A little off-topic here, but I was under the impression dodge was actually 6.5% on bosses....

It is 6.5% dodge, but remember he is a Human so will have 5 expertise on his melee attacks, so he has 10.25% miss + dodge actually.

Right, I was just confused where the 5.6% came from.

Well, I put some simple numbers into a spreadsheet and came up with some results.

I went through all the plate spellpower items on wowhead, and threw together something you might be wearing at 76-77 range. Since there's nothing end-game in the list (other than the ring), I didn't have much else to go on.

Note that most "healing plate" is now primarily itemzed with stam, int, and spell power, and then 0 or 1 of [crit, haste, mp5]

Oddly enough, with the sample set (and the MH I linked earlier), both the stam and int values were 531, with 0 str. I tossed 200 in there to account for a few buffs, then factored in Kings and nothing else. These were my results:

The two specs are the one with SotP and JotW (assumed for maximum benefit) and the one without either. Both are Sheath specs. The JotW number is .6*JoR/3 so mana per 8 seconds (with imp Judgement). The SotP build assumes running SealoR and unleashing with Judgement of Wisdom, while the other assumes running JoW and doing the same.

It's a little misleading, but the JoW numbers are actually the mana you'd get back from a JoW proc, assuming you were the one who put it up.

So, even though you'd be providing ~660 mana to the group/raid every 8 seconds, I'd say going with SoW and dropping JotW would be more applicable to the primary role as a healer.

These numbers are really rough, but they do illustrate a point.

They're sure to rework that talent, look at what shamans got - nature's blessing went from 30% to 15% for same 3 points.


EDIT: Torq, so very roughly you got 660 mp8 = 413 mp5 for 3 people just from JotW with SoR active from a 500 int/500 stam and base str holy spec? That's chainchugging mana pots for 3 people. Granted what me and Antmanton are talking about is far more judicious use than every 8 seconds.

It's worth noting that even in my weaksauce Ret gear in the beta, JoW returns 179 mana per proc, while Judgement itself only costs 147. In other words, if you judge and get a JoW proc, that's already a mana profit. A build that lets you judge every 8/10 seconds while healing is going to have a built-in mana advantage over a build that doesn't which I think is one of the stronger arguments for JotP.

JotW would get you even more per judgement (or at least it would get more mana for your raid as a whole.) But I think the problem with picking up JotW in a healing build is that to do it you have to give up JotP, which is a talent that actually makes it easier to judge frequently.

It is possible to do this now, even if they are changing the coefficients.

I'm curious - does anyone doing progression raiding do this now? Did you in BWL or AQ / Naxx? Why or why not?

I think some are assuming we will be in melee range beating on a boss and using SoW, which is not new at all, and is going to require a pretty serious change in encounter design to be considered a useful mana-return solution.

The reasons Holy palys do not make use of SoW for raiding mana return now and pre-BC are evident - in order to consider SoW to be a viable mana return mechanic for WotLK you must first posit that raid design will change sufficiently to allow that to be the case.

I can only think of... 3 bosses in tier 6 where standing with the melee would cause serious problems right now. People are just stuck with the mindset that healer = caster = stay away.

Right now it is only difficult because we don't have tools to rapidly recoup lost throughput from taking a break to swing our hammers. With the massive buffs to Holy Shock and Infusion of Light we do have these tools and can make great use of them. Combined with long duration Seals and Judgements (especially SoW and JoW) not only scaling well but giving additional bonuses (all 3 specs have a major utility tied to Judgement now) Paladins have a very good reason to "shake it up" and stand with the melee groups.

Remember that SoW is 14% of both your AP and SP every proc, or a good 420 with only 1500 AP and SP. With a 1.8 speed weapon (dropped to 1.62 with JotP) you're looking at a nice 129 Mp5 from SoW alone. With JoW on that target as well, even better.

The biggest reason I like the thought of a 51/20 build (assuming BoL becomes something appealing) is that no matter what your healing assignment is, the Divine Guardian talent will pretty much always allow you to get the full duration of your divine plea off by syncing it up with your bubble and reducing the raid's damage by 30% while you're not casting heals.

Of course, I've never been averse to respecing, so I really don't mind having a couple different options available.

Naj'entus - Spread out (i.e. melee possible, but more of a headache).
Supremus - Chance of getting WTFPWNed vs staying out with no chance
Akama - Could do
Bloodboil - Depends on your Bloodboil groups
Gorefiend - Could do
RoS - Could do but P1 don't use a lot of mana, P2 your mana goes away anyway, and P3 is super-fast spam healing.
Mother - depends on setup
Council - Spreading out is much better idea
Illi - Could do in P 1 & 3/5
Rage - could do
Anatheron - better to be spread out
Kaz - Could do
Anatheron - Depends on how you do it, staying out of range of RoF means no
Archi - not a great idea to add more melee

But then look at SW. I've only done the first 3, so I can't speak for the rest. But you can't melee Kalecgos( not enough room to spread out in my experience ), Brut( just can't stop casting period, plus very set group locations ), or felmyst( limiting melee is a better idea imo ).

The real problem is that if you look at that list, the mana intensive fights that were actually difficult are generally the ones you shouldn't be meleeing.

I have to agree with Denogran - SoW does not appear to be a viable mana return mechanic for Holies in many encounters seen so far pre-BC or post, and less so on the encounters where you need it most.

To assume we are going to be in melee range to make use of SoW, you must also assume such a change in encounter design is going to be make it more feasible than it is at this point - which begs the question: why is such a great mana return mechanic being made so situational? It's not as if Water Shield doesn't grant a passive 50 mp5.

I'm not convinced it's Blizzard intention for us to be in melee, either. That would be directly contra to the notion of giving us 30 yard judgements in the top of the holy tree and a benefit for judging tied to it.

I think many posters in here are wasting much of their breath with this ShoL/BoL build talk. It´s definitely not done yet, we should be patient.

Looking at the shaman resto tree and especially the ""Tidal Waves" talent (btw who thinks "Ancestral Awakening" is a tad too powerful?), which lowers the cast time of your single target heals by 50% and gives them 25% more benefit from spellpower after casting Chain Heal, I´m quite convinced that JoP will be buffed to more than a mere 10%. I know I´m comparing two very different classes, but there is already much homogenization.
All I´m saying is that, if the developers want to have shamans feel kind of rewarded for not brainlessly spamming CH, the same is likely true for holy palas not mindlessly spamming 1 heal and instead get a reward for judging once in a while. As it stands now, 10% haste does look like a big enough incent.

Along with the announced revamp of BoL and probably moving ShoL deeper into the ret tree 51+ in holy will look much better. We´ll know soon enough.

As an aside, the more I look at Aura Mastery these days, the more I think "That's a glyph".

Shaman recently got all totems to 30 yards (saving a talent point), so Auras may get that for "free" or as a minor glyph (I rather get it free).

You're still looking along the lines of "if it isn't optimal to stand in melee I won't!". Again, think outside the box. Just because a fight isn't exactly melee friendly doesn't mean you can't stand with the melee group. Smart melee positioning on fights where it is "suboptimal" (like Naj'entus) allows you to get 9 melee players in with splashes only hitting a max of 3 at a time. If you don't screw up your OT healing on Supremus there is no reason not to be standing on top of him and his obnoxiously large hitbox. Hell on Archimonde we used to have a resto druid stand with the melee for decursing if they got bursted, I don't see why a Holy Pally couldn't do the same thing.

Yeah it isn't "optimal". But it doesn't mean you can't do it.

And remember that Chain casting downranked Holy Lights (Brut) is a thing of the past. With the massive downranking penalties in effect it is pretty doubtful you'll use anything except HS/FoL unless the tank really needs it. I'm positive Blizzard will balance around that.

E: Now that I think of it, on those fights where you just can't afford to take time to swing your weapon there's always good old Divine Plea to get you some mana.

People will always min/max their raids in order to get stuff done faster, wipe less etc etc. You can have 2 healers that heal part time and do crappy dps part time or you can replace the 2 healers with 1 dedicated healer, 1 dedicated dps.

It's a pretty safe bet which is going to be higher raid dps and less deaths due to the healer not losing focus/concentration when changing from dps'ing to healing constantly.

Unless they do something really really radical with boss encounters where tanks take much less frequent spike damage nothing is changing imo.

Except priests do exactly what pallys might (sit on a free/instant heal to regen as much as possible) right now. Yes, in your Sunwell raids (assuming your priests don't suck) you have a couple healers not landing a heal for 5-8 seconds often enough and it works fine. Seriously, I can not possibly understand why these concepts are so foriegn to people. Not all healing is "spam heal 1 x10000", subtle nuances like this is what separate a good healer from a great healer.

And again, if you don't like "risking a death" by regening with JoW just pop Divine Plea.

I'm with Toastr here. Just because something is not done now doesn't mean it can't be done in the future. Casts delaying the swing timer instead of resetting it is a very important change in this discussion.

Think about this situation:

Your HS crits, while you wait on the GCD you get one melee swing. You use the instant HL and get another melee swing. Now with a fast enough weapon and enough haste (remember, haste is one stat now) you may be able to get 3 swings in during these 2 GCDs without a drop in HPS. This scenario can occur as often as every 6 seconds (the HS CD). As Toastr said, Priests sit on Clearcast procs to regen mana oo5sr, why is that different than sitting on an instant HL to get an extra melee swing or 2?

To my mind if Blizzard really intended such a dramatic change in playstyle for Holy healers they would have provided more "on-hit" tools to heal with, remember that SoW/JoW is not new - that mechanic has been there since the beginning and has been largely passed on in top-end raid settings for good reason.

What we see Blizzard showing us is actually the opposite, the top end Holy tree includes a talent to extend judging to thirty yards range, a heal which appears to be put to good use on the tank and nearby melee with a 40 yard range, and all of our other abilities remain 40 yards ranged as well, including the new Sacred Shield being added - and the majority (if not all) of the "on-hit" or melee abilities went to ret paladins and prot paladins.

Or the 30 yard range for Judgments is intended for situational usefulness on fights like (for example) Eredar Twins when you really can't be in melee range (assuming you use the ledge strat) and for PvP usage (where hitting the druid with Justice from across the map is incredibly powerful). We are getting a polish pass sometime soon according to the blues though so we'll see how they take this.

I don't think Blizzard "intended" the 0/21/40 warlock spec either.

Think outside the box, if playing the way toastr purposes would grant better healing, why the hell not do so?

I know the devs read this forum, but not all the time, so maybe someone should take this whole matter to the beta forums, might give the devs a sudden idea surge.

That's my point - why is what could be a strong mana regen mechanic for us so situational and potentially ruled out by a large number of raid design encounters? I don't believe any amount of thinking outside the box will make SoW / JoW work for Twins, for example, and a number of other encounters - so saying 'go hit the boss for mana' while shamans got dumped a passive 50 mp5 on water shield doesn't make sense to me, particularly when you can go hit the boss for mana now and Blizzard knows full well in practice that does not work.

I am curious to see what they do on the next pass as well.

The beta forums have little going on in the way of Holy discussion that I see, the changes to prot and particularly ret are so sweeping people appear to be highly focused on those. The one recent post from a raider who has cleared Sunwell mutliple times and pvp'd to Gladiator states that he believes the current state of Holy has some serious problems for pve. It's a good read but people appear to be not too concerned with it.