The Holy Paladin in Raids by Grandeath
1. Introduction
2. Gear


2.1. Items and Stats

2.1.1. Pre-raid
2.1.2. T4/T5
2.1.3. T6
2.2. Enchants

2.3. Gems
2.4. Consumables
3. Professions
4. UI
4.1. Macros
4.2. Addons
5. Talents
6. Blessings
7. Raid performance
7.1. Flash of Light and Holy Light
7.2. Healing assignment
7.3. Awareness
7.4. Blessing of Protection
7.5. Holy Shock
7.6. Cleanse and Blessing of Freedom
8. Tips
9. Final words

1. Introduction
This is a PvE guide for holy paladins. It is written by me with important contributions by Gaap who did the gear section, as well as input from Johnnyr and our former paladin class leader Nessaj. The guide aims to give insight into how the Nihilum paladins raid, give general guidelines and tips, give advice about gear on all levels as well as consumables, enchants, gems and other topics of interest!

I've tried to compile the most interesting information and facts in here. However I don't claim this to be a PvE holy paladin bible or Wikipedia in terms of completion and listing absolutely everything that a holy paladin needs to know. I hope you readers will enjoy the guide and find it informative and interesting.

2. Gear
2.1. Items and Stats
2.1.1. Pre-raid

Your gear setup at this point will be mostly made up of 5-man blues and quest rewards. I personally always went for +healing over any stat and it worked out well. Critical strike on healing spells is basically just another "lucky strike" (even though you should always try to keep it around 25% unbuffed, talented of course). You should be sitting at around 1.3-1.4k +healing, 25% holy crit and some pretty low mp5. Mana will most likely be a small problem in longer fights, unless you've got a shadow priest in your group. Super Mana Potions are your friends from now on, enjoy the company!

Off to the gearing up part and getting ready for Karazhan. I will list the gear I was using on the way up, including where they drop and if it is in heroic, normal or both modes.
Click here to see the gear (The few items not listed at ctprofiles are left out.)

Head: [Mask of Penance] (Mekgineer Steamrigger - The Steamvault - N/H)
Neck: [Vindicator's Pendant of Salvation] (Honor - Takes some time to farm, but it's worth it, awesome neck)
Shoulders: [Justice Bearer's Pauldrons] (Omor the Unscarred - Hellfire Ramparts - H only)
Back: [Cloak of Whispering Shells] (Hydromancer Thespia - The Steamvault – N/H)
Chest: [Breastplate of Many Graces] (Grandmaster Vorpil - Shadow Labyrinth - N/H)
Wrists: [Vindicator's Ornamented Bracers] (Honor - same as neck, fabulous item, almost on par with Hyjal ones)
Hands: [Gladiator's Ornamented Gloves] (Honor - They are very cheap and pretty good - Should be the first thing bought from honor)
Waist: [Girdle of Many Blessings] (Rokmar the Crackler - The Slave Pens - H only)
Legs: [Starcaller's Plated Legguards] (Quest reward - "Dimensius the All-Devouring")
Feet: [Wavefury Boots] (Rokmar the Crackler - The Slave Pens - H only)
Ring 1: [Cosmic Lifeband] (Nethermancer Sepethrea - The Mechanar - N/H) or [Vindicator's Band of Salvation] (Honor)
Ring 2: [Ancestral Band] (Thrallmar or Honor Hold - Revered - faction item) or [Veteran's Band of Salvation] (Honor)
Trinket 1: [Essence of the Martyr] (G'eras - Cost: 41 Badge of Justice)
Trinket 2: [Scarab of the Infinite Cycle] (The Black Morass - Aeonus - N/H)
Main Hand: [Lightsworn Hammer] (Warchief Kargath Bladefist - The Shattered Halls - N/H) or [Gavel of Pure Light] (Sha'tar - Exalted)
Shield: [Stormshield of Renewal] (The Black Stalker - The Underbog - H only) or [Crystal Pulse Shield] (Random world drop - Always some on AH)
Libram: [Blessed Book of Nagrand] (Quest Reward - "The Ultimate Bloodsport") or [Libram of the Lightbringer] (Commander Sarannis - The Botanica - N/H)
2.1.2. Tier 4/Tier 5
From now on you will start gaining more and more healing power, while your crit and mp5 will stay about the same. With this gear setup you should be looking at around 1.8-2k +healing with average critical strike chance of 25% and ~100ish mp5 (if gemmed for +healing, which is what I would advise you to do). You will gain a lot more mana with your new epic gear, so healing will be a bit easier and less tense for you. Depending on the guild you are in, you may or may not get a shadow priest to make your life even easier and your healing output higher, so prepare lots of Super Mana Potions again! In both cases your mana should be the last problem on your mind (if you don't spam Holy Light, which I assure you isn't neccessery yet). Time to list some juicy loot!
There is one exception I will make for T4/5 and T6 parts in gear list. I won't be listing the basic five parts which you should be getting (head, shoulders, chest, hands, legs) since they are pretty straightforward (for T4/5 - you should be wearing T4/5, and for T6 - you should be wearing T6 obviously).


And again, remember the deal, everything you see on the list is the best of the best you can get for your item range, so keep in mind that items which are not listed that you can get before these will work fine as well.

Neck: Stick to your [Vindicator's Pendant of Salvation] until you get [Lord Sanguinar's Claim] (Quest Reward from Verdant Sphere, quest item dropped by Kael'Thas in Tempest Keep - The Eye)
Back: [Stainless Cloak of the Pure Hearted] (Prince Malchezaar - Karazhan)
Wrists: [Vindicator's Ornamented Bracers] Still the best bracers you can get, up to T6 level
Waist: [Girdle of Stromgarde's Hope] (Hex Lord Malacrass - Zul\'Aman)
Feet: [Boots of Courage Unending] (Thrash mob drop - Serpentshrine Cavern)
Ring 1: [Coral Band of the Revived] (Lady Vashj - Serpentshrine Cavern)
Ring 2: [Naaru Lightwarden's Band] (Quest Reward - "The Fall of Magtheridon")
Trinket 1: [Essence of the Martyr] (G'eras - Cost: 41 Badge of Justice)
Trinket 2: [Ribbon of Sacrifice] (Opera Event - Karazhan)
Main Hand: [Dark Blessing] (Zul'jin - Zul'Aman) or [Lightfathom Scepter] (Lady Vashj - Serpentshrine Cavern)
Shield: [Enamelled Disc of Mojo] (Jan'alai - Zul'Aman)
Libram: [Libram of Souls Redeemed] (Opera Event - Karazhan)
2.1.3. Tier 6

Congratulations, you have reached the top level of your class. This is the "free world" of healing so to speak. Your stats will get a crazy boost, your heals will heal for wicked amounts and you will love it. Time to forget about mana problems from now on, since there won't be any (considering you still throw your Mana Potion friends down your throat)!

Now you have two choices. You can choose to max out healing (talking about values of 2.4k and above) and keep critical strike and mp5 on average like before (works best in my personal opinion), or you can keep your +healing at around 2.2k and boost your crit by about 5-6%.

Both choices have their advantages and disadvantages. The first one will obviously give you more raw healing power and more mana dependency with it, since you won't be relying on crits that much (*hint* [Flask of Distilled Wisdom] *hint*) where the second one will give you more HPS (healing per second) and more headaches when you don't get your "lucky strikes" in, but then again, you might feel more happy with your mana this way. When you've decided which style suits you best, try to play it for some time and get used to it, everybody got his own preference.

Let's move on to the list of goodies that Black Temple and Hyjal Summit offer.

Tip 1: Either +healing style or +crit style, you will decide that with your gems, not your gear.
Tip 2: Don't hate shamans, it's not their fault Chain Heal is overpowered!

(Remember, I'm not listing the T6 basic parts as I mentioned in T4/5 part of the guide)
Click here to see the gear

Neck: [Nadina's Pendant of Purity] (Mother Shahraz - Black Temple)
Back: [Shroud of the Final Stand] (Thrash mob drop - Black Temple and Hyjal Summit) or [Shroud of the Highborne] (Illidan Stormrage - Black Temple)
Wrists: [Blessed Adamantite Bracers] (Rage Winterchill - Hyjal Summit)
Waist: [Girdle of Hope] (Azgalor - Hyjal Summit)
Feet: [Pearl Inlaid Boots] (High Warlord Naj'entus - Black Temple)
Ring 1: [Ring of Calming Waves] (High Warlord Naj'entus - Black Temple) or [Band of the Eternal Restorer] (Exalted - Scale of the Sands (Hyjal Summit) )
Ring 2: [Blessed Band of Karabor] (Thrash mob drop - Black Temple)
Trinket 1: [Essence of the Martyr] (G'eras - Cost: 41 Badge of Justice)
Trinket 2: [Memento of Tyrande] (Illidan Stormrage - Black Temple) or if you got no luck with drops, get [Battlemaster's Perseverance] (G'eras - Cost: 75 Badges, or PvP vendor (Doris Volanthius: Hall of Legends) - 30k honor + 40 AV marks) - Can save your life sometimes!
Main Hand: [Hammer of Atonement] (Kaz'rogal - Hyjal Summit) or [Crystal Spire of Karabor] (Illidan Stormrage - Black Temple)
Shield: [Felstone Bulwark] (Supremus - Black Temple) or [Bastion of Light] (Anetheron - Hyjal Summit)
Libram: [Libram of Souls Redeemed] (Opera Event - Karazhan)
2.2. Enchants
Head: [Glyph of Renewal]
Back: [Enchant Cloak - Greater Shadow Resistance] / [Enchant Cloak - Major Resistance]
Chest: [Enchant Chest - Restore Mana Prime]
Wrist: [Enchant Bracer - Superior Healing]

Hands: [Enchant Gloves - Major Healing]
Legs: [Golden Spellthread]
Feet: [Enchant Boots - Vitality] / [Enchant Boots - Boar's Speed]
Off Hand: [Enchant Shield - Intellect]
Main Hand: [Enchant Weapon - Major Healing]
If you are at the pre-raid gear level, you might want to consider using a couple of stamina enchants to boost your HP during raids, as it tends to be a bit low. Use 150 HP on chest and 18 stamina on shield. You might even want to keep these enchants as you go through tier 4/tier 5. Just get a feel for how good your survivability is. When you are ready, replace them with 6 mp5 on chest and 12 int on shield.
2.3. Gems
Meta
[Insightful Earthstorm Diamond]
[Mystical Skyfire Diamond]
[Bracing Earthstorm Diamond]
Normal
[Teardrop Living Ruby] - Red
[Gleaming Dawnstone] - Yellow
[Royal Nightseye] Red/Blue
[Luminous Noble Topaz] Red/Yellow

Personally I've picked [Bracing Earthstorm Diamond] to max my +healing, but all three metagems are fine in my opinion. The choice depends on which other gems you want to use. When it comes to normal gems, that is where you pick the ones that give you the stat you aim to boost. Go for +healing or +crit. Or go for a mix of both.
2.4. Consumables

[Flask of Distilled Wisdom]
[Flask of Mighty Restoration]
[Elixir of Healing Power]
[Elixir of Major Mageblood]
[Elixir of Draenic Wisdom]

[Superior Mana Oil]
[Brilliant Mana Oil]
[Superior Wizard Oil]
[Blackened Sporefish]
[Golden Fish Sticks]
What is a flask from old vanilla wow doing in here? That's a good question, and I've been asking it myself. Why haven't we who don't need more mp5 gotten a new and better TBC flask? Once I even tried a [Flask of Blinding Light] in hope of that the damage increase in the holy school also increased the healing with an equal amount (This works with, for example [Superior Wizard Oil]). However, this was not the case. So I did some theorycrafting on the [Flask of Distilled Wisdom] and to make a long story short, thanks to our holy talents that convert 35% of our intellect into +healing, and thanks to intellect boosting our spellcrit, this flask is actually the best available flask for holy paladins. Lame of blizzard to not have created a better flask, but this is how it is. Though of course use [Flask of Mighty Restoration] if you are doing some fight that requires increased mp5. The rest of the elixirs, oils and food is all about healing power vs mp5.


3. Professions

Enchanting: A very good profession to have for PvE because of the [Enchant Ring - Healing Power]

Jewelcrafting: Good for the BOP unique gems you can create.

Alchemy: In the next patch comes an upgrade to the alchemytrinket [Alchemist's Stone]. The healerversion is [Redeemer's Alchemist Stone]. It's a very good trinket.

Leatherworking: Good for getting drums that boosts your party. [Drums of Battle] also makes your healing faster from the spellhaste obviously.

Herbalism/Mining: Very good as a second choice of profession. Pick one of these gathering professions and you don't have to respec retribution or create an alt to earn gold for repairs and pots.

Enchanting and Herbalism is a classic combination for PvE focused holy paladins. It gives us both the ring enchants for boosted +healing, and also a way to farm mats for pots. What combination would you use for best PvE performance, assuming you don't need a gatheringprofession?

I'd say Enchanting is a given. Pick that either way. The ring enchants are simply that good. What to have as a second profession depends. If you don't have [Memento of Tyrande] then having alchemy as a second profession is a good choice. If you do have it, then Jewelcrafting is a fine choice. Regarding leatherworking, only pick it if you got strong reasons within the guild to reroll leatherworking.
4. UI
4.1. Macros
Mouseover healing macro for FoL and HL, without annoying "spell not ready" sound:
Flash of Light:
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","0")
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Flash of Light
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","1")
Holy Light:
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","0")
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Holy Light
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","1")
BoP macro with whisper:

/stopcasting
/cast Blessing of Protection
/run local name, realm = UnitName("target"); if realm then name = name.." - "..realm; end SendChatMessage("*** You got BOP ***", "WHISPER", nil, name);

Taunt macro:
/cast [help] Righteous Defense; [target=mouseover,exists,help] Righteous Defense;[target=targettarget,exists,help] Righteous Defense
Divine Intervention macro:

/cast Divine Intervention
/4 *** Divine Intervention on %t ***
/ra *** Divine Intervention on %t ***

(4 being your paladin channel)
4.2. Addons

Here's a list of what I consider the most important addons for paladins. Apart from these listed here, you can have whatever addons that fit your taste and needs inside and outside of raids.

PallyPower

A must have for any raiding paladin. Extremely handy for keeping track of your blessings as well as a way to easily assign them. If you or any of your paladins don't have this already, download and try it and you'll soon be wondering how you ever managed without it. Worth noting that it can act weird while in combat (such as giving the wrong blessing or none at all) so if you have to do combat rebuffs, do it the old-fashioned way instead.
Grid

Popular addon for raidunitframes, showing HP, debuffs, aggro, etc. Used by GD and Johnnyr.
"Slightly boring and ugly, but shows everything you need to know." - GD

sRaidFrames

Another addon for raidunitframes. Used by Gaap.
"What I like about sraidFrames is the way it handles the debuffs, and maybe the most important for raidhealing is its bar update speed. But in the end, it's all the matter of taste and what you get." - Gaap



oRA2



A simple mod to manage raidutilities, and for us paladins mainly used for Main Tank targets, MT target's target, Player targets, etc. Since paladins mainly heal tanks, as a paladin you should be 100% aware of the hit points of all the tanks all the time.



Unitframes



As a healer you need a good mod for keeping track of everybody's health, targets, target of target, focustargets, mt targets, etc. I've used two unitframes in the last six months and can recommend them both. The first one is Pitbull. Lots of configuration choices to fit your needs. Currently I'm using Xperl Unitframes and so far I'm pleased with it. Earlier I was a loyal fan of the Nurfed UI, but when it got to a point where I felt I needed more options, and that it wasn't updated enough, I switched to Pitbull.











5. Talents



When choosing talents for PvE holy paladins, there are some basic things to remember. You want the raid to get Improved Blessing of Wisdom, Improved Blessing of Might and Blessing of Kings. To make all paladins get these would be ineffective use of talent points. Instead, aim to divide the talents among you.


For example, if you have four active holy paladins in the guild, make two paladins spec 50/11/0. This spec includes Blessing of Kings and Improved Blessing of Wisdom. Have the other two paladins spec 46/7/8. This spec includes improved Blessing of Might and improved Blessing of Wisdom. Also I've put three talentpoints into Improved Seal of the Crusader. When judged, this gives the raid dps an extra 3% crit to their attacks. If you know you won't use this however, you can put these three points into holy instead.

Apart from blessings there are a couple of other talents that are must-have. Every paladin should have Improved Lay On Hands simply for the extra armor buff it gives. It can be very handy in situations when a boss deals extra damage, such as when enraged. At least one paladin in the raid should have Improved Devotion Aura, for extra armor for the tank group. However I'd recommend every paladin to spend five talent points on this so every paladin is ready to be in the tankgroup. If you have spent five points in Improved Devotion Aura as I've recommended, you can now spend two points in Guardian's Favor. Do this to decrease the cooldown of your Blessing of Protection. Every paladin should have this.













6. Blessings



This is an example of a basic setup with three paladins in raid.

Druid:

Feral tanks: BOK BOM BOL
Feral dps: BOK BOM BOS
Resto: BOK BOW BOS
Balance: BOK BOW BOS
Hunter:

BOK BOM BOW
Mage:

BOK BOW BOS
Paladin:

Holy: BOK BOW BOL
Ret: BOK BOM BOS
Prot: BOK BOL BOSanctuary
Priest:

BOK BOW BOS
Rogue:

BOK BOM BOS
Shaman:

Resto: BOK BOW BOS
Enhancement: BOK BOM BOS
Elemental: BOK BOW BOS
Warlock:

BOK BOW BOS
Warrior:

Prot: BOK BOM BOL
Dps: BOK BOM BOS

Note that to bless certain setups you have to use single blessings on some players. For example warriors, if you have one dps warrior, you first bless warriors with BOK, BOM and BOL and then the paladin who blesses BOL does single BOS on the dps warrior. Simple. Also, don't slack with blessings, not even during trash. A missing BoS on a dps means significantly less dps output from him, especially from high threat classes like warlocks. Keep the raid blessings organised and make sure your blessings are always up on everyone.










7. Raid performance

7.1. Flash of Light and Holy Light



Paladin is said to be a two button healer. And despite using Holy Shock sometimes, it's basically true. Hopefully Blizzard will give us more healing spells. Until then we have to use what we've got.

One basic important fact is that Flash of Light is cheap to use, while Holy Light is not. You can downrank Holy Light and make it cheaper though. When people ask me how to use healing abilities as a paladin, I usually give a simple answer to make it easy to understand. Use Flash Of Light as much as you can as long as it's enough, because it's cheaper and faster. But make sure you know when Holy Light is needed and then use that.



Because of our lack of Nature's Swiftness, predicting damage is more important for us than anyone else. (I don't count Lay on Hands because it leaves us with 0 mana and can only be used on rare occasions, not once every few minutes like shamans and druids can with Nature's Swiftness.) In the best case scenario we know exactly how much damage will land and when, and then have our heals land shortly after that. Since paladins in raids mainly focus on tankhealing, knowing and predicting tank damage is very important.






It is very common to just spam the MT with Flash of Light. Not because it is easy, but because it is the smartest use of abilities in those situations. But make sure you coordinate with the other paladins, and the other MT healers, so that the healing you do is in fact enough. Sometimes it is better to do a cycle of, for example HL -> FOL -> FOL -> FOL -> HL etc, to throw in some Holy Lights. Sometimes you might want one paladin to stopcast Holy Lights, while the other two spam Flash of Light. It all depends on how much damage the tank takes, what kind of damage it is, if the damage is spiky, how many healers you've got on the tank and what abilities the other healers use. For example, on a fight like Gurtogg Bloodboil, it is the paladins job to spam Holy Light on whomever gets Fel Rage. It uses a lot of mana, and is best done using Divine Illumination and by having a shadow priest in the group.



The concept of healing is simple. It is our job to keep people alive. How we do it, how we heal, is sometimes simple. But many times, especially on new bosses, you need to use your brain and improvise a lot.


Hopefully this guide gives you a few pointers, and you can also read "Nessaj's healing tips" for some great tips.





7.2. Healing assignment

Although paladins can do a decent job at raid healing, a good shaman or CoH priest will do it a lot better and there's really no good reason to assign a pala to it. You should be assigned to healing a single target taking heavy damage, which on most bosses will be the MT. One important thing to remember when you are healing the MT is that you are inevitably going to have very high overhealing and thus not exactly dominate the healing meter. But still it's not worth cross-healing very much. More often than not you are just going to race the raid healers to top someone off, and if you are unlucky, your assigned tank will get caught in a burst and die. Just do your job and keep the tanks alive, or whatever you are assigned to heal. Healing meters are not to be judged the same way as damage meters.




7.3. Awareness

When playing a healer you are playing reactively. To become a really good healer you are simply going to have to learn to know when things are about to happen and react accordingly. Now to do this you have to be aware of your surroundings. Don't stare yourself blind on your raid frames. Instead, try to foresee what is going to show up on it before it happens. A lot of this comes with experience since you're not going to enter an instance and instantly know what every single mob and their abilities are. Be open to learn and gather as much information as possible. Being caught by surprise is the easiest way to have someone die, and it is something you will always try to avoid.





7.4. Blessing of Protection



Blessing of Protection is one of our most powerful abilities. Making someone immune to melee damage can be the difference between life and death. In some encounters you can use BoP as part of the tactic. An example would be Reliquary of Souls phase 1 - to BoP someone that has aggro and is too low on HP to handle it, especially at enrage. Another example would be to BoP a dps that gets aggro after 30% on Illidan, because of dots or whatnot. One could argue, and God knows I've argued about this many times, that BoP wouldn't be needed in 99% of the cases if tanks and dps handle their threat right. It is nevertheless our job as healers to use all our abilities to keep our raid members alive. There are however limitations to BoP that both paladins and other classes need to understand.

First of all, BoP obviously does not protect from spell damage. Be sure before you BoP someone that he is actually under threat from melee damage. In many cases, the boss turns to a raid member and casts a spell. Don't waste your BoP in this situation. In the worst case scenario it will be needed soon after, and then yours is on cooldown.
Second, when a player gets BoPed, he gets the "Forbearance" debuff wich means he can't get BoPed again for one minute. If a player is going mad with dps and ignoring threat, takes aggro and is saved by a BoP but keeps dpsing, it is very likely he will get aggro once again after the BoP wears off. At that time, he can't get BoPed again.
Third, let's say a typical raid has three paladins. With talents, BoP has a cooldown of 3 minutes. That means the raid can get one BoP every minute on average. In situations where threat is badly handled, even three paladins can have cooldown on BoP at the same time.
Fourth, BoP has a range of 30 yards. Don't ask me why (hello Blizzard!) but it does. This means that just because you are in range of players for heals, does not mean you are able to BoP them. To do nice BoPs, you have to be fast. An average timeframe for doing BoP is probably around 2 seconds. Counting human reaction time and server lag, you have about 1,5 seconds to identify your target, switch target, confirm target and use BoP.
Identifying a target can be made by noticing aggro on raid frames, it can be made visually by actually seeing the boss go for a player simply by ingame graphics and it can be made by noticing the maintank frame's target of target, or the target of target of a player that is targeting the boss.
To switch target, confirm target and use BoP can be done either exactly like that, or by using a mouseover macro for bop. That way you don't have to switch target.


BOP is also very good for offensive use. If a lot of adds need AoE, BoP a mage and he's free to do lots of damage without taking any melee damage. After the nerf to [Limited Invulnerability Potion], the importance of Blessing of Protection has increased significantly!





7.5. Holy Shock



This spell is getting a buff in 2.4, but it is still not the most exciting of our abilities with its 15 second cooldown and a rather high mana cost plus the fact that global cooldown doesn't make it much different from a normal FoL. It is however instant, and since you usually don't have much more going for you when you're moving, you should try to use it every time an encounter requires you to reposition. It is also something you should use when under threat of dying and you have to move away from for example environmental damage. Do Holy Shock on yourself and use a HP stone. Can also be very handy right after an AoE silence together with Divine Favor.





7.6. Cleanse and Blessing of Freedom




Sometimes you need to free tanks from being stuck, such as on Lady Vashj and on BT trash. A fast Cleanse, or Blessing of Freedom as in the Vashj fight, is then needed. Rogues and dps warriors appreciate not being stuck as well. Before you decide to Cleanse every single dot that comes along, you need to know how much damage the dots do. Many times it is more effective to heal up the damage done by dots than cleansing them.

Also remember that tanks need their rage so if cleansing the dot from a tank isn't crucial, then leave it on for some extra rage.











8. Tips



Taunt!



When you have your Blessing of Protection on cooldown, you can still taunt mobs off aggro happy clothies. Use your taunt and run towards a tank to let him take back the mob. Use the taunt macro in this guide and target either the mob or the player to taunt off the mob.





Remove a blessing!



If someone needs a blessing removed, we don't have to tell the player to remove it, we can do that ourselves. For example the warlock tank during p3 on Illidan will need BOS when dpsing, but obviously shouldn't have it when tanking. If he doesnt remove BOS when starting to tank, the paladin who does BOS can remove it by doing Blessing of Sacrifice or Blessing of Freedom on him. This also works if you accidentaly happen to BOP a tank (don't ever do that!) or if you BOP a rogue/dps warrior.





Keep those blessings on!



If someone gets combat ressed during a fight, make sure you bless them. Blessings are cheap, and some are crucial, like BOS for dps and BOK for everyone. Basically all blessings should be on at all times.





Have a fast Holy Light ready!



You can do a downranked Holy Light every 15 second or so to always have the Light's Grace buff up for faster Holy Lights when needed. A 2 second HL instead of a 2,5 second one can be the difference between life and death.





Use Divine Shield to protect others!



Use your Divine Shield tactically. Not only can it be used to simply protect yourself, but also as a way of more effectively keeping others alive. For example, if you have lots of environmental damage around you that makes healing the main tank harder (like on Archimonde and Supremus), then simply pop your Divine Shield and feel free to stand in fire or volcanoes while healing the main tank. Another example of tactical use of Divine Shield is on RoS phase 3. Simply use Divine Shield when RoS has around 30% hit points left, both to make it easier for raid healers, and to guarantee your survival for another 12 seconds. The last example is to use it when silenced and the main tank is under threat of dying during this silence.





Know your priorities!



Learn who's more important in a fight. Many times you have to choose which players to keep alive. Of course the main tank is the most important. Most fights end with a wipe if the main tank dies. As a paladin, nothing is more important than keeping the main tank alive. If it is about saving either the main tank or yourself, you can only save yourself if more people are healing the main tank. Since that is normally the case, you can in most cases heal yourself over main tank. However, you should be ready for situations when other healers can't heal the main tank. Then you can heal the main tank until you die or use Divine Shield and heal. If fast healing is really needed, then use Lay on Hands. However, be aware that unless you have a Mana Potion or a Dark Rune/Demonic Rune cooldown ready, then you will be out of mana after that Lay on Hands.





Give the tank 30% more armor when it is crucial!

Since you all should have improved Lay on Hands, use a rotation among the paladins on bosses that hit extremely hard to give the main tank a 30% increase of armor towards the end of a fight. For a prot warrior with 20 000 armor, that means he can have 26 000 armor for the last six minutes of the fight with three paladins and an armor buff that lasts for two minutes. Announce in your paladin channel when you have used it. Just make sure you only use Lay on Hands controlled, so that you have a Mana Potion cooldown ready.





Save your falling friend!



BoP also protects from fall damage. I have tried to use it a couple of times on players doing Archimonde and that while in air, fails with the slow fall because of a dot, because they forgot the slow fall item or because they used it too early. Just a small tip that might lead to some creative solution! If nothing else, you and your friend can have fun jumping from high places, you doing Divine Shield while giving him BoP. Maybe even more fun would be to tell your friend this is what you will do, but then just watch him fall to his death? Ah well.










9. Final words



I hope that both you paladins and others out there found this an interesting read. It was fun to write. I have aimed to include the basics and also answer questions that have been asked me and other paladins. Please feel free to ask more questions and discuss in the comments section below.

Good luck with your raiding!

/GD