You are running Naxx with too many healers if you can get away with spamming Flash + Shock.

Anyway, I doubt there will be a set bonus buffing Flash, since it affects PvP too much (see 10% crit PvE bonus to Shock being used by every 2k rating Pally).

Flash of Light is useless when you have 2-3min easy as hell Naxx fights. When you get into Ulduar and get to 8 minute fights, because you have bosses with as much HP as Thaddius (or more) except no double damage buff. You will have to start using FoL a decent amount or else you will go OOM, no matter how much Int you stack. Its your job of being a good Paladin healer to find out where to cast FoLs where it will have the least risk of someone's life.

I don't think they should add a middle heal, it will make things too easy. You will just spam it most of the time, and switch to HL every so often.

If you have to throw any instants at anyone but the tank in PvE content currently your other healers are not doing their job properly. If I'm throwing my Holy Shock as a *requirement* something has gone exceptionally wrong in the fight, the only difference you'd find with having Holy Shock as a non-instant is that with good management you'd be able to throw an instant flash for 3k less healing or wait 1.7ish seconds for a virtually guaranteed HL crit. If it doesn't suit you the idea is that you don't need to use the glyph and can maintain things as they currently are, it would just make for a strong option.

As for Holy Light being "spammable with a 30k mana pool and replenishment". It's a phallacy, I have a 30k mana pool (in the right gear setup) and have raided with a 90% replenishment uptime since the DP nerf and unless I'm using DP on cooldown and gaining 4+ ticks on every single use I'll be oom in 4-5 minutes after using other cooldowns or getting crit lucky. Sure it's not an issue on a 2 minute kill but when you hit a boss with 25 million health lasting 10 minutes you'll be begging for an intermediate spell as we're discussing and you mention.

I wasn't saying that FoL is useless to the paladin. I said it was useless as a spell, period. It's not enough to keep a tank up, it's not enough to do any meaningful raid healing. Paladins use it out of necessity (low mana or too many healers, needing to sneak in FoL heals to beat other healers), but never with purpose.

Edit: Also, as a note, I was replying in the context of someone suggesting that we were underrating the spell and how it can be maximized. I'm not actually complaining about the spell or that we need an intermediate spell; I'm only saying that it's been correctly realized by the paladin community as a necessary evil spell in PvE and never as an asset.

Furthermore, while I realize we will still be using HLs as much as we can in Ulduar (as Zaroua has pointed out), I see that we will also be needing to utilize periods of no casting or FoL breaks due to the length of the encounters. Given this information, it does seem that MP5 will indeed be more valuable than crit has a mana regen stat.

I don't think there's any efficiency gained in using FoL to conserve mana. You're casting a spell thats essentially going to be a dip in a pond as far as restoring T8.5 Tank health goes and you'd probably be better served with spacing out HL, stacking haste, and using HS strategically.

Pretty much how you healed tanks in sunwell.

With the PTR build updated today, how does this spec look?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?pala...2&version=9684

Why would you rather spend some of the time not casting when you can cast FoL for hardly any cost which will result in more total healing done with the same mana over the same amount of time? That is, on a fight that's not burst-centric but rather one with high consistent damage that will challenge your mana?

I agree that in non-burst endurance races FoL should be used. But not for the efficiency reason - the spell is marginally more efficient these days in terms of HPM. The issue is the smooth factor... 4.5k heals every 1.1 sec easily... it makes any hits the tank take quickly negated, while 11k every 2.5 sec (gapped HL spam) will possibly distract other healers, draining their mana pools.

I disagree. I'll often do little group heals topping off raid members with FoL after some AoE damage (e.g. on Maly P1). It's quite effective when combined with HS. You can heal up a bunch of small damage on multiple people relatively quickly, and certainly quicker than casting a HL on each one. With a beacon, you also maintain a fairly high HPS on the tank (although not as high as HL spam obviously).

In a typical raid my healing done breakdown will usually be highest for HL, but in terms of the number of times a particular spell hits, my numbers for FoL are often higher. I think it's a case of understanding your available arsenal and intelligently selecting the appropriate spell. It also means I very very rarely have to use DP, often finding myself on 60% mana in the last 20% of the fight, at which point I'll spam HL just for the sake of dumping my mana pool.

For reference, our raids typically have 6 healers, and I'll usually be 1st or 2nd on healing done. Are we taking too many healers? Possibly. Is there a use for HS and FoL? I think at this stage, yes, there is.

I don't like the incoming change of Infusion of Light not affecting HL cast time though. It certainly makes HS much less attractive. Currently HL/HS/HL provides some amazing burst healing in a pinch.

Going off what Enoscient said, current content just makes everything to trivial to really test out FoL, HS, Holy Light, or itemization. Even in a longer fight like Sarth 3D where you might be fighting for 7 to 10 minutes, there is only a 3-4 minute period of intense healing. I can get away with casting primarily sacred shield and flash of light until the 2nd drake lands (about 1:20 into the fight) which keeps me at full mana. Then it's pretty intense healing until Vesperon dies. Shadron landing until Vesperon dying lasts a little over 3 minutes.

So to sum that up I can be at full mana 1:20 into the fight, have 3 minutes of intense healing with no chance to Divine Plea, and then spend the remaining 3-4 minutes of the fight using divine plea and not having to chain cast. With a decent amount of intellect, mana would never be a problem.

Now take that same fight length where 80%-90% of the fight length you are putting out as much healing as possible and that's going to change your strategy. We'll be forced to strategically use FoL in our rotations more, and/or stop casting Holy Light when it's not needed. In those fights, I think HL stays as the primary heal with FoL in there as a buffer heal to keep mana cost down.

My only hope is that we'll see fights like that in Ulduar that take a long time AND are highly active throughout the fight. I haven't had the time to make it on the PTR, so i'm not sure what awaits us.

This is one of my biggest problems with FoL. With the game as it is at the moment, FoL never feels like the right spell to cast. It's never something that we can cast and say "damn, that was a great time to cast FoL!" (to be clear, you can get perfectly timed / sized FoLs, but this is a function of nothing more than your ability to guess correctly whether the tank will avoid a swing or not). Rather, we are coerced into using it as a means to space out our mana. If I'm using FoL on challenging content, then I feel very guilty about the risk I'm putting on the tank. I generally have a finger hovering over LoH while doing it.

As a means of managing mana, FoL will get worse as gear increases, while DP will get better. Replacing 15 seconds of HL spam with 15 seconds of FoL spam yields the following MP5 values and % reductions in HPS, assuming haste soft-cap and 4T7, LoR, and GoSoW.

@2000 SP and 50% crit -- 1560 MP5, ~45% HPS reduction
@2500 SP and 55% crit -- 1458 MP5, ~48% HPS reduction
@3000 SP and 60% crit -- 1357 MP5, ~51% HPS reduction

etc etc.

Of course, such large gear upgrades would almost certainly remove 4T7, and possibly the libram, but the trend remains the same. Haste beyond the softcap increases the HPS reduction but decreases the MP5 gained.

Meanwhile, DP @ 30k mana gives 2.5k MP5 for 15 seconds, ~2.9k @ 35k, and ~3.3k @ 40k. SoW gives roughly 1.5k MP5 @ 30k mana, 1.75k @ 35k, and 2k @ 40k, although the HPS reduction is 100%. The SoW values are based on 15 PPM and 4% max mana per proc, and can be slightly distorted if instead of constantly meleeing the boss for an extended period, melee swings are simply tacked on the end of instant casts (you lose about 0.25 seconds of casting time with a 1,8 speed weapon and full raid buffs).

SoW imo needs a change, but more for PvP, where with a 20k mana pool it can quite easily give 1000 MP5 with constant melee (ie vs a pet).

Back to FoL though, I actually think it's kinda a cool spell, and wish that it were possible to really use it to its full potential. SP, haste to the softcap, crit, MP5, and int are all interesting stats if your primary spell is FoL, and I think it would really broaden our gearing options. The only problem is that any tank that can be healed by FoL spam could also be healed by a Druid rolling hots and helping out with raid heals / the other tank / etc. The synergy with SS is an interesting idea and it'd be great to be able to take advantage of it in PvE, but in reality it's just not a responsible way to heal the tank on challenging content. I kind of wish PvE healing was more like PvP -- high movement, low overall DTPS, periods of burst, etc. Cept perhaps without the rogue stunlocking / kicking / blinding me! PvP feels much more fluid and dynamic, while PvE at the moment is just horridly mechanical (moreso that it has been in the past).