[EN] Paladin Holy 5.4.8 PvE Guide

[k0s]

Content:
Click on one of the titles to reach the desired subject

• 1.Intro
  
  
• 2.Stats
  
  
• 3.Spec
  
  
• 4.Healing Spells
  
  
• 5.Cooldowns
  
  
• 6.Gear (Starting & BiS)
  
  
• 7.Enhancements
  
  
• 8.Professions
  
  
• 9.Addons
  
  
• 10.Macros
  
  
• 11.Rotation

Holy Paladin's relevant changes from Cataclysm to Mists of Pandaria:

• Max Holy Power increased from 3 to 5
  
  
• Turn Evil is now effective against Aberrations. Turn Evil now has a 15-second cooldown.
  
  
• Blessing of Kings had its mana cost reduced to 5%, down from 22.3%.
  
  
• Blessing of Might had its mana cost reduced to 5%, down from 22.3%.
  
  
• Seal of Insight no longer has a chance to restore mana on attacks.
  
  
• Mastery: Illuminated Healing no longer activates from periodic healing effects.
  
  
• Divine Plea no longer reduces the amount of healing done, and now restores mana based on the Paladin’s Spirit.
  
  
• Guardian of the Ancient Kings (Holy) now has a cooldown of 3 minutes (down from 5 minutes),
  and summons a guardian that heals the ally that the Paladin healed for 100% (up from 10%) of the amount healed, but no longer heals nearby friendly targets.
  
  
• Holy Radiance now functions like a smart heal, healing the 6 most injured friendly targets within range,
  and minor guardians are no longer targeted (Wild Imps, Bloodworms, Snakes from Snake Traps, etc.).
  There has been no change to the total amount of healing granted by the ability.
  
  
• Holy Shock's mana cost has been reduced by 50%.

Race Choice

Alliance:

1. Human -> The Human Spirit
2. Draenei -> Gift of the Naaru

Horde:

1. ]Blood Elf -> Arcane Torrent





Each stat affects our heals in a different manner.
Intellect is our primary stat and generally the strongest stat that we have.
The secondary stats, Spirit, Mastery, Haste, and Critical Chance, all have different manner of affecting our heals and are valued different because of it.
Spirit has become extremely more important since the MoP patch dropped. I advise gearing towards maximum possible Spirit.

There are now two viable stat priorities to follow:

Int > Spirit > Haste > Mastery > Crit

With that keep in mind that Intellect is not twice as strong as secondary stats, so Intellect stacking your gem slots is not worth it.
This stat priority will also be much harder on your mana, so if you are stacking Spirit and still can’t sustain through a fight with Haste you can switch to Mastery for more efficiency.

Int > Spirit > Haste (to 3106 rating) > Mastery > Crit

This priority will be much more efficient on your mana with some loss in HPS.
I’d recommend sticking to this through progression as it is more sustainable, but Haste is stronger as far as sheer HPS goes.







The talent system was once again redone with the Mists expansion. You now gain one talent point every 15 levels,
with the ability to use one point per tier.
I’m going to break down the talents tier by tier and give my opinion on the absolute best. Most talents are very situational now though,
so if you are looking to get the best out of your talents you may end up changing your talents on a fight per fight basis.



Tier 1: Movement Speed Boost

Speed of Light | Long Arm of the Law | Pursuit of Justice


Speed of Light: This spell works just like a rogue’s Sprint.
Long Arm of the Law: Best used with Selfless Healer talent.
Pursuit of Justice: The drawback to this talent is that you have to sit on some of your Holy Power to have your speed increase,
but with a little bit of foresight you can have the maximum movement speed without gimping your healing.


Tier 2: Control

Fist of Justice | Repentance | Evil is a Point of View


Fist of Justice: Hammer of Justice with half the cooldown. Only useful when trying to control adds.
Repentance: Repentance still works the same way as the current Retribution version with the exception that the cooldown has been replaced with a 1.5 second cast time.
Evil is a Point of View: PvP


Tier 3: Healing

Selfless Healer | Eternal Flame | Sacred Shield


Selfless Healer: This talent now allows Judgement to build Holy Power as well as the mana and cast time reduction buff for Flash of Light, Divine Light, and Holy Radiance.
Eternal Flame: Eternal Flame provides a HoT attached to your Word of Glory finisher, but this HoT no longer has the ability to proc our Mastery shields.
Sacred Shield: Sacred Shield grants you a 30 second shield that starts with three charges and can be cast on multiple people, but has a 10 second cooldown on its charges.
It should be a strong talent for fights with high predictable damage on a few specific targets. May also be strong for fights where you are constantly stacked since EF performs much better for spread raid damage.
There is a Haste breakpoint at 30% for this talent. Cool, right?

Eternal Flame seems to be the strongest talent of the tier.


Tier 4: Utility

Hand of Purity |Unbreakable Spirit | Clemency


Hand of Purity: This spell has a very strong DoT reducing damage component as well as a general damage reduction attached to it. Best for magical debuff fights.
Unbreakable Spirit: 30 second CD on Divine Protection is all that matters.
Clemency: This spell is very powerful on fights where you need more access to any of your Hands.


Tier 5: Throughput

Holy Avenger | Sanctified Wrath | Divine Purpose


Holy Avenger: This spell works the same way that the former Retribution ability Zealotry did. Any ability that generates Holy Power will generate a full 3 Holy Power.
This is an amazing cooldown for burst throughput. In a tough healing situation, you can cast this to follow up every Holy Power ability with a LoD or WoG depending on the situation.
It works extremely well in both single target situations and AoE healing situations.

Sanctified Wrath: For 30 seconds Holy Shock, which is our best on the move heal and primary Holy Power generator, will have a reduced cooldown and an increased critical strike chance.
The bonus healing that is a baseline part of Avenging Wrath combined with the lowered Holy Shock cooldown makes this talent very powerful for throughput and a possible conservation cooldown.
This spell also works extremely well for healing while on the move while.
The talent lets us heal much better while moving through higher Holy Shock use, and it also allows our Holy Power flow to continue as we move around.

Divine Purpose: The bonus from this passive is very strong when it procs.
The only thing that I don’t like about this passive is that I don’t control when the bonus procs, although I will say that it seems to proc quite a bit

Both Holy Avenger and Sanctified Wrath are both extremely useful. As I said, the bonus from Sanctified Wrath has come in handy when I need to heal on the move.
For all other situations I’ve taken Holy Avenger because I like the way it provides its throughput much better.


Tier 6: Damage/Healing Spells

Holy Prism | Light's Hammer | Execution Sentence


Holy Prism: This spells combines healing and damage in an interesting manner.
If you use the spell on a friendly target, it will provide a single target heal and spread AoE damage.
If you use the spell on an enemy, it will deal single target damage and spread AoE heals.

Light's Hammer: This spell works just like other classes’s static AoE heals.
You toss it down and it heals for 16 seconds in the given area. Added bonus of making you feel like Thor.

Execution Sentence: This spell places a 10 second HoT on a target that escalates in strength over the duration. It is a straight single target heal that can easily become overheal.

Play with either Light’s Hammer or Holy Prism depending on whether large amounts of stacking are viable on the fight.
Light’s Hammer will likely also prove to be much stronger on 25 than it is on 10. Light’s Hammer is also much stronger when there is heavy AoE damage for short bursts,
but Holy Prism is a spell that has proven to be extremely strong for burst or prolonged AoE healing in situations where the raid isn’t stacked.

I do advise you to play with the talents as some will be better suited to some situations than others.


Balanced Spec




AoE Spec with Judgement in rotation








Single Target Heals:

Holy Light - Cheap Heal. Should be used in most filler situations, especially with mana being so rough at low gear levels.
Flash of Light - Quick expensive heal. Generates 1 Holy Power if used on the Beacon target. Will likely not be used often unless paired with Selfless Healer
Divine Light - Our hard hitter. Generates 1 Holy Power if used on Beacon target. It should definitely be used more than Flash of Light though, and as mana gets better should be our go to spell for healing large amounts on a single target.
Holy Shock - Strong single target heal. 6 second cooldown. Generates 1 Holy Power and should be used on cooldown to maximize Holy Power gains and Infusion of Light procs. If used after a Holy Radiance it will gain an AoE splash effect in addition to its single target heal.
Word of Glory - Holy Power consuming single target heal. 1.5 second cooldown. This spell is our primary Holy Power consuming heal for single target. It should be used whenever we have 3+ Holy Power and need a quick strong heal.


Area of Effect (AOE) / Multi Target Heals:

Holy Radiance - Heals target for modest amount and spreads 50% of that heal to nearby allies. Generates 1 Holy Power. The heal over time aspect has been removed, and as such the spell will see much less use than it did during Cataclysm. It does have a new synergy with Holy Shock through Daybreak though. This spell is pretty mana heavy and you should try not to spam it.
Light of Dawn - Holy Power consuming AoE heal. Heals 6 lowest health allies withing 30 yards. No longer has a positional requirement and as such is much easier to use. This should be our Holy Power heal when multiple people in our group need health. In most situations using this heal will also provide more heals through Beacon of Light than Word of Glory will.






Healing Cooldowns

Avenging Wrath - A very powerful throughput cooldown that should be used in any situation that calls for extra healing.
Divine Favor - This cooldown is still one of our strongest for healing as the extra speed lets us get more heals off while the critical chance can make them extremely hard hitting. Be warned that it doesn’t have a mana cost reduction as we upgrade out of Tier 13, so spamming spells with this up can burn through mana quickly.
Lay on Hands - Heals a target for an amount equal to your maximum health. Cannot be used on targets with Forbearance and it will cause Forbearance for 1 minute. This is an incredible spell to use in emergency situations when tanks get low on health to quickly get them back to full.
Guardian of Ancient Kings - This spell has been completely reworked. The cooldown is now 3 minutes (down from 5) and it now simply heals allies for 100% of what you heal them for. Seems to me that it now is simply another throughput cooldown and lost a lot of the intricacy that the extra Haste gave this spell.
Divine Plea - Restores mana based off of your spirit with a bottom amount 12%. No longer diminishes healing, so can be used whenever necessary.


Raid / Group Cooldowns

Devotion Aura - Grants immunity to silence effects and reduces spell damage taken by 20% for 6 seconds. This spell is a combination of our old Aura Mastery and Resistance Aura, but it now has a 3 minute cooldown. The main bonus of this spell will be the spell damage reduction for your raid group. In fights with periods of heavy spell damage we will want to use this to make the damage more manageable. Can be glyphed for a shorter cooldown if there is a scenario where you need it for just you, although it will likely never be worth it to do so.
Hand of Sacrifice -Transfers 30% of the damage taken by the target to the paladin for 12 seconds. This is a very powerful cooldown and one that you should be prepared to use during periods of heavy damage on your tank.
Cleanse - There are multiple magic effects spread through the 5 man instances and raids. Keep this spell bound somewhere you can easily use it, but remember that it now has a higher mana cost and 8 second cooldown.
Divine Protection - Reduces Magical Damage taken by 40% for 10 seconds. Can be glyphed to make the mitigation 20% Physical and 20% Magical. This spell should be used often to mitigate incoming damage on yourself and make it easier to keep up the group.
Divine Shield - Protects you from all damage for 8 seconds. This spell can see use in situations where there is a large amount of raid damage and you want to be able to heal the raid without worrying about yourself or to mitigate damage from abilities aimed directly at you.
Hand of Protection - Places a Hand on a raid member that will protect them from physical damage for 10 seconds, but will not allow them to attack or use physical abilities. This spell will be useful in situations where dps gain aggro over a boss or add. It will keep them from being killed and give the tank a few seconds to regain aggro. It can also be used to help tanks drop “Physical” debuffs sometimes associated with tanking certain bosses. You can dispel it fast by using Hand of Freedom.
Hand of Freedom - This will be very useful on fights with slows to help your raid members move out of dangerous situations. Some fights may not require it at all, but on others it may be mandatory for you to toss this on people.





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Glyphs:


A couple of new glyphs were added and changed with this patch. It seems that overall Major Glyphs for us are going to remain just about the same, but there are some notable changes in Divine Shield and Hand of Sacrifice.


Major Glyphs: I think that the best Glyphs that I will use most often will be Hand of Sacrifice, Divinity and Flash of Light. Many of these glyphs are extremely situational.

Minor Glyphs: For minor glyphs, just pick whatever you think is coolest. As long as you include Righteous Retreat as your I win button, nothing else matter.


Enchants:


Shoulders: Greater Crane Wing Inscription

Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Superior Intellect

Chest: Enchant Chest - Glorious Stats

Wrists: Enchant Bracer - Super Intellect

Gloves: Enchant Gloves - Superior Mastery

Belt: Living Steel Belt Buckle

Pants: Greater Pearlescent Spellthread

Boots: Enchant Boots - Pandaren's Step

Main Hand: Enchant Weapon - Jade Spirit

Off Hand: Enchant Off-Hand - Major Intellect



Gems:


Meta Socket: Revitalizing Primal Diamond or Ember Primal Diamond

Red Gems: Brilliant Primordial Ruby

Orange Gems: Artful Vermilion Onyx or Reckless Vermilion Onyx

Yellow Gems: Quick Sun's Radiance or Fractured Sun's Radiance

Green Gems: Zen Wild Jade or Energized Wild Jade

Blue Gems: Sparkling River's Heart

I think that how you gem will come down to how you feel about your mana pool in most situations. You should primarily be using Sparkling gems, but if you find that your mana feels fine you can start using Spirit/x gems to pick up throughput.

If you have absolutely no mana problems and don’t feel it necessary to focus on Spirit, you can stack Yellow gems (Either Mastery or Haste) in all sockets. You can then add in (Haste/Mastery)/X gems in Red and Blue sockets depending on issues with longevity as Intellect and Spirit are more sustainable stats than Haste. Note here that Mastery is much more sustainable than Haste as well, but less overall throughput.


Reforging:


These is the general reforging strategy you should follow is to keep as much Spirit as possible while working to maximize your top secondary stat. For example, with a focus on Haste over mastery you need to keep the stat weights of Spirit> Haste > Mastery > Crit as follows:

If a piece has Spirit and Haste, don’t reforge it.
If a piece has Spirit and Mastery, reforge the Mastery to Haste.
If a piece has Spirit and Crit, reforge the Crit to Haste.
If a piece has Mastery and Haste, reforge the Mastery to Spirit.
If a piece has Mastery and Crit, reforge the Crit to Spirit
If a piece has Haste and Crit, reforge the Crit to Spirit

If you are stacking Mastery, you’d simply prioritize Mastery in the same manner.


Food | Flasks | Potions:


If you want to buff for Intellect, use Mogu Fish Stew. If you want to buff for Spirit, use Steamed Crab Surprise.

Your Intellect option is the Flask of the Warm Sun, and your Spirit option is the Flask of Falling Leaves.

As far as potions go, you have three viable potions that you can use throughout a fight. The Master Mana Potion is a simple mana recovery potion while the Potion of Focus is the larger mana recovery potion with the accompanying ten seconds of not being able to cast. I personally like the Focus style potion much more, but if you can’t find time to use it the Master Mana will still do you good.
Your last option for your potion is the Potion of the Jade Serpent. The Intellect buff it provides can be a very powerful throughput cooldown. If you are really trying to maximize your output and damage starts early in a fight, you can even pop one of these before the fight starts and still have the option to use another potion later in the fight.





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1. Mouseover Macro

Code:

#showtooltip Spell Name  /cast [@mouseover, help] [help] [@targettarget, help] [@player] Spell Name

2. Focus Macro

Code:

#showtooltip Spell Name  /focus [@focus,nohelp] [@focus,dead]  /cast [@focus,help] [help] [@targettarget,help] [@player] Spell Name

3. Rebuke on focus target

Code:

#Showtooltip Rebuke /stopcasting /stopattack /cast [@focus] Rebuke /y Interrupt on %t

4. Burst macro

Code:

#showtooltip Divine Favor /cast Divine Favor /cast Guardian of Ancient Kings /cast Avenging Wrath /use TrinketName

6. Hand of Sacrifice with announce

Code:

#showtooltip Hand of Sacrifice /run SendChatMessage("Casting Hand of Sacrifice on "..UnitName("target").." ("..UnitLevel("target")..")!","RAID",nil,nil) /cast Hand of Sacrifice

8. Divine Shield used as a second pvp trinket

Code:

#showtooltip Divine Shield /cast Divine Shield /cancelaura Divine Shield

Our healing style has remained fairly similar to what it was at the start of the expansion. Holy Shock should be kept on cooldown at all times and the use of our cooldowns and talents is the most important part of our throughput. During downtime try to keep your Mastery shields up with Holy Radiance as much as your mana allows and continue using HS on cooldown. It seems that despite the mish mash of nerfs and buffs, Eternal Flame is still the strongest level 45 talent. Continue to use it to spot heal, but during situations with burst raid damage Light of Dawn may serve you better.

When damage is strictly single target you want to keep your Beacon on the target you are focusing. Depending on the amount of damage they are taking, you should cast HS on them and spot heal the raid to heal them through Beacon. You should try not to cast Holy Light or EF on the Beacon target because transfers can be much more efficient to heal multiple targets. If the Beacon target requires more healing, you can use Divine Light or Flash of Light on them or another target to provide more healing to them. When you get enough Holy Power you should be casting EF or LoD on the raid, with a priority of placing an EF hot on yourself during periods where everyone is taking damage due to the HoT being stronger on you.

In an AoE situation we have access to Daybreak which allows for strong clumped AoE healing. In general AoE healing should follow a pattern of Holy Radiance – Holy Radiance – Holy Shock – Finisher (At 5 HP). If the situation is a burst damage situation, such as Megaera’s Rampage in ToT, LoD will be the best finisher to deal with the immediate damage. EF can be useful in those situations if you manage to get a few HoTs rolling before the damage comes out, but once the damage has started it is best to use LoD to make sure people don’t die. During prolonged damage it is best to spot heal with EF and raid heal with LoD. Remember that EF no longer places mastery shields while LoD does, so you can preshield with LoD now.

[Woofies]

Thanks for guide and the fact that its written in English. Good job.

2 questions: Head enchant and purple gems. You haven't listed them. I'm asking because I want to know if purple gems are no choice at all any longer.

[Hatrick]

Blizzard completely removed head enchants with the release of MoP.

[Orga]

Orga wrote:

Head enchants removed The slot in which ranged, relics, and thrown items were previously equipped has been removed. All weapons should now be equipped in the weapon slot. Ranged weapons, including wands, have been adjusted to be more powerfull.

Purple gems exist and can still be used , bluee and greens are just superior

Oh and also , nice guide

[Woofies]

So oblivious that it hurts. Thank you guys for answers.

[Hatrick]

Ar trebui sa specifici de unde te-ai mai inspirat, just saying. (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1187382-MoP-Holy-Paladin-Guide-5-0)

[Plumber]

I'm new to MoP, so i don't know how Holy Paladin works just yet, still trying to get into it. I was suprised that they removed the talent that allowed you to gain mana every time you succesfuly hit someone with the Judgement. You probably wanna add that into the changes part of the guide.
Also kinda weird to see that critical strike is not important, back in Cataclysm Spirit and Critical were main stats on Holy Paladin.

But anyways nice guide, good job.

[Bhuddzecks]

just in case new ppl read this, disregard the stats priority listed here unti you reach a decent ilvl, it is not beneficial to push into haste with low ilvl. until you start gearing in ToT it is better to focus on mastery than haste. with tot you will start getting more and more haste where the softcaps start to get into your reach. b4 that its just wasted stats.

i could explain this more in depth but i dont feel like repeating what is writen on ej forums or what was written on icy


currently healing ona 490 holy paladin and, well i have no way of measuring shit on freakz bcus i dont know alot of how shit works here cmpared to retail but as a pointer, healing 4-5 dogs solo with a 450k tank in mogushan vault trash grp is no problem with selfbuffed 1,7% haste and 12,08% mastery

[k0s]

Legion Guide -> https://forum.wow-freakz.com/EN-Paladin-Holy-Guide-t454623.html