Equipment

[Jandris]

I picked up a plate belt level 54 with +42 healing on it but when I put it on it dropped my mana by 300 points. I can't afford this loss in mana, so my question is what should I be looking for in equipment/enchants?
Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Darkling]

If your role is as supplemental or primary healing, the +42 may outwiegh the mana pool. This is usually up to the player's decision. Does he or she want to cast more? Or does he or she want to cast stonger healing spells? How much gear do you already have that adds to healing spells?

[voctovian]

The conventional wisdom says as a pally, go for equipment with high stat bonuses (mostly int and spi) to give you as large a mana pool as possible.  Stick with plate, maybe the odd mail/leather/cloth piece so that you are robust enough to OT some mobs and switch to healing if the main healers get overwhelmed.  You will be casting mostly Flash of Light and Holy light (highest rank).  This works very well for a versitile support role.  Enchants, you normally want +int, +spi, +stats, + mana regen.  This is great for some burst healing, but you tend to go OOM too quickly when main healing I find.  Using lower rank spells tends to be ineffective as they simply dont heal enough.

The unconventional strategy that I have been using is to focus almost exclusively on +healing equipment.  Using flash of light (both rank 1 and rank 6) is very mana efficient.  Understand, this will give you a MUCH smaller mana pool, but your overall healing ability will be increased.  The play style is much different, instead of casting the occasional heals, you cast nearly continually.  The difference is you are casting rank 1's and rank 6 flash, saving Holy light for use only in emergency, usually in conjuction with Divine favor.  This play style becomes effective at about +450 healing I have found.  That sounds like alot (it is), but you can often get greens (of healing) with very high +healing stats.  The difference here is that for the same mana, I can cast 16 FoL rank 1 (healing for 400) instead of 1 Holy light rank 8 (1300).  I have found that at about +550 healing, you can start to benefit from trading +healing for +int, it gives you the ability to cast more FoL rank 6 or HL8 spells without depleting your mana pool too much.  Ultimately, you want to be able to cast FoL6 continuously with some HL8.  OOM is seldom a problem with this play style, except for VERY long fights.  Yes, your mana pool will be much smaller, but it is rarely an issue.

The bad news is that +healing enchants are quite costly, but make a big difference when you are casting continuously.  Please note, this is not a versitile equipment set, you cannot OT in cloth/leather very well  .  That said, it means that you may need to carry one or two extra changes of equipment, depending on the role you take.

If you have any questions, please feel free to msg me in game or PM from the website.

Voc

[voctovian]

Oh, one word of caution, it is best not to wear your healing gear around IF or other public places, people tend to make fun of you until you heal them 

For your reference, for the instances we go to, I think the max +healing you can get is about 720.  I'm not sure about good +healing necklaces yet, but this includes things like [wowitem]hide of the wild[/wowitem] and +healing enchants to weapon, bracers, head, legs and gloves.  I have not included the epic trinket from Argent Dawn turnins [wowitem]Talisman of ascendance[/wowitem], although with this, your healing would be incredible while it is active.

Voc

[Jandris]

Thanks Voctovian, I am sure I will have more questions for you.

[voctovian]

I did some further research and discovered a great site at  http://www.wowwiki.com/Healadin_Sets

However, I did notice that there are green "of healing" pieces that offer up to 20 points higher (each) than the best blue pieces listed.  Some are even plate or mail!!  This is especially true of legs and head pieces.  That said, the best +healing using equipment from the areas we fight is approximately +820.  This does not include [wowitem]arcanum of focus[/wowitem] or [wowitem]syncretist's sigil[/wowitem] enchants.  This does, however include the other +healing enchants which are expensive.

I guess I need to head to strat UD for [wowitem]animated chain necklace[/wowitem] and DM North for [wowitem]Harmonious Gauntlets[/wowitem] when time permits... lol

Voc

[Genoism]

in my experience +healing is FAR FAR FAR better then any amount of +int or +spi that you will find anywhere in the game for paladins.
That belt your talking about, I have it and i use it over lightforge. Think about it, 300 mana...is it really that much? That'll give you about 1-2 flash heals if i remember correctly. An extra heal or two over +42 healing on ALL spells up till your oom seems like a far greater advantage to me.

Also, consider stocking up on as much mana regen per 5 sec gear as you can(lean more towards +healing however). On my paladin i have about 62? mana regen per 5 sec. That means every 10 sec i can do a free flash heal. If i downrank enough I can heal infinetly non-stop and still be somewhat effective.
If you have say +400 healing in total and you cast a regular heal with only say...3-4 ranks below your highest. Chances are your still going to be healing for about 600ish while conserving on a great deal of mana at the same time.

On my paladin i have a few different ranks of heals on my bar if im healing and i generally start off using the lowest rank heal on my bar until i feel the target needs a bigger heal and so on. This lets me conserve my mana almost indefinately because I use the rank of a heal appropriate to the situation. However, NONE of this would be possible if all i stacked up on was int gear. Having mostly int gear or spi gear just means that once your mana is gone your pretty much useless for the rest of the fight unless you pop a mana potion. Waiting 5 seconds without casting any spells for your spi to kick in is far too slow compared to mana regen per 5 sec(mp5). This is because spi only kicks in after you've stopped casting while mp5 is perminant. So while your healing non stop during a boss, your spi is useless pretty much, but your mp5 is going to be regenrating your mana constantly.

Also because flash heals take soooo little mana with a large pool of mp5 and enough +healing you can easily outlast any priest. My paladin may have a small mana pool compared to how much +healing i have vs. my int or spi but for example, in our last raid in AQ on the 2nd boss, i ran out of mana only towards the very very end of the fight. But even then, i was able to through a heal every few seconds.

Unfortunately because after the next patch goes live downranking will be made less effective, but I have a feeling it will still be often a better idea to downrank...we'll have to see just how much less +healing we're getting. I'm sure going down even 1 rank can't be THAT bad because saving mana and letting your +healing do the work for you is much better then depending on your mana bar entirely and sucking it up dry because your heals aren't hitting for enough life.

With enough +healing your single flash heal can easily equal to 2 or more flash heals per cast. Like voct said, with all those greens, mail, cloth etc, you get about 820 healing. No flash heal heals for that much, but with that kind of bonus a flash heal is essentially a regular heal with a far lower mana cost, faster casting speed at the cost of a slight reduction in the amount healed. Will that 300 int really help so much vs. +42 healing....not in my opinion.