4.0.1: Talents & Mastery

There is an updated TALENT BUILD written for 4.0.3a. The Mastery Info is current.

With the arrival of the patch, comes new questions, new concerns and a whole lot of relearning what we already knew. Each class, each spec will have a new way of doing things, a new way of gemming, glyphing…a new way of doing it all. I am here to help you, the holy paladin, straighten out the kinks of the new patch. I’ve decided to do the guide in a different way, and I am going to do it by parts because a lot of now-outdated information on talents and mastery are being hit and outdated builds. I want to draw attention away from those into these. Hopefully this is still as helpful.

Mastery

These have been changed throughout the course of time, and now exist as:

It is important that you visit your trainer and train the Mastery ability to activate that last bonus at Level 80. The Holy mastery places an absorb buff, it says shield but do not expect a spell effect, that will absorb for a small amount of the amount healed. This increase by 1% per point of Mastery.

How Mastery works

Mastery is a stat taht we will not see on gear right now unless you decide to reforge your gear. You can visit a Reforger in any city next to the Enchanting trainers. You can opt to remove a little bit of a stat like hit, haste, crit, etc. and replace it with similar stats including Mastery. Mastery is similar to Expertise & Hit in the way it is calculated. You receive a small percentage of Mastery based on Mastery Rating.

Reforging a piece to add 16 Mastery added .35 points. It seems as if we start with 8 Mastery. To add a full point in mastery you need ~46 rating.

The Build

Right now, we won’t have access to all 41 points, obviously we have 5 more levels to go when Cataclysm is actually released, so we have 36 to work with now and 31 must be dumped into Holy before we can receive any other support.

Holy

2/3 Protector of the Innocent – 3/3 Judgements of the Pure

3/3 Clarity of Purpose – 2/2 Last Word

1/1 Divine Favor – 2/2 Infusion of Light – 2/2 Day Break

2/2 Enlightened Judgements – 1/1 Beacon of Light – 3/3 Speed of Light – 1/1 Sacred Cleansing

3/3 Conviction – 2/2 Paragon of Virtue

3/3 Tower of Radiance

1/1 Light of Dawn

–I have not opted into any abilities that increase damage and chose not to do Aura Mastery as I have not benefitted from its ulility in Wrath. I also opted to not take Blessed Life as I should as I should be more focused on healing and using Holy Shock on ever CD for Holy Power–

Protection

3/3 Divinity -1/3 Eternal Glory

–Whether or not mana may or may not be a concern, the ability to do HS+WoG+WoG could be an invaluable asset–

Retribution

1/3 Crusade

–It can be debated whether to take two points in this and none in Eternal Glory but as I mentioned before I believe the combo, and added healing of this talent, is priceless–

But there you have it. I hope to see this change a little bit so that our points aren’t so “cookie-cutter” when we hit 85 but for now we go with what we have got and as always, feel free to ask questions and I will answer to the best of my ability.

Stay tuned for glyph updates and other 4.0.1 tips!