PvE Holy Paladin Stat Priority & Reforging

Holy Paladins in Mists of Pandaria are primarily interested in Spirit and Intellect, with their secondary stat priority slightly favoring Mastery over Haste. You’ll need to know how to prioritize these stats so you can select the appropriate gear, gems, enchants, and consumables as well as for reforging, which is also covered in this guide.

Stat Priority

Here is your general stat priority as a Holy Paladin:

1. Spirit (until mana is not an issue)
2. Intellect
3. Spell Power
4. Haste (to reach a breakpoint)
5. Mastery
6. Haste (beyond breakpoints)
7. Critical Strike

Spirit is the primary mana regeneration stat for all healers in Mists of Pandaria, with raw MP5 having gone away in Cataclysm. Paladin healers gain 50% of their Spirit-based mana regeneration while in combat thanks to their Holy Insight passive effect. The amount of Spirit you need comes down to how comfortable you feel with your mana pool. Once you get to the point where you are not burning through your mana on a typical fight, you can start dropping some Spirit in favor of throughput stats. Until then, it’s more valuable to you than throughput stats since you can’t heal at all if you run out of mana. All healers have a static mana pool in Mists of Pandaria, so mana regeneration is the only way to extend your mana.

• Each point of Spirit equals about 0.56 mana regained per 5 seconds.
• Human gain 3% more value from Spirit due to their The Human Spirit racial passive.

Intellect is your primary stat as a Holy Paladin, and you’ll want as much of it as you can get. Intellect is the main source of your Spell Power and also increases your Critical Strike. (Note that in Mists of Pandaria, it no longer increases your mana pool.) Your Plate Specialization passive effect increases your Intellect by 5%, adding further value to every point you acquire. You can’t reforge other stats to Intellect, so you’ll want to get as much as you can from your gear, although you will still want to avoid items that have completely useless stats for you such as Hit.

Hit is not a necessary stat for Holy Paladins. Your Holy Insight passive ability will guarantee that your main damaging spells are Hit capped and never miss. Hit is not worth stacking for the sake of other abilities such as crowd control.

Spell Power directly increases the healing and damage of your spells. Most of your Spell Power will come from your Intellect at a 1:1 ratio, but you will occasionally see it as a secondary stat on certain items such as weapons and trinkets. Each of your spells has its own coefficient that determines how much its effect is multiplied by your Spell Power.

Haste is the only stat that has specific caps you’ll be aiming to reach, and only if you are using the Eternal Flame talent. These caps are based on breakpoints at which you will gain additional ticks from Eternal Flame over its duration. There is also one such breakpoint for Sacred Shield if you are using that talent instead. Outside of these breakpoints, Haste can still speed up your spell casts and your global cooldown, which means getting more healing out faster. It’s competitive with Mastery in terms of throughput even beyond the caps, and if you had unlimited mana it would come out ahead. However, casting your spells faster means spending more mana, which gives Mastery the edge for efficiency. Late in the expansion with lots of gear, Haste may be worth stacking even beyond the breakpoints, but until you are swimming in mana you will get more out of Mastery between breakpoints.

• Every 425 points of Haste is equal to 1% increased casting speed.
• The following Haste breakpoints for your spells are baseline and can be affected by trinket effects, cooldowns, Seal of Insight, and the 5% Haste raid buff:

Mastery causes your heals to place absorption shields on your targets through your Illuminated Healing passive effect. Absorption effects are more efficient than heals because they sit on the target until they are needed (or they expire), which reduces the chance of overheal. They are also proactive rather than reactive, stopping your target from ever taking the damage in the first place. Haste may be more valuable in terms of raw throughput, but Mastery lets you squeeze extra healing (or rather, mitigation, which is even better) out of every point of mana. So unless you are finishing fights with lots of mana left over, you will be better off stacking Mastery once you have reached the closest breakpoint for Eternal Flame.

• Every 480 points of Mastery increases Illuminated Healing by 1%.

Critical Strike increases your chance of getting a critical hit with your spells, doubling their healing or damage. Crits can be a little iffy for healing since you can’t make them happen when you really need them, and they usually amount to wasted overheal when you don’t. It’s still not a bad stat to have, it’s just not as useful as your other options. Its value drops even further as you get more gear, since your base heals will be bigger and you’ll be able to support more Haste.

• Every 600 points of Critical Strike is equal to 1% increased crit chance.

Reforging

Reforging can only be done for secondary stats, so you won’t be able to alter the Intellect or Stamina on your gear. Holy Paladins will want to reforge less valuable stats to Spirit until they are comfortable with their mana supply. After that, Spirit and other less valuable stats can be reforged into Haste to try to reach one of your breakpoints, or Mastery otherwise.

1. Spirit (until no mana concerns)
2. Haste (to reach a breakpoint)
3. Mastery (any other situation)