Plankeye
New Member
Purpose
This is a Paladin class guide geared towards 20 and 40 man raid content.
Disclaimer
I personally do not like all the ____adin names we get. One of the great things about a paladin is you can play and gear towards your own style. With a few simple swaps of gear the average paladin can go from healadin to critadin and still keep a lot of their versatility. This guide is focused towards a specific style of play that happens at the raid level. At the raid levels classes are broken down to their primary roles, tanks, pullers, damage dealers and healers. There is no getting around it and to aid the progress of the guild and the raid, it is important to stay within those roles and perform them optimally.
What is a healadin?
A healadin is a paladin that has talent points invested in or obtains gear that enhances our basic healing abilities. A healadin has typically spent the majority of their talent points in the Holy tree. A healadin looks for gear that provides +Intellect, +Stamina, +Spirit, +Mana/5, +Healing, +Spell dmg, +Spell Crit.
The healadin’s role in a raid is spot healing/cleansing/buffing/anti-wipe. At the cost of group heals, heal over time spells and a smaller mana pool, the paladin is given the most mana efficient heals in the game. The paladin’s cleanse ability can remove multiple types of debuffs while other classes are for specific types. The paladin has several group buffs in the form of blessings, auras and judgments along with personal buffs in the form of seals and Righteous Fury. The paladin has several anti-wipe tools including blessing of protection, lay of hands and divine intervention.
It is important to understand these abilities and the appropriate time to deploy them. The following sections will detail each sub role and include strategy guides for play along with gear recomendations.
Healing Role
A level 60 paladin with no talent points spent has three heals. They are Flash of Light, Holy Light and Lay of Hands. Paladins can spec heavily into the Holy tree to pick up an additional heal through Holy Shock. For raids, Flash of Light and Holy Light make up the majority of heals. The Holy Light has an excellent breakdown of these two spells. The main thing to know is Flash of Light is our fast and dirty heal with a 1.5 second cast. At a raid level, it is typically enough to replace the health lost by a non critical hit from the average mob on a main tank. Holy Light is our slower bigger heal and typically heals three times the amount of Flash of Light and takes 2.5 seconds to cast. Healing is always situational. Does your target just need a quick couple hundred health to keep going or does the target need a major infusion of health? Figuring this out only comes with practice.
If the paladin has specialized in the Holy tree, they may have the Holy Shock spell. This spell is both an offensive and healing spell. It is an instant cast on a 30 second timer. It heals several hundred health but is very expensive at an almost 1 mana per 1 hit point returned. Holy Shock should be avoided for general use and saved for situational occasions where your target is near death. The extra couple hundred health might make the difference for another healer to cast one of their instant heals or drop a more powerful heal.
Holy specialized paladins may have invested points into Divine Favor and Illumination. These are two very useful talents to a healadin. Illumination gives a 20% chance per talent point to return back the mana spent on a critical heal. 5 points gives a 100% chance. Divine Favor when activated gives the next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Holy Shock a 100% chance to critical heal. Both are great talents at helping to conserve mana. Divine Favor has the added advantage of ensuring burst healing. Spell Crit gear along with high intellect are great additions to these skills as both increase the chance to critically heal which means a free heal. It is a great way to overcome the paladin’s smaller mana pool.
Cleansing Role
Just call us Mr. Clean®. The paladin has the most useful debuff remover in the game. Tools like Decursive extend our ability to remove debuffs and is essential to raiding. It is important to understand how to set the priority list for decursive. There will be times when you want to decurse tanks over healers or casters over melee depending on the boss. Learn how to use Decursive’s priority list to manage this. There are a couple of fights where our primary role is to cleanse. Failure to cleanse quickly could lead to a wipe especially on some of the nastier debuffs like Impending Doom or Ignite Mana.
Buffing Role
The paladin has the most available buffs in game. They also have several buffs that are extremely useful in raid encounters. Thankfully, Blizzard has extended our main buffs to include Greater Blessing that are on a 15 minute timer instead of 5 minutes. But this will still mean you will be buffing numerous times throughout the raid. My suggestion is to always bring between 150-200 Symbol of Kings with you to a raid. If there are a lot of wipes, you will burn through them quickly so always make sure you have enough.
Our primary buff is our Greater Blessings. A buffing assignment should be worked out prior to the first pull. Make sure to let the other paladins know if you have an improved version of a blessing (like Wisdom or Might) or you have specialized and have a blessing like Kings. Every class should have at least 3 blessings and if the group has 6 paladins there could be up to 6 blessings on certain classes. Make sure to conserve your symbols and only bless targets that make use of the blessing. So no wisdom for those rogues and warriors and skip might for the squishy casters as they carry big sticks but they will not be using them.
Our secondary buff is our Aura. Auras are situational and should be switched. Certain bosses will require certain auras. When the raid leader suggests putting on Fire Resistance gear, you should switch to your Fire Resistance Aura. Otherwise you should be switching between your other auras as needed. For raiding, this is typically Devotion or Concentration.
I will mention our judged seals as our third type of buff. Judgment of Light and Judgment of Wisdom are actually debuffs on a target but they have the neat effect of returning back either health or mana. There are a couple of fights where it can be useful to judge either seal to help extend others health and mana pools. If you have spent the talent points to have a longer lasting judgment, make sure to let the raid leader know. The average paladin’s judgment only last 10 seconds unless they stay engaged with the target and continues to deal melee damage. Paladin’s that have spent the talent points have a longer lasting judgment and should be chosen over the average paladin. That way the specialized paladin runs into the fray, casts judgment and can run back out and heal/cleanse for the next 20-30 seconds.
Our final buff is a self buff in the form of Seals. The most useful for raiding being the Seal of Wisdom as every proc returns back 90 mana. There will be times during long boss fights that a paladin will run out of mana. Outside of burning a mana potion, a paladin can quickly regenerate mana by engaging the boss with Seal of Wisdom. Make sure to be aware of the situation. Bosses with heavy AOEs make you a liability if you engage at close range. If things are not looking good, burning mana potions is preferred over regenerating mana slowly through melee.
Anti-Wipe Role
Paladins have several abilities that can be essential to preventing a complete wipe. We are typically the targets chosen to be soul stoned by warlocks as our durability provided to us by our plate means we tend to be the last healers standing when things go bad. It is important to bring several Symbols of Divinity. If a pull goes bad and the raid is overwhelmed, it is the paladin’s job to find another healer that can resurrect players and cast Divine Intervention. Lay of Hands is extremely important. A main tank or primary healer dead can lead to a wipe. It will clear all your mana, but remember Seal and Judgment of Wisdom or pop a mana potion.
Do not forget our ability to lower threat on targets with Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection. A quick Blessing of Protection on caster getting pummeled by a giant will temporarily wipe their threat and hopefully return their attention back to the tank. If you are called to be a main tank healer and pull agro while the tank is establishing agro, burn your Divine Shield to return agro back to the tank and continue healing.
Gear Guides
Coming Soon…
This is a Paladin class guide geared towards 20 and 40 man raid content.
Disclaimer
I personally do not like all the ____adin names we get. One of the great things about a paladin is you can play and gear towards your own style. With a few simple swaps of gear the average paladin can go from healadin to critadin and still keep a lot of their versatility. This guide is focused towards a specific style of play that happens at the raid level. At the raid levels classes are broken down to their primary roles, tanks, pullers, damage dealers and healers. There is no getting around it and to aid the progress of the guild and the raid, it is important to stay within those roles and perform them optimally.
What is a healadin?
A healadin is a paladin that has talent points invested in or obtains gear that enhances our basic healing abilities. A healadin has typically spent the majority of their talent points in the Holy tree. A healadin looks for gear that provides +Intellect, +Stamina, +Spirit, +Mana/5, +Healing, +Spell dmg, +Spell Crit.
The healadin’s role in a raid is spot healing/cleansing/buffing/anti-wipe. At the cost of group heals, heal over time spells and a smaller mana pool, the paladin is given the most mana efficient heals in the game. The paladin’s cleanse ability can remove multiple types of debuffs while other classes are for specific types. The paladin has several group buffs in the form of blessings, auras and judgments along with personal buffs in the form of seals and Righteous Fury. The paladin has several anti-wipe tools including blessing of protection, lay of hands and divine intervention.
It is important to understand these abilities and the appropriate time to deploy them. The following sections will detail each sub role and include strategy guides for play along with gear recomendations.
Healing Role
A level 60 paladin with no talent points spent has three heals. They are Flash of Light, Holy Light and Lay of Hands. Paladins can spec heavily into the Holy tree to pick up an additional heal through Holy Shock. For raids, Flash of Light and Holy Light make up the majority of heals. The Holy Light has an excellent breakdown of these two spells. The main thing to know is Flash of Light is our fast and dirty heal with a 1.5 second cast. At a raid level, it is typically enough to replace the health lost by a non critical hit from the average mob on a main tank. Holy Light is our slower bigger heal and typically heals three times the amount of Flash of Light and takes 2.5 seconds to cast. Healing is always situational. Does your target just need a quick couple hundred health to keep going or does the target need a major infusion of health? Figuring this out only comes with practice.
If the paladin has specialized in the Holy tree, they may have the Holy Shock spell. This spell is both an offensive and healing spell. It is an instant cast on a 30 second timer. It heals several hundred health but is very expensive at an almost 1 mana per 1 hit point returned. Holy Shock should be avoided for general use and saved for situational occasions where your target is near death. The extra couple hundred health might make the difference for another healer to cast one of their instant heals or drop a more powerful heal.
Holy specialized paladins may have invested points into Divine Favor and Illumination. These are two very useful talents to a healadin. Illumination gives a 20% chance per talent point to return back the mana spent on a critical heal. 5 points gives a 100% chance. Divine Favor when activated gives the next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Holy Shock a 100% chance to critical heal. Both are great talents at helping to conserve mana. Divine Favor has the added advantage of ensuring burst healing. Spell Crit gear along with high intellect are great additions to these skills as both increase the chance to critically heal which means a free heal. It is a great way to overcome the paladin’s smaller mana pool.
Cleansing Role
Just call us Mr. Clean®. The paladin has the most useful debuff remover in the game. Tools like Decursive extend our ability to remove debuffs and is essential to raiding. It is important to understand how to set the priority list for decursive. There will be times when you want to decurse tanks over healers or casters over melee depending on the boss. Learn how to use Decursive’s priority list to manage this. There are a couple of fights where our primary role is to cleanse. Failure to cleanse quickly could lead to a wipe especially on some of the nastier debuffs like Impending Doom or Ignite Mana.
Buffing Role
The paladin has the most available buffs in game. They also have several buffs that are extremely useful in raid encounters. Thankfully, Blizzard has extended our main buffs to include Greater Blessing that are on a 15 minute timer instead of 5 minutes. But this will still mean you will be buffing numerous times throughout the raid. My suggestion is to always bring between 150-200 Symbol of Kings with you to a raid. If there are a lot of wipes, you will burn through them quickly so always make sure you have enough.
Our primary buff is our Greater Blessings. A buffing assignment should be worked out prior to the first pull. Make sure to let the other paladins know if you have an improved version of a blessing (like Wisdom or Might) or you have specialized and have a blessing like Kings. Every class should have at least 3 blessings and if the group has 6 paladins there could be up to 6 blessings on certain classes. Make sure to conserve your symbols and only bless targets that make use of the blessing. So no wisdom for those rogues and warriors and skip might for the squishy casters as they carry big sticks but they will not be using them.
Our secondary buff is our Aura. Auras are situational and should be switched. Certain bosses will require certain auras. When the raid leader suggests putting on Fire Resistance gear, you should switch to your Fire Resistance Aura. Otherwise you should be switching between your other auras as needed. For raiding, this is typically Devotion or Concentration.
I will mention our judged seals as our third type of buff. Judgment of Light and Judgment of Wisdom are actually debuffs on a target but they have the neat effect of returning back either health or mana. There are a couple of fights where it can be useful to judge either seal to help extend others health and mana pools. If you have spent the talent points to have a longer lasting judgment, make sure to let the raid leader know. The average paladin’s judgment only last 10 seconds unless they stay engaged with the target and continues to deal melee damage. Paladin’s that have spent the talent points have a longer lasting judgment and should be chosen over the average paladin. That way the specialized paladin runs into the fray, casts judgment and can run back out and heal/cleanse for the next 20-30 seconds.
Our final buff is a self buff in the form of Seals. The most useful for raiding being the Seal of Wisdom as every proc returns back 90 mana. There will be times during long boss fights that a paladin will run out of mana. Outside of burning a mana potion, a paladin can quickly regenerate mana by engaging the boss with Seal of Wisdom. Make sure to be aware of the situation. Bosses with heavy AOEs make you a liability if you engage at close range. If things are not looking good, burning mana potions is preferred over regenerating mana slowly through melee.
Anti-Wipe Role
Paladins have several abilities that can be essential to preventing a complete wipe. We are typically the targets chosen to be soul stoned by warlocks as our durability provided to us by our plate means we tend to be the last healers standing when things go bad. It is important to bring several Symbols of Divinity. If a pull goes bad and the raid is overwhelmed, it is the paladin’s job to find another healer that can resurrect players and cast Divine Intervention. Lay of Hands is extremely important. A main tank or primary healer dead can lead to a wipe. It will clear all your mana, but remember Seal and Judgment of Wisdom or pop a mana potion.
Do not forget our ability to lower threat on targets with Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection. A quick Blessing of Protection on caster getting pummeled by a giant will temporarily wipe their threat and hopefully return their attention back to the tank. If you are called to be a main tank healer and pull agro while the tank is establishing agro, burn your Divine Shield to return agro back to the tank and continue healing.
Gear Guides
Coming Soon…
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