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Pre-Raid Holy Paladin Gear Guide

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May
19

This guide is on how to gear your fresh faced level 80 Paladin, ready for healing Naxx and beyond (eventually)!

 

Contents

  1. Talents and Glyphs
  2. Gear
  3. Gems
  4. Enchants
  5. Tips

Talents and Glyphs

I would recommend going for this talent build. The reason for the choices in Protection and Retribution is that 3% more crit is worth more than 3% more healing, also this build allows you to take the greater blessings which are really useful. The talents in the upper end of the holy tree are not set in stone. Some people prefer to take Aura Mastery and Improved Concentration Aura instead of Improved Lay on Hands and Improved Blessing of Wisdom.

Judgements of the Pure is a key talent now because the majority of our heals are not instant cast. I cannot tell you how much fast Holy Lights help. I suggest that you make a Judgement Macro (thanks to fayne selph for this) and bind it to an easy to reach key (i.e. button 1):

#showtooltip Judgement of Light
/cast [target=mouseover,nomodifier,exists] Judgement of Light; [help] Judgement of Light

This will cast Judgement of Light on the target that your mouse is over (or party members target). I would also suggest making another macro (the same one) but for Judgement of Wisdom, this is useful for when people are starting to run low on mana.

Another option for a Judgement macro is this one which I have been using for quite a while now:

#showtooltip Judgement of Light
/cast [harm] [target=targettarget, harm] Judgement of Light
/stopmacro [target=focus,noexists]
/cast !Attack
/cast Attack
/target focus

A bit long winded I know, but it works. It will cast Judgment of Light on your target if it is hostile, if it is not then it will cast it on your targets target (generally the tanks target) and then select the tank again for you to continue healing. This works as long as the tank is set as your focus.

You have a choice when using Judgements of the Pure whether to judge often enough to keep the buff on you, or judge more often to keep the debuff on the monster. For 5 mans I generally just judge often enough to keep the 15% haste, and in 10 and 25 mans judge more often as there is generally small amounts of AOE flying around and this keeps people topped off. However do not judge during a damage spike, this will use up a Global Cooldown and mean you cannot cast a heal during this time.

The Glyphs are shown on the right hand side of the wowhead page, and they mostly come down to personal choice. Especially after the nerf to the Holy Light Glyph (it now cannot crit). However if you are unsure then the ones that I have selected are great ;).

Back to top


Gear

So you have just decided you want to help heal the injured and play a vital role in raiding. But which stats to go for? Generally I use the following rule:

Intellect > Spell Power > Critical Strike Rating > Mana per 5 Seconds

Intellect is our best stat, it increases our Spell Power (because of Talents), Mana Pool and our Spell Critical Strike Chance.

Whether the armor is plate, leather, mail or cloth it does not really matter, however the items have been created such that plate is the best choice for you, to be honest who else is plate healing gear made for!

I have tried to give the best 4 options per slot. I have also put a dot by the piece of gear that I think is the best in slot before raiding.

In addition to these items it is also good to go on Vault of Archavon runs as they are not too hard and have a chance to drop really nice tier items.

Back to top

Helm

Battlemap Hide Helm which drops from Prince Keleseth in Heroic Utgarde Keep.

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    Oct 20, 2010 @ 23:40 pm

    Needs an updateWe are recently working on improving the quality of content here on WoW-Pro.com, both by limiting low ranked guides and by moving out of date guides into archives. For more information, see [url=https://www.wow-pro.com/node/3016]the full news post detailing this process[/url].

    This guide needs an update to make sure it is current with patch 4.0. However it still has enough useful information that it will be left in it’s proper section as-is.

    When Cataclysm is released, this guide will be obsolete and will be moved to the archive section.

    If someone else would like to adopt the guide, or if you have any questions about this process, feel free to comment here.

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    Anonymous
    Jul 19, 2010 @ 11:55 am

    SpellpowerThis guide might be a little out of date, so I’m not sure how it was back then but as far as i know spellpower is not good at all, and as you said, illumination is nerfed. These days, haste and mp5>crit spellpower. just so that you know. 😛

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    front243
    Oct 1, 2009 @ 10:44 am

    Need Help?If you need help let me know. I have a (holy) paladin that just hit 80 and I need to do a lot of research on pre-heroic/raid gear, so I could let you know some of the items I dig up which is not in your guide already.

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    Sep 28, 2009 @ 17:41 pm

    AbsenceApologies, I’ve been busy in the real world for quite a while now, I should have time in the next couple of weeks to bring this up to date.

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    jdmaddison
    Sep 8, 2009 @ 19:49 pm

    review neededSome of the text may be out of date with regard to the latest patches…

    >> Do the daily heroics when you can, it is not only easier to find members, but you will gain more Emblems of Heroism. <<

    That would now be "Emblems of Conquest" *and* "Emblems of Triumph" although these can be downgraded to Valor or Heroism, if needed. (I did and it hurts, but it works 🙂

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    Jul 24, 2009 @ 0:15 am

    MP5 for pallysMP5 is a mediocre stat at the moment, crit will give you mana back and also give you nice boosts to healing. Since the regen is passive and the amount of crit that we carry, you never have to worry about keeping the regen ‘active’, when you’re healing, you stand a good chance at getting some mana back.

    However it looks like Bliz wants us to look at MP5 gear in the next patch, Illumination is being nerfed (/cry), this means that MP5 will be more desirable and means I will have to have another look at this guide. I would suggest starting to roll on items with more MP5 that lack the crit that you would have looked for before, after the patch it seems this will be more of our regen.

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    Shangra
    Jul 22, 2009 @ 11:07 am

    I love this guide.So my next char will become a plate healer. Btw i read in wowwiki.com about the primary stats and saw that you had the same as they did. Namely (quote from wowwiki.com) “Holy paladin healers benefit most from gear with spellpower, intellect, critical strike rating and haste rating. mp5 is also valuable, but is not as important to paladins as other classes.”
    I’m not so sure about the mp5 though, since what if you don’t crit and get the manaregen active? (the Illumination. effect)

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    Jun 16, 2009 @ 21:05 pm

    HasteYou never really look for haste in gear pre-raid (the other stats are more important at this stage). It is easy just to keep the judgement buff up, this grants more than gear can.

    Once you’re raiding then some haste is good, but again not a primary stat (as far as I know).

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    Kajiya
    Jun 16, 2009 @ 17:36 pm

    Haste ratingLove the guide, working on leveling a pally myself right now with plans to go Holy.

    I noticed that in your ordering of stats at the top of the gear section, Haste rating was omitted. Was this intentional, or just a mistake? Where would you place haste rating in the order of importance for a Holy Pally?

    Thanks, and keep up the good work!

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    May 28, 2009 @ 5:32 am

    The layout is fine, theThe layout is fine, the pictures are of the upcoming item, and the dots are for the best item outside of raids (you would know this if you read the first paragraph.)

    Everything in this guide makes sense and the layout is great.

    I tell it like it is. Work on constructive commenting please.

    (Nice guide Night_Hawk)

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    thirday
    May 25, 2009 @ 16:45 pm

    GearingGreat guide. I’ve been gearing up my pally for Ret but see that I need to upgrade his Holy gear also. Thanks for the guide.

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    May 25, 2009 @ 15:52 pm

    I don’t know what the matterI don’t know what the matter with Unbreakable is, but in alot of guides those kind of comments have been posted I’ve noticed. Guides that look great as well. So ignore them.

    I have to say this guide looks great also, I reffered it to my brother who just respecced to Holy on his Pally and he says its great and is using it to gear himself.

    Keep it up!

    – Skumball

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    May 23, 2009 @ 19:50 pm

    ThanksThanks 😉

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    May 23, 2009 @ 19:33 pm

    /agree. There are a lot of /agree. There are a lot of kinder and more useful ways to say the same thing. Use them. Rude/destructive comments = negative karma!

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    May 23, 2009 @ 19:27 pm

    Layout looks fine to me!Layout looks fine to me!

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    Maw
    May 23, 2009 @ 16:59 pm

    CONSTRUCTIVE not DESTRUCTIVECONSTRUCTIVE not DESTRUCTIVE criticism, thanks.

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    May 23, 2009 @ 13:08 pm

    The dots are there toThe dots are there to designate the piece of gear that I think is the best you can get pre-raid, it states this in the paragraph before the list.

    I put the pictures in to the guide to break up the wall of text up a bit.

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    May 23, 2009 @ 12:58 pm

    Those random pics, dots thatThose random pics, dots that dont make sense etc.

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    May 23, 2009 @ 12:52 pm

    Lay-outIf you could be a bit more specific I would be happy to improve the layout.

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    May 23, 2009 @ 12:38 pm

    What’s up with the suckyWhat’s up with the sucky lay-out?

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    May 22, 2009 @ 19:33 pm

    SpellingCheers for pointing it out,

    Sorry it’s now been corrected.

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    May 22, 2009 @ 15:52 pm

    It also says ‘sheild’ at theIt also says ‘sheild’ at the top.

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    May 22, 2009 @ 15:49 pm

    ShieldAt the shield section, it should be ‘shield’ and not ‘sheild’. Just mentioning it ^^

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    May 19, 2009 @ 19:45 pm

    Very nicely presented and itVery nicely presented and it seems thorough as well 🙂

    Thumbs up!

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    May 18, 2009 @ 18:45 pm

    MacroThis is the macro I use, I found it on the wow forums quite a while ago,

    #showtooltip Judgement of Light
    /cast [harm] [target=targettarget, harm] Judgement of Light
    /stopmacro [target=focus,noexists]
    /cast !Attack
    /cast Attack
    /target focus

    Seems to work fine with me as long as my focus target is the tank.

    I’ll add this to the guide as well to give a bit of choice 😉

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    May 18, 2009 @ 13:50 pm

    What is that macro? ThatWhat is that macro? That would be so much nicer then my own.

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    May 16, 2009 @ 16:26 pm

    Ok, I’ll fix thatOk, I’ll fix that asap,

    Cheers

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    May 16, 2009 @ 16:20 pm

    Bone-Framed Bracers drop in[url=http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39235]Bone-Framed Bracers[/url] drop in 10 man naxx, not 25 man like stated above.

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    May 16, 2009 @ 13:41 pm

    Good idea, I’ll give that aGood idea, I’ll give that a go.

    Cheers

    Edit: Cheers for the idea, however checking the code more carefullly I discovered that I had not put the [ / b ] code at the end … I’m a fool!

    Thanks for the help anyway.

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    May 16, 2009 @ 13:36 pm

    Reason to your [ b ] TagReason to your [ b ] Tag can’t I really explain. I’ve got the same problem many times, all the things you can try do is switching the tags to HTML tags.

    It will be like this then

    Text name , shows up like Text name.

    If that doesn’t work you can change all your [ b ] tags to another pixel size. It’s almost the same with a big size (if you’re using the tags for titles).

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    May 16, 2009 @ 13:25 pm

    Great feedback, thanks forGreat feedback, thanks for that.

    I have no idea why the tag is visible in the Chest section :S, I have tried redoing the tag and it still does that. If a moderator could take a look at that it would be appreciated.

    I’ll add a little bit to explain judgements of the pure, to be honest I had just forgotten to put it in.

    I also use a macro to cast Judgements, however I have a slightly different one that casts it on my Focus’ target, just because I find that easier, but I’ll give yours a go. I also usually judge light, for the reason that it helps with healing (but then switch to wisdom if people need mana).

    Thanks

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    May 16, 2009 @ 7:58 am

    In the chest section, youIn the chest section, you have a [b] showing.

    Nice guide. I totally agree with you on the gear, but I just did a quick scan over. Excellent formatting, and icon choice is brilliant.

    I have some critism though, but some is good.

    Nice talent build, it is the one I use myself, when I have to heal…

    I do have some tips to add, and I will try to keep these pre-raid. Light’s Beacon is a great spell, and not just during AoE fights. If you see someone is taking damage and you can’t get a heal on them fast enough and they are fighting at 30% hp 80-100% put it on them. Also make sure a person getting recoil damage is getting healed (Ret Pally using SoB/SotM). If you have a golden group then I wouldn’t worry about casting it. If you have a golden group, except the tank, see what you have. If you have a Blood DK, a pally using JoL, or someone else that is healing them self for a good amount, cast LB on the tank. This gives him/her more heals, and less things for you to worry about. Nothing is nicer then a DPS that can mitigate some damage for you, without hurting their own dps of course (Blood DK Bloodworms, Death Strike | Ret Paladin Divine Storm, Art of War, JoL, Divine Sac. and Divine Shield combo)

    JotP… You didn’t really explain this, or mention it really. This talent gives you +15% haste for one minute after you cast a judgement. This is key to paladin healing, especially since 2/3 heals are not instant casts. Personally I just make a macro for easy, once a minute hit.

    #showtooltip Judgement of X
    /cast [target=mouseover,nomodifier,exists] Judgement of X; [help] Judgement of X

    That allows you just to scroll over a mob’s body, or character panel/portait, and cast your spell, without losingf focus on the tank. Other spells can be worked into that macro, like cleanse, HoP, HoF…

    Nothing more to say now other then great job.

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