Stats
For each stat I will try to demonstrate what 100 items points gives, which is equivalent to 5 epic quality Northrend gems. For most stats 1 item point is equal to 1 point in the stat. The exceptions are Spell Power (1 item point = 1.166 sp), Mp5 (1 item point = 0.5 Mp5) and Stamina (1 item point = 1.5 stamina).

Intellect
Intellect has received a HUGE boost with WotLK mechanics, and is now the best stat for Holy Paladins by far. Here is what 100 Intellect gives:
  • 121 Intellect, with BoK and Divine Intellect
  • 1815 Mana at the start of the fight
  • 39.5Mp5 from Divine Plea, if it is used on CD.
  • 18.1Mp5 from Replenishment.
  • 4.7Mp5 from Arcane Torrent, if you are a Blood Elf.
  • 25.3 Spell Power
  • 0.759% Spell Crit
This gives you a lot of mana, which lets you cast more Holy Lights and be more liberal in using them. If you stack this stat you will be able to spam Holy Light during most fights.

Spell Power
Increases how much healing your spells do at a rate dependent on each spell, exact values are given in the spells section. FoL scales really well with Spell Power because it has a low mana cost, but gets more benefit from Spell Power than other 1.5sec spells. Once you get to higher gear levels its low amount of base healing won't really matter, since 75% of the healing it does is from Spell Power. 100 Item points gives you 120 Spell Power, which increases each FoL heal at level 80 by 134, and HL by 223.

Haste Rating
Increases how fast your heals cast, but they cost the same amount of healing per mana. 10% Spell Haste does not mean your spells cast 10% faster, rather it means in a given time period you will cast 10% more spells. So the cast time after haste is calculated by (Base Cast Time)/(1 + Spell Haste). The more haste you get the less cast time it will reduce, but it will increase how many spells you can cast by the same amount. It is important to note that all haste effects (Wrath of Air, Ret Aura, JotP, and haste rating) stack multiplicatively. So with all of the raid buffs you need 20.6% haste from gear (676 haste rating) to get haste soft capped (50% haste is a 1 second spell GCD). Further haste will help Holy Light cast faster. Haste increases the chance that HL will reach your target in time, so it is the best throughput stat for HL focus. A FoL focus should not gear past 676 haste.

Critical Strike Rating
Critical Heals end up healing for 50% more and cost 30% less mana, and 100 Spell Crit gives +2.17% crit rate at 80. Crit isn't as usually as strong as other healing stats, since the extra healing usually is overheal and Illumination's 30% less cost doesn't give the same mana return as the same item cost as Mp5. However, sometimes Crit rating can help Glyph of HL and the FoL HoT become stronger. Note Intellect gives you 1/3 of the amount of Crit for the same item cost, while giving the before mentioned bonuses.
Assume 45 Holy Light casts per minute (spamming with the haste soft cap with full raid buffs)


1274 (Illumination uses HL base cost) * 45 * 0.3 * 0.01 (1% crit) * 5/60 = 14.287 Mp5 per %1 crit 1% crit = 45.91 crit rating14.287/45.91 = 0.3112 Mp5 per item point
100 item points of crit = 31.12 Mp5 (when spamming HL as the best case, so in practice the returns will be less).

Mana per 5 seconds
Gives you the specified amount of mana over 5 seconds, whether or not you have been casting a spell. This stat is not as good as intellect for returning mana. 100 item points will give you 50Mp5, which is 3600 mana over 6 minutes. Even though it is not as useful as intellect or haste, at least in most situations it is better than crit rating.


[top]Abilities


Holy Paladins have quite a few useful spells unlike the Classic/TBC Paladin.

Holy Light
With how much mana you can have now, because of Intellect and Divine Plea, this is your main spell that you can spam most of the fight. Holy Light receives 188.5% of spell power per cast with Healing Light. There are a lot of new mana reduction effects (Libram and GSoW) that if you have all them brings the HPM for HL and FoL very close. HL will very often overheal with how much we can cast it now, but that is nothing to be concerned with. Unless you are going OOM before the fight ends, it doesn't matter how much it overheals.

Flash of Light
This is normally used when mana is tight or there is not much is needed healing. It receives 113% of spell power per cast with Healing Light. Divinity will increase the healing by 5% which this spell needs all the +healing it can get. If you cast FoL on a target with SS buff (with IoL talent), it puts a HoT buff up equal to 100% of Flash's heal. This HoT double dips on benefits from healing multipliers such as Imp Devotion Aura and Glyph of Seal of Light.

Holy Shock
With IoL your crits with Holy Shock makes FoL instant or your next Holy Light have a 20% increased crit chance. It receives 90.5% of spell power per spell cast. This is great a spell to use when you are moving and can't cast anything else, or the tank took a huge burst and they will likely die before you can get a Holy Light off. It is both worse HPM and HPS then Holy Light, so I do not use too much, besides those reasons.

Beacon of Light
This is the spell that we were given to help us deal with being able to heal multiple targets at the same time. It can be much better, or it can be worse, than other healer's AoE healing depending on the situation. The Beacon takes into account all healing, so it is very useful. It only works on Paladin healing abilities (ignoring Glyph of HL and trinkets). The common practice is to place the Beacon on main tank and go to raid. It can be a huge mana sink to keep it up, but it is very much worth it. However, don't feel like you need to have 100% up-time on it, sometimes the tank could die while you are refreshing the Beacon so be aware. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target and the healing transfer radius is 60 yards. BoL requires Line of Slight to heal.
Here are some good strategies of different ways to use Beacon depending on the fight.
  • Two tanks standing near each who are both taking regular damage: This is one of the most ideal situations for Beacon of Light effectiveness. You will want to cast it on the tank you are not healing and then just heal your assigned tank like normal, essentially giving free heals to the other tank.
  • One tank in range and heavy raid damage: In 25mans you will want to just cast Beacon of Light on a tank and just heal the raid, just heal the tank if no one in the raid is taking damage. Remember, watch your tanks health like a hawk they will probably still need some direct heals at times because there is a small amount of lag associated with the beacon heal.
  • One tank in range and minimal raid damage: This might be one of those times where it is just not worth casting Beacon of Light. Fights like this don't occur all that often, so don't worry about it too much.

Sacred Shield
First I will clarify how SS works, when you cast the spell on someone they gain a 30 (60 with DG) second buff. Nothing happens until the target takes damage, when they do they will take the full amount, but will gain a 6 (12 with DG) second buff. This new buff will absorb the next 500 + 75% of your Spell Power damage and then expire, while it is active it will also increase the crit rate of FoL by 50%. This 2nd buff lasts a maximum of 6 seconds, and can only occur every 6 seconds. The SS buff causes FoL to add a HoT equal to FoL's heal.

Divine Guardian was added in 3.1, and makes SS more useful, however a target can only have one SS buff at a time, so your best bet is to have each Holy Pally cast it on a separate tank.

Avenging Wrath
A 20% increase to healing but causes a 30sec blackout period with Bubble. This can be used while using Divine Plea to lessen the affects of 50% less healing, so instead you do 60% healing.

Divine Plea
This spell gives an insane amount of mana back, and makes Intellect an amazing stat. This was changed in 3.0.9 to be a 50% healing reduction, and requires smarter use because of it. You will in general be better served by using it during period of time of low tank damage, which easy to tell to predict on some fights and hard on others, instead of spamming it on cooldown. For best results, use Divine Plea in conjunction with tank cooldowns like Shield Wall. It is also useful to have a macro to easily remove your Divine Plea, if your tank takes some burst damage while it is up.



#showtooltip Divine Plea/cast [nobutton:2] Divine Plea/cancelaura [button:2] Divine Plea
Casts Divine Plea like normal except when you right click it, it removes Divine Plea.

Divine Favor
This is unchanged with WotLK, but with IoL it warrants no longer being relegated to just a HL macro. Saving it to use with HS for when the tank gets a big burst can be useful. Don't worry too much if you forgot to use it.

Divine Illumination
Try to save it for when you are going to be casting a lot of Holy Lights or have to renew Beacon. Do not let it sit off cooldown for too long since it is a potent mana saving tool.

Lay on Hands
Is significantly better to use in fights now, since it no longer drains all of your remaining mana as it did in Classic and TBC. It can be used to save a tank that needs a huge burst of healing or cast on yourself with Glyph of Divinity you will get 7800 mana, however as of 3.3, this ability will place Forbearance on the paladin if used on his or herself. When combined with the imp LoH talent, this will reduce the target's physical damage taken by 20% for a short time.

Judgement of Wisdom/Judgement of Light
A Holy Paladin needs to judge at least every minute. There are two main different strategies you can use for judging, you can either be trying to keep a 100% JotP up-time or to keep 100% up-time on the Judgement debuff. It costs a 1.5 second GCD per minute to keep JotP up and 4 GCDs per minute to keep JotP and Judgement debuff up. Either way with 15% extra haste you will be able to get more total healing spells cast even after using those GCDs.

JoL is definitely worth keeping up since it heals 2% (2.1% with Divinity) of the attacker's health. If you have a Ret or Prot pally in the raid make sure they are casting a different Judgement than you. Since the Ret/Prot Pally will have a much more reliable uptime on their Judgement and sometimes you just can't spare the 1.5 second GCD (since it is a melee attack), it might be better for you to do JoL since 100% up-time JoW is a raid dps increase.

Divine Sacrifice
You can usually use this spell safety without bubbling since it breaks at 20% health. This spell is weak for raid healing on its own due to only helping at most 4 people, but when combined with DG it becomes very useful. This will last 10 seconds or if it is broken by damage if it is not canceled.

Divine Guardian
Divine Guardian will help mitigate 20% of all the damage taken by the raid for six seconds. If Divine Sacrifice ends early this effect will persist, so you can make use this macro:


#showtooltip /cancelaura Divine Sacrifice/cast Divine Sacrifice
Hitting this macro twice will cast the Divine Guardian effect on your raid without taking any extra damage from Divine Sacrifice.

Hand of Salvation
This gives 20% threat reduction over its duration. A dps should call for it when they are close to pulling aggro.


#showtooltip Hand of Salvation/cast [rel="nofollow" target=mouseover,nomodifier,exists] Hand of Salvation; [help] Hand of Salvation
You can use a similar macro for Hand of Sacrifice/Protection.

Hand of Sacrifice
This is a good cooldown to use to help keep your tank/squishie raid member alive. Be careful, the target can take lot of damage which will be transferred to you. In 3.1 the amount of damage transferred is capped at your 100% of your health, so you may want to bubble when using this on the tank or have a heal ready for yourself because you could die otherwise.

Hand of Protection
It is good to use on raid member that gets aggro from a tank. Can also be used on tanks in some fights when you need to force a tank transition or to remove Bleeds on people, notably on Deathbringer Sarfang and Gormok the Impaler.

Aura Mastery
A solid one point talent. It is best used during fights with a lot of magic damage like on Twins during Vortex that is covered by our auras. It is off the GCD and doesn't cost any mana, so essentially 130 extra resistance, 600 armor, or more reflected damage for six seconds each time. Be aware that it doesn't improve the talented effect from Aura talents (like Improved Devotion Aura). It also affects Concentration Aura for silence immunity (also removes silence) and Crusader Aura for faster mount speed.

Imp RF
While this was designed for tanking, taking 6% less damage is great and there is nothing better to pickup on the way to Divine Guardian. Note if you pull aggro, then it is usually the tank's fault (with the exception when adds spawn away from the tank).


[top]Holy Light vs. Flash of Light


Holy Light Focus
+ Big mana pool; 40k+ with 245 gear if you use mostly Int gems
+ Spam Holy Light for 2-4+ minutes without outside help
+ Divine Plea restores a ton of mana, 10K+
+ Easier to play since you mostly focus on one heal and healing a tank via Beacon
- Slighter slower healing
- Sacred Shield absorbs less
- The FoL HoT isn't too useful for HL focus


Flash of Light Focus
+ All Heals are more sizable due to using more spell power gems
+ Sacred Shield absorbs more and FoL HoT is strong enough to be a useful tool
+ Flash of Light enables one to quickly top the raid's health off
- 10k+ less mana than the Holy Light build
- Mana pool will burn quickly if you don't mostly use FoL
- Divine Plea restores less mana
- Desire to keep 4/5 Tier 9 for the FoL HoT bonus
- This healing focus is a bad idea if you are the only Holy Pally in a your raid.
- Since you need to be constantly casting to deal with lower hps, so Judgement debuff will have a lower uptime.


[top]Casting Mechanics


To improve your HPS, you should always be casting (or waiting out a GCD after an instant). Anytime a spell ends, you should already be pressing the key trying to start your next spell (WoW processes events when you release the key). When you want maximize throughput, train yourself to start another spell regardless of what's going on, and you can move or cancel your current cast if necessary after you have another second to think. Speedy Actions (if you spam your keys) and Quartz/Castbars will help you know when to start pseudo spell queuing.


[top]Gems


In general, I find that HL focus is best served by using many Brilliant (Intellect) gems + Nightmare Tear, while FoL focus is served by matching the socket bonuses (so use Runed, Reckless, and Royal).
[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] (5% chance to restore 600 mana with a 15 second ICD and 21 Int)
The proc is approximately 70Mp5, varying on your ratio of HL to FoL. This is the best meta you can use.
[Ember Skyflare Diamond]
Though it looks good on paper, you will take a while until you have enough Int (5,725) to have it be competitive with Insightful.
Yellow - [Brilliant King's Amber] for HL focus or [Luminous Ametrine] for FoL focus.
Red - [Luminous Ametrine] for HL focus only if you want the socket bonus/active meta or [Runed Cardinal Ruby] for FoL focus.
Blue - [Dazzling Eye of Zul] - is best option for HL paladin if they want the socket bonus/active meta or [Royal Dreadstone] for FoL focus.
Prismatic - [Nightmare Tear] is unique-equipped prismatic gem that counts as one of every color and gives +10 all stats. This is an alternative if you want to use 20 int gems in all sockets except for one reserved for this.


[top]Set Bonuses


2 piece Tier 7
It is a very mediocre bonus, but notable for the increased chance to proc IoL.
4 piece Tier 7
This is an insanely good set bonus, it reduces Holy Light cost by 5%.
2 piece Tier 8
This is also mediocre due to overhealing and being an inconsistent HoT.
4 piece Tier 8
In the optimal case this a huge increase to amount absorbed by Sacred Shield, but it requires the target to take damage twice within 4 seconds, and then again in the following 2 seconds to offer any advantage. So with tank's avoidance streaks it can have not as much of an impact in some circumstances. If a tank has a chance of dying between 4 to 6 seconds after being full, it can offer a whole additional proc. It is also really good in any fight that has persistent ticking aura, like Twins.
2 piece Tier 9
This is situational a decent bonus if your judgment is being used by your group and you don't Judge every 20 seconds.
4 piece Tier 9
This is an outstanding bonus for FoL focused Paladins, otherwise it is mediocre.
2 piece Tier 10
This makes DI into a useful healing increase cooldown. You can combine this with Divine Plea to help offset the penalty. This is a very good bonus.
4 piece Tier 10
This is situational useful bonus. If you end up having to move and use Shock a lot due to the encounter, this bonus will help you get back into casting HL faster.


[top]Librams


[Libram of Renewal] This is a huge increase in healing output because of how much mana it saves. It reduces the cost of your Holy Light spell by almost 10%, so it is the best libram for HL focus that you can get even when defeating Arthas in Icecrown. Illumination works off of base mana, so you will still get the same amount of mana back from crits.
[Furious Gladiator's Libram of Justice] which is sold for 12k honor or the upgraded version from a few rated Arena games [Relentless Gladiator's Libram of Justice] is the best libram for FoL focused healers.
[Libram of Veracity] Situational useful for more throughput over mana savings; good for Dreamwalker if you get many stacks while inside the portals.
[Libram of Blinding Light] This is a useless libram for all playstyles.


[top]Trinkets


Here are some notable trinkets, listed in ascending order of how Rawr thinks they are useful for a HL focused Paladin:

[Tears of the Vanquished]
[Darkmoon Card: Greatness]
[Pandora's Plea]
[Sliver of Pure Ice]
[Purified Lunar Dust]
[Talisman of Resurgence] The use can combined with Divine Plea to counter the penalty.
[Sliver of Pure Ice]
[Solace of the Defeated]
[Meteorite Crystal]
[Solace of the Defeated] or [Solace of the Fallen]


[top]Glyphs


Personally I use Holy Light, Beacon of Light, and Seal of Wisdom for my glyphs. Here are all of the options you have currently:

Glyph of Seal of Wisdom/Glyph of Seal of Light
SoW is most of the time the better glyph, since you have a 15 ppm chance to get mana returned when Judging, Shield of Righteousness, and auto attacking and it makes all your heals 5% cheaper. Since SoW is ppm you get more procs with a slower weapon. If you need more throughput (such as FoL focus), use SoL. You will always want to use one of these two glyphs.

Glyph of Holy Light
It does not smart heal, but rather heals 5 random targets in range. This can be very effective at healing when the whole raid takes damage. It can do a substantial amount of healing in some fights, so I wouldn't go anywhere without it unless you spam FoL.
Glyph of Beacon of Light
This Glyph saves the cast of one BoL every 3 mins. Its values comes from saving a GCD every 3 mins, reduces the chance that BoL will end when you still need it but can't spare a GCD to refresh it. Taking 2-3 seconds to refresh Beacon/SS together is extremely dangerous since both are minute cooldowns with Divine Guardian.
Glyph of Divinity
If you cast LoH on yourself with this you will get double the mana returned. This it great for fights where you are crunched on mana, and don't need the burst heal/tank cooldown from a Lay on Hands. It can be situational though, since you will probably want to save LoH for burst "oh crap" healing, instead of a mana return. Note that casting LoH on yourself will cause Forbearance and cannot be used if Forbearance is above.
Glyph of Flash of Light
Reduces the average cost of FoL by 1.5% and increases the average amount healed by 2.5%. This is strong for PvP and outstanding for a FoL focus.
Glyph of Holy Shock
While Holy Shock can be a good spell, it isn't something you should use on cooldown. On fights with a lot of movement maybe it is worth using this Glyph, but that is situational. Very good for PvP.

Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Lay on Hands - Very useful minor for Holy.
Glyph of Blessing of Kings - You might need to rebuff Kings on someone who gets a battle rez, so this will save mana.
Glyph of Blessing of Wisdom – If you ever cast single target Wisdom on yourself this is good to use.


[top]Consumables


Potions
While you can only use 1 per fight, and you do have some choice about which that will be.

Runic Mana Potion - The good old bland mana potion.
Endless Mana Potion - The mana potion that never runs out (Alchemist only)
Potion of Nightmares - This got changed from its former brethren, so that it lasts 6 seconds of being taken out of the fight and is not able be cleansed. This is an extra 1200 mana over Runic.
Potion of Speed - This could be useful in some fights if you know there will be 15 seconds where you will need to maximize output.

Well Fed
These are the 4 relevant different buff types, but you can get different food that give the same benefit. Just chose them how you would your gems.

Firecracker Salmon
Imperial Manta Steak
Mighty Rhino Dogs
Spiced Wyrm Burger

Flasks

Flask of Distilled Wisdom - Still a solid overall option even though it is from Vanilla.
Flask of Pure Mojo - Best option for regen.
Flask of the Frost Wyrm - The only option for a throughput increase.

Elixirs
Guru's Elixir and Mighty Thoughts beats out Distilled Wisdom, but it may be more expensive.
Haste Elixir is another viable battle elixir.


[top]Enchants


Enchant choices (from head to toe):
Head - 50 sp 10 Mp5 or 50 Spell Power and 20 Critical Strike Rating
Shoulder - 24 sp 8 Mp5 or 24 sp and 15 Critical Strike Rating
Cloak – 23 Haste
Chest - 10 to all stats or 250 mana
Bracers – 16 Intellect or 30 Spell Power
Gloves – 28 Spell Power
Legs – 50 Spell Power
Shield - 25 Intellect
Weapon - 30 Intellect or 63 Spell Power
Boots – Run speed or 12 crit/hit


[top]Professions


Listed are the benefits you get from being each profession and you must keep the profession to retain these benefits.

Alchemy
Mixology - 47 Spell Power, 20 Intellect or 20 Mp5 depending on Flask used and you get double duration. Other conveniences: [Endless Mana Potion], Crazy Alchemist's Potion which is the same mana as Runic along with health and a random potion, and the ability to make your own uncut gems. In addition, you can use [Flask of the North] to gain 47 sp if you don't want to use a normal flask.
Blacksmithing
Socket Glove/Socket Bracer - Gives you 40 Int via two additional gem sockets.
Enchanting
Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpowerx2 - Gives you 46 Spell Power.
Engineering
Hyperspeed Accelerators - This use effect can be used during Divine Plea to lessen the downside of Plea and for burst parts of encounter such as Phase 3 Festergut. Other useful tools: Nitro Boosts gives 24 crit rating and a burst of speed and 27 spell power to cloak instead of Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed. Assuming you use a Mana Potion Injector, Engineers will get 25% more out of Runic Mana Potions used inside the Injector.
Inscription
Master's Inscription of the Crag or Master's Inscription of the Storm - 46 Spell Power increase over The Sons of Hodir exalted version.
Jewelcrafting
Dragon's Eye Gems - Gives you 42 additional item points with the stats or rating of your choice via three dragon's eye gems.
Leatherworking
Fur Lining - Spell Power - Offers you a 46 spell power upgrade over the regular spell power enchant.
Tailoring
Darkglow Embroidery - gives about 44 Mp5 over time instead of Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed.
Skinning
Master of Anatomy - 40 crit rating.
Mining
Toughness - 60 stamina.
Herbalism
Lifeblood - Small self-only HoT that is off the GCD.


[top]Addons


A good UI for a healer is essential, since you can be much more effective at healing than using the default UI. Here are some suggestions for Addons:

Grid (Raid Frames)
Grid is a raid frame addon that I highly recommend for any healer. It makes it much easier to see the health of everyone in your raid, and is very customizable to fit your needs. GridStatusRaidDebuff can show the fight specific debuffs. How to setup Grid or other addons is out of the scope of this thread.



Clique (Click Casting)
With a click casting addon you assign a mouse button (like middle mouse) to a spell, and whenever you press that button on a unit frame it casts that spell at that unit. I like using this with Cleanse, because I find I have better reaction times with it. Some people like assigning a button (or key-button combination) to all their healing spells.

PallyPower (Blessing Assignments)
This will make your life keeping everyone blessed with the proper blessings much easier. While I am sure a lot of us have had their frustrations with PallyPower, but it is significantly better then not using it. An alternative is ZOMGBuffs.

ClassTimer (Spell Timers)
Keeps track of the time left on all of your buffs like Beacon of Light, SS, and JotP. Being able to see the time left on these spells at a glance makes it significantly easier to keep them up. There are many alternatives such as clcbpt Pally Timer Tracker.

For other useful addons, see Retribution UI: The key to successful facerolling.


[top]Talent Builds


Here are a few sample PvE builds that will give anyone a good starting point and are by no means the only builds you can use.
Holy with Divine Guardian (52/17/2) One can get 3/3 improved Devotion Aura (useful if no Resto Druid or Prot Pally are in your group and giving 600 more armor is great for tanks) dropping 1/2 LoH and losing Benediction for cheaper instant cast spells.
Holy with Ret (52/5/14) This build is good for heroics, but doesn't have as much tank or raid healing potential because you would lose of Divine Guardian.

While this thread is for only for PvE discussion, here is a sample Arena-focused PvP spec:
PvP Holy (54/17)


[top]Rawr Settings


This settings found on the Option Tab will help your Rawr give you a better read on what items you should upgrade. This is my setting so you should tweak it towards your playstyle.
Burst Scale: 30% Activity: 90%
Holy Shock: 5% FoL: 10% Holy Light 90%
Sacred Shield uptime: 100% Fight Length - 5 minutes GHL targets: 2.5
Maintain Judgement and maintain JotP are checked
Mana Potion: 0 LoH is not used on self
Divine Plea: 2 minute cooldown Replenishment uptime: 95%
Beacon of Light up-time: 100% Effectiveness (of BoL): 40%
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the healing rotation?
As most of you know by now, there is no rotation for any healing class. You have to make quick decisions and a situation can change in a millisecond. An excellent healer can predict incoming damage and from that start healing before the damage actually hits.

Q: Should I use Flash of Light or Holy Light?
It's always situational and you have to learn yourself. However one thing that I could improve on is that I spam holy light and could use Flash more often to get up the FoL HoT on the tank and top off raid members using FoL instead of HL, and could save mana and doing the same amount of healing. Which spell to use also depends on the healer setup, for example if your guild have amazing druids, it makes raid healing via FoL spam a lot less useful and leaves you to focus on tank healing with HL and Beacon.

Q: Which of these two items are better for me?
A: Use Rawr, it will be able to help answer it. If for some reason you think Rawr is wrong, post here in detail about why you think that way. In general, haste/mp5 pieces are the best itemized for Holy Paladins and in some cases Mail or Leather will be better itemized than Plate. While Tier 10 does not have haste/mp5 itemization, that haste/crit or mp5/crit are decent to use if it is a more than 10 item levels above what you have.

Q: How should I gem my gear?
A: Short answer, Intellect. Long answer, a starting Holy Paladin should gearing up with spell power so your heals will keep your group alive. When picking stats, you should shore up your weakness. If you are spamming HL and people die before it lands, then you need more haste. If you are using mostly Flash of Light and the tank is dying, try using more spell power or switching to HL and focusing on getting more Intellect. If you are running out of mana, try to use items/enchants that favor Mp5, Int, and to lesser extent crit rating rather than focusing on haste or spell power. Try things out and see what works for best for you.

Q: Should I get this higher item level item over my current item?
A: In most cases, yes. I would get the minimum of between 600-676 Haste and then focus on getting more Mp5 and Haste. For HL focus, if a piece of gear provides an Int upgrade (20 or more Int and/or extra sockets) then upgrade to it even if it has 0 Mp5. For FoL focus, get the highest item level healing item to get the most spell power. Work on getting the Tier 10 Helm and Shoulders

› See More: Holy healing Pve(3.3.3 Updated)