Ulduar has some crazy healing times, while it isn't PvP (since you generally know when the bad stuff is coming), it still it very bursty. In fact, the damage is so high that from my PTR 10 man experience you want 3 healers.

You must have not healed in Classic or BC, or chose to forget it. Back then Paladins were Flash spammers (at least until Sunwell). It is better in wrath, but you are right to want more.

The lovely thing about working with PTR's is that planning a future spec based around them is equivalent to trying to nail jello to a tree.

This latest holy talent shuffle is particularly just...odd? First they nerf one of the major appeals of IoL, then move it down to our 10th Tier as though it's some staple powerhouse talent that we spend the rest of our holy points trying to get. Quite frankly, I don't know if I'm happy or sad they moved it so deep.

Whenever I try to build a traditional holy spec on these new talent trees, I keep seeing myself taking the exact same talent points I have on live with 0 improvements on the PTR. (Rather, a few what-I-expect-to-be-slight nerfs.) It's not that I'm angry or disappointed or anything, I just don't feel anything exciting coming down the pipeline. From gear to talents, there's literally nothing I'm looking forward to on my paladin in Ulduar. Well, except Van'alyr of course.

But I am surprised about the upsurgence of HL vs. FoL debates, although it should be expected with the first new tier of gear shedding new light on scaling. Most of the conversation brings up intelligent points so far, but I see a lot of people writing HL off as an infinite mana sink, which is absolutely not the case.

As it is, no amount of Intellect acheivable now or in Ulduar can allow you to nuke Holy Lights as fast as you possibly can for a full 10 minute boss fight. However, you don't have to. All you have to do is spend less than 25% of your total mana in 60 seconds. As long as you can stay at or below the 25%-every-60-seconds threshold (and assuming enrages or fight gimicks don't delay plea too long), you will end the fight with 100% mana whether it lasts for two minutes or twenty. Any mana consumption rate over 25%-per-minute will eventually bleed you dry, but how long it takes depends entirely on player-determined variables such as potions and lay on hands.

What all this means is that it doesn't matter if Flash of Light cost 0 mana. It wouldn't matter if Flash of Light gave you mana to cast it. As long as you can maintain a mana consumption rate of 25% per minute, there is absolutely zero reason to cast it over Holy Light in PVE under normal circumstances. Holy Light beats it in scaling, HPS, and a glyph that provides our sole AOE heal--the only thing that FoL is superior in is HPM, which is nullified by Divine Plea depending on your own gear and mana consumption rate.

(Note: Obviously there are gimmicks, such as ice tombs on KT, wherein you would have to use FoL over HL. However, as stated, these are gimmicks. If you are trying to maximize the job that you are going to be doing 11 raids out of 10 that you attend--that is, tank healing--then FoL grants no recognizable benefit.)

Is this for real? This seems like an incredibly powerful buff, and one that probably makes a Holy paladin all but required in a raid. Complete immunity to Silence and Interrupts for the entire raid (members in range at least) seems a bit overpowered. Not to mention the 100% improved effect, depends on whether that is ALL auras in the raid for everyone, or only the effects on yourself, or only for your auras on the raid, etc.

Very interesting changes!

Edit: As pointed out Aura Mastery is not passive but activated and has a cooldown, read the below posts for more info. Thanks for the clarification.

Aura Mastery, if memory serves, is supposed to last for 12 (?) seconds, with a 2 minute CD.

It will most certainly not be a permanent function of Concentration Aura.

Any word on if the new Aura Mastery doubles the effects of other players' auras as well? Not necessarily the other paladins; but Tree of Life Aura, Trueshot, Unholy, etc. It'd be interesting to see the many uses of this talent if this ends up being the case.

In TBC I took flash of light off my bars the day I got the 4pt5 bonus (pre-nerf) and instead I used HL7/9/11? Exclusively. This method of healing was maintainable with mana pots usage indefinitely in terms of the fights encountered and there was no reason to use flash at all. Theories changed around the 4pt6 bonus which I'll admit I never got until just prior to the expansion (I switched away from a paladin main again) that allowed for strong enough flashes to allow for the healing required.

Flash has always been too weak as a spell to use after TBC came out and paladins gained the healing strength to not use it, sadly with changes as they are I cannot see us not being forced to a FoL/HL mixed playstyle.

*Edit*

What I'm trying to say is that we are "spam" healers, we need to chain cast both for regen and throughput purposes, this is what Holy Paladins do. Sadly in a high damage environ (which with Ulduar heroic bosses currently hitting for up to 25k on a t7.25 tank) flash is not strong enough to really cover a huge amount of damage to allow pure spam and Holy Light spam is being destroyed by the changes to mana regen and our natural affinity to not take mp5 over haste/crit/sp. We "need" another heal in the mid range to spam which hits for the same range as Holy Shock currently does, holy shock obviously can't be that spell in its current form but it does strike me as being the best candidate to go that way as it brings everything a lot of people want to see with the class through the infusion of light talent.

Lets be honest in saying that healing as a holy paladin is not fun, compared to other healing classes the only issue we have to worry about is how much mana we can afford to spend at x time into a fight, no rolling hots, very little multi-player healing and not an AoE heal to think about. An interactive spell like Holy Shock giving us a proc to play with would add a lot more strategy to our healing overall (do you sit on the proc for a virtually guaranteed crit huge heal when required or do you use it to move a little and flash or do you use it straight away) and for me and from what I've heard from others give more enjoyment. Our healing I would say out of all 4 healing specs is the least interactive and now is the perfect time to see if it can be changed.

If you feel that you -need- that mid-range heal that is so required, try gemming/gearing more for FoL spam. I haven't tried it yet because I'm happy with the way HL spam is working for me (JS/BS I'm close to the 30k mark now) but there are plenty of people who HAVE posted saying that they had a lot of success with the FoL style of healing. If you don't know what I'm talking about, gem more for SP and haste (till soft cap) and pick up the SoL glyph as well as a FoL libram if you can and then in theory your FoL gets buffed enough to where it will be a more midrange heal that can be spammed with HL used when a spike comes in on the tank. On a side note, the new tier 1 prot talent is going to be a pretty big buff for the FoL healers as well because obviously they can use the 5% healing done a lot more than the HL spammers, don't forget that.

People are also failing to mention avenging wrath, hand of sacrifice, divine guardian (I heard DG was going out but I havent been on the PTR to see and its still in the talent builds, if its gone its gone but for the time being Im gonna presume we still have it available). We can chain-cast these much like a DK does with their cooldowns to 'buff' our healing or mitigate tank damage. For the hand of sacrifice pretty much all you'd have to do is make sure beacon is on the tank and start spamming yourself, if you do it right presuming there isnt bursty raid damage like malygos, hand of sacrifice shouldn't cause your death as long as you are focusing heals on yourself.

How about this for FoL?:

Glyph of Flash of Light -- Increases healing done by Flash of Light by 50% but increases mana cost by 100%.

Make sure the 50% increase is post-spellpower and combine with a change to Illumination to only refund 60% of the price you pay for the spell as opposed to base cost (a much needed change to kill HL spam but would serve as a buff to this glyph) and I'd use this and seriously consider gearing/gemming for SP again.

Any kind of mid-ranged heal is not going to work. We're designed all around to be primarily HL-using tank HPS machines. Adding some other dynamic requires a lot of other things about the class to change that I don't even want to get into. There's a strong possibility that we'd just end up spamming whatever the new heal was. Also there's the PvP implications.

In fact, I think with 3.1 blizzard has gone in quite the opposite direction and actually simplified our healing options even more (Sacred Shield nerf).

The suggestion Mex said was on the other boards about an "Eclipse"-style interaction (Eclipse is a deep balance talent for druids) between Flash of Light and Holy Light was the best I've heard.

But this all a moot point anyway. Everything the devs have done so far is showing that they're satisfied (or not satisfied, but unwilling to change anything drastically) with where we're at as a class. Getting into "what if they changed this" kind of stuff isn't going to go anywhere.

I had exactly the same idea yesterday!

My idea the evolved to something like Arcane Blast:
Each time you cast Flash of Light, the healing of Flash of Light is increased by 15%, the critical chance of Holy Shock is increased by 10% and mana cost of Flash of Light is increased by 30%. Effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 sec or until Holy Shock is cast.


This would let us use FoL for semi-serious healing, while also powering up HS in case of unexpected burst.

Currently i only use FoL if i need to save mana for some reason(too lazy to drink, to cheap to use pots, stuff like that)

Tankhealing >> HL, because the tank might get some unexpected burst.
Many raidmembers taking little damage >> HL, becaus of the splash healing.
Few raidmembers taking high damage >> HL, because i'd rather cast 1 HL than 2 FoLs, reducing the time needed to top them off.
Frost tomb on KT >> HL (to HS for melees), because it's still fast enough.

FoL is only good for sniping HoTs, which is lame, and saving mana, which is often better done by meleeing with SoW.

Im curious if JOL stacks, Ive checked forums all over and cant find anything. We have had a few guys in raid claim that you can stack JOL for increased healing. Is this true?