Hello!

This will be a guide to using a paladin to full potential in raids and on boss fights, and is created out of self-experience, testing, and discussions with paladins from both my realm and guild.
If you have improvements, ideas, or other constructive information/critism for me, feel free to post it.
But I'd like all the flamers to stay outside the door, as this is NOT an e-peen booster, nor am I saying that I am the worlds best paladin, it can, and probably will be flawed, but I will try to update it as much as possible, with any new changes blizzard might do for us.

******WARNING*******
This post consist of a highly dangerous Wall of text
******WARNING*******

The guide will contain a few chapters, of which will be:

Itemization
Healing guide
Basic Paladin knowledge and talent.
Glyphs and Enchants

I'd like to introduce myself before I start off with first chapter.
My in game name is Daimy, and I've been playing a paladin since 11th of January, and have been raiding, instancing, and pvping since day one of hitting lvl 80.
I don't have the BiS (Best in slot items) raiding or pvp gear to prove my worth, I don't have the high rating to say that I am an imba PvP'er, but what I do have is experience, and quite good knowledge of my class, and have done intensive testing, reading, practicing to optimize MY paladin to its full potential.

My guild is currently doing 11/14 in Ulduar, and I've been healing since day one, but have now switched to the guilds offtank if needed, otherwise I am still healing on as many encounters I can.

Chapter 1: Basic Paladin Knowledge and Talents

Paladin is most commonly known as the MT (Main tank) healers, which means that it will be our job to keep the tanks alive, as we are single target healers, due to our lack of AoE (Area of Effect) heals, but this doesn't mean we're not capable of raid healing, we can actually do several healing tasks at the same time, if performed correctly.

Our arsenal of healing spells consists of:

Holy light
Flash of Light
Beacon of Light
Holy shock
Judgement of Light

And then we have our mitigation spell known as Sacred shield, which assigns a shield to the target, absorbing 500 damage, and when procced on a target, increases our Flash of light crit chance by 50%.
Our Holy talents are built around our main spells of course, with increased crit chance, effectiveness, and so on, on our precious, but few healing spells.

To my awareness, the most common spec, depending on what you feel is needed is split between:

51/5/15 – Cookie cutter holy spec with 5/5 in divinity.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAztM0sVu0tgdxZVcbx:IdwMcV

Opinion:
This is my current spec, as I am usually the one being assigned to the main tank, which requires a quite a lot of effective healing, meaning that its always good to be able to put out high numbers to keep the tank topped.
Some might say that the 5% heal just adds to your overhealing, and I can to some extend agree on that, but I am getting used to the fact that I, instead of healing 10K normal, I know do 10,5K, and on crits it gives me roughly 1,5K more pr. Heal.
Also the 3% extra crit really aint that necessary once you hit around 30% crit unbuffed, as your mana regen from crits should be more than plenty by then, and 3% wont make much of a difference

Pro's:
Has all the “usual” healing abilities highly recommended in a raiding spec as holy, with 5% added healing.

Cons:
You're missing out on imp. Might, and 3% extra crit.

51/0/20 – Cookie cutter holy spec
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAztM0sVu0tgdZVcbxbh:IdwMcV

Opinion:
This is the basic cookie cutter spec without Divinity, and has the 3% added crit, and the imp. Might.

Pro's:
It has 3% extra crit for the extra mana regen that comes with that, and as the spec above all the basic raiding abilities, needed to optimize a paladin in raids.

Cons:
Not sure its a negative thing, as some find it useful, others don't, it's really a matter of taste, but it lacks the 5% added healing from Divinity.

Now for a bit of an untraditional spec, of which I have yet to test but have heard great things about it.

54/17/0 – Holy/Prot mostly used for Main tank healing.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAztM0sVuhtgdxGzub:wdIcMV

Opinion:
This spec looks extremely interesting to me, and I like the way its set up, it does seem to be very gear dependant though, as you lose around 5-8% crit, so I'd have to say that you would need at least 4/5 t8(.5) to make this work. Also with the 4p setbonus on our t8, it would give us great mitigation with sacred shield now proccing every 4th second instead of 6th, and having Divine guardian, for the extra absorption is two things I think is imperative for this spec.

Pro's:
Extra absorption on our sacred shield, added survivability, and decreased time on stuns, decreased raid/party dmg to every member within 30 yards every 2 minutes is also a very nice feature if used correctly.
As someone pointed out, this spec also has the beneficial 6% extra healing from auras, which is quite uselfull if your main tank aint a paladin healer, for long range fights.

Cons:
You miss out on 5-8% crit, and it seems very gear dependent meaning that, imo you should have at least 35-40% crit raidbuffed, without the retribution talent, if not more.

Alright, so that was the basic knowledge of a paladin, and the most common specs used in raiding.
Lets move on to how to itemize your gear.

Chapter 2: Itemization and Gemming.

Paladins as all other classes have some stats which are preferred, and needed for us to work optimal, and the usual priority list is as follows: Intellect>Crit>Spell power>MP5.
Intellect is currently the most important stat for us, as it provides us with everything we want and need to function in a raid environment.

First of all it increases our mana pool which is needed to stay active for long, healing intensive fights like Hodir to take one example. (This is true for our guild, might not be for yours. :))
Secondly it increases our spellpower from the talent: Holy guidance, which increases our spellpower by 20% of our intellect.
Thirdly it increases our crit rating, which is imperative for our regen as we regain 60% of the base mana cost of a spell back if it crits.

So basicly, intellect increases everything we want, which is also why most people put intellect gems in all their sockets, despite the socket bonus.
Crit, and spellpower is stats most people let come with gear, as intellect gives more than gemming for the pure spellpower/crit.

Although I will say this, currently doing Ulduar, I am ending a lot of my fights with about 5K mana left, which in theory is a waste of mana.
To be perfectly optimized, you should end your fights with less than 1K mana, but ofcourse this would meen that you wouldn't have the necessary (At least in my opinion) mana pool to spam heal if something goes wrong, or another healer dies.
But aiming for a balance between having your healing output to be very effective, along with not wasting too much mana over other more useful stats, would be optimal. So what I'm trying to say is, try finding a balance, so that you wont be lacking mana during a fight, but also, not ending a fight with 15K mana spare.

The ulduar itemization as it currently is, is very poorly for our choice of stats currently, as it usually forces you to choose between haste and crit, while giving you MP5, which is utterly useless as its designed at the moment.

But as most of the paladin gear, non tier, is designed with MP5, and according to Blizzard statements, they intend to change this, so if you're raiding ulduar, I'd advise you to collect the MP5 gear anyway, and not discard it completely. You never know what blizzard comes up with of crazy ideas.

Chapter 3: Healing Guide.

Alright, so the healing guide will be based from my own perspective, and from what I find most efficient.
I'll make examples out of a couple of the bosses in Ulduar, as I don't think trash needs a huge explanation, although it can be challenging healing wise, its usually sorted once people knows the tacs.
Usually I am assigned to the Main tank(s), with the job to keep them alive, as we have our druids, shamans, and priests, to keep the raid up, as they're designed more towards this.

I am using grid coupled with mouse over macro for my Sacred shield, Flash of light, holy light, and my holy shock.

My holy shock is macroed into a following macro:

/cast divine favor
/cast [target=mouseover,exists] "Holy shock(Rank7)”
/cast [target=target,exist] “Holy shock(rank7)”
/cast [target=player] “Holy shock(Rank7)”

Which basically uses my holy shock on the target my mouse is hovering over on grid, if I am not hovering over anyone, it'll use it on my target, if I dont have a target, it'll use it on myself.
Now, that is also the macro I use for any other key healing spells, except Beacon of Light, so that I am able to switch target, simply by hovering over another target and clicking my button again.

Now, keeping the main tank up is not a hard job if you're geared correctly, as with gemming full int, you'll have about 28-30K mana, and with Divine plea, and crits, you should be able to actually spam heal the tank during the entire fight.
But this is not how you would efficiently maximize your healing output, and would also completely waste Beacon of light, which is a god sent gift to paladins.

With the amount of raid damage dished out by bosses now'a'days, you are actually able to keep up the MT by having beacon, close eye on his health, and good knowledge of the encounters, while raid healing like a crazy !%!*@. This way you're helping your fellow healers, not wasting your mana on overhealing, and having a nearly topped MT all the time.

Of course, this is not always the case, as some fight does actually require you having the MT on close watch all the time, as the boss might have a special ability taking him down to very low health, where its imperative to have an holy light charged right away so that the MT will be topped immediately after the strike hits, like on Iron council, starting with steelbreaker and his fusion punch.

There's also some fights requiring heavy movement, which is a paladins worst nightmare, as we only have one instant cast, two depending on whether the first one crits or not, but this is where holy shock and Flash of light shines, as a holy shock in raids can crit for roughly 8,5-9,5K, and followed by an 8K Flash of light, it'll roughly dish out the same amounts as a holy light, so if you're MT healing as you should, but have to move a lot in the process, Sacred shield is important to keep up 100% of the time, so that the proc will be up every 6 seconds, also, using holy shock as much as possible, and then topping rest of with either a flash of light or Holy light, depending on how fast you need to move or if there is time for a holy light. It might only be 0,3 seconds (Which it is in my case, with FoL being a 1,1 sec cast, and HoL being a 1,3-4 sec cast), but it can kill you or the tank at some situations.

Well, I guess thats pretty much it for me. Sorry for the wall of text, but I've been wanting to make this guide since I started getting more experienced as a paladin, as I feel this is something lacking on our forums.

Chapter 4: Glyphs and Enchants

Alright, we'll start out with the glyphs.
My preferred glyphs, matching my healing style, is Glyph of Holy Light, Glyph of Beacon of light, and Glyph of Seal of Wisdom.

Glyph of Holy Light
Glyph of holy light is useful in so many ways, that it'll blow your mind. First of all, paladins are usually Main tank healing as described in one of the above chapters, and melee is usually close to the main tanks, which means that you will basicly help keep up the melee as well, along with Judge of Light, they will basicly be topped at all times, except for extreme raid damage fights.

Glyph of Beacon of Light[/i
Well, this is increases your beacon of light, which is a very costly spell, by 2 minutes, which increases your mana effeciency, by quite some, dont have the exact numbers.
Not really much more to say about this.

[i]Glyph of Seal of Wisdom
Basicly I've taken this for security, as I am a holy light spammer, I need all the mana effiency I can get, so this, combined with the reduced mana cost of holy light Libram, my holy light is down to roughly 1100 mana pr cast.

An alternative, if you feel you're not in need of Glyph of BoL, or Glyph of Seal of Wisdom, you can change it with Glyph of Holy shock, which reduced your CD of Holy shock by 1 second, which can be very helpful for heavy movement fights like Hodir.

Lets move on to the enchants.

Head enchant:
Arcanum of Burning Mysteries - Requires Kirin Tor Revered reputation.

Shoulder enchants:
Greater Inscription of Storms - Requires The Sons of Hodir Exalted reputation.

Alternatives:
Lesser Inscription of Storms - Requires The Sons of Hodir Honored reputation.

Back:
Enchant Cloak - Greater speed - 23 Haste

Chest:
Enchant Chest - Powerful stats - 10 stats

Bracers:
Enchant Bracers - Exceptional Intellect - 16 Intellect

Gloves:
Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower - 28 Spell power.

Leggings:
Sapphire Spellthread - 50 Spellpower 30 Stamina.

Boots:
Enchant boots - Icewalker - 12 Critical Rating / 12 Hit rating

Weapon:
Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spell power - 63 Spell Power

Shield:
Enchant Shield - Greater Intellect - 25 Intellect.

Thats the enchanting section done. This is what I'd suggest for your enchants

Reserved for future posts.

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Q u o t e:

Our arsenal of healing spells consists of:

Holy light
Flash of Light
Beacon of Light
Holy shock

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We also have Judgement of Light which in some cases is the BEST healingspell we got.

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Q u o t e:

And then we have our mitigation spell known as Sacred shield, which assigns a shield to the target, absorbing 500 damage, and when procced on a target, increases our Flash of light crit chance by 50%.

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It benefits from spellpower -> absorbing alot more then 500 damage.

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Q u o t e:
51/5/15 – Cookie cutter holy spec with 5/5 in divinity.

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Imp. Might is better than shorter CD on judgements.

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Q u o t e:
51/0/20 – Cookie cutter holy spec[/b]
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#sxAztM0sVu0tgd:IdwMcV

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Link is bugged.

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Q u o t e:
54/17/0 – Holy/Prot mostly used for Main tank healing.

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You missed the entire reason to specc into prot -> Improved Devosion Aura

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Q u o t e:
Although I will say this, currently doing Ulduar, I am ending a lot of my fights with about 5K mana left, which in theory is a waste of mana.

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You are doing Ulduar EASYmodes and end fights with 5k mana...you run with 3 healers? :S


There are some useful information in your post but with the amount of errors I am surprised anyone would sticky-request this.

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Q u o t e:

Bracers:
Enchant Bracers - Exceptional Intellect - 16 Intellect

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Not better then 30 spellpower

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Q u o t e:

Boots:
Enchant boots - Icewalker - 12 Critical Rating / 12 Hit rating

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I prefer some kind of runspeed (tuskars vitality) unless you specc for it.


Nice effort though, but try to get your facts straight. Maybe read the accurate post at Elitist Jerks? http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t55577-holy_paladin_guide_3_1_a/

/end of whine

Thank you for putting the time into making such a guide.

Your information isn't 100% accurate though. It lacks quite some vital information and the information about the subjects you discussed (Glyphs, Holy/Prot spec, enchants to name a few) is incomplete.

http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t55577-holy_paladin_guide_3_1_a/ is quite good for our class discussion.
Thanks again for taking the time for writing such a guide. My apologies for linking EJ, new paladins could get all the information they need from it however.

Like the whole idea, take the glyph of holy shock in mind, 1 second of it's cooldown is something very handy in heavy movement fights...

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Q u o t e:


We also have Judgement of Light which in some cases is the BEST healingspell we got.




It benefits from spellpower -> absorbing alot more then 500 damage.




Imp. Might is better than shorter CD on judgements.




Link is bugged.




You missed the entire reason to specc into prot -> Improved Devosion Aura




You are doing Ulduar EASYmodes and end fights with 5k mana...you run with 3 healers? :S


There are some useful information in your post but with the amount of errors I am surprised anyone would sticky-request this.

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Thank you :) I wrote it while the servers were offline, and at about 6 am in the morning, so I must admit, it was bound to be flawed, I'll correct these to make it usefull.

I know that Sacred shield scales with spellpower, and therefore has alot more absorption than what the tooltip says, but again, I was tired and didn't have access to my own paladin.

I'll start on the corrections right away.

You can get a add 1 socket enchant for waist items, right?

Yes. :)

i definitely dont use BoL enough to justify a glyph. the minor glyph of LoH will take time off the CD and if you use the major (Glyph of Divinity) you will get mana if you have to use it. you can even use LoH as a mana battery on yourself in that case since itll give a nice amount of mana. i dont know if you spam FoL or just have some of the best of the best gear but i definitely dont end fights with 5k mana, so having LoH as a backup is very handy

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Q u o t e:
i definitely dont use BoL enough to justify a glyph. the minor glyph of LoH will take time off the CD and if you use the major (Glyph of Divinity) you will get mana if you have to use it. you can even use LoH as a mana battery on yourself in that case since itll give a nice amount of mana. i dont know if you spam FoL or just have some of the best of the best gear but i definitely dont end fights with 5k mana, so having LoH as a backup is very handy

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I was refering to that doing easymodes means you will never ever go OOM whatever you do, unless you are playing really bad.

I am rarly useing Holy Light since paladins suck ass at raid healing in this patch.

So i allways get the job as MT / OT healer. Beacon on whoever is the OT.

SS on the MT and just keep him up with flash of light, i am useing the specc 51/5/15, to have the extra mana reg + crit with FoL.

Useing seal of light becouse my mana reg is insane, felt that 5% more healing was the way to go.

I am useing only int gems, i am JC so don't need any other gems. Meta is 21 int + mana on spell cast. Around 5k mana per fight.

Raid buffed i got around 32.000 Mana witch means Divine Plea gives me 1.3k-ish mana per tick. '

I allways go 70% mana left when the fight is over UNLESS i need to start spamming Holy light, after the patch changes some is going to respecc and re-glyph re-gem. but as a mt healer, all you need is to stack int and use FoL holy light is just a waist on mana, overhealing we'll have enough of anyway.

EDIT:
respecced for the sake of fun, to se if the imp SS is giving me a better advantage as mt healer.

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Q u o t e:
I am rarly useing Holy Light since paladins suck ass at raid healing in this patch.

So i allways get the job as MT / OT healer. Beacon on whoever is the OT.

SS on the MT and just keep him up with flash of light, i am useing the specc 51/5/15, to have the extra mana reg + crit with FoL.

Useing seal of light becouse my mana reg is insane, felt that 5% more healing was the way to go.

I am useing only int gems, i am JC so don't need any other gems. Meta is 21 int + mana on spell cast. Around 5k mana per fight.

Raid buffed i got around 32.000 Mana witch means Divine Plea gives me 1.3k-ish mana per tick. '

I allways go 70% mana left when the fight is over UNLESS i need to start spamming Holy light, after the patch changes some is going to respecc and re-glyph re-gem. but as a mt healer, all you need is to stack int and use FoL holy light is just a waist on mana, overhealing we'll have enough of anyway.

EDIT:
respecced for the sake of fun, to se if the imp SS is giving me a better advantage as mt healer.

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According to your armory you haven't done any hardmodes so you are not really qualified to give advice. HL is extremely required for Algalon, Thorim phase2 HM, Iron Council Hardmode and extremely useful in most other encounters -_-

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Q u o t e:
I am rarly useing Holy Light since paladins suck ass at raid healing in this patch.

So i allways get the job as MT / OT healer. Beacon on whoever is the OT.

SS on the MT and just keep him up with flash of light, i am useing the specc 51/5/15, to have the extra mana reg + crit with FoL.

Useing seal of light becouse my mana reg is insane, felt that 5% more healing was the way to go.

I am useing only int gems, i am JC so don't need any other gems. Meta is 21 int + mana on spell cast. Around 5k mana per fight.

Raid buffed i got around 32.000 Mana witch means Divine Plea gives me 1.3k-ish mana per tick. '

I allways go 70% mana left when the fight is over UNLESS i need to start spamming Holy light, after the patch changes some is going to respecc and re-glyph re-gem. but as a mt healer, all you need is to stack int and use FoL holy light is just a waist on mana, overhealing we'll have enough of anyway.

EDIT:
respecced for the sake of fun, to se if the imp SS is giving me a better advantage as mt healer.

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Why would you gem for int if you use FoL mainly?

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Q u o t e:
We also have Judgement of Light which in some cases is the BEST healingspell we got.

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Judgement of Light are best left to the retri paladins (or prot paladin if no ret is available), atleast untill 3.2 and maby even after that if the fight require healing more then mana back for the casters.
So I would not count Judgement of Light as a healing spell for holy paladins unless you are the only paladin in the raid. (Not counting bugged stacking JoL)

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Q u o t e:
You missed the entire reason to specc into prot -> Improved Devosion Aura

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No, the main reason you specc into protection is because of Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian, witch both are extremely usefull talents on certain fights, DG with 4pT8 makes you Sacred Shield alot stronger and a mini shield-wall for you raid is verry usefull on some fights.
Improved Devotion Aura is usually covered by a protection paladin or a resto druid (increased healing portion only)

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Q u o t e:
I am rarly useing Holy Light since paladins suck ass at raid healing in this patch.

So i allways get the job as MT / OT healer. Beacon on whoever is the OT.

SS on the MT and just keep him up with flash of light, i am useing the specc 51/5/15, to have the extra mana reg + crit with FoL.

Useing seal of light becouse my mana reg is insane, felt that 5% more healing was the way to go.

I am useing only int gems, i am JC so don't need any other gems. Meta is 21 int + mana on spell cast. Around 5k mana per fight.

Raid buffed i got around 32.000 Mana witch means Divine Plea gives me 1.3k-ish mana per tick. '

I allways go 70% mana left when the fight is over UNLESS i need to start spamming Holy light, after the patch changes some is going to respecc and re-glyph re-gem. but as a mt healer, all you need is to stack int and use FoL holy light is just a waist on mana, overhealing we'll have enough of anyway.

EDIT:
respecced for the sake of fun, to se if the imp SS is giving me a better advantage as mt healer.

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As some other pointed out, if you basicly only use FoL (witch you shouldn't) you should not gem straight INT, you should go for as much spellpower or haste (if not soft capped) you can. But if you are able to only spam FoL you either go with too many healers or the fight is trivial.

Sno is right in that - for 3.1 at least - Judgement of Light is much better when done by a Retri pally. The spell weights attack power and spell power equally when working out the amount to heal and the end result is that a retridin's JoL heals for about 75% extra over a holydin's.

This will change slightly in 3.2 when JoL changes to healing a fixed percentage of max health. Even so, it will remain a good idea for the retridins and protadins to focus on JoL because Judgement is a spell they tend to use at every opportunity as part of their rotation and a higher uptime should result. Holy pallies sometimes have to be a little more selective with GCDs and risk letting a Judgement effect drop as a result.

My current spec is 51/20/0, containing the usual suspects in both trees. I disagree that Improved Dev Aura is the best thing in the low level holy tree for raiding. The extra 6% healing doesn't seem to stack with the similar effect from the Druid's tree form (though it's nice to have the redundancy both if there isn't a tree druid about or if it gets turned into a pile of wood chippings midfight) and 900 extra armour....meh. I would point to Divine Sacrifice/Guardian as having absolute pride of place for our purposes.

Yes, I did just nominate Divine Suicide. Yes, the spell that takes up to 40% of the incoming damage and dumps it on you. Yes, that's the spell that can get you killed before the GCD from casting it has expired.

When you mix it with Divine Shield, however, all that damage is reduced to zero. Besides allowing you to live, this has another very beneficial effect. Normally Divine Sacrifice breaks when the duration runs out, you die or you take a total of 150% of your maximum health in damage from the spell. Since the bubble reduces all the incoming damage to 0, the second condition doesn't trigger and neiher does the third, allowing you to absorb effectively unlimited damage for the duration of the effect. If you're tackling some of the hard modes - Hodir's Frozen Blows ability comes to mind - this makes a massive difference.

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Q u o t e:



According to your armory you haven't done any hardmodes so you are not really qualified to give advice.

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Yo Penicillin, what is your problem?