Holy Paladin Healing Stat Priority — 12.0.5

The stat priority for a Holy Paladin varies based on your spell selection or fight duration, your proximity to your healing targets, and your talents. We will give the general stat priority, then explain how each of these can change it for you. Having said that, our secondary stats are so close in value, and Intellect is so strong at current gear levels that an item-level upgrade will usually be worth equipping. You should use the information on this page to help you decide if one similar item-level piece of gear is superior to another.

If you are interested in min-maxing your stats to gain the highest amount of HPS is possible; you can visit QuestionablyEpic, a website dedicated to healer theorycrafting. This website will compare your stats based on gear and logs to tell you which items in your bags you should equip to make your character as strong as possible. Otherwise, we will provide a brief rundown of what stats you will want to prioritize depending on your build.

This stat priority focuses on maximizing the output of Herald of the Sun. Given that Mastery provides us with the largest HPS increase from secondary stats, it is what we will prioritize. Critical Strike will lose value from other builds due to it not having as much impact for Herald.

When playing Lightsmith, Critical Strike value will increase significantly due to Hammer and Anvil. This causes Judgment critical strikes to deal healing to nearby allies. Much of your playstyle revolves around maximizing your Judgment casts and we want to also increase the healing it does by increasing the amount of Critical Strike we have.

That being said, Mastery continues to be our strongest stat and it is what we will prioritize overall.

When playing Mythic+, you have quite possibly the most interesting choice when it comes to allocating secondary stats. Mastery will continue to provide you with the largest HPS increase, but it does not offer any increase to your damage like the other stats will.

We recommend sticking with Mastery until you gain more comfort with the new dungeons, increase your overall gear, and feel as though more healing isn't need. At this point you can consider dropping Mastery to the bottom of your stat priority in favor of stats that increase damage such as Haste and Critical Strike.

FAQIs There a Haste Cap For Holy Paladin?

There is no "cap" to how much haste you should have. What is important to keep in mind is that once you have a significant amount of Haste, other stats tend to increase in value. Using QuestionablyEpic is a great way to help manage your stats, gear, and whether or not you should aim for more Haste.

FAQShould I Drop Haste if I am Running Out of Mana?

You should never aim to drop haste simply because you do not have enough mana. The best place to fix your mana will be in your own ability casts. Spells such as Judgment have very high mana costs whereas Flash of Light is extremely cheap. Reducing Judgment casts in favor of Flash of Light casts is a much better way to address mana issues than reducing what is your best overall stat.

Optimization

Simulations and Tools

While a generalized stat priority will assist new players, there really is no substitute for simming your character. Learn more with this guide!

Go to Guide

Understanding the impact of each stat is crucial if you aim to truly minmax your gear and performance. Below we will break down the impact that each stat has.

• Mastery — Increases your healing done based on the proximity of your target. The closer you are to players, the more healing you will do. It is important to note that Beacon of the Lightbringer changes this slightly. With this talent, the healing increase will also take into account the distance your Beacon targets are from players. If they end up being closer, the healing is increased relative to that distance rather than your own distance. This is one of the main reasons you are incentivized to spread your Beacons to ranged players who aren't often close to you. They can give you extra coverage in the room, increasing your Mastery effectiveness.
• Haste — Many spells in the game "scale with haste". What this means is that their cooldowns are decreased as you obtain more haste. For Holy Paladin, this applies to Holy Shock and Judgment most notably. The more haste you have, the lesser cooldown these abilities will have. Additionally, Haste will reduce the cooldown of cast times for spells such as Flash of Light and Holy Light.
• Critical Strike — Gives you an increased chance for spells and attacks to deal additional healing or damage. Additionally, some abilities will only trigger off of Critical Strikes such as: Hammer and Anvil for Lightsmith. While more procs of this ability can be a massive boost for players using Lightsmith, Critical Strike runs into an issue where you get so much of it through various talents that stacking it on your gear loses effectiveness. Holy Aegis, Divine Glimpse, and Avenging Wrath all modify your Critical Strike chance in some way, leading to you often having more of it that you need, decreasing the overall desire to target gear with Critical Strike.
• Versatility — By far the least interesting stat, this increases healing and damage done by a small amount and decreases damage taken. Unfortunately, this stat does not compare to the alternative options. In very high Mythic+ dungeons you may see players running more amounts of it in order to live very high damage intakes that would otherwise 1-shot them, but most players will not experience this. Outside of that specific situation, you will typically avoid targeting gear with Versatility.

Every stat has a limit where they will begin to offer less increase per point gained, which are known as the points of diminishing return. Once you have reached these amounts, stats will become progressively less valuable and may fall behind other options. The current breakpoints are:

Itemization

Gearing and Enchants

Your stat priority extends to enchants, consumables, and gear. Take what you learned on this page and apply it to your gameplay with these two guides!

GearEnchants

Mytholxgy

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Mytholxgy, a former RWF progression raider and analyst for Pieces and Liquid. He is also a Templar in the Paladin Class Discord, as well as one of the class experts in the Evoker Discord. You can reach him on Twitter and watch him stream occasionally on Twitch.