Red Dragonscale Set: BiS Forever?
Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2026 2:36 pm
Ex-Nordanaar player here, when I started playing Naxx was already out, so I totally missed how good this set is. TL:DR according to my calculations this set (all 4 pieces) are BiS until K40 and even then T3.5 would need 5 pieces to compete with this, if my memory serves right about stats on T3.5.
There are two reasons why this set is so good. The first and less important one is the really high healing values on items. They're mail, so each piece gives an extra 6-7 healing than what is stated on the item. Set pieces usually rely on having strong 5-6-8 piece bonuses to be viable, because almost always some set pieces will be bad. For example, T1 belt and helmet are so-so due to their low amount of healing. T2 shoulder, chest and especially boots are quite underwhelming. Not these items. They are all individually very strong in addition to strong 2 and 3 piece bonuses.
The bigger factor is the 4 piece bonus. That HoT effect can occur on each one of your holy strike healing targets similar to a chain heal. Each time you do a holy strike and heal 5 people -even though the proc chance of that heal is low individually- you are rolling that dice 5 times and that significantly increases how often that effect procs. Currently, that healing effect is 7% of my overall healing in logs, which is quite a lot.
One thing to note with these set bonuses is that, for Holy Paladin, the best set bonuses are always the first ones. The 3 piece bonus for T1 and T2 are the best ones, 2 piece bonus for T3 is the best one. You don't necessarily gain anything important from having 5 or 8 pieces of a set. You get 57 extra healing for having 3 pieces, but 15% mana reduction on your holy light spell at 5 pieces for example.
You can probably see where this is going. By keeping 4 pieces of Red Dragonscale Set and only replacing the other slots to get the strong set bonuses, you are arguably stronger than being in full T2 or even T3. There's almost never a reason to replace any of these pieces.
So currently we are in MC+Onyxia phase. Wearing 4 pieces of Red Dragonscale set leaves our helmet, glove, bracer, belt and ring slots open. Helmet is either Azuregos helmet for this phase or T2. Gloves are from ZG Hakkar, bracer is from Scholo or T1, belt is from AH.
When we move to BWL, I think the BiS setup will be having full Red Dragonscale set still, but using T2 helmet, belt and bracers to get 57 extra healing from set bonuses. T2 chest piece is objectively worse than Red Dragonscale set even from a stat perspective, same goes for shoulders and boots and so on. Even without the 4 piece bonus, Red Dragonscale set wins.
If my memory serves me right, T2.5 absolutely sucked ass for holy paladin, so nothing really changes in AQ40. Legplates of Blazing Light would give us 20 healing and extra 1% crit, but would that make up for losing 7% of our overall healing? I don't think so. Holy paladin doesn't need mana regen from spirit or haste. I don't remember what the 5 piece bonus did, so I might be missing something here but T2.5 was bad.
When we get to T3, the 2 piece bonus is the massive one. It gives you SIXTY flat increase on your flash of light spell. The easiest way to get this while still keeping 3 piece T2 and 4 piece Red Dragonscale is getting the T3 ring from KT and replacing ZG gloves with T3. You may lose a tiny amount of healing, but the flat 60 healing on your flash of light increase is worth almost 150 healing power.
The poor itemization of paladin set pieces (haste is useless for holy paladin and MP5 is usually useless when you are constantly meleeing with seal of wisdom) and frontloaded set bonuses makes this set BiS forever.
So what are the takeaways from all this? Should paladin be nerfed then? No. According to overall logs, paladin is the 3rd strongest healer out of 4, so it is actually in a slightly weak state. Should this set be nerfed? Also no, because the problem isn't that this set is too good, but that the alternatives are too bad. Haste is basically useless for holy paladin, this isn't WoTLK where we are spamming Holy Light. We're using holy shock constantly (instant heal), melee healing (instant) and our crits proc heals automatically (instant). Usually 30-40% of our healing at most is impacted by haste, making this stat quite inefficient for us. Flat healing and crit will always triumph over haste because they impact all the spells.
My recommendations:
1) Replace the %haste stat on holy paladin set pieces with spell crit. Then we would have an actual progression. Compare the Red Dragonscale Breastplate with T2 chest for example. 66 healing versus 48 healing and 2% haste. If it was 48 healing and 2 crit, then that would have been an upgrade over it. As it stands now though, it isn't because haste is useless.
2) Revisit 5 and 8 piece bonuses for T2, T2.5 and T3. Anything past the first set bonuses for these items are really weak. Compared to priest T2 for example, our T2 8 piece is laughably bad. I don't know what would be appropriate, but it is certainly not these bonuses.
There are two reasons why this set is so good. The first and less important one is the really high healing values on items. They're mail, so each piece gives an extra 6-7 healing than what is stated on the item. Set pieces usually rely on having strong 5-6-8 piece bonuses to be viable, because almost always some set pieces will be bad. For example, T1 belt and helmet are so-so due to their low amount of healing. T2 shoulder, chest and especially boots are quite underwhelming. Not these items. They are all individually very strong in addition to strong 2 and 3 piece bonuses.
The bigger factor is the 4 piece bonus. That HoT effect can occur on each one of your holy strike healing targets similar to a chain heal. Each time you do a holy strike and heal 5 people -even though the proc chance of that heal is low individually- you are rolling that dice 5 times and that significantly increases how often that effect procs. Currently, that healing effect is 7% of my overall healing in logs, which is quite a lot.
One thing to note with these set bonuses is that, for Holy Paladin, the best set bonuses are always the first ones. The 3 piece bonus for T1 and T2 are the best ones, 2 piece bonus for T3 is the best one. You don't necessarily gain anything important from having 5 or 8 pieces of a set. You get 57 extra healing for having 3 pieces, but 15% mana reduction on your holy light spell at 5 pieces for example.
You can probably see where this is going. By keeping 4 pieces of Red Dragonscale Set and only replacing the other slots to get the strong set bonuses, you are arguably stronger than being in full T2 or even T3. There's almost never a reason to replace any of these pieces.
So currently we are in MC+Onyxia phase. Wearing 4 pieces of Red Dragonscale set leaves our helmet, glove, bracer, belt and ring slots open. Helmet is either Azuregos helmet for this phase or T2. Gloves are from ZG Hakkar, bracer is from Scholo or T1, belt is from AH.
When we move to BWL, I think the BiS setup will be having full Red Dragonscale set still, but using T2 helmet, belt and bracers to get 57 extra healing from set bonuses. T2 chest piece is objectively worse than Red Dragonscale set even from a stat perspective, same goes for shoulders and boots and so on. Even without the 4 piece bonus, Red Dragonscale set wins.
If my memory serves me right, T2.5 absolutely sucked ass for holy paladin, so nothing really changes in AQ40. Legplates of Blazing Light would give us 20 healing and extra 1% crit, but would that make up for losing 7% of our overall healing? I don't think so. Holy paladin doesn't need mana regen from spirit or haste. I don't remember what the 5 piece bonus did, so I might be missing something here but T2.5 was bad.
When we get to T3, the 2 piece bonus is the massive one. It gives you SIXTY flat increase on your flash of light spell. The easiest way to get this while still keeping 3 piece T2 and 4 piece Red Dragonscale is getting the T3 ring from KT and replacing ZG gloves with T3. You may lose a tiny amount of healing, but the flat 60 healing on your flash of light increase is worth almost 150 healing power.
The poor itemization of paladin set pieces (haste is useless for holy paladin and MP5 is usually useless when you are constantly meleeing with seal of wisdom) and frontloaded set bonuses makes this set BiS forever.
So what are the takeaways from all this? Should paladin be nerfed then? No. According to overall logs, paladin is the 3rd strongest healer out of 4, so it is actually in a slightly weak state. Should this set be nerfed? Also no, because the problem isn't that this set is too good, but that the alternatives are too bad. Haste is basically useless for holy paladin, this isn't WoTLK where we are spamming Holy Light. We're using holy shock constantly (instant heal), melee healing (instant) and our crits proc heals automatically (instant). Usually 30-40% of our healing at most is impacted by haste, making this stat quite inefficient for us. Flat healing and crit will always triumph over haste because they impact all the spells.
My recommendations:
1) Replace the %haste stat on holy paladin set pieces with spell crit. Then we would have an actual progression. Compare the Red Dragonscale Breastplate with T2 chest for example. 66 healing versus 48 healing and 2% haste. If it was 48 healing and 2 crit, then that would have been an upgrade over it. As it stands now though, it isn't because haste is useless.
2) Revisit 5 and 8 piece bonuses for T2, T2.5 and T3. Anything past the first set bonuses for these items are really weak. Compared to priest T2 for example, our T2 8 piece is laughably bad. I don't know what would be appropriate, but it is certainly not these bonuses.