**IMPORTANT**Not updated since 3.1**IMPORTANT

I initially wrote this for my guild, so note that it still needs a bit of work on the layout, not to mention it will needless to say have some points which someone will disagree with.
Feedback is very welcome.

Note it's a was primarily a guild one, so there are some jokes/puns you won't understand. But they're there purely for the sake of comedy value, and you won't be missing out on information. Other than knowing there's a paladin who chose Sacred Cleansing over Beacon... Yeah.

Please see "The part of the guide I didn't make" below for alternative views on different subjects of the guide. Any feedback which I think should be mentioned will be there, and if you skip reading it you will be missing out. This is not a "be all end all" guide, it's a reference which will give you pointers to help you develop your character. There's no "ultimate" holy paladin, it's much up to personal preference. While I might not agree with someone, maybe their style of healing will appeal to you more than mine does.

Lastly, thanks for everyone who added/will add feedback, you have/will definitely improve this guide.


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Attributes

Stamina : If you ever gem, enchant or in any way gear for stamina you're a -insert flame-. Your job is to heal, all stamina you get should come from gear you're actually upgrading (there's always some stamina on it). Don't look for this stat, survivability is not anything you have to worry about. If a mob is bashing you, the tank is doing something wrong and you'll die in one or two shots whether you have four stamina gems or none.
Do. Not. Gem. For. Stamina.
The one exception would be if we go to EoE and your hp is at 14k, but then you shouldn't go to it in the first place.

Intellect: Here's a real gem (pun intended), this is by far the most important stat. Short version : You get crit, spellpower and mana (as well as more mana regained with divine plea).
More in depth version: (source : elitistjerks)
100 intellect will give you :
-126.5 Intellect, with BoK and Divine Intellect
-1897 Mana at the start of the fight
-39.5mp5 from Divine Plea.
-21.3mp5 from Replenishment, with 90% uptime.
-25.3 Spell Power
-0.759% Spell Crit

Have a look at these stats. There's no other attribute which benefits us as much as intellect does. Stacking intellect will let you be more *careless* with your heals (spamwise) which actually reduces risk of tank dying. Last night at Patchwerk's frenzy I was at 60% mana, so I started spamming it a bit before it knowing that he would die before I would OOM. If I stacked spellpower over intellect, I might very well have been at 30-40%, and this might not have been possible.
Personally, I think the sweetspot in current content is around 20k mana. At that point you'll have enough not to OOM, and then you can stack other stats (crit and spellpower specifically) for more benefit. But do note that when Ulduar comes mana regeneration will be nerfed and fights will last longer, so don't ditch intellect gear. The more you have, the better.

Spell power: Increases the amount of healing you do. Holy Light gets more benefit than FoL from it, while FoL scales better as HL's wil often be overhealing. You should be aiming at aroudn 2k, at that point you won't need more (but every bit helps). You won't *need* to gem for it, as it should come naturally when you get some gear pieces, but gemming for spellpower isn't a bad choice. Do note that a lot of the spellpower will end up as overhealing, don't overdo it for your e-peen, unless you're sure it will benefit you.

Critical strike rating: 100 crit gives you 2.17% crit. If your heals crit you get 60% mana back. Holy Light consumes a lot of mana.
You should be able to figure this one out.
Very important stat, you should have at least 20% crit when entering Naxx, and you should keep increasing this stat. It scales well while gearing up, as the more mana you have the more mana you'll get back from crit.
Yes, most of our crits will end up in overhealing, but it's the mana you want back that's important. With a lot of intellect and a lot of crit you can spam holy light's day and night. Very important stat.

Mana per 5: Any paladin who played TBC will know that this was one of the major stats a paladin should use. Such is no longer the case. This is not useless, but for the same amount of item points crit will always end up giving more mana than mp5. With divine plea it's pretty much made redundant. Mp5 isn't useless, it just isn't useful. Skip this, but if the piece of gear is an upgrade in other areas, by all means go for it. Just don't sacrifice intellect, crit, spellpower or haste to get some more mp5. Please don't. If you gem for it it's to get a *good* socket bonus (such as 5 intellect) and you require a blue gem. In which case you go for the 9 spellpower 3 mp5 purple gem, NOT the pure mp5 gem.

Haste: 20.6% caps Flash of Light, so if you use FoL a lot there’s no point going over this cap. For raiding though, every bit helps and haste is an essential part of your healing attributes. Faster heals = Less chance of tank dying. Saves you on a lot of them really bad looking moments.

Spirit: Useless. Give it to priests and them lot. If you stack spirit you suck.
Strength, agility. No.

Essentially, you should follow this rule as a baseline:
Intellect > SP = Crit > Haste > Mp5

After reaching about 20k mana (you'll find your sweetspot) you can switch it around to prioritize crit and/or spellpower as more mana isn't necessarily needed for current content. But as a general guideline, use that. You can't go wrong with it. If you end up with 27k mana raidbuffed, that's perfectly fine.
An example of an ideal piece of gear:
Chestplate of the Great Aspects (drops from Sarth25). Has stamina, intellect, haste, critical strike rating and spellpower.
This is actually much better than the T7 and T7.5 chests, as they have sacrificed item stats for mp5. T7/7.5 Chest and Helmets are NOT the best in slots for a holy paladin.

As for Librams: Libram of Renewal (mana cost of HL reduced) is by far the best holy paladin libram. No questions asked, the Naxx25 man is a joke but you should be able to figure that out on your own.

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Glyphs

Major glyphs:

Since the glyph of FoL has changed from being craptastic, you essentially have five options for your major glyph.

Glyph of Holy Light (If you don't have this, reroll something else). It's our only AoE healing tool, and you won't believe how much it adds up while you're spamhealing the tank and there are 8 melee DPS standing around him. That's one Holy Light with 180% effectiveness. It will still be extremely useful after the nerf.

Glyph of Flash of Light: 5% crit on Flash of Light. It's good for heroics, but you won't be using Flash of Light much in raids (you shouldn't, anyway). It *can* be useful, but it's more a bonus than a necessity.

Glyph of Divinity: 2x more mana when using Lay on Hands, you get as much mana as target gets. This is your “oh **** I’m oom” or your reply to “SOMEONE INNERVATE ME” and the druid says “CD”. Get this ;)

Glyph of Seal of Wisdom: Your spells cost 5% less mana. Not much to say here, 5% less mana adds up. It'll help you last longer during mana intensive fights (say Sapph with two healers).

Glyph of Seal of Light: 5% more healing done. On paper it looks nice, but if you have a look on the overhealing metres you'll see that us paladins are often at 50%, sometimes higher sometimes a bit lower. In other words, this glyph will add to your overhealing. Good when you aren't geared, but after heroics it isn't very useful.

For minors:

Glyph of Lay on Hands: Reduces LoH CD by 5 min. There’s not much competition, this is the only minor that’s actually good.

The rest have no raid utility.

TLDR:
Majors: Glyph of Divinity, Glyph of Holy Light, Glyph of Seal of Wisdom
Minors: Glyph of Lay on Hands.

Gems

Gemming... We got stamina, spirit, mp5.. All the good stuff.
No nevermind that, anyhow.

Meta: Insightful Earthsiege Diamond
+21 Intellect (our best stat remember?) and a 5% chance to restore 600 mana (on a 15 second internal cooldown).
This is the best meta gem. No contest. Ember Skyflare gives 2% intellect, but you'll probably never get enough int for this to be good enough. And the mana restored by Insightful surely adds up. This is the best in slot for a meta. If you don't agree you're wrong. If you still don’t agree, then I still think you’re wrong. If you have zero use for more mana however, you can use the Ember Skyflare to make some farm content even easier than it is. It’s not useless, just doesn’t hold a candle to IED.

I'll skip going through each one of the gems. If you just follow the Int>SP=Crit>Haste>Mp5 you should be fine (don't gem for Haste or Mp5, would be my advice though). Only get the stat bonus if it's worth it. Do not sacrifice 16 intellect to get +5 mp5. That would be gimping yourself.
If you've got 20k mana and feel like you don't need anymore, get more spellpower or crit. If you want more, get the +16 intellect. It's pretty baseline.

If there's a stat bonus of 5 intellect for example, but it's a blue slot. Get the +9 spellpower and +mp5 gem, do NOT get a pure mp5 gem. It's not rocket science, you should be able to figure this out. Int>SP:Crit

Skills and how to (not) use them.

I thought of skipping the obvious bits, but someone might be respeccing so might as well get the whole bunch in.

Holy Light: Our main healing spell. It does cost quite a bit of mana but if you don't use it the tank will die. Receives most benefit from +crit as 60% mana returned is quite a bit here. Takes 188.5% benefit from spellpower, so it scales really well. You will overheal a lot with this, it's the nature of the paladin. Don't worry about it, 50% overhealing is perfectly fine. Just don't end fights with 0% mana, that means you need more intellect or crit. It does not mean you should stop using Holy Light and switch to Flash of Light. Really, it doesn't.
Combined with Divine Favour this can be a good "oh %!##" button. 16k~ crits is nice.

Flash of Light: Situational in raids, 113% benefit from spellpower so doesn't scale too much. Nice for topping someone up, but in general you shouldn't rely on it.
There are some situations where it's vital though. Kel Thuzad ice blocks someone. You don't want to start throwing a holy light due to latency possibly delaying it, resulting in a dead person. Spam FoL on him and the 4% healing needed to keep him alive will definitely be there. This assuming holy shock was on cooldown (which happens far too often for my liking). It's situational, but don't remove it from your actionbars. It can never match the HpS from holy light.

Holy Shock: The spell that sucked once upon a time. Our only heal we can cast while moving. Combine with divine favour for a nice burst heal (as you'll have specced Infusion of Light) with either an instant FoL or a very fast Holy Light (it will be a Holy Light with 20% increased crit next patch). Don't overuse it as it's not very mana efficient, but if you have to move and heal; throw it. If the tank is getting just under 50%, throw it and follow with a holy light which might very well turn into a one second cast. A 4-6k instant heal is never a bad thing, use it wisely.

Sacred Shield: One thing. Always, always, always keep this up on the tank. Reduces damage taken in a very mana efficient manner (moreso than the HpM of Holy Light or FoL can match). Only usable on one target since 3.1, so always keep it on the tank. There's no excuse not to. It absorbs 500 + 75% of your spellpower.

Bacon of Light: Our "AoE Heal" (yeah sure). Takes a lot of mana and is slightly situational for being the 51 point talent. If you're raid healing putting this on yourself or the tank would be wise. On yourself so you can stop worrying about dying, or the tank to help the MT healers. Overhealing doesn't count (Tested and confirmed), so don't beacon someone and heal someone at 100%. Many ways to use this, sometimes it's more useful than otherwise. As a general rule though, keep it up on someone. Up to 2x more healing from all your heals definitely helps.
It's 100% gold at Loatheb, simply put it on someone who's low and heal someone else. Holy Paladins can top Loatheb healing metres, believe it or not. (Simply to show they can do as much healing, if you use healing metres to compare who's the better healer just delete your character, please). Also very useful at PW of course. Also, if you're MT healing do NOT beacon the tank and raidheal. If you heal someone who's out of range of the tank and the tank gets a burst, well, he dies. Heal the tank and beacon yourself if you must, but don't ever stop directly healing the tank as an MT healer.

Divine Plea: The active mana regenerating spell that keeps getting nerfed. In any case, it will restore 25% of your maximum mana (not base) but give you a 50% healing reduction for 15 seconds. With this you shouldn't ever run out of mana, but use it wisely. Not when spikes are incoming, but when you can get a few seconds to breath (and don't have to heal) you can use it. That does not mean you should stop healing and leave it up to the other healers. No, but if you use it and keep healing you'll still restore mana. There are some situations where you can use it without a problem (Sapph takes off into the air phase, not much else you can do while waiting for people to get ice blocked). But use it wisely, and to make things easier you can combine it with....

Avenging Wrath: 20% more healing done. You won't be able to bubble 30 seconds after using it. Obviously don't use it just before you need to bubble. But the healing penalty on divine plea when combined with AW is greatly reduced, in other cases you can use it when you know you'll need to heal as much as possible (Gluth's Decimate for example). 20% more healing done, it's awesome. Essentially.

Divine Favour: 100% crit on your next cast. If you need to prepare for a big heal (Gluth's Decimate, Loatheb) combine it with a holy light. Otherwise use it with Holy Shock for a very bursty heal (instant FoL or quick HL). It has no GCD, so makes macros utilizing it.

Divine Illumination: Your spells cost 50% less mana for a short time. Use it when you know you need to spam (Guess what, Gluth's Decimate), or when you want to reduce all risk of anyone dying without running OOM. Say Patchwerk's frenzy, might as well DI and just spamheal the tank. Bear in mind the cooldown (3 min).

Lay on Hands: When the tank goes low you can use it. Otherwise use it on a healer who's OOM, or use it on yourself to regain some mana (a lot of mana if glyphed): 16 minutes if talented, it's very useful and you want to use it. Use it before the complete wipe moment if you can, better safe than sorry. Waiting with the cooldown forever will only prevent you from using it, which isn't good now is it?

Judgement of Wisdom/Light: Keep Judgements of the Pure Up (if you haven't specced it go respec), then you can keep the Judgement up on the mob or simply use it every minute. It's up to you. It scales better with AP then SP so a retri using it will benefit the raid more, in that case use JotW. On the other hand some rets refuse to and will use JotW to guarantee it being up, in that case keep JoL up. It heals a lot, so make sure someone is using it.

Hand of Protection: Use it on yourself if bubble is on CD and big ugly mob is attacking you, save a dps (which happens to be mages, 90% of the time.. oh and rogues). Can also save another healer's butt using it.

Hand of Salvation: Same here, use it on yourself if you're getting aggro, use it on Stygg and Braz.. I mean a DPS if he's overaggroing or another healer. It isn't used as much as it should, but it's a very nice ability. If you use it on the tank you should be shot. Then hanged. Then dragged to the deepest part of Hell. Then shot again.

I prefer not to use Hand of Sacrifice, it's too risky. Hand of Freedom can be useful, but I've never really found it to be a must-have. So well, use them when the moment asks for it. They aren't 100% necessary in current content though.

Divine Intervention: Saves you a repair bill :)

Talents

Short version:

51/0/20 Cookie cutter, Lay on Hands and BoW/BoM are a matter of taste.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxA0gMzhVuMxRtZVcbxbh
51/5/15 With divinity
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sxAzg0zhVuRxRtaZVf0x

Longer version:

Holy:
I won't list 100% useless talents for any reason other than making fun of them.

Spiritual Focus
5/5. If you combine 70% reduced pushback with Concentration Aura you have 100% reduced pushback. Do I need to explain why this is good? Must have. Partly because your other option sucks.

Healing Light
12% more healing done. 12%, more, healing done. 12% healing. 12%.

Divine Intellect 15% more intellect. Remember which our most important attribute was? Must have.

Illumination The reason paladins never run out of mana. This provides more mp5 than raw mp5 could ever do. No reason (other than creating a ..challenge) to skip.

Aura Mastery One point better spent elsewhere, as the silence immunity doesn’t work in most PvE scenarios which makes it very situational. Some extra frost resistance can be nice in Naxx, but is it really necessary? Not worthless, not worth it.

Imp. Lay on Hands 50% more armor for 50sec, 4 min reduced cooldown. Very nice for the "Oh %!##" button, saves a lot of wipes.The reduced cooldown may or may not provide you with a lot of mana in a N25 run.

Imp. Conc Aura PvP talent, skip.

Imp. BoW You don't have many options, and this is a nice raidbuff (it helps yourself a tiny bit as well). Might as well take it, although it's not necessarily essential. If anything, take it purely because there's barely anything else to take.

Pure o.. No.

Divine Favour Will save you a lot of times, no reason not to take this.

Sanctified Light Int>Crit=SP>Haste>Mp5. 6% crit. Must have. This gives you a lot of mana and it's a steal for 3 points.

Blessed Hands The mana cost reduction is more or less irrelevant, but 100% increase on Hand of Salvation can save you a wipe, while the Hand of Sacrifice increase is a bit risky.. you can find a use for it situationally. It’s not a must, but it’s not useless.

Purifying Power If you find yourself going out of mana while cleansing this might be useful. In other words, it's turd on toast.

Holy Power See sanctified light. Must have.

Light's Grace Reduces cast time on Holy Light by 0.5 sec after having cast one. Very useful as Holy Light is far too slow otherwise. Put points here, really, max it.

Holy Shock Baseline Holy Spell, you have to have this. It's our only instant and it's essential for burst healing.

Blessed Life I think Quez specced this when he went holy and skipped BoL /cry

Infusion of Light Nerfed… now gives you an instant FoL when HS crits, or 20% increased critical strike chance on your next Holy Light. It’s not as good as before, but it’s still a very good talent.

Holy Guidance Spellpower is nice. You're supposed to stack intellect. No reason to skip this, at all.

Sacred Cleansing If you follow Quez' holy build you should go for this and skip BoL. In other words; Rofl.

Divine Illumination
Reduces all spells mana cost by 50%. This is a must have, if you ever feel like the fight will be mana intensive you'll thank yourself for speccing this. No excuse to skip.

Enlightened Judgements You're going to keep judging, and you don't want to stand 8 yards from bosses. Spec this.

Judgements of the Pure
15% haste (20% next patch), 100% must-have. 15% faster casting times is a lot, and it surely adds up throughout a fight.

Beacon of Light Scroll up for an explanation, spec this unless you're Qu.. I'll stop. Spec this.

Protection:
Divinity: 5% healing to you is 99.99% recurring useless, 5% more healing is the equivelant of Seal of Light glyph. A lot will end up in overhealing, in other words. This might be useful for heroics though, where you might rely on spellpower and flash of light more than usual. Would I recommend it? No, 5% more healing vs 5% more crit. I love crit /discussion

Guardian’s Favour Cooldown on Hand of Protection reduction is nice, but not necessary. You need these two points if you decide to respec for Divine Guardian. Three filler points which.. well, use them wherever; they’ll suck anyway.

Divine Sacrifice Raidwide Hand of Sacrifice. You’re a healer, you’re not allowed to die. This *can* be used extremely situationally, I wouldn’t risk it though. Suppose it might get adrenalin rushing, or you can use in conjunction with bubble and divine guardian. That’s where it’ll shine.

Divine Guardian Extremely nifty at encounters where raid damage is intense (Sarth 3d, Sapphiron if you’re progressing for example). Also nice for some Glory of the Hero achievements, but I wouldn’t keep this in your main build. It’s nice though, when you can put it to use.

Retribution:

Deflection: ...no.

Benediction 10% off instant spells. That includes Sacred Shield, Beacon of Light, Holy Shock.. Every paladin should have this.

Improved Judgement Not a must-have, but still nifty. Alternatively, go for..

Imp. Blessing of Might Won't be of any use to you, but it's a nice raidbuff. Preferably don't spec both BoM and BoW, as two points will most likely go to waste (you can't have two blessings on one target, but you knew that, right?). Spec this instead of Imp. Judgement if you want.

Vindication Useless.

Conviction5% crit. If you don't get this you suck.

Seal of Command Haha, no.
When you have to move, this means you'll get to the spot you're moving to 15% faster, which means your heal will start casting 15% faster. If you lag, you have an easier time of getting back into.. wherever (say getting out of green @##* at Heigan). If someone is out of range, you can get to him faster.
In my opinion, this is a must have.

Sanctified Seals One of the reasons (along with Conviction) you're speccing down this tree in the first place. 3% more crit. Said it again and again, crit = nice.

You shouldn't have any point left, if you do, respec. In other words, you can't go further down the ret tree as you should have specced 51 points into holy.

Enchants

Head: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries (Kirin Tor revered)

Shoulder: Lesser/Greater Inscription of the Storm (Sons of Hodir Honored/Exalted)

Chest: +250 mana. +8/10 all stats might seem nice but.. Essentially you get 8/10 intellect, while nice +250 mana is more beneficial. Not to mention far cheaper.

Bracers: +16 int or +30 SP depending on your playstyle/current gear.

Weapon: +50/+63 SP. +63 costs a lot, don't put it on a blue.

Shield: +25 int. No questions asked.

Hands: +28 sp.

Belt: Get an Eternal Belt Buckle and gem it. Either buy it (around 50g on my server) or get a blacksmith friend to make you one.

Legs: Azure/Sapphire Spellthread (25SP, 20Stam/ 50SP, 30Stam). Buy at AH or get a tailor to make you one.

Boots: Icewalker.

Healing Strategies

First of all, coordination:

Healing is not competition. Topping the healing metres does not mean you're a good healer.

I’ve seen a lot of “plz show recount healing done kk?”. Seriously, leave that to the DPS. We aren't racing against each other, we're working together to keep the raid alive. To simplify things I'll give an example.

X and a disc priest is MT healing, Y is raidhealing. X really wants to beat Y on the healing metres, but the disc priest is preventing him from getting too many heals off in any given timeframe. What does he do? He starts throwing heals at the raid to improve his "Healing done" data.
What is the problem with this? He puts the tank at risk, damage can be extremely inconsistent and an MT healer needs to keep on his toes. Consistent damage can suddenly turn inconsistent, and BAM the tank took a spike which damaged him from 200% more than the other hits.
The disc priest can't solo heal through it, and X is busy healing a raidmember. Raid wipes. X says "Look at the healing metres, it wasn't my fault".

He might have 20% more healing done than number on the metres, but in the end, there was a wipe because he screwed up. I shouldn't need to explain this further. Healing metres only tell if someone is slacking badly, metres do not give an indication of who's a good healer and who's not. If you're MT healing and the tank is alive at the end, you've done your job.
Only situation where you heal anyone that you're not assigned to is when you can make sure you can keep your task up despite throwing a heal otherwise. Throwing a holy shock at a healer who's low would be one example, as this might let you get a faster heal off on your assigned target as well.
But your priority is to keep who you're assigned to alive. Your priority is not to top metres, and not to heal anyone you're not assigned to (unless it's an absolute necessity). Think dynamically, but focus on who you should be healing before all else.

I assume I won't have to mention that you shouldn't throw your faster heals because you can reach a target who's not in immediate danger just because you'll get some effective healing on your metre. If someone is safe and getting a heal, you'll heal someone else. Oh well, I mentioned it anyway.

Always throw a heal
This is extremely important at encounters like Patchwerk. Don't stand around idle waiting for damage to get to the tanks. Start throwing a holy light, cancel (by moving, using a macro, whatever.. just don't jump) the heal at 50%-75% if it isn't needed. Start casting again, this time the heal might be needed so you let it go through. Start casting, cancel at 50%-75% if no damage was taken by the tank... and so forth.

Essentially. Always have your cast bar moving, but don't throw heals that end up in 100% overhealing. Else you won't have time to get your heal off in time.

Don't be afraid to ask for help
Ff you're assigned to keep X and Y up, X is getting low as well as Y and there's a risk for one of them dying (you might even be low on mana), announce it. Some healer might be able to give you some support. Much rather have you swallow some pride and say you can't cope with the current task then say "Sorry went OOM" after a wipe.

Mana management
With the nerf to divine plea you will have to think more about mana. Use it wisely and make a cancel divine plea macro.
I personally use

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Q u o t e:

/cast divine plea
/cancelaura divine plea

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Simple, but effective. When I press my DP hotkey this will throw divine plea, when I press it again it will cancel DP. This works while you are casting a heal. So you can get divine plea up, throw a holy light and cancel divine plea when the HL has reached 80%, then you'll get some mana and you'll get a full heal off. If possible, try to avoid casting heals while DP is up. The HpM is awful.

Combine it with Avenging Wrath and a trinket and the healing penalty won't be as bad. Works on a lot of encounters, use your own judgement as to when you'll be able to use it. That's it really, we don't have many tools when it comes to mana.

If you don't need the burst heal of Lay on Hands though, put it on yourself to get quite a bit of mana. You can of course put it on another healer who's running low on mana.

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Q u o t e:
Hand of Sacrifice / Divine Sacrifice + Beacon on self will mean the tank takes 30%/40% less damage for a duration. (can also be combined with DS instead of Beacon)
Frost Resist/Shadow Resist Aura + Aura mastery right before Boss spell nuke - 260 Frost/Shadow resistance is bound to reduce damage taken by the tank by at least 20%, and can result in a total resist.

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-Eldore

The part of the guide I didn't make

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Q u o t e:

Getting your fols to 1 second or actually getting your gcd to 1 second you have only reached a softcap so to say. Holy light will still benefit greatly from haste, untill you get it to 1 second. Ofc that's not gonna happen since you need huge amount of haste with raidbuffs to get there but it's still a good stat.

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-Ichígo

What he says is true, it's not a 'cap' in the way rogues have a hit cap and every bit of haste after reaching it will benefit your Holy Light's. I personally think it's more than enough to have it at 20%~, and then to prioritize other stats moreso than you even did before. If you want to experiment, by all means you can breach the cap and if the style suits you, go for it. I personally think that it isn't worth sacrificing other item points when your haste level is that high, I'd rather get more crit, intellect or spellpower. You definitely won't need to get more haste when it's 'capped', but indeed, every bit helps. It would certainly be beneficial in encounters all about inconsistent spike damage (Patchwerk comes to mind). It's not necessary but it is worth pointing out.

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Q u o t e:

About the manapool. I would never stop at 20k, actually you should pretty much never stop trying to get more mana. Until you can spam continuously holy light without using divine plea at all you won't have enough.
When you start getting really high amounts of mana you might want to start sifting from crit(or mp5) to haste simply because you won't need the mana regain so much anymore while haste offers nicely controllable way to increase your output.

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-Ichígo

This can be argued for years and years, and no one is right here. You will be able to do any of the current content with a 20k manapool but extremely healing intensive fights such as Sarth+3D would definitely benefit from an increase in intellect.
Reaching the 20k mark will let you get through all content, and you will notice the increase of crit/sp/haste if you prioritize these stats. It's up to you though, there are paladins with over 25k mana unbuffed who're excellent healers, but others will sit at 20k without any mana troubles. Divine Plea, while nerfed, is still a great tool which should keep you from running out of mana without putting anyone at risk if used right. As I mentioned, you will find your own sweetspot. Be it 20k or 25k. As long as you don't run out of mana and you're keeping your assigned target alive you're doing your job. It's up to the paladin to decide whether he wants more mana or if he wants to prioritize other stats. I won't add anymore quotes regarding this subject, I've edited the Intellect bit instead.

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Q u o t e:

In current content I mainly use Holy Shock and Flash of Lights for healing, even when healing the MT.. I use a Holy Light to keep up Light's Grace (have to admit I forget sometimes, since I don't use HL all that often..)

Cases where I do use HL : Patch, Sarth xd and Gluth @ Decimate

In fights where someone is taking a lot of damage unanticipated (DPS overagro or whatever) I just do HS, if it crits, I do FoL, if it doesnt : Sacred Shield

There's only 2 fights where I don't spam holy shock, and that's KT and Heigan.. I like to save my instants for KT's iceblocks and Heigans trigger happy DPS, failing to avoid the green thing coming out of the floor.

-

I have to say, in my PVE healing set, I have around 650 haste, 40% crit and 2150 SP unbuffed.. I always keep up judgements for the 15% increased speed and I try to keep Lights grace up with a HL whenever I think a fight is gonna turn into "hardmode"..

So basically, my HL's are pretty fast whenever I need them..

It just gives me a little more fun than just mindlessly spamming HL's :)

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-Antrasith

Here's a unique approach to healing and while I have yet to try it out, on paper it seems as if it could work for bosses who don't hit for 20k. Some thought involved as well, keeping Light's Grace up while not relying on the Holy Light's as your main healing spell. I would still stick or the 'regular' way to be safe, but by all means, try this out. It works for Antrasith, no reason it wouldn't work for you. I'd like to add that a lot of haste is probably baseline for this kind of healing though, along with quite a bit of spellpower to make it more efficient. If anything this works well on bosses who refuse to damage the tank for more than 10%, but its' reliability might be a case of overgearing.

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Q u o t e:
I prefer the Ember Skyfire over the insightful Earthstorm. Insightful Earthstorm may provide more mana in total with the proc but considering that in endgame gear you will never have any mana problems anyway the +SP is still more desirable.

Tested all Ulduar bosses on PTR (that was avaliabe, hardmodes tested aswell), mana was not an issue there either, one particular fight (General) will also make any mana regen ineffective, rendering the Insightful Earthstorm proc useless.

The same goes for when choosing which Libram to use. The Libram with -mana to HL may seem better then the Libram with +SP to HL but if you actually need that -mana you are doing something wrong. On a sidenote I'd say that the Deadly Glad's Libram is the best-in-slot, both for PvP and PvE.

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-Buttran

I replied to this at page 2 post #39.

Addons


If you heal with the standard raid ui.. How do you do it?

Here's a list of some useful healing addons.

Grid: Raid unit frames, extremely customizable and people swear by it. You can have it show you basically any information you need. If you don't want to customize it, it's not for you. If you have the time and willingness, it might very well be the most effective raid unit frame addon in existance.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid.aspx

Clique: Often combines with Grid. Essentially lets you bind different heals (or any spells) to mousebinds. So if you left click a unit frame you'll cast Flash of Light, for example.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/clique.aspx

Healbot: Fulfills the same function as Grid+Clique, and has everything you need to heal as a holy paladin. I am using it and I doubt I'll ever change. Everyone essentially gets a healthbar (you can configure them to show mana, aggro etc). You can add custom debuffs and it will show you which debuffs you can cleanse. Also has a built in VisualHeal (don't skip VH though, sometimes one doesn't show a heal and sometimes the other doesn't). It's Grid+Clique without any need to configure (although you can). Good if you just want to install it and get down to using it.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/heal-bot-continued.aspx

PallyPower/ZOMGBuffs: Helps you with Blessings, they can be assigned and you simply spam a button which will automatically bless for you. I prefer ZOMBuffs but you might prefer PP. Due to someone being unable to bless BoM and keep it up in our raids, I'd suggest that *you* download one of the two.

ZOMGBuffs: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/zomgbuffs.aspx
Pallypower : http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/pally-power.aspx

VisualHeal: A bar that shows if any other heals are being thrown at the target, who'll heal him first (you or him for example) and essentially prevents you from overhealing and helps you decide which target to heal next. Must have.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/visualheal.aspx

Decursive: A mod that helps you cleanse targets. Not much more to it, I don't use it but I know several people who swear by it. A mini healbot that makes cleansing much easier.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/decursive.aspx

Should be okay for space now.

Thats a fantastic guide.

You deserve a cookie (or two).

IT`S OVER NINE THOUSAND!
On a more serious none, great guide dude. =)

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Q u o t e:
IT`S OVER NINE THOUSAND!

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Edit: and reported

While a great guide, I want to add few points.

Getting your fols to 1 second or actually getting your gcd to 1 second you have only reached a softcap so to say. Holy light will still benefit greatly from haste, untill you get it to 1 second. Ofc that's not gonna happen since you need huge amount of haste with raidbuffs to get there but it's still a good stat.

About the manapool. I would never stop at 20k, actually you should pretty much never stop trying to get more mana. Until you can spam continuously holy light without using divine plea at all you won't have enough.
When you start getting really high amounts of mana you might want to start sifting from crit(or mp5) to haste simply because you won't need the mana regain so much anymore while haste offers nicely controllable way to increase your output.

It's a pretty solid guide except for one thing imo.. The heals you mainly use..

In current content I mainly use Holy Shock and Flash of Lights for healing, even when healing the MT.. I use a Holy Light to keep up Light's Grace (have to admit I forget sometimes, since I don't use HL all that often..)

Cases where I do use HL : Patch, Sarth xd and Gluth @ Decimate

In fights where someone is taking a lot of damage unanticipated (DPS overagro or whatever) I just do HS, if it crits, I do FoL, if it doesnt : Sacred Shield

There's only 2 fights where I don't spam holy shock, and that's KT and Heigan.. I like to save my instants for KT's iceblocks and Heigans trigger happy DPS, failing to avoid the green thing coming out of the floor.

omfg plate bubble and heal and you guys still need a guide on how to play just jokin great guide :P

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Q u o t e:
While a great guide, I want to add few points.

Getting your fols to 1 second or actually getting your gcd to 1 second you have only reached a softcap so to say. Holy light will still benefit greatly from haste, untill you get it to 1 second. Ofc that's not gonna happen since you need huge amount of haste with raidbuffs to get there but it's still a good stat.

About the manapool. I would never stop at 20k, actually you should pretty much never stop trying to get more mana. Until you can spam continuously holy light without using divine plea at all you won't have enough.
When you start getting really high amounts of mana you might want to start sifting from crit(or mp5) to haste simply because you won't need the mana regain so much anymore while haste offers nicely controllable way to increase your output.

---

Thanks for your feedback, I'm organizing the guide a bit more and I'll update it with this in mind. I don't disagree, simply two different ways of gearing and both are perfectly viable.

---

Q u o t e:
It's a pretty solid guide except for one thing imo.. The heals you mainly use..

In current content I mainly use Holy Shock and Flash of Lights for healing, even when healing the MT.. I use a Holy Light to keep up Light's Grace (have to admit I forget sometimes, since I don't use HL all that often..)

Cases where I do use HL : Patch, Sarth xd and Gluth @ Decimate

In fights where someone is taking a lot of damage unanticipated (DPS overagro or whatever) I just do HS, if it crits, I do FoL, if it doesnt : Sacred Shield

There's only 2 fights where I don't spam holy shock, and that's KT and Heigan.. I like to save my instants for KT's iceblocks and Heigans trigger happy DPS, failing to avoid the green thing coming out of the floor.

---

Hm, I must admit I've never tried this and I do think it sounds risky. In case holy shock is on cooldown and you only have Flash of Light's to get the tank up rather than a holy light on the way. Interesting though, anyone else using a similar style of healing? I'm a bit skeptical about it, but I won't diss it before I've tried it.
Thanks for your input.

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Q u o t e:


Thanks for your feedback, I'm organizing the guide a bit more and I'll update it with this in mind. I don't disagree, simply two different ways of gearing and both are perfectly viable.


Hm, I must admit I've never tried this and I do think it sounds risky. In case holy shock is on cooldown and you only have Flash of Light's to get the tank up rather than a holy light on the way. Interesting though, anyone else using a similar style of healing? I'm a bit skeptical about it, but I won't diss it before I've tried it.
Thanks for your input.

---

I have to say, in my PVE healing set, I have around 650 haste, 40% crit and 2150 SP unbuffed.. I always keep up judgements for the 15% increased speed and I try to keep Lights grace up with a HL whenever I think a fight is gonna turn into "hardmode"..

So basically, my HL's are pretty fast whenever I need them..

It just gives me a little more fun than just mindlessly spamming HL's :)

This is way over 9000 :)
Explains the way i play / spec / gem / think even, perfectly.
Thx for a great guide <3

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Q u o t e:


I have to say, in my PVE healing set, I have around 650 haste, 40% crit and 2150 SP unbuffed.. I always keep up judgements for the 15% increased speed and I try to keep Lights grace up with a HL whenever I think a fight is gonna turn into "hardmode"..

So basically, my HL's are pretty fast whenever I need them..

It just gives me a little more fun than just mindlessly spamming HL's :)

---

Thanks for elaborating, it does look odd at first glance but now when I think about it, why not? Mixing this in with one holy light spamming tank on the main tank might actually work quite well. I'll add this to the guide. Thanks again.

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Q u o t e:
This is way over 9000 :)
Explains the way i play / spec / gem / think even, perfectly.
Thx for a great guide <3

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You're welcome!

I'd like to add that over 20k mana you can swap the meta with 25sp / 2% int as it essentially gives you same amount of intellect, but an extra 25 sp instead of a chance to restore mana.