Comprehensive Pre-Kara Holy Paladin Guide (Edited 2/12/07)Follow

After writing so many of these on a poster-by-poster basis, I decided to go ahead and write a generic guide so that the people wondering if their gear/spec was ready for kara could go look for the best stuff. I'm writing this under the idea that you're going to put forth the maximum effort you can into getting good gear before you set foot in the kara door.

Before I get into the actual good stuff let me just clarify that this guide is meant to get you ready for raiding. I have been asked several times "why not just get gladiator gear?" First off, PvP gear has resilience on it (which does nothing for you in a raid) and it has very little or no mp5 on it. Some of the early fights in kara, and possibly even up to part of SSC you might be able to get by using PvP gear, but as you progress further and further into raiding your lack of mp5 begins to hurt you more and more. Besides, you really want to gem out your PvP gear with PvP gems (like extra stam) and have PvE gems in your PvE gear. You can't do that if all you have is PvP gear. On top of that, getting a full arena set can/will take you WEEKS, and you can farm instances and get a full raid-ready healing set in half the time. There are some fights in BT that you need higher HP for, but honestly by the time you get to that point you should have at, or near, the required HP anyway so really, don't bother with PvP gear in raids.

Professions
There are some different choices when you consider for your raiding paladin, and I'll list some of the better choices. These are just suggestions, so if you wish to do something else (to make money, for example) go ahead.

Alchemy - Aside from the ease of getting raid consumables, you also get to make an Alchemist's Stone which greatly increases the mana you get from mana pots, and you will be using hundreds throughout your raiding career, so this will get a lot of use. The stats aren't half bad either. They also recently added alchemist only potions, but that is still too new to really prove whether they are useful or not.

Engineering - Aside from repair bots, mounts, and PvP stuff, you also get to craft some Justicebringer 2000 Specs which are easily better than Tier 4 and you can get them before you set foot inside a raid.

Enchanting - You will be re-enchanting your gear several times over throughout your raiding career and being able to get your own mats will save you a hefty bundle of cash. On top of that, you also get access to the +20 healing to ring enchant which adds a nice chunk to your healing.

Jewelcrafting - This is my profession, but I'm not sure it's for everyone. I got into it to be the guild JC, but if you're looking for self benefit this only has a couple things. Two BoP gems, Blood of Amber and Kailee's Rose, and a few largely useless and easily replaced trinkets. It does make decent money, and it does make getting gems ahead of time easier though.

Talents
I'm not going to go into the specifics of exactly what points to put where, because there are other stickies that already do a decent job of that. However there are a few talents that, if you're ready to be a raider you need to pick up or avoid. They are:

-Aura Mastery > You're gonna be at max range for most fights so any talents that involve range are a good idea.

-Improved Lay on Hands > There aren't MANY fights this is handy for, but it certainly does really help when your guild is progressing on Gruul.

-Blessed Life > I see some people try to take this, but honestly for the most part if you're taking enough damage to where this would make a difference, you're probably going to die anyway, so there's no reason to waste points.

-Guardian's Favor > This is a MUST HAVE if you're going to do Vashj and is also quite useful in kara and many other places.

-Improved Righteous Fury > Most of the people who take this are doing it for PvP, but its also a talent that makes tidewalker easier because its easier to get murloc aggro

Gear
Head: There are two different really good head pieces. Mask of Penance from steamvaults second boss, and Headdress of the Tides from the second boss in heroic underbog. Helmet of the Steadfast Champion is another good option if you have enough heroic badges. As for enchants, grab the glyph from Thrallmar/Honor Hold

Neck: Probably the best you can get your hands on is Veteran's Pendant of Salvation from PvP although Necklace of Eternal Hope from heroic badges aren't bad either.

Shoulders: Justice Bearer's Pauldrons from heroic ramparts are probably the best you can get your hands on, though I did use Moonglade Shoulders from the last boss in steamvaults until I was able to run heroic ramparts. Use your aldor/scryer healing enchant.

Back: There are lots to choose from and the best four options are (in order) Bishop's Cloak (badges), Avian Cloak of Feathers (Sethekk Halls), Vicar's Cloak/Mantle of Vivification (quest reward from "Will of the Warchief" (horde) or "Turning the Tide" (alliance)), and White Remedy Cape (crafted). Get whichever one of those you can get your hands on and then start saving your badges for the Bishop's Cloak. The BC is the 3rd best paladin healing cloak in the game (preceded by one from Kara and one from Black Temple). As far as enchants, there really aren't that many good ones to choose from. Most PvPers go with shadow resist to resist fears and the like (also useful in Hyjal/BT) though you can slap armor on there too. It doesn't really matter what you enchant this slot with for kara, honestly.

Chest: Easy one, get Breastplate of Many Graces from the third boss in Shadow Labs and put 6 mp5 enchant on it.

Bracer: Your ultimate goal is to get Vambraces of the Naaru from heroic badges, but along the way you have two good choices. If you're a farmer, pick up Blessed Bracers made by a blacksmith, both of which are better than the kara bracers and will actually last you until you are in Black Temple. If you want an instance-based alternative until you get badges pick up Primal Surge Bracers from Black Morass. As far as enchants, I would probably start off with mp5, but once you think you have enough mp5 (which is subjective) you can go ahead and switch it to +30 healing.

Glove: Your ultimate goal are Handguards of the Templar from heroic badges. While farming those badges you can pick up Life Bearer's Gauntlets from heroic ramparts, from the chest at the end of the instance. Until you're able to get one of these two however, there really aren't any good options, so just get what you can until you get these. As far as enchants, at this point in your gear I would really go +10 spell crit, but if you find yourself having enough crit, you could switch it to +35 healing.

Belt: Girdle of Divine Blessing is probably the easiest to get, since you can get them off the AH, although you can find an upgrade from heroic slave pens, Girdle of Many Blessings.

Legs: This is another slot that the 2.3 patch really gave a boost to. Your ultimate goal are High Justicar's Legplates from heroic badges which are not only better than anything you can get in kara, are easily better than Tier 4, and you could make a good case that they are better than Tier 5. Along the way, there are two really good options. Consortium Plated Legguards are what I actually used (before patches released more options), they are a quest reward from Mana-Tombs. There are also Starcaller's Plated Legguards as a quest reward from a nethersorm quest. If you take starcallers, however, you'll be passing up on an extremely good protadin trinket, so think hard on this one. As far as enchants, you want to get the healing spell thread from an aldor tailor.

Boots: Thankfully Blizzard released a good pre-raiding pair of boots in the 2.3 patch, Implacable Guardian Sabatons. Depending on whether you prefer crit or mp5, you could possibly wear these all the way to Black Temple, but these will at LEAST last you until SSC. Getting some boots prior to these is actually a bit challenging since people rarely want to run heroic OHB. I actually ended up using Boots of the Glade-Keeper from the cache in mechanar. As far as enchant, the only enchant that is worthwhile for raiding is vitality.

Rings: Ideally you want the ring from heroic badges, Band of Halos and the one from Thrallmar/Honor Hold, Ancestral Band. Veteran's Band of Salvation is also a very good option that you can get from PvP. If you're really lacking on crit you can go with some dps rings such as the Scintillating Coral Band from the first boss in steamvaults, but only if you really NEED crit.

Trinkets: I am a collector of trinkets. I have 7 trinkets currently and I'm working on getting 3 more, so I've pretty much tried everything. As good as the Scarab of the Infinite Cycle is, its really better for PvP than for PvE. One of the best, if not the best, trinket for flash of light spamming is the Lower City Prayerbook, and typically if you're pre-kara you're kinda crit starved so I would go the Xi'ri's Gift trinket from the Sha'tar. Start collecting badges, however, and get yourself Essence of the Martyr. It is one of the best healing trinkets in the game, though you might not use it for every fight.

Mace: You have four solid choices... Lightsworn Hammer from Shattered Halls, Hammer of the Penitent from mechanar, and my favorite option Gavel of Pure Light from exalted Sha'tar rep, because I think its fairly easy to obtain and is pretty good. If you do a lot of heroics, there is also the Shockwave Truncheon from heroic Shadow Labs, off the last boss, though I've seen more PuGs fail on Heroic SLabs than succeed. PLEASE stay away from both the Hand of Eternity, and The Ancient Scepter of Sue-Min, every time someone uses one of those, a kitten is killed! (not really, they're just pretty terrible and not worth your time/money) As far as enchants, I would recommend the 81 healing enchant, because your healing at this point in your gear is going to be your weakest stat.

Shield: Crystal Pulse Shield is your best option, pick it up off the AH and get the 12 INT enchant on it.

Libram: Blessed Book of Nagrand is debated to be one of the best, if not the best, libram in the game. Even after you get the libram from opera, keep a hold of this one for situations where you don't have light. I tossed mine and I still regret it. They did add Libram of Mending to the game in 2.3 but I'm in the camp that believes paladins should try to play efficiently and nothing involving Holy Light (after the changes to coefficient and Tier 5) is efficient.

Gemming your gear
Meta Gem: I'm a jewelcrafter with every rare gem in the game, and I've tested out every single meta gem a paladin might use, and honestly the best meta gem that you can get is the Insightful Earthstorm Diamond. Mystical can be good for pvp, but the insightful has just proven superior in PvE. I will say that I talked to another paladin that once told me he did so much healing he needed threat reduction of the Bracing, but at this point in your gear that shouldn't be a concern.

Gems: You only need 3 types of gems. Gleaming Dawnstone (if you need crit), luminous noble topazes for the yellow slots you don't need crit for, and royal nightseyes for both the blue and red slots. Some people use the green dazzling talasite, but unless you need it to meet a certain meta gem requirement, I'd steer clear.

Consumables
Flask: The best flask is the Flask of Mighty Restoration. Mp5 lets you heal longer and more. Advantages of using this over elixirs, it doesn't go away when you die so its wonderful when you're working on new progressions and expect to wipe a few times.

Elixirs: Elixir of Healing Power and Elixir of Major Mageblood are a really good pair, some people like it more than flasking, but the down side is the fact that if you die, they go away and you have to use more. This can get expensive if you die often, but if you're an alchemist you probably can easily afford it.

Food: Blackened Sporefish is your best bet for food. Mp5 helps you in the long run much more than any other food buff would. The best part about this food is the fact that you only need 305 fishing and 310 cooking to make them, both easily achieved in a day or two of work.

Oils: This really depends how much gold you farm or which professions you have. If you make a lot of money, or are an enchanter, then the Brilliant Mana Oil is the best thing possible. Thats a little too expensive for my tastes though, so I usually go with the MUCH cheaper Superior Mana Oil.

Edited, Feb 12th 2008 1:42am by Dilbrt

Edited, Jul 3rd 2008 10:41am by Wordaen

Arena gear is good, but in arena mp5 is meaningless so you end up getting resilliance where you would otherwise get mp5. Once you really get into raiding you'll find out that gimping yourself on mp5 can really hurt. Same goes with any stat, really, try to balance your stats between healing, crit, and mp5. Arena gear is crit heavy, mp5 light, and meh on +healing. In addition to get a full arena healing set you have to do arena for WEEKS, wheras you can get nearly every piece of gear I listed in DAYS. So while I won't rag on arena gear, if you're really going to be a hard-core raider you really don't want to rely on it.

On a side note, does anyone know what it would take to get this stickied?

Edited, Nov 13th 2007 3:42pm by Dilbrt

I can link it in the FAQ if you'd like, i'll even put it right at the top so people don't have to search for it, but the forum admins don't usually like too many stickies in a forum (I think max is three).

Edit: Also, it's a lot cooler and easier to read if you post all of the links as [wowitem=x]item name[/wowitem] where x is the number you see at the end of the allakhazam link. It's pretty easy and quick to change it all and i've been doing it ever since I saw bodh do it a while back.

Edited, Nov 13th 2007 2:46pm by CapJack

Thing is you can get 3-4 of the pieces of gear I listed just off the AH, and you can easily get 1-2 of the others per day. You could, if you're lucky, get the entire set of holy healing gear I listed before the server awarded you a single arena point. I personally don't care for warcrafts pvp system anymore (I stopped when they got rid of ranks), but if there are people that want to get arena gear to hold them over until they get PvE gear, go for it. They are not the same thing however, and you should never just accept pvp gear in place of your raiding set, with the possible exception of the healing neck piece.



Thanks Jack, you're a good man (even if you do refuse to go holy). I'll try to get my links cleaned up with that format.

Thank you very much indeed! I think you have now completely required to my questions from a few threads earlier, although I had managed to work most of it out myself in between :)

An excellent guide.

I'm going to soon guarantee that you will get rated down every time you mention that mace. It's been mentioned again and again it's not worth the money.

Bump.

I added 2.3 stuff in. I tried to change the links to [wowitem=33502]Libram of Mending[/wowitem] but as you see it doesn't work for me. I figure you need a premium account to use it.

For rings and neck you can't go wrong with the pvp rings and neck. The rings Veteran's Band of Salvation and Vindicator's band of salvation are two that are hard to beat even with part of the allocation going to resistance. They even beat the exalted ring from Violet eye for healing.

Veteran's pendant of Salvation and Vindicator's pendant of salvation are the same for necks.

Personally I've been hitting the BGs to save for both of the vindicator version. The ring I will be using alongside the hallow's eve epic Witches Band but of course unless you got this from horseman you will need to wait until next year to get it.

Bump.

Changed the links around to make them easier to read, added the PvP ring, and added a professions section.

This guide isn't aimed at leveling. If you're leveling, generally you won't be holy anyway.

Another formatting nitpick. You should make your subsections stand out more either with coloring or bolding or something. For example, I would probably Bold and Underline the main topics like Talents/Professions and just bold or italicize the subtopics like Head/Neck/Alchemy. It just makes it easier to browse to where I want to go.

Now it looks spectacular! I'll now give this an official thumbs-up! Before it just had a non-official thumbs-up.

See kids? Me and Dil can play nice.

      
      
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Edited, Dec 12th 2007 3:35pm by CapJack

I was always prot, I went holy for like... 2 weeks, then went back to prot, unless you started acknowledging my presence right around then.