Stats going into 4.3 for holy pally

[iholycow]

Hello,

I've been recently playing with different stats and builds for my pally. I most recently tried a mastery /spirit build. I've gone from 10ish mastery to 18 but ive lost around 1000 haste. The haste lost I've only noticed a .1 second loss in my cast time on Divine Light. The extra mastery has doubled my healing from illuminated healing. The only way I don't see this being the premier build in 4.3 is if we're spamming holy radiance. Do you think that this play style is viable?

Along with this I've looked closer to my gemming and I recently decided to gem straight int, besides 2 int / mastery gems and 1 int / spirit gem where the socket bonus was +20. My thinking behind this is that 10 int > 20 spirit. I looked at your gemming choices and you have done what I was doing before and going for socket bonuses, which means you value 20 spirit > 10 int. What is the thinking behind this, especially with your already high spirit builds.

Thanks for all the great work you guys do.

[DiamondTear]

The only way I don't see this being the premier build in 4.3 is if we're spamming holy radiance.

There's your problem.

Along with this I've looked closer to my gemming and I recently decided to gem straight int, besides 2 int / mastery gems and 1 int / spirit gem where the socket bonus was +20. My thinking behind this is that 10 int > 20 spirit. I looked at your gemming choices and you have done what I was doing before and going for socket bonuses, which means you value 20 spirit > 10 int. What is the thinking behind this, especially with your already high spirit builds.

The value of spirit is 1.3 times higher in 4.3, so it's not really the appropriate time to cut back on spirit.

[iholycow]

I don't believe that holy radiance spamming is going to be the healing style for holy pallies, unless the raid is stacked with tank healers as is. I think we will still have our niche as tank healers.

As a healer isn't absorbing damage > throughput, which if our shields can match our raw throughput wouldn't it give a greater advantage. Yet a lot of pallies seem to deem it the other way, with out any justification.

As far as the spirit gemming concern. I wasn't saying to forget about spirit. I was merely saying that with your current gems your valuing 20 spirit > 10 int. I was curious what the reason behind that was. I will in 4.3 be looking to have around 3.5k spirit.