This post grew out of an answer I wrote for someone on the PlusHeal forums; I figured other people might find it useful too.
By the time you hit 80 and do a couple of instances, you’ll likely have upgraded a lot of your gear, if not all of it – only a few pieces of BT and Sunwell gear are better than the iLevel 187-200 blues you’ll find in level 80 instances and heroics and on the rep vendors.
One of the easiest ways to wring some extra oomph out of your gear is to make sure it’s fully enchanted – sure, don’t enchant something you pick up at level 73 that you know will be gone by level 77, but once you start picking up stuff in the endgame you really owe it to yourself – and the people you play with – to maximise your gear. The good news is that right now is a cheap time to get your gear enchanted; crafters and enchanters are often willing to do things for very low fees or even provide some of the materials, because they’re scavenging for skill-ups!
So, without further ado, here are the holy-pally-relevant item enhancements that have been introduced in Wrath, along with a bit of commentary and analysis of the choices.
You’ll note that for some slots there are various degrees of enchants for the same stat. In Wrath, many enchants have a basic version with very reasonable mats, and a top-of-the-line version with absolutely hideous mats. Spellpower to weapon is a good example: +50 Spellpower only requires 10 Infinite Dust and 2 Greater Cosmic Essences; +63 Spellpower requires 40 Infinite Dust, 20 Greater Cosmic Essences and 6 Abyss Crystals. Clearly, you’re best off saving the top-of-the-line enchants for gear that won’t be replaced for a long time, and use the cheaper equivalents on blues and early epics.
Helm
Your choice here; I tend to prefer Crit over mp5, so that’s what I’d pick.
Shoulders
Again, your choice here depending on whether you prefer Crit or mp5.
Cloak
Greater Speed is the obvious winner here. Darkglow Embroidery is a reasonable alternative (according to WoWhead it’s got a 35% proc rate with a 75s internal cooldown) if you’re one of the rare paladins who took tailoring. (Damn clothadins!) If you’re having a problem with aggro on specific fights, just get a secondary cloak with Wisdom on it for those fights only.
Chest
10 Int is worth about 4 mp5, a tiny amount of Spell Crit, 150 mana and 2 spellpower. Your call as to whether that’s better than 8 mp5; numerically it’s about on par. I’d be inclined to go for Powerful Stats, simply because not only do you get the benefits of 10 int, but you get all the other stats as well. However, if you’re low on mp5 and feeling the pinch (or you can’t afford the significantly higher cost of the Powerful Stats enchant) Greater Mana Restore is a perfectly reasonable choice.
Bracers
The stand-out winner here is the +23/+30 Spellpower (or the Fur Lining for leatherworkers). +16 Int is nice enough for early gear, and very cheap on mats, but is nowhere near good enough to compete with the spellpower enchants.
Note that unlike all the other crafter-only item enhancements, the blacksmith’s bonus socket is in addition to a regular enchant. Blacksmiths have no excuse for not making use of this.
Hands
Given the relative size of the enchants, the Spellpower enchant is vastly better than the Blasting enchant; it’s the only choice here. (And it’s way cheaper on mats, to boot.) For engineers, the Haste tinker apparently works out around a static 24 Haste Rating, which is okay if you’re scrounging for speed, but Spellpower is still way better.
And, as with the Bracers, Blacksmiths should absolutely be socketing their gloves at all times. There’s no reason not to.
Belt
These are BoE and craftable by blacksmiths for anyone’s use. There’s no reason not to use them, so do it. A free gem? Yes please!
Legs
Much of a muchness here. As a general rule Spirit is all but useless for paladins, so the Stamina threads are better; however, if you regularly get innervates or have much better access to the mats, the Spirit threads are okay.
Boots
Both have their upsides; now that Judgements are important to Holy paladins for Judgements of the Pure (and Heart of the Crusader, for the newly-popular critadin builds with 18-20 points in Ret), Hit Rating is not entirely a waste of time. I’d probably go for Icewalker myself, but either is acceptable.
Rings
if you’re an enchanter, do this; if not, your rings go unenchanted.
Weapon
The +Spellpower enchants are the obvious choices here; the Crit and Hit of Accuracy are nice (see the ‘Boots’ section for Spell Hit discussion), but 50-63 Spellpower is an order of magnitude more powerful. I list the Spirit enchant here solely because you may wish to carry a +Spirit weapon and offhand to be swapped in when you get innervated (for instance, after a battle rez). If you don’t get innervates, don’t bother – and, obviously, don’t take the +Spirit gear out of the hands of druids and priests who can make better use of it.
Shield
Well, that’s an easy one. :)
Happy gearing!
3.0.8 brings two welcome changes to holy paladin glyphs:
