Holy Light XI also costs 15 more mana baseline than Gheal VII (144 more talented) and has a coefficient of 14.28% less (34.28% less talented) while healing for a baseline of 269 less average. The only difference is that Holy Light gets an extra 580 from BoL (if its up) and is .5 seconds faster to cast if LG is up. And on an additional note, no one can maintain a HL XI spam, its actually very rarely used outside of a DF+HLXI macro (9 is our preferred rank).

FoL is extremely efficient, but with the current devs' idea that "hard content = more damage" it begins to lose ground unless you have a lot of healers on one target.

Agreed.
At the end of the day, you want 3 Paladins' in your raid, no matter what their spec is. (With one being Holy for Imp Wis.)

I don't see why people say this will keep Holy viable.

If mana doesn't matter for the spirit based classes, then 9mp5 isn't that valuable anymore.

I also find it laughable at this point in BC people expect Prot and Ret to carry the paladin class. It may be true, but it's pretty funny.

Anyway, at the end of the day Holy has to stand on it's own two feet, and not rely on auras/seals/blessings to be in a raid.

And don't forget that a plate+shield wearing healer can judge wisdom on a boss between heals. Anyone will keep wanting those kinda melee'ing healers, and that plate isn't only there to look shiny.

I'll go ahead and debate that point a bit. After having some turnover in our paladin ranks (I'm the paladin CL for our guild) I went ahead and did some fleshing out of theories about 3 paladins vs 2 paladins and it boils down to buffs and
in general it looks like this*

Basically who gains when you have 3 paladins (in this case 1 ret / 2 holy, for prot it changes very little):
Really Good Benefits
Hunters get a very good 3rd buff (Might) (though if they could handle threat they would be getting salv instead, this could be different in your guild, in ours our hunters hit hard and feign infrequently)
DPS Warriors get a very good 3rd buff (either might or kings, depends on the fight)
Rogues get a very good 3rd buff (Kings)
Ret Paladins get Kings / Might (depends on the fight)
Spriests get wisdom

Medium Benefits:
Mages either get wisdom or kings (depends on the fight)
Ele Shaman get kings or wisdom (depends on the fight)
Enh Shaman get might

Small Benefits:
Resto Druids get salv /light
Resto Shaman get salv /light
Feral druids get light (which is useful to 3/25ths of the raid)
Prot warriors get light (which is useful to 3/25ths of the raid / sanc if a prot pally is in the raid)
Warlocks get Wisdom (very very small benefit)
Holy Paladins get Light
Holy Priests get salv /light

So the real question is what would your rather have, the really good buffs for those few raid members, or say, another resto shaman (heroism, totems, chain heal), COH priest for aoe healing, (I think 3 paladins outweighs having 3 resto druids, they don't bring much synergy or raid buffs)

With all that non PTR related nonsense out of the way let's get back on topic:
I don't know why paladins think Priests and Druids shouldn't get the Regen change. Right now I know in at least our raids, (and others I've seen on WWS) they are habitual pot chuggers, where as I chug a pots on a handful of fights (Illidan, IC, BBoil, Shahraz). I don't see the change as something that is going to force out paladins any more than the fact that the fights in Sunwell (and many in BT) do not favour our healing. I've been on the PTR and seen Kalecgos and Felymyst v4(the one with the aura) (Brutallus was disabled last time we raided) and those fights are phenomenal for chain heal, COH, HoTs, PoM and pretty much awful for whackamole FoL or HL.

Buffing illumination back to 100% doesn't fix those problems (though as someone who PvPs a fair bit I'd imagine that would kind of unbalance us in 5s). We could get the same exact increase in Mp5 and it wouldn't make us stronger healers, our problem right now in PVE is rarely longevity. (in PVP we could really really use a way of regenning man, and I mean that in the regenerative sense, as in gain mana, not get a 2 for 1 sale after winning the crit lotto).

I could go on and on about what we need (BoL affecting other healers, a 3rd heal that isn't on a 15 second cooldown, a better PVE aura besides just Devo, etc.) and don't need, but that is going straight off topic and into speculation.

What is somewhat odd is that we seem to be picking up a ton of spell haste at seemingly the decrease of spell crit,
Sigurd has a great post summing up some gear choices that would get FoL down to 1.33 seconds (thus increasing it's HPS, maybe enough to make it more vialbe, I'm not sure). While neat on paper, I don't really relish the idea of becoming an immobile, single target version of a Lifebloom stack.

I think Praetorian hit the nail on the head on the first page:
until we get some sort of change on the PTR I don't see anything he said being inaccruate. Hopefully this paladin introspection won't become a warlock LT QQ trend. I can only hope it will also stop these asinine posts about us wearing plate, our 25% more HPS on holy light (numbers pulled from nowhere), and how the Druid and Priest regen changes are gonna take our jobs. Put it on the wow forums

*this list is going to vary from fight to fight as noted, it's a baseline interpretation of how our guild (and likely many many others) sets up paladin buffs when we have 3 paladins.

Or your Prot paladin can judge it once while the Ret paladin keeps it up permanently along with crusader. A holy paladin doesn't bring anything new to the table judgement-wise.

Elemental shaman can already do this and if Moonkin/Shadow Form form weren't so restrictive, they could do so as well. (assuming the priest isn't wearing FSW) Obviously not in a long-term capacity like bear->cat form, but the option exists.

The troubling part is I really don't think there's room in developing content for what Paladin healing has become, and the future of raid design. Even if they revert to 100% Illumination (which wouldn't be a very good idea anyway), the inherent restrictions of single target spam simply fails as other healers with better scaling and more versatile tools fill out.

Paladins really need something off the exotic heals list to continue to serve, some aspect that allows them to develop more.

Here's a short list of what I consider "exotic", as in, not purely a channeled -mana +hp.

Reactive Heal: a heal that automatically heals when damage is taken. (Priest, Shaman)
Intelligent Healing: heal that selects its own target semi-intelligently. (Priest, Shaman)
Multi-Heal: one cast covers multiple targets. (Priest, Shaman, minorly Druid)
Ablative healing: damage absorbing effect rather than a heal. (Priest, minorly Paladin)
Emergency heal: large instant healing or an OSHIT button. (Druid, Shaman, minorly Paladin, very minorly Priest)
Discretionary healing: recepient uses healing at their own discretion after it is provided. (Priest, Warlock)
Combat rez. (Druid, Warlock, minorly Shaman.)
Invulnerability. (Paladin, Mage.)
Fire-and-forget healing. You cast it, it does work without your active intention. HoTs, etc. (Druid, Priest, minorly Shaman.)
"Responsive" healing. Basically, lifebloom and its instant-ticking nature in terms of reducing the impact of a large hit. (Druids only)

Laid out like this, it suggests a few approaches they could take without stepping on other people's toes in terms of class role. The path they are currently taking as regards making Holy Shock an actually acceptable instant heal is a good one, but I think it needs some sort of coefficient bonus as well to really serve well in this regard.

Reviving Blessing of Sacrifice as some sort of healing tool instead of "lol CC in some arena" would be a good option too, I think. Perhaps via some cooldown and duration tweaking so it has a much longer cooldown than duration, but provides a percentile damage transfer instead of a low fixed number. That leaves some room for a Holy talent that reduces the actual damage recieved when a Sacrifice is assigned, which would be almost vital for an idea like this to actually serve acceptably in real PvE.

...

Even if you don't buy in to this approach, a more generally solid idea would be to change the +6% HL crit of Sanctified Light into a straight up -15% mana cost on Holy Light, similar to the Priest talent of equivalent talent depth. Some form of properly active mana regen wouldn't go wrong either; that's one of the biggest and most notable absences, compared to the other three classes.

Something really noticable right here is how depreciated Divine Favor is; it just doesn't matter much, anymore. The marginal gain of a forced crit heal isn't really earthshattering anymore, unlike in the Naxx era where a crit holy light would still be 60% or more of a tanks' HP. It also no longer means a free spell. It's really somewhat of a geriatric mechanic, but there's no absence of those in other classes so there's not much reason to whine. A similar ability is Inner Focus which sufferes many of the same curses, but at least that still has some merit in terms of exploiting a Clearcasting proc in order to get a few ticks of full out-of-combat mana regen while chain casting.

In that regard, I think it's quite notable that the class-defining combat system has absolutely no impact on a Holy paladin playing their spec primary role. It may be a good idea to add some sort of passive effects to the three seals used only for their judgement (Light, Wisdom, and Crusader). IE, having them active but unjudged will slowly heal you/regen your mana/increase your healingpower and spellpower, even if you aren't meleeing.

But that puts us back in "wishful thinking" territory, like the first part of my post.

You illustrate the main problem with paladin healing: a near-complete lack of situational healing abilities. I somewhat blame it on paladins having three completely different talent trees (Healing, Tanking, Damage)--the situational abilities a paladin has are often throw into the Prot / Ret component of the class (many Judgements and Blessings) and applying them means a loss of healing time. Situational healing abilities, desirable as they may be, will clearly have to wait untill Wrath of the Lich King. I very much doubt there will be a new ability in 2.4--and thus discussing it is fairly pointless.

New PTR patch is up. Apparently Lifetap now only takes ~5% health, and seems to restore a lot more mana. On my friend's warlock with 2/2 improved tap and 1100 shadow damage, he spends ~400 health to get ~1400 mana.

Lifetap now drains 5% of maximum health to return 15% of maximum mana. This change, while notable, is not worth fifteen pages of discussion. Please don't derail the goddamned thread again. Thanks.

What the hell...

Seriously? That change confuses me so much. That's a straight PvP buff for warlocks. It really does give them basically infinite mana. There's no reason to ever not lifetap any time you don't have something else to do with a given GCD. I guess they really do just want to reduce warlock PvE DPS?

Basically, PvE warlocks want the most mana per GCD used regardless of the cost (within reason). PvP warlocks want the best possible hp-->mana ratio, and would also prefer the ability to tap without losing large chunks of health.

The original PTR change was a huge hit to PvP warlocks and a small one to PvE locks, so we assumed they wanted to nerf PvP locks and PvE locks took a collateral hit. The new change suggests that they really just want to reduce the rate at which warlocks can regain mana via life tap.

Current PTR version causes more DPS time lost than Live, but requires less healing by a long shot. It hurts Destro a shade more than the other specs for PvE, could be that they're trying to bring them all roughly equal (though coefficients would have to change for that to end up happening). I have nearly no practical knowledge of PvP, so I cannot speak there.

EDIT: beat to most of the punch...

I'm have to believe the newest version of Life Tap isn't at all what they intended. It doesn't make sense at all, especially given their reasoning behind the change in the first place. Until I see otherwise, I'd consider it a bug personally.

PvP warlock : 15k hp, 8k mp lifetap costs 750hp & returns 1200 mana
PvE warlock : 12k hp, 10k mp lifetap costs 600hp & returns 1500 mana

Higher stamina will still result in a bigger loss so I'm not sure if it can be termed a PvP buff. It does reduce the healing strain in all domains though & am confused that Blizz is keen on sticking to this max hp: max mp scaling formula.

Compared to the live server, obviously.

Pretty sure half the people complaining were complaining about the 15% mana part and don't care what the health part is set at.

If they like this ratio, then something closer to 7% hp > 21% mana would be fairer to PvE. PvPwise I would deem it perfect.

Got this before server shut down in sunwell:



Hmm...

Is the Third Gate down on US PvE yet? Could that have been it coming down?

I think due to the roles of the classes that a nice change to make healing paladins much more viable and needed would be to give paladins inspiration. You could give priests a talent to replace it that would increase the healing of CoH,PoH and PoM in place of it. Paladins are much more fit to heal tanks and it only makes sense that they would have this ability.

Or to make it a PvP nerf but a PvE buff, move it to 20 and 20. The PvE complaint was that 15% max mana was less mana return than 580 + Shadow Power already provided them, so they felt they were taking a nerf.

From a PvE perspective, the health cost is irrelevant since any amount of lifetap damage will generally be swept up in the far more substantial raid damage and raid healing already in the encounter. For a PvP perspective the health cost is the issue, but then from anyone who isn't a warlock's perspective the functionally cost-free nature of the infinite mana of Lifetap in arenas was a huge part of the "grr warlocks > " perspective.

All in all though, let's stop talking about warlocks and go back to talking about Paladin healing.