Two Completely Different Holy Builds
Thank God it’s Friday! Stupid work though, I’m still gonna be here until 4pm. Oh well, Military is Military and does what it wants.
Anyways, Ferraro over at Paladin Schmaladin wrote a post not too long ago about two healing builds for the raiding Holy Paladin. Here it is if you want to read the entire thing: http://http://ferarro.blogspot.com/2009/11/flash-of-light-vs-holy-light.html. The jist of it is you can spec one way, and gem/enchant/glyph for Spellpower and primarily use Flash of Light to heal. Or you can go the way of most paladins that I’ve seen running around Dalaran and spec another way, and gem/enchant/glyph for Intellect and primarily use Holy Light to heal.
The reason I bring this up isn’t to start a discussion, but to kind of get my thoughts down on paper so to speak. Currently I’m specced similar to his Holy Light build, but I primarily use Flash of Light. Seriously, I hardly ever use Holy Light. When the shit hits the fan, when I need to help out with some raid healing, or when I’m bored. That’s it. And Lord Marrowgar, cause he hits the tanks I run with like a fricken Mac Truck.
Anyways, it’s worked well for me so far. Haven’t had any complaints about me being a horrible healer. When my tank dies it kind of falls under the category of shit happens. If it’s due to something I did or didn’t do, I correct the mistake and it doesn’t happen again. I have yet to find the fight that I’m unable to heal. So why change? Well, Ferraros’ post got me to thinking. I’m not playing to my strengths, be it to the strength of my build, or the strength of my play style. My build is for Holy Light, which I hardly use, but my play style is that of his Flash of Light play style, which I’m not built for.
So here’s my conundrum. I don’t want to regem/ enchant my gear. I like this spec because when the shit DOES hit the fan, I’m right there, ready to fricken pick up the slack and pull the raid through. However, like I said, I’m not playing to my strengths, not playing to the best of my ability. This bothers me greatly. I take a lot of pride in doing the best that I can do, in every situation. So this is what I’m thinking, drop my Prot Spec(I really don’t like tanking as a Paladin anyways, it’s too easy, that and I’ve got my Warrior now for tanking so when my buddies need a tank, here I am), and picking up a second Holy Build, tailored towards the Flash of Light build. However, now comes the gear problem. I believe I’d need a complete second set of Holy gear for this build. A set of gear with int gems/enchants for my Holy Light build, for fights where I know I’ll be using it(Marrowgar and a lot of ICC come to mind), and a second set of gear with SP gems/enchants for my Flash of Light build, for stuff we’ve got on farm, trash, and general heroics.
Expensive? Yes I know >_< !!! I’m not made of money you know! But I AM an Enchanter, and I’ve got almost 1000 Stone Keeper Shards saved up, so that’s a ton of honor to buy gems with. Now all I’d have to do is farm up the badges for a SECOND set of T9.
Is it a good idea for me? I think so, I believe it’ll help me play to my strengths and play to my fullest potential, as well as the fullest potential of the class.
What do you guys think? Would the benefits outweigh the costs for you?
Flash of Sadysm 
You could go with a second set of t9, but it would probably be cheaper just to use old gear and slowly upgrade the secondary set with newer discards as you upgrade.
What? You DIDN’T save your t7 and t8 pieces? Bad paladin!
Seriously, though, using older gear keeps your costs down. Plus the t8 4pc bonus is really nice with tons of spell power. As for talent spec, you can go with a crit build but the utility from Prot will help with the unexpected and, again, buff your Sacred Shield.
Ha, I absolutely understand using older pieces of gear, unfortunately my Paladin isn’t that old. When I hit 80 and started gearing, I was farming the hell out of Conquests in heroics, and wasn’t yet fully geared until 3.3 came out. So I never actually HAD T7 or T8 on my Paladin.