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Daily Thoughts: More Paladin Changes Incoming

November 1, 2010

Here’s some changes from one of the latest beta builds. Playing around with my holy spells a little bit and checking the tool-tips, these seem to be in place on the live servers as well. So what does this mean to you Holy Paladins? 30% increased base healing from all of your main heals. Read the changes and I’ll get to some explanations after.

Holy Radiance‘s effectiveness now diminish on targets farther than X yards away.
Divine Light base healing has been increased by 30 percent, from 8,538-9,512 to 11,100-12,366.
Holy Wrath now scales from 61 percent of spellpower, up from 30 percent. Base damage is reduced by 22 percent, from 3,122 to 2,435.
Exorcism now scales from 34.4 percent of spellpower or AP, up from 15 percent. Base damage increased by 15 percent from 2,343 to 2,741.
Flash of Light base healing has been increased by 30 percent, from 5,313-5,961 to 6,907-7,750.
Lay on Hands no longer restores mana.
Holy Light base healing has been increased by 30 percent.
Beacon of Light now lasts 5 minutes, up from 1 minute.
Mastery: Illuminated Healing now absorbs 10 percent of the amount healed, up from 8 percent. Now lasts 8 seconds, up from 6 seconds. Each point of mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.25 percent, up from 1 percent.
Holy Shock base healing has been increased by 30 percent, from 3,033-3,285 to 3,943-4,271.

Outside of large base healing buffs to FoL, HL, DL, and HS, there’s a handful of other small nerfs and important buffs. Small nerf to the range on Holy Radiance, though who really cares? We want big tank heals, not weakish AoE heals on CD. We also lose the mana return from Lay on Hands. While this is technically a nerf to the spell, the new glyph allows for the spell pretty much puts it right back in, so we’re sitting good still. The biggest news here is the buff to our mastery. Not only does it absorb more than before up to 10% of the healing done from 8, it lasts two seconds longer. Each point of mastery is 25% more effective as well, potentially making it pretty worthwhile to stack some mastery through reforging.

Although Holy gets some use out of the buff to exorcism should help rets dps out pretty well with about a large increase to its scaling and base stats. Hopefully I can take these and test them out, but I’ve been a little more focused on gearing my new resto shaman. Having a lot more fun there than his other spec, enhancement. Probably some updates on that tomorrow!

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Daily Thoughts: Holy Paladin 4.0.1 Continued

October 18, 2010

Well, another day of healing as a Holy Paladin and still Flash of Light is stronger than Holy Light and very expensive. Maybe I was half expecting my massive Holy Lights to be back – they weren’t.

Today I ran a couple of heroics and killed Ignis in Ulduar for the weekly quest. Definitely do not feel as powerful as I used to. Not to say that it was very hard to heal that content nor did anyone die. I suppose the shaman who pulled before the tank died but, don’t enhance shamans always die? I’m not sure that counts. No, it definitely doesn’t count. Regardless, it takes a lot more attention to make sure that people don’t die (shamans aside). Prior to 4.0.1, there was really no need to do anything other than hit Holy Light, especially with the Glyph of Holy light which added a splash heal to nearby players. Finally, I’m picking up on the idea that I have to use Holy Shock on cool down. Outside of HS, FL spam is still the way to go for most fights without huge incoming damage. This is making me want to go after more haste than I had before. Yes, haste was always a go to stat for Holy, but now that HL doesn’t hit like a bus, I need it to hit more often to even attempt a comparable throughput. I see reforging in my future.

Without the Illumination talent which gave mana return on crits, crit is even less valuable than it was. Spirit is still a decent stat as a high damage fight could tax our mana regen after the severe nerf to Divine Plea (10% mana down from 25% mana gained). Proper spell use, AKA Holy Light/Holy Shock, will help negate that mana regen nerf to make sure we can keep casting through out a long fight. I’ll probably reforge a fair chunk of crit into haste so that my little HL’s can do the job still.

The other big factor in mana conservation is Word of Glory. Word of Glory is the Holy Power outlet for Holy. Unlike other HP outlets, Word of Glory scales linearly and each point of Holy Power is worth the same amount of healing. For example, 1 holy power might equal 2,000 healing, while 3 holy power will just equal 6,000 healing. This is an instant cast, mana free heal. Without huge cheap mana regen, free heals are a big deal. What about our other two new spells? Light of Dawn is alright for helping out with incoming AoE damage. If you have a Resto Shaman or Druid, you’re better of letting them do the raid healing. I still haven’t found much use for Divine Light – Paladin’s new big heal. Considering that Flash of Light ends up being a little more throughput and Holy Light is cheap, I just can’t find the right Niche for Divine Light.

One thing that is keeping Holy Paladins a contender for big tank healing is our Mastery – Illuminated Healing, which adds a 8% of the healing done as a bubble that lasts 6 seconds. If your tank is taking consistent damage the bubble will constantly being used, adding a lot of effective healing. The other nice part of Illuminated Healing, it is affected by Beacon of Light Heals. So all healing you do to the raid adds 50% of healing to the tank which constantly places that 8% bubble onto the tank. Keep in mind though, this bubble doesn’t stack, each new heal replaces it and resets the 6 second duration.

That’s all for tonight. I’m thinking about taking Holy into PVP tomorrow, though I might end up focusing on gearing my Fury warrior. As always, comments are welcome. Feel free to ask questions or give feedback/suggestions.

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Holy Paladin Healing – ICC 4.0.1

October 15, 2010

Sorry for the short post tonight, but here goes:

I’m going to need a couple more rounds in ICC and some random dungeons before I can give my full opinion of Holy healing post 4.0.1. This new healing model seems a bit wonky to me. I’m really not used to Holy Light spam being so weak. HL is down to about 40% of the effectiveness compared to its previous incarnation. Flash of light, which used to be the small heal, is now a bigger heal than HL. It’s fast and expensive and can’t be spammed recklessly. Right now, Holy Power seems to be on the verge of useless since Holy Shock is still better overall than a 3 point word of glory. There’s also this relatively weak AOE heal ‘Light of Dawn’ that is on a 30 second CD and therefore can’t be used very often.

So what does a Holy Paladin use to heal? Everything! Holy Light is the go to heal for the most part because of its relative efficiency. You’ll also want to throw in Holy Shock almost on cool down because of its chance to provide a 1.5 second reduced cast time on HL as well as 30% reduced cast time of next heal if you talent into it. Use Light of Dawn for when the raid takes some AOE, naturally, and flash of light if someone is taking heavy damage. Honestly, I didn’t much use the new big heal, Divine Light. High incoming damage is better responded to with Flash of Light.

Other than that, use the normal spells as before 4.0.1. Judge to get a haste buff and Beacon the tank. Mana isn’t much of an issue still, stack int/haste and cast away. Healing Dreamwalker is still a blast. I have no idea what’s coming tomorrow, but I’ll see you next time!