Paladin Tier 11, first Cataclysm armor set

Keep in mind that as my previous posts, these are only Beta PTR versions and could be changed before coming to live (which was postponed to early/mid December it seems).

The Holy Paladin set is here (from MMO Champion):

Head - Reinforced Sapphirium Headguard

cost is one head token from raids
+281 Intellect

+512 Stamina

+228 Spirit

Meta Socket Socket Bonus: +30 Intellect

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 168.

Shoulders - Reinforced Sapphirium Mantle

cost is one shoulder token from raids
+233 Intellect

+380 Stamina

+149 Spirit

Red Socket Socket Bonus: +10 Critical Strike Rating

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 169.

Chest - Reinforced Sapphirium Breastplate

cost is 2200 valor points (gained in raids and probably daily heroics)
+301 Intellect

+512 Stamina

+228 Spirit

Yellow Socket Socket Bonus: +20 Intellect

Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 188.

Hands - Reinforced Sapphirium Gloves

cost is 1650 valor points (gained in raids and probably daily heroics)
+233 Intellect

+380 Stamina

+169 Spirit

Yellow Socket Socket Bonus: +10 Mastery Rating

Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 149.

Legs - Reinforced Sapphirium Greaves

cost is 2200 valor points (gained in raids and probably daily heroics)
+301 Intellect

+512 Stamina

+213 Spirit

Red Socket Socket Bonus: +20 Intellect

Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 203.

All are epic ilevel 359 plate armor items. The set bonus is:

• (2) Set: Increases the critical strike chance of your Holy Light spell by 5%.
• (4) Set: Whenever your Holy Radiance spell is active, you gain 1620 Spirit.

I won't discuss costs or valor points, I have my views on the topic but it is not the day for that, and we're not yet sure about anything related to them.
The items themselves reflect the changes to spirit regen, though int will stays a very important stat as it now provides you with the equivalent of spellpower.
If you've followed my last posts about Holy Paladin talents, you know that crit does not provide us with any sort of mana regen anymore. Hence I am sad to find 3 pieces with a huge amount of crit on this set and only one with haste. I guess a lot of us will be reforging them into more haste, at least we have this option now.

About the set bonus mmm ... I'll have to see it live to decide. The crit bonus isn't bad but I wonder if Holy Light will be of much use in raids, remember that it is now our "medium" heal hence not useful for emergencies neither for big pushes on the tank.
The 4 pieces bonus seems to be a nice mana regen bonus, though Holy Radiance is both on a 1mn cooldown and consumes 40% of our base manapool to cast. Once again, has to be tested.

Not much comments from my part, but if you wanted to look at our next gear set, that's a first view of it.
See you soon for more cataclysmic news.

edit (10/13):
Patch 4.0.1 is now live. You can find the last update concerning gear, stats and reforging on this post: Patch 4.0.1 is going live. You are not prepared!
It is worth noting that Spirit is considered a secondary stat and can be reforged into. It is hence possible to change half the crit rating of an item into spirit. I'll probably do that on most of my gear.

edit (12/30):
I'd advise you to read the neat Home | Best in Slot Holy Paladin Resource. You will find there a complete list of BiS items for Holy Paladins and for each slot an alternative to our poorly itemized T11 with some greatly needed haste rating.

Build 13066 does change everything.

Or Not :P
You can find all the details on MMO Champion, but for Holy Paladins here is the only change that concern you:

Spiritual Focus no longer gives you hit based on your Spirit. Renamed to Paragon of Virtue - Reduces the cooldown of your Divine Protection by 10/20 sec and the cooldown of your Avenging Wrath by 30/60 sec.
Enlightened Judgements now also grants hit rating equal to 50/100% of any Spirit gained from items or effects.

Nothing linked to PvE though Spiritual Focus can have PvE uses, they are very limited. It won't change the 31/5/5 build I gave before much, though if Enlightened Judgements grant range to our judgements as the mmo talent calculator says, then it'll replace the 2 points into the Improved Judgements ret talent. As the calculator has changed, you can find the new build here. It will be a 33/5/3 or a 31/5/5 depending on range being linked to Enlightened Judgements or not.

For another view of our new talents, you can find a Prot analysis of build 13033 on Rhidach website Righteous Defense.
If you want more analysis of Holy Talents and skills, I'd advise you to read the detailed article on Paladin Schmaladin and the healing "tips" and comments on Blessing of Kings.

See you soon hopefully patch 4.0.1 will hit live soon, for good and bad :)

Cataclysm Holy Paladin Build

Good News Everyone !

I'm sorry for the lack of activity on my blog for such a time, summer job isn't easy (fewer people and often as much work to do), and summer raiding isn't either (same reasons ;p).
On the plus side, my small guild is now on Putricide hard mode in 10-Man, reason for the silly intro. I've had a lot of fun with ICC hard modes, more than normal modes from what I recall of them so many months ago ... (yes one year on a single instance is way too long Blizzard :p).

But I'm not here to discuss ICC, I guess most of people reading blogs are close to the end anyway now. A new build has been deployed on the PTR (news on MMO Champion as always). Paladin talents have been modified as always too (hybrid classes are those that give the most problems to Blizzard clearly). And as you can guess the Holy build has changed accordingly. If it wasn't completely true before, I now can say that there is a cookie cutter build for PvE Holy Paladins in this PTR Build 13033.

You can use MMO champion talent calculator to look at my 31/5/5 build, that I guess most paladins will get as soon as the patch is out (assuming talents don't change until then).
Why am I so sure it's cookie-cutter ?
The reason is very simple, it contains all +heal talents and not a single pure PvP talent like Arbiter of the Light, Blazing Light, Denounce, Blessed Life and Spiritual Focus from the Holy tree.

I'm a bit sad that Blizzard didn't keep their words saying we would have choice, but I guess it's too hard to do on an hybrid class with PvP talents required in nearly every tree.

Feel free to discuss, and as always have fun :)
Can't wait to roll a Goblin Squig Herder myself, oh sorry .. hunter :P

edit:
The talent builder has changed since this post on MMO Champion due to new patch builds. You can find the build on this link. Future builds/patches will probably break it again follow the blog updates to find the last build.

edit 2 (10/13):
Patch 4.0.1 is now live. You can find the last version of my build and a detailed discussion of the talents and gameplay on this post: Patch 4.0.1 is going live. You are not prepared!

edit 3 (12/27):
The update for Cataclysm and lvl 85 is finally up, you can find it here:
Holy Paladin Cataclysm Build at level 85