For The Paladin

So you’ve decided to help the population of WoW by healing. First off, let me say that healing as a Paladin relies on 3 main spells: Holy Light, Flash of Light, and Holy Shock. For the most part, your healing relies on just these spells. But there are other factors that apply to being the best Paladin Healer in your group, your raid, and quite possibly your server. Lets start with the basics:

Holy Light

This spell is your big heal, for the most part it is used when someone has taken a lot of damage. However, Paladins are well known for being very mana efficient. Through the talent Illumination and the spell Divine Plea, Paladins are very well at making sure that having mana isn’t a problem. Therefore, some Paladins choose to use Holy Light a lot more often, and stack a lot of Intellect to make up for the lack of Spell Power (Holy Guidance brings the Spell Power back up though, so with the right gear, you should have enough Spell Power). Add in Light’s Grace and your Holy Light is already half a second faster. With enough haste, it is definitely possible to bring Holy Light down to a 1 second cast.

Flash of Light

This spell is (for the most part) your most often used spell. Small mana cost, quick casting time, scales with Spell Power, what’s not to like? Used in conjunction with Sacred Shield, a correctly timed Flash of Light can also throw a Heal Over Time (HoT) spell on the affected character, causing him to be healed for 100% of that Flash heal over 12 seconds. So think about it for a second. Crit with a Flash heal on a player that has the Sacred Shield buff….need I say more?

Holy Shock

This is your Instant Cast spell. Use it whenever you can (every 6 seconds) because the more you use it, the more you have a chance of proccing Infusion of Light which will make your next Flash of Light instant cast OR give your next Holy Light a 20% increase in your critical strike rating. Casting a Flash heal right after a Holy Shock can be the reason your tank stays alive. Like I stated before, use it well, use it often.

Now that I’ve talked about the basics, here are the other spells to use in your rotation while being a great Holy Paladin.

Sacred Shield

This spell is a 30 second buff which you put on a character (mainly the tank). This buff also applies a buff (a buff within a buff…a super buff?) which, once activated, shield the character, absorbing 500 damage. At level 80, 500 damage isn’t much (especially when you’re fighting a raid boss), but consider that this buff reapplies itself every 6 seconds…in a 5 minute fight, if you are applying the spell to the tank every 30 seconds, the tank will have absorbed 25,000 points of damage…and most fights last longer than 5 minutes. Sounds a lot better when you think of it that way huh? What I feel is most important about this spell is that once the Shield is active, a Flash of Light spell increases its critical strike chance by 50%! As if that wasn’t impressive enough, if you also heal a character with Flash of Light while that character has the Sacred Shield buff active, Flash of Light heals the character for 100% of the heal over 12 seconds. So, to recap: PUT SACRED SHIELD UP ON SOMEONE (EVEN YOURSELF) AT ALL TIMES BECAUSE IT IS DEFINITELY WORTH IT. ALWAYS.

Seal of Light/Judgement of Light

You NEED to have Seal of Light on you at all times while healing. Judge every 20 seconds. Everytime you cast it on a mob, your group has a chance on hit to heal themselves for 2% of their maximum health. That’s healing that you don’t need to worry about while concentrating on healing your tank. Also, casting Judgement of Light will proc Judgements of the Pure and Heart of the Crusader. So just by using one spell, your group is being healed, your casting speed is increased by 15% for a full minute, and increases crit chance for everyone by 3%. This spell is SUPER IMPORTANT to use, I cannot stress that enough.

Beacon of Light

Placing this spell on someone will allow them to be healed without having to heal them. Simply put it on someone (mainly the tank) and heal everyone else. That person will be healed for 100% of the heals you give to other people. Perfect for fights where everyone is taking damage and you need to cast Holy Light on everyone while keeping the tank up. Make sure you are keeping this up at all times, because it only lasts a minute at a time. There you have it, the ins and outs of Paladin Healing. Hope that by reading this article, you’ve learned just what it takes to be the best Holy Pally out there. ~Baros

For Paladins, there are 28 major glyphs and 6 minor glyphs. Obviously, you can only use 3 of each, so I will go over which ones will benefit each spec and why. For the sake of me writing on and on about every single glyph for no reason (because if you’re looking here, you’re probably wondering what the best is for each spec PvE/PvP wise), I will only seriously talk about those which are actually worthy of getting.

Protection:

Glyph of Righteous Defense – This glyph increases the success rate of your taunts by 8%, which is very worthy to grab as a protection paladin. If you need to quickly taunt something and it misses, say goodbye to your groupmates.

Glyph of Seal of Vengeance – While your Seal of Vengeance/Corruption is active, you get 10 expertise, which basically adds more +hit. The more damage you’re doing, the more threat you’re obtaining. Nice to have in my book.

Glyph of Divine Plea – 3% more reduced damage for as long as you’re auto-attacking a mob? Yes please!

Holy:

Glyph of Divinity – Ok, so lets say you’re in the middle of a raid, and it’s getting really heal-intensive, and you need to blow through a lot of your mana. Well, when your mana gets really low, just pop LoH on someone, and you’ll get back some mana!

Glyph of Flash of Light – Personally, I use Flash of Light a lot. Probably more than I should. But if it’s critting so often, why not right? So it’s good to have a little more crit. I say this is definitely worth picking up.

Glyph of Holy Light – Your holy light becomes a little Circle of Healing? I’ll take it, especially when you’re in a melee-friendly group. Those extra heals are definitely worth it.

Retribution (**Please note that this particular piece of information came through forum searching, so don’t bash me if I’m not 100% correct on this):

Glyph of Judgement – This is a no brainer. 10% more damage from judgments.

Glyph of Hammer of Wrath – This makes your Hammer of Wrath cost 0 mana. For those fights where you need to crank DPS in the last 20% (so that makes it…all of them), this is awesome.

Glyph of Consecration – I’m not about to go crazy with the math here, but by adding 2 seconds to your consecration, you’re essentially saving mana. Mana is good. Very, very good.

There, hope this helps! Agree with my choices? Disagree? Leave a comment, or shoot me an email!

So you decided that you’d wanna take all the hits, eh? Well, look no further. I’ll try my best to explain what Paladin tanking is all about without the technical mumbo-jumbo the guys at Elitist Jerks talk about.

So let’s talk tanking in general. Basically, you’re going to want to hold all the aggro on whatever it is you’re fighting while your DPS beats the ever-living crap out of it. Now, let’s get one thing straight. Tank’s don’t top damage meters. Ever. If you can find me a screenshot of a tank out-DPSing any DPS in any fight ever, you need to find that player, and tell him he needs to change his gear/rotation/enchants/etc. because whatever he’s doing obviously isn’t working.

“But Baros, if a tank isn’t doing the most damage, how is he supposed to hold aggro on anything?”

Well, just because a tank isn’t doing much damage doesn’t mean it won’t hold aggro! That’s what a Prot Pally’s spells are all about.

Spells

Shield of Righteousness: This spell hits one target for a lot of threat. There. That’s about it.

Hammer of the Righteous : Smashes 3 targets with an attack which also produces a great amount of threat.

Avenger’s Shield: Use this bad boy when you want to pull mobs from a good distance. This spell is one of the reason Pally Tanks are so useful: they can stack threat on multiple mobs with one spell.

Exorcism : Need to put a little more threat on a mob? Avenger’s Shield down and you wanna just pull really quick and get it over with? Hit the mob with exorcism! **NOTE: This spell always crits when used against demons and undead. Sweet!

Holy Shield: This spell should always be in your rotation simply because it adds 30% more block. Adding it with the benefits of Blessing of Sancutary, Holy Shield pays for itself in a couple blocks, which means extra mana reserved for your other spells.

Consecration: Here it is, the spell that pulls all your mobs you’re not currently attacking to attack you instead of any healers/dps. Drop this down, and watch the numbers fly. AoE FTW. This is also great to put in a hallway when spawning mobs will have to run to you. If a mob is running through your consecration while trying to get to healer, for the most part the mob will turn it’s head towards you.

Judgement of Light/Judgement of Wisdom: While these spells aren’t exactly “Threat” worthy, they are useful in putting up those judgements so that your DPS will either regen health or mana on hits. Pretty neat spell to put into your rotation.

Seal of Vengeance/Seal of Corruption: This is your primary seal as a Prot Pally. Use it to stack a DoT on the mob(s) which, once judged, will cause more damage, and thus more threat.

Righteous Fury: Let me say this once, and only once. If you are tanking an instance, and for some reason you aren’t holding the mobs at all, do me a favor and check and see if this spell is active. It isn’t? Give yourself a nice palm to the face. You, good sir, do not understand Paladin tanking. It’s a good thing I’m writing this guide now isn’t it? This spell increases your threat by HOLY spells by 80%. If you haven’t noticed by now, ALL of your spells are holy. Yeah, this spell is indeed awesome.

Blessing of Sanctuary: If you’re the only Paladin in your group, you’re either going to have this spell or Blessing of Kings on yourself. Small stamina and strength increase, damage reduction, and 2% of your mana back every time you dodge, block, or parry (which if you’re gear is in check, you should be doing all of those a lot). You shouldn’t have a problem with mana with this blessing applied.

Divine Plea: Two words: MANA. REGENERATION. With the talent Guarded by the Light, you will be gaining 25% of your mana over 15 seconds, ALL THE TIME.

Sacred Shield: Absorbing damage? I’ll take it. 500 damage may not sound like a whole lot, but with the Divine Guardian talent, it increases the duration by 100% (so a full minute of the shield), and increases the shield absorption by 20%. Plus, your spell power increases the amount you absorb. But for the sake of this argument, let’s just say that you only absorb 500 damage. In a typical 5 minute fight, you’ll absorb 500×60 (the max amount of times Sacred Shield will proc in 5 minutes) = 30,000 damage. So if anyone ever asks you why you put sacred shield up on yourself, you let them know why.

Righteous Defense: This is one of your taunt spells, that makes up to 3 enemies attack you. Good to use: when you need to pull all the mobs to you. Bad to use: When you need to only pull one mob.

Hand of Reckoning: Single-mob taunt. Nothing much about it other than that.

Divine Protection: This spell reduces all incoming damage by 50% for 12 seconds. The big difference between this and Divine Shield is that this spell doesn’t drop your aggro. So use it when you feel like you need to give your healers an extra second to get those big heals off, or when you feel that you’re gonna get hit with a huge attack. This is your Shield Wall

Divine Sacrifice: Transfers a bunch of damage being done to the raid to you. Add it to Divine Protection and all that damage is reduced by 50%, which should be enough to keep everyone alive during an AoE blast (just make sure your healers are focused on you!)

Ok, now that I’ve talked about spells, lets talk rotation.

Generally, your spells are either on a 6-second cooldown or a 8-second cooldown. So, in order to provide maximum threat in your rotation, you want to keep switching between your 6 and 8 second cooldowns. Here is an example of my rotation

- Open with Avengers Shield

-Consecrate

- Hammer of the Righteous

- Holy Shield

- Judgement of (your choice, I normally choose light)

- Shield of Righteousness

- Repeat (minus Avengers Shield)

There you have it! Hope you enjoy Pally Tanking as much as I do, and make sure to watch this page for any updates as the game goes on!

Happy Gaming!
~Baros