I kind of expected to see some kind of nerf to paladin healing, there was so much complaining about it, and I was praying they would focus on our synergy with shadow priests, but looks like they removed that and then dealt a big blow to Illuminate as well.

I'm just trying to figure out how big this will impact us, without trying to be overdramatic about it.

I'm simply gonna look at it from a theorycraft point of view, because I can't get my character copied to actually try things out. I'm comparing us to priest because that where the real concern seemed to be, the other 2 healer classes are more stackable because of their unique abilities (totems, combat rez, etc).

Greater Heal rank 7

Average base heal: 2590
Base mana cost: 825

Let's take a priest with 1500 healing and 13% spell crit (5% from holy spec, rest from intel), who has 3/5 empowered healing (other 2 points towards imp spirit).

Gheal after +heal: 2590 + (1500 * 1.12 * 3 / 3.5) = 4030 (Base +healing * Empowered healing * +healing coefficient for gheal)

Gheal after spiritual healing: 4030 * 1.1 = 4433

Gheal after spell crit: 4433 * 1.075 = 4765.48 (Half spell crit because crit heals only increase by 50%)

Gheal modified mana cost: 825 * 0.85 * 0.94 = 659.18 (Improved healing and Holy Concentration).

Efficiency (hp healed per mp): 7.23

Comments: I oversimplified the calculations for holy concentration here, but I think it should work. If anything, it's probably a bit better than the raw 6% because it keeps up spirit regen.

Holy light Rank 11

Average base heal: 2321
Base mana cost: 840

Let's assume a paladin with +1500 healing and +30% spell crit to holy light. I think 30 is a fair number because it's currently attainable without making a massive sacrifice in other stats.

Holy light after +healing: 2321 + (1500 * 2.5 / 3.5) = 3392.43

Holy light with BoL and Libram of souls redeemed: 3392.43 + 580 + 96 = 4068.43 (I'm assuming the 96 isn't modified by holy light's coefficient since BoL isn't, correct me if I'm wrong)

Holy light with healing light: 4068.41 * 1.12 = 4556.64 (I don't know if BoL applies before or after this bonus, so I could be wrong here and the actual number would be slightly lower then).

Holy light after spell crit: 4556.64 * 1.15 = 5240.14

Holy light modified mana cost pre-nerf: 840 * 0.7 = 588

Holy light modified mana cost post-nerf: 840 * 0.85 = 714

Mana efficiency pre-nerf: 8.91

Mana efficiency post-nerf: 7.34

Comments: That's a pretty big change. We go from being ~23% more mana efficient than priests to ~1.5% more. Granted spell crit keeps scaling, so we can increase that mana efficiency again, but then again, +healing scales better for priests due to gheal's cast time.

Conclusion: I think they went a little too far. I can understand the concern for the way paladin mana effiency scaled, but this strikes me as over the top. Our mana efficiency is now comparable to priests (and due to the nature of crit heals, I feel it's less reliable), but without the utility in healing spells, without the great spirit mana regen, and without shadowfiend. Assuming all this is right, the only thing paladins still have going for them from a pure healing perspective is the fact they can pump hp into a target faster than anyone else.

I'm really not sure what else to say. I'm sure 1-2 paladins will still get raid spots either way, even if only for the blessings (but after 2, the use diminishes a lot), tho I really do hope we don't get turned into a buffbot class.

Someone please tell me I'm wrong on my calculations, or that I'm missing something, because I really don't like the way these numbers are looking.

I know BoL is not modified by the holy light coefficient, I don't know if the talent healing light boosts it tho, I assumed it did in the calculations.

And yeah, our efficiency is now being brought down to be comparable to others, except without the utility or spirit mana regen that they have. :/ (I actually haven't looked at resto shamans in a while, so I'm not sure how we compared to them now).

No it doesn't, since Holy Light has a shorter casting time. Greater Healing's 6/7 of the +healing bonus in 2.5 seconds is less bonus per second than Holy Light's 5/7 of the bonus in 2 seconds.

Empowered Healing does change this, though the 2% extra healing from Healing Light and the free +healing from Blessing of Light certainly help too.

The issue I have with the changes isn't that Paladin healing was nerfed, I felt we were due a bit of a downgrade. It's the fact that it devalues spellcrit on our gear to a large degree.

Given that I've just "upgraded" to a lot of Karazhan epics with spellcrit, rather than the mana/5 on the 5 man/heroic blues I've now vendored, I'm inclined to feel rather indignant unless they change the spellcrit on these items to some nice mana/5, or a bit of both.

Yeah, they'll have to seriously change gear around, and I'm afraid that just won't happen. Personally I really liked focussing on spell crit, it was a fun playstyle, but now the emphasis seems to be entirely on mp5 and simply treating spell crit as a nice bonus, not something you should be concerned about.

Going by a healing spreadsheet, with my current gear set up over a 7 minute fight I can heal about 350,000 damage theoretically. Of course, in the game, over 7 minutes of Gruul or whatever, I won't ever actually reach this theoretical number because alot of my heals, especially crits, have alot of overhealing.

Taking Illumination down to 50% like on the PTR reduces my healing down to a theoretical maximum of 305,000 or so healing over a 7 minute timeframe with the gear I have.

However, if I trash 100% of my epics, and go back and refarm every single piece of Blue +mp5 gear I've vendored, I'd actually be able to increase my mp5 from the current 105 to 180 or so. And while my crit rate would be completely shitty, and my HPS would of course suffer as a result, I'd actually be able to sustain about the same level of healing over this imaginary perfect seven minute long fight. (using the same percentage of holy lights and flash of lights as I would with the current illumination of course) My ability to cope with burst damage would of course go down (nothing like those 7k crit holy lights at a critical moment to brighten my day).


So while not a nerf to paladin sustained healing ability, a HUGE blow to the raid gear itemization of Paladins. Now instead of looking forward to Tier 4, Tier 5, and Arena healing Gear, I will instead be looking for the best combination of cloth/leather/mail with the highest possible mp5 on it.

The more I think about this, the more I wish they would nerf our base crit, and not illumination, if mana efficiency has to be nerfed.

We get 11% spell crit from talents and I believe 3-4% from int. If part of that talent spell crit is nerfed (such at the 6% holy light crit removed) and the spell crit from int removed, we still take a serious blow to our healing and mana efficiency, without completely destroing the balance between mp5 and spell crit, and without essentially making all our current gear useless.

I looked up the item budget values of mp5 and spell crit rating, and if they are correct, then any item with spell crit will just about always be a downgrade from an item with pure mp5...

Spell crit rating is worth 1 point, mp5 is worth 2.4 points.

So for every 2.4 spell crit rating, you could get 1mp. That means 1% spell crit is worth roughly 9mp5 on the budget. After the illumination nerf, there is absolutely no way 1% spell crit would be better than 9mp5 for a paladin.

I suppose all spell crit could be removed from items and replaced by mp5, but then it feels like the paladin class has lost it's unique touch entirely as healer. I'd much rather see them nerf our base crit we can get before gear, and then limit the amount of crit they will put on gear.

The notable thing is that if Paladins have the same mana efficiency as everyone else, they are now firmly in the crapper in context of mana use. They never needed active mana regen before. But if they now do... it'll be a bit lonely, in this bright new world of Shadowfiends and baseline innervates and Mana Tides that don't take 10 extra points to get.

Being a long time paladin, and a long time reciever of paladin heals I am saddened by this change to the paladin holy tree. I liken it to watching someone nearing the finishing line with crowds of people cheering, and then suddenly without warning a guy jumps out from the side with a baseball bat and beats the crap out of the runner (the paladin getting nerfed) while the crowd stops cheering and goes, "Oooo ..."

Crying aside, its obvious this nerf needs to be followed by some itemization changes for paladins. Yes, crit is still important, but it's half as important. Which is odd because they even introduced talents (imp holy light, holy power) focusing specfically on heal crits. Hopefully something is looked at again, or their gear is changed accordingly.

Hmm just logged in, according to the character sheet I have 8.41% spell crit from intel, so halving it is probably better than removing it.

After running that through a spreadsheet, if I lost ~10% spell crit, my healing power should be about the same as it would be with the current illumination nerf. Same effect, none of the long term problems to the class.

The paladin 2.1 changes thread deals with all changes, this one deals with one change in specific. Discussing it in the other thread would just add clutter.

As for the healing threads, they're all about current healing, not how it will change in the patch.