Classic- healer talents and gear

Classes Paladin
1

Where do I look for official guides on this that are not just for level 60? I would like some kind of guide for Classic.

I just rolled a paladin for Classic and I accept I will be a healer, so what is best way to level? Can I wear any gear; cloth, leather or mail that has Intellect, spirit or any healer specific gear?

2

In general armor type is meaningless for casters/healers in classic. You pick what has the best itemization for you and in the case of specs like holy pally and boomkin this is sometimes cloth armor.

As for leveling don’t level as a healing spec unless you plan to do dungeons 100% of the time. Your solo questing/grinding speed will be laughable because you will have near zero DPS.

In general dungeons up to ~ level 40/50 do NOT need tank/healer party members with dedicated tank/healer talent setups to complete.

3

Holy leveling guides don’t really exist, because leveling guides are designed to level a player as fast as possible.

I leveled 1-60 as holy and most of that time was spent questing. My /played to 60 was around 10 days, and I kept engineering, mining, cooking, and fishing appropriate to my level rather than pursuing them afterwards. So it really isn’t that bad. Ret is faster, if that’s what you’re after. But leveling as holy, you can do things that ret specs can’t. Like taking on 4-5 same level mobs without running like a sissy.

If you want a mini-guide, here’s one:

Talent placement looks like this as you level (in this order):

5/5 Divine Intellect
5/5 Spiritual Focus
1/1 Consecration
3/3 Healing Light
1/2 Improved Lay on Hands
5/5 Illumination
1/1 Divine Favor
2/2 Improved Blessing of Wisdom
2/2 Improved Lay on Hands
1/3 Lasting Judgment OR 1/2 Unyielding Faith
5/5 Holy Power
1/1 Holy Shock

This puts you to level 40. At this point, you have to decide whether you want to improve your defensive abilities or improve your damage output.

If you go 31/20/0, you will be able to tank or heal level 60 dungeons, and your healing/buffing utility will vastly improve. You will use a 1h/shield combination at all times, and you will be able to solo same-level elite quests once you get comfortable with the playstyle. In Classic phase 1, your dungeon tanking will be worse than that of a paladin with 31 points in protection, but in later phases it has the ability to outshine 31 prot due to spellpower gains on holy shock.

If you go 31/0/20, your solo questing/leveling speed vastly improves and you have the option of going 1h/shield, or 2h with seal of command. This makes you more versatile in pvp, as you can contribute pressure on your opponents if healing is not required.

For the 31/20/0 build, your final points go into:
5/5 Redoubt
3/3 Precision
2/5 Toughness
3/3 Improved Righteous Fury
3/3 Improved Shield Specialization
1/1 Blessing of Kings
3/3 Improved Concentration Aura OR 5/5 Toughness

Taking 3/3 Improved Concentration Aura is desirable if you want to provide 50% pushback immunity to casters in raids, or if you want to be an extremely annoying pvp healer thanks to the 15% additional immunity to interrupt and silence effects. 5/5 Toughness will help you mitigate more damage if you want to improve your dungeon tanking potential.

For the 31/0/20 build, your final talent points go into:
5/5 Benediction OR Improved Blessing of Might (Benediction for solo, imp BoM for group buffs)
5/5 Deflection
5/5 Conviction
1/1 Seal of Command
2/2 Pursuit of Justice
2/2 Improved Retribution Aura OR 2/2 Unyielding Faith (holy) OR 3/3 Lasting Judgment (holy)
Imp ret aura helps greatly on grinding multiple melee mobs at once. Unyielding Faith is your pvp option, and Lasting Judgment is your raiding option.

Gearing: Keep two sets of gear in your bags at all times while leveling:

  1. Pure healing set. At low levels look for +int +spirit, and as you level up, start to prioritize +healing, then +int, then spell crit and +mp/5. Spirit becomes useless by around level 40, when you should be looking at flash of light as your main healing spell. Wear a shield while healing, whenever possible. The massive increase to armor offsets the fact that you’ll be wearing cloth, and will typically give you ~40% damage reduction which is far better than other healing classes. You won’t be in as much danger if you over aggro with a large heal.
  2. High armor value set, with an even balance of strength, stamina, and intellect. This is your solo questing and tanking set. As you get to higher levels, start prioritizing items with +defense, parry, dodge, crit, and spell crit. Ideally you want to become extremely hard to hit but with a high crit value, which makes up for your lack of strength. As you reach 60, you can start thinking of replacing this gear with the deathbone set out of scholomance.

Weapon choice: From 1-40, you’ll typically be best suited with a slow 2 handed weapon with Seal of Righteousness. Once you have access to Seal of Wisdom, I find it more effective to switch to sword and shield, and nuke with Holy Shock and consecration on cooldown while regaining mana with Judgment/Seal of Wisdom. This playstyle requires a fast 1H weapon in order to maximize mp regeneration. Note: Seal of Wisdom is better than Seal of Light because you can convert mana to HP at a ratio of roughly 2.8hp per 1 mana point through your healing spells, without adding any +healing power gear into the calculation. As such, mana gains provide more effective health regeneration in hard fights than straight healing gains from Seal of Light, point for point.

You will keep your 1H/shield setup until you get Seal of Command in your mid to late 50’s, at which point you should switch back to a 2 hander if you find a good slow one. Anything faster than about 3.3, and you’d probably be better off sticking to the shield and sword.

Questing:
Aim to finish quests that are yellow or green in difficulty. While you are tankier than most other classes for your level, you will kill same-level mobs very slowly (30 seconds on average). The way to get around this is to kill enemies and finish quests that you can complete quickly. Your improved killing and turn in speed offsets the fact that you’re getting less xp per kill. Download an addon like Questie, which shows available quests on your world map - and finish all the quests in every zone, before they turn grey in difficulty. By doing this, I was able to get to 60 without running out of quests in the endgame zones (which means you don’t have to exclusively grind mobs for your last few levels).

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4

Thank you Kei! That is very concise and helpful.