This is absolutely the key to making it all come together.

Bacon will be useful in any fight with more than 1 person taking damage at a time. Last I checked, that's pretty much every single fight in the game. If the person doing healing assignments for you doesn't understand this spell's potential, it's in your best interest to educate them in what it's capable of. It really comes down to adapting to the changes and planning around the new tools that are available.

I wouldn't be comfortable doing that. You need to heal almost full hp on burn to keep proper healing on mt, and if the tick increases midheal the burn person dies.
Beol is great with healing all burn dmg with only paladin, just put it on the 2nd burn person and don't bother with him until first one expires. I just looked at brutallus strictly from a tank healer pov.

Made an update pass on the OP; I'll take another look this afternoon to catch errors/omissions. Meanwhile, if you notice anything wrong/incomplete, bring it to my attention.

@ Burghy

In fights where only 1 person takes significant damage we already are kings. I don't mind BoL being useless in the fights where we shine already.

On loatheb you can do 2 HL and 1 HS in that heal window. Having beol on mt means you will heal mt + 2 players to full and help on a 4th with hs.
Loatheb 10 man with a disc priest:


@palados If you look at my posts I'm really happy with beol. And REALLY scared of the amount of people agains it. If blizzard change it into some half assed aoe tool it's gonna be a sad moment.

Does beacon on work with normal paladin spells only or does it work the more obscure crap like bandage/gift of naaru/herb healing spell etc? What about healthstones? Not that it changes anything, just curious.

To end the beacon discussion, if you want to be the most effective healing paladin possible you're taking this talent. It doesn't matter what you theorycraft holy/ret builds to on paper.

Think of it this way:

Beacon tank, then Holy light everyone else thats under 60%-

With your glyph, you'll be out AOE healing priests and druids as every bomb crit is going to heal 5 people for 2k per cast AND you your tank will always be topped off. It adds flexibility.

I don't know of too many people against Beacon, but less enthusiastic definitely. From one perspective it's very nice extra healing, but it doesn't remove the need for an extra healer, so subsequently our most important job remains single target healing to which Beacon doesn't add much. What people are pretty frustrated about is the upper talents (sacred cleansing, JoTP, EJ), the complete lack of addressing our PVP concerns, and the lack of new healing abilities. I couldn't even begin to tell you why Blizzard feels tacking on extra healing to Holy Light is a better solution then creating a new heal. Sure it makes us more powerful, but more fun? Beacon is absolutely powerful but putting on a buff once a minute is more fun? There is no question any raid is going to love having 1 beacon healer, but the spec still plays the exact same.

But Aditu is absolutely correct, you'll want to take beacon as your primary healing build for PVE. Beacon for PVP though is a completely different beast. One might just say while Ret is not truly a healer, their heals definitely are significant and they can put pressure on another team. All holy can do is try to outlast, which there is no gurantee, with our CC vulnerability, is possible.

I am a dedicated raid healing holy paladin, and at level 80 I plan on specing beacon. What I am questioning is the most effective way to make the 70-80 grind. Is holy DPS so much lower than retribution that I would benefit from switching specs? It seems with an 18/43 build I would still be able to heal for group quests or basic dungeons, but I would be able to quest much more effectively. If one considers 18/43 to be the better leveling build, then would my t4/s3 holy gear be more effective then reputation and boe level 70 rares and epics. In order to apply the answer to any given holy paladin facing this dilemma let me rephrase the question. -> What amount of Strength and Attack Power bonuses would outperform X spell damage? This could be on any individual peice of gear or on gear totals. Only using Talents and Self buffs within a 18/43 build. An estimation or even an opinion would suffice I don't want anyone going crazy calculating every SP/AP co-efficient.

You don't only put a buff, you also have more decisions while you heal.

You can level as holy, probably feels better than leveling as retri in tbc. But retribution soloing is really overpowered atm (or the game is just too easy :p). If you have s2 or better just go ret.
If you lvl as holy, normal holy gear with bom should do the trick.

Has anyone played with Sacred Shield while tanking? Assuming we have the mana for it which we should in most fights its a pretty big source of mitigation that I haven't noticed counted anywhere. It also sounds like a very helpful source of utility for ret and OT prot, from what I've seen both specs can fit a gcd in ever 30 seconds or so and it can potentially mitigate a lot of damage on anyone in the raid from something like a dot. Although it would mean sacrificing dps this could be a real feather in ret's cap on any fight where there are lots of dots flying around, especially if things go south and a healer dies. I know a lot of people don't like the idea of healing as ret but sacrificing a rotation or two to prevent a wipe is worth it in my book. Its also not healing so it works in situations like ROS phase 1.

A few questions for anyone with beta:

1) Is the absorption before or after mitigation? 500 before armor and rf is a drop in the bucket for heavy hitters but 500 + scaling is a lot if its after mitigation. Will holy shield still use a charge and do damage on a hit thats fully absorbed? I'm assuming not which means we wouldn't get any mana back from BoSanc. Similarly will ret aura proc off absorbed hits? It doesn't seem likely but its worth checking.

2) Can the shield proc more often than 6 seconds? Say you are tanking a number of mobs that hit reasonably hard, will you get another charge of absorption if you take a non-absorbed hit within 6 seconds of getting a proc or does it have an internal cooldown between charges? If it doesn't have an internal cooldown its value goes up dramatically on packs of fast hitting mobs.

3) Is the .75 spellpower coefficient in game yet? And what are some approximate spellpower values for the 3 specs in say naxx 10 gear so we can figure how much each of their shields would absorb.

4) Can two paladins have shield up on the same person? If so how do they interact? Do they get multiple shields or just not share the cooldown (if there is one)? If you can't will someone else casting it on your target overwrite yours or is it smart enough that the shield from the paladin with the most spellpower will stay up? It would suck if the paladin in t9 who's shield would absorb 2k a proc could be overwritten by the scrub in greens who's shield procs for 550.

5) How does it interact with PW:S? I would hope they wouldn't interfere as they are pretty different in use but things have slipped though before.

6) Does it absorb SoB/SoM self damage? If so how does it compare to the damage from SoB on an auto attack? Keeping sacred shield up on themselves could be an important part of the ret rotation.

If these things have been tested does anyone have a link and would it be possible to get them put in the op?

I stopped at 74 when Murmur came out, but questing seems the best way to level. Ret is going to make it easier for you, so I'd definitely consider it. Holy is slightly better with Holy Shock's lower cooldown, but our seals and judgments hit for very little in spell power gear.

Back to beacon for a sec. More decisions? In 5 mans, yes. In 10 mans with active other healers, less so but as been stated varies significantly on a fight to fight basis in how powerful it is. In 25 mans, nope. You fire it on your secondary target and go back to healing your tank assignment.

Not 100% sure, but I'll work under the assumption that sacred shields do not stack. If you're in a group with a Holy Paladin, you'll want them putting it on the tanks. When you're tankin in a 10 man, it's usually not needed but I did find myself putting it on both tanks for patchwerk. For 5 mans, nothing hits hard enough to really worry about it that includes heroics.

I estimate for an average 70 blue/random PvP epics with 51 Ret they have about 1k dps. You would want 44 Ret (for CS) and then 17 Holy, using that you can do about 800 dps, then with a gear swap you can heal any instance easily.

Holy dps is horrible without Holy Shock (maybe 400 dps without it). They really nerfed SoR.


Note the upcoming Blizzcon has further details on the dual specs, so perhaps you don't need to worry about a hybrid spec.

The best way to level is to chain run instances (largely due to lag + competition on mobs). Of course this is not available for most players, so questing is a close second, where Ret shines.

A couple of questions on the coefficients section:

1. On Holy Shield, I was finding more of a 5.6% AP and 9% SP for it (someone else in this thread had similar results, but I forget who at the moment). Are you sure about the coefficients you listed?

2. The WotLK Wowhead site lists different coefficients than the ones you list for JoV (see the Seal tooltip there for details). I wonder if you have been able to test it since the nerf on 9/24. Just something to check.

That's an excellent point, if you can't get ahead of the curve almost immediately then questing will not be as good for the first week.

Allow me 1 remark:
Recent talent updates removed the instant-heal in holy trees.
It should rather be qualified as quicker heals in this general description.

I'd drop kings and purifying power for benediction. Unyielding faith I think it's pretty weak talent - ask how priests feel about their 1 second to fear pvp glove bonus. I'd also work in enlightened judgment.

EDIT: Let me explain the unyielding faith thing - if you resist a fear it's outright momentum turning event, so people specced it, getting feared for less time is far less consequential. Especially since the fear will most likely be broken early anyway.

I have a few questions about the new seal/judgment of wisdom.

From what I've read it seems that judgement of wisdom is bugged, but when it is working it will return 2% of total mana with a 4 second cool down (give or take based on swing timers lining up with the cool down). Seal of wisdom on the other hand from what I've read returns 4% of total mana with no internal cooldown, but a chance on hit instead. Does anyone know what this chance is?

Also, I've been led to believe that the new judgments also trigger the seal effects with things like seal of vengeance and seal of blood. Does this happen with seal of wisdom as well? If a target is currently affected by the judgment of wisdom debuff, will another judgment proc it's effect (since it seems the judgment is treated as a melee attack)? If either of these things are true, it seems that holy paladins can still gain quite a bit of mana from their ranged judgments since these abilities are based on total mana rather than base mana.

If we assume that a judgment can both proc the mana return effect on judgment of wisdom and seal of wisdom, then we can do some rough math to figure mana returns. Let's assume for the purpose of argument that these effects are so good and mana conservation is so important that a holy paladin will maintain seal of wisdom, and spend a GCD every 10 seconds to judge wisdom. Let's also assume that the holy paladin will be at range and not able to benefit from the mana return on swing of seal of wisdom:

(MP5 Returned) = (((Total Mana) * .04 * (Chance to hit for SoW)) + ((Total Mana) * .02)) / 2

So, for a paladin with a mana pool of 15000, the MP5 returned would be as follows for each of the guesses at the SoW proc rate:

SoW of 100% -> 300 mp5 from SoW + 150 mp5 from JoW = 450 mp5
SoW of 50% -> 150 mp5 from SoW + 150 mp5 from JoW = 300 mp5
SoW of 25% -> 75 mp5 from SoW + 150 mp5 from JoW = 225 mp5
SoW of 10% -> 30 mp5 from SoW + 150 mp5 from JoW = 180 mp5

Judging every 10 seconds would expend 110 mp5, and sealing every 2 minutes will cost 26 mp5, so it seems that at an expense of 136 mp5 this is a mana positive activity assuming even a very conservative SoW proc rate and a very modest estimate of an entry level 80 mana pool. At entry level it seems like a very reasonable equivalent to water shield in terms of mana regen, while also providing 10% haste, but with the ability to scale with gear as mana pools grow.

Am I missing anything?

Edit: miss rate on bosses in healing gear will take a toll. Figure a reduction based on chance to miss.

This might be true for a fear, but having a blind or a sap reduced by 30% is a lot, especially if your trinket is down.

If I may speak about another issue. What is that 'deflect', that I'm getting with Hammer of the Righteous. I've tested about 10 minutes with a boss dummy and got many deflected attacks with HotR. Some misses and dodges and a lot of deflects. What game mechanism is that exactly? A ranged version of parry? Speeding up enemies attacks, too?

Remember it only procs once every 6 seconds and can (read: will be) purged/dispelled/spell stolen. Not bad, but that really won't "destroy" anything.


I've been throwing Sacred Shield up here and there while beta raiding as ret, however due to the fact that it doesn't scale with spelldamage from sheath, it remains too weak to be a "real" boon.


What level does your beta experience come from? I remember during 70-74 I had the exact same impression and it's no wonder considering all of us are wearing obscene raiding gear compared to the content which is designed for people who might potentially be in green level 70 gear (alts, DKs, etc.). This "really overpowered" feeling does reduce significantly once you start reaching the high 70s.

The other thing I'd like to emphasize (actually I've been meaning to mention this since the first time someone exclaimed "ret grinding/leveling = lul!"): Instancing is also a very big part of leveling. You have a much higher chance to be needed as a tank or healer in instances than as DPS.

This has nothing to do with the qualities of Ret as a DPS in instances (which is great), but more with the fact that groups generally need "healer + tank" to launch, getting 3 DPS is usually the easy bit.


I leveled to 80 as ret on the beta, however I'd say the more than half the instances I did while leveling was as a tank or healer.

Admittedly, healing/tanking the low level instances (70-76) was usually fairly comfortable as traditional ret spec (0 points in holy/only str in prot) especially in sunwell gear, however once you get closer to 80 it starts getting harder without the talent points.

I know for a fact I had to respec to tank after I tried tanking Halls of Lightning as level 77 ret spec and our healer had trouble keeping me alive. Similarly healing the non-heroic Halls of Lightning as a level 80 ret spec was doable, but left no room for error considering you have 2.5 sec HLs, no HS and just Sheath and JotW to go off (this was during the 20% max mana returned JotW patch, I probably would have trouble with this now), healing anyone who got aggro or took some spike damage besides the tank was a mess.

My point in all this is: Ignoring the first few levels where your raiding gear does half the job for you, being a full time tank or full time healer offers a lot of benefits for leveling in instances and doing them comfortably at early levels, that "could" realistically balance out the speed Ret can solo at.

Obviously this is very situational, depending on your guild, composition of people you level with etc. though it's no surprise that many people who are normally healers/tanks were DPS specs for leveling, creating more demand for me to be a tank/healer in instances despite spec.

Keep in mind in all examples I was 0/5/x spec, there's a whole other argument to be made for a hybrid ret spec that can heal/tank better. Then again, it probably ends up a wash considering your DPS will be less efficient for the oh so awesome soloing.

As far as I see it, there's two healer spec archetypes at 70: Beacon and no-Beacon.

Beacon is going to look something like this, with some possible variation in the Holy tree but definitely with Benediction and Kings (which someone has to apply, but Prots will have Sanctuary and Rets want at least 51 in tree plus 5 points in Divine Strength).

No-Beacon will probably come in several flavours. The obvious option I see is the 43/0/18 maximum crit variant. I quite like this variant, as it's essentially identical to what we run now except with the odd Holy Flash of Light and a bonus 8% crit. The only major changes are that Light's Grace is out as I don't know that we can ensure 100% uptime - if it turns out we can, the points can shift back from Blessed Hands and Aura Mastery - and of course Kings is gone, but Might and Wisdom are both improved.

The other is a 24/0/37 JotW/Sanctified Wrath build. It sacrifices a bit of spellpower and 6% crit, but replaces some of the lost throughput by having increased uptime on AW and greater mana regen. It's probably what I'm going to level with in WOTLK rather than a build I'd use for raid healing post-3.0, though.