Thread: The 3.3 PvE Holy Paladin Guide.

Hi and welcome to Thoukaia's 3.3 Holy Paladin guide to PvE. Please note that english is not my main language so i'd like to apologise in advance for any grammar/syntax errors i've made. Also, feel free to correct me if you find any inaccuracies in this guide. I'm always up for constructive criticism.

Keep in mind this is a guideline thread, not Elitist Jerks.

THE HOLY PALADIN BASICS

If you're new to the holy paladin class, there's a few things you need to know. The holy paladin is a unique healer compared to its shaman/priest/druid counterparts since his healing spell arsenal is somewhat limited, but he makes up for it with his buffs, cooldowns and other various tools.

Why should the raidleader invite me to the raid? What do i, the holy paladin, have to offer?
A healer's job is to not let people die. In the case of Holy Paladins, the "people" are the tanks, and the Holy Paladin is very good at making sure they stay alive.
Being in a raid (PuG or guildrun) as a holy paladin, your role is automatically assumed to keep the tanks up, unless stated otherwise. Ofcourse you can heal other people if the tanks are not taking much damage and your Beacon of Light is enough to keep them up, but keep in mind that if one of the tanks die, your blame is bigger than the other healers'.

As i said, your job is to heal stuff, and you can do this by using the following spells:
Holy Light: This is your second most powerful heal behind Lay on Hands. With a HL build, you wanna be using this a lot on the tanks. In challenging content, where tanks can die within 1.5 seconds, you can't wait for the tank's health to drop before casting it, you need to spam it until your hands bleed. In less challenging content, you can wait until the tank's health drops and then cast it. Beware that it costs a lot of mana compared to your other healing spells so try to avoid casting it when you're low on mana. If glyphed, this spell provides an AoE heal that can be devastingly useful in some cases.
Flash of Light: This healing spell combines low mana cost with fast casting time so it's ideal when your target is at ~80% but needs to be topped off quickly. Naturally, it's not as strong as it's priest counterpart (Flash Heal) but it's cheap and it has a very strong HoT component if used together with Sacred Shield.
Holy Shock: This spell is instant but costs over twice the FoL's mana while doing slightly more healing than FoL - therefore it's better saved for those ohshit moments.
Judgement of Light: This healing spell is a bit different from the others in the sense that it's a debuff that you put on your target, and it automatically heals the friendly players attacking this target. This spell can be very strong in fights with AoE damage, but unfortunately the holy paladin will not always be able to keep a 100% uptime on it so it should be preferably assigned to a ret or prot paladin.
Lay on Hands: This is your most powerful heal and restores 1950 mana to the target, however it's on a 20 minutes cooldown (15 minutes with the minor glyph, 11 minutes with the Improved Lay on Hands). Prior to 3.3, this spell was mostly used on self to restore 7800 mana with the Glyph of Divinity. However, post 3.3 it is no longer usable on self, and i personally believe it wont be worth speccing/glyphing for it.

Ofcourse, these spells arent enough to justify a raid spot, which is why we paladins have been granted a number of cooldowns and buffs to make up for the limited healing arsenal.

Sacred Shield: This is a buff that lasts 30 seconds (60 if specced for it) and absorbs 500+(spellpower value)*0.75 damage every 6 seconds. It also causes your Flash of Light to heal for an additional 100% (200% with 4pc T9) over 12 seconds.
Beacon of Light: This is a buff that lasts 60 seconds (90 if glyphed) and transfers all healing and overhealing done by the paladin to other raid members to the target. This is one of the most useful spells in our spellbook, as it allows as to heal 2 tanks at the same time. However, beware of LoS: if your healing target is not in line of sight of the BoL'd target, the healing will NOT transfer.
Hand of Sacrifice: This is a 2-minute cooldown spell that transfers 30% of the damage taken bu the target to the Paladin, up to a maximum of 100% the paladin's health. Use this when you know that high burst damage from the boss is incoming, and make sure you keep yourself up during its duration. One unlucky chain lightning when you're at 50% and you'll bite the dust.
Hand of Salvation: This is a 2-minute cooldown spell reducing the target's threat by 20% over 10 seconds. It can save your warlock friend if timed correctly.
Hand of Protection: This is a 5-minute cooldown spell (4 minutes if specced for it) that makes your target immune to physical damage for 12 seconds. Use this to clear any bleed debuffs on your target, or to prevent a caster from instanly dying after having aggroed the boss or some kind of add. Causes Forbearance.
Hand of Freedom: This is a 30-sec cooldown spell that removes all movement impairing effects on your target and makes him immune to them for 6 seconds. I suspect this spell will be exceptionally usefull in ICEcrown Citadel. This spell is also very useful at dispelling Hand of Protection.
Divine Plea: This spell is on a 1-minute cooldown, and restores 25% of your maximum mana over 15 seconds, but reducing the amount healed by your HLs, FoLs and HSs by 50%. If you're using a HL spam build, you should be casting Divine Plea every 2 minutes or so, except for when you need to be at maximum healing capacity. If you're using a FoL build, you will rarely find yourself in need of mana so Divine plea becomes less of a need. Time Divine plea with your Darkmoon Card: Greatness (+90 int) procs, or with the priest spell Divine Hymn.
Avenging Wrath: Increases damage and healing done by 20% for 20 seconds, 3 minutes cooldown. This spell shares a 30-sec internal cooldown with Divine shield, Hand of Protection and Divine Protection
Divine Illumination: This is a 2-min cooldown spell that reduces the mana cost of all your spells by 50% for 15 seconds. With a FoL build, you wont be needing this much, but with a HL build you need to time this cooldown when you know that you're going to spend a lot of mana. I like to time it with Heroism. With 2pc T10 this spell increases healing done by 35% while it's active.
Divine Favor: This is yet another 2-min cooldown spell that guarantees that your next HL, FoL or HS will be a critical strike. Use this together with Avenging Wrath when you know that an extra 8k healing from HL could make the difference between the tank dying and the tank surviving.

Seals - a very special holy paladin mechanic.
The Holy Paladin can choose from 2 seals: Seal of Wisdom and Seal of Light. The only usefulness of Seal of Light is its glyph which gives 5% more healing - good if you dont run oom fast. Seal of Wisdom, on the other hand, is fantastic. It will cause your melee swings to restore craploads of mana. With Glyph of Seal of Wisdom your healing spells will also cost 5% less mana, making Seal of Wisdom the superior seal in terms of endgame raiding.

Stats

The stats that a Holy Paladin wants in his gear (the priority will be explained later) are: Spellpower, Intellect, Stamina, Critical strike rating, Haste rating and Mp5. Other stats like Strength, Agility, Spirit and Hit rating are of little to no importance at all.

Spellpower: Increases healing done by your spells minus Judgement of Light, and the absorption value of Sacred Shield. This stat is very important to Holy Paladins, make sure you maintain a healthy amount of Spellpower when healing in raids.
Intellect: Increases your maximum mana pool, increases your mana regeneration through Divine Plea, Mana Tide totem and Replenishment, increases your Spellpower through the Holy Guidance talent and increases your spell critical chance. This stat scales by 12/4/6/8/10% with the talent Divine Intellect, and is further increased by 10% from the Blessing of Kings buff. It's importance depends on your playstyle - more will be explained below.
Stamina: Increases your maximum health pool, this stat scales by 10% with the Blessing of Kings buff. This stat is found on gear in decent amounts, and while it's not a smart idea to gem/enchant for it, that doesnt mean it's not useful. In a few cases, a difference in 100 stamina will decide whether you live or die.
Critical Strike Rating: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with your healing spells and increases your mana regeneration through the Illumination talent. This stat provides a nice HPS (healing per second) boost as well as mana regeneration so it's always a good stat to have.
Haste Rating: This stat decreases the casting time of your spells and the duration of your GCD (global cooldown). While it offers a great increase in HPS, it also drains your mana, so be careful of the amount of haste you have.
Mp5: This stat increases your mana regeneration. It is more efficient than the mana regen provided by Illumination but since mana is not always a problem, you will want to prioritise on other stats.

Gear

You want haste+mp5 gear. If such gear aren't available to you then go for haste+crit. Avoid crit+mp5 like tha plague.

Enchants

Head: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44159
Shoulder: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44135 (Master's Inscription of the Crag for scribes)
Cloak: +23 haste (Darkglow Embroidery for tailors)
Chest: +10 stats or +250 mana
Wrist: +16 intellect or +30 spellpower ( Fur lining - Spell power for leatherworkers)
Weapon: +63 spellpower
Shield: +25 intellect
Gloves: +28 spellpower
Legs: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41604
Feet: 8% speed + 15 stamina
Rings (enchanter only): +23 spellpower

Professions

Jewelcrafting: The best profession. Allows you to put 3 Dragon's Eyes in your gear, which contain an extra 14 stat points each, for a total of 42 extra stat points.
Blacksmithing: Two extra sockets for 40 extra stat points.
Alchemy: Increased duration and effect from for elixirs/flasks you can make from Mixology. Also able to use Crazy Alchemist's Potion which is basically a Runic Mana Potion with a chance to proc a Wild Magic, Haste, or another Runic Mana Potion.
Tailoring: Somewhat bad profession. It comes down to Darkglow Embroidery vs +23 haste.
Engineering: I wouldnt recommend picking Engineering as a PvE holy paladin, as its only useful perk i can think of is the short duration haste enchant on gloves, which doesnt stack with the +28 spellpower enchant.
Leatherworking: +76 spellpower on gloves, an extra 46 if you deduct the normal +30 spellpower enchant.
Inscription: An extra 47 spellpower on shoulders + no need to do Hodir dailies.
Skinning: +40 critical strike rating. Bad.
Mining: +50 stamina, almost useless.
Herbalism: Ewww. Stay away.

As of 3.3, there are 2 viable "playstyles" which a holy paladin can use in raids, the HL and the FoL ones. Thus, this guide will now be split into 2 major categories in order to proceed with analysing gemming, speccing, and using consumables.

FoL versus HL

There's been a lot of discussion about whether FoL beats HL in terms of healing efficiency. At the moment (3.2.2), the most popular build is by far the HL one, because of spiky damage in the hardest encounters.

THE HL BUILD

For this build, go with the Emblem of Heroism Libram (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40705) or the Emblem of Triumph libram (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47662). Most prefer to use the Heroism one because at high haste levels it provides a crapload of mana returns. If mana isn't a problem for you then go for Triumph one.

Stat Priority (roughly): Intellect >>> Haste > crit=mp5. I'm not gonna go into much detail about the crit vs mp5 debate. Mp5 is more regen than crit but crit is also throughput. And there are times when a crit heal could have saved the tank. Notice there's no spellpower in the priority - this is because spellpower exists on all gear, unlike haste, crit and mp5. In the end of the day, your spellpower depends only on the ilvl of your gear so it's pointless to try to measure its importance.
As a wise paladin once put it: Intellect is our God, Spellpower is our boss at work, haste is our friendly neighbour, crit is our distant relative that lives in Australia, and Mp5 is our colleage to whom we only say hi.

Gemming: There's one and only one way to gem your gear as a HL spammer - Insightful Earthsiege Diamond and Nightmare's Tear on head, +20 intellect everywhere else. End of story. Stop listening to anyone who says that gemming SP+int in red sockets, and SP+mp5 in blue sockets is the way to go.

Speccing: List of Viable specs:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxA0xr0sVu0tgdxGzubh - The "standard" HL build post 3.3
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxA0xr0sVu0tgdxGzubZc - The "standard" HL build post 3.3, if you raid with a restoration druid.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAzxR0sVu0tgdxGzubh - The "standard" HL build with Aura Mastery, for bosses that deal shadow, frost or fire damage
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxA0xr0sVu0tgdbZVf0x0h - The alternative HL build post 3.3, this spec grants you 8% extra crit and 10% mana cost reduction on your instacast spells while at the same time maintaining 2% extra healing from Divinity.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAzxR0sVu0tgdbZVf0x0h - The alternative HL build post 3.3 with Aura Mastery.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxA0xr0sVu0tgdZVf0xbh - The alternative HL build post 3.3 with 2/2 in Pursuit of Justice instead of 2/5 Divinity. If you like "fun" talents then this spec is for you. We havent fully seen ICC yet, but i'm sure there will be at least one fight which will require you to run from A to B as fast as possible (icehowl hard, anyone?), and Pursuit of Justice is perfect for that.

Another opinion on speccing, which emphasises more on Imp LoH and Imp conc aura:

Originally Posted by Firecrest

Your speccing options are very simple:
Baseline Spec - This has full Imp Conc and full Imp BoW and assumes you're the only one who can bring it.
BoW Bitch - No Conc. Points go into LoH and Benediction. Here it is if you have no Tree Druid (this is also the spec to use if you somehow find yourself raiding as the only Holy Pally and with no Tree).
Conc Bitch - No BoW. Points go to LoH and Benediction. Here it is if you have no Tree Druid.

Glyphs: Glyph of Holy Light is the must-have. For your 2nd glyph slot i suggest picking Glyph of Seal of Wisdom. The 3rd glyph slot you can pick one of the following: Glyph of Beacon of Light, Glyph of Holy Shock, Glyph of Cleansing, Glyph of Divinity or Glyph of Flash of Light.

Consumables:
Flask: The best flask for the HL build is not actually a flask, it's an elixir combo: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44332 + http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40076. If you wipe alot, it's suggested that you use http://www.wowhead.com/?item=13511 instead.
Food: Fish feast or haste food.

THE FoL BUILD

The FoL build consist of Flash of Light being the main healing spell (duh?). Compared to the HL build, it lacks in healing power but compensates in longevity. Keep in mind that for this build you need the best version of PvP libram you can get. Also make sure you get 4pc T9 if you havent got it already.
The FoL playstyle is very useful for healing Valithria Dreamwalker (except that you will be using HL).

Stat priority (roughly): Spellpower >>> Haste until cap (~676) > Crit > Intellect >>> mp5.
Not much to say here, the FoL build relies heavily on Spellpower to increase the amount healed by FoL. ~680 haste rating is when your FoL cast time becomes the same as your GCD, any haste beyond that point is almost useless. Mana regen isn't really an issue with the FoL build, you might still have to pop a divine plea or two during some fights though.

Gemming: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41376 or http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41333 for meta. The good thing about meta gems is they only require red gems. If you're haste capped from your gear then maybe you'll want to put some Potent Ametrines (SP+crit) in the yellow slots in your gear to gain some socket bonuses, and +23 spellpower everywhere else. If you're not haste capped then go for a few Reckless Ametrines (SP+haste) and make sure you have the important socket bonuses that usually give +9 SP (head,chest,legs) to compensate abit.

Speccing: See the specs posted for the HL build.

Glyphs: Glyph of Beacon of Light, Glyph of Flash of Light, Glyph of Seal of Light.

Consumables:
Flask: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=46376.
Food: Fish feast.

Macro Section

This macro will cast Sacred Shield on the default target on left click, on the target's target on right click (presumably the tank):
#showtooltip Sacred Shield
/cast [button:2, target=targettarget] Sacred Shield
/cast Sacred Shield
__________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________

With this macro you need to set the MT as your focus target. The macro will automatically cast Judgement of Light on whatever the MT is targeting. If your target is an enemy it will cast Judgement of Light on it instead.
/cast [target=target] [target=focustarget, harm] Judgement of Light
__________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________

#showtooltip
/cast [target=targettarget, harm] Judgement of light
/targetlastfriend

Pretty much judges your targets target with a JoL and then on the second button hit it reverts back to your original target.
__________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________

#showtooltip Judgement of Light
/cast [target=target,harm,nodead][target=targettarget,harm,nodead] Judgement of Light

You'll instantly cast JoL on your target's target without deselecting your target.
__________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________

This macro will cast Divine plea the first time you press it, and will cancel it the second time.
#showtooltip Divine Plea
/cancelaura Divine Plea
/cast Divine Plea
__________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________

This macro will cast Divine Favor if it's off CD and then Holy Shock.
/cast [combat] Divine Favor
/stopcasting
/cast [help] Holy Shock; [target=targettarget] Holy Shock
__________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________

This will allow you to first put your Sacred Shield on any target, and the second macro will allow you to then cast Flash of Lights onto that target without switching targets. This is useful, as you can keep up your FoL HoT on the SS target effortlessly.
Macro 1:
/focus
/cast Sacred Shield

Macro 2:
/cast [target=focus] Flash of Light
__________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________

This macro will cast 10-min BoW with leftclick, and 30-min with rightclick, you can change it so it applies to any other blessing.
#showtooltip Greater Blessing of Wisdom
/cast [button:1] Blessing of Wisdom
/cast [button:2] Greater Blessing of Wisdom
__________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________

DS/DS macro:
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=5 Divine Shield, Divine Sacrifice
/raid Divine Sacrifice active! I've bubbled!

Helpful Addons

Pally Power http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...lly-power.aspx
BoL/SS/JotP tracker http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ls/clcbpt.aspx
Decursive http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...decursive.aspx
Bartender http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...artender4.aspx
Grid Unit Frames http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ails/grid.aspx
Clique (works great with Grid) http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...ls/clique.aspx
Visual Heal http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...isualheal.aspx


I hope you had as much fun reading this guide as i had writing it :) Stay tuned for the 3.3 PvE protection paladin guide!! (naah just kiddin')

You can see my armory here

hmmm i'm currently HL build and been thinking of changing to FoL but wasn't sure if spending thousands of gold on gems to completely redo my gear was worth it, i'm currently at 33k mana unbuffed and 38k raid buffed, you said that you think FoL will be better in Icecrown and i'd love to try it out but i don't wanna redo it and hate it and waste all that money. keep in mind i'm a big FoL spammer anyway unless there's alot of aoe healing then i switch to HL.
armory below

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...eden&n=Dillbag

For Holy Light builds, Pure Mojo provides more mana from 65 Int, especialy for Alchemists. Tuskar's Vitality is probably worth more from the other 2 enchants since their effect is somewhat trivial and the we do need some sort of mobility for some fights. Don't think of Icehowl, think of Twins hard or Anub hard. As a HL spammer, getting 40 haste or 40 crit food is more worth it from some random spellpower that overheals most of the time. Last but not least, 30 int on your weapon will provide a greater benefit from 63 spellpower once you reach an acceptable threshold.
I think I would never value Spellpower over Haste or Crit. In general, as a Holy Paladin when someone dies it was either because you run out of mana or your heal wasn't fast enough, not because the HPs you restored weren't enough.

Originally Posted by Zikron

For Holy Light builds, Pure Mojo provides more mana from 65 Int, especialy for Alchemists. Tuskar's Vitality is probably worth more from the other 2 enchants since their effect is somewhat trivial and the we do need some sort of mobility for some fights. Don't think of Icehowl, think of Twins hard or Anub hard. As a HL spammer, getting 40 haste or 40 crit food is more worth it from some random spellpower that overheals most of the time. Last but not least, 30 int on your weapon will provide a greater benefit from 63 spellpower once you reach an acceptable threshold.
I think I would never value Spellpower over Haste or Crit. In general, as a Holy Paladin when someone dies it was either because you run out of mana or your heal wasn't fast enough, not because the HPs you restored weren't enough.

Thank you for your feedback.

What maths are you using to support the Pure Mojo > 65 int claim? Correct me if i'm wrong but:
65 intellect = 78 intellect raidbuffed = 1170 mana. Assuming usage of Divine Plea every cd, it will return 24 mp5, Replenishment will restore 12 mp5, the 0,39% extra crit will restore 4 mp5 through Illumination assuming 1,3 second cast for HL and mana tide an additional 4 mp5 for a total of 44 mp5. So yes technically you're correct when stating that Pure Mojo restores more mana but when it comes down to which one is better than the other, i'd go with Mighty Thoughts + Guru's for +20 stamina, +12 spellpower and 0.39% crit. (in fact if you take hymn of hope into account then 65 intellect provide 49 mp5 but i wont go that far since hymn of hope rarely targets holy paladins, and then another 3 mp5 if you're a blood elf for a maximum of 52 mp5)

o.o whats the seal of wisdom bug atm?

First of all, i´d like to thank you for providing this very well written guide.

I do however not agree with you on some issues.

The professions part does´nt include the 2nd best profession; Alchemy.

Consumeables part: I personally, would never go for the Gurus elixir, i know its tempting due to the low cost of the craft, but it wont benefit you as much as the crit elixir (deadly strikes i believe its called). Well fed; i only see 2 options here, as Starstruck said it: Crit or Haste food pls.

As Riek mentioned, i dont have any issues with the Glyph of Seal of Wisdom aswell.

I´m currently the HL spammer-type, and was also thinking of switching to FoL spec/playstyle, as it would allow me to "never" go oom, i.e. always allow me to throw an xtra heal where needed, but i just cant make myself "waste" the gold :P

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...hj&n=Healsalot

Feel fre to comment on my build/gems/enchants etc. Im always looking into improving :P

Originally Posted by Healsalot

First of all, i´d like to thank you for providing this very well written guide.

I do however not agree with you on some issues.

The professions part does´nt include the 2nd best profession; Alchemy.

Consumeables part: I personally, would never go for the Gurus elixir, i know its tempting due to the low cost of the craft, but it wont benefit you as much as the crit elixir (deadly strikes i believe its called). Well fed; i only see 2 options here, as Starstruck said it: Crit or Haste food pls.

As Riek mentioned, i dont have any issues with the Glyph of Seal of Wisdom aswell.

You're 100% right, i cant believe i left alchemy out, being an alchemist myself... *slaps self*

Last time i checked (it was after 3.2.2) Glyph of Seal of Wisdom was bugged and didnt provide the 5% mana cost reduction, in fact i also found a thread about it in the paladin forums. It seems that now it's fixed though.

Originally Posted by thoukaia

Thank you for your feedback.

What maths are you using to support the Pure Mojo > 65 int claim? Correct me if i'm wrong but:
65 intellect = 78 intellect raidbuffed = 1170 mana.

You need Kings, DP on every CD starting as soon as you are at about 70%, 100% replenishment uptime and Mana Tide (not counting the fact that your BE racial or DP might coincide with Tide so you lose some regen right there). Oh, and being Blood Elf and being able to spam 1,3sec HL witout interrupting to achieve the same effect. So it's kinda conditional. Needless to say the gap widens if you are an alchemist.

Originally Posted by thoukaia

You're 100% right, i cant believe i left alchemy out, being an alchemist myself... *slaps self*

Last time i checked (it was after 3.2.2) Glyph of Seal of Wisdom was bugged and didnt provide the 5% mana cost reduction, in fact i also found a thread about it in the paladin forums. It seems that now it's fixed though.

ah I see.. but even still I would find Seal of Wisdom more useful than Seal of Light as SoW provides 4% mana each time you melee. I usually go heal in melee range (except for Gormok) that way I have chance of gaining 2k~3k ish mana which is really nice =)

And yes, excellent guide btw!

One more thing though -- Currently I'm HL type holy paladin for the most part, and I've not done pure int gemming on my gears atm.. Mostly I gemmed for Ints, but I also put in some 10 int + 5 mp5 as well. Do you guys think I should go back to pure int gemming? I figured I'd have very low mp5 so I included some 10 int + 5 mp5 as well.


Sorry I cannot provide armory atm since I'm in my ret spec, but I can tell you general stats of my holy paladin unbuffed:

27.5k mana (when I did pure int gemming, it was about 28k)
2.4 sp
30~35% crit
250 ish mp5
550~600 haste

I don't have the greatest gears atm as holy is my off spec... but I will gladly take some advices on how I could improve upon it!

I highly disagree with your stat priority as far as HL spec goes

It should be Int > Haste > Mp5 > SP > Crit
With Crit and SP being interchangeable depending on if you value the regen qualitys over the slight bonus to Holy Shock and Sacred Shield (unlikely to be worth anything on HLs)

Other than that the guide is ok

I didn't really read your FoL comments because FoL is worthless. But your HL Build information is rather off in some major ways. Not to be a complete dick or anything, but your progression on your Pally is pretty lackluster. 0/5 Heroic 25 TotGC. Not even one Ulduar hardmode. I'm a strong proponent of people experiencing at least most of the content before they dole out advice on it. A guide like this really would be better off coming from someone in a more progressed situation.

I know that you're leaning toward 3.3 with this guide, but the changes from 3.2 are not significant enough that someone who has progressed about as far as a half decent PUG should be giving out instructions.

That's really harsh, I know. But what I assume you're gunning for here is as sticky. Making this something that may conceivably be used as a major resource for new and learning Pallies. The last thing we need is another generation of Holy Pallies running around doing it wrong because their teacher was inexperienced.

Anyhow, if you wanna clean it up, here's my critique.

Stat Priority (roughly): Intellect >>> Spellpower > Haste before 600 > Crit > Haste between 600-700 > mp5.

Your prio here is very wrong. First off, you're putting way way way too much importance on Spellpower and Crit. These two are our worst stats. As a HL Holy Pally, throughput is just not needed. Your overheal is so great already and these stats just add to it.

Additionally, you are tending to devalue MP5 which is also incorrect. MP5 provides better mana regen than Crit. Sure Crit gives you crits, but again... that is throughput that we just don't need.

You're also wrong on Haste. In a HL build, you cannot get enough Haste. Haste past the 682 soft cap is just fine because 682 only applies to FoL which you should be casting fairly few of. So who cares if FoL goes below one second? Haste past 682 continues to reduce HL cast time which is just what you need. You need something like 1500 Haste to get HL hard capped. So don't ever worry about having too much Haste.

A proper prio is: Int > Haste > MP5 > Crit/Spellpower

When you get gear, you want Haste/MP5 gear. Then Haste/Crit. And lastly MP5/Crit should be avoided like the plague.

Gemming: There's one and only one way to gem your gear as a HL spammer - Insightful Earthsiege Diamond and Nightmare's Tear on head, +20 intellect everywhere else. End of story. Stop listening to anyone who says that gemming SP+int in red sockets, and SP+mp5 in blue sockets is the way to go.

Socket bonuses that give Int are generally worth getting. Helm of the Bested Gallant for example. Trading 2 Int for 5 mp5 is a good trade.

Speccing: List of Viable specs:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxA0xr0sVu0tgdxGzubh - The "standard" HL build post 3.3
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxA0xr0sVu0tgdxGzubZc - The "standard" HL build post 3.3, if you raid with a restoration druid.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAzxR0sVu0tgdxGzubh - The "standard" HL build with Aura Mastery, for bosses that deal shadow, frost or fire damage
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxA0xr0sVu0tgdbZVf0x0h - The alternative HL build post 3.3, this spec grants you 8% extra crit and 10% mana cost reduction on your instacast spells while at the same time maintaining 2% extra healing from Divinity.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAzxR0sVu0tgdbZVf0x0h - The alternative HL build post 3.3 with Aura Mastery.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sxA0xr0sVu0tgdZVf0xbh - The alternative HL build post 3.3 with 2/2 in Pursuit of Justice instead of 2/5 Divinity. If you like "fun" talents then this spec is for you. We havent fully seen ICC yet, but i'm sure there will be at least one fight which will require you to run from A to B as fast as possible (icehowl hard, anyone?), and Pursuit of Justice is perfect for that.

I couldn't find a single "good" spec in any of these listed. The biggest part of your speccing decision is determined by whether or not you're the only Holy Pally in raid. This influences your LoH/BoW/Conc decision. In none of your specs did you get 3/3 Imp Conc and anything less than full is pretty much a waste. You also skipped imp LoH in every spec. Which doesn't make any sense at all.

Aura Mastery should never ever be skipped. Very few and far between are the fights that don't majorly benefit from this ability. And even then, a Mastery'ed Devo can never go wrong.

Your speccing options are very simple:
Baseline Spec - This has full Imp Conc and full Imp BoW and assumes you're the only one who can bring it.
BoW Bitch - No Conc. Points go into LoH and Benediction. Here it is if you have no Tree Druid (this is also the spec to use if you somehow find yourself raiding as the only Holy Pally and with no Tree).
Conc Bitch - No BoW. Points go to LoH and Benediction. Here it is if you have no Tree Druid.

End of story. Depending on how things end up in 3.3, there may be an argument for going back into the Ret tree. It will be wholly determined by the value of DG though. Not by PoJ. PoJ is nice, but it's not a determining factor when it can be halfway covered by a simple boot enchant.

Glyphs: Glyph of Beacon of Light and Glyph of Holy Light are the must-haves. For the 3rd glyph slot you can pick one of the following: Glyph of Seal of Wisdom, Glyph of Seal of Light, Glyph of Holy Shock, Glyph of Cleansing, Glyph of Divinity or Glyph of Flash of Light.

Nonono. Beacon is not a must have. Your two non-optional major glyphs are HL and Seal of Wisdom. Your third can be Beacon or FoL. Shock and Divinity are not wrong, but they are not your best options (Shock because the times you use this spell back to back are few and Divinity because LoHing yourself is a bad practice - Beacon Glyph will give back more mana anyhow). Glyph of Cleansing and Seal of Light are wrong for PvE.

@ Firecrest:

Haste is good at high gear levels when doing hardmode content, but this guide is mostly directed to the average holy paladin that clears ToC 10 and 25 every week but has no luck in heroic modes. And as an average holy paladin, you should be aiming to reach a healthy amount of spellpower before thinking about 600+ haste. Low SP+regen because of 226 gear + alot of haste = oomage after 30 seconds of HLing.

Also - you shouldnt be getting Improved Lay on Hands after 3.3 since you wont be able to cast it on protection paladins and it could be risky to cast on yourself, so the only use i can find for it is to pop it on another non-paladin healer.

You say that there are only a few fights where Aura Mastery is not needed, but most damage in ICC (at least from the bosses we've seen so far) is melee: Marrowgar, Deathbringer Saurfang, Valithria Dreamwalker, Blood queen Nathanel and the airship fight dont have any significant magic damage to justify 1 point in Aura Mastery. Neither do the new icecrown heroics, with the exception of 1st boss in the Pit of Saron who deals heavy frost damage, and 2nd boss in halls of reflection who deals shadow damage.

About the BoL glyph, there's currently a bug that allows you to increase the duration to 120 seconds. It remains to be seen whether this has been fixed in 3.3 but even if it has, it's still a good glyph. In fact lemme do some rough math for you:
Over a 9 minute fight, this glyph will save you 3 BoL casts which roughly equals to 3k mana and 3 GCDs. Now there's not a exact way to translate GCDs to mana but the best would probably be meleeing the bosses for those 3 seconds, which should net you 2 SoW procs = 4k mana fpr 7k mana total. Assuming 20 HLs per minute, the Seal of Wisdom glyph will save you about 10k mana. So the difference isnt that huge.

I also fail to see how not having killed a boss in ToGC25 means anything about my knowledge of the holy paladin class. In fact i believe it's better that i dont have - else the majority of the people in this thread wouldnt be able to keep up.

Regardless, i clearly stated at the beginning of the original post that i'm open to constructive criticism, and thus i have edited the guide to reflect some of the different opinions expressed in this thread.

Originally Posted by Krazzy

Thank you so much for this guide. It's been near impossible for me to find a good Holy Paladin guide for PvE. I know it's for 3.3, but the information is so very useful to me now.

Thank you so much.

You're so welcome

Originally Posted by thoukaia

Also - you shouldnt be getting Improved Lay on Hands after 3.3 since you wont be able to cast it on protection paladins and it could be risky to cast on yourself, so the only use i can find for it is to pop it on another non-paladin healer.

Just any FYI since you may not be caught up on this since it was flip flopped a lot. They changed LOH back to an acceptable solution. It only causes Forbearance if you cast it on yourself now. Meaning your free to cast it on anyone in the raid, including other paladins, without worry of giving the Forbearance.

Originally Posted by thoukaia

You say that there are only a few fights where Aura Mastery is not needed, but most damage in ICC (at least from the bosses we've seen so far) is melee: Marrowgar, Deathbringer Saurfang, Valithria Dreamwalker, Blood queen Nathanel and the airship fight dont have any significant magic damage to justify 1 point in Aura Mastery

Sindragosa has a large constant frost AOE, plus a significant frost breath. Still unknown what the Lich King fight will entail. Even for a few fights, you'd be surprised how worthwhile that 1 point is.

Originally Posted by thoukaia

Also - you shouldnt be getting Improved Lay on Hands after 3.3 since you wont be able to cast it on protection paladins and it could be risky to cast on yourself, so the only use i can find for it is to pop it on another non-paladin healer.

This has changed like literally 5 times since the PTR started. In fact, last I heard it wasn't causing Forbearance on others anymore. I don't even know though. I'll make plans for that one when it actually hits Live.

Originally Posted by thoukaia

About the BoL glyph, there's currently a bug that allows you to increase the duration to 120 seconds. It remains to be seen whether this has been fixed in 3.3 but even if it has, it's still a good glyph. In fact lemme do some rough math for you:
Over a 9 minute fight, this glyph will save you 3 BoL casts which roughly equals to 3k mana and 3 GCDs. Now there's not a exact way to translate GCDs to mana but the best would probably be meleeing the bosses for those 3 seconds, which should net you 2 SoW procs = 4k mana fpr 7k mana total. Assuming 20 HLs per minute, the Seal of Wisdom glyph will save you about 10k mana. So the difference isnt that huge.

Never said the Beacon Glyph was bad. Just that it was not a mandatory one. It is, in fact, most people's best choice as a third major.

Your example leans VERY heavily toward favoring Beacon Glyph, relying on abusing a bug and only giving HL 20 casts in a minute (my HL is down to 1.2 seconds). But even then, Beacon still gives less mana return than SoW Glyph. So which one should be more important?

Again, HL and SoW glyphs are mandatory. Beacon or FoL for the third slot depending on how much you need the mana savings.

Originally Posted by thoukaia

Haste is good at high gear levels when doing hardmode content, but this guide is mostly directed to the average holy paladin that clears ToC 10 and 25 every week but has no luck in heroic modes. And as an average holy paladin, you should be aiming to reach a healthy amount of spellpower before thinking about 600+ haste. Low SP+regen because of 226 gear + alot of haste = oomage after 30 seconds of HLing.

I completely disagree with this and highly doubt you'll find many who would support it. Stat prio, gems, spec, glyphs... All the variables center around one question. Can you sustain HL spam? The answer to this question can be found in your mana pool. If you have more than ~28k unbuffed mana, the answer is yes. If the answer is yes, then you should hit the HL Build with everything you've got. You should not ever half ass it. If you're gonna gimp on the Haste and lay on the SP, you're doing yourself more harm than good and you might as well go FoL and be done with it.

Your guide for the "average Pally" (the average Pally should at least be doing some HMs IMO) is teaching him how to do things wrong. What good is that? You need to teach him how to do it right (don't take just my word for it BTW - poke around and you'll find that pretty much everything I said is common knowledge) or put a big disclaimer up at the top of your post that says, "NOT FOR GOOD PLAYERS".

Originally Posted by Firecrest

I completely disagree with this and highly doubt you'll find many who would support it. Stat prio, gems, spec, glyphs... All the variables center around one question. Can you sustain HL spam? The answer to this question can be found in your mana pool. If you have more than ~28k unbuffed mana, the answer is yes. If the answer is yes, then you should hit the HL Build with everything you've got. You should not ever half ass it. If you're gonna gimp on the Haste and lay on the SP, you're doing yourself more harm than good and you might as well go FoL and be done with it.

This is not countering my argument at all. If you can sustain HL spam with a lot of haste in your gear, then you are uber l33t and you dont have anything to learn from this guide OR the comments in this thread in the first place. If you have mana problems while still gemming for maximum intellect then you should drop some haste in favor of some crit or even mp5, THEN maybe you can sustain it.
What you're saying is: If you can afford to spam HL, then go for haste. The mistake in this logic is that as you increase your haste, you will lose your ability to sustain the HL spam.
What i'm saying is: If you can't afford to spam HL then drop some haste for some mp5. Can you now sustain HL spam? If yes, you've reached your goal, if not then keep dropping haste.

To be honest there's practically no reason to argue on the importance of spellpower either. It exists on all gear, unline haste and crit, and noone should gem for it, so there's no point in arguing whether it's better or worse than the rest of the stats. In the end of the day, your spellpower will depend on the ilvl of your gear.

Originally Posted by Firecrest

Your guide for the "average Pally" (the average Pally should at least be doing some HMs IMO) is teaching him how to do things wrong.

I believe you will find more correct stuff than wrong in my guide, but still if something is wrong then something has to be done about it, which is why i have edited the original post for the 4th time to reflect some other opinions.

Nice job on the guide, pay no attention to the negative nancys who are trying to get their EPEEN EGASM by putting you down for one or two tiny things.

I rarely am holy because I go ret/prot for raid, but I gem myself for Flash of light because of ret spec with flash spam and judgements of the wise I am limitless on mana so I want my flash to be huge, so to speak. :-P I do this on TOGC 25. If thee is nothign to cleanse I spam on likely to die targets just to get sheath on them since mana is not an issue.

When I do go holy though I prefer flash build, holy light just takes to long in most cases even with the 620 haste I have, and it is better on mana. It also allows me to spec holy without losing my sheath healing strength for those strange cases I need to have holy gear on like TOCG25 for faction champs