The New Holydin - Raid Battle Cleric Update 3.0.8

Post by Lightrain

The guide for those of us that don't crunch numbers

The Basics

The new holy paladin is a completely new animal. The old required mp5 and crit to keep your mana pool up. While this is still the case, the new spells implimented by Blizz have made us much more flexible in our itemization.

Divine Plea is now one of our main sources of mana. It has almost removed the need for mp5 on our gear. The amount of mana returned by this talent is staggering. With a 20k mana pool, which is becoming increasingly low in raids, you effectively add 417 mp5 to your gear by using this every minute.
Beacon(Bacon) of Light has become a powerful tool for solo healing, and my must have spell for healing heroics. It has very good use in raid for MT healers to contribute to raid heals when the tank isn't taking much damage, but unfortunately, the tank can only have one beacon on himself at a time, meaning only one healer gets to reap the rewards of double the healing done.
Sacred Shield is a new tool that is really a hit and miss spell. Some paladins love to spam it on everyone, some love to ignore it. In my experience with it, it's great if you use it for the 6 second crit spree if you are still a tried and true Flash of Light spammer.

This is where this talent really shines in my opinion. If you cast it on the tank and just let it sit, it protects the tank. If you need to keep your healing up, and aoe damage is rampant, I cast it on the tank, FoL heal 4-6 targets, then cast it on whoever is taking the most damage(if time allows), then FoL heal 4-6 targets, and rotate it this way. This is very difficult to do, but this makes the mana use of this talent worth it.

If you spam it 5 times on the whole group, you spend a lot of time and mana not healing, but prevent some occasional damage for 23-25 seconds on the whole party(reduced for gcd's spent). This is a useful spell, but definitely a preference spell.

In raid, it is a utility, but has minimal use as far as actually mitigating damage. It does ease damage off the tank, but it's spurratic at best and hardly noticeable. A better use for it is the crit proc, but that is also a small time frame, and hard to use effectively unless you are in a continuous spam fight such as Patchwerk where every crit counts.
Judgement of the Pure is one of the most vital new talents for our healing per second. While it will drain your mana faster by using this spell, it increases your healing output incredibly. I keep this proc up at all times. Losing a GCD to keep this talent up is always a good investment so long as you don't kill the tank.
Lastly, the new talent tree allows for holy paladins to pump out more heals for longer, and itemize differently, allowing them to really gear per fight. The new 51/0/20 raid healing build adds an incredible 8% crit to our healing gear. This allows the new paladins to stack more haste which improves our hps more than crit and squeeze incredible amounts of healing to a single target or two.

There are now 2 main healing strategies in use in the new content.

The tried and true FoL spam with the occasional off healing Holy Shock. This now heals 2 targets at once if you keep your beacon active, and having the lack of mana issue, you should always practice this method with a beacon up somewhere in the raid(preferably on a tank). This is effectively the longest lasting healing strategy ever in WoW. If you stack nothing but crit and Mp5, you can effectively heal for 30 minutes, possibly even forever self buffed. Your HpS(healing per second) will suffer if you choose to itemize this way, and the current fights do not require you to be able to heal for this long. HpS will actually become an issue if you do not acquire any haste on your gear. I will get into Itemization later.
The new "old(Sunwell Plateau HpS healing style)" strategy that is becoming more popular due to the new system of raid librams, glyphs, and the new tree is a Holy Light spam. Yes, it is now viable pretty much everywhere. It is very highly impractical with current content, but you will definitely spam more HpS, but won't last nearly as long as the FoL spamming method. With a good raid, you have the replenishment effect up at all times, and good shaman can use their mana tide totems twice in spam fights. This combined with Divine Plea, Glyph of Seal of Wisdom and loads of crit make HL spamming possible. If you have some kick butt gear, you can get your HL down to a Flash of Light speed, and still have the crit to keep up with it mana wise. You must have, bare minimum, 30% crit to do this for any amount of time. You probably will want more.

A word about this as a warning to new healers. This is raid viable(and possibly necessary for healing heroics if your raw spell power is low). In heroics, most fights will require Flash of Light spamming, and you will have the occasional need for Holy Light spamming. If you are letting a heroic tank drop far enough to make Holy Light viable as a normal heal, the tank will more than likely not appreciate the "YoYo" effect on his health bar.

Post by Lightrain

Gear comparison

The Naxx 25 man drops for Healadins(plate only) are as follows. As you can see, even Blizzard has taken the Tier pieces away from Mp5 as well, and if you choose to go with an Mp5 set, it mixes crit and haste, and you can't really go with one or the other in the 213 Ipeen bracket.

Haste/crit
Head-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40298
Shoulder-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39725 OR T7.5- http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40573
Chest-n/a
Wrist-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40274
Hands-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39703 OR T7.5- http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40570
Belt-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40259
Legs-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40204 OR T7.5- http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40572
Boots-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40187

Crit/Mp5
Head-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=39760 or T7.5- http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40571
Shoulder-n/a
Chest-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40210
Wrist-n/a
Hands-n/a
Belt-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40241
Legs-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40363
Boots-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40320

Haste/Mp5
Head-n/a
Shoulder-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40377
Chest- T7.5- http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40569
Wrist-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40332
Hands-http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40316
Belt-n/a
Legs-n/a
Boots-n/a

This is only a show of the Naxx 25 drops to show you that Blizzard is also negotiating for the new system where Mp5 has lost it's value. This doesn't by any means mean that Mp5 is not a good stat, this just means that in order to stack Mp5 to make a difference, you really need to mix your stats to get the most benefit out of it, and the number your mp5 has to increase to in order to keep up with other stats is incredible.

On a side note, as rob1n stated, the T7.5 chest is pretty lacking. You can go to heroic Sarth and get a much better chest, and still hold your T7.5 set bonuses.

Some have asked about the point system. I don't use the point system, but I understand where it's coming from, from what I've heard.

The main stats to boost your stats as a raid healer(neglecting base stats of spell power and int. of course) are Haste and Crit.

Crit has a lower point base because it, while very very good for mana conservation, diminishes in usefulness when it comes to HpS per point.
Haste has a higher point base because it improves your HpS almost exponentially, while your crit still determines how long you can sustain it at even incredible cast speeds(less than one second, which happens a lot with heroism/bloodlust)

While Mp5 has lost it's value, some healers still like to use it, and it is still a useful stat. The crazy amount of int. on the new paladin gear makes for an enormous healing pool, and makes Divine Plea the top rated source of straight Mp5.

Crit, however, will keep your mana pool up better than either Mp5 or Divine Plea. Take the now incredible style of Holy Light spamming.

-Food for thought-
With 40% raid buffed crit(which is very attainable without food buffs), every full cost, 1200(I rounded) mp cast at the insane rate of 1.5-1.6 second cast times can be ungodly horrible on your mana pool. With this crit rate, squeezing 4 heals just outside of 5 seconds, and critting basically every other cast, is pushing your regen close to 1000 mp5 on crit alone while spamming.

The newly implimented librams are lacking for any style other than HL spamming. Maybe these are a sign from blizzard that we will be pumping 6-8k HpS to a tank in future raids?

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40268
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40705

Curious....

The Libram of Renewal is, in basically every holy paladins opinion, worth 10x the slot as the Naxx libram. Reducing the cost of the HL vs. making it bigger than it already is, is generally a given. The HL spam strategy will show a whole lot more over healing, making the libram seemingly just contribute to that number.

Post by Lightrain

Glyphs

With 3.0.8, we now have 3 major glyphs for holy that will be pretty standard. The rest are preference, and in all un necessary, but good utility when the time arises.

Glyph of Seal of Wisdom- This is the end all, must have glyph. If you are a holy paladin, you need this glyph, and you should always be using SoW when healing.
Glyph of Holy Light- It was a major glyph to use, and now with the buff(and then an instant nerf... I didn't even get to use it with a 20 yard range. =( ), it is even more valuable. This makes raid healing much easier for paladins, and increases our contribution while spamming HL.
Glyph of Flash of Light- With 3.0.8, the new FoL glyph is much better. Great to have if you are a purist, and even better for PvP if you are doing 2v2, since HL glyph won't really be necessary in that situation, and you will want to have glyph of TE for pvp.

Optiona Glyphs

Glyph of Seal of Light- Arguably, a very weak glyph, and not worth mentioning, but I will. It can help with a FoL spammer on HPS fights, but a HL spammer will /lol if you try to give him this glyph. It may come to play in future content, but since 99.99% of the time you will want to keep your mana over a boost in healing power, this will probably never be used in PvE.

However, in PvP, this would be a very useful glyph when you are trying to heal thru a burst class's attack. I've seen a lot of PvP healers use this glyph, and as such, is how it should be used.

This glyph also helps if you are lacking in spell power. Great to get a little extra if you are lacking in gear or just hit 80.
Glyph of Turn Evil- This is one of my favorite glyphs, but has very little use in PvE. Amazing in PvP tho, getting rid of DK and warlock pets in one GCD is priceless.
Minor Glyph of Lay on Hands- Great glyph, and I'm glad it's a minor. It will always stay there. This is the ultimate mana potion. Especially if you have LoH talented as well.
All the glyphs I haven't mentioned are still optional. You can use them, or choose not to use them. SA would be very cool to have when there is a lot of AoE damage. But, all the others are pretty much just up to you.

Personally, I keep SoW and HL on when I'm holy, and have a ret glyph left over in the other slot to try to keep my costs down at least a little....

Gems(short and dirty)

Gemming is preference, and generally up to the person and how they play, so I won't get into depth here, but I will cover the basic guidlines that raiders as of right now are following(and add a little of my preference, which isn't generally min/max as far as gemming for healing goes).

Meta-Ember Skyflare Diamond- The meta's out right now are rather tricky beasts. This gem, with my gear, would push 24 extra base int while providing spell power. This also scales with gear, kings, and AI, so if you have a huge mana pool, it could be a prefered gem if you have some heavy hitting gear. At lower gear/int levels, this meta will seem very lack luster.

According to Elitist Jerks, Insightful Earthsiege Diamond is better than the Ember Skyflare Diamond because of the int and about 100 or more mp5 we paladins will get from this gem. If regen isn't an issue, I would go with the Ember Skyflare personally. You get about the same int at 1050 int, and a bonus to spell power, but the Mp5 can arguably be better since it actually does give quite a bit(100 Mp5 on a 1.5 second spam).
Red-Runed Scarlet Ruby- This goes in every red slot. Period. Raw spell power is #1 for red slots in any situation unless you just can't get a meta requirement any other way.
Yellow-Brilliant Autumn's Glow- This is the main gem that raiders use for yellow. Preference for this slot could still lean toward a mutt gem adding spellpower into the slot(Luminous Monarch Topaz or Potent Monarch Topaz) instead of raw int, but it's been proven to be the most benefitial to your healing with a pure int gem(less a very minute amount of HpS, making it better in 90% of the reasons to have it over a mutt gem).
Blue- This is where preference plays a big part, and at the same time, doesn't. Blue will be a mutt gem, and it up to you if you want stam(Glowing Twilight Opal) or Mp5(Royal Twilight Opal). Eventhough we've already said that Mp5 does next to nothing in the current holy paladin design, it is still the better gem for min/max healing. My preference is toward a little extra stam. Eh, up to you. =)

A word to the budget player- If you can get a good deal on Luminous Monarch Topaz, or the Monarch Topaz themselves, as mutt gems are usually cheaper than solid color gems, you can fill all your red and yellow slots with this, and only lose 1 spell power per 2 slots. This is an easy way to fill out your slots, and possibly a cheaper way to do so.

This does not get into the PvP gems, but you will typically go for more stam over a bit of spell power from gems. You will want a ton of crit as well, and you will have to gem for hit rating so your HoJ, Hammer, Holy Shock, and judgements don't miss at all the wrong times.

--NEW(4/6/09 pre 3.1)--

Geared paladins are switching to crit and spell power rather than int stacking. When they are doing 3D sarth and PvP with a 51/20/0 spec, they are swapping to crit stacking for the mana efficiency due to the lack of 8% crit in spec. PvP holy paladins are crit stacking as well. They find that with the extra crit, they have just as much efficiency, and in PvP, they need the extra holy shock crit.

For PvE, you need near 20k unbuffed mana pool on your gear to make this plausable(after swapping the gems for crit and spell power).

If you fill either of these rolls, you probably want to adjust your gems accordingly.