New feature also has some use in pvp - you can trink out of stun but can't trink out of spell lock

I've always assumed it works only on undead/demons, so I've never specifically tried to test this, but I'm about 95% sure that I've used it on a mixed-mob group and it's only hit the undead/demon mobs.

It doesn't work on non-undead/demon mobs. I tried using it the other night on one of the humanoid randoms in an all undead area in DragonBlight and it just did nothing.

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Read close. It says "Holy damage and stunning all Undead and Demon targets within 10 yds for 3 sec." Not "Holy damage to all targets within 10 yds and stunning all Undead and Demon Targets for 3 sec."

Holy Damange and Stun apply to Undead and Demons - it's one clause. English Grammar frankly sucks - Blizzard could have worded this far better - big surprise. I have only the deepest respect for the many of you out there for whom English a second language.

That is true, but the damage nerf was across the board. We can't be sure how big of an effect it's going to have until we see how the new HotR gets buffed.

As I didn't see any concrete numbers here yet;
With the newest build all Seals seem to have their total damage reduced by exactly 20%, Judgement damage seems to be unchanged.
With that change I'd like to see Repentance and Crusader Strike switch their positions for leveling purposes only, having nerfed Seal damage and still getting your first real instant strike at level 50 looks pretty depressing.

This might be beating a dead horse, but I think it's important to throw down some numbers for the JotW/HL spam issue.

I don't have beta, but if Base mana - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft is to be trusted, the exact number is 4394*.29 = 1274. This also puts the cost of Judging at 4394*.05 = 219 and seals at 4394*.14 = 615.

Why would you assume that you have a 10 second Judgement cooldown? Improved Judgements is a 2 point talent at tier 2, and one of the few talents in your charge to JotW that's actually useful to Holy. (As you point out, for the most part all you get is JotW.)

Then there's Illumination. You get a whopping 19% crit chance on Holy Shock and Holy Light just from talents. I think it's safe to assume at least an additional 6% from gear, bringing your crit to 25%. So the total average cost for Holy Light x3, Judgement, repeat is 1274*3*(1-.6*.25)+219 = 3467.7. Multiplying by 5x to get the total mana pool gives 17338. This should be very attainable. Of course, there's other mana costs like refreshing seals, Holy Shock, etc. but since they all take time out of your rotation and cost less, they only decrease the true amount of int you'll need.

As for haste, a spec like this wouldn't gear for haste. You're already burning half a second waiting for the judgement cooldown to come up - adding haste just causes extra "hurry up and wait." The only relevant amount would be when you cross the threshold to be able to pack 4 HLs in between each judgement. But you'd be stacking int and crit first, because that not only increases your throughput but also gives you the efficiency and mana pool you'd need to sustain a more intensive rotation.

Of course, you can go hybrid and change the number of HLs between each judgement. And you can judge on the run, giving you something useful to do when you're getting out of the BBQ. In practice, you could throw more HLs in a row for nasty parts, and more judgements while moving/lower tank burst damage.

I'd prefer it if you were right that HL spam can't be maintained, but sadly you're wrong. Doesn't mean BoL isn't viable, or even more viable than JotW, but it does mean that you *can* spam HL nonstop if you can get that close to the boss.

Edit: Fixed quote splitting

Hate to break it to you bucko, but between 2 raid buffs (Wrath of Air and Swift Retribution/Boomkin) you have 8.15% haste and from wearing only the 5 pieces of Valorous Redemption you're getting another 203 rating (6.19%). So only between raid buffs and 5 pieces of armor you're looking at 14.84% haste. Bring in all the Naxx level stuff and you're rapidly approaching 20%. Bloodlusts puts you up to close to 50%.

So bro it doesn't matter whether you're "gearing for haste" or not, you're gonna have a lot of it.

And again, you're assuming you are in melee range of a boss. When you're not you absolutely positively suck at healing. Conditional healing is not a strong thing.

Oh my God. Please, please let that be placeholder art.

Eh, it's still better than Heroes' Redemption.

Pretty much all the Naxx sets are this ugly.

When you're not in range of a boss, you just have to slap up Sacred Shield and spam FoL. My healing build goes all the way down to sheath, so the 80-90% crit chance on FoL with SS up is a lot of extra healing, and VERY cheap. It won't have the throughput of spamming HL from 10 yards (like you can on most fights in the game), but it does well enough.

About this on going JotW spec vs BoL spec war:

Please remember that in the end, "the optimal" will be dictated by gear (regen/haste) and how encounters (fight length, AoE damage, melee range restrictions, chances to use BoL well, etc.) play out. I really think it's getting futile discussing this any further.

Go Holy-JotW if it suits you, but remember it's not just about how the specs look on paper.



Regarding the Seal nerfs:



Though this was my first reaction, I guess this is a wait and see how things will shake out.

All that really matters is that we end up as competitive DPS, I'm holding them to that blue post saying we should be in the same rage as rogues and hunters (someone link?).

So what you're saying is that if you can't stand within 10 yards of a mob then you will resort to FoL spam?

Here are the fights in Sunwell where you wouldn't be welcome in my raid:
1. Kalecgos - due to positioning requirements you are unable to heal the dragon tank.
2. Felmyst - due to positioning requirements I don't want you in melee range since there are already 5 melee, 1 tank and hunter pets in there eating Mass Dispell.
3. Twins - I'm sorry you aren't healing the Sacrolash tanks from the floor.
4. M'uru - In P1 you can't be assured that there will always be a mob within 10 yards to judge. In P2 you'll need to be moving around and because your spec is terrible in that it doesn't even pick up IoL you have far, far less mobility. Not to mention by standing next to the melee you're increasing the chance of an orb spawn or a Void spawn in melee.

2 Bosses remain in Sunwell of these you are only useful for Brutallus since with max rank holy light spam you would indeed be an effective tank healer in this situation. KJ doesn't require it although you could easily keep up JotW and provide an additional replenish to the raid.

So I dispute your claim that you can stand within 10 yards on most fights in the game you can't on Illidan, Council, Mother, Azgalor, Archimonde and even on the fight where you can stand in range you will find that you don't need to be swimming in mana and won't need to spam Holy Light. People need to actually test Beacon of Light and realise that it is an amazing 51pt talent. Ghostcrawler has said that it isn't intended for healing paladins to be specced deep into Retribution so in my eyes doing it is pointless.

What are these rumours of a new 11 pointer for prot based on?
I've never seen a blue post even hint that prot would get a new spell/talent?

Talent trees (contrary to popular belief) do follow a pattern.

1) Tier 1 is always 10 points total.
2) Every odd tier other than 1 has a single point talent. That is, tiers 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11. It is rare (except Death Knights) to have single point talents outside of these tiers.
3) The second to last tier is always 5 points total.

#2

Personally i'd much rather have 10-man set than the 25-man. Gold/turquoise is just such a hideous colour scheme. Luckily for me, i'm most likely to just be doing 10-mans in WotLK anyway...

The patch changes are, well, confusing. Seems like we may have ended up with a build running several steps behind blue comments, again, judging by the lack of any change to Divine Plea or anything else they've talked about recently. As far as the ret-specific changes in partciular go, i guess we'll have to wait and see what the raid parses are like before passing judgement, but the way they've been tinkering with talents and skills over the past few patches seems rather... haphazard. I'm still guardedly optimistic that things will shake out ok in the end, though.

When doing Naxx on beta I found the most use out of beacon of by either putting it on a tank healing the other tank mainly, but still watching the beacons health, or put in on the MT, and raid heal when you can. By raid heal I don't mean spam FoL, I mean for those times when the raid is taking damage that you are close to spamming HL. The only time I can see where BoL won't be useful is when there is only one tank (in range) and not much raid damage is going out at all. Which if is the case it is a pretty easy fight probably, except in the range case. If there are two active tanks it is amazing, you heal the tank you are assigned to with BoL on the other tank greatly helping out his healer.

There is no way they are going to let JotW be the main healing spec, if that turns out to be what most pallies spec to they will move it up to Tier 9 or something.

If I wanted to be in your raid, I'd show you the calculations of what kind of sustained healing you get out of FoL spam with sheath and a 90% crit rate. On the other hand, I don't actually, so you'll have to do the math yourself. It's pretty amazing for anything but main tank healing.

You also obviously don't understand how mana will be working in wotlk: we won't have enough of it. That's the game-plan - make regeneration and conservation actually important parts of healing again. In Wotlk, bosses won't be doing as much melee-ownage/silencing - GC is trying to make the classes evenly useful again (and melee-silencing bosses don't allow protadins to maintank).

And use some kind of punctuation to separate your sentences and clauses, please. Your post made my eyes water a bit.

It will never be the main healing spec. If we are lucky, it will be allowed to remain as the alternative, also viable healing spec.

It's not "FoL with a 90% crit rate".

At the moment the extra crit is only active while the shield is up. That means if your tank is getting smacked repeatedly it actually might not be up a fair amount of the time.

In the fraction of fights where a healer cannot ever stand within 10 yards of the boss, how many of those fights do no aoe damage to the melee? I've been assuming that there will usually be some kind of predictable damage to take advantage of on the few fights that heavily penalize being close to the target, but if there are a lot of mechanics and situations in Wotlk raids that would preclude either use-case, then yeah. No ret healers.

Quick Question: does anyone know if resilience was previously working in the Beta?

Blizzard had/has the chance to blend melee into holy for an increase in mana regen/group utility without having to dip 31-4 deep into Ret. It looks like they still intend for them to stand in the back chain-casting fol and HS->instant HL's while juggling BAcon and Sacred Shield AND judgements.
Hell, they still have time to change a multitude of things, even if it isnt towards a melee-oriented healing. The possibilities for improvement are limitless. Here's hoping one of those 8+ beta builds they already have has at least our 11-point Prot talent, and removes Aura mastery as Holy's.

Toast, I demand a Wartools thread on your holy build on whichever site you prefer. Much discussion to be had and exported to the Beta-boards for peer review.

*magic 8-ball says* Outlook is unfavorable.