Raid Optimization for Holy Paladins

I always felt that speccing, gearing and gemming a holy paladin is pretty straight forward. We had only a few spells and it is absurdly easy to pick up how to heal on a holy paladin due to our small toolbox of direct healing spells.

The true mastery of the holy paladin I feel comes with learning the tricks of the trade and managing the CDs, ensuring you can pump out the healing numbers as well as keeping on top of mana regen - just like every other class.

I really believe that half of the holy paladin's ability to perform in raids is preparation, even more so than other healing classes. You have to gem right, gear right, talent right and glyph right. This is because of the weird dichotomy of our healing arsenal - a big, inefficient heal or a small, efficient heal - so we must optimize for usage of 1 spell over the other (though not used to all exclusion). The other half of the equation is execution, which takes practice depending on the difficulty of the fight along with experience to get a hang of healing.

So here I am, reading Rhidach's post about this site called Armory Datamining. I like these types of websites because they tend to compile information in WoW in a different way, revealing things that are new or from a different angle.

Anyway, I went to look at the holy paladin data, expecting there not to be much deviation. Lo and behold, I was wrong.

I may be presumptive but I really want anyone reading this that is not preparing properly as a holy paladin to sit up and take notice! There is leeway if you want to do things differently but there is still such a thing as wrong gems/glyphs/talents/etc for holy paladins to do! So here is my little troubleshooting attempt.

BS/JC Gemming

This is something I have never understood. Perhaps I am doing it wrong but...

A lot of Holy paladins are BS/JC understandably for the JC gems + 2 extra BS slots. However, why is it whenever I see BS/JC, they always seem to put the JC gems in random slots?

For me, I like to always put my 3 JC only Dragon's Eye gems (usually Brilliant) in the 3 extraneous BS slots:

1. Belt Buckle
2. Bracer Socket
3. Glove Socket

Why you ask? Well, I like to switch out gear a lot depending on the fight. If I have a set socket that my JC only gem is always in then I know that no matter what gear I switch in and out. It will never interfere with my Dragon's Eye gem! That way I won't be limited in gear combinations just because of either too little or too many JC only gems.

It also makes no sense for the JC only gem to be put into a colored socket because most holy paladins (HL ones, of course) ignore socket color to just do all Brilliant + Nightmare Tear. Even so, FoL paladins can still benefit from this gemming method.

Maybe HL paladins have gotten lazy and just wear one set of gear no matter what. Well, all I have to say to that is...

Don't be lazy!

VDW needs separate gearing/gemming. No, it is not for epeen because the faster VDW gets healed up, the better for the raid! There are also other fights in ICC that I use FoL gear or you may just want to mix up some different types of gear to increase haste or mp5 or what not. Gemming in this fashion makes gearing a lot more flexible!

If you're like me, I have a hard time letting go of gear because I'm always like, well I could use for this and that, etc. I always try to get the most mileage out of my gear.

What do you guys think?

JC in Cataclysm

I am like most other paladins a BS/JC, which I really believe has been the best combination so far. The fact that I actually wear plate is just a perk.

It's funny because in TBC I used to be Mining/JC simply because I wanted to be able to level up JC while leveling. I never min/maxed in TBC. I only finally dropped Mining in WotLK after Ulduar and power leveled BS so I could stack more int after the great nerf of 3.2 for holy pallies.

So I have always been a JC and now more recently a BS, in terms of being a crafter for professions. The funny thing is the only reason why I wanted to be a JC in TBC was because it was the "new" profession of the expansion, just like how belfs were the "new" race of TBC.

Yes, I am a very silly holy pally. Ahh, the days of noob-dom. =P

So talking about trends in TBC, in WotLK, the "new" has become pervasive and completely ubiquitous.

Of course, JC being such a dominant profession is backed up by its very nice benefits.

• Flexibility - You know how engineering usually better for PVPers and maybe some classes in PVE? JC is beneficial to everyone, regardless of their class/role or PVE/PVP because it stacks more of the stats you want
• Customization - Enchanting is a lucrative profession and it's nice to easily enchant anything but the rings only enchant AP, SP or stam, which are nice but not as customizable as the JC only gems with stats that you can stack such as res, spirit, strength, armor pen, etc.
• Money making potential - Even if you don't sell gems or cuts, you still do the JC daily!

JC wasn't always this nice, so I really hope they don't make it the "worst" profession in Cataclysm to make up for its popularity in WotLK. Even so, I still would like to stick with JC at the very least as one of my 2 professions in Cataclysm.

Right now, I'm really happy with what I have heard so far about JC in Cataclysm. No danger signals (yet).

According to MMO Champion:

• New Jewelcrafting dailies will be introduced.
• Many cuts are being added to support the new Mastery stat.
• Some new Cataclysm jewelry recipes have completely random properties, and can sometimes create superior and epic versions.
• Jewelcrafters will have some fun new (and potentially lucrative) vanity items, including fist weapons, rhinestone sunglasses, monocles, and stardust (sprinkle on players for entertainment).

Hahaha, completely makes JC all worth it for me!

Since Blizzard is cracking down on the NDA stuff, I guess we won't be hearing too much about Cataclysm, which means not much about the content is too spoiled. I just hope we can hear enough about the game play and class changes to give constructive feedback to Blizzard. I think everyone is at "wait and see" in regards to the 10 versus 25 man raid changes.

Crossing fingers! Till next time!

Ulduar Paladin Check List, Part II

Warning Long post ahead!!

So in Part I, I talked a bit about my spec, glyphing, gemming and macros. The biggest part supporting a holy paladin's ability to heal is the gear though. The gear that we choose ultimately allows us to fulfill our roles in raids as healers. I am of the school of thought that paladins should go for intellect with a balance of crit and haste!

Keep in mind that once you get to ~50% crit and 5-600 haste, each point of crit/haste you stack beyond that will not improve your healing ability as much. Thus, you can treat crit and haste as having a “cap” so to speak. There is no cap to intellect stacking though since it increases spell power, crit and your mana pool! I'm currently wanting to hit 30k raid buffed mana but as of now, I am stuck at 29.5k raid buffed if I wear certain trinkets.

On a side note, I dislike mp5 very much so though I will not discount it entirely but I will not focus my entire gear set around stacking it exclusively. Meaning that if a particular piece of gear that I am using has it, then whatever but I will not specifically seek out gear solely for it having mp5. So let's get to it!

Gear

I am listing items from highest to lowest preference. Net gains or losses are being compared to the item being replaced. The only stats considered are crit, haste, SP and int in that order.

Ulduar Paladin Checklist, Part I

So since Ulduar is out, I wanted to do a more comprehensive analysis of the gear out there along with detailing some of the reasoning behind my spec/glyphs/gemming. I wound up writing a long post so I'm going to split it up so it is more manageable to read.

Gems

I will be listing in order of preference from highest to lowest. I don't have the new epic gems included as they are not widely available at this time.

Ulduar gear - Rant

Warning: Long rant ahead!

Well, we've been seeing alot of prospective items from the Ulduar bosses and I gotta say when it comes to the spell power plate, I am NOT impressed. Just because the level of the item is higher, it does not automatically make it attractive (see my previous post comparing plate heal boots currently available in game).

In fact, all of the items I have seen so far have mp5 on them and either have crit or haste not both. This irked paladins on the forums that many have posted complaints on the WoW forums about how elemental shaman gear is more attractive, subsequently leading to troll comments about how if our mana regen weren't OP then maybe mp5 would be more attractive to us. =(

My holy pally gear

So last night when we did Malygos, the healing plate boots dropped and everyone expected me to roll. I did not and another holy pally got them (he had the edge in epgp anyway) and made the comment that he was happy because they were "best in slot." To be fair, I was not interested in them though the stats were nice because