In 25 BC man raids, lets assume you will have 3 paladins that will have the following blessings:

Might/Wisdom
Kings
Light/Salvation

You will not be able to afford having Blessing of Light on all players.

Since paladins only have single target healing and only warriors will have Blessing of Light where will you direct the paladin healing?

Let's assume we will have 6 other healers (druids, priests, shamans). How would you use 9 healers to cover the entire raid?

Edit: forgot shamans :)

What about shamans?

No Shaman? Sure, it will take some time to level up, but not planning for Shaman is silly.

But you are right, BoL will be at best on just the warriors.

It is hard for me to envision the sort of healing requirements, when no one not under a NDA doesn't really know the sorts of damage being dealt.

Can we also assume that the encounter involves arial dueling between opposing factions that pass each other mid-flight as they are fired from cannons?

Because without an actual encounter, all that can come of this is broad, baseless speculation. If we're in need of fiction, let's try to keep it interesting.

So assuming a raid of 25 players enters Azdtendupual, land of Ich-Gnomes (outland gnomes, twice as cute, but prone to barfing uncontrollably) and finds a set of 10 cannons, each with three charges awaiting them. The helpful, but overly chipper gnomish signpost explains that they must cross the vast waste (which appears to be just shy of jumping distance) in the cannons. The cannons all appear to be aimed in different directions, at clearly fatal objects. Being adventurers, we believe the gnomish signpost. Clearly they must seperate their raid force, and load each cannon with a selection of members, then fire themselves forth.

They have access to 2 of each class by default, and 7 fillers. That allows them to send 1 "Healer" type with each cannon team except the last two, which take some of the extra CC to help make up the difference....

See how pointless this is?

Obviously paladins, as they exist at 60, are healers primarily. At 70? Itemization, and Encounter constraints, and game mechanics (what if they remove/alter +healing?!) will determine their role.

I move that this thread continue designing the encounter suggested above, as it will be more entertaining at work. Alternatively, we can talk about beer again.

I'm thinking a standard DPS heavy raid is 7 healers - 2 paladins, 2 shamans, 2 priests and 1 druid. And even then, the two priests are to provide extra group healing in case of env damage. Tank and spank is probably better off with two druids for double the innervate. I don't think you'll see more than 2 priests very often as paladins shamans have much better buffs. I've pretty much given up on seeing blessing of light on anybody at all unless they change regular blessings to 15 minutes and raid blessing to like 30.

How about books? I'm into epic fantasy and hard sci-fi, but I'm running out of suggestions from friends short of raiding libraries for "classic" sci-fi. Currently reading: book 6 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series (Stephen Erikson), which I dread finishing as it's the last I have; and the short story collection of Year's Best Sci-Fi. There's always some good stuff in those, though there's usually 1 or 2 that I just don't get into.

If you like the Malazan series (love it myself) , yoy may want to try the G.R.R.Martin series - a song of ice and fire - first book being Game of thrones i believe.

I've read them already. Eagerly waiting on Dance with Dragons, I need my dose of Daenerys and Tyrion. Here's hoping Martin gets it out by the end of the year!

Call me skeptical, but I dont see Blizz closing the gap between Pals and Wars on tanking or Pals and Rogues/Mages for dps. I think a smaller raid group will just accent or weaknesses more and lead us to play to our strengths: buffing and healing. I would think melee would want kings/might/salv and healers would want kings/wisdom/salv for sure. Is there an argument out there for 3 shamans?

Two noteworthy facts that we know to be true about BC:

(1) Mid-rank healing spells are going to get a +healing coefficient nerf.

(2) HoTs will be stackable.

The consequence of (1) is that FoL spam won't be as powerful, and the consequence of (2) is that it won't be necessary on most fights (and thank god for that).

BoL is at it's most effective in aiding FoL spam, especially low-rank FoL spam. The proportional boost to max-rank FoL or to HL is smaller. My max-rank FoL hits for a bit over 600 without BoL and about 750 with BoL. The blessing is a nice boost, but if we're short on paladins and we can't bless Light on the whole raid, nobody really notices the difference.

So I think in BC, BoL will be a situational blessing for fights where you're counting on the Paladins to do a lot of healing. In many cases Sanctuary will actually be a more useful blessing than Light (check out the new BC rank -- the damage absorption goes up from 24 to 80.) You might even prefer Might over Light on the tank if it's an aggro-sensitive fight.

Shaman group buffs are very powerful. Agility totem is like what? 3% dodge? Windfury, mini innervate for the group, group healing with chain heal. You're probably looking at one shaman per melee group plus one for tank group at most. Don't know how much melee you're taking.

I think you're right about paladin tanking. Warriors are currently the only hybrid class in the game - undisputable tanks and DPS at top notch. I think tanking + DPS is a better hybrid than tanking + blessing of light.

Only if you don't mind losing the mob(s) you were tanking.

Edit: oops, confused the Paladin healing and tanking thread. :unsure:

Paladins have a taunt in BC. True story.

I'm aware Mocking Blow will maintain a mob attacking a warrior through invulnerability (invuln pot), but does the standard taunt? Sorry for the derail, just curious.

Derails on page 7 are one thing. But when half the posts on the first page of a thread are off-topic, that's a good sign the thread isn't going anywhere.