We want to welcome Celton the owner and administrator of HolyPaladin.net to Horde Review as he launches his first post. If you are looking for advice on the Holy Paladin this is the man you want to talk to. He has been featured around the blogging community and we are really excited to have him posting on Horde Review be looking for Celton in the future as he has agreed to post periodically here on HordeReview.com.

So, you’ve just leveled to 80 or collected a good amount of that off-spec healing gear and you’re thinking about enlisting your light-wielding warrior in plate to the ranks of the healing team. Let me tell you, you won’t regret it! Everyone loves a good holy paladin healer. What’s that you say? “But, Celton. I’m not a good holy paladin healer”. Well, that’s where this guide comes in! Read on for an overview of everything you need to know to unleash the light within onto your fellow adventurers instead of onto those evil undead/dragons/constructs, etc.

Choosing your talents

If you’re going to be standing in the back keeping other people’s butts alive, you’re going to need some talents to boost your overall healing power. Fortunately, choosing talents as a Holy Paladin is very straight forward. There is very little spec variation among Holy Paladins. Most Healadins now in Patch 3.3 go down the Protection tree for the Divine Sacrifice talent. This means you’ll be using a spec like 51/20/0. One variation is to pick up the Aura Mastery talent, which can be very useful on some fights when used in combination with one of your resistance auras.

Choosing your gear

Now that you have your spec all set, we’ll need to look at your gear. Like the spec, Holy Paladin gear is fairly simple to figure out. You’ll want the Plate gear with Spell Power and Intellect on it. You can also get Mail or even Cloth gear with Spell Power and Intellect on it, but stay away from that Hit and Spirit stuff. The stats you’re looking for are Intellect, Spell Power, Haste, Mp5, and Critical Strike Rating. World first kill Holy Paladins will stack as much Intellect as possible, skipping socket bonuses and putting Brilliant King’s Amber in ever slot, with the exception of one Nightmare Tear to match your color requirements for your Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. Your libram choice is easy as well. Grab the Libram of Renewal. It is still best in slot for world first healadins.

If you have a choice, you’ll want to pick up the gear with Haste and Mp5 as opposed to the gear with Haste and Crit or Crit and Mp5. You’ll want to look at trinkets with a lot of Intellect like the Talisman of Resurgence, although if you can get it, a trinket with high mana returns like Solace of the Fallen is actually best in slot despite the lack of Intellect.

For glyphs, you’ll want the Glyph of Holy Light, Glyph of Seal of Wisdom, and Glyph of Divinity (or Glyph of Beacon of Light). For minor glyphs, Glyph of the Wise, Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom and Glyph of Lay on Hands work great.

Putting it all together

If you haven’t figured it out yet from the gear, spec, and glyph choices above, I’ll just tell you. You’re going to be casting a lot of Holy Lights. World first Holy Paladins are focused on using Holy Light as much as possible while making it as efficient as possible in order to maximize heal throughput for those times when one or two tanks need massive consistent heals.

Your healing strategy for every fight, from 5-mans to 25-man raids is very similiar. Just before the pull you’ll want to pop Beacon of Light on your tank. You may also want to put Sacred Shield on him, or if two tanks are going to be taking equal damage, put Sacred Shield on the second tank. Lastly, get a Flash of Light on your Sacred Shield target to start your HoT rolling. Just after the tank gets aggro and as you’re running in to a pull, throw a Judgement of Light on the tank’s target, which will also give you your very important haste buff. You’ll probably also want to throw a Holy Shock on the tank as you’re running in while you’re getting into position. Ideally, you will keep Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, the Flash of Light HoT and Judgement of Light up at all times during the fight. DO NOT let Beacon of Light or your haste buff fall off at any time. Those times when you have to move are great times to refresh these buffs since they are all instant cast.

From that point, your job is to refresh those buffs while throwing heals on anyone who isn’t your Beacon target, primarily using Holy Light. Flash of Light can be good to use if there isn’t a lot of damage coming in to top someone off and conserve your mana. Use Holy Shock if a healer or dps is going down fast, but its usually best to just start up another Holy Light quickly if the tank is going down, since Holy Shock alone probably won’t save him.

Use Divine Plea nearly every cooldown to keep your mana up. Start early as soon as you hit 75% mana. Almost every fight has lulls in the damage where you can pop Divine Plea safely without anyone dying. For those that don’t, you can use your trinkets, Avenging Wrath, or the Teir 10 2-piece bonus with Divine Illumination to negate some of the 50% healing deficit, or just use good communication with your other healers so they can cover you for a bit. Also, if you can get in melee range of a mob, Seal of Wisdom will return a lot of mana for you between heals.

Handling AoE damage and using our Toolbox

Holy Paladins have quite a few tools in our box to help handle those times when massive damage is incoming all at once. Divine Sacrifice is a very powerful tool for reducing the amount of damage going out to your group or even just to the tank. If you’re worried about possibly dying while using it, just pop Divine Shield on yourself. Glyph of Holy Light helps a lot for healing up AoE damage on melee dps around the tank or other people who are close to each other. Hand of Protection will work much better than a heal for saving a clothie who draws aggro. Another tool to handle AoE damage is to pop Divine Favor followed by an instant Holy Shock, followed by an instant Flash of Light to almost instantly heal three people (counting the Beacon target). Hand of Sacrifice is very useful for mitigating damage being done to one person (like the tank). Improved Lay on Hands is another tool for reducing the damage incoming to a tank. Cleanse is also a very important ability to use on many fights and can help reduce incoming damage by a lot. Lastly, I already mentioned that Aura Mastery can be very effective at reducing damage on fights with a lot of Frost, Fire or Shadow damage.

The importance of a strong UI

Like all healers, Holy Paladins need to have their UI, keybinds, and macros set up to allow quick and easy access to the information we need as well as the abilities we need to handle that information. Setting up a good UI including keybinds and macros is probably the #1 thing you can do to improve your healing. A click-casting mod or macro is essential for great paladin healers. This means that you only need to click your target once to cast a heal or to cleanse rather than click once to target and then push the heal/cleanse button. Healbot and Grid +Clique are great add-ons for this. You’ll also be much quicker having all your abilities easily accessible as keybinds rather than moving your mouse to click them on your action bars, since many times you’ll need to use them immediately and timing is very important in difficult content. You can check out holypaladin.net for more specifics on how to set up your Holy Paladin’s UI.

Alternative Playstyles

While stacking Intellect and primarily casting Holy Light is the way healadins in world first kill guilds usually do it, you aren’t a world first kill Holy Paladin, are you? There is an alternative way to play your Holy Paladin that can actually be even more effective depending on the content, your skills, and your group and is also usually more engaging and fun for most people. The strategy for a Flash of Light build is vastly different than a Holy Light build and can be very effective, especially if you’re tasked with carrying some less than stellar raid healers on your healing team or if your group is having trouble staying out of the fire/ice/runes/etc or there is just a lot of raid damage in general. Its also a great build for 5-mans where tank damage is usually not that high and you’re the only healer in the group. Despite what many people say, Holy Paladins CAN be very effective raid healers while also healing the tank, especially in a support role for the other raid healers. Check out holypaladin.net for all the details on the Flash of Light build for Holy Paladins if you’re interested in learning more.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to maximize your Holy Paladin, don’t hesitate to spen. some time reading up about strategies for each fight and what experiences other Holy Paladins have around the Internet. There are quite a few Holy Paladins blogs you can follow and read to keep up to date on happenings in the healadin world. Besides that, get in there and start practicing. Becoming a healer is a great way to get a whole new perspective on the game as well as a lot of respect and admiration from your fellow players as you keep them alive and well.

Good Luck!