Holy paly kara starting!Follow

I had posted a “ideal pre-kara gear” thread about a month ago, which suggested going tailoring for some of the cloth gear seemed like a decent way to go.

I obtained 4 cloth epics before my guild entered kara, with the rest of my gear being plate, and I had 1400 bonus healing, 130mp5, and about 12-13% crit chance.

We did not have any priest so we knew we would only be able to beat Attumen and the beasts, and we were able to do so very successfully. My gear has been upgraded a bit more and I now have just under 1500 healing and 140mp5, with similar crit numbers and I have no problems healing either main tank role or other any other roll so far.

As of this point I stand behind my original assessment. I still have a few gear upgrades that I would love to aquire (arena gloves), and blessed bracers being the big upgrades.

I also have not put many enchants on my gear which would take me well past 1600 healing and around 155-160mp5.

You can armory paash(Balnazar) if you wish. I would love any gear suggestions, as I may have missed some quest rewards.

Also, I have not really looked into different holy specs, but mine is maximized for pve raid/party healing. If there are any flaws please feel free to suggest what changes and why.

I did think it was cool when I recently got my first 7000 crit heal.

Also, all of those numbers are no elixers or food buffs.

The mask is a definite upgrade tyvm for that. I must have missed that when scanning bosses for loot drops.

Also I have no aversion for non-plate helms. If armor were not a factor would that still be the best in your opinion?

Whew... you're gonna make me earn my pay grade with this one. First off, the pleasantries... Congratulations on getting into kara and downing the first real boss (I don't really count the beasts, heck I've never even gone down there). You have some gear I do, in fact, like. I had those boots when I first entered kara, I like your rings and trinkets as well as your mace, shield and libram.

Now for the part of the post where I stop being nice. First off you have one of the worst holy specs I have ever seen... Where do I begin? Drop purifying power, the mana you save is negligible at best. Also drop blessed life. If you're taking damage, then something is wrong. Drop improved judgment, 90% of the encounters you're in you really want to be out of judgement randge. Take kings, there are lots of situations where people (especially tanks) will want kings above any other blessing. Now the rest of the excess points you can throw around. Feel free to look at my build to see what I did.

As for gear... man your crit is not only low, its non-existent! You don't have ANY crit rating. Actually I take that back, you have a single MELEE crit gem. Healer with melee crit? Come on... That mooncloth set isn't bad but it has no stamina on it. You have barely more than 5k health. A dead healer doesn't heal. Get that switched out for some gear with actual healer stats. Know what's really good? The whole recolored judgement set. If you're able to heal kara then you can heal heroics and get all of it. And if you're doing heroics, you're getting badges. Know what you can get with badges? Extremely good gear! Neck, ring, cloak, helmet, and trinket. If you get exalted with sha'tar you can get another mace (and a good trinket at honored).

Honestly the thing that worries me the most is your complete lack of any crit.

I must have accidently put in a melee crit gem. I will fix that as well. I can not currently look at your spec, but the reason I have not gone for kings, is because I thought most agreed it would never be a primary buff.

I agree that some of the talents are very unconventional, but how can you tell me to go for more stamina, and then not to worry about getting hit?

I have discussed the issue of crit with many people and all of them definitely say stacking crit is the way to go, but I have not seen any gear that adds crit without majorly gimping healing bonus. Typically it is a 2 for one loss, and if you run the math on it, my average heals are much larger than someone with say 1200 healing and 16-17% crit.

I do plan on getting shatar rep mace and then putting major healing on it and at that point switching over to more crit since my healing will be over 1650 at that point.

And Dilbrt I appreciate that you definitely come out and said what you think is wrong with my spec. I agree holeheartedly that the skills you mentioned are my "weakest, but i was really unable to find anything I felt replaced them. I would be spending 4 more talents to get kings, which means I would be losing purifying power and imp judgements to get a good secondary blessing, that is almost never needed, as all other blessings are better, and if we ever have 2 pallys, one holy and one prot, we will have the blessing anyway, which is what it is good for, a secondary blessing.

As I said, I will look into your spec later when I am able to, and ty for the advice.

You mentioned the "good" trinket at shat'ar honored. I believe it is at revered, and gives 1.7% crit. Is 1.7% crit better than 70 bonus healing? If so please explain why as it does not appear to be to me. On a 4.5k heal 1.7 more crit means an extra 38.25 healing per cast averaged over time and 5 more mana per cast.

crit is ******* worthless with the nerf to illumination get mana 5 gear your guys advice is extremely outdated.

cloth is an EXCELLENT start, living dragonscale helm is very good too.

just for my reference, what's the crit percentage you need?

You said you were unable to see my spec? well I figured with my character in my signature you could just plug that into armory, but I can save you a little work:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmane&n=Erurainon

Kings is quite often a primary buff for me. If I am the only paladin in the raid (which has both happened in kara and 25 mans) then it is extremely selfish of me to put light on a tank when a majority of the healing will be coming from non-paladins (combining multiple other tank healers versus my healing). However kings would benefit all healing classes because it gives the tank more health to work with. When you're on a fight that can land two near-instant crushing blows of 10,000 hp (happened last night, shield block was down, and boss parried), you want what health you can get. Honestly on tanks getting kings on them is much more of a priority than any other blessing that a paladin could possibly offer. It is also the buff of choice when you either have 3 paladins or fights where there is no aggro.

OK as for the health, yes you really shouldn't be taking direct damage from mobs , but that in no way means you will not be taking damage. Take the fathom-lord fight I did last night. He shoots off this bolt that does 50% of your health to anyone in 40+ yard range (if you're healing the main tank, you have to be in range or it) and at the same time there is a totem that shoots fireballs that hit for 3000 at the same time. What would happen if you took 50% followed by 3000? I'm fairly certain you'd be toast. When it happens to me it hurts, but I don't die and the people healing me (you have healers healing the healers that fight) are then able to top me back off and the fight continues. You need stamina, trust me.

Yes getting crit can hurt your +healing, I'll be the first to admit that. However if you get actual paladin gear, concentrate on getting minimum numbers of crit and mp5 WHILE CASTING!!! then the healing will be there. When I was progressing my paladin I went for mp5 first, once I got that I went after crit, once I had sufficient crit and mp5 (where I am now) then I started changing stuff around to up my healing. Healing was my 3rd priority, not first. I think that is more important to have balanced stats then just simply go for as much +healing as you can. I frequently change around my trinkets depending on the situation. When I was low on crit, I used the sha'tar trinket, when I had enough crit, I subbed it out for something else. I probably have 5-6 trinkets... I have a couple ones made by JC, I have the scarab, sha'tar trinket, 41 badge one, LCP, and I'm trying to get the fel reaver's piston and the one from shade. I like having options.

As for your question whether 1.7% crit is better than 70 healing? It depends what you need more, and with your crit being so low then yes I would say in your case 1.7% crit is way better than 70 healing. But once you get crit elsewhere in your gear, the answer will then probably change to no.



I'm sorry, but do you actually have experience playing a paladin at all? Yes the illumination nerf hurt. Yes it caused us to re-gear, taking more mp5 whereas before we would do nothing but stack crit. However illumination is still extremely huge. Almost every healing class in the game would die for mana refunding off every crit. Paladins are still the single most efficient healers in the game. Want to know why? Cheap flash of lights, divine illumination, and illumination. Illumination is a huge part of what makes us who we are. All the nerf did was make it where we can no longer GAIN mana through crits. I remember pre-nerf popping divine illumination and being able to crit my way up 25% of my mana pool at least.

But you know what? Fine, throw my advice out the window if you want. You don't have to listen to anything I say. Besides, its not like being in Hyjal and Black Temple gives me the right to say I know how to play my class, right?

I will be picking up the arena gear one piece at a time starting with the gloves, but you are talking about 5-6 months before i would have obtained those pieces, and without actually having done the math, just estimating The amount of upgrades they are slight to fairly significant upgrades, but keeping in mind, at best I can be picking 1 up eveyr 3-5 weeks, it is not the most viable solution for upograding gear now.

I have only been 70 for 2 arena weeks and I joined one last arena week, so in 2 more I hope to have at least the gloves.

Also, as to the crit vs mp5 issue I completely agree that crity is better for the given itemization point. In the previous thread I was debating in at least I was always of the mind that +healing is better than crit for the same itemization points. I readily cede that my crit is too low and my mp5 is only a consquence of the gear, not a deliberate attempt to imply that mp5 was better than crit.(And I agree that cursing holds no place in an honest open debate. All it does is say I am loud and obnoxious. Look at me while i have no way to articulate my feelings.)

To reiterate in case that last paragraph was fuzzy. The reason I have the gear I do is to stack +healing. Some of it also happens to have mp5, which is a bonus. I would much rather it have crit in its place at the cost of mp5 but not at the cost of healing.

Also, crit mathematically will overtake +healing per itemization point at roughly 1800 bonus healing if i remember correctly.

And yes to be clear crit was nerfed but even with the nerf the return of mana from crit does surpass a reasonable amount of mp5. Especially when u can force 3 crits in a kara boss fight on top of your base crit chance what ever it happens to be.

I can not check out armory as I am currently at work(sure hope my boss does not see this). I will check it out when i get home also my last post was written right afte rthe cursing post and I wrote it without having seen the rest of the posts, so it makes more sense in that context. I will look into the "new judgement" set whenever I can find what specifically those pieces are. As I did not play with the old set, I do not know what gear it is on the new one.

I need to go now, but I can post more later.

EDIT

Silveren and Dilbrt the advice is definitely taken into consideration, and it is very sound advice. I am currently grinding shatar for the mace so i will definitely try that trinket.

Edited, Sep 25th 2007 12:09pm by aicoped

The only one of those that is hard to get is the boots, which is why I ended up wearing those cloth ones the OP had... it was either that or some leather boots I can't remember which, but I used them until I got the boots from SSC trash.