Preparing for raiding

[Johay]

I'm pretty new to WoW therefor never being in a raid (since im only lvl 66 and pre-tbc conetnt doesn't get done) I'll be raiding soonish so I'm just here to ask some information from you experianced raiders.

First of all, the first thing i'm worried about is gearing up for kara, after reading some information on wowwiki as a healer I should have +1.5k healing and 10k unbuffed, a friend tells me I should go for d3 (dungeon set 3 gear), my question here what other gear should I go for? are while I'm getting the set 3 gear will other gear drop I can use for kara? (May sound a silly question)

secondly could anyone link me to a good holy paladin spec? Heres spec I use at the moment: http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-talents.xml?r=Burning+Legion&n=Sevut I'm not so sure if it is the best PvE spec.

Also as I'm brand new to raiding I know I won't get a guild right away to I maybe proof myself as a skilled healer, but when would oyu suggest looking for a guild? Should I join PUG's till I maybe have full tier 4 then search for one?

The last few things I'd like to know is to do with the UI for raiding I know theres a forum for it, bit I think its a little more tidy if I keep it all in one post. this is my ui in AB http://i34.tinypic.com/8vop00.png . I know it's ugly, could you suggest any addons? I'm looking for a nice raid frame I like grid but for me grid is a little to complex therefor taking more time to setup, I just want someting nice and simple.

thats all for now :-D

[Twoflower]

as for the spec, i am realy no paladin expert.

but get grid ( and clique ). set it up properly. even if it takes an entire evening. you will thank youself for the time you took when you have worked things out. it is a amazing addon.

[elsegundo]

You can easily get crafted gear, quest rewards, and normal instance drops that will start you off with raiding. gem them, enchant them, and heck, even go for some mail items. Holy pally? you're not building a tank so you can drop down to mail gear if the stats are right.

Gems to look out for: ones that give you int, mp5, healing, or a combination of all three. not too sure about spell crit.

Enchants: same as above.

Glyph: shoulders: inscription of oracle or faith, from scryers or aldor, respectively. head: Glyph of renewal from thrallmar/honorhold.

Magister's armor kits add mp5.

Legs: silver or golden spellthreads give +heals and stamina.

you dont need a whole lot to jump into kara, but it will take you a while to actually get through all of it. you might also want to do heroics. drops are better than normal instances, and you get badges, in which you can trade in for kara-comparable or better gear.

[Johay]

gues I should try grid out i currently have clique for dispelling and it's a nice addon.

Wow, thanks that really helps, thought I was going to be farming for gear for a few weeks to start raiding. Also glad oyu mentiond the gem thing aswell as I'm always unsure about if to get spell crit.

[Twoflower]

gues I should try grid out i currently have clique for dispelling and it's a nice addon.

Wow, thanks that really helps, thought I was going to be farming for gear for a few weeks to start raiding. Also glad oyu mentiond the gem thing aswell as I'm always unsure about if to get spell crit.

read around on the paladin section of the board, there is a lot of information there.

if you still have questions after that, post a thread there, you will get more expert advise :)

[clevins]

So... I won't address gear as I've not got a pally... but I will address two very important things.

1) You're not ina guild. Find one. I have no idea why you're not in one, but a good guild is the easiest way to get runs etc. Depending on your server you can find good Kara pugs... but get in a guild. I actually don't get people whose mains are unguilded.

2) What instance experience do you have? If not a lot, run instances. As many as you can. Learn how to heal in a group... how not to pull aggro, how to keep the tank up, then how to keep the tank and dps up. If you've been hitting instances a bunch, great. Hit heroics when you ding 70... they're good prep for Kara, they sometimes have gear for you and they will prepare you for healing in places where the mobs hit harder and the fights last a bit longer.

Oh and for grid... WoWinsider has a very good article on how to configure it... it's here (http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/01/22/raid-rx-unkicking-butt-a-grid-story/).

[Justinledwards]

Go through all the reputation faction rewards and look for the factions that give you items you want. For example, Honor Hold revered, gives you the head enchant for +healing.

[swaldman]

First of all, the first thing i'm worried about is gearing up for kara, after reading some information on wowwiki as a healer I should have +1.5k healing and 10k unbuffed, a friend tells me I should go for d3 (dungeon set 3 gear), my question here what other gear should I go for? are while I'm getting the set 3 gear will other gear drop I can use for kara? (May sound a silly question)

I'm guessing from what you say later that you're a paladin, and intending to heal.
In that case:
- 1.5k +heal would be nice, but in the early part of kara you'd be fine with 1.2k or so, and even later on if you have 3 healers and the others are better geared.
- Don't worry about 10k unbuffed health. Obviously it's nice, but don't gimp yourself for it. You need to be able to hit 10k buffed for one fight; if necessary you can swap gear to achieve that.
- Don't bother with the dungeon 3 set, it's pretty poor as a healing set. Get The Essence Focusser and Crystal Pulse Shield, which should both be available on the AH pretty cheaply nowadays. Get yourself into good +healing blues from the lvl 70 instances.

Your spec looks fine - personally I'd do a few things differently but you have the important stuff.


The last few things I'd like to know is to do with the UI for raiding I know theres a forum for it, bit I think its a little more tidy if I keep it all in one post.

Mostly up to you, but things that I regard as essential for a healing paladin:

1. Ora2. Most raid groups will insist on it.
2. Good raid frames. I like Grid (it is worth spending the time to set it up and get used to it), some prefer Healbot.
3. Pally Power. If you don't have it you're just causing the other paladins grief.
4. A way of seeing who needs to have a disease/poision/magic removed from them. Grid will handle this, or you can use something else.
5. A fast way of casting heals. I like to use Clique to click-cast on my raid frames, others have other ways.

[drewid]

Khorium set is a good starting point, the S1(now S2) PVP healing mace is excellent until you get a Kara Mace even then its comparable. My Pally has cleared Kara and im still using my pvp mace with the + heals chant (been unlucky on the drops :cry: )

Void slayer tunic from dimensus the all devouring quest in netherstorm, its mail but adds + 88 heals.
Mask of penance - from Steam vaults its mail but gives +66 add the glyph from thrallmar rep wil give u total of +100 heals
You should be fine with the below stats as long as the Tank has at least minimum Stats
Holy Pally
Unbuffed:

Healing: 1100 (early Kara), 1500+ (later Kara)
MP5: 80 MP5 while casting (early Kara), 100 MP5 (later Kara)
Spell Crit: 12% (early Kara), 15%+ (later Kara)

Warrior Protection
Unbuffed:

Defense: 490 minimum
Armor: 11k (early Kara), 15k+ (later Kara)
Health: around 10.5k (early Kara); as much as possible (later Kara)
Dodge, Parry, and Block % should be as high as possible

If Your tank isnt uncrushable you will really struggle in Kara to keep them up.
Make sure you are a tank healer not a raid healer.
Throw some mana oil on ur wep , and eat some fish sticks or other + heals buffs and you should be ok with some practice in OL instances.
the biggest issue with a pally healer (slow first main heal)on min stats is that the tank can be dead before you get off a big heal, make sure u learn when to preheal on the pull, u can always cancel it if the tank didnt take damage.
Unfortunatley in 5 mans Pally healers can struggle in messy situations were the whole group is copping damage, use divine favor(instant and gives next heal 100% crit) with holy shock (instant) on the casters if one is getting hit, then go back to tank healing.

Healbot is a really nice and simple Raid heal addon in conjunction with decurse.

Spec, I cant see yours ATM (at work) but you must get to the end of the Holy tree to get Divine illumination (reduce mana cost by 50% on all spells for 15 sec), Lots of groups like the Blessing of Kings you would need to go 12 points into Prot to get this, so you would be looking at 49/12/0. Or you can go with out the BoK and go full holy.

Good luck, once you get it sorted Holy Pallies are a lot of fun.

[Cerberus]

Start picking up some arena points once you hit 70. Doesn't matter what gear you have, just get as many people as possible and do 10 matches. Doing 5vs5 will grant you a decent amount of points even if you lose 10 matches. Just don't get tempted to do more if you're losing all of them ;) 3-4 weeks at 1400-1500 rating (you start out at 1500) and you'll have

Vengeful Gladiator's Ornamented Gloves

They'd be pretty high on my list if I was gearing up a new paladin.

A good healing weapon will also help a ton and I'd even argue the Merciless Gladiator's Salvation now available for honor comes out ahead of the one dropping from the last boss in Karazhan. Farming that honor will save you a huge amount of badges and the other honor gear is a lot easier to replace if you're aiming for PvE. I'd start out with a Essence Focuser+Crystal pulse off AH as well :)

[bloog]

Raiding as a Holy Paladin is spamming flash of light till your keyboard breaks down. Do you want to do play this way? Tanking also is an option.

Start doing instances before level 70. It will give you an idea about group play. It will ease up getting reputation for the heroic keys. It will provide blue quality items. Even pre 70 this is good stuff.

After some time you gain access to the heroic instances. Heroic loot is slightly better than normal loot, bosses will drop Badge of Justice. More important epic items grant esteem to the wearer.
Karazhan is like a heroic instance for 10 people.

Craftables are nice, but they cost. You don't need really these.

PvP offers epic items, but in general these items got unsuitable stats. Lots of guild, especially new ones, talk oneother into PvP stuff. Skill + blue items is better than 's3' (but I do mean 'PvP raids' are made of fail).
PvP also takes time from playing instances.

[Wintrow]

I'm actually pretty curious which addons you are using. What's that "blessing setter" on the right? And that list of names on the left?

And that timerbar one in the middle? I got one but it's big and clunky. Yours looks neat, small and functional.

[swaldman]

I'm actually pretty curious which addons you are using. What's that "blessing setter" on the right? And that list of names on the left?

And that timerbar one in the middle? I got one but it's big and clunky. Yours looks neat, small and functional.

The "blessings setter" is Pally Power, which is something that every grouping or raiding paladin should have. Apart from making your life easier by tracking the times to buff expiry on every raid member, if all the paladins in a raid have it it will display a grid of who is buffing what, which makes *everybody*'s life much much easier when setting up blessings.

The timer may (or may not) be Capping. Not sure.

As to the list of names, I can't help there :-)

[Beruen]

A good bit of it will depend on the guild you join, to be honest. If it's a guild where the core of the raid is running Kara just for the badges, you'll be able to get away with a weaker set (though you'd best still put effort into it, just so that everyone knows you're not expecting free epics). If it's a guild that is just starting Kara, or where people stop running kara when they're well geared, then there's a lot less slack.

We had problems with a paladin OT being undergeared for Kara (gearing a paladin tank for raiding is much harder than gearing a holy paladin), so we asked him if he'd be willing to go holy and heal if we let him roll on both tanking and healing gear until he got geared up. He's now got a very good healing set and a pretty good tanking set.

10K health for a healer in Kara is overkill, sounds more like the goal for mana for healers. My priest has less than 8K health and a lot less armor, and seldom dies unless it's a wipe or close too it. 7K health is a bit on the squishy side in Kara, but doable.

[Wintrow]

It all comes to surviving the unavoidable damage.

Like Aran's Pyroblast if you can't kill him fast enough
Illhoofs demonic chains
Maiden's initial burst of Holy Fire
...

All non-aggro-related damage which you need to survive. Anything above is just wasted stats that could've gone to better healing/mana-management.

[Ash Housewares]

Void slayer tunic from dimensus the all devouring quest in netherstorm, its mail but adds + 88 heals.

absolutely not! you take the paly healing pants from that quest

HH revered will get you your helm enchant and a healing ring
LC revered will get you a trinket

the Crusader Ornamented set would be an upgrade at glove and shoulder

replace all your sup 70 gear, get a real libram, did you not complete the Nesignwary Safari questline? and your crit trinket, have you killed the Overlord?

dont use vendor gems, use the green quality cut gems for now

get the healing enchant for pants, the 46/15 is adequate for now

get honored with the aldor and get your shoulder enchant

vindicators boots are solid, consider the pvp grind for them, season 3 gloves are also good

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Executus&n=Evildeadash

thats my paladin's build, its decent enough for pve and pvp


I probably started kara around 7k health 8.5k mana 1000-1100 healing unbuffed

ofc, I was always with a strong group and didnt have to shoulder a huge load, just my own fair share

[Johay]

First of all thanks for the comments, it's being a while since I could get a chance to login. let me start of first by saying; How the hell I lived without grid and clique before I do not know, after configureing grid and getting to know how it works it's one of the best addons I have.

After reading on what some of you guys said about enchants, I buoght the aldor enchant for my shoulder.

I'll be taking a quick look just now at what other enchants you guys suggested and gear. When I ding 70 I mostly did a few sv-normal runs got a few drops then went for some season 2 gear the mace and a few other itams. I currently only have 1.1k +healing a few people said maybe I could do beginning of kara with a strong tank / team, as my guild is just gearing up for kara I doubt that. My real intention is to get a little more pvp gear and start doing heroic till I have around 1.3/1.4k healing then going for early kara.

a few friends told me I could start doing sv-heroic around 1.2k healing, after looking around the internet for a while I coudn't find alot of information on the type of stats I should have for other heroics could anyone maybe give me a little information for that? The thing i seem to be lacking at the moment is some proper mp5 I only have 58 in combat unbuffed which is not great, but I guess my other stats seem to be coming along nicely.

[drewid]

[QUOTE=bloog;4144253]Raiding as a Holy Paladin is spamming flash of light till your keyboard breaks down. Do you want to do play this way? Tanking also is an option.

So Raiding as a fire mage is spamming fireball till your keyboard breaks down?

I raid as a holy pally we are only up to kara but i would hate to have so much + heals that all i did was spam Flash of light.....

[drewid]

[QUOTE=bloog;4144253]Raiding as a Holy Paladin is spamming flash of light till your keyboard breaks down. Do you want to do play this way? Tanking also is an option.

So Raiding as a fire mage is spamming fireball till your keyboard breaks down?

I raid as a holy pally we are only up to kara but i would hate to have so much + heals that all i did was spam Flash of light.....

[Johay]

Old topic, but it's better then making a new one so what the heck..

the post in here really did help a lot but when i started to do heros and experianced stuff a bit it's easy to get up for kara IMO.

Theres seems to be no real "gear req" for gruul/mag I really don't think I'm ready yet, have aroud 120 mp5 self buffed, 1.5k healing, but could anyone give me a ruff estimate when i should start to do gruul/mag? I've used sites like wow-heroes and be-imba as much as I like these sites I really can't trust one 100% for gear req's, my armory link below..

http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Burning+Legion&n=Sevut

[drewid]

Isnt Gruuls a lvl 65+ instance? (shoot me if im wrong:cry:)

therefore u would assume that if you are in 70 blues you should be fine, its probably more about team work and learning the posistions etc..

[semiiramiis]

I'm pretty new to WoW therefor never being in a raid (since im only lvl 66 and pre-tbc conetnt doesn't get done) I'll be raiding soonish so I'm just here to ask some information from you experianced raiders.

First of all, the first thing i'm worried about is gearing up for kara, after reading some information on wowwiki as a healer I should have +1.5k healing and 10k unbuffed, a friend tells me I should go for d3 (dungeon set 3 gear), my question here what other gear should I go for? are while I'm getting the set 3 gear will other gear drop I can use for kara? (May sound a silly question)

secondly could anyone link me to a good holy paladin spec? Heres spec I use at the moment: http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-talents.xml?r=Burning+Legion&n=Sevut I'm not so sure if it is the best PvE spec.

Also as I'm brand new to raiding I know I won't get a guild right away to I maybe proof myself as a skilled healer, but when would oyu suggest looking for a guild? Should I join PUG's till I maybe have full tier 4 then search for one?

The last few things I'd like to know is to do with the UI for raiding I know theres a forum for it, bit I think its a little more tidy if I keep it all in one post. this is my ui in AB http://i34.tinypic.com/8vop00.png . I know it's ugly, could you suggest any addons? I'm looking for a nice raid frame I like grid but for me grid is a little to complex therefor taking more time to setup, I just want someting nice and simple.

thats all for now :-D

First off the bat. Forget about the D3 set. It's not gonna happen, and except for the fact that paladin Judgement set is positively wonderful looking, it's not worthwhile. (These pieces drop out of the hardest of the old 40 man content raids, which no one does anymore. Contrary to popular belief, it is still not easy to do these encounters, even with 70s.) Solid blue heroic pieces will carry you into Kara until Kara itself gives you the gear you need. So... regular instance->heroic instance->Karazhan will get you the gear you're looking for. Not Naxx, BWL, etc.

You need a guild. That's absolutely correct. There should be several guilds on your server who are looking for more to start Karazhan with, or more to start a second Kara group (the first sign that a guild is starting to look at attempting 25 man content)

[clevins]

Isnt Gruuls a lvl 65+ instance? (shoot me if im wrong:cry:)

therefore u would assume that if you are in 70 blues you should be fine, its probably more about team work and learning the posistions etc..

Gruul's Lair is the first of the 25 person raids - next in line after Kara in difficulty. I'll let others comment on pally stats for it, but if your group is composed of people who can clear Kara (or very close to clear it) then you can take on gruul.

Johay,

You want to continue to run Kara and heroics. If you can, do the heroic version of an instance vs the normal simply for the badges. Get in a guild - you don't need full T4 or even close to it to be worth something to a guild. KNowing what you're doing is more important than gear... gear supports a good player, it doesn't make them.

Do gem and enchant gear - those things help out a lot and show to guilds that you're serious about being good.

Finally, remember that the new gear in Wrath will be very very good, so plan accordingly.

[Ash Housewares]

get a real gem and enchant on those bracers
get spell crit enchant for gloves and 46healing to pants, not the best, but better than nothing

minor adjustments needed, you're a little heavy on shaman gear vs. paly gear so far, but you could join a gruul raid

worry less about mp5 and more about crit, shoot for ~25% holy crit for the moment, you're at 20% now, its a start, but keep working on getting plate gear with better paly stats

good luck on t4 legs!

[det]

First of all, the first thing i'm worried about is gearing up for kara, after reading some information on wowwiki as a healer I should have +1.5k healing and 10k unbuffed, a friend tells me I should go for d3 (dungeon set 3 gear), my question here what other gear should I go for? are while I'm getting the set 3 gear will other gear drop I can use for kara? (May sound a silly question)

Haha..some of our mages cannot reach 10 k unbuffed in BT ^^. Nice hint. I did Kara on my priest with 1.5 k healing, so that number at least is correct. If you can get a nice HP pool, it will certainly help...but for long and healing intense fights I rather went for spirit and mp5 (although I am a priest and no paladin, so I cannot help you any further than this :)

For clothies, tailored stuff is awesome...hell..our resto shammies started raiding in whitemend tailored...

Theres seems to be no real "gear req" for gruul/mag I really don't think I'm ready yet, have aroud 120 mp5 self buffed, 1.5k healing, but could anyone give me a ruff estimate when i should start to do gruul/mag?

That is because Gruul is a bit nerfed and people PuG it. You still need your stamina mage in King M. and you still need some basic skill. When I got invited to a Gruul run, the raidleader asked me first about my +heal, mp5, spirit, int and specc. Not least it depends how many healers you get into your group (we have successfully 20 manned the place.)