It gives us two at large points to allocate anywhere (generally judgement talents, although this isn't remotely required), and 1 extra point if you don't want 3/3 PoTI for allocation in holy.

Judgment is considered a melee ability.
A bit odd how they made it spell hit and not hit all around. Maybe it is a bug.

The new +hit talent we got affects both melee and spell hit, so it's all good.

Currently I am putting those 2 points into Imp HoJ. I know this will only last until raids open up, but I am using HoJ as a damage reduction tool quite often right now. Its amazing how much stunning 1 target for 6 seconds helps right now.

Also, it looks like Protector of the Innocent is working properly since the last patch. I was hoping they would overlook that bug...

Rule of Law gives us 15% critical chance to our Word of Glory; using all 3 points. It may seem less attractive than what was Holy Shock, since HS crits give Infusion of Light procs. I've been using my remainder 2 points into Improved Judgments in the Retribution tree. Gives you a bit more freedom in placement from a boss and still being able to judge without hugging the boss. Although I do see that if you don't take the aforementioned talent, that when you do need to refresh JoTP, you could get some quick melee swings off for some mana return (default range on judgment is 10yds).

Up to today I have been doing what Zaroua recommended, Healing the group, rely on HS to generate Holy Power and letting Beacon keep the tank alive. It was working out fairly well. that is until this morning. Today I simply could not deliver enough healing without switching to direct heals on the tank. 2 Paladin tanks, 1 DK tank and 2 Warrior tanks. Glancing at recount I was usually in the range of 7k HPS, on some fights going as high as 10k. Previously 3-4k HPS is what I was seeing.

I am not used to posting here, I have been a reader-only for years, but I am at a point where I need to directly ask for help because I don't know if this is simply a problem with the way I heal, or something in the last patch doing something funky.

What in your opinion will be the new stat priorities? Paladin gear has a huge lack of haste. I know Blizzard said that crit will matter now, but in my opinion reforging crit to haste is still better. It just feels better to have faster casts. The bad this is, that haste is a throughput booster that increases your mana usage and crit boosts healing without abusing your mana. Second thing is spirit. Right now on longer fights on heroic modes (normal modes were nerfed so much that they aren't a problem) I'm having mana issues so it probably would be better to stack spirit on every item. What do you think?

Int > Spirit > haste > mastery => crit . There is no math behind that, but my logic is this:

Int gives you both mana and spellpower, which will be very useful.

Spirit gives you mana and no one will ever die as long as you have enough mana and they don't screw up really badly.

Haste allows you to use HL to keep the tank up instead of resorting to DL. This allows for significant mana savings because HL is more efficient. If you're never forced to use DL, you won't run out of mana.

Mastery is better if you are casting heals on the beaconed tank, because 1% of mastery is 1% more healing, while 1% more crit is less than 0.5% more healing. The reason mastery is not always better is that if you are topping the group up after the occasional group damage, the main shield will be wasted and only the 50% shield (according to Zaroua BoL causes a shield too) on the tank will be used. In this case 1% more mastery will result in 0.5% more healing while 1% more crit will result in less than 0.75% (beacon heal can't crit, can it?) more healing. I suspect that this situation is very rare and during the course of an ordinary fight mastery will always be better.

Crit's value is diminished because of the rating conversions as well. Crit (and Mastery) require 179.28 points to gain 1%, but Haste only requires 128.05 for a 1% increase, so in essence Haste is 40% better per item budget. The saving on itemization means we can put points into Spirit and those points would likely nullify the extra 1% mana used.

My current thoughts on stats are as follow:

Intellect is *the* stat for us, it improves both our passive mana regeneration from spirit and increases our mana gains from Replenishment/Divine Plea. On top of that, it's a 100% reliable way to increase our HPS for all of our heals in every situation. It does not have any practical or theoretical conflict with our other throughput stats.


Spirit is our main regen stat. The very minimum amount of spirit that you should aim for is the amount that lets you spam Holy Light/Holy Shock/Word of Glory without losing mana - this would be around 2500 spirit at lvl 85 with raid buffs. The more spirit you have, the less you'll hurt when you have to use a Divine Light or throw out AoE heals. Spirit should be the most important stat to use on encounters where a Paladin needs to AoE heal a lot.


Mastery as it works right now should end up being extremely encounter dependent. This is due to the shield not rolling like Ignite/Deep Wounds, meaning that multiple casts in a row on the same target can potentially lead to our mastery doing absolutely nothing if the shield isn't absorbed. On top of that, due to the shield not rolling, mastery is forced to be in direct conflict with both haste and crit. The way mastery works is that whenever you land a heal, a shield appears on your target of a strength relative to how much mastery you have. Landing another heal on a target already affected by your mastery's shield will do one of those things: if the new shield that would result from the second heal end up being larger than the first shield, then the first shield is replaced by the second, larger shield. If the new shield would be smaller than the first, then the first shield is refreshed.
For haste this means that when you cast two of the same heal in a row - say 2 Holy Lights - there's always a chance that your second heal will heal for less than the first (due to the variance in numbers between heals, 2 Holy Lights will rarely heal for the exact same amount). Then you factor in the fact that it's entirely possible that 2 Holy Lights would land in between attacks or damage ticks and it becomes easy to see that it'll often be possible for our shields to be completely wasted this way. This issue becomes even more problematic once tanks start to get more and more avoidance.
For crit the problem remains the same: if you crit your first heal, the second heal will get no benefit from our mastery.
One last problem with our mastery is that it'd be possible (albeit extremely impractical and completely stupid outside of the most extreme of circumstances) to cast a LoH in a full mastery set and keep the extremely powerful shield rolling until a pull happens - while waiting on Soulstones/Brez for example. It also turns LoH as a huge tank cooldown: with 3 stacks of Conviction + Glyph of Seal of Insight + AW + a little over 22 mastery, my LoH crits act as 50k+ shields.


Haste is mostly the same as it was in LK with only a few minor changes. First one is that reaching the haste soft cap is much, much harder to do. Second one is that it scales tremendously well with Holy Radiance and Conviction. Third and most important is that having more haste does not necessarily mean an increase mana spent over a given period of time if you make use of Tower of Radiance. Casting more Holy Lights means more Daybreak procs which means cheaper and stronger heals (Holy Shock is higher HPM and HPS than Holy Light) and more Words of Glory which is free. Even without using Tower of Radiance, haste still gives us more Daybreak procs and Daybreak procs are good, very very good.

Crit is still the odd one out. If mastery ever gets fixed to roll, Crit will be by far our worst stat, if mastery stays the way it is, then crit should be fairly close to our mastery in terms of being potentially useless. While wasted healing should be far rarer in Cata then they were in LK, it's still a potential waste. Plus, RNG is bad for healers: we still want predictability over randomness. The biggest nerf to crit however is that it longer affects our mana pool at all due to the loss of Illumination.


So to me, Int = Spi > Haste, rest don't matter.

This certainly puts the value for mastery dead last for me, but not that far behind crit. It's a big problem with the number of instant heals we're going to be using.

Given that Int = Spi > Haste and given the proliferation of Crit plate and that mastery is not so hot. Have people found it worth reforging Crit to Spi (given that Int will be on all and Spi will not)?

In my honest opinion haste is the WORST stat for holy paladins right now, because our main healing abilities are instant casts, Holy light is a pure waste of time being used without infusion proc, yes it procs daybreak but it is not that good now as it was before when it reseted the cd of hs, now after proccing db u have to wait hs cd, and here comes the wasted spell. Crit looks more helpfull than haste for sure, because it procs infusion and THIS is our true haste. May be in future when we'll have highlevel gear we can focus on haste more, but now in blues its a pure waste.
I think the priority of stats looks like -
Int-spirit-mastery-crit-haste

Blizzard made our healing really interesting but luckdependent aswell, we have to use some kind of rotation now. for ex -
HL to beaconed tank for 1 holy power proc then hs then 2stackwg here comes the proc chance, if wg didn't proc we have to use the filler it can be a HL with infusion or DL or FL dependable on tank damage after that hs(may be 2 dep on bd) and 2-3wg and then next filler depending on situation I often use light of down as a filler as well. This kind of rotation really makes you think and think fast, in this case communication with tank in vent has a huge benefit for healing.

But I don't know what is our role in raids, i think we'll play some ass saviour role to top really low ppl with our instants as well as some raid and tank healing. We cant focus on raid healing and cant fully focus on tanks, we seem to be some balance healers that can do both jobs but not that good as focused healers. And what do you think?

It is a rotation but with procs to react to, and CD's and ability durations. Mainly it is a (John Madden) priority system like a dps has, plus we have to decide who to heal:

Burst elemental damage -> Aura Mastery
Long term heavy damage -> Wings or Divine Favor
Heavy AoE Healing required -> Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn
3 HP -> WoG
HS off cooldown ->HS
HS off cooldown in <0.5 second ->wait then HS
Someone needs heal badly -> Cast Heal (HL or DL)
Beacon Fading Soon -> Beacon
JotP Fading Soon -> Judge
Light AoE healing required -> Light of Dawn
Someone needs heals -> HL

Our role in the raid will likely be the same as it was in 3.0. We healed the raid or second tank, and when the beacon tank spiked badly (we couldn't trust beacon due to overheal non-transfer) we'd heal the beacon tank direct. Now we have a few AoE CD's to hit when the raid takes damage, but that is a just a few GCD's a minute.

I would say at this stage of the Beta, and given what we have seen from Blizzard thus far, we will still be the "tank healer". I feel that Blizzard has unwillingly done the exact opposite of what they wanted to do with healing classes in regards to homogenizing all classes. Blizzard's mind set going into the expansion was they wanted all healing classes to perform on a fairly level playing field when it came to single target healing and raid healing, but with the change to Beacon of Light they have effectively made us a single target healer with lack luster ability to be efficient in raid healing. Keep in mind that this is all pre-launch and subject to change.

Given the priority of our stats: Int > Spirit > Haste > Mastery=/= Crit, I think we will see ourselves spending the most time spamming Holy Light on the tank (or Beacon target) and filling in around that with our Holy Shocks and 3 stack Word of Glorys.

Intellect will make our Holy Lights bigger, thus leaving us not having to use Divine Light as frequently, and I cant see any point where we will want to use Flash of Light on a regular basis for anything. Using our Word of Glorys and Holy Shocks to fill in around us when someone is a bit slow to react to fire or they are targeted for what ever reason.

If we get ourselves to a point where the spirit we have gains us enough mana regen then I don't see much of a problem with using Holy Light as our "bread and butter" just like In WotLK.

It is pretty obvious that we are going to need to balance out our stats much more so than in Wrath. I can't really find a spot so far where Mastery is the beneficial for us. On Beta I have gotten my mastery to 14% and it seems "meh" at best. Having Haste at the soft cap (not sure of what that number is off the top of my head) seems to be a better choice as it will allow us to continue spamming Holy Light with out having to rely on filling in with a Flash of Light or "wasting" a Word of Glory or Holy Shock.

As far as luck and procs, I think most of us have become accustomed to watching various buff bars and tracking addons to track things like Infusion already.

TLDR version: We will still be healing tanks, just not healing them with Beacon.

I have to strongly disagree. Crit is still the same as it has always been, RNG except now it has no regen value for us. Relying on Crit to provide us the needed haste is the same as relying on a Crit to keep the tank alive. If we are unable to reforge to spirit*, Haste looks like the next best stat. If I have to pick between converting Mastery or Crit to something else I will currently pick losing Crit especially since our heals just received an across the board 10% increase improving the value of the mastery shields even more.

(I say reforge to spirit because I can only guess INT will always be present on gear)

I would say that even reforging crit for haste would be more beneficial, as well as mastery for haste.

Does anyone have a data parse with the mastery absorb effect? I think it would be useful to have a look at how it compares to the typical healing distribution we have already seen.

The RNG effect of crit is lot less concern if they manage to pace down healing. If you have 3/4/5 gcd before your tank dies, or before you top him off, the long term throughput has more weight and reliable short term throughput less weight, compared to tanks dying in 2 GCD.

Was nice to see Blizzard give us back a bit of our HPS, making us comparable to some of the other classes in that respect.

I am wondering if anyone has done any research into the following:

Preferred trinkets with the changing stats/procs.

Preferred professions to provide maximization.

How much mana return we get from putting crusader strike into our rotation and
standing mainly in melee for swing procs.

First time poster, long time reader, and please forgive my English.

Trinkets will probably have int and an "on equip" for mana regen or an "on use" for mana regen, haste or crit.

Professions will probably be whatever maximizes int, from what I can tell, but afaik we don't yet know all profession related bonuses, it'd be a safer bet to assume JC will be good, and BS will be around there, but it's entirely possible that another profession could have a very good "on use" effect.

You won't be gaining mana from CS, it costs more then SoI can return, but it will grant a HP, and white swings in melee will grant 4% base mana, not alot but not insignificant over a fight. Being in melee will really shine with holy radiance and LoD.

A) Trinkets - Nation covered this.

B) Profs aren't exactly fully hammered out. Obviously skinning will be bad, because crit is weak. Any prof that yields a regen or int passive will be roughly equivalent. Engineering will likely remain a favorite with its combination of mobility (rocket boots) and throughput cooldowns (glove enchants).

C) Don't use CS. It costs 12% base mana, and with Seal of Insight you have a "chance" to restore 4% base mana. You will be spending ~10% base mana to produce 1 Holy Power, if you don't get dodged. Autoattack if you can be in melee still, with HS and WoG, that's a lot of open GCD's where you can get in autoattacks.

- A note on the RNG of crit. RNG is the small issue with crit. Crit is still weak just do to throughput.
Crit
180 rating = 1%
1% crit = ~0.42% boost in output at ~20% crit
0.0023% boost per rating

Mastery
180 rating = 1%
1% mastery = ~0.84% boost in output at ~20% base shields
BUT shield duration + override will make it ... ? only 50% effective
so
1% mastery = ~0.42% boost in output at ~20% base shields
0.0023% boost per rating

Haste
128 rating = 1%
1% haste = 0.84% boost in output at ~20% haste
0.0066% boost per rating

This is the issue with stat balance as it stands. This is why when you pick a typical piece of armor you will think:
1. Must have spirit
2. Hopefully has haste too
3. I couldn't find spirit/haste so I reforged the crit/mastery to haste.