Selenia

Simple. Elegant. I like. Someone should really post that as a suggestion on the beta boards.

 

levk

I don't blame you, this thread is ginormous.

Longevity is a big issue and stacking int is the best way to address that. So yeah people will be stacking int.

If you're asking whether people will stop stacking throughput via +heal and haste - of course, that was dead in the water with the downranking wipe. You used to be able to address longevity by stacking throughput and downranking and you won't be able to do that. Moreover things like current shadowpriests and manapots are not available either. It's tough to say but yeah most likely you'll be looking at longevity first and foremost for a while - unlike now. Now you're looking for throughput since longevity is not a concern at all.

 

Razr

So it seems these decisions are rather final since Patch will 95% be deployed on 14th of Octomber. How do holy raiding pallies feel about new talents and their effect in post 3.0 sunwell plateu era?

 

Amera

Given they always give 2 weeks notice before the season ends, and that 3.0 will be the end of that season, the patch will probably be teh 21st, not 14th, fwiw. They didn't officially announce the end of s4 in two weeks, as far as I know. But in any case, yes, there probably aren't many changes left to be made.

 

• Vinsent

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - 01/10 End of Arena Season 4 Coming Soon

We’re currently planning to end the fourth Arena season on October 14, 2008, and as always -- this date could easily change. This Arena Season is only ending in respect to the ladder, meaning we'll be taking a snapshot of the season's ladder and then go through our normal process to determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards. This process should take approximately one week. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for the arena-specific title and/or Armored Nether Drake to refrain from transferring their character to another realm between the date outlined above, and when the end-of-season rewards are physically awarded.

Upon the end of this Arena Season, teams and ratings will not be wiped, and will carry forward allowing players to earn points each week and purchase gear until the launch of the expansion (November 13, 2008).

Patch on the 14th

 

Amera

Whelp, I stand corrected.

 

◊ Cathela

If you're referring to a post I made awhile back, that was strictly based on int+Replenishment vs mp5, and it was done back when Replenishment was 0.5% of total mana per second; it's since been reduced to 0.25%.

So Replenishment's been cut in half, but now we have regular DP's at least partially making up the slack. I'm not sure where the numbers finally end up, but it does look like intellect will be a very useful stat regardless.

Reading the last five pages should give you a pretty good picture.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

healbotftw

So as a holy paladin working on KJ, what am I replacing my haste gems with? Crit or Int? I was leaning towards crit but I honestly have not been playing as a holy paladin for very long.

 

teeny

Well, good news:

"To help with both of these potential [mana]problems, We are going to change Divine Plea to only reduce your healing by 20% (up from 100%)"

Source: WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Upcoming Divine Plea change

It saddens me when she admits how a wonderful Pve ability can be messed up by Pvp balance.

 

flyingtoastr

Well the ten intellect from [Brilliant Lionseye] is equal to 12.65 Intellect with Kings and Divine Intellect, or roughly 190 mana. So that gem will increase your Replenishment tic by .475 mana/second, your healing by 2.53 (if you have Holy Guidance, which the ret build does not), and .125% spell crit at level 70.

EDIT: Full post by GC.



So they admitted holy does have problems, spamming FoL is really boring, that balancing for PvP really fucks things up, and that balancing healing is a PITA. Yay!

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

PSGarak

I'm curious if Divine Plea is really "intended" to be used for the full 15 seconds or if you're supposed to cancel it early. I suppose it's less of a question now that it's only 80% throughput instead of 0%, but do you really blow through a quarter of your mana bar in a minute? Even with cancel-casting you might only be able to get a few seconds at a time with no throughput loss on most fights, but at a one minute cooldown you can get those few seconds pretty often. How much of Divine Plea's duration do you need per minute cooldown, and how easy is it to get by for that long, especially if you top off your tank beforehand and coordinate cooldowns with him? (coordinating cooldowns means popping Shield Block so he lasts longer, and popping your force-crit when you divine plea so you can let him get down lower--possibly using a cancelaura + holyshock macro)

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Corronach

Divine Plea nerf is nice, it works well with AW now (perhaps AW getting put on the GCD could get removed for a nice macro?)

A lot is going to ride on their decisions regarding first and foremost A) Boredom issue (Can this be resolved before WoTLK? I'm pessimistic the desire is there, this is probably one of the more hallow things mentioend. B) Holy Deep Talents. I suspect they finally get players don't want the current deep talents, they're holding onto beacon of light, but hopefully the rest are on the table.

The last part just screams we don't have the time to fix everything, but we will. Announcing those plans before WoTLK is going to be pretty key.

In normal scenarios? No. Flash of Light is still very cheap. When things get crazy? Yes. Holy Light is a total hog. When we hit those tough AE situations we have to be throwing out heals rapidly, or when the tank is taking 50%ish hps a swing like Thane, then yes it's that bad.

 

• frmorrison

She addressed the PvP balance, Divine Plea can be dispelled.

While 20% less healing isn't so bad especially if used with AW, I still would like to something that makes deep Holy more powerful.

If GC cannot accept instant HL, add this spell:

Lesser Holy Light
Mana cost between FoL and HL
Healing is between the two spells

Why does she still say Bacon instead of Beacon? Maybe to lighten the mood.

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

 

Corronach

Quick thought. Paladins are going to be freaking nightmares to some classes in PVP while the problem ones will remain problems. This doesn't solve the PVP mana issue at all =/ Both priests and hunters can dispell, meanwhile everyone else will have to deal with infinite mana paladins. Hmmah.

 

Qalor

If instant HLs are overpowered (and I'll admit, I saw some crazy shockadin stuff going on with them), I think my favored change would be to make Infusion reduce the casting time of your next FOL or HL by 1.5 seconds. That way you get your small heal instant with mobility, or just time taken off your next HL to get a big one off.

 

burghy

Well they promised to give tools if needed when they implemented the mana cost changes. FoL-HL is a perfect example for that. Both spells are at the extremes of hps and efficiency.

 

burghy

Another big issue with holy is that I doubt it was properly tested by players. Probably most of them were just expecting that promised second pass. Instead of that we got some rushed changes and an excuse that healing is hard to test.
Also, considering their excuse that tanking/healing is harder to test than dps. Wouldn't it be a smart move to have available a version of naxxramas tuned really tight so people can find the flaws in tanking/healing?

 

Amera

I really don't see this. What did we get that suddenly makes us this unstoppable healing powerhouse? Right now on live, we are the worst PvP healers in most situations; I'm pretty sure this is accepted right now. Without Infusion at level 80, very little has changed about us, and the DPS classes have had amazing boosts to burst and control. As it stands now, a mage/rogue can easily kill any player with max resilience in a few seconds during a counterspell. A power-infused priest can drain someone dry in 20 seconds or less, and literally win games with only one or two mana burns if it ends up being a close mana battle.

It seems we have gained a pain suppression at the cost of losing our best CC out (BoSac), a situation binding heal like tool (beacon), and Hand spells that are tough to dispel. We've also benefited from some talent changes that reduce duration rather than resists, and gotten 6 sec holy shocks. Some of those are nice (shock in particular), but they aren't cyclone or mana burn, nor are they lifebloom. We still don't have threatening offensive abilities, and we still have poor instant healing capabilities compared to the other classes.

So what changed here? Have people had such different experiences on beta with paladins at 80 then at 70? I'm absolutely staggered that people seem to believe that Holy is so overpowered in level 80 PvP, especially given how bad we are now.

 

Suicidal Zebra

All the cool kids call it 'Bacon'. I've been doing it since our first Beta patch :P.

--

But seriously, I'm glad that sanity has prevailed somewhat in terms of Divine Plea. Something had to give. However I continue to worry about just how easy it is for our mechanics to be dispelled and yet it is significantly more difficult for us to dispell debuffs in the same arena (yes... me, worry, with my career high of 1589 in 2v2 as Ret ).

I'm not convinced that it's going to be possible to balance PvP and PvE healing effectively for Holy without introducing yet another counter mechanic. In terms of PvP Infusion reducing cast time by up-to 2 secs and stacking with Light's Grace could be an answer, but this is perhaps too unpleasant for PvE or may require too high a crit rate to be viable. There's no easy solution without providing a hard counter in PvP, and I feel that we already have enough of those.

Still, nice to know that 'vigorous' feedback can produce some results. I wonder if the same can work for IoL and JoW.

 

Corronach

I didn't mean to imply Paladins are going to be the druids of the next expansion. The main point was the classes we need mana against can counter our new mana tool.

The second point was that other classes will have to beat us without regard to our mana levels since they cannot dispell. Unfortunately to make that remotely balanced we're going to have to keep our CC vulnerabilities. But a big change is Holy Shock actually healing now. It helps against CoT.

I should have clarified, freaking nightmares to balance for pvp.

 

Ngita

Thats a very simplistic viewpoint, during TBC they increased the effects of spirt and improved the talents around spirit, they also improved water shield for shaman. Paladins got no additional mana regen but simply relied on their cheap spells,the ability to down rank to the appropriate sized holy light, the ability to gain mana mana from heals and pots. Wotlk removed the ability to down rank and it removed the ability to abuse pots. It also made healing spells considerably more expensive.

If a paladin is party healing and random party member takes 5k damage, a paladin has the choice of a cheap flash of light that will under-heal the damage or a expensive Holy light, or a even more expensive per heal holy shock. If the paladin is under time or movement pressure, the only choice is very expensive spells with high overheal because of the lack of appropriate heals for the job.

At the start of wotlk beta when Holy paladins reported mana issues in 5 mans and Divine plea was added shortly afterwards to the holy spellbook it seemed easy to draw the conclusion that the solution (divine plea) was for the problem (lack of mana in 5 man healing) Note at that time Retribution had truly massive mana regen so we can be reasonably sure it wasn't intended for retribution.

If instead of adding divine plea Blizzard had re-adjusted the costs of healing spells it wouldnt be a buff would it? its simply a new mechanic and not a extra buff.

 

Malleus

The identical GCD downtime is irrelevant. The difference between landing those heals in 1.2s and 2.2s is colossal.

With instant HLs from IOL, it is a genuinely worthwhile "oh shit" button despite the high mana cost. If the tank is in danger, you can get all your healing off before the boss swings again.

With 1 second HLs, you're no longer getting a guaranteed save if the tank is not brought to a point where he can survive by the Holy Shock alone. If the tank can't be saved solely with the Shock, then there's little point in delaying your main heal for that extra .2 seconds. You're as well off trying for the DF+HL and hoping he mitigates enough damage or receives enough healing to survive until it lands.

On the other hand, if the tank can be kept up long enough with the Shock, then unless you're the only healer on that tank it is all but guaranteed that you won't actually need to cast the HL. Before you can land it, another healer will have landed a heal that they began casting while you were on GCD from the Shock. In which case, the benefit of having a 1s HL cast is greatly reduced.

Also, let us be honest here. At 1200 mana per cast, we are highly unlikely to have 100% uptime on Light's Grace. In any calculation, we have to assume that HL will have a 1.5s cast time when Infused because we can't guarantee that Light's Grace will be up when we need it. When your equation goes to 2.7s vs 1.2s, it should be painfully obvious how uneven the comparison is.

 

Andrast

This is 100% correct.

My experience on the beta was that I would use Holy Shock to and sit on an instant Holy Light which I would use to put up Light's Grace and then continue to cast Holy Light if the situation demanded it. As it stands now we have no cheap way of maintaining Light's Grace and, therefore, our overall throughput is reduced. The alternative would be casting Holy Light to maintain Light's Grace and producing more overhealing, reducing efficiency and longevity.

 

Zarty

And it should also proc Light's Grace, when talented.

Please, god, yes. I was just complaining on my guild forums about the lack of a spell like that. Our main strength is in direct single target healing, and the loss of the ability to downrank has left a huge hole in our lineup for this. None of the new situational toys we've received address this. I don't even care if the mana-per-heal ratio is the same as holy light (though efficiency wise it really should be between the two) but the choice between spending 2 GCDs to top someone up efficiently with flash of light, or wasting >50% of a heal that's already much less efficient really sucks.

Though it would completely cripple us when it came to raw throughput, it almost seems like it would be worth it to give up max rank HL entirely in exchange for something closer to rank 8 hl. At least I would be more confident in my ability to heal effectively and efficiencly over a long fight. Note that I've never healed past Illidan, though, so I'm not sure if Sunwell Holy Paladins would agree with me or not.

 

Thorgred

I think that we need a new heal somewhere between FoL and Holy Light in efficiency/hps. Right now the option of healing 8k or 2k isnt enough when the tank is taking 3k damage per second - either you drastically undrheal and tank dies, you overheal and was lots of mana, or you wait until the tank gets low and then hope that HL goes off in time before the tank dies.


Again, i'm a proponent of ALSO making JoL (either the judgement or the debuff) a group heal/hot.
For example allowing JoL to proc off ranged attacks via talents.


In a strange way, i think that one of the things that is holding back Holy Paladins the most in many aspects is Sheath of Light. When Ret can get >50% of the spellpower that Holy can, it makes the many abilities quite difficult to balance considering the huge amounts of SP/AP that ret is sporting. Seals are one major thing that has suffered from this and now holydins deal very low damage with what as traditionally the holy seal.


I think the thing that sucks the most is how stubborn blizzard is acting. Sticking their head in the sand, saying "we can't (dont want to) see those problems so they don't exist".