Paladin Healing

Healing with your Paladin. This is not the way to do it, this is the way i do it.

With the coming of WotLK and now Cataclysm playing a Paladin is totally different compared to The Burning Crusade and WoW Vanilla era. Back in the days you could only have one talent spec. Also a large numbet of item stats on armor and weapons played a role. Intellect, Stamina, Spirit and Healing Power. Not to mention the other specs like Haste and Crit.
Here i'll try to keep it up to dat and write about healing in Cataclysm, nothing else.

1. What talent build should i have?
You should have two talent builds, one for healing in instances and raids and another talent build for levelling or DPS. You can also take up a tanking spec, but i know nothing about it, so i dont talk about it. Choose a healoing build for instances. Choose a retribution build for solo play and levelling.

Healing talent build: 31 / 5 / 4
Wait this build is just 40 points?! Yes, I havent spent the last point you get when reaching level 85. Mostly because I'm content a lazy bastard and also because I'm content with my build right now. I will spend the last point and i will use it to increase my range for Judgements [Improved Judgement]

I didn't build my own talenttree, i copied it from Elitist Jerks, but kept the liberty of making own decisions. You will have to make own choices, because the build spends only 37 points.

Coming back to the start: you need two talent builds, one especially for healing. I discussed this with a friend of mine who was checking my build and told me I should use Blessed Life in the Holy Tree in stead of some of my Retributions choices.
When you have two builds, one for healing and one for DPS, I personally dont think you need a thing like Blessed Life. In a proper instance you won't get damaged a lot. Thus, the free Holy Power charge won't occur often. Especially with just a 50% change to proc.
I think you really need the extra damage AND healing bonus from the points you spend in Crusade in the Retribution tree. t It generates more more healing power.

2. What spells to cast to heal my group?
(I don't go into mathmetics. Elitist Jerks have it all worked out)
The tank always recieves a Beacon of Light [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] from me. I try to keep it up all the instance long, not just during boss fights, but especially during trash. DPS especially melee tends to recieve more continious damage from trash then during a boss fight. Most bosses have AOE, but that is very limited time. The trash however tends to more AOE, but they also attack DPS who steal aggro from the tank or get attacked randomly. Giving the tank the Beacon, I can easily (over)heal the damaged DPS without risking the tanks death.
During trash fights i think I heal DPS more then I heal the tank

I spam Holy Light [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]during fights. Not continiously. Actually I start with a quick and direct single target heal: Holy Shock [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]. (Generates 1 Holy Power), then I start casting Holy Light [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] heals until i see the health of the target I'm healing is dropping below the maximum I can heal with Holy Light[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]. Then I cast another Holy Shock[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]. (Generates another Holy Power). This is the moment Divine Light [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] is cast a longer heal to cast, costs more mana but heals a large amount. Tower of Radiance generates the third Holy Power and it is time to cast Word of Glory [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.].
Normally the tank doesnt recieve that heal, but another groupmember gets it. It is instantly cast and with the Beacon [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]still on tank, tank recieves a small heal as well.

Use Seal of Insight[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] and use a Prime Glyph: Glyph of Seal of Insight. Having just the seal active does two things: When you get attacked you have chance to regenerate health and mana. Second and more important: when cast as a judgement [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] on the enemy attacked by the tank, you will have a nice amount of mana returned. During the healing try to cast the judgement as often as possible, to keep mana maxed out.

There are a few spells left: Holy Radiance [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.], Lay on Hands [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.], Flash of Light [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]. Spells I hardly use. Only Lay on Hands when someone is near death, but i tend to let DPS die when they 'stand in the fire' in stead of saving their asses. Lay on Hands [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] on the tank is a last resort i prefer not to use it, it means the fight has gone bad already somewhere early (Like when i have spend to much time Cleansing the party).
Holy Radiance [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] i use for the fun of seeing a dozen and more green healing values pop up in the screen. I use it after afight when most of the party has had little damage and we are running together. Or I use it when I want to stay focussed on the tank but also want to keep DPS health up, i posistion myself close to the targets (closer means stronger heals).
Flash of Light [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]: don't use it. It is strong, but also a heavy mana burn.

Important stats for paladin healing:

In the old days, prior to WotLK there was a spec: Healing Power, that was, besides Intellect most important to stack up in your gear. The downside of that old days system was: Damaging spells didn't make use or get an increase in damage, they didnt use Healing Power. Blizzard has changed the Healing Power to: Spell Power.

The most important stat is: Intellect
- Intellect equals your mana pool. More Intellect, more mana. Intellect also contributes to: Spell Power, Spell Crit and mana regen (MP5). There is no maximum of Intellect you can have. The bigger the better, eventhough a smaller mana pool makes you heal more effective.
I believe your healing output can be roughly the same with 10k mana less, it just depend on your healing efficiency. Casting Divine Light over and over again gives good healing, but consumes lots of mana. Casting Holy Shock, Holy Light an occasional Divine Light and Word of Glory makes much better use of your available mana. PLUS healing with a paladin is no longer boring, as it was in WotLK.

Back to the stats:
Stats that increase your healing:
-Intellect; for mana, Spell Power, Spell Crit, MP5 (for the calculated breakdown of 100 mana increase check elitistjerks)
-Spell Power: directly increases Spell Power. Especially good in raids, because you can recieve buffs to directly increase Spell Power.
-Spell Crit: Increase the chance to cast a Critical Heal
-Mastery: Does nice things to your healing: a healed target recieves a shield to absord damage, rougly 10% of your cast heal.
Every mastery point increases that amount by 1.25%

Stats that not increase healing but still are beneficial
-Haste: Shortens the time to cast a spell, also lowers global cooldown. Simply: cast more spells in less time.
-Spirit: increases mana regen

Nice post indeed, thanks for that

I always used to use [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

for gearing up and where to go this page is very useful too [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]