Deris

No, what we need is a 51 point talent worth getting.

Otherwise, you're shooting yourself in the foot by not picking up JoTW. A 51 point talent should NEVER be situational, period. If its the ultimate talent in the whole damn tree, and I need to sink 51 points into it - I shouldn't have to say "Well, it *could* be cool for *this* fight." I should be saying "Oh hell yeah, I can't WAIT to spec that."

What is really telling to me that Beacon just has poor placement (don't get me wrong : it could/will be a "neat" ability - but Class/Talent Tree Defining it is not.) is that if Judgements of the Wise was the 51 point holy ability, I don't think anyone would bat an eye, and we would all be excited about having it. Ret would be pissed, but who cares about those guys anyways.

 

Thorgred

How does Sacred Shield work?
Does it scale from spellpower? Attack power?
I think holy needs a talent to improve Sacred Shield and Divine Plea.

I also believe that the holy tree mostly sucks and can't see a reason why I'd take a holy pally over any other healer.
I know that cross-tree comparisons aren't the best idea, but you should look into the healing trees of other classes (specifically resto druids and shamans) and see what kind of talents they are getting, on top of their superior arsenal of healing spells.

And prot still needs their 11-pointer. This can be a talent that increases either TPS or Mitigation- or both. I'd like to see a damaging interrupt on a 20-sec cooldown, off the GCD. I'm not a fan of the HoJ interrupt mechanic and feel like protadins need something more to deal with trash.

EDIT - Btw Flyingtoastr i really like your holy tree. The Judgement of Light talent on the first tier seems a little powerful considering that Prot/Ret can easily get it, but its a great solution to some of our AoE healing problems.

 

Spenda

I'm not disagreeing with you, but shaman totems were just changed to last 5 minutes.

 

flyingtoastr

CoH is one of the most situational spells in the game and yet it is the premier healing spec for Priests. Funny, you seem to be... wrong. There are all sorts of strong tree-topping talents that are situational. Shockwave. Deep Freeze. Guardian Spirit. Dispersion. Killing Spree. Bladestorm. Beacon of Light is not the problem, it's the talents around it that are. Buff Tiers 8-10 to outdo JotW (which is damn easy to do considering that all you gain from going JotW is JotW, every other talents is about as fraking useless as possible for healing) and tweak a few numbers on BoL and you're golden.

Making the holy 51-pointer our Chain Heal is retarded. It cripples anyone except deep holy from being effective healers. We shouldn't have to fill a healing deficiency with a talent point, we should simply make our healing better with that point.

Not every single point talent needs to fundamentally change how your class plays.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

• frmorrison

My experience with SS is it is a pretty nice spell for Ret. The 50% crit on FoL works well with Art of War, and you rarely have mana concerns as Ret. For Holy it is so-so, but I think it is worth the GCD.

It would be nice for Holy to have a talent that boosted the 500 damage absorbed.

I believe spell haste affects Divine Plea, so you could say there already a talent that affects it (by 10% when judging).


Beacon needs to last 2 minutes and slightly lower the mana cost.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Andrast

A longer duration would be greatly appreciated due to the very high mana cost of the spell. It is also very frustrating that it expires in the middle of most heroic fights normally as things are getting more difficult. Have they fixed the re-application bug with it yet? Also can someone confirm that if you proc the Beacon heal with a holy shock can Infusion of Light proc if the Beacon heal crits? I haven't specced holy in the most recent build due to focusing on live.

I found it extremely fun and very powerful. It isn't just limited to aoe healing but is extremely powerful in 2 tank situations such as Patchwerk. The fights in Sunwell where it might be beneficial off the top of my head would be:
1. Brutallus burn healing and keeping heals on the tank. (Or vice-versa)
2. Twins (slap it on the warlock tank) and heal your Sacrolash tank
3. M'uru - multiple uses here. Sentinel tank and Void spawn tank for my guild.
4. KJ - reflection/KJ tank.

I really don't think you can dismiss BoL out of hand until you've really thought about the strategic uses. I agree it is somewhat limited and does need improvements/work but I really think its very close to a viable 51pt talent.

 

Demonseedx

Wouldn't Glyph of Holy Light cover that to a small extent? Not that it is great for those fights where the raid has to spread out but it is at least something to consider as a small AoE heal with no Drawback to HL.

 

flyingtoastr

I would agree if the range wasn't so small. 5 yards is pretty much nothing except on Illidan P2 or Twins stacks.

I'm also a major proponent of Glyphs enhancing classes instead of fixing problems. The problems should be addressed baseline or (as a last resort) talented.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Andrast

It is frustrating that it very rarely even reaches from the tank (at the front of a mob) to the melee (at the back of the mob).

With that said there doesn't appear to be many better glyphs available.

 

Deris

Everyone brings Priests pretty much entirely for CoH... it fundamentally changes how they play.

I don't want the 51 point to be Chain Heal, I never stated this.

What I want is a 51 point that isn't laughably terrible compared to the Mana Regeneration options that JoTW gives you, on top of 8% additional spell crit that you gain on the way to it. Nerfing JoTW isn't the way to do it, but I have a feeling that this will be happening shortly. Then we're stuck with a mediocre gimmick spell that quite frankly should be baseline to make up for our complete lack of AoE heals outside of glyphs. Not even mentioning the mana cost/duration.

 

Anedris

BoL is considerably stronger than many other 51-pointers (dispersion and deep freeze from the top of my head) and more or less in line with most of them. It's extremely powerful in some situations, useful but a bit gimmicky in the average case, and very rarely useless. I'd say that passes muster.

You get those 8% spell crit regardless of whether you continue on to JotW or take beacon, so those are irrelevent to this question.

The issue as stated is that nothing in deep holy remotely compares to the idea of near-unlimited mana. JotW needs to be moved deeper or deep holy needs to be buffed (or both).

 

flyingtoastr

You can get the 8% spell crit while going deep holy. Again, the only healing talent you get from going JotW is JotW. Everything else is redundant raid buffs or DPS talents.

Priests can AoE heal without CoH though. It's not as good, but it functions exactly like I said. You spec into your tree to gain better heals, not to completely change your playstyle. Look at Riptide. It doesn't change how Resto Shamans play, it simply gives them ways to expand their healing power. That is what we need.

The problem still isn't BoL. It's everything around it. Deep holy has zero throughput talents. JotP is fun and interactive but very lackluster for 7 points. Most of the new talents were focused at PvP. All they need to do is buff up deep holy talents. What if deep holy had something like:

Vassal of the Light: Increases the healing done by your critical heals by 11/22/33%. Your Judgement of Light also has a chance equal to your Holy critical strike chance to heal for double the amount.

or

Sanctification: Reduces the Global Cooldown caused by your Judgement and Sacred Shield spells by .5/1 seconds. In addition the healing reduction effect caused by your Divine Plea spell is decreased by 30/60%.

Bam, have some nice activated regen. Reduce the time you need to dump out the group utilities. Increase your throughput by a pretty hefty amount. Now deep holy is worth speccing into regardless of Beacon.

Beacon is useful. It just needs a few tweaks (duration and something to deal with overheal) and it could be an incredibly stellar talent. Don't nuke a useful talent that isn't the problem. No matter how good you make Beacon speccing deep holy is going to be meh unless you make deep holy worth speccing into.

EDIT: I understand your problem. You think BoL is an AoE heal. Stop thinking of it that way. BoL is an additional tank healing tool. Think of it as Earth Shield on Steroids.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Thorgred

I was always a fan of Beacon of Light becoming Glyph of Holy Light on steroids:

Your healing spells on the Beacon heal up to 5 nearby party or raid members for 20% of the amount healed on the beacon.

But i agree with everything that Flyingtoastr has said. Talents and glyphs should enhance playstyles, not create entirely new playstyles or be used to fill glaring gaps.

 

Ngita

I cant talk about the later fights as we only recently killed Brutallus but as I understand it bol is limited to the party. So if burn targets arent in the same party as the main tank he will receive no benefit.

Flyingtoastr not every talent point needs to affect how the class plays but our 11,21,41 Holy talents dont exactly have wide ranging effects either. Even holy shock was regarded primarly as a pvp talent and of no use for actual healing until recent changes. Divine illumination is mainly taken simply because its only 1 more point. If they had simply only nerfed Illumination to 65% and removed Divine Illumination from the talent tree would we be any worse off?

Edit, having said that I am happy with BoL as a talent, it helps in 5 mans with AOE, it is likely to be useful in 10 mans and is looking to be situationally useful in 25 mans. Depending on raid makeup I dont know if I would take it over say blessing of Sanctuary or Sanctified Retribution both of which are strong raid utility talents but I would think about it. my problem is with the Holy tree as a whole. Deep holy especially but even Spiritual Focus is looking lackluster with the spell push back changes and assuming I could rely on improved Concentration aura instead. Indeed if I needed to take Blessing of kings, the assumption by many is to drop 3% holy crit. But I would be looking at dropping deep holy talents instead.

 

Andrast

I'm working under the assumption (perhaps misguided) that the party only restriction will be lifted and/or isn't intentional.

Beacon of Light - Spell - World of Warcraft

Makes no mention of the party-only restriction.

In any case since virtually all buffs are raid wide it's fairly trivial for the paladin to switch people into the party to benefit from BoL. This does seem overly cumbersome so I really hope that BoL is changed.

 

flyingtoastr

Oh I agree with you. Aura Mastery should be baseline (Totems are 40 yards now, Moonkin and LotP are 45, time for Auras to do the same) and Divine Favor could use a facelift. Having done M'uru without a Shadow Priest this week though I must say that Divine Illumination most assuredly has its moments where I just want to kiss the man who designed it. However as I see it the ability would be much better served as the 11 point Holy talent with something real in the 41-slot.

Ah what the hell, I'll toot my own horn for once. I made a mock-up of how I feel the Holy tree should look, and it incidentally covered those points you made.

BoL's wording says "friendly targets" so I would assume it is supposed to be a raid-wide buff until told otherwise.

---------

Some more info on Judgements that I just tested:

-JoL is indeed scaling with AP/SP still.
-A weaker JoL will overwrite a stronger one.
-JoL heals are now counted as coming from the person who Judged, not the person receiving the heal as on live.
-The amount restored by JoL is determined at the time of the Judgement and will persist at that level regardless of changes to your attack power/spell power.
-JoL heals are affected by Avenging Wrath on you, however the outgoing heals on others is not affected.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Soralin

Firstly - I love your talent spec. I think that the "Vassal of the Light" talent is probably a little too powerful - increasing the entire heal by 33% when you crit is quite excessive. I'd settle for "increases your critical spell bonus by 50%" or something like that. I also like the "Purified Flash of Light" - but think rather than adding a new spell, you could incorporate it into the existing flash of light spell with a "This cannot occur more than once every 4 seconds" or something like that.

The idea that there is a deep holy talent that reduces the MS debuff attached to Divine Plea has been knocking around in here a fair bit and I hope thats something that makes it to live - that alone would almost encourage people taking deep holy talents.

One thing I noticed.

Are JoL heals redirected through BoL? It would be nice if they were... its fairly unlikely that it would be, in a raid environment it would be fairly overpowered - but perhaps there could be a deep holy talent that did it - in place perhaps of your Vassal of Light: "JoL has <holy spell crit> chance to heal for twice the amount" ... "Up to 4 JoL targets heal your Beacon of Light targets". Or perhaps "50% of all JoL Healing is also redirected to your BoL target". It would be the "HoT" that pallies have been looking for, and although its only limited to one target, isn't that "Tank Healing" what Blizzard want pallies to be doing?

 

Anauel

I must say I am not, and probably will never be, a proponent of Holy Paladins. I find the build not really fitting with my play style...

But, damn, even I'd want to pvp as holy with that purified flash of light.

 

burghy

I had 364 heal ticks poping on the tank with beol and jol up and I can't think of anything else causing them.
And as we are on the subject, it would be a decent move to make judgement effects last 30 seconds if current JotP isn't changed a lot. And add judgement gcd reduction on it.

 

Darandor

Purified FoL would make me PvPgasm. Unless the 51-pointer for Holy changes significantly, a LK Holy PvP-build is a no-brainer, certainly going no further than Enlightened Judgements.

With the spell pushback changes, are Holy PvPers still thinking that Conc Aura is going to remain the bread and butter Aura? My current PTR (non-LK) experience points toward Ret Aura being more useful, given the amount of time I spend tanking fast-hitting melee in PvP. With Eye For An Eye and Ret Aura up, a geared PvE Rogue can kill themselves in under 30s while I casually heal myself with all my shiny new (well ... reworked) instacast spells. The interrupt duration reduction is nice of course, and currently fairly necessary given the majority of cast time healing spells I use, but I'm definitely going to give Ret Aura a run.

Also, I posted this a few pages back, but I think it got buried:

I was just browsing through the PvP items listed on mmo-champion, and couldn't find a spell power/crit rating 1H weapon usable by Paladins. The 1H mace is there with its MP5, which isn't really an optimal PvP stat since Infusion of Light.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and if not could somebody please mention this on the beta forums?

 

bellator

Are you certain these heal ticks weren't simply the tank procing JoL on himself which would show up as you healing the tank with JoL?

I do hope however this is true as it would give more incentive to judge on cooldown.

 

burghy

If the JoL procs show up as my heals then they should be reflected through beol.
I'll log tonigh if I can get some more instance runs, I'm used with loggerhead and forgot to do it

Meh testing atm and it doesn't seem to redirect through beol even if jol procs are considered your heals. Would have been nice

 

Andrast

I'm not entirely sure that a paladin pvp spec is a "no-brainer". Assuming BoL stays in its easily dispellable form and therefore inappropriate for pvp would you attempt to get the survivability talents from the lower tiers of protection? Or would you attempt to get the extra crit from ret? Personally I can't see how you could ignore Stoicism and Guardian's Favor. Does anyone know if the dispel resist mechanic from Stoicism and Blessed Hands stack? 60% dispell resistance on Hand of Protection, Hand of Freedom and even Hand of Sacrifice seems fairly strong.

The other question is exactly how deep would you go into holy? Would you get Divine Illumination? Personally I can't see the massive use in Sacred Cleansing since it seems such a weak talent as it relies on RNG to proc RNG. If I had to pick right now I'd probably go with something like: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...00000000000000

You get the extended judgment range so you can judge light/justice on targets relatively far away, the run speed increase from Pursuit of Justice and importantly the extra mobility provided by the crit talents in ret and their synergy with Infusion of Light.

 

bellator

Just done some testing of this, and joL procs do not appear to be reflecting through BoL. The word of the healing is slightly different:-

Bellator's Flash of Light Heals Player-X for 1000 health

Compared to

Player X Gains 400 health from Bellator's Seal of Light

Whilst the healing is being attributed to the person who's seal of light, it seems to be treated differently, as a gain rather than a heal thus not triggering Beacon of Light. If the wording had been "Bellator's Seal of Light Heals Player-X for 400 health" then i would have expected a trigger of beacon, but it's unfortunately not the case.

 

Darandor

It depends a little on your PvP style, but having messed around with Holy/Prot and Holy/Ret, Ret is the support tree to run with, since you'll be wanting to stack all the crit you manage, and then a little more. To answer your question though, I'd get both - extra crit from Ret and survivability from Holy - in this build.

Holy:
As far as Holy goes, Infusion of Light and Enlightened Judgements are mandatory. Divine Illumination is garbage for PvP on live (I've been dropping 41 points in Holy and not picking it up for many a respec now), and mana is even less of an issue in 3.0. The more I play it, the more I'm preferring Ret Aura to Conc Aura, hence my lack of points spent in Improved Concentration Aura, although there's not really anywhere better to spend them at the moment. Deep, deep Holy is quite skippable for PvP, unless BoL turns into something much better.

Prot:
In that build, you can drop Sanctified Retribution and a point in Sanctified Seals and put 2/2 in Guardian's Favor depending on your taste. Forebearance is four minutes now, which means you won't be HoPing the same target within one of those talent points anyway (worse for 2v2 arena than anything else). Not sure how dispel resists stack, but it's easy enough to get them all at the moment anyway, as they're attached to other talents you want. Divine Guardian is sexcellent for PvP, but the Ret stuff is much better in practice. It'll be interesting to see what the Prot 11-pointer looks like.

Ret:
Pursuit of Justice is nice but not necessary (more Ret than Holy). Ret is about a bit of mana efficiency, buckets of crit (which is truiy golden in action) and Eye for an Eye. Watching Rogues and Feral Druids gank themselves while you don't lift a finger is really, really amusing. Doesn't get old.

At the moment I'd like to see something better on Tier 4 of Holy, since I think I'm going to stop using Conc Aura, and (regarding BoW) I don't like buffing buffs that just get dispelled anyway. I'm a card-carrying member of team 'Make BoK Baseline' too, but everything else is just ... fun!