I get PM's every now and then asking me question about the class and I tend to answer them but I just wanted to make a forum post. It's pretty simple
Itemization
Do: Stack Intellect, Crit and Haste
Don't itemize Mp5, in fact at 80 do everything in your power to avoid Mp5 gear. In Wotlk Mp5 is universally acknowledged as an extremely poor choice of itemization for Paladins. Also don't stack Spellpower past 2100, it's an extremely bad idea.
Gems: Insightful Earthsiege Diamond, is really the only choice. Ember Skyflare Diamond is actually trash. Even with Ulduar gear the 2% int won't beat insightful by enough to negate the mana restore effect. Deal with it. Other than that, you gem exclusively for Intellect, with one red equivalent and one blue equivalent to make the Meta work. Why Intellect, because stacking SP is bad, crit isn't as beneficial as Intellect and you should get enough from gear and talents, and haste is no bueno. Intellect gives you mana, spellpower and crit also the more you get from divine plea.
Glyphs: Seal of Wisdom, never Seal of Light. This comes down to a fundamental basic of Paladin healing in Wotlk, once you have 2k healing you are good. Stacking healing benefits by gemming SP, trinketing for it is not a good plan. You can argue this but once again, elitist jerks or go look at any holy paladin in any top 100 guild, or just watch your overhealing.
The next two are contentious, FoL vs Holy Light, personally I rather take 5% guaranteed crit over 8yard heal that is very situational. Though HL glyph does react with Beacon so if you hit a Melee with an 18k heal, heal the melee around him for 1.8k each, and had beacon on tank, then the tank gets 18k + 1.8k x 5 or whatever, buts thats just overhealing though it won't overheal. So once again 5% crit for mana.
Divinity vs Beacon. For the avg raider I would say hands down divinity, if you are doing hard modes get beacon.
Spec 51/2/18 this is the spec you should be unless a guild leader forces you to be 51/20/0, which I don't like at all but there are a few fights where it is nice to have the survivability. The loss of 8% crit in the 51/20 spec is a pretty hefty kick in the cajones.
The most overlooked enchant in the for Holy Paladins!!!!:: Tuskarrs Vitality. Basically any fight where you move more than 10 seconds out of every minute this enchant starts to scale onto a level equivalent of a major amount of haste, more importantly 8% run speed will help avoid aoe. When compared to the other options Vitality giving Mp5 which is poor itemization or a very negligible amount of crit from Icewalker, this not so obvious choice is actually quite obvious. Some pallies will take 2 points out of Prot and put it into PoJ (Pursuit of Justice) however if a enchant can do the job and free 2 talent points up for 2% healing then the choice is obvious.
Professions Jewelcrafting. Hands down the best, while others are strong they don't even stand a chance against how OP JC is for Min/Maxing a Paladin. Blacksmithing synergizes with JC extremely well with extra gem slots and easily beats out Inscriptionist. However you only want to min/max that bad its assuming you already have another lvl 80 alt with an epic mount that will be farming for you.
Anyways, other than that once you get to Ulduar keep you eye out for Elemental Shaman pieces, they are more often than not best in slot for you. Hope this helps all the new pallies.
Edited, May 11th 2009 12:16am by bodhisattva
Edited, May 11th 2009 12:16am by bodhisattva
Edited, May 11th 2009 12:23am by bodhisattva