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The Cataclysm Holy Paladin Compendium
Please note the thread is unfinished, I've had a very strange week with regards to work. The company folding and finding a new job; my time has sadly been quite limited for writing and I will update the thread daily until completion
This thread is based around the Holy Paladin 3.3 thread by frmorrison to make it easily readable to those of us that have been reading it for a long period of time. Please feel free to PM me with anything I have missed out that you feel is required and I can add this in. This is as always with theorycrafting a work in progress; nothing is currently set in stone with regards to the most efficient way to heal in Cataclysm. This thread is currently still a work in progress, please see the end of the thread for various things that still need to be tested; any help is much appreciated.
[top]Introduction to the TreeHoly is the paladin healing tree, until cataclysm focussed on being the "Tank Healer", now we are also incorporating AoE heals and support to make at least one of the heals (Healing Hands) stronger with a lower cooldown. However, it has been stated that our niche as the tank healer isn't one that has been dropped and as such we should still be able to put the highest HPS on a single target efficiently, as well as spreading healing between two separate tank targets very well. [top]AcronymsThere are many acronyms in World of Warcraft, and Holy Paladins are doing their part to keep that true. For the new Paladins out there this is to help you not be totally confused while reading posts. I have modified this from the 3.3 holy thread removing redundant acronyms and adding newer ones relevant to the tree mainly in the form of new proc talents. • AM: Aura Mastery • AW: Avenging Wrath, also called Wings • BoK: Blessing of Kings • BoM: Blessing of Might • BoL: Beacon of Light. • CD: Cooldown • DF: Divine Favor • DG: Divine Guardian • DL: Divine Light • DP: Divine Protection • DS: Divine Shield/Bubble • EG: Eternal Glory • FoL: Flash of Light • GoAK: Guardian of Ancient Kings • GCD: Global Cooldown • HL: Holy Light. • HoP: Hand of Protection • HoSac: Hand of Sacrifice • HoT: Health over Time • HPM: Healing per mana • HPS: Healing per second • HR: Holy Radiance • HS: Holy Shock • ICD: Internal Cooldown • IoL: Infusion of Light • LoD: Light of Dawn • MT: Main Tank • OOM: Out of mana • OT: Off Tank • SoL: Speed of Light • SP: Spell Power • ToR: Tower of Radiance • WoL: World of Logs • 5SR: 5 second rule [top]Stats{Clarification and check on numbers required} The cataclysm holy paladin has 5 main stat points to work with which will affect his healing ability; these will be covered here alongside a breakdown of what 100 allocated stat points will provide to your character sheet. [top]IntellectIntellect is without a doubt the most important stat to us come cataclysm, it provides us with more mana, mana-regen, spellpower and spell crit. Intellect can be thought of as the jack of all trades stat, it cannot be reforged as it is considered a “primary stat” and each tier of gear will provide roughly the same amount per piece meaning gems and enchants will be the only way of increasing it. Intellect in Cataclysm becomes a Red coloured gem. Intellect is the only primary stat on gear that affects our healing ability. At level 85, 100 Intellect will provide:- • 105 Intellect with Blessing of Kings/Gift of the Wild. All numbers are based on kings below • 0.1617% crit • 105 Spellpower (given a 1:1 conversion) • 1050 intial fight mana per • 1.05 mana per second (10.5 mana per 10 seconds) from replenishment • 0.525 mana per second from Arcane Torrent, 63 per cooldown • 0.875 mana per second from Divine Plea, 105 mana per DP cooldown use [top]Haste RatingHaste is a strange stat as it has huge benefits and negatives with its use. Haste increases your healing throughput by reducing the cast time of spells but at the same time increases your maximum mana consumption due to an increased number of heals cast per unit of time. The main note with haste is that 10% Spell Haste does not mean your spells cast 10% faster, rather it means in a given time period you will cast 10% more spells. So the cast time after haste is calculated by (Base Cast Time)/(1 + Spell Haste). The more haste you get the less cast time it will reduce, but it will increase how many spells you can cast by the same amount. 100 haste rating provides 0.7809% spell haste at level 85. [top]Critical Strike RatingCritical strike rating increases the chance of your spells getting a critical strike, a critical strike increases the damage or healing of your spell by 50%. Due to the change in paladin healing mechanics Crit rating does not return any mana on spell crits. 100 critical strike rating provides 0.5577% crit at level 85. [top]Mastery RatingThe holy paladin mastery is a small shield placed on the target of a heal relative to the size of the heal used. As a base, the shield will make up 8% of the heal size and last for 6 seconds. If a heal of 10,000 lands on your target, they will gain a shield absorbing 800 damage on any attack taken during the next 6 seconds. Each point on mastery (note, not rating) will increase the shield size by 1%. The shield created by our mastery does not increase in size with further heals, instead it is replaced by a newer shield which for the moment if the new shield is bigger than the old shield; if the shield is not bigger the existing shield remains [top]SpiritSpirit is our primary passive mana regeneration tool and differs to intellect as no active mana regeneration skills such as Replenishment or Divine Plea use this value. Spirit alongside Intellect determines out of combat mana regen and via the meditation holy mastery also dictates our in combat mana regen. Spirit is without a doubt the most important secondary stat that we have, in the new healing model where healer mana matters regen is the most important consideration for a tank healer; maintaining a constant stream of healing is what will keep your tank alive over short bursts of healing provided by haste and crit. If you are allocated to raid healing, being able to regen mana quickly during a lull in raid damage will be critical in a long fight. {The numbers are to be inserted after I get some time to do some testing. Base mana regen value at 85 is still unknown to me at this point} [top]Stat InteractionsHaste, Crit and Mastery with the cataclysm changes have some strange synergies with each other. Haste has the most complicated synergy with the other two secondary stats. Haste has a positive synergy with crit as more heals leads to more critical heals per period of time and obviously more HPS; conversely it has the potential for negative synergy with our new mastery. According to current theorycraft any shield created by a heal is overwritten by the next shield created within that 6 second window regardless of shield strength. This means that should haste be brought to a value where you will land another heal before the tank takes a hit then you have wasted any points you have invested in Mastery for that heal. {Further details to add, coming in the next update} [top]Abilities[top]The HealsDivine Light Divine Light is one of our new heals and is designed to take the place of what Holy Light was always intended to be in initial paladin design; our big slow heal. In terms of direct heal HPS Divine Light is superior to Holy Light and Inferior to Flash of Light, the opposite is true when we consider HPM with it being less HPM than Holy Light yet more HPM than Flash of Light. This ability costs 30% of base mana Flash of Light Flash of Light historically was our filler spell, it healed for a small amount very quickly and was sustainable for long periods of time. Like Holy Light this is no longer the case and Flash of Light has become the equivalent of a priests flash heal; it is a very quick heal with good numbers but costs more mana. Flash of Light is our highest HPS direct heal but our lowest HPM heal. This ability costs 27% of base mana Holy Light Holy Light historically in the game has been our biggest heal, it was intended for use in high damage situation but was never meant to be sustainable. Now Holy Light is to be considered our “auto-attack” heal, the heal we should be casting when damage isn’t high enough for Divine Light, required quickly so we don’t use Flash of Light and in between Holy Shock cooldowns. Holy Light is the lowest HPS direct heal a paladin currently has and the highest HPM (depending on AoE ability usage) This ability costs 9% of base mana. Holy Radiance Holy Radiance is the new paladin AoE Heal of Time, this is a target unlimited heal aura that will tick for 10 seconds. Once activated this ability will continue to tick regardless of whether you cast other spells. As with Light of Dawn this heal is going to be very situational, if players are not within 10 yards of you then they will not get hit by the ability. When a raid is clustered up this heal will be incredibly efficient and hugely effective. Holy Radiance scales with all of your secondary abilities and will help to stack Conviction. This ability costs 40% of base mana. This ability has a untalented 60 second cooldown Holy Shock Holy Shock is the Holy Specialisation skill, historically Holy Shock has been a weak instant spell that was primarily for use in PvP or whilst moving in PvE. Holy Shock is now the only healing ability that innately builds our new resource Holy Power. As such our healing “rotation” is built about the liberal use of this ability to build Holy Power for Word of Glory. This ability costs 8% of base mana. This ability has a 6 second cooldown Light of Dawn Light of Dawn is our 31 point Holy talent. It is a new AoE healing spell and is the first PBAoE (Position Based Area of Effect) heal in the game. Healing literally shoots out in a cone in front of your character healing everyone in this cone(in or outside of your group). Light of Dawn is a very situational healing spell to use, it requires good positioning on the part of the paladin to hit as many people as possible; usually this will mean that you should be behind a cluster of people or standing virtually on the melee group. This ability costs 21% of base mana. This ability has an unglyphed cooldown of 30 seconds Word of Glory Word of Glory is the Holy Power “Finisher” we’ve acquired with the Cataclysm, it’s healing power scales exponentially with each Holy Power that you currently have meaning it should mostly ever be used when you have 3 stacks. Currently Holy Power at 3 stacks heals for a margin more than a Holy Shock. This ability costs no mana [top]The HandsHands are useful short term buffs which can make various encounter specific mechanics more manageable, they are very useful to understand how and when to use. Hand of Salvation Hand of Salvation is used to lower the threat level of a single player against all mobs in combat, it is best used on a DPS being throttled by a tanks threat or on a tank during a required switch for which the tank doesn’t need to take the mob back. This ability costs 6% of base mana. This ability has a 120 second cooldown. Hand of Protection Hand of Protection is used to render the target immune to physical damage, it causes the targeted player to lose all threat on a mob doing physical damage for the duration of the hand. It is best used when a player takes aggro from a mob where you cannot afford the time for hand of salvation to work or when you need to force a tank switch for a short period of time. This ability costs 6% of base mana. This ability has a 300 second cooldown. Hand of Sacrifice Hand of Sacrifice is used to transfer damage from the targeted player to yourself. This ability transfers 30% of all damage from the player to yourself. After the targeted player has taken damage equal to 100% of your health, this ability is cancelled. The best use of Hand of Sacrifice is as a tank cooldown, during a raid it is important to ensure that people know you are using the ability as it can lead to a spike in personal damage taken for the duration. This ability costs 6% of base mana. This ability has a 120 second cooldown. Hand of Freedom Hand of Freedom is used to free the target of all movement impairing skills (snares or roots) and makes the target immune for the 6 seconds the buff is active. The best use of this ability is on any player than needs to be able to move at full speed but is currently snared or is liable to get snared/rooted within 6 seconds. This ability is rarely used in PvE content, but it can provide a huge buffer on encounters where snares play a part (Rotface in WotLK for the kiting tank is a good example of this) This ability costs 6% of base mana. This ability has a 25 second cooldown. [top]The OthersBlessing of Kings Blessing of Kings increases all primary stats by 5% and increases all resistances by a value determined by your level, most notably spirit and ratings are not affected by this blessing. It lasts for 1 hour and a single cast will buff the entire raid with the spell, it will need to be refreshed on anyone that dies. This ability costs 6% base mana and is the same as Mark of the Wild as provided by Druids, in such a case the paladin should buff might and allow the druid to buff the “kings” Blessing of Might Blessing of Might increases attack power by 10% and mana per 5 by 828. Blessing of Might lasts for 1 hour upon cast. This ability costs 6% mana and does not overlap with any single buff from another class. However the mana regen and attack power qualities are shared by buffs of other classes. Cleanse Cleanse has been in previous expansions one of the core skills used by paladins, we have eternally been the “cleanse bot” of the raid as ours was less expensive than the priest version. Now all four healing specs have the availability to cleanse magic and in the case of the shaman have the ability to heal with each cleanse when talented. This ability costs 14% of base mana and will cast even if the target has no debuffs that can be cleansed. It is imperative that people do not overlap on cleanse in the new healing environ as this can lead to a lot of mana lost. Crusader Strike Crusader strike is the main ability used in the retribution rotation as it stacks Holy Power, that being said it is also useful for holy paladins that will be sitting in melee range. This ability can proc seal of insight and also gives another stack of holy power. During periods of healing downtime or a lull in healing required, this ability used correctly can lead to more free healing. This ability costs 10% of base mana, this is more expensive than Holy Shock but still a useful ability to have binded for the occasions where it may be worthwhile to use. This ability has a 4.5 second cooldown. Exorcism Exorcism in Cataclysm has lost the 15 second cooldown which made it a rarely used skill for holy paladins, coupled with the talents boosting exorcism’s power (Denounce making it a free on a proc and damage increase from Blazing light), exorcism can be more effectively used in cataclysm if needed. This skill is mainly going to be used in PvE for burn phases on bosses if at all. This ability costs 30% of base mana before the talent Denounce. 1 point in denounce makes Exorcism cost 19% of base mana and the 2nd point takes this to a 7.5% base mana cost. Judgement Judgement as with Wrath of the Lich King forms a large part of the Holy Paladin healing ability, Judgements of the pure is in effect a “free” 9% haste for the single global cooldown for judging any mob. Missing a judgement is not a catastrophic situation as the cooldown is not excessively long but there is a talent to ensure that misses are very rare within the holy tree. This ability costs 5% of base mana and can proc whichever seal you have active at the time. This ability has an 8 second cooldown and a 10 yard untalented range. Seal of Insight Seal of Insight is the new “Holy” seal which is the merge of the old Seal of Light and Seal of Wisdom. Blizzard addressed the situation whereby the seal gave a huge amount of mana back and we now live with a return of 4% base mana per proc. This seal comes with what is questionably our only required glyph as it increases our healing by 5%. This ability costs 14% of base mana and lasts for 30 minutes. [top]Gems[top]Meta GemsCurrently we have two meta gems of PvE interest, these are as follows:- • Revitalising Shadowspirit Diamond – The 3% increased critical effect is going to double dip as it will increase our mastery shield by a marginal amount. This will be the easiest meta gem to fulfil the requirements as a single prismatic gem or Zen Dream Emerald will activate the effect. • Ember Shadowspirit Diamond – This will without a doubt be our best meta-gem choice unless a newer version of the Insightful Earthseige Diamond becomes available. The easiest way to fulfil the requirements of this gem will most likely be through the use of two Artful Ember Topaz or Potent Ember Topaz. The reason for this meta-gem being so strong comes from the replenishment gains of the extra 2% mana over the course of a fight. This should equate to more healing than the 3% critical healing effect gained by the Revitalising gem. {Maths on meta gems to add} [top]Standard GemsWithout a doubt our current gem of choice in Cataclysm will be the Brilliant Inferno Ruby other gems simply will not match the power to our healing ability of this gem currently and as such any other types of gems should only be used to fulfil meta-gem requirements or gain socket bonuses which provide more benefit to your character than by using a Brilliant gem in its place, the true value of a socket bonus can only be determined by a tool such as Rawr or personal preference and as such I cannot offer an arbitrary point of reference with exactly what to gem. It does go without saying however that the gems which provide you with the most intellect will provide you with the highest benefit unless you have the ability to chain-cast Flash of Light for the entire duration of a fight. Alternative gems to be considered are: - Zen Dream Emerald Artful Ember Topaz Potent Ember Topaz Purified Demonseye Timeless Demonseye [top]Set BonusesCurrently only the tier 11 set bonuses are available to us, these are of course:- Reinforced Sapphirium Regalia 2 Piece – Increases your critical strike chance with your Holy Light spell by 5% 4 Piece – Whenever your Holy Radiance spell is active, you gain 1620 spirit. [top]GlyphsHoly has a veritable selection of glyphs available in Cataclysm, most are going to be good for situational use, others will be good to swap in for certain fights with different mechanics. Below are details by type of each glyph which may be worthwhile for paladins to use in a raiding environ. [top]Prime Glyphs[Item not found!] – This glyph is the most essential glyph that we will use in the coming expansion. 5% healing in an expansion where mana is going to be critical cannot be ignored at any point. [Glyph of Word of Glory] – Word of Glory is going to make up a large percentage of our healing in any fight where ToR healing is possible. This glyph makes Word of Glory 10% stronger and will in 95% of situations be the second choice prime glyph. [Glyph of Holy Shock] – At early gear levels this glyph will no doubt be the third choice prime glyph. It will provide a higher number of IoL procs and again increases the effectiveness of one of our highest usage spells. The main alternative to this glyph will be the glyph below. [Item not found!] – This glyph will mainly have use on short bursty fights or long fights with a few heavy burst phases. The glyph increases the uptime of Divine Favour from 11.1% to 16.7% when used on cooldown. At higher gear levels where 5% crit on Holy Shock is less important this glyph may take the place of the glyph above. [top]Major Glyphs[Glyph of Light of Dawn] – This glyph reduces the cooldown by 33% at the cost of 20% healing, it definitely seems like a relatively strong major glyph but will only really provide any benefit where you "need" to be using LoD on cooldown. This glyph may be a good candidate for the 3rd glyph slot on certain fights however it certainly doesn't seem to be a "required" glyph in the current content. [Glyph of Beacon of Light] - This glyph increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 seconds. Beacon on the beta has currently been increased to a 5 minute duration with no mention of a glyph change, meaning this glyph is no longer the best glyph for us to be using but now just makes for a very strong glyph for fights where you don't need it otherwise. [Glyph of Salvation] - A very strong glyph for fights that require a temporary tank switch, it acts in the same way as a priests fade ability and completely removes the targetted player from the threat table temporarily. This glyph is incredibly situational and if you use Salvation on random high-threat DPS this glyph is not for you. [Glyph of Divine Plea] – Arguably the second most important holy glyph for raiding purposes, this provides DP with a 50% increase in the mana gained over the course of the 15 seconds the buff is active. The weakness of the glyph lying only in situations where divine plea cannot be used; it still shines when only a couple of ticks per DP cooldown are possible [Glyph of Cleansing] – A very useful glyph for any fight where you may be taking up the cleansing duty for the raid, it allows for more in fight mana but is useless on any fight where there is no cleansable debuffs. [Glyph of Divinity] - Glyph of Divinity does exactly what it says on the tin, 10% of your mana returned whenever you use Lay on Hands. This glyph essentially provides a large mana cooldown and for any fight where mana is seriously difficult, this glyph can provide another buffer when Divine Plea is unusable. [Glyph of the Long Word] - This glyph is quite strange, it provides paladins with a minor HoT tacked onto our free heal; however where it is useful is a difficult question. For the period of an entire fight the glyph doesn't provide enough to be worthwhile for full time usage and will only be rarely worth using. [top]Minor Glyphs[top]Consumables, Enchants & Reforging[top]Professions[top]Talents{In depth analysis of our core healing talents, the "optional talents" and benefits of each sub-spec} [top]ToR Healing and youjblade made this post regarding healing the beacon target over healing targets that were not the beacon, the numbers are not important and have been removed but the conclusion provides us with an insight into what we save mana-wise with ToR healing. What he missed in the post was the healing gained on the beacon target from healing off-target therefore missing a large portion of the non-ToR healers raw healing; I have snipped the vast majority of the original post to show the important part of the conclusion only. Quote:
[top]Version History21/10/2010 - Initial Draft Posted. 30/10/2010 - Added various updates to the original draft. More to come. |
Intellect still gives 15 mana per point, so 100 Int with Kings (and plate spec) will give 1650 mana.
(Corrected my correction as per Zalinda, below.) |
This math is inspired from Noule's math on healing your beacon with HL for ToR or healing the raid for the benefit of beacon (in the other holy thread). In the other thread, Noule seemed to be talking about live, so I started to look at the math for cataclysm.
Setup Information Assuming 25% haste (10% base + 15% from judging) WoG and HS will always be cast on non beacon target. I chose the time interval of 154.56 seconds because that is the interval where both rotations can fit perfectly in where they each start with 0 HP and end with 0 HP. Instant: 1.2 seconds HL : 2.16 seconds HL : 7k healing WoG: 13k healing //These healing numbers are kind of hand wavy/ what I remember HS : 8k healing // I'll come back and edit them when I can get back on beta to check the numbers for sure. HL Mana = 9% base HS Mana = 8% base WoG Mana = 0 ------------------------------------------- Holy lights on non beacon target: HL HL HS HL HL HL HS HL HL HL HS WoG 22.08 x 7 = 154.56 HLx56 x 1.5 = 84HL = 588k healing WoGx7 x 1.5 = 10.5WoG = 136.5k healing HSx21 x 1.5 = 31.5HS = 252k healing Total = 976.5k healing HPS = 6318 Total Mana = 672% base mana ------------------------------------------- Holy lights on beacon target: HS HL HL WoG 6.72 x 23 = 154.56 HLx46 = 46HL = 322k healing WoGx23 x 1.5 = 34.5WoG = 448.5k healing HSx23 x 1.5 = 34.5HS = 276k healing Total = 1092.5k healing HPS = 7068 hps Total Mana = 598% base mana ------------------------------------------- Conclusion: In the same time interval, directly healing your beacon with holy light is ~700 more hps, while costing 74% base mana less. Some things to note: I didn't account for HS procs/judging to keep up the haste buff/ IoL procs/ Daybreak procs. I don't think any of those would drastically change the delta in outputs. I also didn't account for eternal glory procs, which would affect the latter rotation (healing your beacon) more so, and thus widen the gap in both mana efficiency and hps. Another way to look at it, is that you lose 38 HL to gain 24.5 WoG and 2 HS by healing your beacon target with your HLs (during a 154.56 second interval). This of course also assumes only using HL/HS/WoG and nothing else. Another thing to note is that this assumes that none of your healing ever goes to over healing, which after raiding in beta I have found that often times, the tank damage is so low that the tank doesn't need your holy lights, so they are wasted if you cast them there. Also, there are times when the raid is taking no damage, so WoG/HS would be wasted there. The calculations are of course to be taken with a grain of salt, but I think it shows healing your beacon target is not drastically lower hps, as some have posited (honestly it seems intuitive that taking advantage of your beacon 100% would yield more hps, so I'm not saying those people are stupid). |
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Unless stats are really out of whack of you're severely undergeared and just picking up "anything" as an upgrade, there's no good reason to take anything other than plate. Judging procs a seal (again), so that affects the mana replenishment from intel as well. Haste also doesn't mention the faster ticking of HoTs, not that we have a lot of them, but it is an additional boon to throughput nonetheless. |
This should give us a starting point for a talent guide.
The min/max build I'm seeing is this: The World of Warcraft Armory Talent Breakdown: (Holy) Arbiter of the Light: DPS talent, skip. 0/2 Protector of the Innocent: This turns out to be good free healing. 3/3 Judgements of the Pure: Core talent. 3/3 Clarity of Purpose: Core talent. 3/3 Last Word: This will be a nice boost when it's relevant, which will only be a small portion of time spent healing. At this point in the tree, it's the best pf the options. 2/2 Blazing Light: DPS talent, skip. 0/2 Denounce: Opportunity for free dps at the cost of a gcd, but doesn't help our healing output. 0/2 Divine Favor: Core cooldown. 1/1 Infusion of Light: Holy shock is something we'll be using on cooldown, so this is a must. 2/2 Daybreak: No cooldown means more Holy Power, which means more free heals. 2/2 Enlightened Judgements: Judging will be something we need to do (for mana and procs). This allows us to hit with our Judgement. 2/2 Beacon of Light: Core ability. 1/1 Speed of Light: Fast casts are always nice and Holy Radiance has the potential to be overpowered. 3/3 Sacred Cleansing: Core utility spell. 1/1 Conviction: When we crit (with heals or Judgement), this will give us a stacking buff. Yes. 3/3 Aura Mastery: Core talent 1/1 Paragon of Virtue: Optional, not recommended based on Noules's analysis. 0/2 Tower of Radiance: More ways to generate Holy Power = good. 3/3 Blessed Life: Unless that means we need to offtank. 0/2 Light of Dawn: Core ability. 1/1 (Protection) Divinity: Core talent. 3/3 Seals of the Pure: DPS talent. 0/2 Eternal Glory: More free heals. 2/2 Judgements of the Just: In the unusual circumstance when this debuff is not otherwise available, we will be Judging and could apply it. (Retribution) Eye for an Eye: Damage. 0/2 Crusade: Buffs Holy Shock by 30%. 3/3 Improved Judgement: Positioning is going to be important for us due to our AoE heals. Range on Judgement will allow us some mobility. 2/2 Rule of Law: Not recommended. The extra crit on WoG would come at the cost of Divinity (2% overall healing per point) or Eternal Glory (15% free WoG per point). Pursuit of Justice and Guardian's Favor: Not recommended, again for the opportunity cost. Imp Judgement is the first to go if you know you'll be within 20 yards (e.g. healing the melee) and can put those points into either Paragon of Virtue or Judgements of the Just. |
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Also, since this thread just seems to be a generic compilation/cata discussion thread, the title, Cataclysm Holy: Raid Healing?, doesn't make much sense, especially when posed as a question. |
Couple of notes on HR - the radius has been increased to 20 yards. It can crit and the crits do proc Conviction.
With regards to the DF glyph, you may want to point out that it can be used as a means to conserve mana, by allowing you to cast more HL's instead of having to cast an expensive DL. Depending on the fight, it may be stronger than HS, even at early gear levels, for that reason. I haven't done enough beta raids to be able to say that with certainty, though. |
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In Cataclysm both of those factors should be different - it should be possible to let health bars 'coast' for a little bit if we can make up for the different before or after. Furthermore we should be overhealing quite a bit less, so the extra loss from Divine Plea could be quite noticeable. It's not clear that Divine Plea used with AW will actually be significant mana return (over no CD), since you'll have to be using better HpS heals if you do have to maintain healing. None of those points necessary mean 2m AW isn't useful, since you could then use AW as a cooldown immediately -after- the Divine Plea to catch up. However it seems less likely that we'd be using Divine Plea on CD anyway - the longer CD means delaying Plea is more reasonable than before (as if you do not lose an entire Plea, you don't actually miss out) and we're likely going to have to time it better with encounter breaks. So I'm not sure Paragon of Virtue is really a must-have talent. As a rough estimate, Paragon of Virtue should add about 0.5% healing per point (+20%, increased uptime is about 7.5s per 3m interval at 2 points since you get 1.5 AW instead of 1 AW => about 0.5% increased healing). It does provide other benefits, too, but I'd suggest that the third point of Protector of the Innocent would provide more return typically (or Last Word depending on how you go). Skipping Paragon of Virtue lets you fill out Enlightened Judgments/POI/Last Word and go 31/5/5. |
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All in all though I think the DF glyph may still better because you can control when you get the benefit rather than having a small passive bonus, if the net benefit turns out to be roughly the same. |
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Let's take your example of 25% net haste (as an aside, this value is almost certainly too low for raids[1]). If we have the non-TOR rotation be HL HL HS HL HL <wait> HS HL HL <wait> HS WOG we find that the rotation results as follows: Duration: 18.72s (2xHL + 12s for two HS intervals + HS time + WOG time = 2x 2.16 + 12 + 2x 1.2) Net healing: 79K (6xHL + 3xHS + WOG = 6x7 + 3x8 + 13) - pre-Beacon Net mana used: 78% base (6xHL + 3xHS + WOG = 6x9 + 3x8 + 0 percent) That means in the original total duration of 154.56, you will get: Total: 978.4k HPS: 6.33k Total Mana: 644% base mana In particular, the new rotation is superior to the original non-TOR in basically every way. While the final result is still qualitatively the same (TOR is more hps/hpm efficient) the difference is somewhat smaller. What we find is that the calculation is quite sensitive to the value of haste and the specific values each spell heals for - the ratio of which does not seem to stay the same as spellpower increases. Note also that for a different value of haste the optimal rotations do change due to the fixed HS cooldown. In some cases adding haste has almost no effect on the optimal rotation (if you further examine the non-TOR rotation, haste appears to have very small effect until it becomes optimal to add the third HL into the HS intervals). Due to this high sensitivity to haste, IoL/Daybreak/Eternal Word procs start becoming very relevant. Very generally, we can state that the TOR rotation will always have a higher percentage of healing from WoG since it will have superior holy power generation. This pretty much ensures TOR rotation will be more mana efficient than non-TOR. HpS questions are too dependent on actual values to generalize, though (based on rough order of magnitude) TOR should always be competitive if not better than non-TOR until DL/HL ratio surpasses some threshold. [1]: During raids you should have 1.03x from SoL, 1.09x from judgment and 1.05x from spell haste aura => 1.18 haste before items. 1.25 haste then implies you have 6% from gear, which seems low. |
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That doesn't mean the active ability is necessarily better, however - only if there is some 'feature' in the healing environment that you can exploit by being able to control your own healing rate. If the healing is constant with little 'feature', you could argue reasonably that the passive ability is better because it tends to smooth out your own healing. While neither is always better, the active ability gives you the opportunity to do better than the average (with smart play) while the passive ability does not. Basically, if there's a period where I have to heal really hard for ~25 seconds, the DF glyph helps me more than the HS glyph. If there's no such period, then both of them are about the same in the long run. More crucially, there's no healing arrangement where the passive glyph is better than the active one (okay, technically it would be possible to come up with a encounter mechanic where it IS better, but if you just consider changes in the necessary HpS, this should hold). Again, this does depend on the assumption that the glyphs -are- about equal on average; this is not necessarily clear. |
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This could all easily change with hardmodes, though. |
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