Tuftears

What I'm wondering is, what if Infusion of Light made the next holy light free, instead of reducing cast time?

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

Amera

It would obviously help mana issues, but it still wouldn't address the PvP issue of very little mobility. The instant cast HL was fine; an internal cooldown, lack of crit with the HL, or something else would be effective enough.

 

tachycardia

Two main issues as I see it.

1) PVP

The infusion issue is mainly a PVP issue as I see it. You cannot keep both Light's Grace and Infusion up in all practicality, so you're basically stuck with a 1.5 sec HL after a HS crit. 1.5 sec cast is easily interruptible/counterable, especially when you add a tongues or a mind numbing.

The fact is that everything which is important in PVP, the holy paladin doesn't have. Control like roots, cyclone, mana burn, offensive dispel or fear. HoTs and shields to prevent being silenced and cover your target when you are silenced and when you need to move. Counters to control (like shifting). Not to mention more than 2-3 healing tools. Our "increased survivability" means nothing except vs. warrior/rogues, but they can easily shut us down with a priest (BURNBURNBURN) or druid (CYCLONECYCLONECYCLONE) friend. WLK does nothing to aid the paladin in these aspects, while boosting the already PVP-healer kings, priests and druids.

I think the boost to sacred shield is good. I think blizz needs to continue that trend; bite the bullet and buff holy paladins til they think they're overpowered for arena healing, just so they can see whether it's enough. Then take it back a step or two to put them in line with the others. I don't expect to have the same strengths as druids/priests, but I do expect to have some. Maybe preventing damage a la boosted sacred shield.

2) Holy = boring

Paladins simply need more tools at their disposal. Healing can boring enough when you have as many tools as a priest/druid does; 3 spells which are all the same except for cast time and amount healed is mega-boring. Beacon and sacred shield are a step towards solving that, hopefully they'll continue the buffs.


In other news, apparently they nerfed the Judgement of Wisdom debuff such that it only gives off 1 proc per 4 seconds, raid-wide.

 

flyingtoastr

GC did admit this in that blue post though.



So it's pretty clear they understand that spamming FoL isn't fun and engaging and (more importantly) it doesn't give any real way to differentiate between good Holy Pallys and great ones. That last one is where IoL really shined, a great Holy Pally would use that proc to melee for JoW/SoW or pop Divine Plea or do a little /dance, which is why I still maintain the "screw PvP" attitude with regards to that talent.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Prinsesa

Wouldn't this Divine Plea change further encourage speccing into a Sheathbot build?

If we can regen 25% of our mana every minute for a 20% healing penalty, it seems to me that that points towards trying to get as much throughput as possible (via Sheath's AP-SP conversion) to 'earn back' that 20%.

This seems especially true given that there isn't really anything past Illumination that helps with our mana efficiency (except for Divine Illumination), so you spec into Illumination/JOTW and use Divine Plea liberally to solve all your mana problems (hopefully), then go for maximum throughput via Sheath.

Specifically, I'm talking about a build like THIS.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

flyingtoastr

As GC keeps reiterating they don't want us speccing ret to (main) heal. I would expect we'll see some sort of major change to deep holy that makes it more exciting again (hell buffing IoL back again alone makes Sheath worse).

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Satlan_Leng

Quite a few pages back, there was some work on what professions gave the best DPS boost for its slot. I was wondering if anyone had done more or even finalized the math on it? Or are the professions still not that fleshed out to tell?

 

• frmorrison

Profession are fleshed out. The highest dps gain is Blacksmithing (two extra sockets, possible good weapons) followed by leatherworking (bracer enchant).

Here are the numbers for you to make your own choice:

- Herbalism = 66.7AP (average, requires consumables used on cooldown)
- Skinning = 25 Crit rating
- Alchemy = 64 AP (If Flask of Endless Rage is being used)
- Enchanting = 64 AP
- Jewelcrafting = 42 AP or 21 AGI or 21 STR or 21 Crit Rating or 21 Haste Rating or 21 Hit Rating or 177 ArPen
--- Jewelcrafting = 62 AP or 31 AGI or 31 STR etc. (Bonus from avoiding using a blue gem for meta requirements)
- Blacksmithing = 80 AP or 40 AGI or 40 STR or 40 Crit Rating or 40 Haste Rating or 40 Hit Rating or 280 ArPen
- Leatherworking = 76 AP
- Inscription = 64 AP

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

 

Lightflower

Long time lurker, first time poster.

What concerns me the most amidst all the flaming and outcry is that many people are latching onto the DP "buff" as some sort of addition that will counterbalance the weaknesses of the holy paladin that we are familiar with.

In reality, the same situation that exists currently in live will remain in WotLk because we still have no method of addressing AoE damage beyond the 1 GCD -> 1 target mechanic.

This would not be a problem if healers had well defined niches but unfortunately this is not the case. Paladins have limited mechanics to ensure tank survivability beyond spamming high throughput heals whereas the arsenal of shields, seeds, hots and armour boosts available to others has a direct reducing effect on both the spikiness of the tank damage and the amount that must actually be addressed via direct heals.

I know that the point has been made before that all healers can (and must be able to) heal a single target well but only Paladins cannot effectively address AoE damage and I don't want to belabor things.

I just wanted to ask everyone to remember that, even with the changes as they stand and even with a hypothetical IoL reversion, we would still be severely hampered when it comes to even minor amounts of aoe damage.

Because I firmly believe that all healers must be relatively equal in their ability to address damage on a single target (for 5 mans if nothing else), I think that we should be asking GC to consider some form of AoE heal that will allow Paladins to function as a group healer if necessary. It could be something as simple as one of the earlier suggestions that would allow JoL to proc on ranged as well as melee attacks.

Or maybe something like direct overhealing on the beacon target intelligently divides and 'splashes' to the most injured target(s) in the same party within 40 yards. The splash wouldn't proc unless you cast a heal directly at the beacon target but would allow a dual functionality of using beacon on a 2 tank fight or as a toned down CoH for when the AoE damage gets too much.

 

Demonseedx

I been thinking is there a way to work the needed heal into the Judgment Mechanic much in the same way JotP & JotW works allowing for a buff to FoL allowing it to act as that mid-ranged heal we seem to need? Perhaps move to something closer to JotW to give Paladins a kind of AoE heal? I dunno I just look at the Judgment system they have and think if they could somehow make it give a more direct benefit to Holy, (whom never seem to gain much of anything from the judgments as Prot and Ret do) it could be more readily embraced by the Paladin players.

About PvP; I'm really kinda confused about the thought process behind balancing for it now. We won't see PvP really come into its own until sometime after WotLK goes live and a majority of the population has reached 80 (a month or more) and have started PvPing some. I would imagine 3.1 will end up addressing some major bugs/balance issues not seen till 5 million people started playing. By then PvP balance is unlikely to still be in effect and it might not be till 3.2 that we see Area rolling out to actually be the balanced competitive environment people want.

Edited: added the PvP thoughts

 

Satlan_Leng

hmm BS i knew was working up to the top. but LW in second just for the bracer enchants? and BoP leg enchant if i remember right. Currently i have Enchanting and Alch, i'm moving from BC Holy into Wrath Ret, so i and doing the work on seeing if a profession change is needed to maximize my raid performance. Also in your numbers are you taking into account on the haste ring enchants? I have heard Haste has taken abit of a dive in wrath, but has it dropped that far?

 

Anauel

Where's Engineering? The goggles ought to be at least good.

 

Zapf

Goggles eventually get replaced - extra sockets, better gems, fur linings, ring enchants, etc, do not get replaced.

 

Arthaal

The haste enchant on gloves is pretty tasty even though it replaces the relevant 'enchanting' enchant. 340 haste (10% or so at 80) for 8s on a 2min cooldown. Pop it to match your trinkets + AW + bloodlust for possibly quite an effective increase in DPS for a class that scales well with haste (like us).

 

burghy

Regarding that quote of GC. Wouldn't a drastically lower mana cost on BeoL and removing it's GCD solve a bit of the problem?

 

Deris

One thing I think that hurts us more than anything else in pvp is the nerfing of downranking. Currently at 1800+ I win almost all of my matches vs. anything with a mana drain/burn using R2 FOL with BOL up.

Mana Burns are completely going to smash us, on top of all of those classes having dispels.

 

kharen

Right now on beta, the LW self-only leg enchants are exactly the same as the epic-quality tradeable ones, just at a much lower skill requirement, and with much easier to obtain materials, so it's a convenience thing rather than a power thing, at least after a week or two (Nerubian Leg Reinforcements is the self-only version, Icescale Leg Armor is the tradeable item); LW gets all it's personal power bonus via the bracer enchants.

 

Malleus

Also, the advantage of goggles is variable up to that point.

Prinsesa - I disagree with your 28/0/43 build, but only insofar as it has 4/5 Fanaticism. Healing Paladins don't have to worry about threat, and you won't really be set up to DPS. Given that Avenging Wrath now affects healing (unless it's been changed again), I'd shunt two points into Sanctified Wrath to knock a minute off the CD.

 

Hidden

Doesn't the value of Jewelcrafting/Blacksmithing increase if you take them together?

Edit: Nevermind, I assume you're already calculating it with the maximum amount of JC gems.

 

Andemoni

In a sense this is true since we no longer can keep Light's Grace up with lower ranks of Holy Light. I've personally never seen any paladin down ranking Flash of Light in arenas, and most certainly have never done it myself. Mana Burn is not the big problem for us - Mana Drain (warlock/hunter) on the other hand is.

This is basically what we gain in Wrath arenas compared to our current state (going the "intended" holy/protection way):

• Holy Shock cool down reduced by nine seconds.
• 30% more dispel resistance to our short-duration blessings.
• Folding of Blessing of Light into our healing spells.
• Hammer of Justice cool down reduced by 30 seconds.
• 25% of our mana back every minute provided the other team has no offensive dispel or you manage to stay out of their way for 15 seconds.
• 30 yard range on Judgements.
• 50% reduction in Curse of Tongues duration.
• Infusion of Light (something you'll take even in its current state).

Is this enough to make us competitive? Judging from my personal experience at level 70 arenas, yes, I think it would be. However, other classes will be getting some huge improvements as well (yes, even resto druids, something that baffles me completely), so it will render most of our improvements moot. Performance aspect aside, playing holy will still be boring in Wrath. Sacred Cleansing and Judgements of the Pure really need to be changed into something worthy of being so deep in the tree (not to mention how retarded the current incarnation of Sacred Cleansing is, make it heal the target per each debuff removed and make it ignore dispel resistances to some degree or something), and Beacon of Light is a waste of a talent point.

Here's what we're still missing:

• Spammable nuke that has a cast time and a reasonable mana cost along with an offensive spell that says to the enemy "hey, you need to acknowledge me, too!". I think shamans are in the same boat with paladins here; we are simply too safe to ignore completely.
• Due to no one really ever focusing paladins (in 5v5 you could run in full PvE gear), resilience is pretty much a wasted stat for us. This is mostly because it's completely safe to ignore paladins; what the hell are they gonna do to you? Heal you do death? I'd love to see every class and spec being a viable focus target in Wrath, thus giving you a drawback for wearing less resilience. Actually, I'd just prefer to have all PvE gear abolished from arenas, but enough of that.
• Interactivity! The optimal paladin play style is just standing at maximum range and spamming heals. How boring is this? I've already suggested this before, but Blizzard could give Shield of Righteousness an Earth Shock like effect. This alone would give us a valid reason to be within melee range of a caster, and it is small nuances like this that make the game actually fun to play. Currently we have pretty much no reason to target an enemy character outside of Hammer of Justice or the occasional help with bursting someone down with our fancy 20 yard nuke.

 

• Chicken

Divine Plea only ticks once every three seconds which is something to keep in mind for it's mechanics, and is why I preferred the old version to be changed to tick once every second as that works better if it's intended to be cancelled.

As for blowing through 25% of the mana pool every minute, let's calculate that. Obviously the results depend somewhat on the situation, but a Paladin should be a viable healer even in a situation where you need to spam Holy Light (Which by all accounts I've read is realistic for Patchwerk). But we'll assume the cast-cancelling effect allows us to get away with once every four seconds on average. Holy Light's mana cost at level 80 is 1274 mana. That means you'll go through 19110 mana every minute.

Illumination, with what I'd estimate at a 35% crit rate (Rating becomes less valuable, but we gain 8% extra crit from talents), is a 21% mana cost reduction effectively, so that's 15097 mana. With the new Blessing of Wisdom I think it's also save to assume we can easily get 250 mana/5 from gear, so that's a further 3000 mana less, or a 12097 mana deficit. The raid is likely to have at least one person bringing replenishment however, which also recovers 15% of your mana every minute.

So let's add in a mana pool, reports I've read seem to indicate a mana pool of 20000 is quite realistic at 80, putting Replenishment at a further 3000 mana, for a 9097 mana deficit. That means that with one Holy Light every four seconds, and all those regenerative effects, you go through 45% of your mana every minute. A 80-Patchwerk fight should be lasting for about four minutes, so over the course of the encounter you go through 180% of your mana without Divine Plea. With the old version, you could use Divine Plea over that duration to recover 20% of your mana, meaning you'd still want to spend 60% more mana than you actually have. Holy Light is powerful enough to make it so that the 20% healing reduction on the new Divine Plea isn't really noticeable most of the time, and it'd put you at using 80% of your mana over the course of the encounter. You still have a mana deficit here: A fight that lasts another minute would run you dry with an average of one Holy Light every four seconds. But that's realistic, healer mana shouldn't be endless.

I won't go into the full numbers without cast cancelling, but suffice to say that you're blowing through more than your mana pool every minute with full-on spam. More bitterly, one can also view this as "You can barely systain half your potential throughput for five minutes", but healing really shouldn't be about constantly achieving your maximum throughput in my eyes.

buff /bÊŒf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Hidden

When I was playing Warrior/Paladin my partner used downranked FoL nearly every game, especially against Hunter teams it was the only chance to heal when my Paladin was OOM.

@Divine Plea: It looks much worse than all compareable ways of regenerating Mana that other classes have, I'd definitely take Shadowfiend/Evocate/Innervate over it, the biggest problem I see is that especially in 10-player raids you can't just have 1 healer stop casting for 15 seconds, that just doesn't work out.

 

Prinsesa

Good call! I was just browsing through Ret trying to pick up filler talents and Sanctified Wrath completely slipped my mind. That in itself should cancel out Divine Plea half the time, yes?

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Malleus

Correct, and I think it's something a lot of people are missing - me included for a while. Our problem has never been insufficient maximum healing output in an emergency; so long as we can land the heal in time, the heal is big enough. A crit HL11 returns 8.2-8.5k at my gear level, and with WOTLK changes it's worth following it with an immediate Holy Shock. That's 10-11k of healing. Do I really need to add Avenging Wrath for an additional 30%?

Saving only low-percent enrages, boss encounters cannot be designed around the use of a healer's long CD abilities. It seems to me that all I'd be doing is blowing every CD trying to top up the tank to full in one go, when what I really need to do is get him back to around 60% to ensure he can be kept up. I want a better use for AW.

Looking at the situation we're in where a max rank HL generally overheals hugely, I don't think we need to worry quite so much about getting a regular spiky increase in throughput from our trinkets and AW - which, when you think about it, is for a healer essentially a free "Use: +spellpower" trinket. I feel that in 3.0 we'll be better served using these boosts in synchronisation with Divine Plea, to cancel out most or all of the drawback and ensure steady throughput.

 

flyingtoastr

Aside from the overhealing conundrum the only real problem with Beacon (as I see it) is the mana cost. Fixing one or both of those issues would render it a powerful and useful utility spell.

The huge problem with deep Holy would be the Judgement talents. They're fun, they're interactive, they fit with the role that a Paladin should be doing (combat healer). The problem is twofold though. The first is naturally that Judgements cause a GCD, eating a large portion of the haste that you would have gained. This is especially apparent when you combine it with the second issue, that Judgements only last for 20 seconds. In a raid situation where you have to keep up those Judgements you're going to have to Judge every 20 seconds, regardless of how long is left on your JotP haste buff. Combined with the GCD issues you're stuck only gaining 2/3 of a GCD from Judging, making it very lackluster.

Divine Favor still costs mana.