Updated for Mists of Pandaria 5.2

Note that this guide is oriented toward level 90 players, though lower levels should be able to get something from it. If you need to get to the level cap  then our recommendation is either dungeon leveling, PvP leveling (slower,) or grabbing a leveling guide to speed you along your way.

There’s a pretty fair amount of flexibility with Holy, depending on whether you’re in 2s, 3s, 5s, BG, who your teammates are, your personal style, and so on. This page is a general Holly Pally PvP guide, rather than being specific to Arena, for example.

Contents

• Videos
• Stats
• Gems
• Enchants
• Professions
• Race
• Macros
• Leveling

Holy Paladin PvP Video

A pretty good video on gearing your Holy Pally in patch 5.2

 

Holy Paladin PvP Stats

Healing spells always land on your target, which makes Spell Hit rating obsolete for healing spells. Holy Paladins also have Holy Insight, which is more than enough additional Spell Hit to reach the 6% Spell Hit cap when trying to assist in damaging your team’s kill target, Holy Wrath to reduce damage output, or land a timely Hammer of Justice. It is also of note that although it is not mentioned in the tooltip, Hammer of Justice, Blinding Light, and other control abilities, benefit from Holy Insight as well. There are no “Mandatory” stats for Holy Paladins.

Note: Much of the info on this page regarding gear, stats, gems, etc. was taken (with permission) from the Skill Capped gearing guide.

Your general stat priority is:

Intellect > Spirit > PvP Resilience > PvP Power >  Mastery > Critical > Haste > > Hit > Anything else.

Note that PvP Power adds to your healing and damage power, but healing only gets about 50% of the PvP-P value that damage does. 

Intellect increases your spell power and chance to Crit with spells. Increasing Intellect will increase your healing throughput and your heals will return more health to your target per spell. In addition, Critical Strike is one of our top priorities in terms of secondary stats!

Spirit  - While mana efficiency is pretty solid for Holy Paladins, Spirit helps to ensure your mana pool is not depleted over the course of a PvP encounter. If you’re always full up on mana then get rid of some of your Spirit, in favor of Mastery or Crit.

PvP Resilience reduces the damage your opponent does to you. In a PvP scenario, increasing your damage or healing output is amazing, but decreasing the amount of damage you take can dictate how a PvP scenario plays out. You can’t heal if you’re dead!

• How much do you need? That depends on how much you’re being pressured. You need more if you’re always the center of attention, less if you aren’t. Also keep in mind that Res. is subject to diminishing returns, like armor. Your last X number of points is worth less than your first X points.
• The easy answer? Get as much as you can, especially if you’re just starting your gear grind.

PvP Power increases all of your healing against other players. This additional healing increases linearly and does not fall subject to diminishing returns, making this stat more and more effective as you gear your character.

• The additional benefit to healing spells is 50% of the damage increase PvP Power provides for dps classes, making this stat a bit less enticing for Healers than Int, but still a very effective throughput stat.

Mastery -  Holy Paladins benefit from Mastery: Illuminated Healing, which creates an damage absorb shield on targets you cast direct healing effects on.  This increases Holy Paladin throughput by a significant margin, as the overwhelming majority of Holy Paladin healing spells are considered direct healing.  Mastery is an excellent secondary stat to allocate into.

Critical Strike, or Crit, is another decent stat to accumulate for a Holy Paladin. Critical Strikes when using Holy Shock activate our passive Infusion of Light.  The reduced cast times on Holy Light, Divine Light, and Holy Radiance makes topping off you and your teammates much easier, and can make a huge difference in how a PvP encounter plays out.

Haste  reduces the cast time of your abilities and reduces the duration of the Global Cooldown (the minor cooldown that is invoked after casting spells). Haste helps to ensure your important spell casts go uninterrupted (Holy Light, Divine Light, etc.), an important factor in PvP, as there are several interrupt mechanics in the game.  Although beneficial, the reduced cast times do not justify allocation out of other important secondary stats.

• Divine Favor can also be used in a pinch, when additional haste and crit is required for survival.  This ability is quite potent, as it also increases the crit chance of Holy Shock even further, which could lead to even faster casts via Infusion of Light

Reforge:

How’s your mana regen? If it’s bad, then reforge everything into Spirit until you’re fine. Otherwise Reforge everything into Mastery. If an item already has Mastery then reforge into Crit.

Holy Paladin PvP Gearing, “How To,” Questions Answered, & More. Get Better: Skill Capped. 

Holy Paladin Gems

Gems with secondary stats (PvP power, Haste, etc.)  have twice the value of gems with primary stats (Int, etc.) PvP Power is only half the value for healing that it is for damage, but the gems are twice the value, so one likely is about equal to the other.

Remember that your Plate bonus adds to any Int gem bonuses, making them worth 5% more Int.

Gemming for defense:

• Red socket: Willful Vermilion Onyx
• Yellow: Mystic Sun’s Radiance
• Blue: Vivid Adventurine or Vivid Wild Jade
• Prismatic (belt buckles, blacksmithing sockets:) Mystic Sun’s Radiance

Gemming for Max Power:

• Red socket: Brilliant Primordial Ruby
• Yellow: Artful Vermilion Onyx
• Blue: Mysterious Imperial Amethyst
• Prismatic (belt buckles, blacksmithing sockets:) Brilliant Primordial Ruby

Grab this addon if you need more gold for your gem, gear, enchant, mount, and toy buying.

Gems for Holy
Meta		Ember Primal Diamond: +216 Intellect and +2% Maximum Mana Tyrannical Primal Diamond: +665 PVP Power and +775 Resilience, requires 27k earned conquest points and iLevel 476, cost 1k conquest points.
Red		Brilliant Serpent’s Eye: 320 Int, self-only Jewelcrafting gem Brilliant Primordial Ruby: 160 Int
Yellow		Mystic Sun’s Radiance: 320 Resilience
Blue		Stormy River’s Heart: +320 PvP power Sparkling River’s Heart: +320 Spirit
Orange		Willful Vermilion Onyx: +80 Int & +160 Resilience Artful Vermilion Onyx: +80 Int & +160 Mastery
Green		Turbid Adventurine: +200 Spirit and +200 PvP Resilience Vivid Adventurine: +200 PvP Power and +200 PvP Resilience Vivid Wild Jade: +160 Res, +160 PvP Power Zen Wild Jade: +160 Mastery, +160 Spirit
Purple		Mysterious Imperial Amethyst: +80 Int, +160 PvP Power Purified Imperial Amethyst: +80 Int, +160 Spirit
Prismatic		Brilliant Primordial Ruby: 160 Int
Cogwheel		Sparkling Tinker’s Gear: 600 Spirit – requires an engie helm, such as this. Smooth Tinker’s Gear: 600 Crit Fractured Tinker’s Gear: 600 Mastery

Holy Paladin PvP Enchantments

The chest item is the only enchant the provides Resilience and none provide PvP Power, so you will be enchanting for Int > Spirit > Mastery > Crit.

Short on gold? If you want to buy the best enchants, fund all of your alts, donate to the guild, etc., but don’t have the cash, then see what the Tycoon Addon can do about about fixing your poverty.

Helm enchants are gone in Mists of Pandaria, shoulder enchants are all handled by the Inscription profession. Talk to a scribe or buy them off the Auction House.

Holy Enchantments
Weapon	Enchant Weapon – Jade Spirit: Sometimes increases Int by 1650, might increase Spirit by 750 if mana is low. Off Hand: Enchant Off-Hand – Major Intellect: +165 Int
Shoulders	Secret Crane Wing Inscription: 520 Int and 100 Crit rating, Requires Inscription 550. Greater Crane Wing Inscription: +200 Int and 100 Crit
Cloak	Enchant Cloak – Superior Intellect: +180 Int Lightweave Embroidery – attacks can give 2k Int for 15 sec, requires tailoring
Chest	Enchant Chest – Super Resilience: +200 Resilience Enchant Chest – Mighty Spirit: +200 Spirit
Bracers	Enchant Bracer – Super Intellect: +180 Int Fur Lining increases Int by 500, requires leatherworking. Socket Bracer – Pop in a gem, requires Blacksmithing 400
Gloves	Enchant Gloves – Superior Mastery: +170 Mastery Socket Gloves – Pop in a gem, requires Blacksmithing 400
Belt	Livingsteel Belt Buckle: Gem slot for a nice Int gem
Leggings	Greater Pearlescent Spellthread: +285 Int and +165 Spirit
Boots	Enchant Boots – Pandaren’s Step: +140 Mastery, slight run speed increase.
Rings	Enchant Ring – Greater Intellect: +160 Int, Requires Enchanting 550

 

Professions for the Holy Paladin

All of the professions provide some benefit for Paladins of any spec, though clearly some are better than others. Even the gathering professions have some value, though you might be better served by using those to build a larger gold stash.

What’s Best? Probably Blacksmithing, for the versatility with gems and that the secondary gems have double the stats of primary gems. Those two slots will give you 640 PvP Power vs the 320 or so Int of the other profs.

Holy Professions
Tailoring	Cloak enchant sometimes adds 2k Int.
Leatherworking	Bracer enchant adds 500 int.
Jewelcrafting	Make nicer gems for your own use.
Enchanting	Enchant both rings, for a total +320 Int gain.
Inscription	Shoulder enchant adds 520 Int and 100 crit.
Alchemy	More effect from your own potions. Adds 320 Int and an extra hour to your main flask. Abouit 30% extra stats and and extra hour to all flasks and elixirs.
Engineering	has lots of interesting toys, some of which have situational use, and Synapse Springs, which increases Int by 1940 for a short time. If you take this use a macro to activate it along with other short term buffs.
Blacksmithing	gives two extra gems slots. Since gems with secondary stats have twice the value of gems with primary stats Blacksmithing might be a very valuable profession. For example, you’ll be able to socket he two gems for 640 PvP Power or Spirit instead of 320 Int.
Skinning	provides 480 crit rating
Herbalism	Small heal and 2880 Haste for 20 seconds
Mining	480 Stamina

Macros

Possibly useful macros for the Holy Paladin

Bothered by pesky undead critter sent by that DK over there? This will help. Works best if only one of the things is attacking.

• #showtooltip Turn Evil
• /targetexact Ebon Gargoyle
• /cast Turn Evil
• /targetlasttarget

General macro targeting you or a party member. Great if you’re running arenas. Make one for yourself and another for each party member, where applicable.

See the second video on our “how to macro” page for making a “cast sequence” macro.

 

How to Get your Paladin to the Level Cap, ASAP

Retribution Paladin leveling is easy. Holy and Protection have it a bit harder, just due to the utter lack of damage. So if you’re questing then switch to Ret, unless of course you’re leveling another class.

Any way you want to look at it, there are thousands of quests from to get to 90 and a bazillion mobs to kill (not to mention other players, but they don’t count here.) Sorting out which quests are best and which series of quests will get you to 90 the fastest is another game, which is why we highly recommend Zygor’s Guide.

Zygor’s is an in-game guide and it nearly automates the whole leveling process: you just pick your starting point, at any level, and the guide tracks which quest you’re on, tracks the quest objectives, and automatically advances and updates as you complete your tasks and quests. In addition, a waypoint arrow is set automatically, so you never have to wonder where to go. All of the important quest info is included in the guide so you never have to wonder what to do. You’ll find that it’s vastly superior to the in-game questing help.

Playing with Heirlooms and/or Recruit a friend? Gaining a few levels in the dungeons or in PvP? Zygor’s has your back. The guide knows what level you are and will correctly suggest where to go next and will let you dump all of your obsolete quests. You will probably never need to look at your quest log again.

Grab your copy here and get to 90 as fast as possible, or read our review, first.