The skinny on holy paladins

[benseac]

Lyre and I had a good chat today about holy paladins. My paladin Xaandr's going holy and since I played just about 70 levels as him being ret (with a few days trying prot at 60 on a lark), I needed some insight.

So, here are a few questions I'd like answers for. I'm asking them here because this will give me something to read through at work. :)

1) What is a good "base" +heal and +spell crit to shoot for? Off the bat I'm sure won't hit it but if I have a goal, I can start looking at gear lists and get an idea of where I need to concentrate.

2) +healing and +spell crit gems are what I need, for sure. Are +mp5 gems worth getting?

3) In a boss fight, I'm assuming that I either judge light or wisdom. Is this accurate?

[Etrigana]

1) What is a good "base" +heal and +spell crit to shoot for? Off the bat I'm sure won't hit it but if I have a goal, I can start looking at gear lists and get an idea of where I need to concentrate.

2) +healing and +spell crit gems are what I need, for sure. Are +mp5 gems worth getting?

3) In a boss fight, I'm assuming that I either judge light or wisdom. Is this accurate?

1) Reach as high as you can with what you can grab. As a druid healer, my goal is to max out +healing while keeping a decent amount of regen. Id imagine it would translate the same to paladins with +crit adding to regen AND healing. The ideal optimization is whatever you can reach that lets you heal for as much and as fast as possible for as long as possible.

2) Id say yes. Most healing gear is usually made so that its worth stacking gems for bonuses. So if you get a gem with MP5 that fits the gem socket, its almost always worth using. So if you have a blue gem, get a 11 healing/ 2 MP5 gem to fill it. Spirit, however, is a completely worthless stat. And remember that intellect means a larger mana pool AND marginal amounts of crit.

3) As of right now, we barely ever run with judgements up. If you feel you can heal effectively while keeping it up, feel free. Its no small task from what I hear (and why our paladins dont do it I assume). The more important thing to worry about is cleansing and timely buffing.

-Etri

[Lyre]

1) Reach as high as you can with what you can grab. As a druid healer, my goal is to max out +healing while keeping a decent amount of regen. Id imagine it would translate the same to paladins with +crit adding to regen AND healing. The ideal optimization is whatever you can reach that lets you heal for as much and as fast as possible for as long as possible.

2) Id say yes. Most healing gear is usually made so that its worth stacking gems for bonuses. So if you get a gem with MP5 that fits the gem socket, its almost always worth using. So if you have a blue gem, get a 11 healing/ 2 MP5 gem to fill it. Spirit, however, is a completely worthless stat. And remember that intellect means a larger mana pool AND marginal amounts of crit.

3) As of right now, we barely ever run with judgements up. If you feel you can heal effectively while keeping it up, feel free. Its no small task from what I hear (and why our paladins dont do it I assume). The more important thing to worry about is cleansing and timely buffing.

-Etri


Everything said here is true, yep. The purple 9 +healing, 2 mana per 5 gems are really nice to pick up, Xaan. Flat spell crit gems are also nice to fill a yellow slot with if your spell crit is really lacking. A paladins true regeneration is illumination, so shoot for high crit because it not only helps us last in fights, but helps us heal for more. Do keep in mind, though, you want probably a little more +healing than +spell crit.

And yes, once we have a full time ret paladins you can judge and the ret paladin will make a macro for when judgements need to be reapplied because crusader strike missed. Until then just focus on healing and cleansing, it's way to hard in BT to consistantly keep judgements up and actually do a good job in keeping people alive.

[Etrigana]

Im gonna change a few points on paladins that I think reflect some generally held beliefs amongst many many people.

1) spell haste is the new spell crit. Faster flash of lights (below the 1.5s cast time) means more heals going out and greater healing throughput.

2) Judgements are a must. DPS requires a lot of mana and Judgement of light over a 30 second period of time is greater than the healing done in the time to put it up. Judgment of wisdom allows the fight times to be cut down and leads to faster clears. JoW is a must. JoL is nice, but not as needed.

3) A previously held idea I had was that we NEEDED a ret paladin for judgments. Thats crazy, you guys should be able to handle it on most fights. If its only up for half the boss fight, thats still better than nothing. And if we can keep judgments up on Azgalor, why cant we on other fights?

-Etri