Gearing your Paladin.

Oh lord, not another "how to gear up" post.

Hahahahahaha, too bad! I'm moved to blog about this topic right now!

I got on a tangent in my last post about the color quality of items, how points add up and become item levels... blah blah blah. It was a layman's post and far from the official process by which developers build game items.

This post will talk about different options a Paladin has in gear, and I will add my opinion to each post explainaing which stats I feel are important and why I will prefer to use those stats for each of the various roles.

Stats and Spec (from least to most important and why)!

Retribution:
STR - Contributes to amount of damage stopped on a successful shield Block, and also gives Attack Power (1 point STR = 2 points AP)
Attack Power - Gives weapon damage
AGI - Contributes to your chance to Parry, Block, and Dodge attacks, also gives Melee Crit %
Melee Crit - Increases your chance to critically hit with weapons
Hit Rating - Increases your chance to hit with weapons at all. Big damage and critical attacks mean nothing if you miss your target. Don't ignore this important stat!
INT - Contributes to overall mana Mana and Spell Crit Chance (which I don't mind having for Judgement of Command). Every single one of your active combat abilities requires mana (minus Auras, if you want to call them active). Think of it as blue Rage (hey, that would be a great name for a blog!). And while I don't consider INT a super important stat anymore (on Retribution gear), it IS a very nice thing to have and I will GLADLY take it when I can get it. That of course assumes that the INT doesn't come at the cost of any of the stats above it (item levels again, heh).

Why?:
I have no hard and fast rules by which I gear up, so as with everything you read here, it's just the way I do or see things. Now I say STR first because 1 point STR = 2 points Attack Power. Attack Power = Damage. So you could also say that STR = Damage, I mean, it does. But STR has more things it affects than just Damage. How much damage is blocked by a successful shield block for one. Yes, I try to carry a separate set of gear for tanking, but in the event that I have to use the same piece of armor in both my Ret and Prot suits, the STR is more versatile than straight attack power. But there is an exception! The best DPS plate pieces I've found have STR, STA, Attack Power, and Melee Crit % on them (and some INT if it's a token drop). That's a very focused piece of melee DPS gear. However, if I compare a piece of armor with +60 Attack Power against a piece with 20 STR on it, I'm taking the straight AP piece! Why? Because 20 points STR times 2 (2 points AP for 1 point STR mind you) only equals +40 Attack Power (theorycraft, lol).

Protection
(But for God's sake, don't read my opinions on Paladin tanking! Go to Ardent Defender, Honor's Code, or Maintankadin instead!):
Defense - Reduces melee damage you take when hit. Always a good thing! Amirite?
Shield Block - Increases the chance that your little Paladin will raise his shield in time to block and negate some melee damage. For me, not being Protection spec and not having those innate blocking bonuses and defensive abilities means that I have to compensate for negated damage with shield blocking (and a Thorium, or even Mithril Shield Spike is always a good thing to have, even if the threat gain is negligable).
Spell Damage - Increases damage done by spells. In our case, Seal and Judgement of Righteousness. This is NOT something I encourage stacking (the stats making up the item level on each of your gear pieces are better allocated to more a defensive bonus). Instead, I encourage you to have ONE, single-hand weapon with a very high Spell Damage bonus on it, like the Continuum Blade to give a healthy damage bonus to your Seal of Righteousness. Hell, enchant the sucker with Spell Damage enchant too! The purpose of this, of course is higher chunks of Threat built with each hit.
STA - Increases your Hit Points and your Resilience (which makes you harder to nail with critical hits). I get hit while tanking... a lot. On the rare chance that I get a tanking item with some gem sockets, guess what's going in them? That's right, STA gems! STA is your lifeblood. If your STA is too low, then your Hit Points are too low! If your Hit Points are too low, then you will be crushed like an ant before your healer can finish casting their big healing spell on you, and your group will die! I don't put STA up higher on this list because there are few items in the game that don't offer STA bonuses. It's the most-itemized stat in the entire game! Show me a Blue Plate Armor item that doesn't have STA on it! Well... rather... I'm sure you could show me a Blue Plate drop without it, but you'd have to search for it for a long while. I don't think there's a single Set item in the game without some Stamina on it. Put simply, it could quite possibly be the single most important stat in the game because of it's direct tie to your Hit Point pool. But it is because that Stamina is on just about any piece of armor in the game, and it is a really, REALLY common bonus that I don't put more emphasis on it.

Why?:
I know that I just said that STA is the "most important stat in the game"; yet in the above section on Retribution, I don't have STA listed at all. Why is that? I don't have that listed because the my mentality about the Retribution spec is one of all-out offense. When solo, if you boost yourself to the absolute maximum of your damage-dealing capabilites you will be able to kill anything faster than it can kill you. When grouped, you have a 30% passive Threat Reduction (when the Righteous Fury ability is not active) with the talent Fanaticism, which is good, because now you actually need it. Ideally, you will also have a tank to hold that Threat while you are dealing DPS, so the boss or monster, when being handled correctly, won't be focusing on you anyhow. Hence, STA is given up with Retribution gear in favor of more offensive stats.


Holy
(I'm far from an expert here. My "healing" consists of spamming Flash of Light and the occasional Holy Light when my Flash just isn't enough, all whilst wearing my healing outfit and clicking my Decursive 2 icons when they light up and someone catches a debuff):
+ Healing - Increased Healing increases the amount healed by your healing spells. Simple enough. As Ret, or any spec really, bigger heals for the same Mana cost are without a doubt the way to go. I don't have a lot of mana to begin with (though I do have far more Mana in my Holy outift than I do in any other). So for me, without talents boosting my healing efficiency or my Mana pool, I need all the healing bang for my buck that I can get.
INT - Increases your Mana pool. Increases Spell Critical Chance. Vital to any caster, a healer especially, is Mana Mana Mana! Without it, either pop a potion or your group dies. Some Paladins argue that INT is even more important than +Healing. That very well may be the case for them, for me, I just find that most +Healing simply comes on items that already have INT. So it's a natural coefficient for itemization. Hell, I don't even really know the calculation for how much Mana a point of INT gives you, or how much, if any, does INT boost your Healing and Damage spells. Furthermore, I have no idea what the ratio of INT > Spell Crit % is. So there, I just discredited myself entirely (like I needed any help with that).
Spell Damage - I take Healing items over Spell Damage, always. Then again, I never put on my Holy outfit to kill things, ever. For career Holy Paladins though, this might be something to consider, but I'm certainly not fit to advise or explain. Instead, I give you a pat on the butt and send you on over to Blessing of Kings, "good luck!" /wave. Coriel knows her stuff, and keeps her blog updated! I refer all of your "leveling-as-Holy" questions to her!

Why?:
I feel like I did a pretty good job explaining this above. I will add here though that I prefer a specific weapon setup for my Holy outfit. One-hand Mace and Shield are the weapons of choice for me when it comes to Holy. Again, I don't level as Holy, I only heal, but if my tank ever misses a beat, I just might get beat on. And if I die while healing, then my party dies as well. Having Plate Armor and a Shield with 2k-3k or more Armor on it usually buys the time it takes for the tank to regain the aggro and for me to not die. There's also quite a few respectable shields in the game now for healers (well, Paladins and Shaman anyway) that offer hefty bonuses to healing along with the Block and Armor values to keep death at bay for a while longer. So a good INT and Healing Shield is a must, a good example of this would be the Light-Bearer's Faith Shield. This won't help you much until you're at a position where you can run Heroic Dungeons and collect Heroic Badges. But I plan to run lots of heroics before stepping foot into Karazhan this time around (I always felt out-classes wearing my BoP blues from normal 5 mans when entering Kara for the first time). For a fine example of a great healing mace to couple with the above shield would be Mogor's Anointing Club, available from the very difficult Ring of Blood quest in Nagrand. For my own Holy set, I went with a much simpler and easier-to-obtain mace, the Preserver's Cudgel, which cost me only time for faction and a few gold spent at the Cenarion Post in Zangarmarsh, though I'll definitely upgrade later on. For now, though, it's a great jumping-off point for a healing mace.