Holy Paladin PvE Guide(Updated for 4.3 PTR)

Intro

Updated for 4.3 PTR notes as of November 19th, 2011.

Spec

I would currently recommend 31/3/3 as a base spec, with 4 points left to put where you feel it most useful.
Possible options:

Eternal Glory - Usefulness depends on Word of Glory usage
Last Word - Usefulness depends on Word of Glory usage
Improved Judgment - Extra range can be nice for flexibility

Healing Spells

Single Target Heals
Flash of Light, Holy Light, and Divine Light are all casted single target heals. They vary in mana cost, speed and power as per the chart below. Holy Shock generates 1 Holy Power at all times, while the Divine Light and Flash of Light require utilizing Tower of Radiance for Holy Power. Holy Light is the most efficient heal before the more complicated factors like Beacon, Holy power and Mastery.

Holy Power Heals
We have 2 healing spells based on Holy Power. Casting a spell that requires Holy Power will consume all of your current Holy Power. The number consumed will determine the power of the spell. These spells have no hard cool down, and are instead limited by the rate you generate holy power. These spells do not cost mana.

Word of Glory
Word of Glory is an instant cast single target heal of medium power. Useful under certain conditions where Light of Dawn would be unfavorable, such as during Guardian of Ancient Kings, or when only a single non-beacon target needs quick healing.

Light of Dawn
Light of Dawn is a cone based heal that uses the 'smart' targeting mechanic and has the following attributes. Light of Dawn will require getting familiar with the cone targeting mechanic to use it to full potential. Light of Dawn has a 30 yard range, 10 yards shorter then the majority of our heals, but also the same range as Blessing of Sacrifice. It will heal pets, and is currently transferring all heals to the Beacon target, resulting in many smaller heals that total a very large amount. Light of Dawn can and will heal yourself unless 6(5) other people need it more.

Other Healing Spells

Holy Radiance
As of Patch 4.3, Holy Radiance now has a 3s cast time, no cooldown, and requires a player target. That target is imbued with Holy Radiance, which heals them and all group members within 10 yards instantly, and continues to heal them by a smaller amount every 1 second for 3 seconds. Holy Radiance generates 1 charge of Holy Power at all times.

Beacon of Light
Beacon of Light is triggered by Word of Glory, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Divine Light and Light of Dawn at 50% transference and Holy Light at 100% transference. It does not transfer Holy Radiance, Protector of the Innocent or other sources of healing. Beacon heals will not produce the Illuminated Healing shield from the mastery stat.

Cooldowns

We have several potent cooldowns available to help when the going gets tough.

Avenging Wrath
Avenging Wrath provides a powerful 20% additional healing, and damage, for a fairly cheap mana cost. The 3 minute cooldown can be talented to 2 minutes allowing more liberal use of this cooldown, which lasts 20 seconds.

Divine Favor
Divine Favor is a very powerful burst healing cooldown. 20% spell haste and crit makes this more powerful then AW in most situations. 3 minute cooldown with a 20 second duration, which can be glyphed for an extra 10 seconds.

Aura Mastery
Aura Mastery is a deep holy talent. 2 minute cooldown for 6 seconds of enhanced auras. You can choose from 4076 extra armor, double damage retribution aura, silence and interrupt immunity or 195 extra fire/frost/shadow resistance. Extra resistance and silence immunity will be the best options in most cases, as almost 25% extra damage reduction is very potent.

Lay on Hands
Lay on Hands is a very powerful heal with the health scaling of cataclysm. At 10 minutes, this is a long cooldown and should be used when it will matter. Can be glyphed to 7 minutes, as well as being able to restore 10% maximum mana to the paladin, even when used on other players. Causes the Forbearance effect on the target.

Guardian of Ancient Kings
This spell summons an uncontrollable pet that will replicate your casted heals. At this time the following are the only spells valid for Guardian of Ancient Kings: Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light, Holy Shock, and Word of Glory. It is invulnerable, and lasts 30s or until 5 valid heals are used. The effect is a duplicate heal cast on the same target, as well as healing all targets within 10 yards of the target healed for 10% of the heal value, which can hit the original target as well.

Divine Plea
Our mana regeneration cooldown, 12% of maximum mana (18% glyphed) over 9 seconds, with a cooldown of 2 minutes. Reduces all healing output by 50% during this time, which is a major drawback that has to be considered. Possible options are using it with Hand of Sacrifice, Avenging Wrath or in low damage phases of encounters.

Hand Spells

Only one hand per paladin can be cast on a target at the same time. You can have multiple hand spells up at any time, and you can also have multiple hand's on the same target, provided you have more then one paladin.

Hand of Freedom
Hand of Freedom removes and prevents debuffs that slow movement or root, even if they have other effects like damage. This can be very useful under these circumstances, always look to use this when it will help, and usually it will be on the tank or something with current agro.

Hand of Protection
Prevents all physical damage, removes all physical debuffs. This causes the target to be unable to use melee or ranged physical attacks. Mobs without a magical source of damage will ignore the target for the duration of the spell; it has no effect on threat levels. Causes the Forbearance effect.

Hand of Sacrifice
Transfers 30% of damage to you, up to your Max HP in value. While not technically a damage reduction cooldown, it is used as such due to our automatic and powerful self healing. The cooldown promotes using this under phases of increased damage, rather then constant usage. Can be used to 'bypass' mortal strike debuffs that would otherwise weaken the effect of other healing based cooldowns.

Hand of Salvation
Reduces the targets total threat by 2% per second, for a total of 20%. Potential use for niche tactics, usually to get slightly more raid DPS or to assist in transitions, threat drops, or adds.

Other Abilities

Seal of Insight
Seal of Insight will be our main seal, mostly due to the glyph which adds 5% to our healing. Auto attacks made with this seal up can heal the paladin and return 4% of base mana, or 937 mana.

Judgement
As of patch 4.3, when judging, the effect from Judgements of the Pure now increases mana regeneration from Spirit by 30% for 60s when fully talented in addition to providing haste.

Cleanse
Cleanse only dispels one Poison and one Disease effect, and has to be talented to remove a Magical effect. This has a non-trivial mana cost and as such may be desirable to glyph in certain situations. You can use cleanse even without a valid debuff now, which you will have to watch out for.

Blessings
Blessings affect the whole raid with one cast.
Blessing of Kings gives 5% Int, Stamina, Strength, and Agility, as well as +97 to all resistances. Blessing of Kings does not stack with Mark of the Wild.
Blessing of Might gives 10% attack power, and 326 Mp5.

Forbearance
This is the resulting debuff applied to anyone affected by Lay on Hands, Hand of Protection or Divine Shield. Currently lasts 1 min, and prevents application of the aforementioned abilities. This has the potential for issues in multiple paladin groups, and should be a consideration in strategies.

Stats

Short break down of the useful stats for Holy Paladins.
Int>SP>Spirit(till comfortable)>Haste>Crit>Mastery

Intellect
Intellect will provide Spell Power, Mana, and Spell Critical chance. Int will also increase your spirit based regen as well as regen based on maximum mana. This is by far the best stat, and thus will be the primary focus of gems, trinkets and enchants. Any Int gained after the fight starts is less potent then Int from the start of the fight You are unable to reforge for Intellect.

Spell power
Spell power comes primarily on weapons and from Intellect. It is currently the strongest stat for output and efficiency. Spell power also receives a 6% or 10% bonus from raid buffs, which further increases its desirability. Spell power cannot be reforged.

Spirit
Spirit is used for mana regen and hit rating through enlightened judgments. Any increases to Intellect will also increase the mana returned by your spirit. There exists a fight length for all values of Spirit and Int where the regen from Spirit will surpass that of int. Spirit based regen is reduced to 0% in combat, with holy spec changing this to 50%.

Haste
Haste is, in most cases at 85, the best stat for increasing output. Haste is desirable to reduce the GCD and cast times, which allows faster multi-target healing, as well as quicker emergency healing. Under full buffs, the GCD cap is 3489 haste rating, or ~27.24% haste from gear.

Spell Crit
Crit suffers from poor rating conversion. Crit heals do twice the healing of non-crit heals, and as of 4.0, all healing effects are able to crit. Some level of crit rating will be useful to keep Conviction up. With Light of Dawn and Protector of the Innocent producing Conviction, this further reduces the amount of crit we desire.

Mastery
Mastery has a unique effect per spec, Illuminated Healing produces a shield for a base of 10% on most paladin heals with an additional 1.25% per Mastery, which is not to be confused with Mastery Rating. This shield lasts 8 seconds and is refreshed by smaller shields from mastery, and overwritten by larger ones. These illuminated healing shields are produced by Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light, Holy Shock, Word of Glory, Light of Dawn, Holy Radiance, and Lay on Hands. As much as 50% or more of our healing is unaffected by mastery, reducing its effectiveness.

Glyphs

Prime Glyphs
Glyph of Seal of Insight(Required)
Glyph of Word of Glory(Suggested)
Glyph of Divine Favor(Optional)
Glyph of Holy Shock(Optional)

Major Glyphs
Glyph of Divine Plea(Required)
Glyph of Divine Protection(Situational)
Glyph of Light of Dawn(Situational)
Glyph of Divinity(Optional)
Glyph of Lay on Hands(Optional)
Glyph of Beacon of Light(Situational)
Glyph of Cleansing(Situational)

Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Insight
Glyph of Blessing of Might
Glyph of Blessing of Kings

Enchants

Armor Enchants
Back: Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect / Enchant Cloak - Intellect
Chest: Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats / Enchant Chest - Mighty Stats
Feet: Enchant Boots - Haste / Enchant Boots - Lavawalker
Hands: Enchant Gloves - Haste
Shield: Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect
Wrist: Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect / Enchant Bracer - Greater Speed
Head: Arcanum of Hyjal / Arcanum of Vicious Intellect
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone / Greater Inscription of Vicious Intellect
Legs: Powerful Ghostly Spellthread / Powerful Enchanted Spellthread

Weapon Enchants
Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent
Enchant Weapon - Heartsong

Gems

Socket bonuses appears to be fairly weak, with the best being Int. We will end up needing 2 Yellow gems for the Ember meta, which naturally leads to Int/Haste.

Meta Sockets
Ember Shadowspirit Diamond

Red Sockets
Brilliant Inferno Ruby
Perfect Brilliant Carnelian
Brilliant Carnelian

Blue Sockets
Purified Demonseye
Perfect Purified Nightstone
Purified Nightstone

Yellow Sockets
Reckless Ember Topaz
Perfect Reckless Hessonite
Reckless Hessonite

Consumables

Food
Seafood Magnifique Feast
Severed Sagefish Head
Delicious Sagefish Tail
Basilisk Liverdog

Potions and Flasks

Flasks
Flask of Battle
Flask of the Draconic Mind
Flask of Flowing Water

Elixirs
Elixir of Mighty Speed
Ghost Elixir
Elixir of the Cobra
*Elixirs are a poor choice now due to a lack of a solid guardian version. They do however cover some stats the flasks do not.

Potions
Potion of Concentration
Mythical Mana Potion
Volcanic Potion
*Note that you can pop an Int/SP potion before the pull and still use a mana potion later.

Professions

Jewelcrafting - Brilliant Chimera's Eye x3
Net Gain: +81 Int with current gems

Leatherworking - Draconic Embossment - Intellect
Net Gain: +80 Int

Alchemy - Mixology
Net Gain: +80 Int

Blacksmithing - Socket Gloves/Bracers
Net Gain: +80 Int with current gems

Enchanting - Enchant Ring - Intellect
Net Gain: +80 Int

Inscription - Felfire Inscription
Net Gain: +80 Int

Engineering - Synapse Springs
Net Gain: +480 Int for 12s / min

Tailoring - Lightweave Embroidery
Net Gain: +580 Int for 15s, -50 Int Enchant

Herbalism - Lifeblood
Net Gain: +480 Haste for 20s / 2min

Skinning - Master of Anatomy
Net Gain: +80 Crit