My mistake. I thought they dropped it to a 0.5s so you couldn't cast it on the run. Much bigger nerf than I thought.

Edit: My prediction is that Ghostcrawler posts that some designer was "just playing with talents, and the build accidentally got the changes." Amazing how that keeps happening to paladins.

I'm wondering why we're not getting a change if Protection gear is. It isn't a big issue, since pvp gear at 80 is corrected, but it doesn't make sense to me.

I am in the same position. I haven't been a holy paladin for a while, and these changes are mind-boggling. The only thing I can say to holy pallies is that maybe you're in the same phase that ret went through when the consolidation to buffs happened and JotW was just replenishment. It sucks, but it can only get better from here.

There is still time for buffs.

I guess if I were going to put the most optimistic possible spin on this, I'd say they've got buffs planned for deep holy. But boy, they'd have to be pretty damn impressive buffs. Gutting IoL like this really removes most of what I thought was fun about WotLK holy.

Two things I've noticed after playing the new build:

1. Hammer of the Righteous is now FOUR TIMES weapon DPS. Using a Merciless Gladiator's Gavel (41.2 weapon DPS), 1792 AP (128 DPS) and 10% One-Hand Weapon Specialization, my HOTR was hitting for 744 damage non-crit, which matches [ (41.2 + (1792 / 14) * 4) * 1.1 ] exactly.

2. Avenging Wrath is currently triggering the GCD.

The IoL nerf was complete unnecessary. If they felt that holy was going to be overpowered in arena they could've just put a cd on IoL so it doesn't proc every time you crit a holy shock. Like maybe once every 30 secs or so. As it stands now there's no point in going any deeper than illumination/divine favor.

Has the internal cooldown on JoW procs increased to 15 seconds?

I don't have a Paladin (I play a Shadow Priest) but when a Paladin started hitting on a test dummy, putting up JoW for a little bit I was checking my combat log and I was only seeing a proc about every 15 seconds to me from his JoW (we were not grouped) rather than every 4 seconds.


*edit* Okay so the internal cooldown doesn't seem to be changed upon further testing however it's certainly not a 100% proc rate. Seems a lot lower.

I like the idea of Consecrate becoming an AE HoT, but the problem is that we're right back where we started in terms of mobility. Not only do we have to run over to whoever we want to heal, in order to receive that heal they have to stay within Consecrate for the duration. I could see it working well for melee, but on most fights there is too much movement for it to be truly useful, and we're stuck with no mobility again.

And although I haven't been Holy in a while, I agree with everyone else; my deepest sympathies. Holy didn't deserve this.

I can confirm something similar at least. internal cooldown on JoW was increased, or its proc rate decreased substantially.

Also, AoW is still reseting the swing timer.

Would it be overpowered at all if Consecration (and any imaginary Healing Consecration talent) pulsed out from the casting Paladin every tick instead of being stuck in its original spot? The worst affected spec I can see would be Prot, but I can't see that being a huge deal.

This thread MMO-Champion BlueTracker - GC, Word on Holy? (Blue Request)made it pretty clear they had no intentions beyond what they have done so far.

I am sure some buffs will come in 3.1 and I am sure pvp representation wil be looked at after season 5. But fixes to holy on time scale of their fixes to ret. would be unfortunate.

My mistake. The internal cooldown on JoW procs is still 4 seconds, the proc rate still seems to be 100%. However the cooldown is linked to the debuff, not the player.

Which means that if multiple people are casting spells at the target the procs are shared between those people. So people who cast more spells in a given period have a higher chance to "steal" the proc. And the more people hitting it the less regen each person gets because they can miss out on procs.

(Saw this from 9 minutes from a combat log).

I partied up with a Paladin and we were hitting a dummy. He kept JoW up the entire time.

Occasionally some other people would swing by and start casting spells on the dummy.

At one point I Mind Seared another target to see if the damage ticks could proc it (maybe I was unlucky but I didn't see any. The casting of the spell itself though can proc it).

In the 9 minutes of my combat log there were 106 JoW procs all up (with a 4 second ICD the maximum would be 134 if there was a spell cast exactly on every 4 second mark).

There was no instance of any proc happening more often than once every 4 seconds (with the margin of latency).

Unfortunately, that seems likely. Again, there really couldn't be a clearer distinction between the careful, deliberate changes they were making at first, and the much more... frantic approach they've taken since the release date was announced. It seems pretty clear that they've had to radically change their timetable and scrap a number of their plans.

(Remember when GC said that Prot and Ret weren't done, because they each needed a few more cool deep talents? How likely does that seem now?)

My guess is that for PvP reasons they don't want you to be able to create an AoE that people can't run out of (at least not without having to devote all your time to it, like spamming Arcane Explosion.)

This is really unfortunate if it's true (and intended) as it makes JoW largely useless in raids. This is grasping at straws, but maybe it was weird behavior due to the two of you not being in the same group?

[e] Saw your latest post. Never mind.

Well some good news. Sacred sheild is now scaling and with a fairly high coefficent. I have seen possibly 0.75 mentioned. 1400 absorbed with 1500 spell power is one point.

It scales from gear, it scales from holy guidance and it scales for avenging wrath. It doesnt scale from Spell power from Sheath, perhaps deliberately considering their stance on ret healing. Its also unaffected by Divine plea so your free to throw a bunch of fairly cheap sacred sheilds around for any target likely to take raid damage.

I really, really hope that Sacred Shield not scaling from Sheath is a bug, since that would give Ret 0 new abilities from 70-80(Divine Plea, Shield of Righteousness, Sacred Shield) of any use. I wouldn't be surprised if it's intentional, but it would be a nice tool to use in PvP or even in PvE to apply a little bit of hybridity(I know, not a word). As it stands, 500 damage is barely worth noting, especially as HP pools begin to scale up. DPS will be rocking 20k life in raids, and I can only guess at the HP totals of people in full S5.

I agree with that, it seems too big and too odd (1sec HL with LG?) for it to be exactly as they intended it to be. Maybe something like they are changing the talent to 5 ranks, and .5 sec per rank or something like that. Though I am bit concerned that there have been blue posts in almost all of the other class forums tonight including one about Prot pallies, except nothing for Holy yet.

I think they can make JotP and Enlightened Judgements better by adding some small things. Make Enlightened Judgements refresh the duration of your current seal when Judgement is used, and make JotP increase the duration of the Judgement debuff to 1min. Overall 10% haste is really good and I think the base idea of having to use Judgement to keep it up is fine, it is just a bit odd now what we must do to keep it up. We can either use 3 GCDs every 2 mins (having to reseal, and 2x Judgements) to keep it up, but then our Judgement only has a 33% uptime. Or we can use 7 GCDs every 2 mins to have 100% uptime of both, but that is a lot of time spent not healing.

I am extremely happy to hear about the Sacred Shield change, that is what I was expecting it to do and it will be very good. It will absorb as much as a non crit HL over 30sec, and cost a little bit more then a FoL. Finally a preemptive healing ability.

Sacred Shield also scales with touched by the light. I am not going to argue if sheath spell power should affect Shield but I dont believe its good for ret long term to be seen as a the "premier healing spec".

Are paladins not seeing Blizzards vision for Holy Paladins because of bugs?. A beaconed main tank and raid wide healing through flash of light and shield would work and provide good throughput. Fast Holy lights used on demand on the maintank for reserve. But beacon has been seen as bugged because it doesnt work that way.

Or not.

It seems that Blizzard's gotten themselves convinced that Holy is still somehow completely overpowered, even after gutting Infusion. From GC's quote above, I guess that means we can look forward to a few more kicks in the beanbag before release? Does anyone in the beta have any insight at all as to exactly how Blizzard is arriving at polar opposites from everyone else? Some gimmick encounter? Arena testing? Something's got to be skewed here, someone has to know what it is.

Now for what really terrifies me: 22/0/49 is looking like a really nice healing build now. Given that its "not intended" for healers to spec that deep in Ret (despite the absolute shit they shoveled into deep Holy), I'm petrified that AoW and Sheath are going to get nerfed into uselessness in the very near future since they can no longer be moved out of reach of Holy. Hell, you might even see another Illumination nerf (by moving it further down) to try to artificially sweeten the Holy tree by souring the alternatives. I just wish they'd explain exactly what the goal is here rather than stringing us along with vague comments.

Once beacon works properly it really looks like a good talent. Imagine a few situations:

In a raid with 2 tanks, heal the tank you are assigned to like your normally would, and put Beacon on the other tank. You won't have the issue of not being able to rely on it since you are not using it to keep your tank alive. But, you will greatly help the healers on the Beaconed tank.

In 5 mans, we have problems with group healing because we need to stop healing the tank to do it, and it takes 10 seconds to get a heal to everyone. With a Beacon on the tank we can safely heal the group up without having to risk the tank dying.

The mana costs still seems high, would prolly be better at like half of what it is. So we will be able to easily move it around when the situation changes without having to pay such a huge penalty.

I am still confused with what they did with Divine Plea since it is almost impossible to use now while healing unless the fight has some Illidan/Felmyst length phase changes. I don't really care that it has some penalty, it makes more interesting then a button to press every 1 min, but you should still be able to heal decently while it is up. Something like 30% reduction would work well, though even the old 50% was workable. The skill doesn't really seem done yet though.

In raid casting divine plea.
Refresh your your jotp
Refresh shields.

If things get out of hand then a macro for canceling divine plea, divine favor,holy shock,holy light.

If their is a any 5 man single phase fight that a holy paladin cant heal and without resorting to divine plea then feedback it as too hard /Holy Paladin mana costs are too high.

Only thing I can come up with is that they're looking at data from runs where Paladins are grouped with other healers, who are all covering for the Paladin's flaws. My normal Naxx group is a Holy Paladin and a Holy Priest, and it works fine because the Priest can do the bulk of the AE healing and the Paladin can keep up the tank. In any situation like this, Paladins are fine; they CAN perform the one role decently well. They can stand still and spam heals on a tank. THe problems appear when you try to get them to do other things. Heal on the move, heal multiple people, endure longer fights, etc. So until you look at a Naxx group with 2 Holy Paladins, you won't really notice how the Paladin is failing unless you look really closely.

It's a bad excuse and I'm not sure it's the right one, but it's the only one I can come up with for how Blizzard keeps touting Paladins as amazing healers when everyone realizes they're not, and that the healing tree is purest dreck right now.

Perhaps it is due to the high amount of spike damage on tanks in PVP gear. and the bursty nature of paladin healing matching up so perfectly and artificially inflating Paladin effectiveness in Naxx that has led them to believe that. Perhaps it was a knee-jerk reaction to IoL + JotW being overpowered in arenas.

But really that is just mildly educated speculation based on my own experiences on beta.