Gearing

Holy Paladin Guide

Introduction
Abilities
Talents
Gameplay
Stat Priority
Gearing
Macros and Addons

Artifact Weapon: The Silver Hand

It’s important to spend Artifact Power carefully. Each point you put into The Silver Hand increases the amount required for the next point at an exponential rate. This path is a more efficient path to acquiring all three golden traits (25 total traits), but it also delays the time before you get the more beneficial traits.

Our recommendation on use of Artifact Power is to go straight for Shock Treatment and up and around to Power of the Silver Hand:

1/1 Virtues of the Light
3/3 Second Sunrise
3/3 Shock Treatment
1/1 Protection of the Light
3/3 Blessings of the Silver Hand
3/3 Expel the Darkness
3/3 Deliver the Light
1/1 Power of the Silver Hand

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Power of the Silver Hand can be a very strong trait but not something you should try to build up for the sake of getting a huge heal. If you’re keeping Holy Shock on cooldown, you won’t have to worry about losing the buff with it. The only issue you might run into is using Holy Shock as damage and then not having enough time to use Holy Shock again before the buff wears off. While it may be fun to keep track of how much Power of the Silver Hand is going to heal for, it would most likely just be clutter on your screen.

For dungeons, using the Power of the Silver Hand buff can provide incredible group healing with Beacon of Virtue. All Beacon abilities have a slight delay between a heal going off and then transferring to your Beacon targets; you can make great use of this by pre-casting Flash of Light and then immediately casting Beacon of Virtue as soon as it goes off. Follow this up with Light of Dawn and Holy Shock for amazing burst healing for your group.

Next you want to go straight for Protection of Tyr to the right from Second Sunrise:

1/1 Templar of the Light
3/3 Focused Healing
1/1 Protection of Tyr

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Protection of Tyr isn’t necessarily interesting, but it is very useful. Coupled with Templar of the Light and Devotion Aura, Aura Mastery becomes 20% damage reduction and 15% increased healing for 8 seconds.

After that, pick up Vindicator and then The Light Saves as our last Golden trait.

The Light Saves is nice to have, but it’s not all that great. We typically don’t want to be healing our Beacon targets because then we don’t get much out of our Beacons. It’s still an increase to overall healing, it just isn’t that significant.

Once you’ve gotten all three of your major artifact traits, pick up Justice Through Sacrifice, Share the Burden, and then Knight of the Silver Hand last.

Trinkets

This list of trinkets is found in my spreadsheet and will change slightly based on your own character or talent choices, but it won’t change too much.

As a general rule, trinkets that have Intellect and another secondary stat (crit, haste, mastery, or versatility) are very good. You can usually find these as a reward from World Quests from time to time. We suggest doing those world quests as often as possible in hopes of getting one with high item level. Similarly, Helya in Trial of Valor, and Nightbane in the updated Return to Karazhan are other options for the same Intellect plus secondary stat trinket.

A new legendary trinket was added in 7.1.5. Velen’s Future Sight is a very good trinket, but not necessarily an amazing legendary. It will depend on your currently available trinkets as to how good this is compared to other legendaries.

Set Bonuses

While we’re not sure if this is going to be a continued trend in future tiers, a cloak was added to the Tier 19 set making it 6 pieces total instead of the normal 5. There is still only a 2- and 4-piece bonus, but it does allow us more flexibility in gearing up and swapping pieces for various upgrades.

Tier 19 Set Bonuses:

2-Piece: Increases Holy Shock’s critical strike chance by 5%.
4-Piece: Infusion of Light has 1 additional charge.

As was already mentioned in the secondary stats section, the 5% increase to Holy Shock’s critical strike is calculated before our normal critical strike chance is doubled. Both of these bonuses are worth maintaining, but neither is very interesting.

Gemming, Enchanting, and Consumables

Enchants:
Three gear slots can be enchanted in Legion: necks, cloaks, and rings. There are also shoulder and glove enchants which can assist with professions, but weapons in Legion do not have special enchants.

Neck – Enchant Neck – Mark of the Ancient Priestess
Cloak – Enchant Cloak – Binding of Intellect (200 int) or Enchant Cloak – Word of Intellect (150 int)
Ring – Enchant Ring – Binding of Critical Strike (200 crit) or Enchant Ring – Word of Critical Strike (150 crit)

Gems: Deadly Eye of Prophecy (150 crit) or Deadly Deep Amber (100 crit).
Flask: Flask of the Whispered Pact (1300 int).
Food: The Hungry Magister (375 crit), Leybeque Ribs (300 crit), or Salt and Pepper Shank (225 crit).

Legendaries

Ilterendi, Crown Jewel of Silvermoon – This ring makes Aura of Mercy and Judgment of Light much more attractive. Generally a very strong legendary. During raids, you should always be using this if you have the option. For Dungeons, the effect isn’t quite as strong but is still very good.
Obsidian Stone Spaulders – A very good legendary that doesn’t require any extra thought to receive the benefit.
Chain of Thrayn – This Legendary was changed in 7.1.5 to increase the healing during Avenging Wrath by 25% and damage by 20%. A significant portion of our healing comes from Avenging Wrath, so this is a very good Legendary.
Prydaz, Xavaric’s Magnum Opus – Will give you a shield sometimes, but not all that useful. Can be nice for dungeons.
Maraad’s Dying Breath – A very interesting cloak that still needs some testing. It’s potentially very strong, but difficult to tell for sure, so we’re leaving it fairly low on the list.
Velen’s Future Sight – Again, a strong trinket, but not necessarily a strong legendary. The 15% increase to healing is very nice, but we still need to see how much benefit the overhealing conversion gives. This legendary is still a throughput increase but probably not as much as the others above is.

Any other Legendaries can be nice to have, but won’t really give you much benefit, so you should really only use the ones listed above if you have the choice.