Holy/Ret Spec for 10mFollow

Learning to Heal –

I just Socket’d (I’m BS) my gear, I’m looking into Gemming it. I have never healed before, but I have several epic healing items from Naxx as I’m the only Paly in my guild (That raids Naxx). So every piece just goes to me. (We run a Prime Spec – Need, the off-spec Greed rule) So I’m sitting here in about 4 – 5 pieces of epic armor, about 2 days from getting my BS Mace, with around 20 badges (already have the healing Libram).

I’ve read the sticky – so there seem to be two main ‘cookie-cutter’ builds. The first is the standard Deep Holy. But I kind of like the mix between Holy/Ret for the HoT on Crits. My thought is that our guild is currently working on mostly 10m content with a few attempts at 25man. I could add more value as a healer/DPS than as a pure healer. (We run 3 heals on 10m) So I think having 2.5 Heals would be nice. Is the Holy/Ret combo Viable? Would you consider it an advanced spec that should not be used by noob healers. (Like Frost AOE mage is an advanced and situational spec for frost mages – that is much more difficult to use that simply the standard ‘frost spec’.)

Any advice?

Any Holy Paladin that does not go 51 points into Holy to get Beacon of light is worthless. Beacon is the best healing tool we have, so you need it. The only talents you want tout of ret are the ones that improve Spell crit, and if you have the spare points, Pursuit of Justice is kind of nice ( but not necessary). You may want to spec 5 points into Kings rather than going deeper into ret. You lose out on 3% crit, but that's about it. With patch 3.1, Kings becomes trainable, but you will want to put the points in the new prot talent that increases healing by 5%. A healing DPS combo will be a sub par healer, and and awful DPS, so you should really avoid any sort of spec that combines the two, unless your raid has a real need for it (but I can't imagine why they would). Use the cookie cutter pve Holy spec. 51-5-15 or 51-0-20. Sheath of Light is a nice talent, but it s too deep in the ret tree to help you as a healer. Paladin healing is really really good . You won't need the HoT. If it was near the top of the ret tree, I would say grab it, but, honestly, it would make Holy Paladins overpowered if we could get it.

As far as gems, intellect is the way to go. We get spellpower, mana, and crit from it. The more intellect you have, the more Mana you get back from divine plea. All yellow sockets and BS sockets get intellect gems. For meta requirements, or good socket bonuses, use the orange gem with intellect and crit (I can't recall the name), and there are some green ones with intellect you can use for blue ( names, again, elude me). I wouldn't gem for crit or haste unless you have a TON of mana. Mp5 doesn't help us much. If you have it, then it's fine, but don't specifically gem for it. For the Meta gem, use the one with 21 intellect and a chance for mana return on spellcast. It will need one blue, red, and yellow to work.

I switched to Holy not too long ago from ret. I loved ret, but I have a mage to DPS, so I thought I'd give healing a try. It's a very different aspect of the game, and it is really enjoyable and challenging. I'm glad I switched. It feels like a whole new game. I'm having tons of fun. The first few times healing were tricky, but the more you heal, the easier it gets. Plus you get invited to a lot more things as a healer.

To me, you are either better off going with a traditional Ret spec and DPSing and then throwing in some extra heals on fights that really require it (which is maybe 2 fights in Naxx) or going a traditional holy spec and focusing on healing. Trying to do 2 things well at the same time usually means that you will do 0 things well. The good news is, in a few weeks when dual-spec comes out, you can just press a few buttons to switch your spec and gear and then heal on the fights that they need you to heal on and DPS all of the fights where they don't need that 3rd healer. Should be very convenient!