Healadin Newest Guide

Talents and Glyphs As a healadin, you will be spending the majority of your talent points in the Holy tree. You need to do this to gain some serious healing ability, including the level 31 talent Holy Shock. This little gem gives you your only instant healing spell. It comes at a high mana price but can give you enough time if used correctly to get a big heal off right after it, instead of chain casting smaller heals.
Probably the most important talent is the 51 point talent Beacon of Light, which turns the target into a beacon for all healing that the Paladin does within 60 yards of him. This means that any time you heal anyone you heal within 60 yards of the beacon, the beacon also receives the full effect of the heal. This provides you with a solid multi-target heal, especially when the beaconed target is the tank.
There are several other critical talents in the Holy tree for a Healadin such as Spiritual Focus (70% chance to not lose casting time when hit), Illumination (critical heals return 30% of the base mana cost of the spell), and Divine Favor (next heal is a critical one, 2 minute cool down). There are also many others that are important, such as increased intelligence, increased critical chance on holy spells, and a reduction to cast time, but the first 3 are your core.
This is the Healadin Build I use when speccing Holy - Healadin Build. It has proven itself over and over again in the level 80 instances and raids. It dips into the protection tree to pick up even more healing power with Divinity (+5% healing) and a situationally awesome ability called Divine Sacrifice. Divine Sacrifice allows you to absorb some of the damage incoming to the group and transfer it to you.
While there are a number of decent Glyphs for a Holy Paladin the ones I suggest are based on raid usefulness. Therefore the greater glyphs I believe you should use are:
Glyph of Seal of Wisdom - Reduces all of your healing spells' mana cost by 5%. This is a can not go without glyph as it allows you to cast more heals over time. 5% may not sound like a lot, but it sure adds up.
Glyph of Beacon of Light - Increases Beacon of Light's duration by 30 seconds to 90 seconds. Having to cast this spell less often means less chance that it will not be up when you need it.
Glyph of Holy Shock - Reduces cooldown by 1 second. This may not sound like a whole ton but it takes it from 6 to 5 seconds, which can make a a big difference on certain fights when you need it.
Stats and Gear
Paladin HealerPaladins make solid healers that can take a lot of incoming damage as well due to their heavy armour.
Mana Efficiency Now that you know the order you should heal, how to you make sure you have mana for everything? Which heals should you use when and why?
Holy Shock - This is your only instant heal, but it is very mana inefficient and has a 6 second cool down. Because of the low amount that it heals, its high mana cost and its cooldown you should only use it as a last resort to save someone, even then it probably won't be enough. It is also the only heal you can cast while moving, so any time you need to move or readjust in a fight it is a good time to throw one of these at the tank.
Flash of Light - At a 1.5 second cast time this is a fairly fast spell but does not heal much. It is a very mana efficient spell but because it is a small heal it is not always usable. It will still probably be your first choice as a healing spell unless you are being out damaged.
Holy Light - This is a long cast time heal at 2.5 seconds that heals lots of health. It is slightly less efficient than Flash of Light but heals for a lot more. This is the spell you will be using to heal your tank when bosses are out damaging your Flash of Light heals or to catch up on heals so that you can revert to Flash of Light.
Beacon of Light - This ability effectively doubles your healing since it will heal the beaconed target for the same amount cast at any friendly target within 60 yards. This makes healing a group much easier since you can Beacon the tank and heal the group. Even over heal is transferred to the tank so you can heal a fully healed group member and still heal the tank.
Sacred Shield - This is a damage prevention ability rather than a healing ability. It does, however, allow you to heal slightly less and provides a boost to healing when needed. When cast on a target it places a 30 second buff that will spawn another buff once they are hit. The second buff lasts up to 6 seconds and absorbs some incoming damage and then expires. While it is active though you gain a 50% crit rate boost to your FoL spells.
Divine Plea - While this is another spell that is not a healing spell it does give back a huge amount of mana, and therefore should be mixed in anytime you are down to between 30 and 50% mana. Do not wait until you are out of mana to use it as you then have to wait for it's cooldown to expire to use it again.
The above is just a base look at healing efficiency though. There are many factors that change and enhance your healing, for example Flash of Light only benefits from 112% of your Spell Power while Holy Light gets 188% of it. The HOT portion of Flash of Light also increases its effectiveness even more, as does its synergy with Sacred Shield. Use of Divine favor and Illumination increase the effectiveness of all of your heals as does the use of proper glyphs. Even when everything is added up though FoL is more mana efficient than Holy Light, but will need to be mixed with Holy Light to keep up on big damage MOBs.
Healing RotationsThere are of course a huge number of variables when healing, so there is no one specific rotation. Who and what you heal is largely based on your assignment in a raid, or healing priority in a group, or on just who is taking damage and why. After reading the Healing Priority section above you likely have a very good idea of who to heal and why.
There are several things to keep in mind while healing though as follows:
Keep your Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield up on the Tank unless someone else is likely to be taking more damage - for example the off-tank in certain fights. Cast a Flash of Light on the tank every 14 seconds to keep the HOT portion of it active. Heal other players the rest of the time to effectively double the amount you are healing due to Beacon of Light . Heal using Flash of Light as much as possible, however watch for stronger incoming damage and use Holy Light if needed. ConsumablesWhile items and gear are required for any raid, obviously, you also really should bring along all the consumables that will help you maximize your healing ability. The ones that every Healadin should bring to a group or raid are:
Flask of Frost Wyrm - Increases your spell power by 125 for an hour. This is the best flask you can get as a Holy Paladin. Flask of Pure Mojo - Increases your mana regeneration by 45 MP5. This is a decent flask, but not as good as Frost Wyrm, since 45 MP5 is not that significant a number at max level. Firecracker Salmon - Increases your mana regen by 45 MP5 and stamina by 40. Imperial Manta Steak - Increases your haste by 40 and stamina by 40. Runic Mana and Healing potions - Bring a stack of each just in case. MacrosThere are several very common macros that every Healadin should use (assuming they haven't started already) to simplify their life. The most common are:
Divine Favor / Holy Shock Macro
This macro allows you to cast Divine Favor and then Holy Shock right after critical hits. This will allow your next Flash of Light to be an instant cast as well. This combination puts out a lot of healing really quickly.
provide almost 2000 extra mana to work with which is huge. Intellect also provides significant boosts to MP5, Spell Power, and Spell Crit. They are not as much as simply focusing on those stats obviously, but significant enough to mention.
Spell Crit and Haste are next in usefulness as a Holy Paladin. Spell Crit is huge since when you do crit your heal will hit for 50% more than normal and through talents return 30% of the base cost of the healing spell used. The extra health healed allows you to potentially cast fewer heals to do the job, and the mana returned allows you to cast more heals before you run out of mana. Spell Crit scales amazingly well as you gear up, vastly expanding your effective mana pool. Haste is important as most of a Holy Paladin's spells have long cast times. Haste allows you to cast these spells quicker, however they heal for the same amount and use the same amount of mana. This means that the more you stack haste the more you can heal per second, but you will run out of mana sooner.
The last useful stat is MP5, and it's usefulness depends greatly on your style. Many Holy Paladins prefer to simply focus on crit rating to generate mana back through it, however you should get at least a little MP5 so that if you do ever run out of mana you have a way to generate some back.You should get enough of this while focusing on the other stats simply because a lot of gear will come with it.