Palados

That sounds quite crazy. All people who healed Naxx say that holy and beacon rocks and no healer comes even close (even in aoe fights), while people who just look at talents see that it should suck. I guess it's the change in the healing mechanics that makes us unusually good with such 'crap' talents. If they want people to heal reactively, class that relies only on reactive spells is more effective.

I guess we should just trash everything we know about healing in SWP and adapt to the WotLK, otherwise we can't judge our talents objectively.

Heidegger, how big is aoe damage? I guess CoH/CH/HoTs are not effective only when damage is big enough that you need a 4-5 GCD to top the people. Paladin could use same few GCD to top people healing tank at the same time.

 

Zaroua

In Naxx10 the only dangerous AoE is Sapphiron's aura (which is over the top, but that's not a discussion for here). All other AoEs are fairly lenient and while they all require to be healed, it's never too much of a big deal. In Naxx25 it's even easier, surprisingly enough.

The biggest change though is that Shadow Priests can use Vampiric Embrace (Imp. or not) without having to worry about pulling aggro off the tank. A Shadow Priest or two can not only do decent to good DPS, but they can also literally keep up with a normal healer on an AoE heavy fight.


To go back to Paladins: Beacon of Light is so good that it feels overpowered. Which ends up making Paladins very competitive healers in raids. Landing a 10k crit HL on someone, having the Beacon heal for another 4-5k and then another 5-6k from Holy Light glyphs makes up for a LOT of HPS potential. Of course it doesn't solve a lot of the problems Paladins have, but it's a really powerful tool, one that can at the very least be considered on par with Sheath in terms of utility. Sheath is also very, very strong especially when paired with Sacred Shield. But both specs are so very different and since healing is so hard to model accurately, it gets very hard to say which spec is best. At least I can say this with utmost confidence: Paladins can heal damn well in Wrath, it may not be enough in the end but right now it gets the job done.



And for the person who asked about tank stam: my DK has 1536 stam unbuffed. All my gems/enchants are geared towards Defense and my trinket/ranged slot don't give me any stamina. Buffed and without a flask, I sit at a little over 34.5k health.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

Helot

I'm curious: What healing spec was the other paladin?

For the Saph fight, he was almost 1.4k HPS less effective healing, which seems like a huge gap. Either your way out-gearing him, or you have radically different specs/healing styles.

For the Kel fight, it's pretty nice to see that BOL spec can do extremely well. Clearly it's an under-estimated talent, as shown by your logs.

It's nice to see some tangible data to back up claims that Beacon is effective.

Chaith logs on
<zyl> Actually, I do like my paladin. He's fun to play, but don't tell Chaith.
<chaith> Looks like i logged in at the right time
<zyl> ....
<zyl> I pressed enter half a second after you logged on.

 

Zed

I guess the "sucks" comments were in reference to 25-man raiding and the "rocks" comments came from 10-man experiences. There were also concerns not about the position of Paladins on the healing meters but that their lack of healing versatility makes them dependable on other healer types (i.e. you cannot run 10man instances with 2 Holy Paladins) while other classes may not have such constraints and this goes against Blizzards new design theme of "bring whoever you want as long as they can push their buttons properly".
Naxx is nothing like SWP in terms of raid damage that is true, who knows what future encounters will be like, so it is probably better to fix the class when there is a major pass (if those concerns are valid).

 

bellator

The problem with beacon is it's variability in power. In some occassions it is great, in others it is worthless. It makes it impossible to balance.

If you balance it around fights where it is usefull then paladins become severly underpowered on fights where it's worthless. If it's balanced around fights where it's of little use then paladins will become overpowered in fights where it's useful.

Personally for a top tier abilitiy I would much prefer something that had use accross the board not something that was so bi-polar.

 

Zaroua

The concerns are valid.

I've ran Naxx10 5-6 times with 2 Holy Paladins and 1 Shadow Priest (static group) and it's very doable - the only fight that gave us trouble was Sapphiron but I'd attribute that to bad design on Blizzard's part. Having both your healers frozen while he's in the air with a Blizzard running over your group coupled with the aura makes the fight moronic to the extreme. But then again, both Paladins and both tanks in the group are Sunwell experienced, so not sure how it would hold out against less skilled players.

The Paladins certainly seem to still be effective in the 25 man Naxx. That's probably because the guy who does the healing assignments for my group is a Paladin and knows how to use it properly.

Not sure what it's worth but: a Beacon Paladin was able to keep me and himself up through 4 marks from Rivendare on Naxx25 without any help. A good reference in any case since Rivendare hits pretty hard in heroic mode - at least he was putting out more DPS on me than any other boss except KT/Sapph/Patchwerk.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

heidegger

What Zaroua said. Its only really over the top in Saphiron. I still have been able to use beacon on other fights where people take incidental damage. With all the haste on the gear, raid buffs, and judgement of the pure, I can rip off a holy light in about 1.6-1.7 seconds, FoL in about 1.2-1.3 seconds. I suppose, being mostly pugs, you could argue about how effective such raid healing would be with people more on the ball, but those are still fast cast times and if you are alert, you can get a good return from beacon. I don't know of another class that could beat us, maybe a holy priest with flash heal, but they wouldn't have as much haste as we do due to judgements of the pure.

I don't recall his spec. I am pretty sure he had beacon of light too. I didn't see any sheath hots on anyone, ever.

 

Palados

Most 51pointers are like that except, probably, Riptide. Priests guardian spirit is nice but situational. Wild Growth is nice but situational. Their effectiveness depends on encounter design and the same is true for BoL.

 

burghy

As someone said a lot of the tools that other classes have and paladins complain we lack are situational. Spells usable in every situation (like various ranks of HL on live pve) aren't exactly helping with boredom.
It's great in 5 man and 10 man. In 25 raids is at least decent when 2 tanks are taking damage. If only 1 tank is taking damage most likely there will be some aoe healing to do and it helps there too.
Yeah it's not easy to balance, but because it's semi crap in pvp (at least small brackets) I hope it will be left in this "unbalanced" state.

 

Andrast

People keep saying this but my experiences suggest otherwise. I've yet to encounter a fight where BoL is useless or worthless. Every single fight I can think of in SWP and Naxx has a very good strategic use for BoL so I'm really at a loss as to why I keep seeing this, or similar, statements.

Can you please elaborate on why you think it is useless rather than just stating it as an assumption?

 

burghy

Brutallus for example has very little use for BoL. (But I really hope they step away from that model. Being locked in chaincasting a spell due to the amount of constant dmg on the tank is not really fun).

 

Zed

Disagree, it can be used very effectively to heal Burn.

 

Siawn

I'm glad to hear that replenishment isn't going to cause our dps role to suffer, but does anyone else feel a little nervous that there weren't any Ret changes listed when GC compared us to Unholy DK's in terms of how overpowered we are? I'm dreading a repeat of BC with the nerf bat smite just before release.

 

burghy

Yeah but usually paladins are assigned on mt healing, priests and druids are already great for burn. And their declared intention is to have paladins as tank healers.

 

Kirion

Agree. In my guild paladin and druid are healing burn targets.

Actually BoL is usefull on every sunwell fight except Felmyst probably.

42.

 

Palados

Well, but on felmyst sacred shield rocks. If you have spare GCD to throw it, it will be used almost to its full potential. People understimate both sacred shield and BoL usefulness in certain cases. And while it's easy to construct the situation where both are useless, I doubt we'll see many of those situations in WotLK.

I think main reason why people don't see BoL advanatges is because it is stucked in the minds that BoL is 2-tank healing tool. While it is 2-target healing tool that can be used smart taking into account specific encounter design. For example it could be really powerfull binded heal. Priests praise it and our version is much more stronger.

 

Kigale

I can't think of any fight from Kara on that has only one tank taking damage for the entire encounter. Saying BoL is useless on some fights is wrong. Saying its value varies is fine but every one-point talent has varying power.

In my opinion the most common use for BoL will come on AoE fights. Beacon the tank and start spamming FoL on the raid to provide a steady stream of healing. It isn't limited to 2 tank encounters where each tank is taking the same amount of damage ... it is OP in that case.

 

burghy

PVE wise, sacred shield is a very akward tool. Absorbing on the next damage taken that must occur within 6 seconds is weird.

 

Kigale

Sacred Shield will destroy Dot and Rot arena teams. With a .75 coeffiecent this becomes a pretty powerful HoT ... as long as the target is taking steady damage.

 

◊ Cathela

Numbers seem to range from 25k-35k with full raid buffs depending on gearing preferences and professions. Jewelcrafters who go whole-hog for stamina have reported 35k; others less.

For what it's worth, I don't think there's been any mention of dual-speccing from blues for a long time. I think it was one of those "Wouldn't it been cool if we implemented..." ideas that never got past the conceptual stage.

(EDIT: Okay, I need to learn to read blue posts instead of just glancing at the first sentence and going "yeah yeah, okay, whatever".)

Related question: Does anyone know how Divine Plea affects Sacred Shield? I would guess probably not at all; if that's the case you could have a single holy paladin spend the whole Felmyst ground phase just cycling through targets with SS to do a huge amount of "healing".

Also: I'll be doing a (long-overdue) pass on the OP today. Sorry it's been so long.

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

 

Zed

The thing is you can heal mt and Burn target at the same time, and possibly bring less healers. If done right, noone will "steal" your effective heals - heal tank when Burn target is near max hp, heal Burn target when he goes low (and spam him when the debuff is about to end) - this way you maintain full throughput while healing Burn at the same time, the 30 sec tank swaps might be tricky though with beacon reapplications.

 

• Chicken

Very recent post by Ghostcrawler, and BlizzCon is this week.

---

In regards to Beacon of Light, I do like the spell from my personal experiences with it as well, but I haven't tried it in anything larger than five mans as the single healer. The 40 yard range on it is something I can foresee as being problematic, though that varies a bit based on your positioning in fights. For Brutallus in particular, with the positioning I'm used to, it's very possible that Burn targets will stand well within my range (Which is within 40 yards of both tanks), while at the same time being over 40 yards away from the tanks, taking away the Beacon advantage.

That's an issue in a few other fights as well, Illidan flame tanks would seem like a good place to use Beacon on paper, but based on my own experience flame tanks tend to spend their time standing more than forty yards away from each other. You can use it to heal someone getting Dark Barraged as well as your assigned tank at the same time however.

Fights in general which feature some kind of magical direct damage being chained on a target while a tank is still taking damage make Beacon work better: Magical damage tends to be steady, and a Paladin can then deal with the magical damage being taken by someone, while at the same time healing the tank. Unfortunately, that isn't a particularly common situation, as can be seen by how many words it takes to even describe it.

Anyway, to go back to actual experience, for 5-mans it's simply great since it allows you to patch up other people while healing whoever is tanking. But that doesn't work as well as you add more healers to the mix.

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

 

bellator

Hope this helps clarify my assumption.

In 10 man naxx, it's pretty worthless on the following fights:-

Anub - only 1 person takes significant damage
Maex - only 1 person takes significant damage
Noth - only 1 person takes damage
Heigan - only 1 person takes significant damage
Loatheb - Pala always used to heal MT. Could heal 1 other person up through dooms, but thats about it.
Instructor - May be wrong on this one - can Beacon heal the Mc'ed adds? If so, move this to the useful section.
Grob - only 1 person takes significant damage
Gluth - could heal Mt and kiter depending on how far away kiter

The following are fights where it has potential, but if you have other healers doing raid healing then could prove problematic if your heals end up being small effective amounts.

Faerlina - healing MT through fire damage
Thaddius - healing MT through raid damage healing
Sapphiron - healing MT through Aura
Gothik - useful since both sides will only have 1 healers, however damage not on tanks is minimal
KT - healing Mt through frostbolt volley etc

Here's the fights where I see it being used to it's full effect.

Patchwerk
4Hm


Agreed these have situational use, however the other classes have variety in their heals. This is the only ability we have that I would class as variety in healing and as such feel our only variety shouldnt be situational.

 

GSH

Regarding heidegger's data, what jumped out at me is that he almost never used Holy Shock. 3% on Sapphiron, 0.7% on KT. Given that Blizzard seriously buffed this spell, I thought they were trying to push it into our standard healing rotation.

heidegger, is Holy Shock/Infusion of Light just not worth it now? Also, did you use Sacred Shield? Do you remember what your overheal was like?

 

Kortar

Beacon of Light is inarguably one of the strongest 51-pt. talents in any of the healing trees.

The problem is that it's proceeded by 10-15 points of complete junk. The cumulative impact of every talent point between 1/1 HS, 3/3 LG and BoL is outweighed by the benefit of JotW.