For JotW you're using a Judgement every 8 seconds, or nearly 4 full GCD's every 30 seconds. For SotP you're looking at 1 shortened GCD every 30 seconds.

Lets have a looksee.

Without any haste you're looking at being able to cast 20 FoL/Holy Shock/Cleanse/Instant Holy Lights in 30 seconds. Not too bad. 10% haste reduces your GCD, 1.5's and instants to 1.36 seconds. That means you can now fit in just over 22 spells in 30 seconds. 1 of those is your Judgement, so you're looking at 21 effective heals cast (still a gain).

Now we have our Sheathbot judging every 8 seconds in an attempt to pretend he is a shadow priest. With no haste he gets 20 casts per 30 seconds, but (assuming the first Judgement was at t=0) he is spending 4 of those GCD's Judging. So he is only getting 16 effective healing casts every 30 seconds.

16...

21...

Yeah... Better hope that HoT is keeping the tank up, amirite?

I'm aware of it, but our discussion right now is about a JotW swinging shadow-preist wannabe spec.

I don't think its the number of GCDs you gain with the haste, but the usefulness of haste over that 30s, in terms of situational heal output, reactive healing, and possibly mana saving cast cancelling due to the availability of the aforementioned uses of haste. You can theorycraft the gains during spam casting all you want, but the fact of the matter is that with the huge nerfs to downranking, and the huge increases to max rank costs, spam casting figures are going to be a thing of the past.

That's why Sheathbot is an ineffective build. I'm not sure why you'd spec into JotW as Holy anyway. If you want mana gain, just autoattack whatever has JoW up, and make the Ret pally be the one to keep it up. If you don't have a Ret pally, you can keep it up yourself, as you'll be refreshing it every 30 sec for your haste buff. Even with Sheath, you can pick up 6% haste, which still earns you back your GCD that you spend judging.

I would understand getting JotW if you could synergize it with JotP, but since you can't, what's the point? As you state, it's a waste of GCDs, and a waste of healing. Autoattacking between heals with a JoW up will give you more mana back than JotW every cooldown, especially since it's not necessarily guaranteed to give that mana to you.

Until we have concrete numbers for the amount of SP/Crit/Regen/Haste we'll have at 80 though it's too difficult to theorycraft effective HPS/Mp5 gains from JotP versus JotW.

You are right though, that additional haste (for example) allows you to hit that Crit HS/Insta HL faster, cleanse and start your next heal quicker, throw a HoS on some silly warlock and get back to healing the tank quicker, etc... There is a reason Haste > pretty much everything once your gear can support it.

Toast, you've got some fairly strong arguments (believe it or not I'm getting more skeptical about sheath healing builds the more I think about it), but please:
You go respec? I mean, come on.

And as a nitpick, Holy Guidance is 36-40 Holy. Call it 38-42 under the assumption that nobody's dumb enough to pass up Infusion of Light, so there's still plenty of room for it to coexist with Sheath in the same build.

Umm, I don't have to judge every 8 seconds. If there's something else for me to do I'll do that, what I meant is if you're in a sustainability situation, you'll likely have time to judge and get the mana. Mana battery is not your job but it's a perk. If you're in a throughput situation where haste is good wasting the gcd to get that haste is backwards to me. If they added a reduce to gcd caused by judgment 0.3 seconds per talent point at least it would make sense.

This doesn't work in practice, casted spells reset swing timer. Gevlin keeps saying it doesn't but he's the only one and I haven't seen any proof. By the way instant holy lights off infusion of light most surely reset the swing timer as well since nature swiftnessed stuff and talented ghostwolf certainly do. You can do it on cleanse situations and the last time that was actually worth it was at Chromaggus.

EDIT: before I get the flames, "last time that was actually worth it was at Chromaggus" for a holy paladin.

The point of the talent is to give a 30 second reward in exchange for a GCD, not to make Judgement not have a GCD.

What is does it start to add more skillful play to Paladins, such as knowing when to use the GCD.


Judgement of the Wise is bad because of the new Seal of Wisdom. If you really need mana and you used your potion and Divine Plea, that will be the way to get it.

Just to echo what was already said, Sheathbots can judge every eight seconds, but by no means do they need to do so. You can still throw your 40 FoLs/Shocks/instant HLs/Cleanses per minute if you need to. And honestly, if the encounter is such that you need to hit your tank with more than 40 heals or Cleanses per tank healer per minute, either you need to add more healers or get a better tank (or the encounter is fucked and needs retuning). The 10% haste probably won't make the difference between success and failure there.

I'll log into beta when I get home from work, but I can almost guarantee that those timers are now working independant of one another. TBH, I've tested exclusively ret abilities so far, but given that your swings seem to not be affected by HoW, I was just assuming the same holds true for heals. Can anyone else save me the time and verify?

But if you're going to waste the GCD to judge and hope for some mana return (unless it's been confirmed that you always gain some of that mana back), why not just have autoattack running? You'll more than likely get a swing off when you're using HS, or a insta-HL -> HS chain, since even though the HL will reset the swing timer, you have effectively 3 sec to get a swing off.

If that's not enough, just wait for the swing before resuming casting after a HS. You may give up a slice of time to do that (if you're using a slow weapon), but it will still end up being less than the GCD you would spend on Judging... and you're guaranteed the mana from JoW rather than just hoping you get your share.

[E] And you can also keep SoW up on yourself for even more mana back.

[E2] Something like Melia's Magnificent Scepter as a concrete example. Off a HS, you lose .3 sec (modified by haste) to get the swing, but you can get a JoW + possible SoW proc every 6 seconds, without really breaking your healing.

A couple more beta observations:

First, I don't recall whether this was considered a settled issue yet or not, but as far as I've been able to determine, non-instant heals still reset the swing timer. I don't have a timestamped combat log or anything like that, but I've done my best to try to get a swing right after a HL, and it seems like I'm always waiting 3+ seconds for the next swing once the heal finishes. I haven't had a chance yet to test this with Infusion of Light + HL, however. I can't yet confirm that HoW doesn't reset the swing timer, because as Ret the damn thing crits more often than not, and even a non-crit still usually kills the target.

Second, I haven't tested this in a group yet, but so far it appears that Swift Retribution stacks with haste, but does not count as haste. If I have zero haste gear equipped and I switch on Ret Aura, then my attack speed changes and my cast time for HL/FoL changes, but the character sheet still shows me as having 0% haste. If I then equip a piece of gear with 30 haste rating, my character sheet shows 1.90% haste, and my swing time and casting times decrease further.

So this at least implies that the "increased casting, melee, and ranged attack speeds" from the aura will fully stack with any haste gear or buffs, and won't count against the haste cap (though I still need to find a shaman to actually prove this.)

Why not do both? Nothing says you can't autoattack for mana with say Vengeance up between heals and judgements. And assuming JotW is at least minimally "smart," even if you don't get the mana, it means three other people who needed it more did. That's worth something even if you don't see a direct benefit yourself 100% of the time.

The 3% Ret Aura stacks with every buff.

HoW and Steady Shot are coded to not mess with the swing/shot timer and I have seen evidence of both. I don't think this code was added to heals, but I haven't seen anything that proves or disproves it.

Because what you give up as a healer to be a semi-effective "mana-battery" is not worth it. The Ret pally is the one who is supposed to be providing that utility, and can do so with far greater ease and efficacy than the hybrid holy-yet-not pally can.

[E] To rephrase: The cuts you have to make to your primary role just to elevate your secondary role to a mediocre status are too great, and in turn reduce your primary role to mediocre as well. The holy pally's gearing isn't going to be enough, even with all the talent boosts, to make JotW an effective mana return to anyone, and losing out on JotP, Holy Guidance, and whatever other utility you sacrifice is hurting your ability to heal (primary function) too much.

Basically, going Sheathbot with JotW is spreading yourself too thin, to the point where you can't do anything well.

Someone tested the heals shortly after we noticed HoW wasn't resetting the swing timer and they were still resetting it.

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t28560-p...28/#post825734

With judgment at 30 yards it's a big difference than being in melee range. You miss and get dodged a lot in holy gear too, although enlightened judgments will help with hit. Do bosses still ass dodge? There are screenshots of dodged backstabs but I don't know how old they are.

EDIT:

Also on the swing timer with casting - just so we all understand how this works, myself included, on back loaded casted spells (all paladin spells) swing timer resets at the end of the cast. So if you're casting holy light at 0.0 seconds you're done at 2.5 seconds and you have a 1.4 speed weapon you'll swing at 3.9 seconds after you started casting - no haste. Instant casts like holy shock, cleanse, blessings, and I'm assuming hand spells do not reset the swing timer. There's no testing information on infusion of light, but other casted spells made instant by abilities or talents (nature swiftness + whatever, talented ghostwolf) do reset it so at least for now we can assume instant holy light resets the timer. So to get any SoW/JoW return while in melee range you need to do as flyingtoastr said, get the crit and sit on the buff. You can instant holy light at the point of your swing for minimal loss. Another way paladins did this a very long time ago is to cast/cancel in melee range with autoattack on. This worked fine through BWL even with very slow weapons. Since not finishing a spell does not do anything to the timer. People don't do this now because it's either not worth it to be in melee (cleave, other damage, clumping up, etc) or they can't cast/cancel due to throughput required. And melee from a holy paladin is much weaker now - all the gear before T3 is hybrid with somewhat decent melee stats.

I will concede efficiency, since the Retribution paladin deals more damage, but I will contest the ease. Its not like Judgement is a horrendously complex or difficult to execute spell, all you need to worry about as a healer is "will my healing target die inside the next GCD if I do this?" If you're at least halfway competent, you should be thinking at least that far in advance anyhow to determine your next spell, so deciding whether or not you can safely Judge should not be an extra burden on you.

Not to mention that JotW is not a limited overwritable buff or debuff; the party or raid gets a full benefit from each paladin with the talent.

[e] I addressed the build issues in a previous post; suffice to say you don't need to give up any points in Holy Guidance to pick up Sheath and JotW, although it does cost you JotP and all of the PvP goodies you might otherwise take.

Yes, bosses still dodge from behind, which is why there is expertise on dps gear...but as regen goes, 15% miss isn't that bad to deal with, as long as you attacking doesn't put people at risk for dying.

With 4% hit from talents you're looking at a ~10.6% chance to not hit the boss with each swing (9%-4% miss + 5.6% dodge) from behind. Not great, but not terrible either.

If you want JotW as a holy build you either have to give up 2 in Holy Guidance or 2 in EJ or 2 in IoL. Out of the three HG is worth the least.

That hit talent will help with the damage part of the Judgement since it can be resisted (the debuff will never be resisted but the damage part has a chance, with Judgement of Blood will not be resisted currently).

You only have a 5% to not be resisted with damage judgements (spells have a 9% chance to resist, and with the Elemental Fire totem and imp FF you have 0% miss).

I'd sooner give up Enlightened Judgement than Holy Guidance. You want to be in melee range anyhow to take advantage of JoW and JoL, to pick up all of your AP buffs, and to hit everyone with Retribution Aura if you're the one running it. The 4% to hit is very nice, don't get me wrong, but you can suffer along without it much easier than the loss of 112 spell power (assuming 800 intellect).