gain from PvP items should be enough. You’ll want to maintain 22k-25k health unbuffed. You definitely don't want to go below 20k health or you'll be in some trouble when burst comes knocking on your door.

Spirit: ...

That’s a rundown of important stats for Holy Paladins in order of most important to least important in my opinion. Preference plays a role in stats you want, but this is a general outline of the order of important stats.

As mentioned before, for your offset items you want to take the ‘of Salvation series of offset gear. You could go with 'of Subjugation' for the haste, but you should try to get haste from PvE gear over PvP gear in order to get that extra Mp5.

Just to note: Always get plate gear if you choose PvE gear, that extra armor is good mitigation against melee classes.

Gems:
Intellect and Spellpower gems are what you want to use. But you don’t want a pure Spellpower gem or pure Intellect gem unless you need to or have any other option.


Brilliant King's Amber: Your basic +20 intellect gem. If you're in full PvP gear socket your gear with these to reach an acceptable mana amount (21k). If you went the haste PvE gear route, you shouldn't need any extra intellect so don't socket these.

Runed Cardinal Ruby: If you've gotten at least 21k-22k mana unbuffed, you can start socketing these in. They're your bread and butter +23 spellpower red gems. You'll most likely be socketing these if you've gone the PvE haste route.

Insightful Earthsiege Diamond: This should always be your meta socket. It gives 600 mana on proc and gives you a good 21 intellect.

For the Jewelcrafters:

Brilliant Dragon’s Eye: Get three of them and socket them in some yellow sockets.

Runed Dragon’s Eye:

One more thing, socket bonuses don't matter in the long run, or at least to me, so don't feel like you have to constantly gem to fit them.

Enchants:

Head: You want the Arcanum of Dominance (+Spellpower and +Resilience)

Shoulder: Inscription of Dominance (+Spellpower and +Resilience). Not much choices for Head and Shoulders.

Cloak: Enchant your cloak with either Speed (+15), or Greater Speed (+23) for some extra haste. There aren’t really many useful cloak enchants so this a situation where enchanting haste is good. If you feel like you can't afford the +23 haste, there's nothing wrong with the +15 one.

Chest: For your chest, you want to enchant it with Exceptional Resilience for the 20 resilience boost. You can also get +8 Stats or +10 stats, but the Resilience bonus is better in my opinion.

Bracers: Enchant them with Greater Spellpower (+23) or Superior Spellpower (+30) for obvious reasons. Once again, not many options here.

Gloves: Pick up a Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower (+23 Spellpower)

Legs: Sapphire Spellthread (+Spellpower and +Stam) is the best choice. But if you’re low on cash, get the downgraded version, Runic Spellthread.

Boots: Pick up either an Icewalker enchant (+12 Hit and +12 Crit) or a Tuskarr’s Vitality (+15 Stam and + Run Speed). Greater Fortitude (+22 Stam) is also a viable choice if you prefer stamina over all else. All are useful, so it comes down to preference. I'd advise the Tuskarr's Vitality so you can JoJ + Freedom kite (Which is ineffective, but half useful for running away)

Weapon: Enchant it with Exceptional Spellpower (+50) or if you feel like spending some money, Mighty Spellpower (+63). This choice comes down to whether you want to spend the money or not.

Shield: Greater Intellect is the way to go for shields (+25 Int). Not many other good choices for a Holy Paladin in this slot.

For the Enchanters:

Enchant your rings with Greater Spellpower (+23).

Glyphs:
Glyphs all come down to playstyle and preference, so I’ll just be outlining the usefulness and uselessness of each glyph.

Glyph of Holy Shock: It takes 1 second of cooldown off of a very powerful Holy healing spell. You should ALWAYS pick this up, you won't be countering much burst without it.

Glyph of Seal of Wisdom: Pretty basic. 5% mana off of all heals. I wouldn't advise this much anymore considering paladin's already have godly mana management.

Glyph of Turn Evil: Allows you to get a pesky Gargoyle, Ghoul, or lock pet off of you without having the risk of being interrupted. It's extremely useful to pick up, and a full fear on one of above who are sticking on you should allow you to drink for a second or so.

Glyph of Beacon of Light: It's a pretty decent glyph, but the problem is that there are better glyphs to pick from other than another mana management tool.

Glyph of Holy Light: If you are healing grouped up people and are not being focused so you can cast Holy Light, it’s useful (Read: No it's not). This glyph has a small niche in healing however and I don’t recommend it. Seriously, don't pick it up.

Glyph of Flash of Light: An extra 5% crit on your Flash of Light. It’s not the most useful glyph considering with a Sacred Shield proc up on a target you have a 50% increased chance to crit with it anyway.

Glyph of Salvation: Reduces incoming damage by 20% when you have Hand of Salvation on yourself. It makes a otherwise useless spell into a useful one and can help your survivability when focused. I would recommend this glyph.

Glyph of Seal of Light: With all the burst of the season and season's past, an extra 5% healing is pretty useful. It's definitely a glyph to look into if you find yourself lacking in healing strength. Once again, another glyph that I recommend.

Glyph of Cleansing: 20% mana off of Cleanse. If you find yourself cleansing a lot, you might pick this up. There are many other better glyphs however and you should not find yourself picking this one up.

Minor glyphs are all preference.

Spells:

General Spells:
Flash of Light: Your bread and butter low cost, medium output heal. When being focused by classes that can interrupt (Read: Most of them), you don’t want to spam this as much if you don’t have an Infusion of Light proc. When healing and not being focused, this is a good heal to spam. Always spam this after a fake cast to try to get some healing out of it.

Holy Light: High cost, high output heal. You don’t want to spam this unless your partner is low and health and you know you can get the heal off (Which is pretty difficult with all the burst and CC they will most likely be pressuring you with). This is more of a heal to use when you’re bubbled. Also useful if you want an enemy dps to try and interrupt you so you waste their interrupt, as many classes will try and interrupt this if they see you casting it.

Sacred Shield: Your flexible, mini priest bubble. You want to keep this on the person who is getting focused. This scales very well with your spellpower (75% of your spellpower is absorbed by the proc). This can and will save someone. It gives you a 50% to crit with Flash of Light when you have the proc active as well. If this is not on whoever's being focused, you're playing paladin wrong.

Hand of Freedom: Gets rid of any movement impairing effects on the target. You should always try to use this every time its off cooldown if your partner or you needs to run. Very important to keep up. This also affects things like roots and frost nova.

Hand of Protection: It’s a portable bubble. You can cast it on any teammate to negate any MELEE damage. It’s a common misconception that this can prevent spells too, it doesn’t. If you’re teammate is a clothie or anything for that matter, this will save their lives if you need some time to get a heal off. This can also be used offensively if need be, and dispel Blind, most Mortal Strike effects, and rogue stuns. If you're running with a spellcaster against a melee team, this will allow them to freecast.

Aura Mastery: When used with Concentration Aura, it prevents the application of any silence or interrupt effect. Stuns, fears, and similar spells will still effect you. Use this if you’re getting focused and need to get a heal off or your partner is getting focused and you need to be sure you can get a good heal off.

Cleanse: Simple spell. Removes a Magic, Poison, or Disease effect from the target. You want to use this often, but don’t waste all your mana on it. Definitely dispel things like Immolate, but use it wisely as it will eat your mana if you spam it enough (And at times you will find yourself spamming nothing but cleanse without realizing it).

Divine Shield: The infamous bubble. If you’re getting focused and are about to die, pop it and heal up. If your teammates going to die, bubble and bring out the big heals. If you're CC'd, with trinket and everything else on cooldown, pop bubble to get out and heal. If there’s a priest on the other team, or a warrior, try and LoS them or they might break your bubble which can ruin a game.

Hammer of Justice: A Holy Paladin’s only form of CC. Don’t be afraid to get in melee range of something to stun them and help your partner. It's obvious that you should also use this if you find say a priest casting mana burn on you and a pillar a mile away.

Avenging Wrath: Generally, you do not want to use Avenging Wrath. If the team you’re facing is decent, they’ll switch onto you as soon as you use Avenging Wrath as you can not bubble for 30 seconds after using it. This is to be used in situations where you know they can not burst you down quickly. If your bubble is on cooldown, then it is safe to say that you can use it without fear and get those extra strong heals off on you or your teammates.

Turn Evil: Most times against Death Knights and Warlocks, they will have their pet set to auto attack and follow you. Use this to fear them off of you. You should also make a macro to target a Death Knight’s Gargoyle and use this spell as a Gargoyle can deal good burst damage to you.

Divine Plea: This is your mana regeneration. You should try to use Divine Plea when you think that the other team won’t be bursting soon and if you think you’ll run out of mana soon. This does stack multiplicatively with other Mortal Strike effects, reducing incoming healing to 25% of the original so use it wisely. When it looks like your mana is going down (75%-80%), it's okay to pop it early, it will most likely be off cooldown by the time you need it next.

Hand of Reckoning: Useful to get an enemy healer in combat to make them stop drinking or stop an opposing healer from resurrecting another player.

Divine Sacrifice: Use this in order to avoid things such as Sap, Repentance, Blind, Freezing Trap, and one of the most important, Polymorph. If you use this before you are CC'd and your partner takes damage, you'll take some and be broken out depending on the CC.

Holy Shock: This spell has a medium cost for a relatively large output heal. It’s instant so when being focused you’ll want to use this. It has the chance to proc Infusion of Light which makes your next Flash of Light instant.

Divine Favor: This is your emergency someone’s going to die soon heal enhancer. You should only use this on Holy Shock in order to proc the Infusion of Light effect to get a Flash of Light off. Using this on any other heal, even Holy Light, will not muster a strong enough burst as a Holy Shock -> Instant Flash of Light will.

Divine Illumination: An often overlooked, but very powerful tool in the Holy Paladin arsenal. Pop this ideally when you’re low on mana with Divine Plea up. Your powerful Holy Shock becomes the amount of mana a Flash of Light was and your Flash of Light is around a hundred mana. If you find yourself with only a thousand or two thousand mana left, and Divine Plea on cooldown, you might want to use this as well.

Beacon of Light: This spell is even more overlooked than Divine Illumination, yet it is one of the most useful spells in the Holy Tree. This is the only way Holy Paladins can heal two targets at once. In 3v3 and 2v2, where I feel it shines the brightest, you pop this on your partner and you’re free to heal someone else. This saves a lot of mana by healing two targets at once instead of healing both of them. Because of it’s high mana cost, you should only use this before an arena starts during Preparation or when you have Divine Illumination up. It’s an easy way to double your healing output, and save you mana. If you anticipate a switch, you can place it on whoever is currently being focused and begin to heal your other partner, provided they are nearby.


http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...z,86YO-R,11159
This is a common Holy spec. the 4/5 Divine Intellect points can have one point switched out into Holy Power for an extra 1% crit if you so desire. You have your tools all included in this spec, this spec is useful on a team where your games are longer than an average game.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...WZvm-WG,8NYO-R
Slightly different in the one above in that it has taken points out of Improved Hammer of Justice and Light's Grace for more mana and for more crit. This one is better used for a quicker burst team, along with extra Intellect in Divine Intellect in case the burst doesn't work the first time around.


That’s it for this outline. Comments/Questions, feel free to ask.

Nice guide! However, I'd suggest this Prot/Holy Spec. ;D

Originally Posted by Deyman

Nice guide! However, I'd suggest this Prot/Holy Spec. ;D

Seems like a good build. However, many people say Imp. Conc Aura isn't working properly at the moment so I decided not to take it in the spec I posted. I also don't like One Handed Weapon Specialization. But that's just my opinion, obviously points can be swapped according to preference.

Originally Posted by lollero

what's the point of having only one point in touched by the light?

Whoops, I forgot to put another point in there >.>

"A Prot Holy paladin has one trinket and one bubble to escape from CC. After that, you can’t do anything about it."

Hand Of Sacrifice and Divine Sacrifice are great tools for breaking CCs.

About gems/enchants for prot healing, full stamina gems and stamina enchants (head from Horde Exp and shoulder from honor) are better, IMO. You will lose SP, but will have a huge HP and spell power from talents. Stamina scales really well with talents, spell power doesn't.

One-handed mastery is a quite cheap talent for a huge increase in your burst, I like to use it.

My spec/glyphs:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...&version=10116

Originally Posted by Raiss

"A Prot Holy paladin has one trinket and one bubble to escape from CC. After that, you can’t do anything about it."

Hand Of Sacrifice and Divine Sacrifice are great tools for breaking CCs.

About gems/enchants for prot healing, full stamina gems and stamina enchants (head from Horde Exp and shoulder from honor) are better, IMO. You will lose SP, but will have a huge HP and spell power from talents. Stamina scales really well with talents, spell power doesn't.

One-handed mastery is a quite cheap talent for a huge increase in your burst, I like to use it.

My spec/glyphs: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...&version=10116

I omitted those two because they can't break all CC, but it's worth a mention. I'll edit them in.

Originally Posted by Ronark

So DP has a 80% chance for Dispell, meaning that the opponent has an even less likely chance to dispell it.

Like I mentioned before, only having one point in there was a mistake on my part. You're supposed to have the full 3 points invested in it.

This is the best Holy Paladin guide i have ever read, it trumps Mackzter's long awaited guide in every way. Please sticky this guide and post it in a main area on the site. Great job. ;D

Another add

For gloves, +20 hit can be usefull, since +28 spell power isn't that important. With the deadly ring, furious neck and this enchant, you will have 100 hit rating, it should be quite enough (for a healer)

If your BG's isn't full of DK's, Glyph of Hammer of Justice can be very handy, also. It will help alot your partner to get in melee range without having to move alot.

Originally Posted by Raiss

Another add

For gloves, +20 hit can be usefull, since +28 spell power isn't that important. With the deadly ring, furious neck and this enchant, you will have 100 hit rating, it should be quite enough (for a healer)

If your BG's isn't full of DK's, Glyph of Hammer of Justice can be very handy, also. It will help alot your partner to get in melee range without having to move alot.

Both points seem pretty valid, I only added them under the Prot Holy section however as hit isn't a main priority to a Pure Holy paladin as a Prot Holy Paladin and that there are plenty of other useful glyphs avaliable to a Pure Holy paladin but not as much as a Prot Holy paladin.

My BG is full of DK's so I don't see healing paladins picking up Glyph of HoJ to help their DK partners out ;D

Originally Posted by Pally_Power

Both points seem pretty valid, I only added them under the Prot Holy section however as hit isn't a main priority to a Pure Holy paladin as a Prot Holy Paladin and that there are plenty of other useful glyphs avaliable to a Pure Holy paladin but not as much as a Prot Holy paladin.

My BG is full of DK's so I don't see healing paladins picking up Glyph of HoJ to help their DK partners out ;D

They are both for prot, indeed. Long time without playing deep holy, I'm afraid I can't help with that spec anymore.

I like to carry some extra glyphs, though. I like to play in early morning, so fights can get pretty repetitives, and when I'm sure I will face another priest/rogue or druid/warrior, I can change it.

Originally Posted by Madxena

I actually chose to take HotR aswell. I like the on-demand extra hit to be sure your Divine Plea gets refreshed on that last second. Also (atleast for 3v3) I often get a hit on 3 targets and with luck proc 3x seal of wisdom. Free mana! Not a bad point for only 1 point invested. The dmg sucks, but the utility fixes it, atleast for me.

The spec I use is http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sxNd0hZxGzNruMhsIufd

I dont seem to need the Illumination for some reason, I never have any mana problems.

For 2v2 I even use Bandits Insignia for a funky extra burst. Its fun to see a 6k shield crit follewed by a 3k trinketproc (rare but it happens!).

I once read that Judgs and Hammer wouldn't refresh Divine Plea anymore. Am I wrong or this will only work on 3.2?

With a Furious mace, how much do you hit with the hammer? Can it reach 1.5k with criticals? They really proc Seal of Wisdom?

For the second trinket, I really like to use a battlemaster one. They have a good ammount of critical/sp and the use is not on GCD nor is locked for holy interrupts. An extra 4k heal can be game-breaking.

Originally Posted by Nnmana

Therefore, this gem is actually +11 Spellpower/ +8 Int to Holy Paladins making it more worthwhile to use two of these gems than one pure spellpower gem and one pure intellect gem


This is wrong.
A 16 intellect gem and a 19 spellpower gem will provide you with 16 intellect and 23 spellpower, which is still more than what you suggested.

No clue how I did not notice that or think about turning the +16 intellect into spellpower by the talent. Thanks for pointing that out. I feel pretty stupid not noticing that.

But, I don't know about your server, but the price of a Runed Scarlet Ruby + Brilliant Autumn's Glow far exceeds what two Luminous Monarch Topaz' cost. So if you don't feel like spending loads of gold for one extra spellpower, the Luminous ones are still viable options.

I'll edit that in though.

Edit: I blame that Blizzard rounded the blue gem down but didn't round the epic gem down. :-\

So in 3.2 we should be using two Lumious Flawless Ametrines over a Runed Cardinal Ruby/Brilliant King's Amber

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...&version=10116

ive never played this spec but i think id use this for prolly. using dp as a dispel block with 80% chance to resist. good way to make them waste their mana

3pts moved from dodge and guarded by the light to 1h spec and 1 pt from int to unyielding faith

another amusing thing is that you could play this type of spec in 3's with spiritual attunement +disc priest +drain dps (hunter aff lock mswarrior etc)
get a ton of mana when that priest heals you
the priests instants should counter out the disadvantages of prot as well as w/e cc/snares your final partner can apply. burning team. works perfectly with the new resil

A++ Nice guide man.

Originally Posted by Madxena

I have the Ulduar25man mace from Razorscale, Guiding Star, so I dont have the pvp mace yet (getting full set first, it has less prio), and hit hits for as good as nothing. HoTR hits for 4x your mainhand DPS (not dmg) and since we dont have any ap its pretty horrible. It hits for about 400-450 and crits for double that. It does proc seals and I'm sure it also refreshes the divine plea.

Since my Hit rating is horrible the extra attack is very nice, (I got annoyed by: miss miss dodge miss, plea ends) on top the proccing of seal of wisdom made the point well worth.

It's indeed a good way to refresh Plea when that rogue is sprinting and running around you. You save sometime without having to time a melee. It didn't help alot on burst, though. It can crit for 1.6k, but the range is just too low, I'm always out of range and someone is running faster than myself.