5punk

I'm not 100% up to date with recent changes to the Paladin holy healing stuff. All I know is that Mp5 is now slightly useful again, rather than totally useless, but afaik Intellect is still pretty much the only stat to stack. You can afford to stick some Int/SP gems in if you need to match socket colours though.

This post was originally aimed at entry level raid healing, but most of it still stands. Only difference really in heroics is you'll use FoL a lot more than HL cos the damage is much lower.

Healing Tools

Holy Light (HL). This is the daddy. Together with mana reducing toys such as Libram or Renewal, Glyph of Wisdom and 4pc T7 Bonus the heal per mana is almost the same as FoL. Glyph of Holy Light also gives you a small AoE heal, which is nice.

Haste. It's a stat rather than a tool, but I'm putting it near the top because it's so damn useful. With a decent amount of spell haste Holy Lights cast almost as quickly as FoL. That's insane. I note too that Judgement of the Pure, Light's Grace, Wrath of Air Totem etc all stack as well so in a raid environment my Holy Lights should be mighty quick (soft 'cap' is 50% after raid buffs for 1sec casts).

Holy Shock (HS). This has to be one of my favourite tools and I have it pretty much on cooldown. It's the only heal I can do whilst moving and combined with Divine Favor in a neat little macro, I can get a guaranteed crit which either gives me an instant FoL or increased crit chance on my next HL. Together with clever use of Sacred Shield, I can almost instantly heal 50% of a tank's health. This will also proc the new FoL HoT which is win.

Bacon. Bacon is quite expensive to keep up, which is why I went and got the Glyph, which saves a considerable amount of mana over the course of a fight. With it now doing full heals you can Bacon the tank and heal everyone else, basically getting 2 heals for the price of one.

Divine Pee, Arcane Torrent, Avenging Wrath & Divine Illumination. Mana break! Divine Pee is a load of Mana back on demand every minute, plus the belf Arcane Torrent for another 6% every 2 minutes. Sadly Divine Pee nerfs my output so use Avenging Wings of the Fairy at the same time to offset it. DI ofc I'll keep pretty much on cooldown, and especially when I expect heavy HL spammage.

Lay on Hands (LoH). No longer just an oh shit button, but I keep forgetting to use it. Specced into Imp LoH, tempted to get Glyph of Divinity or Glyph of LoH, that's a nice mana boost for me and the tank and he gets 50% armour for 15s every 11 minutes.

Flash of Light (FoL) Yep, at the bottom of my list now because I find it so very underwhelming compared to the other tools. In the past (and in heroics) I could get away with a simple sacred shield, bacon the tank, and FoL spam everyone with the occasional Holy Light thrown in for good measure. This was fine when I had little mana, no haste and bugger all crit but the few times I've healed in raid I've found FoL simply doesn't cut it anymore. The only time I use it really is after a HS Crit for an instant on the move heal, preferably combined with SS for the extra crit chance, or during quiet moments for a cheap quick heal when damage is low.

Talent Builds

I'm assuming in a TF raid there's likely to be a prot paladin and/or a retadin so much of the support function from the prot tree (Divine Guardian, Imp Dev Aura) are covered already meaning I don't have to. That basically leaves a regular 51/x/xx build, with the only choice being a full 5 points in Divinity, or 2 in Divinity (1 if you take Aura Mastery) and 3 in Sanctity of Battle. They actually work out very similar in overall healing done, but the extra crit in the Sanctity build will contribute to greater longevity thanks to the mana returns. For now I'm sticking with the Divinity build though, because until my gear improves I really need that extra 5% for my burst heals, and crit won't return that much mana until I have a lot more of it.

My Conclusions:

I want to set myself up to maximising Holy Light and Holy Shock output, the first because it's by far my best healing tool, the second because it's the one I'll use on the move, and I expect to be doing a lot of moving.

Stats Priority: Int > Int > Int... > Holy Spell Crit (Minimum 25%) & Haste (~20% before raid buffs)

Method: I want fast heals and to invest as much of my mana 'credit' as I can into Holy Lights on my main heal target, and so reducing the cost of other spells is useful.

1. Judge every minute to keep JotP up
2. Bacon the tank, with Glyph of Bacon to reduce the overall mana cost.
3. Cast Holy Lights, with Glyph of Holy Light so I don't waste mana healing others around the main heal target, and Glyph of Wisdom to reduce the overall mana cost.
4. Sacred Shield, Divine Favor/Holy Shock/FoL combo for a burst heal on the move.
5. Divine Pee, Arcane Torrent, DI to maintain mana; Avenging Wrath if needed.
6. Tactical use of Imp LoH.

Final note: a useful addon is Paladin Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield, JotP Tracker (found on Curse). It provides inobtrusive cooldown bars for and flashes warnings up when they're about to fall off.

UI Design. This is aimed at getting all the important stuff in the centre for ease of reference. I've gone with Grid raid target frames because it fits 25 people into a neat box in the middle (and is very configurable) and Clique, which you can use for setting up mouse/keyboard combos (e.g. MB4 for FoL, Shift+LClick for HL, Ctrl+LClick for LoH etc).

Couple of useful macros:

This one is a simple mouseover for holy shock: hover the mouse over a person or character / raid frame and press the button:
This is a more advanced version, that combineds Divine Favor if it's off cooldown and you're in combat, which will guarantee a crit and you can follow up with an instant FoL or 20% crit on an HL.

Good work Friz, me likes.

I'd not kept in touch with all the new glyphs but i'll be swapping a couple of mine after reading your post.

One thing though about your Divine Favor/Holy Shock routine, I dont know if you know this already but if you DF and cast a holy light on a target then spam your holy shock button during the cast, This can even be on a different target, both crit 100% in a party or raid. Furthermore you still get the instant FoL/HL increased crit chance buff.

You basically get the divine favor crit for the Holy light AND the Holy shock, dont ask me why it works but it does, using this i can basically heal MT's to full, by HL crit, HS crit, HL crit (most of the time from the increased 'chance' though if your base crit is high enough its almost always) Bust a trinket before you pull this and your popping 2- at least 19k heals + a holy shock crit, play around with it, its very useable.

Thats if you didn't know already Just seems logical to get a guaranteed HL crit in first before your HS then the gamble on the following HL is a bonus Woop.

hehe, sounds like it should be a bug, but I'll give it a go

You'll jizz in your pants

Well if its a bug, i've been able to do it for at least over a year. But keep it shhh so blizz dont 'fix' it lol. Doesn't work solo, only in party or raid so that kinda suggests it must be a bug, or they know about it and consider it too op for solo play. Meh.

Tried this today, not positive it worked though. DF, HL then spam HS (lots of 'another action is in progress') then HS will only crit the usual amount, not 100% of the time.

Cross post from guild forum for 5punky benefit. This is really aimed at Ulduar 10+ raid healing, because it'd be overkill for heroics (apart from maybe that last bit in ToC, but that's all really).

Stats Changes

I've done a bit of reading now that the 3.2 changes have settled in. Basically from what I can gather, the nerf to Divine Plea and Divine Illumination has brought mp5 back into the frame as a not so bad stat to have, especially for those longer fights where you're spamming Holy Lights. That said it would appear Int, SP, Haste and Holy Crit are still more important to a point (see below).

Raid Damage Mitigation

The popular Ret tree Crit build has a new contender for top place, losing the 8% added crit in favour of Divine Guardian: 52/17/0 +2 with the last 2 point going wherever you want (Benediction for example).

The rule of thumb seems to be if you're not having mana problems, then you can afford to lose the extra crit. Some are even going as far as to gem SP over Int because they have more than enough Mana/Holy Crit already.

Stats Priority

My numbers are based roughly around unbuffed requirements for 10 Man Ulduar

Int > SP (~2K) > Haste (500+) > Holy Crit (~30%) > Mp5 (200+ in combat)

For heroics, low damage, FoL spammage or overgeared content I'd put Mp5 above Haste. Note that a lot of Coli gear is now itemised with haste and mp5 not crit.

Rotation

While the technique remains fairly similar, this build gives access to 40% Divine Sac which (apparently) doesn't trip the 150% health cap if you bubble at the same time, and it increases the duration and damage absorption of Sacred Shield a huge amount. You can also use Imp Righteous Fury (with care!) if there's a lot of aoe incoming. That's some considerable raid wide damage mitigation going on.

My standard healing technique therefore becomes something like this:

1. Judge to keep JotP up & Light/Wisdom on the target
2. Bacon and Sacred Shield the tank.
3. Cast Holy Lights on a group to benefit from Glyph of Holy Light
4. Divine Pee, Arcane Torrent, DI to maintain mana; Avenging Wrath if needed.

I also have these 3 tools to use:

5. Divine Favor/Holy Shock/FoL combo for a burst heal or on the move.
6. Div Sac & Bubble when heavy raid damage is inbound (e.g. XT's tantrum). Can also use Imp Righteous Fury for self if threat isn't an issue.
7. Proactive use of Imp LoH.