If a hunter has to stop DPSing for 10 seconds to reposition himself, the tank is not going to die.

A tank doesn't have to stop tanking a mob in order to move because all tanking abilities are instant.

If a healing class with hots has to stop healing for 10 seconds to reposition himself, the tank is not going to die.

If a healing class with no hots has to stop healing for 10 seconds to reposition himelf, the tank could die very easily.


Of those four, see if you can pick out which one holy paladins are.


If you need convincing on PoJ, you don't have to look any further than Heigan. Sure, other classes can get by without the speed bonus, and so could you. The difference is PoJ-less paladins don't have the time to stop and toss out a flash on every splash in addition to the holy shock once every two splashes.

As it stands, PoJ is by no means mandatory, but it's solidly above most other choices we have.

This post makes me a little sad, but first of all I need to correct myself. When I referred to other classes I meant other healing classes. That out of the way we can agree that 10 secs would leave most tanks dead if it was a paladin healer.
Now... the sad part. As the game is now there is no - and I mean no! boss which requires you to be away for the tank for 10 secs (perhaps save Sarth and the firewalls - but PoJ wont solve that). Next, your argument about Heigan seems a bit dodgy. Nobody is supposed to take damage, and therefor no healing is required. If one fails, however, I'd still take the chance of my Holy Shock critting over faster run speed. HS critting = instant FoL - which can crit again. Also more healing should help reduce the need for HL or FoL.

On top of all this - you always have the bubble as a last support to bring you home safe. I'm not convinced PoJ is more than some convenience thing. In my experience, there is no fight in WotLK where you can't position yourself or react early enough to do very well without running faster. Agreed, this might change with future patches, but that is too speculative for me.

To sum my rantings up: Raw healing/crit > running faster.

edit: @tiberion02: PoJ does not stack with any enchants, gems or other speed increasing effects - unless they are higher, which then nulls the PoJ effect.

Just because you don't need the extra speed to avoid something like a lava wave doesn't mean it isn't immensely useful for allowing you to reposition faster so that you may resume casting sooner.

If you are only referring to current content (as referenced above), then raw healing/crit = even more overhealing. I find PoJ useful in fights with a large area, i.e. Sapphiron raid healing. If a healer goes down on the far side of the group, I can get in position faster to take over. I fail to see an advantage to not taking PoJ in this content. While not mandatory, PoJ does provide a benefit where overhealing does not. It may be fair to say it is a convenience, but to use your summary:

PoJ convenience > Raw overhealing/ crit overhealing in current content.

As a guideline to PoJ's value in most fights, It'll take someone with Tuskarr's Vitality 1.64s to cover the distance a PoJ-specced paladin covers in 1.54s (calculated around "how long do you have to run for to get 0.1s benefit"). 1.54s gets you quite a long way, more than enough for a void zone type issue, enough to cover most out of range moments. It's also long enough to be the difference between the heal landing before or after the would-be fatal damage hit the tank is about to take.

There scenario where PoJ comes out most favourably is when you've got uncontrollable slow kitable adds. What immediately springs to mind is the 2nd boss in ye olde mechanar. Those fire elemental adds moved at 80% normal speed, a PoJ equipped paladin would need 20% less time to get far enough to safely cast than one with Tuskarr's Vitality. Throw something like that into Uldar, and there's no argument about those 2 points for that encounter.

Ultimately though, for current content, you can absolutely argue it either way. It's definitely not wrong to say PoJ isn't worth speccing, that heal landing 0.1s earlier after a move might save someone, but you can say the same about 2% crit or 2% more healing. If you ask me, it's down to preference and neither can be called the "wrong" option.

The boot enchants are 8% (the same as 1/2 points in PoJ) and do not stack.

Scenarios where I find Pursuit of Justice beneficial (more-so than losing PoJ to get 2% in overall healing in3.1):
(also note that naxx is extremely easy, but assume it was the same type of fight mechanic but Ulduar difficulty)

• Anub-Rekhan: during locust swarm tank is kiting around the room, and i'm trying to stay ahead of the tank. PoJ lets me cast a heal, run to my a new position ahead of the tank, then start that heal earlier
• Maexxna: people who get webbed way far away take longer for dps to get them out. Sometimes it's a 2+ sec run before i can pop a holy shock on them if they are going low.
• Heigan: faster movement between 'safe spot' usually lets me get a FoL off during each pause. Holy Shocks go off while running
• 4H: we use a strategy of 2 paldins in the back with beacon on each other. Every 2-3 marks we need to switch with about a 2-3 second run. You're taking large damage spikes while running and only get 1 holy shock. The faster you get back in place, the faster you can get a heal off.
• Grobbulus: the debuff means you are running 10-15 yards from the raid. while you are running away, the tank is slowly moving in the other direction. the faster you can get away, cleanse, and get back the better. PoJ would cut a lot of time off here.
• Thaddius: Each polarity shift you will get to the other zone faster, and start healing sooner. Less of a chance to hurt someone else (even though it shouldn't be an issue, think if you were just progressing on the fight).
• Sapphiron: you're running for several seconds usually to get behind a block, all while people are taking blizzard and aoe damage. faster run speed means you can finish off one more holy light before you start running. getting there faster means you can start casting sooner as well.
• Malygos: P2 faster run speed means less "danger zone" time outside of bubbles when they are far apart. you can start casting sooner.
• Sarth 3D: i'm a paladin who uses Righteous Fury to pull fire guys to me and also to our tank. The tank's running around picking up random blazes and I'm assigned to heal and follow him. So it's a much more mobile fight than just running from waves and voids. And depending on where I'm standing when a wave spawns, the faster run speed often times lets me finish a cast before running to the safe spot. There's also some hug spike damage when multiple blazes and 6 whelps are on the tank, where being on the run can end up in a dead tank

Again, the content doesn't require it now, but think if these fights were tuned to be Ulduar difficulty. Using 3.1 talents, 2% increased healing is not going to do much for you. If I'm standing in place I can put out an amazing amount of healing, much more than's even needed. Adding 2% to that isn't what's going to make or break a fight and I'd say it wouldn't even be noticeable.

When I read the talent description, it seems the 5% healing to you only counts when it comes from others (like SA). However, the talent is still not on PTR so I cannot test.

Or they might be trying to implement this "selfless buffer" attitude to our healing. Since it's currently better for a paladin to delay self-healing in case they might benefit from SA, maybe this stacking 10% to healing is supposed to favour self healing by alleviating it's cost?

I definitely like that perspective. On the other hand, if they somehow implement a magical mechanic that removes any benefit holy paladins would get from SA anyway, wouldn't that in and of itself be incentive to heal ourselves? Instinctual healing priority is usually Tank > Healer > DPS (modified by assignments, of course), but SA is the only reason we tend to flip that around.

Although even then, I'm not to sure about exactly how much we shake up the priority system. What strikes me as curious is that the SA planned change was first announced as a way to make it a "prot only" skill--then they assured ret paladins that they wouldn't be affected by it, and it was mostly targeted as a holy nerf. But honestly, holy has the hardest time out of all the three specs getting benefit from SA in the first place.

Protection (through bosses) and Retribution (through SoB) deal with roughly steady incoming streams of damage that are expected to be healed through. In order to gain anything from SA, we Holy Paladins have to actively try to take some environmental damage and rely on other healers healing us. Usually they won't, since healers tend to assume that other healers can take care of themselves. Even if you do inform your raid of the benefit from getting SA heals instead of healing yourself, you have to constantly try to measure how much damage is too much damage to take.

An obvious example would be asking yourself "I have 66% health left--should I stand in the fire and risk dropping to 33% or play it safe?" But it goes beyond just asking yourself how much damage you can survive through as holy. You also have to ask yourself how much damage your fellow healers can heal without being burdened with your mana regen. After all, if the purpose of SA returns as holy is to fuel your mana to put out more healing, you have to constantly weigh the extra healing from your SA-granted mana against the extra healing of your healing mates funneling the healing they're using on you into the DPS or tanks.

These are all really complicated on-the-fly decisions that holy paladins have to use when playing with SA. It's honestly a lot of work for a variable amount of benefit. I'm not sure where Blizzard gets the impression that holy paladins are fountains of endless mana because we all stand in the fire.

In any case, I tend to shy away from the technique myself since I'm always wary of Murphy's Law. As long as they nerf our endless mana syndrome through SA and not DP/Illumination, I'll be happy.

Going to have to disagree here. Currently, there is no fight that makes you take enough damage that can put you to that point. In saph, I'll beacon myself and eat blizzards, for instance. It's not bad enough, and healers normally get to it. We have a shaman raid healing, it may cost her a little mana, but no difference since she'd be throwing chainheals either way. We always rotate assignments on our druid, so if I get hit with heals, better for me.

The only place I could not see purposely taking damage is S3D. Everything else is simple enough to take a hit for your mana pool.