Where to start as a new 80 Holy Paladin
I received the following question recently and I thought since others may be wondering the same thing, I would answer it in a post:
“I started WoW recently, and my holy paladin is going to hit 80 soon. I really want to get top tier gear, but I have no idea where to start. Should I start with 5 man ToC? 10 naxx? Heroics? I know I have to start somewhere to climb the chain, but I really have no idea where to start. Any help would be appreciated.”
Starting as a new 80 healer coming into the game at the last patch of the expansion can be difficult. If this is your first character, you don’t have a guild, and don’t really know anyone on the server, then it can be very difficult. The good news is that if you can find some good groups with patient people, you should be able to gear up quickly and clear at least 10-man normal Icecrown Citadel before the release of Cataclysm, if not 25-man and hard modes as well.
A great place to start once you hit 80 is with my epic 5-man gear guide. Use the Dungeon Finder Tool to run as many random heroics as you can, so you can start collecting your Emblems of Frost and Emblems of Triumph. Check out my guide for a list of gear you can buy. Also, look at the list of other 5-man items you can get and see if any of them appeal to you. You can get epics from reputation and also from the Argent Tournament dailies if you like questing, and even buy some with gold.
5-man ToC and the three new Icecrown dungeons are a great source of gear for a new 80 even on normal difficulty. Just make sure that you are capable of healing these dungeons. There isn’t a lot of patience for wipes this late in the expansion, especially in the older heroics. If you still need to gear up outside of heroics, check out my leveling gear guide for a list of the blues that are available to Holy Paladins and start working on collecting that gear. Run some normal dungeons if you have to in order to get practice healing. The good news is that most players vastly outgear heroics these days, so healing them is much easier than it used to be when Wrath first came out.
Ideally, you’ll find a raiding guild that is still running through the older content and will help carry you along as you collect gear and emblems. A lot of guilds run alts and newer players through older content. And since only four bosses are open in ICC, most guilds are still running ToC as well. Depending on your group’s gear and patience, you should be able to run Ulduar and maybe even normal ToC as a fresh 80. 10-man Naxx can be a great, quick source of emblems for you and you should have no problem doing it. Run some Pick-up VoA, OS, and even Onyxia groups for gear, emblems, and raiding experience. Healers are so rare that they rarely get kicked from PuGs, even when at the bottom of the meters. However, don’t get upset if you do get kicked for whatever reason. Getting into a raiding guild as a new player can be difficult, but if you gear up a little first in heroics and PuG raids, you should be able to find a guild who will accept you pretty quickly.
Besides that, if you like battlegrounds, you can get some Deadly and Furious PvP gear with just Honor Points. You may face some criticism for running PvE content with PvP gear, but if its better than your PvE gear, and you get it doing something you enjoy, then why not? Check out my PvP gear guide for a list of gear you can get.
So, as you can see, there’s a ton of different things you can do to get gear as a fresh 80, random heroics and normal 5-man ToC and ICC dungeons being great ones to start with. With the new Emblems and 5-mans, its very possible for you to upgrade directly from a blue to a Ulduar or ToC-level epic. Once you’ve collected a number of ToC-level epics, see if you can get into an ICC raid. Spend some time reading this site and other Holy Paladin sites for healing tips. Good luck!
You timed this post perfectly for me. I got my alt Pally to 80 about a week ago. I spent a few hours going through most of your posts today, very good stuff here!
My advice would be slightly different, and that would be to DPS heroics.
Like you said, there’s very little patience for wipes in heroics, especially now a lot of highly-geared players are going back to them for the emblems of frost. Since the patch the average health of tanks I’ve seen in heroics has gone up by 5-10k and most of them chain-pull the whole thing. I’d hate to have to heal that in quest blues.
Retribution paladins, on the other hand, are doing decent enough damage by the time they hit 80, and if you invest in some crafted gear (like the Titansteel Destroyer) you’ll still be lowest DPS in the instance but you’ll be doing enough not to feel like dead weight.
Meanwhile, since Holy paladins are the only class that can use caster plate, so there’s very little competition for it. Even if the healer in your 5-man heroic is a Holy Paladin, chances he’s only doing it for the emblems, and nothing that drops will be an upgrade for him. If you say at the start of the run that you’re going to be needing on healing plate you’re unlikely to see any objections (or at least I never did. You’ll also pick up upgrades for your DPS set.)
By the time you’ve put together a good set of level 200 blue and purple gear from heroics, you’ll even have enough emblems of triumph to pick up your first T9 piece and it’ll be time to put yourself in LFG as a healer.
My /played @ level 80 is at about 20 hours. I did spend a few thousand gold to get the titansteel healing weapon and a few other starter epics. Within a few days I have now healed all the new heroics, a 10 TOC, Ony, OS and countless heroics. I am almost disappointed at how easy it has been to gear. When I get the 245 crafted chest tonight, a few more badge items I will be over 4500 gear score! On the bright side I will be able to step into ICC on my alt within a few weeks.
Again, great post, it has been very helpful
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