Holy Paladin PvP Gear Guide

 Paladin  Comments Off on Holy Paladin PvP Gear Guide
Jul 282013
 

Mists of Pandaria Holy Paladin PvP Gearing: How to Gear Enchant and Reforge a Holy Paladin in WoW PVP – Season 13 Patch 5.3

BY RUGMOUSE // APRIL 11, 2013

How to Gear Enchant and Reforge a Holy Paladin in WoW PVP - Season 13 Patch 5.3

This guide is a collaborative effort with Necrolina, produced by SkillCapped. All of our written guides are available for free, and we encourage you to post them wherever you’d like as long as you use a link back!

Note: This guide was originally for patch 5.2 and has been updated by me for 5.3. Here is the original page. Also this guide assumes that you’re level 90. If you’re not yet there, then go here and get there.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Stat Priority
  2. Adjusting Stats As You Grind
  3. Optimal Final Stats
  4. Getting Started
  5. Honor Gear
  6. Conquest Gear
  7. The Best Holy Paladin PvP Gear in Season 12
  8. Holy Paladin PvP Professions

 

STAT PRIORITY FOR HOLY PALADINS

Mandatory

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 Wrathto 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.

Ideal Stat Gains

In this section, you will find a list of stats along with their descriptions; stats are ordered based on their importance. While gearing, you should focus on achieving the following stats based on this priority hierarchy:

  • Intellect
    • Intellect increases your spell power and chance to Crit with spells. In previous expansions, Intellect also had the added benefit of increasing your mana pool, but mana levels are now static in Mists of Pandaria. 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
    • In Mists of Pandaria, mana pools have been capped at 300,000 mana and can no longer be increased by stacking Intellect. Spirit increases the rate at which mana regenerates.  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.
  • PvP Resilience
    • 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!
    • In patch 5.3 Resilience has changed. The value of the gems has been cut in half (320 to 160) and everyone enters PvP with a base resilience of 65%, regardless of gear. In addition, Res. has been removed from most high end gear, though it’s still present on low level gear.
  • PvP Power
    • 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, but still an effective throughput stat.
    • PvP Power was also nerfed in 5.3, by a third, and the gems values were also cut in half. The PvP Power on your gear will be fine, but don’t gem for it.
  • 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
    • 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
    • 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

 

Stat Priority

Intellect > Spirit > Mastery > PvP Power > Crit > Haste > PvP Resilience

 

ADJUSTING STATS AS YOU GRIND

Here we will be explaining exactly how to obtain, and what the optimal gear choices are while building up your character. While you are accumulating gear, it is important to recognize that until you have your completed set, your stats will constantly be changing. It is extremely important to be mindful of what stats are most important for your class as you work towards your optimal set, and make item selections based on what will have the most profound impact on your performance.

  • Always try to accumulate as much PvP Resilience as you can until you are in the best gear Season 12 offers. Being able to survive with enemy players on you is going to be extremely important. Without proper peeling techniques from your partners, you can be in trouble very quickly, so it is not advised to prioritize Intellect (or other throughput enhancing stats) until you reach a decent PvP Resilience level.
  • It is unnecessary to work for more resilience, unless you feel the need for it. With the base 65% and your heals you should be fine.
  • Mana efficiency is another concern, and maximizing your energy regeneration and throughput will also help to extend your life and the life of your partners. While stacking Spirit does help with this (and recommended), it is important to try and find a balance of Spirit, Intellect, and PvP Power that works with your play style. Remember, more Intellect means higher heal values, which will result in less healing necessary to keep your team topped off.

OPTIMAL FINAL STATS FOR HOLY PALADINS

These stats reflect what we have researched and believe to be the best obtainable stats for Season 13 using Conquest gear with the Elite gear set. These stats are here to give you a benchmark as you work towards completing your gear set.

  • Mastery: 3,345
  • PvP Resilience: 9,067
  • Spirit: 8,088
  • Intellect: 14,721
  • Haste: 3,302
  • PvP Power: 11,584
  • Crit: 2,991

GETTING STARTED

This section is geared towards people who have recently hit 90 for the first time, or have an under-geared alt that needs to be primed for beginning the PvP gear grind.

Upon achieving level 90, we do NOT advise you to just jump into an Arena, or start grinding Battleground’s, or do any sort of PvP for that matter fresh off of leveling in your leveling items. Chances are many of the enemies in a Battleground will significantly out-gear your fresh level 90, which means they will have a significant advantage over you in a PvP setting. Something that we promise will save you a lot of grief, speed up your grind, and make your PvP experience that much more enjoyable would be to obtain the crafted PvP gear right away. Here is a list of all of the items you should immediately obtain before you start PvP’ing in Mists of Pandaria:

Note: in patch 5.4 this will all be Malevolent Crafted gear, though the gemming and reforging should be the same.

Tip: It is normally much cheaper to get the materials for these items yourself and have someone craft them for you, rather than buying them off of the Auction House. Even if you just buy the materials off the Auction House and spam trade, it’s normally cheaper. Always check first for good deals on the Auction House, though!

Tip 2: Gemming and enchanting this gear is not really necessary, since (ideally) you won’t be in it very long. If you do want to gem & enchant it, and have the gold, then scroll down to the Conquest gear for recommendations.

HONOR GEAR

Should I get the Honor Gear?

The short answer: 0/2 Malevolent Season 12 gear is roughly in-line with Malevolent Season 13 gear. 1/2 and 2/2 upgraded Malevolent Season 12 gear is better than Malevolent Season 13 gear.

The detail: Not only is there a new arena season in patch 5.2, but also new PvE content. Blizzard did not want Honor PvP gear to have the same (or higher) item level as the PvE gear available from the Looking For Raid system. The decision was made to reduce the item level of the Malevolent Season 13 gear available for purchase, while increasing the Stamina, PvP Power, and PvP Resilience values to offset the differential. Season 12 gear that was earned last season is not effected by the change.

If you did not participate in Season 12, honor gear should be accumulated to increase your characters power. The stat differential going from the Crafted Dreadful set to Malevolent Season 13 gear is significant and will greatly increase you chances of success in a a PvP setting.

Malevolent season 12 gear that was not upgraded is essentially in line with the Malevolent season 13 gear. The differential between 0/2 upgrade Malevolent season 12 and Malevolent season 13 gear is miniscule, if any differential at all, so it is NOT NECESSARY to upgrade. If you have any upgraded season 12 gear (1/2 or 2/2), those pieces will be superior to the lower item level gear available for honor and those items should be retained.

What Honor Gear to Get, and What Order

If you did not participate in season 12, you should upgrade your gear using the Malevolent Season 13 set available at the honor vendor. Below you will find a list of all of the honor gear pieces you can obtain. They are listed in order of their stat benefits to you. That is, if you go follow this list in order, you will get the best stats first. This is not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but we feel if you are going to gear up, you might as well do it in an efficiently as possible.

If you already own the Season 12 equivalent of this gear, simply skip over that item and proceed to the next!

Gems for the Holy Paladin Honor Gear

Take the first gem if you feel like you need more spirit, the second choice is for more healing power.

For enchants  scroll down to the Conquest gear for suggestions.

The Gear

CONQUEST GEAR

What Conquest Gear to Get, and What Order

This season, there are two tiers of conquest gear. In hopes of creating a more level playing field, Blizzard has decided to do away with rating requirements for all items (except for a weapon enchant to help differentiate players that have attained a high rating). This means that all players will have access to the best PvP gear available, provided they earn enough conquest points to purchase the items.

The second tier of conquest gear, or “elite” gear, is only available for purchase once you’ve amassed a certain number of conquest points for this season. Once 27,000 Conquest points are earned, it will unlock the “elite” tier gear. It is also important to mention that a new honor quartermaster will also be made available, which will have the non-elite gear available for honor points! This will be of particular value to hybrid classes, as they can participate in Battlegrounds to purchase their off-set PvP items.

If you have a mix of upgraded and non-upgraded gear from last season, prioritize the gear that has NOT been upgraded. The stat gains will be greater.

Gems for the Holy Paladin Conquest Gear

In patch 5.2 the best choice was to get as much Resilience as possible. In 5.3 everyone starts at 65% Resilience, so that advice is no longer useful. PvP Power is similar, in that the stat was nerfed and the gem values were cut in half (320 to 160.)

Go here if you need help getting enough gold for all your stuff.

Take the first gem if you feel like you need more spirit, the second choice is for more healing power.

Chest – 2,250 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Ornamented Chestguard

Head – 2,250 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Ornamented Headcover

Weapon (Main Hand)

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Gavel

Weapon (Off Hand)

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Redoubt

 

Legs – 2,250 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Ornamented Legplates

Shoulder – 1,750 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Ornamented Spaulders

Feet – 1,750 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Greaves of Meditation

Waist – 1,750 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Clasp of Meditation

Hands – 1,750 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Ornamented Gloves

Ring 1 – 1,250 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Band of Meditation

  • Reforge
    • From Haste to Mastery

     

Wrist – 1,250 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Bracers of Meditation

 

Back – 1,250 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Drape of Meditation

Neck – 1,250 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Pendant of Meditation

  • Reforge
    • From Haste to Mastery

 

Ring 2 – 1,250 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Band of Cruelty

  • Reforge
    • From Crit to Spirit

 

Trinket 1 – Crane Deck

Relic of Chi Ji

  • Reforge
    • None

 

Trinket 2 – 1,750 Conquest Points

Tyrannical Gladiator’s Medallion of Meditation

  • Reforge
    • None

 

THE BEST HOLY PALADIN PVP GEAR IN SEASON 13

Elite Gear is available for purchase after earning (not necessarily spending) 27,000 Conquest Points. Any piece of gear that actually alters the appearance of your character will have an Elite upgrade (in other words – chest, helm, legs, shoulders, gloves, belt, boots, and weapon).

Remember, once you earn 27,000 Conquest Points this season, you will also be able to purchase Non-Elite Conquest gear with Honor Points! This is of particular value to hybrid classes that would like to switch specs, from say a healer, to a dps class. Instead of having to use additional Conquest Points on your off-spec gear, you can farm Battlegrounds for your gear! Note: the 27,000 Conquest Point threshold is essentially a full set of conquest gear.

Follow the same gemming and enchanting template that was used in the previous section.

 

 

HOLY PALADIN PVP PROFESSIONS

Our goal is to give you the absolute best gear set up you can achieve as a Holy Paladin in Season 12, and part of that is choosing the right professions. Before we tell you what the best professions are, we should note that when comparing professions, there is a very marginal benefit to your overall gear set, and you should not sacrifice a profession you really enjoy for the sake of a minor stat increase. Leveling a new profession can be costly!

That being said, here are the best professions for a Holy Paladins in Mists of Pandaria PvP:

Blacksmithing

This is the best Profession for a Holy Paladin because of the two extra gem slots that can be used to refine your stats. Blacksmithing offers you the best customization, as you are able to increase primary stats, along with the freedom to choose various secondary stats, such as Mastery, Spirit, or even PvP Power and PvP Resilience! Other professions simply do not offer this much customization for your character.

The next two Professions were a split decision between our pros, and are totally up to what you want to do.

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafting allows your character to use Willful Serpent’s Eye in two of your red slots. This offers you a boost to survivability along with some added damage. Mysterious Serpent’s Eye is also available to add even damage and healing throughput, if you feel your survivability is sufficient.

Engineering has the Synapse Springs gadget, which is pretty sweet.

Herbalism has Lifeblood, a massive Haste cooldown.

Good Luck!

This guide is a collaborative effort with Necrolina, produced by SkillCapped. All of our written guides are available for free, and we encourage you to post them wherever you’d like as long as you use a link back!

Please let us know how the article was. Were we missing anything? Do you have any further questions? Was the format useful? Feel free to Like, Share, and Comment on this post. 

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The Retribution Paladin – Massive Pwnage and Nerf Bait

 Paladin  10 Responses »
Oct 202008
 

Lots of us have encountered this scene in the battlegrounds (BGs:) There’s the Pally, let’s start working on him. I’tll take awhile, but…. WTF!?! (appear at spirit healer)

About That Squishing Noise…

Yes, right now is the time of the Retribution Paladin. They’re lean, mean, squishing machines laying waste to anyone who stands in their way. I don’t play a Pally, my 40 is collecting dust right now, but I’ve been on the receiving end of a few of them in the BGs. It’s not bad if I can land a dismantle and they don’t bubble, but otherwise? I’ve never been slaughtered quite so quickly.

Not that I know what I’m doing, but sheesh.

I’m of two minds on this, especially for long time players. For ages Pallies have been underpowered in some areas and the subject of much complaining from their fans (and which class hasn’t?) so it’s kinda cool that they are now the destruction/murder machine of choice. On the other hand, since I play a Rogue… 😉

My kid has been playing Paladins and Warriors since the original beta, claims they are his favorite classes, and has complained about their damage and abilities for as long as he’s been playing them. I tease him about being a masochist, since those are his classes of choice and their damage has traditionally been …lacking. I’ve also been kidding him about how he must hate the current situation with the Ret. Pally running roughshod over everything.

Word has it that in the Wrath of the Lich King beta test characters were balanced for level 80, but that too little testing was done at the lower levels. The call from dead and envious players, since the 3.0 patch on the 14th, has been heard and the official word is that the nerf is coming (which will make my kid happy. I think. )

Supposedly the nerf is going to clip the burst damage, but will leave longer term DPS about the same. We’ll see. Buffs and nerfs (and patches) usually have their fair share of unintended side-effects.

So What’s the Word?

This post pretty much covers what the fuss is about:

Retribution Paladins: Fair and Balanced – So I tried my hand as a Retribution Paladin this weekend. I had heard all the complaints about how overpowered Retribution was at the moment, so I thought I would get some first hand experience for myself. …

WoWinsider notes the the coming changes are aimed at PvP Paladins and will leave PvE pretty much (in theory) unchanged. It also has a Ret build for PvE types. I’m going to log into my rust covered Pally right now and play with them for a few.

Patch 3.0.2 primer for Retribution Paladins – Retribution deals so much pain that we’ve sent the rest of player base running to Ghostcrawler crying for a nerf. And we’re getting nerfed. To the ground. Don’t panic. The changes are really, mostly aimed at PvP Paladins — okay, …

Movie time – Pally testing from the 3.02 patch:

Mp 3.0.2 patch paladin retribution Overpowered ? – Category: PvP Summary: My paladin testing out patch 3.0.2 and retribution paladins are pretty overpowered. *…

Here’s a good analysis of the Ret Paladin from Blessings of Kings:

Are Retribution Paladins Overpowered? – Half the challenge of playing a Ret paladin is actually getting to melee range. It’s not like Retribution can Charge or Stealth or Death Grip. If a player lets a Ret paladin get in range, she has already lost half the battle. …

Zuggy (a hardcore PvPer) has some blue posts on Blizzard’s thoughts about the incoming nerfs:

Retribution Paladin Nerfs Incoming – There’s no denying that retribution paladins are insanely overpowered and fortunately (or unfortunately depending…) the nerf stick was officially confirmed earlier this evening. While there are some needed changes to the class to …

And SpoonCraft has details on some of the specific nerfs:

Retribution Paladin Changes Coming Soon (Oct. 17th) – As I stated yesterday, we are happy with Ret’s PvE damage and sustatined damage in PvP, but were concerned that the burst damage in PvP could be too high. We discussed this for literally hours yesterday, which was certainly not the …

So what are your thoughts on the Retribution Pallies and their current or upcoming states?