I decided to play a holy paladin for Classic. I’ve read/watched several guides, but one thing still eludes me:
How/when do I make the transition from a ret leveling spec to a holy group spec?
Many guides point out that pre-raid BiS can start to be farmed before hitting cap. When then should I look into respeccing from ret into a more viable healing build? Should I be keeping a second set of healing gear? Is it fair for me to simply switch to my healing gear and enter a group as a healer still in ret spec?
I really want to know how to handle this so that I can gear for what my end goal is without crippling my parties. I played a hunter in Vanilla so I never had this issue before.
every class will have to have a 2nd set of gear depending what spec you are trying to make up for. Well not every class but, Warriors can tank in fury spec up until 55+ Pallys are very mana hungry like any other healing class, so keeping cloth gear for +int / +healing will only help as when you get to 60 you would want nothing but Crits to heal which maintain mana a lot better.
Also downranking skills help with mana management. But if you’re leveling as ret and want to heal, I would recommend getting cloth gear as mentioned + 1h / Shield for more stats.
You wont have to switch holy until 50+
also, Holy palas are OP AF! in pvp. hard to kill and hard to go oom once you have the right gear.
Thanks for the info. Just getting a sense of when to change my focus from just pure leveling spec to an actual healing spec has been difficult.
I chose the spec to help support my friends and to have a better chance getting into group content. I feel like playing support will force me to get more groups and branch out.
I have absolutely no delusions about what my role will be in raiding. I’m really concerned with farming 5 or 10 mans for pre-raid BiS for holy healing.
My plan is to level as ret, and then transition into holy as I get closer to cap so I can start farming gear to prep for raiding. I don’t want to tank.
You will have to try it out and see how far into higher level dungeons you can go with ret.
You can totally get away with healing in ret spec as long as you have a decent set of gear depending on the group and how careful they are in the dungeon.
While leveling you can generally get away with healing in a leveling spec and just keeping a set of +int gear.
As far as respeccing full healer, I’d probably not do that until 60 as leveling as a pure healer build can be painful.
When it comes to Paladin healing, baseline they already have most of their healing strength. The main benefit of going holy is mana efficiency through the Illumination talent, which is not going to be a big deal for you until you get some gear with spell crit on it. It might mean you need to stop to drink more often in dungeons, but you can do without it all the way to 60.
That said if you want, you can also do a hybrid build that’s something along the lines of 21/0/30. That build can heal even into raids, but doesn’t give up Retribution’s damage talents for solo content. It’s close to what I used in Vanilla myself, even at 60.
it was a joke bro - irony is your friend - but as far as your comment that you won’t raid unless you’re Holy, the Spelladin says, “Hold my beer…”
or go 11/26/14 Trispec to pickup Blessing of Sanctuary and AoE tank for your guild and then swing Nightfall the rest of the time while wearing 8/8 Tier 1 for group AoE heals in either the Main Tank or Warlock group and become the ultimate support class/spec in the entire game
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")