M's utility Holy Build (Part 3)

End game raiding gearing philosophies, Gemming and Enchanting

Gearing Philosophy

Speccing and glyphing is fairly easy, there are no random factors in it. Gearing though is a bit of a hassle.
Fortunately for us, Blizz in all it's wisdom has decided to ease up the entry lvl gear. By facilitating the previous tiers sets, as well as some random goodies, easily attainable with the help of a few friend.

In the Holy paladins particular case, it is our objective to maximize the time we can use Holy Light. Since any less than this spell, during high damage phases in boss encounters, will not be enough to keep our tanks up. So in order to do this we must try to max out our mana pool and mana regen mechanics, as well as strike a balance with our through output, as in Spellpower and Haste.

How do we achieve this?, by setting goals to complete.

Intellect

Int is our main stat, it provides us with mana, spell crit. and to a lesser degree a bit of SP, All through talents. And as if it wasnt enough it will provide us with mana regen through our very nice 1 min CD Divine Plea, as you can see the larger our mana pool the larger our mana regen too.


Spell Power

SP should hover between 2800 to 3000, any more is overkill(at least for regular icc10), not that the occasionall power burst from a trink aint welcomed, here we are just looking at the base unbuffed stats.

Haste

Anything under 640 haste is not advisable, this is without adding the Judgements of the Pure buff. Just know that when you hit the magic number, 676 haste, you are officially at the GCD (Global Cooldown) cap, as in you GCD has gone from 1.5 secs to 1.0 secs flat, and your Flash of Light has also been reduced to a 1 second cast. Still, any more you can get WILL improve the casting time of Holy Light. None the less keep in mind that the more spells you cast, the higher the mana consumption is.

Gems

This is an easy thing to do, at least the basics are, though there is room for tweaking for more experienced paladins, since this is a guid i will keep it simple.

Meta Gem - Insightful Earthsiege Diamond

NO, there are no other valid options, sp doesnt mean much, 2% more mana or 2% more int, actually can't top 21 int, also this gem has a chance of 5% to proc for 600 mana on every cast, with an internal cd of 15 secs between procs. Which means about 4500 mana regenerated over the course of a 5 min fight.
TLDR 21 int + an average of 75mp5 every 5 min encounter.

As a Holy Light paly, there are almost no gem socket bonuses worth taking, and even on the event that there  happens to be one, it is usually located in the head piece, so to take advantage of this and satisfy the meta gem requirement, we will use 1 Nightmare Tear there. Every other socket should be Gemmed with Brilliant King's Amber. For all the various reasons stated above.

Enchanting

 
 Here i will just post the best itemized chants per piece of gear to keep it simple, excluding the profession specific perks.

Head - Arcanum of Blissful Mending from The Wyrmrest Accord once you hit revered with them.

Shoulders - Greater Inscription of the Crag from the Sons of Hodir once u hit exalted with this Faction.

Cloak - Enchant Cloak: Greater Speed

Chest - Enchant Chest: Powerful Stats

Wrists - Enchant Bracers: Superior Spell Power

Gloves - Enchant Gloves:  Exceptional Spellpower

Belt - Eternal Belt Buckle, for an extra gem socket, no matter wich profession you have.

Legs - Sapphire Spellthread

Boots - Enchant Boots: Tuskarr's Vitality, although not a through output chant the speed increase helps with the mobility required for many of the end game raiding encounters.

Weapon - Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower

Shield - Enchant Shield: Superior Intellect

Final Comments

 This is it for part three as a bonus heres a profile for easy to obtain starting gear through badges, except for the Tears of the Vanquished trink that comes from Trial of the Champion regular 5 man instance.





On part 4 of this Series i will explore how to furtherly min max this build through professions.

M's End Game utility Holy Build (Part 2)

Glyphs

Major

This are the game changers, the modify your playstyle and the power of your spells or their utility.

Glyph of Divinity

If you've followed this guide so far, you picked up Improved Lay on Hands. This improves it's utility. By augmenting its utility, providing you with a bit of mana regen whilst blowing your OH SHIT! heal, or twice the amount by casting it on yourself, to keep those heals going.

Gliph of Holy Light

This is THE staple glyph if there is one. Basically, it provides small heals to up to 5 additional targets near the original one, for 10% of the original value. This is particularly useful when we have both tanks stacking up and have Beacon of Light on one of them and Sacred Shield on the other. This way you can Holy Light the second tank and the first will benefit from the duplicate heal and the splash as well, plus 4 more melee will do too.

Glyph of Seal of Wisdom

This is a great mana management tool. Two reasons why. First it provides a steady 5% cost reduction on all your healing spells. Second, since your seal of wisdom is up every judgement is capable of proc'ing it, providing  you with a 4% mana return for the seal proc part and a 2% health/mana return on the judgement part, depending whether you judged Judgement of Light or Judgement of Wisdom

Minor

Regarding minor glyphs there is only 2 that provide you as a Holy paladin with any benefits.

Glyph of Lay on Hands

which furtherly reduces the cool down of Lay on Hands by 5 minutes, for a total cd of 11 min, making it possible to use it once per encounter.

Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom

This one provides you with a bit of flexibility when buffing either solo content, by saving you reagents or a a personal blessing different from the class wide one u can provide to other paladins.

The Third minor is mostly inconsequential.

Stay tuned for Part 3 Gearing philosophies, gemming and enchanting.

M's End Game utility Holy Build (Part 1)

So we are at the end of the expansion, and all possible builds have been explored. All the Big names have already ran the math and tested them to full effect. Here's a comprehensive guide on how to create an efficient progression encounter build.

But first a few, things that everyone should know. The current holy paladin community feels that other than Holy Light, ther is no other usefull spell, i will disgree, but to be fair this IS our main heal, and should be used appropietly. So this build will reflect that.

Trees

Holy tree

Tier 1

Spiritual Focus A 70% pushback reduction, also enough to move onto tier 2 of the tree. 5/5

Seals of the Pure a purely offensive talent, with no benefit whatsoever to our helaing prowess, 0/0

Tier 2

Healing Light a 12% boost to our healing spells 3/3

Divine intelect 10% increase to our mana pool, crit ans spell power gained from intelect. 5/5

Unyielding Faith a pvp talent, skip it. 0/2

Tier 3

Aura Mastery Once a pvp talent, now a great mitigation tool for elemental raid dmg. 1/1

Illumination Mana regen for casting heling spells, not as OP as it used to be but a pre req. for other talents, no wasted points here. 5/5

Improved Lay on HandsAnother must have, coupled with both its glyphs it will be usable once per encounter, either as an OH SHIT! heal or a mana source. 2/2

Tier 4

Improved concentration aura Another PvP talent. 0/3

Improved Blessing of Wisdom a huge boost to our mana regen, take it. 2/2

Blessed Hands a poor talent, in end game raiding saving a slight bit of mana on spell we might not need to use is poor talent itemization. Since we have enough points to move onto the next tier. 0/2

Tier 5

Pure of Heart PvP talent, skip it. 0/2

Divine Favor A crit on demand!, take it, coupled with our regen mechanic on crits, it makes for a great cooldown. 1/1

Sanctified Light Another through output boost. 3/3

Tier 6

Purifying Power PvP talent.0/2

Holy Power More through output, in the form of crit. 5/5

Tier 7

Light's Grace Through output in the form of haste for our main heal. 3/3

Holy Shock Our only non proc talented insta heal, Take it. 1/1

Blessed Life Apurely PvP talent, skip. 0/3

Tier 8

SAcred cleansing pvp talent, skip. 0/3

Holy Guidance more through output, in the form fo spell power, for stacking our main stat, INT. 5/5

Tier 9

Divine Illumination 15 sec 50% mana cost reduction, OP much?? rofl, great CD to burst in hevy duty situations, with no time for mana regen cds. 1/1

Judgements of the Pure 15% haste buff, lasts 1 min and gets refreshed by judging. 5/5

Tier 10

Infusion of Lightit gives us a solid reason to use holy shock, as well as provides us our HoT effect. 2/2

Enlightened Judgements it might seem like a PvP talent, but its strategic value is gret, since it allows us a greter range with which to refresh our haste buff. 2/2

Tier 11

Beacon of Light Finally our 51 pointer, it allows us to duplicate all heals onto the target of this spell, in 10 man making us responsible for both tanks, and in 25 man, allowing us to help with some spot healing without disregarding our assigned tank. 1/1


Brief thoughts

in this particular build we will not go for any of the offensive utility of the ret tree, since its the objective of this buid to increase our mitigation cd's.

Protection tree

Tier 1

Divinity a 5% buff to our out going heals, which also stacks wit itself when healing ourself, this coupled with beacon is a great boost when only healing our main tank. 5/5

Divine Strenght a threat/dps talent, skip. 0/5

Tier 2

Stoicism a pvp talent, yet we need the points to move down the tree and its far better than a 3% avoidance increase, since we should never be the target of any melee attack. 3/3

Guardians favor Also a pvp talent, but it does provide raid utility by reducing the cd of Hand of Protection, allowing you to save that random dpser that doesnt watch agro when adds show up.

Anticipation, avoidance talent, purely tank specific. 0/5

Tier 3

Divine Sacrtifice purely a pre req talent, so we'll just dump the points here and look on to its improved form next tier. 1/1

Improved Righteous Fury As paladins we have the least threat generating healing spells, and need not to spec into threat reduction. So even though this increases threat, it also reduces all incoming damage by 6%, which is a load of dmg. Plus we need the point to move down the tree. 3/3

Thoughness unfortunately we still need to dump 1 more point to move further down, and being all previous talents are pretty much worthless, 1 point here is more than enough. 1/5

Tier 4

Divine Guardian, or as we fondly wall it bubble raid wall. 20% reduced dmg for all the raid, increased duration for Sacred Shield as well as increased absorption. 2/2

Improved Hammer of Justice not worth the utility it provides, having other clasess much better suited to interrupt duty. 0/2

Improved Devotion Aura we will put our last 2 points here, since it will give us a passive 4% increase to our heals, no matter which aura we have on. 2/3

Final comments on Build

In the end you build should look like this HOLY END GAME UTILITY BUILD. this is it for part 1, will see you soon with part 2 glyphs