Holy Paladins Stacking Intellect in 3.3.5Follow

If you are gearing up a paladin, or already geared this is the traditional build. It is pretty ballin. The combination of Libram and Glyphs on this one is are important. There are reasons behind each and if you mess with any one for any reason you are impairing the efficiency of Stacking Intellect. So read on.



How you should gear, glyph, spec and trinket/libram


Talent Build

51/0/20. Hits all the holy abilities you need, also gives Imp Might, Imp Wisdom, +8% crit and 15% runspeed.


Glyphs

1st Seal of the Wise (mana cost reduced 5%), 2nd Beacon, 3rd Holy Light Glyph (the spell you will use most often).


Libram

Libram of Renewal. Ilvl 200, obtainable from Badges of Heroism. Anything else is fail at its most basic level, I will explain below.

I want to say something because this is a very important part of being a Int/Haste Holy Paladin that the majority of new Holy Paladins make a mistake on. The core of being an Intellect stacking HL spamming paladin is that you are using a mana intensive spell (Holy Light). Gemming intellect increases your mana pool, giving you more room to work with, it also increases mana regen via Replenishment and Divine Plea allowing you to support the mana intensive build. Libram of Renewal is the crux of this build because in conjunction with Seal of the Wise Glyph you are cutting off a significant chunk of spell cost and when you do crit your Illumination returns the equivalent of 36% mana on spell cast rather than 30%.

Basically, putting any other libram in that slot is like gemming for Strength as a Hunter, or Spirit as a Shaman.

Trinkets

Intellect Trinkets or bust. If you are just gearing up SP can be used when you are low on spellpower, but if you have somewhat decent gear you want the following.

Talisman of Resurgence - Triumph Badges +128 intellect
2nd trinket depends on what you have access too. +int trinket out of ToC 5 man, Greatness Trinket from Darkmoon card, Algalon 10 man trinket is BiS, or Pandoras Plea from 25 man Ulduar.

Once again, at all costs avoid Mp5 or SP trinkets when at all avoidable.

Gems& Enchant

Meta Gem - Insightful Earthsiege Diamond +21 Int + manarestore
Yellow - Brilliant King's Amber +20 Intellect
Red - Luminous Ametrine +12 sp +10 intellect
Blue - Nightmare Tear + 10 all stats(only 1, shouldn't use any other blue)

Haste to Cloak
+30 Int to Weapon
+16 Int to Bracers
+250 mana to chest
Icewalker to boots

Rest SP.

Gear Focus

Haste. It is your throughput stat. You gem intellect, you gear for haste. Every single piece of gear you have other than your trinkets and Libram should have haste on it. 700 minimum, 1k+ being the goal.


As for Haste + Crit gear vs Haste + Mp5 gear, Elitist Jerks and sites are saying Mp5 over Crit. In practice I am seeing top end paladins go Haste + Crit. I personally have a little bit of both, based on what has dropped for me so far.

Avoid Crit + Mp5 gear like the plague, unless you are just gearing up.


Spell Rotation

Spam HL, use FoL during low damage periods, use Holyshock to top up spike damage. Keep Beacon and Sacred Shield up 100%. Use Divine Plea during low damage parts of the fight, or in conjunction with Wings or 2 piece t10 Divine Illumination.





Edited, Aug 29th 2010 12:55pm by bodhisattva

1st I am using the heroic Solace trinket :P so yes it is still good, but that is the exception to the rule.

and yes ret is a significantly better choice than putting 15+ talents points for a nerfed raidwal, especially when your raid has a priest.

With the 30% 2 healing shouldn't be an issue.

On normal mode especially, but even on heroic depending on gear there are only a few fights where 3 heals are necessary not out of any issues with HPS but rather to mitigate the issue of RNG taking one or both healers out at the same time.

The simple truth of the matter is that your raid needs the nerfed raid wall then there are issues in the raid greater than a paladin with a suboptimal spec. It isn't even an issue of top end elitism, just general raid composition and performance in relation to gear available and 30% buff. If your raid is 245-251 with some 264 mixed in you should be able to steamroll regular. If you are 264-251 most hardmodes should be doable without too much fuss.

FYI, the raid-wide mitigation of Divine Guardian is 20% damage reduction for six seconds every two minutes. Are you sure you're getting as much benefit from those 20 points in Prot as you think you are? I agree with your philosophy about utility offsetting the badness of baddies, but this particular argument seems a little forced to me. The patch 3.3.0 nerf to DS/DG was just brutal (I remember trying Heroic Assembly of Iron 25 with a fail group in full TOC25 gear shortly after ICC was released and just absolutely despairing at the change in difficulty).

I want to come back to this because it is important. Not in a "whhhhargarrrbl imright" type manner but lets really touch on what Hoyadinftw stated.


You are dumping a lot of points into prot that are wasted, Divinity (5% heal) is not wasted but also not needed with Int stacking, so wasted stats. Tier 2 has wasted stats though Guardians Favour isn't complete *** since I use Hand of Protection and Freedom but not in a make or break manner. Tier 3 gives you a group raid wall and Imp Devo aura which as a paladin you shouldn't need (see Divinity) and then you finally get to a raid wall that had the snot nerfed out of it and is situational to a couple fights and other classes can bring a better raid wall (priest).

You are trading that up for 8% crit (which should be about 1/9th of total crit raid buffed), 10% off instant spells, Imp BoM for buffing, 3% crit for raid damage, and most importantly the 15% runspeed which actually plays out as haste which for Int stacking is a primary focus off gear. Also 100% uptime.

Edited, Sep 6th 2010 9:28am by bodhisattva

Heroic 25 versions of
-LK: used in a rotation with AMs to offset infests(phases 1+2), vile spirits(phase 3) and can be used for tank cd if available outside the rotation

-Sindragosa: can be chained/used in rotations with AMs to mitigate damage in phase 3, especially when RNG isn't kind to your healers

-Putricide: Used to mitigate green slime explosions damage during transitions and used in a rotation with AMs at the end of phase 3 once one the tanks reaches 3 stacks

-Blood Queen: Use during air phases to mitigate blood bolts(i think that's the right ability)

-Blood Princes: Used to mitigate 1st empowered vortex ability on switch back to Valanar as a large portion of the raid will have multiple stacks from moving to dps him

-Festergut: Generally paired with an AM right before the Pungent Blight explosion or as a tank cd during the hardest hitting phases

That's all i can think of at the moment. Its possible my guild overvalues DS/DG as both holys and our prot MT spec it, but we found it very beneficial in progressing through the above bosses. Although you're probably right, once you have them on farm with the 30% buff its probably not necessary except maybe for LK.

Is that really what Bodhi's saying though? I'm asking because that's not what I'm getting from it. To me, it sounds more like "If your raid's abilities are above a certain minimum level, then you'll benefit a hell of a lot more from a 51/0/20 spec than you would from having DG. Yes, DG can be quite useful, but its opportunity cost is very great and thus I really recommend going the other route."

Yes, I do know no one else in the raid has specced into it. I am almost always the only holy paladin in our 25, and the prot paladin we sometimes have doesn't take DG. The guild I'm in isn't terrible, but there's a fairly large quota of the raiders that would prefer to take a more casual approach to raiding (while still getting their ZOMG 277 lewtz, thank you very much for the drag) than the more hardcore stance of min-maxing to get every last bit of performance that they can out of their characters. I'm not quite so casually minded myself, hence taking divine guardian to help support my raid as it is.

But yeah, anyway, I wasn't trying to stir up any bad discussion or whatnot, just putting in my two cents that putting the twenty or so points in prot isn't *always* the less optimal choice provided one knows what one's raid structure is likely to need one way or the other.