Are you honestly trying to contend that marginal healing upgrades are any less vital than marginal dps upgrades? Again, I must ask why you would cast BoL on a tank(outdated at this point I suppose), why you would get epic gems in your gear, and why you would have each piece of that gear in the first place, since each piece is only a marginal upgrade to the piece before it? Why take any talent that increases healing done by some small % or improves your healing speed or anything else that improves healing at all? I almost want to call troll on you, because I can't imagine someone posting this long on these boards seriously trying to make this claim.
I'm not arguing incremental increases in general. I'm arguing imp devo specifically. As it stands it's a 7 talent point investment up from kings and 12 points absolutely wasted into prot plus 5 points of pvp value for a healer. It's a gigantic amount of points that make an impact difference elsewhere.
I'm not arguing incremental increases in general. I'm arguing imp devo specifically. As it stands it's a 7 talent point investment up from kings and 12 points absolutely wasted into prot plus 5 points of pvp value for a healer. It's a gigantic amount of points that make an impact difference elsewhere.
This was discussed earlier.
If you know a prot paladin will be in the raid, they'll probably have Imp Devo Aura. If you know a ret paladin will be in the raid, they'll probably have buffs to Ret Aura.
If you know one will be, but not the other, then the best you can spec for the raid is to improve the other aura. If both will be, it hardly matters.
In a 5 man, Imp Devo seems like it hardly matters and is more talent points for less benefit to your personal healing compared to Sheath.
(personally I agree with flyingtoastr that Sheath will be nerfed and Bacon of Light will be buffed, but until then Sheath looks great.)
And the 23 points you need to invest in Ret to get Sheath? I'd say you could coherently argue the 5 you put into Conviction, while the rest is pure filler. You gain a HoT effect on crits and additional spellpower in exchange for Spell haste on Judgements, Kings, Imp Devo(which I have no doubt would absolutely make more difference in most encounters than a single Paladin's Sheath) and Divine Guardian(again stupidly powerful in every raid damage situation).
I'm not telling you to spec into Prot as your only option. I think you are massively overstating the pain of speccing into Prot for those utility talents while exaggerating the benefit of Sheath and downplaying the waste it takes to get there. But I am not in the beta, so I can only go off theorycraft. It's a pretty clear tradeoff between personal throughput and minor utility(Sheath HoT) in exchange for less personal throughput and more raid utility. Pick your poison. I'm a Ret Paladin, so I've clearly made my choice by not rerolling Rogue, and that may explain my bias.
I'm not arguing incremental increases in general. I'm arguing imp devo specifically. As it stands it's a 7 talent point investment up from kings and 12 points absolutely wasted into prot plus 5 points of pvp value for a healer. It's a gigantic amount of points that make an impact difference elsewhere.
Talents don't exist in a vacuum. To pick up the Sheathbot you lose 10% spell haste, 14% INT > Healing, Blessing of Kings, 6% less damage taken, 3% raid healing, 600 armor for everyone, lower cooldown on HoP and longer duration on HoF and raid wide pain suppression every 5 minutes. You gain Improved BoM, 3% raid crit, 8 second Judgements, 5% spell crit, faster movement speed, additional Retribution Aura damage, 2% raid damage, a Crit HoT, 30% of your attack power as Spell Power and a small Mana Restore effect.
The problem again arises that a ret pally takes every ounce of utility away from a Sheath holy pally, but we'll ignore it for now.
Incidentally losing those 2 points in Holy Guidance costs me about ~90 healing right now at level 70. Assuming 800 Intellect isn't too hard to reach in Wrath you're looking as missing 110 healing, so Sheath really isn't even giving as much bonus as people try to make it out as. Not only that but as intellect scales with Holy gear while AP does not the gap will even begin to close.
It's so funny how many people get worked up over Sheath's HoT given just how weak it is. The only time it will ever heal for an appreciable amount is on a crit after a massive damage spike. Every other time it is going to be so small it is insignificant. The fact that it doesn't count overheal makes it incredibly hard to maintain (and thus you can't count on it) and makes it scale inversely with your tank's gear (better gear = less damage = less effective healing = smaller HoT).
I think you were talking specifically about the situation where a holy/sheath build is healing on a tank here, but just my two cents-- I can see the HoT effect being very useful in situations where a ret paladin is healing minor raid damage with FoL, and I think that may be its intended core functionality.
Obviously you're not going to be healing offspec in a min-max situation, but I think most paladins who've healed offspec would agree that there are many situations where you'd like a little more oomph on your Flash and you don't care if it gets there right away.
The suggestion that something is 'better than just mashing FoL for 4 hours' strikes me as off-base, or "working in" a medium-HPS HS every 6 seconds. On difficult progression encounters I do not have that kind of flexibility as to be spamming FoL and "hold" a HL for a good instant-use, or to spam a medium-HPS HS every 6-10 seconds hoping for a crit. Maybe I'm missing something - are people healing progression encounters with just FoL at this point?
Being in melee range to swing away and proc SoW really isn't "new" as a mana regen mechanic - we have been able to do that since Molten Core but Holy healers typically do not. The reasons we didn't do it in MC and BWL, and now MH / BT / SWP will very likely also exist in WotLK - the encounters will be new and sure there will be some changes, but I'm skeptical that the paradigm of encounter design will shift so dramatically as to allow for something it has discouraged since pre-TBC - nor am I convinced that is Blizzard's intent.
Holy as it stands now strikes me as poorly implemented and difficult to use for top-end progression raiding. Interesting ideas, and I am happy to see them adding more interactive things to do but much of this strikes me as poor to put into practice for raiding.
Hopefully they will give it some thought when they do the next pass-through of paladin talents.
You guys are also forgetting that judgement of wisdom, at this point, is our "mana regen mechanic" - optimally you will want to judge every 10 seconds for mana return, and you will have an obligatory once-every-30-second judge to keep your haste buff up anyway.
I believe you have reached an incorrect conclusion about how the new Judgements work. JoW does not return significant mana to the paladin, other than maybe a single Wisdom proc from a pre-existing Wisdom debuff. JoW does Holy damage and places a debuff on the target.
As a Holy paladin, you would need to be hitting the mob to get significant regen from the Judgement/Seal mechanics. Just Judging every 30s won't give you any regen.
Torq, I wouldn't compare sheath to demonic sacrifice. You can't really breakdown healing on paper like you can break down damage; healing comes down to situational warcraft. As a warlock all you care is throughput and every step you make in that direction yields 100% return no matter what. Which is why people come up with rotations and stuff for damage classes. There are no winning rotations for healing. Healing is about utilizing the tools you have in a given situation. Sheath forsakes tools (all the cool stuff in holy like cleanse resist, half curse duration, resistance to dispels on hand spells, guardian's favor, 10% haste) and throughput (beacon) for different tools (HoT, judgment of wise, sanctified ret, even PoJ) and throughput (30% ap to spellpower, HoT, conviction).
Of course I'm comparing it to straight throughput. I was ignoring the fact that you're giving things up to get it, because that's how it should be. However, the comparison also is that it gives you more throughput than the current iteration of BoL, just like as it stands now, DS gives you more throughput than Shadowfury. The contrast isn't as stark (i.e. Shadowfury is 0 additional throughput in PvE), but it's there. 30% more SP based on your AP, which incidentally is a stat that benefits from a huge number of talents and/or buffs, is a little overpowered. The HoT is also a nice addition, especially given the method in which it rolls, netting you even more increased throughput on single-target healing.
To be honest, your argument of loss of tools isn't huge, either, if the points that can be spent in Prot are pretty much wasted, too. For example, something like this spec: 40/0/23 gets you the more useful tools from ret (imp BoM, PoJ, Conviction) and avoids the more useless ones. You still pick up the reduction on curse and disease duration, and still get 6/10% haste. Even if you went 51 in Holy, where else are you going to spend your remaining 20 points? Waste 10+ in prot to get Kings and/or Imp Devo? Waste 5+ in Ret to get Conviction anyway? To be entirely honest, the points you "waste" in Ret to get Sheath are actually more attractive than the points I "waste" in Demo to get DS.
The point still remains, you're giving up 1 healing spell and 4% haste, as well as a few situational tools (which I understand are important) to pick up some other situational tools, and some massive amounts of throughput (see 5% crit, 30% AP->SP conversion, and 60% additional healing on crits). Even without Divine Strength, bear in mind that every point of Strength nets you 2*1.1*.3 = .66 SP, which is a relatively decent conversion factor. Incidentally, that conversion factor is also strong enough to balance out the loss of 15% damage on the main threat nukes for Prot, and nearly an entire threat ability, if the ~2:1 stam:str ratio holds to end-game gear.
No matter what perspective you look at it from, Sheath is an extremely powerful talent. Since nearly every paladin damage ability scales with both AP and SP, you're getting 2x the scaling contribution for 3 talent points (almost 3x on SealoR, for example) and on a primary or secondary stat for 2/3 specs. It seem like the most powerful for Ret, as they'll be the ones stacking AP anyway, but both Prot and Holy paladins gain a non-trivial amount of AP through talents, gear, and/or buffs, which turns into a non-trivial amount of spellpower.
BoL is getting buffed, because right now, it really can't compare to Sheath when other healers with AoE heals as baseline (or easier to spec into) are available. However, I wouldn't expect it to get buffed to the point where it's strictly better than Sheath, if Sheath stays as it is. If Sheath gets nerfed to just damage, then sure, any incarnation of BoL will be better, and far more worth the investment in talent points.
Why does it matter if all raiding Holy paladins spec into Sheath?
From my point of view, the problem with 21/40 Destro warlocks wasn't that they took DS, it was that they ended up playing like a shadow mage. They didn't use defining characteristics of the warlock class like DoTs or pets. All the marvelous complexity of the warlock class was tossed out in favour of spamming shadowbolts. That was the real problem with Destro.
In contrast, a Sheathbot still heals like a traditional paladin. In many ways, it will play much the same as a Bacon pally. Cast FoL, cast Shock into instant HLs, maybe Judge for a bit of haste, maybe melee for a bit of regen. Only the Bacon paladin tosses BoL at the melee every so often. Not really that much difference, in my opinion.
In the end, cookie-cutter spec is cookie-cutter spec, regardless of which actual spec ends up as cookie-cutter. How that spec plays in terms of effectiveness, gameplay and fun are more important considerations.
I think the new plan is definitely to make JoW and SoW the paladin regen mechanic. It's been posted before but the new way casting and swing timers works makes this a very viable playstyle. It also puts the paladin at raid center allowing everyone access to our auras. You say it's a paradigm blizzard won't move to, but maybe it's actually something that you're not wanting to adapt to. Current encounter designs allow it but our healing habits and current swing timer mechanics don't. That's changing...
As a Holy paladin, you would need to be hitting the mob to get significant regen from the Judgement/Seal mechanics. Just Judging every 30s won't give you any regen.
Thanks - edited prior statement. That had been reported still happening on beta (the mana return on judge) as of 7/31/08, but has stopped now.
Ironically, that is actually more disappointing. Holy mana return mechanics look to be Divine Plea, which has its own issues for raiding, and SoW - which you could use now but most do not.
I don't know why everyone is so hung up on this. You do NOT get 60% additional healing on crits. IF you crit heal, you get 60% of the EFFECTIVE heal as a dot. Example: Player is down 3K health. You crit heal for 15K health, and he gets a dot that heals for 1800 health. That =/= 60% additional healing on crits unless whoever you are healing is very low on health every time you crit heal them. It seems pretty obvious that this function is primarily a PvP/solo ability so that you don't have to stand there and spam heals on yourself if you are low on health. You stop, get a lucky crit and can move on while the HoT is ticking (alternately, in smaller groups with a single healer, the HoT helps top off the non-tank who took damage).
I think Blizzard is trying to make that tier have both PvP and PvE viability. Compare with the Ret talent at the same level. Haste off judging might be pretty useful in PvP. (Though what I would *love* to see for PvE is a talent that reduced the cast time of FoL to instant for 30s after judging.)
As for the AoE heal, we need it for 5 and 10-mans, where we don't have the other classes to back us up.
I am going to disagree with the need for 5/10 man aoe heals.
I just finished running all of the beta instances for WotLK. With mostly tier 6 gear (at level 77 it scales down significantly in value), I found myself quite capable of healing without an AoE. In fact, I found the new Holy Shock->instant cast Holy Light to be an amazingly efficient and expedient way of topping my group off quickly. The instant cast nature of Holy Lights allows a Paladin to juggle flash of lights until a target (main tank or otherwise) takes enough damage to justify spending the instant cast holy light.
This is despite the instances being poorly tuned (read: incredibly easy). I don't see the need for haste at all beyond the extent we have on our gear. If your saying the 45pt talent is PvP oriented.... then the Holy tree needs an alternative selection to want to make Holy Paladins not run immediately for Sheathe of Light and the Retribution tree.
The suggestion that something is 'better than just mashing FoL for 4 hours' strikes me as off-base, or "working in" a medium-HPS HS every 6 seconds. On difficult progression encounters I do not have that kind of flexibility as to be spamming FoL and "hold" a HL for a good instant-use, or to spam a medium-HPS HS every 6-10 seconds hoping for a crit. Maybe I'm missing something - are people healing progression encounters with just FoL at this point?
The majority of Sunwell encounters consist of mass HL spam. Other than trash or maybe KJ (depending on your role), if you are able to do your healing job FL spamming, you could easily stick another class on that job and just not take the paladin. The only thing we are uniquely good at is pouring massive heals into one target for an absurd amount of time; anything else, another healer can do better. But in this scenario, it is still basically a one button job.
I think this debate on sheath is getting a little silly, with arguments making circles at this point.
Talents don't exist in a vacuum. To pick up the Sheathbot you lose 10% spell haste, 14% INT > Healing, Blessing of Kings, 6% less damage taken, 3% raid healing, 600 armor for everyone, lower cooldown on HoP and longer duration on HoF and raid wide pain suppression every 5 minutes. You gain Improved BoM, 3% raid crit, 8 second Judgements, 5% spell crit, faster movement speed, additional Retribution Aura damage, 2% raid damage, a Crit HoT, 30% of your attack power as Spell Power and a small Mana Restore effect.
The problem again arises that a ret pally takes every ounce of utility away from a Sheath holy pally, but we'll ignore it for now.
For Holy/Prot, you forgot 15% more strength (for a little extra damage on your judgements), also the raid wide Pain Suppression can be used twice per 5 minute period (first with Divine Shield and three minutes later with Divine Protection).
Even with a Ret Pally around, Sheath has a 250 spell power edge (350 SP from attack power versus 100 spell power from Holy).
Heh, I think most of the discussion will be moot if 51 Holy was buffed (make it instant, lower mana cost).
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
The majority of Sunwell encounters consist of mass HL spam. Other than trash or maybe KJ (depending on your role), if you are able to do your healing job FL spamming, you could easily stick another class on that job and just not take the paladin. The only thing we are uniquely good at is pouring massive heals into one target for an absurd amount of time; anything else, another healer can do better. But in this scenario, it is still basically a one button job.
I think this debate on sheath is getting a little silly, with arguments making circles at this point.
Exactly. Holy Light spam is really the only thing we can do in BC, that doesn't mean thats the direction we should want to be headed down. To an extent, I believe the changes to Holy Shock/Instant Holy Light will help with the mediocrity of FoL spamming on a tank all evening. With that said, the changes to spell power affect our heals positively, on beta they are landing for about 2-3k more then they do on live server with the same gear (Sheathebot spec'd). One can infer that they wanted to boost our healing up to the point where we will continue to be main-tank healers. The incorporation of Blessing of Light into our heals means we won't need as many Paladins, correct, but this does not mean that our healing assignment has changed.
To pick up the Sheathbot you lose 10% spell haste, 14% INT > Healing, Blessing of Kings, 6% less damage taken, 3% raid healing, 600 armor for everyone, lower cooldown on HoP and longer duration on HoF and raid wide pain suppression every 5 minutes. You gain Improved BoM, 3% raid crit, 8 second Judgements, 5% spell crit, faster movement speed, additional Retribution Aura damage, 2% raid damage, a Crit HoT, 30% of your attack power as Spell Power and a small Mana Restore effect.
Let's break it down then.
10% haste is neither here nor there to me as you lose the gcd. More useful for HL spam I suppose. Situational. Certainly far more situational than mana return from judgment of wise whose only limiting factor is the judgment cooldown as far as mechanics are concerned. You don't get extra haste from judging more with judgment of pure, but you get more mana from judgment of wise. It's not yet determined how "small" mana restore effect will be from judging something like SoR + JoJ because they are likely to tweak SoR.
14% int to healing from holy guidance. They're surely to work on this talent but if it's the same thing as shaman get then it's roughly the same state as now. Regardless, long way to sheath ap coefficient.
Kings. I expect ret to pick up kings as it's far closer for him than me anyway. He's not losing much. Prot obviously takes it.
6% less damage taken by me from imp righteous fury. I actually had to turn this off in earlier raiding because of threat concerns. Either way, I shouldn't be taking anymore damage than the tree druid next to me. Is it useful? Sort of. Still a waste of talent points. Pvpwise talent is moot, RF is purge fodder.
3% raid healing from imp devo - I think my opinions are clear on this one.
Guardian's favor is strictly a pvp talent I don't think I've ever thought it useful for any boss encounter.
Raidwide pain suppression every 5 minutes from divine guardian. An actual tool. Extremely situational. About as useful as current LoH at the cost of talent points instead of the mana dump.
Beacon. An actual tool. Situational. I have no doubt there'll be times when I'll have to have this. Other than that meh.
Imp might. I don't know what ret sustainability is like, they might like benediction better. Probably overlap with ret. Otherwise a crucial talent.
3% raid crit from heart of crusader. Overlap with ret. Otherwise crucial talent.
5% spell crit from conviction. Dough.
Faster movement from pursuit of justice. This is very very nice. Double the increase from boot enchant. Kicks the crap out of imp RF.
Ret aura damage and 2% raid damage from improved ret aura and sanctified retribution. I actually took crusade instead of ret aura damage. For judgments of wise and shits and giggles I guess. 2% raid damage overlap with ret, otherwise crucial talent.
Sheath. HoT is nice to have but probably not terribly useful in raids unless you have very tight healing assignments in a min/maxed raids. Ap to spellpower coefficient easily outstrips what you'd lose in holy guidance (after they change it.)
Mana return from judgments of wise. They'll fiddle with this I don't have doubt about that. I for one don't think this should be any less for holy/sheath with SoR/SoV than what ret paladin gets with SoC/SoB. It's an excellent farming and daily addition - holy/sheath will eat far more mana with holy shock and healing than ret with crusader strike and divine storm.
To me the 43/0/28 toolset is easily tastier than 51/20/0 toolset. Now 60/11/0 is a completely different toolset which I also like, but it doesn't include imp devo either. If there was ever a talent worth of moving up and rolling in with something else imp devo is it. Roll it in with touched by light or something.
GSH: I think what he means is that with JoW 100% proc off internal cd, if the proc is more than judgment cost then it's worth it to judge at earliest convenience when cooldown is up.
We seem to be cyclically arguing the same point and coming to identical conclusions here. Can I try to sum up the arguments here?
Beacon of Light, in it's current implementation, sucks.
Sheath of Light, in it's current implementation, is very good.
No one really disagrees with the above statements of opinion, so we can move on to the following conclusion:
Sheath of Light is better than Beacon of Light, therefore 43/0/23 + 5 is currently a better spec than 51/20/0.
Again, we all seem to be in violent agreement that the above is in fact the case. Even Blizzard's class designers have alluded that Beacon is weaker than it probably should be.
So given all of the above, how is it that half the posts in this thread devolve into "Sheath is overpowered/abused/exploited by Holy paladins, nerf it/move it/delete it so they spec 51/20/0 like they should be?" Isn't the entire point of having three viable talent trees to provide choices and options to players? It's beginning to sound like some people would rather have the talent trees removed entirely in favor of a single choice of Holy, Prot, or Ret Paladin, with that one single choice giving the player the single "best" cookie-cutter spec ("best" in the mind of the poster, at least) for that role.
Rather than adding barriers to people cross-specing, shouldn't the focus be on improving the weak talents in Holy to become attractive, on par with those for Ret? Or would you all rather cry nerf on yourselves to draw knee-jerk reactions and wind up with glaring weaknesses at WotLK launch that take years to fix, like what happened at BC launch?
I agree - HL spam is basically our "niche" for late-game raiding as it stands. For those situations where you can get away with just FoL spam you are already past a situation of difficult healing. I am somewhat surprised that the changes to the top of Holy are not direct benefits to healing, but instead are so situational.
They appear to be out of line with the changes made to the other healing classes' top-end healing talents as well, from a design standpoint. Compare haste-on-judge, instant-HL on crit HS, and Beacon with Grace, Gift of the Earthmother, Tidal Waves, Flourish, Nourish, Test of Faith, Divine Providence, Ancestral Awakening, etc., and you can see it. Those talents add direct benefits to the healing task itself and require little additional action, the only chance involved is typically whether or not you crit and the "chance" that gets triggered shores up a shortcoming of what you were doing (i.e. Ancestral Spirit - critting with a single-target heal also heals a second target of lowest health, ostensibly easing the pain of not using a chain heal). I am fairly impressed with the creativity of Ancestral Awakening, Spirit Link, and Guardian Spirit in particular.
The top of the Holy tree as it stands now provides a benefit that requires chance with a spell you may or may not be able to afford to use (crit on HS), something other than healing (judging), or takes additional time away from healing (judging GCD), not to mention issues which may be present for raiding with Divine Plea and Beacon. The design intent appears to be somewhat unclear to me, unless they just want us "doing more stuff" - which isn't really a benefit to healing in raids.
10% haste is neither here nor there to me as you lose the gcd. More useful for HL spam I suppose. Situational. Certainly far more situational than mana return from judgment of wise whose only limiting factor is the judgment cooldown as far as mechanics are concerned. You don't get extra haste from judging more with judgment of pure, but you get more mana from judgment of wise. It's not yet determined how "small" mana restore effect will be from judging something like SoR + JoJ because they are likely to tweak SoR.
14% int to healing from holy guidance. They're surely to work on this talent but if it's the same thing as shaman get then it's roughly the same state as now. Regardless, long way to sheath ap coefficient.
Kings. I expect ret to pick up kings as it's far closer for him than me anyway. He's not losing much. Prot obviously takes it.
6% less damage taken by me from imp righteous fury. I actually had to turn this off in earlier raiding because of threat concerns. Either way, I shouldn't be taking anymore damage than the tree druid next to me. Is it useful? Sort of. Still a waste of talent points. Pvpwise talent is moot, RF is purge fodder.
3% raid healing from imp devo - I think my opinions are clear on this one.
Guardian's favor is strictly a pvp talent I don't think I've ever thought it useful for any boss encounter.
Raidwide pain suppression every 5 minutes from divine guardian. An actual tool. Extremely situational. About as useful as current LoH at the cost of talent points instead of the mana dump.
Beacon. An actual tool. Situational. I have no doubt there'll be times when I'll have to have this. Other than that meh.
Imp might. I don't know what ret sustainability is like, they might like benediction better. Probably overlap with ret. Otherwise a crucial talent.
3% raid crit from heart of crusader. Overlap with ret. Otherwise crucial talent.
5% spell crit from conviction. Dough.
Faster movement from pursuit of justice. This is very very nice. Double the increase from boot enchant. Kicks the crap out of imp RF.
Ret aura damage and 2% raid damage from improved ret aura and sanctified retribution. I actually took crusade instead of ret aura damage. For judgments of wise and shits and giggles I guess. 2% raid damage overlap with ret, otherwise crucial talent.
Sheath. HoT is nice to have but probably not terribly useful in raids unless you have very tight healing assignments in a min/maxed raids. Ap to spellpower coefficient easily outstrips what you'd lose in holy guidance (after they change it.)
Mana return from judgments of wise. They'll fiddle with this I don't have doubt about that. I for one don't think this should be any less for holy/sheath with SoR/SoV than what ret paladin gets with SoC/SoB. It's an excellent farming and daily addition - holy/sheath will eat far more mana with holy shock and healing than ret with crusader strike and divine storm.
To me the 43/0/28 toolset is easily tastier than 51/20/0 toolset. Now 60/11/0 is a completely different toolset which I also like, but it doesn't include imp devo either. If there was ever a talent worth of moving up and rolling in with something else imp devo is it. Roll it in with touched by light or something.
-10% haste is 10% haste. It stacks with Swift Retribution and Wrath of Air. It also lowers your GCD for everything including Cleanse and Holy Shock, even more useful for high damage fights when you need to dump HS/HL as quickly as possible. It helps negate a lot of the downtime caused by Divine Plea. 10% haste is a very very good talent.
-14% INT > Healing isn't a huge amount but as it is it at least scales upwards as your gear progresses. You get absolutely zero extra attack power on holy gear from tier 4 to tier 6.5, expect the same in Wrath.
-Blessing of Kings is amazing, and because it isn't baseline you should have as many pallys speccing into it at once. What happens if your ret pally doesn't show up one night, "oh sorry raid, I just fucked us over for shits and giggles"?
-If your tanks can't keep aggro over improved Righteous Fury on a holy pally (meaning your heals cause 95% threat) get some new tanks. Sorry, but there really is no nicer way to say that.
-Improved Devo is both extra effective health to everyone in the raid in addition to a very nice additional healing for everyone. Priests are literally going crazy over the power of Grace (which does the same thing) and we get the same thing for free for turning on an aura.
-Divine Guardian is situational, but it is still an incredible talent. Since you don't play WoW I would assume you've seen nothing of sunwell, but as I see it any time you pop that thing you're getting a lot of raid mitigation regardless of whether it is ideal or not, and in certain instances (encaps on felmyst for example or stomps on brut for example) it could be considered borderline broken.
-5% from Conviction is flat worse than the 10% haste from JotP.
-I've made it abundantly clear how worthless Sheath's HoT is in most situations. The AP > SP is nice but doesn't scale at all, you will be getting your 300 SP from that from Tier 7 to Tier 9000. The HoT scales inversely with tanking gear and because of how often it tics is often useless due to your own heals landing exactly before it.
-Judgements of the Wise is nice but not especially powerful. With 1500 AP and 1500 SP using JoR you're looking at returning ~350 mana to 3 people per judgement (Judgement itself costs 220, so in reality you're not looking at much gain). In addition you have to actively use Judgement, which you cited as a reason why JotP sucks. So make up your mind, is judging for 10% haste so much worse than Judging for 44 Mp5 for 2 friends and 16 Mp5 for yourself?
-Ret (and most likely prot) will be taking Improved Might. Benediction is a marginal gain of less than 20Mp5, no one in their right mind will take that POS.
And one more time since still people still can't read:
Beacon is being reworked in the next push. Stop whining about it.
There was a reason I didn't even bring Beacon up when I listed the changes.
Originally Posted by Antmanton
No one really disagrees with the above statements of opinion, so we can move on to the following conclusion:
I disagree. Sheath brings no additional utility if you have a ret pally. In addition because of the loss of Holy Guidance you're looking at Sheath giving a maximum of maybe 300 additional Spell Power. That's it. Sheath is not a better spec.
Judgements of the Wise is nice but not especially powerful. With 1500 AP and 1500 SP using JoR you're looking at returning ~350 mana to 3 people per judgement (Judgement itself costs 220, so in reality you're not looking at much gain). In addition you have to actively use Judgement, which you cited as a reason why JotP sucks. So make up your mind, is judging for 10% haste so much worse than Judging for 44 Mp5 for 2 friends and 16 Mp5 for yourself?
If stay far away and don't swing at it you also proc JoW every judge. It's a net gain for you not to mention the two other people. Haste and wasting the gcd just work against each other. It just feels backwards if I need haste I don't have time to waste to get it. Regen on the other hand means it's a sustainability situation meaning I have time to do this.
You're right I haven't seen sunwell. By the looks of it I'd hardly want any paladins at all there.
EDIT:
Unir, holy shock is the most efficient heal in WotLK, you'll use it every cooldown.
Oh and what I said about beacon, I meant the concept not the current state. Concept being a useful aoe hot that I need to spec into.
EDIT2:
Wait a minute, can you not proc JoW on a judgment? If there's a JoW put up there by someone else? Judgment does damage it should proc this stuff.
I disagree. Sheath brings no additional utility if you have a ret pally. In addition because of the loss of Holy Guidance you're looking at Sheath giving a maximum of maybe 300 additional Spell Power. That's it. Sheath is not a better spec.
(Link) What loss of Holy Guidance? OK, you don't get JotP with this build and you need someone with Improved Concentration Aura to make up for the point out of Spiritual Focus (or steal it back from SotP if you can't guarantee you'll have that). Yes, a full Retribution build does step on your toes. If that's consistently going to be the case, either suck it up or respec around it (to the extent that's possible). If nothing else, two paladins with JotW is still better than one, and you still get stronger Judgement debuffs than a pure 51/20/0 Holy build. Stating "no utility" is a bit of an overstatement in this case.
10% haste is neither here nor there to me as you lose the gcd. More useful for HL spam I suppose. Situational.
Yes and no. a 10% haste buff for 30 seconds gives you 33 seconds of effective casting time. So you spend a GCD to gain a GCD every 30 seconds.
Originally Posted by flyingtoastr
I disagree. Sheath brings no additional utility if you have a ret pally. In addition because of the loss of Holy Guidance you're looking at Sheath giving a maximum of maybe 300 additional Spell Power. That's it. Sheath is not a better spec.
There are other specs (48/0/23) that still provide Holy Guidance and also get Sheath. There isn't just one Sheath spec.
08/06/08, 2:30 PM
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