Holy Paladin gear - Spell Power or Intellect?
Stacking Intellect
Elitist Jerks has correctly identified that Intellect is currently the best investment for Holy Paladins who want to get the most out of your gear’s budgeted stats. If you have two pieces of gear of the same item level, you will get more total benefit from a piece of gear that stacks Intellect over one that uses its budget points for other stats. The benefits of Intellect include:
- scales with BoK and the Divine Intellect talent (100 Intellect turns into 126.5 Intellect);
- provides mana right at the start of the fight (1897 for 100 Intellect);
- Divine Plea, Replenishment, and Arcane Torrent all scale with Intellect (65.5 extra Mp5 per 100 Intellect) and
- gives 25.3 Spell Power and 0.759% Crit.
As you can see, Intellect gives you access to a huge amount of mana over the course of a fight. With such a large mana pool, paladins can focus on heal throughput rather than mana efficiency, giving them the ability to cast Holy Light almost non-stop throughout a fight. In perfect conditions, this will provide a huge boost in how much healing a paladin can pump out over a set period of time. This is ideal for times when you know someone will be consistently taking a great deal of damage (like a tank).
Stacking Spell Power and Crit
Spell Power does one thing and does it well. It makes all your heals more powerful. Even those who subscribe to stacking Intellect agree that you should have at least 2000 spell power before starting Ulduar. People who follow this strategy will choose gear and gems with Spell Power and Crit over gear with Intellect. The benefits of stacking Spell Power and Crit include:
- more powerful heals;
- more powerful crits that happen more often;
- better mana efficiency and
- more flexibility.
A paladin using this strategy will use Flash of Light much more often than a paladin stacking Intellect, allowing you to throw many quick, small, mana-efficient heals throughout a fight - perfect for raid healing. Holy Shock will be more powerful and crit more often, giving you more access quick Infusion of Light powered Flash of Lights and Holy Lights. Your glyphed Holy Light AoE will be more powerful. Your Judgement of Light will be more powerful. You will have less overhealing, since you can choose the right spell for the amount of healing needed. You can better respond to split-second emergencies.
Spell Power: 2147
The other argument for stacking Spell Power is that many times you just don’t need the large amount of mana that stacking Intellect gives you. Mana that you don’t use is completely wasted, whereas extra Spell Power is always useful unless you’re overhealing significantly on every single heal, which isn’t likely if you’re healing intelligently. With Beacon of Light on the tank and a focus on raid heals, you can provide a large amount of healing to both the tank and the raid. Lastly, stacking Spell Power is a more dynamic, interactive, and IMO, fun way to heal.
Mix of Both?
The ideal setup may actually be a good mix of Spell Power, Crit, and Intellect. With this strategy you’ll have a decent mana pool as well as powerful heals. You’ll be able to throw Holy Lights a little more often but still have access to more powerful Flash of Lights. Unless you’re raiding a ton and have access to a huge pool of gear, most people will find themselves in this category naturally as they upgrade to pieces with the highest item levels. Its only when you get the choice between two pieces of gear with the same item level that you’ll have the ability to specialize into a gear type you prefer.
Ultimately, the choice has more to do with which play style you prefer. If you prefer and can handle a dynamic healing environment where you choose a new target with almost every heal and are better able to handle emergencies, then stacking Spell Power is your thing. If you prefer powerful heal throughput and large numbers while doing your assigned role very well, than stacking Intellect is your thing. The choice is yours.
Related Articles
Is there an ideal cap for Spellpower?
No, the more Spell Power you can get the better. The only Holy Paladin stat that has any sort of cap is haste.
However, you always want a good balance of every stat. In general when you’re first gearing up, go with whichever Spell Power gear has the highest item level and you should be good.
Hi,
It is important to note that stats do really depend on the style of player and also the type of boss. I stack intellect because of the mana pool, and divine plea mana regen, but also because intellect for Paladins, benefits, spell power, crit and mana regen.
I have a 25.8k mana pool unbuffed. In a 25 man it is just over 30k. I never run out of mana. I am not superbly geared average 200/213.
I think what is important is that for some fights you have gear that is appropriate to your role in the team, i.e. healing an avoidance or stamina tank.
I totally agree on not overdoing haste but around 500 is good, and no gems are necessary.
Please write more, it is a good read, keeps the mind thinking.
2000+ spellpower 650 haste n a ton of intellect . I like it I beacon my tank heal him heal other tanks if there r some close by n holy light raid members that take a bunch of dmg the argument against stacking intellect to high is that unused mana is a waste. well big holy lights that overheal because you hav a ton of spellpower are also a waste moderation is probly the best way to go but i like havin 31k+ mana in raids
Well i think a good mix is the best way to go, but i will allways focus having a great mana pool. Im am rly satisfied with my gear now, unbuffed i have: 25k Mana, 37% crit, 2189 SP and around 500 haste. I dont think you ever need to be above 30K mana in a raid, you will NEVER have to use it all if you know ur cooldowns, i would rather switch some int gems with crit, and the more crit you have, the less mana you need ;=)
Keep em comming, good read!
I think it depends on your healing style, Fol vs. Holy light. If you want to spam holy light intelect is the stat of choice, while if you want to spam Fol, Sp is the stat of choice because Fol scales with Sp an amazing amount. Allso with Fol you really dont have to wory about mana eficency or crit because of sacred shield
I must say, this whole website on Holy Paladins has been of great help to me. Quite recently, like yesterday, I switched my secondary spec from prot to holy due to curiosity, and the preference of my new guild. Reading these articles has been a great intro for me to holy paladins and it is much appreciated. Thanks
Hi i em a holy paladin and i found this text very nice fore me, my guild master sed that i was to low on the healing site , how ever i got 2200 sp unbuffed, nut he still thinks that i heal to low. why can this be so.?
robin: you gm clearly doesn’t know how to play a paladin. if you have 2200 unbuffed spl power you are ready to go into ulduar (provided the rest of your stats are solid).
what’s worked extremely well for me is to socket int, gear for crit and haste, and then chant for spl power. i am a huge proponent of the HL spam (b/c it is by FAR the most effective way to heal in ulduar) and gearing this way works great. also… 30k sounds like a lot but start doing the hard modes and you’ll find yourself running oom by the end of fights, even though you’ve used all your cds.
Hey,
First wanted to say that your posts have been very useful to me on about every aspect. Keep it going :).
My question was: about that SP 2000 as minimum do you mean 10 man or 25? Was wondering this cause my guild just does 10man partially cause of the number of ppl and partially cause most aren’t very fond of 25s. And about every site I found gives the requirements for either 25man or for healers in general.
You probably should have 2000 spell power for 10-man Ulduar. You might be able to get away with less if you have a trinket like Illustration of the Dragon Soul, but 2000 is a good guideline.
Just wanted to say i love your site and thanks for posting all of your info. i usually get made fun of the second i join a raid because of my smaller mana pool 19k unbuffed. every gem and peice of gear i have goes to sp and i’ve found this an extremely effective way to heal, and rarely get beat out in healing in a 25 man raid. mana usually isn’t an issue because of the power my flash’s and shocks have. i still use holy light every time a raid member gets low but don’t have to use it nearly as much as the next paladin just my opinion but i’ve found sp is a great way to go
Looking over all this has been helpfull and would like to throw in my 2 cents. BE Pally on winterhoof named blackfive is my toon. I have roughly 30k unbuffed and 35k raid buffed mana with straight Int gems (including JC gems and Blacksmithing socket bonuses.) My haste is just a hair under 500 and sp is 2150 unbuffed and roughly 2500 raid buffed. I strongly reccomend the Darkmoon card greatness intellect trinket and the trinket off mimiron called Pandora’s plea. these help tremendously in stacking a large mana pool. With darkmoon card proccing as it does you will have a 40k mana pool raid buffed and if you get hit by the priest hymn mine has pushed 50k mana pool if all that is proccing at once. Plus pandora’s plea (which procs as often as darmoon card) gives you an extra 950 spellpower (even though its bugged and only does like 750 right now in which blizzard is fixing). So with that said, a 30k+ mana pool a trinket that pushes it higher and a trinket that pushes your Spellpower to close to 3k and depending on your raid healing setup (i suppose most run with 2 druids a priest or 2 and a shaman besides yourself) it is quite possible to outheal efficiently even the best geared druid. Once one can hold its on and be a reliable tank healer and semi raid healer it is quite possible with that big of a gas tank and that much muscle to quite possibly replace a couple healers and 4 heal ulduar. Last but not least with those tools one should in my opinion treat their paladin as a hybrid healer keeping beacon on tanks and raid healing as much as possible, fol is ok for this but if you lose a couple of healers to w/e you can hold up the raid. Also Divine plea is good to set off when Greatness procs its like hooking up a mana iv with an express lane.
seems like the concensis is approx. 1900 SP and 20k mana, and 30% crit are basic.
keep up the good work on this site… Blackfive, thank you for your post helped out allot as well.
I normally heal with my druid healer, but since healers are needed all the time I dualspecced my Tankadin for healing.
@article writer:
(maybe I should add a site like little-tree-healer for druids in your style ^^)
I found this site when searching for more detailed information on heal paladins and its GREAT! Keep up the good work, every line was inspiring
@Blackfive:
I dont think you can compare healadins with druids, both kinds of healers have different focuses: Druids are great for group heal and hot, and you wont outheal them on this. Paladins can do a lot of healing on single (or if beaconed 2) targets, but if you try to heal a whole group you will run against the global cooldown wall more easily than a druid. On the other hand if you try to fully heal a tank consuming hard damage with a druid (instead of the in this case more effective paladin) you will run out of time with the druid, since the non-hot-healing spells are not as effective as needed (especcially for unexpected damage peeks).
@all again:
I think 2000+ unbuffed SP should be enough even for Ulduar+, if your regeneration/mana pool is high enough. (my druid is at round-a-bout 2200 unbuffed now and I hope my paladin will be there soon too).
Is there an ideal cap for crit?
There really isn’t an ideal cap for crit. Crit just keeps getting better the more you get. Just make sure not to neglect other stats.
brandon here….. agin i need to know i read the part about intl and am cunfused as HOLY PALLY do i need SP and lots of it or intl and lots of it or is it a 50/50 andlast time i posted i was not in the right spec my bad this is the right one lol http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hydraxis&n=Morfeen i tryed to helz H OK andfound it veery hard to do so plz point me in the right dir
thanks
morfeen LVL 80 Holy Pally hydraxis
sorry need to know what i do lol i would like to do raid helz ibelive that is what it is called ( H VH H OK ) things of that natcher lol
The best Holy Paldins in the World go for Int.
Im Holy Pala 2650 SP 35% Crit and 32k Mana 600 Haste unbuffed.
If you go for INT you get the SP with it as well as Crit and MP.
you cant got for Hardmodes or PDoK without a LOT of Mana.
Since the PDoK fights are going to last for about 8-9 Minutes you need to be able to Heal a lot and that fast
Its not exactly true that the best Holy Paladins in the world go for Int, at least not all the time. The best Holy Paladins in the world swap out their gems appropriately for the encounter. Its not true that Int is the best choice for every Holy Paladin in every fight in every raid.
Ok I am still in the air about th eholy pally, with SP or cri or intel. right now I have 2370 SP / 30.74 Crit / 510 haste… and almost 27k man unbuffed. Yet I am still struggling in wether to keep stacking intellect or get more SP or crit? Right now I am stacked on intell gems should I switch some and make SP gems?
It depends on what content you’re doing Rizzo and how you heal. Spell power is mostly useless if you’re mainly spamming Holy Light on the tank. It is more useful if you use a lot of Holy Shock and Flash of Light. If you’re already stacking Intellect I would recommend you stick with that since it is what you’re used to.
I find that spell power is especially useful in PuGs because it helps you make up for bad healers and raids that are less organized. If you do a lot of PuGs or are slightly overgeared for your content then spell power may be useful for you. Using spell power for progression hard modes is usually not recommended for most fights/raids.
They’re removing SP in Cataclysm. the t9-t10 gear all has haste on it (or at least the ones you want to get do) max your haste (soft cap 675) or close to it, thru gear and a gem or 2, and then gem the rest Intel/crit (fairly even mix of both). This way you have a trinket slot open as well, since with your haste soft maxed, you can get rid of ol faithful (the Egg trinket that gives 505 haste chance) The SP bonuses on gear and current “proper” enchants will be quite sufficient for that, and will bring you up over 2k sp unbuffed anyway. Thats just my take on it, and seems to be working for me.
almost forgot. theyre removing mp5 as well, and making us holy pallys have spirit. The gear change from whatever we have to Cataclysm should be interesting.
Hey my name is Grabeather lvl 80 holy pally on shadow council. If anything right now during 3.2 i pref. a mix of int, crit and SP. Fully raid buffed i have 30k mana 42-46% crit and around 3k SP,this is all depending on buffs i get from certain classes and food. Now that i hav 30k mana i do not feel i need any more, i never run out of mana any ways, so now im focusing on SP and crit.
If u would like to see my gear or spec i would recommend looking me up on wow heroes not the armory, i usually log out in my pvp gear accidentally.
Hi, I’m main spec Holy. At the moment, I have 2411 SP, 34.34% Holy Critical chance and 629 Haste. I’d say I’m moderately geared, I still have some Ulduar10 gear but have some TotC25 and 2 ICC10 peices but no tier set as of the moment. I usually gem by putting a SP gem into every red gem slot I gain, and stacking on Int gems for the rest (with 1 MP5 gem to make my Meta Gem of 21 Int and chance to restore mana on spellcast activate).
I’ve basically been gemming and gearing up based on being told that Int is extremely important for Paladin Healers. But I’m not sure if this is the right way for my style. Usually, I am healing a tank with FFA healing when i can. I spam Holy Light and Holy Shock regularly, and when i get below 30% mana I use Divine Plea and Divine Illumination together and cast JoW wherever possible. This usually keeps me out of the Oom zone, but sometimes I do find myself Oomed if we’re in a pushing situation (example: only healer alive). What i would like to know is if - based on my style - am I gemming/ench my gear correctly based on my style? And is there any recommendations on how I can improve myself.
Hello, I wanted to add a few thoughts as well. I am geared SP/CRIT and I have had to hear from other pallys all the time about how im built wrong and to stack int and haste.. you have to figue in many other things to build your spec, I for example have 1600 SP and 38.89% holy crit and 23k mana unbuffed, I stack all red 23 SP gems and use fol and hos as main heals which works great for me, if your setup like this and judgment seal of light you get 15% hatse right there, and with my gear set bonus I get 100% added power with SS+BOL which for me is a dot that i can always keep on the tank that ticks from 800-1800 every like twice a second. the more sp the harder the dot will tick… Im thinking the whole mana pool vs SP thing should be based on what type of gear and trinkets you have to work with..
i just wanted to add a few things, i have 38k mana unbuffed 650haste 2800sp and i can say that stacking int is good as long as you have a replenishemnt affect in the raid, i have gemmed sp in the past but even tho i have got up to 28k hol crits this amount of healing is not needed and when the tanks are taking a lot of damage you oom very fast, i have switched to int gems and i can say it is a deffinate upgrade however stacking sp can be good with FOL but this is not neally as affective as Hl
Holyshadoww shattered hand
Hi
I’ve been playing a Holy pally for awhile now and tend to disagree with one thing. I am my guilds current main tank healer, and I tend to stack more SP and crit than intellect. Currently I’ve completely gemmed and enchanted for SP and I heal tanks just fine. My SP is at 2400+ with a crit rating of over 30%. My idea is, if I can continuously hit a tank for 7-8k FoLs then I wont need the extra mana (even though I stack SP I still have a 24k mana pool unbuffed). If the tank does get into trouble I just hit a Holy Shock for about 10k, another FoL for 7-8k and a Holy Light if truly needed for about 21k I just Beacon the tank, help with raid heals, and heal myself if tank goes out of range because of fear or other reasons because beacon has a 60 yard range. IMO SP is a much more reliable way to heal.
As another side note,
My guild has been having trouble with ICC but we finally made it to Saurfang but we needed and extra dps so we put our shammy raid healer on dps, the tree took raid, and I took both tank (cause I have beacon, and I can do that HOLY FTW). Anyway, throughout that whole fight I just switched beacon and SS to whowever didnt have the debuff and healed the other one for an 8 minute fight. With Divine Illusion, Favor, and Plea, I never ran out of mana. Druid kept asking me if I needed an inervate but I never did. SP FTW!
Hi,
I’ve seen alot of discussions regarding this issue. I must say that i prefer the SP stacking before the INT-stacking. My gear is quite good, i got 3507sp and 40% crit, 661 haste unbuffed.
I think in ICC a SP-way is the way to go.. Damage here is fast and spikey on the tanks, and their are alot of auras that makes the entire raid take alot of dmg. The SP-way lets me help raidhealing / keep the tanks up myself, even in 25 man.
I have been able to solo-heal up til Saurfang on 10 man. And i’ve topped the healing done with up to 12,6k Hps on fester / Blood queen.
Mana really isn’t the problem here, i have never been oom at the end of a fight and i got only 25,2k mana unbuffed, the efficiency of FoL when i got 13k FoL (raidbuffed) can’t be beaten by any holylight spamming. It is fast, efficient and makes a holy pala a very volatile healer overall.
EDIT
I’ve had a lot of INT-stacking paladins commenting on my gear, and asking me why in the world i would stack SP. I just say “Wait til you have seen me heal a fight till you comment”…
Afterwords, i haven’t heard a beep about the healing i produce with my SP-stacking. Im allways tons of healing above the INT-stackers…
But again, this is about the healingstyle you prefer.. I am not telling you to stack SP because i like it. You try both, and make your choice. Pick the style that suites you best. Then you will produce the most healing you can.
SP may be good and all, but I don’t see how on earth you could keep the tank alive on fights such as festergut. I have 30k mana and 2800 SP unbuffed 40% crit and 600+ haste. Raid buffed i have almost 35k mana and my HL crits are between 25 and 26k. And with Jotj up i have almost a 1.5 HL cast. For the first 4 bosses I use FOL + HS a lot more than HL but fester/rot… yea HL is a must, unless you let the other raid healers pick up your slack.