Best Holy Paladin 3v3 PvP Spec/Build?
I’ve been spending quite a bit of time looking at the specs/builds of the top 3v3 Holy Paladins in my battlegroup. Honestly, a lot of the top paladins in my battlegroup are Retribution wearing dps gear. However, I did a search through the armory and found the top six Paladins wearing healing gear in my Battlegroup and took a survey of their specs. Every single one of them has some variation of 51/20/0. Here is the talent breakdown.
Protection Tree
I’ll start with the protection tree, since they were all very similiar.
- Divinity - All six have 5/5 Divinity.
- Stoicism and Guardian’s Favor - All six maxed out both of these talents.
- Divine Sacrifice, Improved Righteous Fury, Toughness - All six maxed out Divine Sacrifice and Improved Righteous Fury and placed 1 point in Toughness.
- Divine Guardian - All six maxed out this talent.
- Improved Hammer of Justice - 4 of them maxed out Improved Hammer of Justice.
- Improved Devotion Aura - 2 of them maxed out Improved Devotion Aura instead of improved HoJ. One of them put one point in this talent in addition to maxing out improved HoJ.
So, the Prot tree seems pretty straightforward. The only question is whether to go for Improved Hammer of Justice and/or Improved Devotion Aura.
Holy Tree
The Holy tree sees a little more variation.
- Spiritual Focus - All six maxed this out.
- Healing Light and Unyielding Faith - all six maxed both of these out.
- Divine Intellect - here is where we get some variety. Divine Intellect is the talent where its common to sacrifice points. Only 2 maxed out Divine Intellect. 2 of them only put one point in Divine Intellect. The other two put 2 points and 3 points into Divine Intellect.
- Aura Mastery and Illumination - All six maxed out these talents.
- Improved Concentration Aura, Pure of Heart, Divine Favor, Sanctified Light - all six maxed out all of these talents.
- Holy Power - 5 of the 6 maxed out Holy Power. The last one put only 3 points into Holy Power.
- Light’s Grace and Holy Shock - all 6 maxed out these talents.
- Sacred Cleansing - Only one maxed out Sacred Cleansing. The others skipped it.
- Holy Guidance - 5 of the 6 maxed out Holy Guidance. The last one only put 3 points into Holy Guidance.
- Divine Illumination - all 6 got Divine Illumination.
- Judgements of the Pure - 4 of the 6 maxed out Judgements of the Pure. One put 3 points into it. One put only 1 point into it.
- Infusion of Light - all 6 maxed out this talent.
- Enlightened Judgements - 5 of the 6 maxed out this talent. The last one only put 1 point into it.
- Beacon of Light - all 6 got this talent.
Analysis
It seems to me that 51/17/0 is a pretty solid PvP spec for 3v3 Arenas. The only question then is where to put the last 3 points. Your options are Divine Intellect, Improved Hammer of Justice, and Improved Devotion Aura. This is mostly a personal choice. I think I’m going to max out Improved HoJ and put the last point into Divine Intellect. So, my final spec is: 52/19/0. This is very different from my current 49/2/20 build which I’m actually doing pretty well with. The main things I lose are 8% crit, Pursuit of Justice and some Intellect. I can make up for some of that with a speed enchant on my boots.
Strategy
The 52/19/0 spec gives me a ton more buttons to push. I haven’t tested the spec out yet, but here’s the strategy ideas bouncing in my head:
- Save Divine Illumination for when I use Beacon of Light (probably with a macro).
- I now have 4 different instant cast spells I can use to deal with burst damage on a teammate (one extra one): Sacred Shield (which is now stronger), Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Sacrifice, and of course, Holy Shock.
- Beacon of Light works perfectly with Hand of Sacrifice and Divine Sacrifice. I can Beacon myself and heal the person being burst down without losing any health or needing to Divine Shield.
- If someone is taking a ton of damage, I can use Aura Mastery and bomb Holy Lights without worrying about interrupts.
- The other benefits of this spec is that I will take 6% less damage due to Improved Righteous Fury and my Hammer of Justice has a 20 second shorter cooldown, meaning it will be available more often when I need it.
In general, this spec seems like win, although mana might be even more of an issue for me. Running out of mana is the main reason I lose matches now, so I’m a little worried about that. I’ll also have less frequent instant Flash of Lights and a little weaker burst damage with this spec, although I gain a lot of other things from it. I’ll give it a try this week and let you know how it goes.
Related Links
I was going to mention this during your last post, but I thought that a build without Beacon is really gimped. I am very new to Arena, but with an Arms Warrior and Ret Pally in my group, we have been doing decently for a bunch of noobs. The ability to put beacon on someone else, SS myself, and heal myself through the burst damage at the beginning is amazing. I find that if I can withstand the initial onslaught (not hard with bubbling) at that point our dps has burned down their healer or main CC and we can cruise to a win.
This thing actually really is pretty informative. However, I can’t see why not go with 5/5 Divine Intellect ans just 2/5 Judgements of the Pure. The thought behind my idea is that it will 1. enlarge your manapool and give (a very little) extra spellpower and 2. I think you aren’t using Judgements that often anyways but heal rather… So my question is: Which is more valuable? More intellect (+spellpower) or the 15% haste-buff (and 25% more dmg)?
I think the haste buff is pretty important. You usually have to get heals off as quickly as possible. Where you might be able to shed some points though is Enlightened Judgements. We arguably don’t need ranged judgements since there’s almost always going to be an enemy within melee range at least once a minute that you can hit with your judgement. You might also be able to shed Divine Illumination for the last point since you might get more mana from Divine Intellect anyway.
The fact that holy pallys do the most over healing of all healing classes says we really do not need additional spell power outside of gear. However haste is a different story as admin said you have to get heals off as quickly as possible. Give rogues/DKs etc. less time to interupt your heal and reduce your over all global on spells (spam cleanse faster) by maxing out Enlightened Judgements. Holy Guidance and Divine Intellect shouldn’t be maxed out. Extra spell power for more overhealing? no thanks, and Divine Intellect really doesnt give much extra intell in pvp gear.
I’m not so sure about that, Mike, especially with the prevalence of Mortal Strike. There’s been numerous times where my heal target is at less than 50% health for a great deal of time and the only thing keeping him up is my spellpower. None of the heals are overheals at that point. In fact, I don’t think I overheal in arenas much at all, not nearly as much as in pve. For one thing, you have to be a lot more careful with mana since mana pools are smaller in pvp gear. Haste doesn’t help Holy Shock or instant Flash of Light at all like Spell Power does and more spell power means you can use Holy Light less, which means you actually have less cast time to get interrupted.
I tried not maxing out Divine Intellect for awhile but I just found my mana pool was too small. There’s some abilities I’ve actually found I didn’t use much during a match, like Beacon and Divine Illumination, so I transfered those points back into Divine Intellect. Beacon costs a ton of mana, a GCD to keep up, and a lot of times it was just wasted since people get focused on so much in arenas. Its actually rare where two people are taking a lot of damage at once, except maybe in 5s.
i also have some imput umm Benediction idk in ur 52/19/0 biuld u dont have it i have a lvl 66 pally and kinda tweeked ur 52/19/0 biuld a bit Divine intelect is full cuz i feel i run out of mana to much also im not sure i should get divine illumination because i never use it
Josh, you run out of mana and don’t use Divine Illumination… Ever think of that one?
I’ve just got a quick question. Is this build also recomended for 2v2 as well? Or is there some other holy paladin spec?
I’m in the same boat as Joe. Still trying to find a PvP 2’s build that will suit me and a lot of the time your builds are always good points for me to start.
To Joe and Corey: this set-up is also pretty good for 2s. I personally would invest a bit more in prot tree (same as is but get enough anticipate to get BoS). It works rather well. I sacrificed some of the cleanse/purify to get it but I feel it was worth it.
If you run with a feral druid, mana will never be an issue. Pop plea when damage incoming is low for any reason, have your /cancelaura macro ready for it. If you REALLY get low on mana, ninja your druids innervate. Also, use seal of wisdom. Every time you judge, thats 4% mana back. If you have time, do it on cooldown even if you dont need to atm to keep JotP up. judging light on the killtarget is usually a pretty good option.
I run holy/arms/enhance, when our enhance pops lolbloodlust i pop DI and spam the living fuck out of holy light to keep everything up. Usually by then 1 of their dps, or their healer, is dead, and i’m able to back off on healing, and start playing as offensive as a holy paladin can.
I run with this setup
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?paladin#ilkRwCWiduTpB,8bJeO3,9742
and i’ll be moving the 1 point in holy power to sacred cleansing once i update my gear a little more… i’m just kinda low on crit atm.
This spec also works great for 2’s.
hey..what gems to socket for 2’s and 3’s? int and spell? or haste?
I love this build
Some advice for holy pallys starting to areana
I just started a 3v3 team Holy pally/Aff lock/Surv hunter..
And i’ve found out while there both in pretty good PvP gear 5300+gs me only at about 4700gs with my pvp set. i love beacon of light because theres no line of sight requirement i can beacon lock get out of line of sight of there ranged heal myself and beacon heals whoever. They both also hit like Mac Trucks so on mele heavy groups bubble once there all on you heal up, beacon yourself and toss out the heals, and always divine plea when you get a chance even if your mana is at 75% you never know when your gonna need to just spam everything you got to keep your team alive, ie. Blade Storm, Heroism, Pally wings, etc. Also Make sure your DPS communicates on who there focus firing that is key. Rogues are just horrible for healers period.
Gladius is a good add on too displays your opposition as soon as one of your teammates sees them as well as spec so you get a few seconds of strategical planning for your situation.
And remember you have Stuns/interrupts go stand next to there healer and stun him/her. A 5 second stun is all it would take to throw him off his/her game and down one of there dps or the healer again another place were communication is key. Tell your team your stunning there healer and they need to focus fire something and down it.
Hope this helled someone. just a few things from my experiance
Excellent article! I recently started running again with my brother, who plays a MS warrior, and I’m trying to learn the PvP mechanics of a pally, since I leveled up as prot, and my previous PvP experience has been with a resto shammy and druid.
I noticed that no one mentioned going for the extra crit talents in retribution; I wonder why. It seems that crit isn’t as important as I originally thought.
It looks like haste, intellect and spell power are the main stats to go for.
I have to revise my existing build, and keep trying out different things. Been off the game for almost a year, so, I’m still rusty…
Thanks for the great ideas!
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