The Holy Paladin Guide for WotLK - Page 150

Lianya · 04/21/09, 11:47 AM

Hello,

Forgive me if I've missed this. I was looking for a thread/post similar to the Retribution Paladin 3.1 thread. That thread is simply amazing. It lists out everything needed to understand being a Ret Paladin from specs/variations, gems, to gear, enchants, etc. It's extremely well done and seems to be very up to date. When I visit the Holy Paladin thread, the info seems old, and, as far as I can tell, you have to dig through the thread itself trying to pick out bits of info here an there.

Is there a Holy Paladin concise thread/post that I've missed?

I appreciate the info. These forums have been an amazing source of info for me.

In case you wish to armory the Paladin:

Name: Chasse
Realm: Blackwing Lair

galzohar · 04/21/09, 11:53 AM

Keep in mind you're not comparing AM to anything useful, really. You're comparing it to imp wis, imp LoH and blessed hands. It doesn't need to be a good talent to deserve a point, it needs to be better than 2 of the above.

Ariashley · 04/21/09, 11:57 AM

I've noticed two oddl things this week in raids looking at web stats. I did a search to see if anyone else was asking/talking about it and don't see any recent posts on these topics.

1) Sacred Shield procs don't seem to increase crit on Flash of Light by 50%. If you look at the web stat report (http://wowwebstats.com/t4ey4hcwplltg...01dee920#buffs) this is showing an attempt where I (Auriane in the report) was healing the MT (Ridge). My Sacred Shield procced 23 times on Ridge (a bit less than 50% uptime). My buffed crit rate is around 51% on Flash of Light without a Sacred Shield proc. My crit rate for that nearly 5 min attempt was 50%, which means that Sacred Shield procs did not result in any more than the expected amount of crits without using Sacred Shield. I noticed this in 10 mans this week also. I wasn't really using sacred shield + flash that much prior to 3.1, so can't say that I ever looked for this as an issue previously.

2) Lay on Hands is critting for 2x the paladin's max health instead of 1.5x. (see http://wowwebstats.com/kdgnhhvdocjty?a=x1800000009794ab). Selvia has around 25k health or a bit over and his LoH crit for 52k.

Also, is anyone else finding that with the changes to mana regeneration and the overall speed and amount of raid damage, flash+holy shock is proving to be a lot more healing than holy light spam?

Pirjo · 04/21/09, 12:26 PM

Originally Posted by galzohar

Keep in mind you're not comparing AM to anything useful, really. You're comparing it to imp wis, imp LoH and blessed hands. It doesn't need to be a good talent to deserve a point, it needs to be better than 2 of the above.

To me, Imp LoH is required. We have resto shaman so that means it is AM vs. 1/2 points in blessed hands.

I personally won't give up the extra 130 raid wide resist button for 10% additional threat drop on 1 target every 2 minutes. Usually the 30% drop is enough to keep that person out of trouble for the rest of the fight.
Flame Jets was a great experience - between the fact that the ability is resistible, and the damage ticks are resistible, the times I popped AM people rarely dropped below 8k.

The weakness of AM is the fact that most AoE damage is nature in Uld. Most fights you'll use it just to boost devo aura to pull cat lady. Or right when the guardian spawns to prevent interrupts. But in specific fights that resist can represent a massive amount of damage prevented - moreso than divine sac.

Drayton · 04/21/09, 1:23 PM

Originally Posted by Ariashley

2) Lay on Hands is critting for 2x the paladin's max health instead of 1.5x. (see Wow Web Stats). Selvia has around 25k health or a bit over and his LoH crit for 52k.

From your WWS, it appears the player had Guardian Spirit active on them at the time, accounting for the additional healing.

Endoscient · 04/21/09, 1:29 PM

Originally Posted by Ariashley

I've noticed two oddl things this week in raids looking at web stats. I did a search to see if anyone else was asking/talking about it and don't see any recent posts on these topics.

1) Sacred Shield procs don't seem to increase crit on Flash of Light by 50%. If you look at the web stat report (Wow Web Stats) this is showing an attempt where I (Auriane in the report) was healing the MT (Ridge). My Sacred Shield procced 23 times on Ridge (a bit less than 50% uptime). My buffed crit rate is around 51% on Flash of Light without a Sacred Shield proc. My crit rate for that nearly 5 min attempt was 50%, which means that Sacred Shield procs did not result in any more than the expected amount of crits without using Sacred Shield. I noticed this in 10 mans this week also. I wasn't really using sacred shield + flash that much prior to 3.1, so can't say that I ever looked for this as an issue previously.

2) Lay on Hands is critting for 2x the paladin's max health instead of 1.5x. (see Wow Web Stats). Selvia has around 25k health or a bit over and his LoH crit for 52k.

Also, is anyone else finding that with the changes to mana regeneration and the overall speed and amount of raid damage, flash+holy shock is proving to be a lot more healing than holy light spam?

For your first point, you need a lot more statistical evidence then that to disprove SS not increasing crit rate. The bonus crit only lasts as long as the damage absorb shield is up, so if due to fight mechanics the shield drops almost immediately after being applied it can have a very low impact on FoL crit rates. You would have to perform a comprehensive analysis of the amount of FoL crits and non-crits while the absorb shield is up. Even with that you would need a much larger sample size then just one fight. This can be very easily tested on your own though with the new Divine Guardian talent and fighting mobs that do trivial damage, since you will have 100% uptime on the absorb proc. I also noticed that you had two Pallies casting SS on one target, and since they don't stack (they share ICD), it can obscure the results even more.

Your second point is not true either. The reason why it healed for so much is because your tank had Guardian Spirit at the time, which increases all healing received by 40%.

Melnor · 04/21/09, 2:27 PM

Originally Posted by Endoscient

For your first point, you need a lot more statistical evidence then that to disprove SS not increasing crit rate. The bonus crit only lasts as long as the damage absorb shield is up, so if due to fight mechanics the shield drops almost immediately after being applied it can have a very low impact on FoL crit rates. You would have to perform a comprehensive analysis of the amount of FoL crits and non-crits while the absorb shield is up. Even with that you would need a much larger sample size then just one fight. This can be very easily tested on your own though with the new Divine Guardian talent and fighting mobs that do trivial damage, since you will have 100% uptime on the absorb proc. I also noticed that you had two Pallies casting SS on one target, and since they don't stack (they share ICD), it can obscure the results even more.

Your second point is not true either. The reason why it healed for so much is because your tank had Guardian Spirit at the time, which increases all healing received by 40%.

Regarding the SS not adding bonus crit testing. An easy test is to just get naked and shield yourself and have something proc the shield. I'm not sure what a paladin's crit rate is completely unbuffed but it should yield a good enough answer to tell that SS crit bonus is or isn't bugged.

Ghon · 04/21/09, 3:03 PM

Hello, well I have been playing with a mixed style of Healing using FoL, HL and HS depending on the situation since 3.1 and its actually working pretty good, I don’t see any point arguing which one is better between HL spam, staking as much int as you can, or FoL spaming since you can regulate how much mana you will use in a fight, changing between them and Having a lot more spell power, crit and a good mana pool average, I’m using all the spell power enchants and a lot of gems with +int, I have 2464sp(including trinket stacks), 38.56% crit, 375 haste, 22k mana pool, and 140 mp5, with FoL, HL and SoL Glyph.

1) Judging by that stats what do you think is better?, 3% crit from Sanctity of battle or 3% more healing from Divinity since I’m using 2 points already on it, I would love to have those 2 extra talents to complete it but there is no way, did someone thought about it before? Can you tell me which one is better?

2) is Divine Sacrifice worth the lost of 8% crit? since its a 2min cd and SS will not absorb as much as you can do with all that crit.

Ariashley · 04/21/09, 3:09 PM

Edit: double posted in error

Ariashley · 04/21/09, 3:14 PM

I didn't heal on the paladin in BC and also didn't raid on it. Sorry if my questions were stupid, but wasn't really trying to make a "point" per se. I meant to be asking whether anyone else had observed similar issues and for someone to point out what mistake I might be making in looking at it. Three different people (one of them a priest) looking at the log didn't notice a Guardian Spirit proc prior to the LoH (and the priest tells me he was looking for it - I know I wasn't).

It wasn't just this raid when I've noticed the issue with SS. I've definitely seen the buff from my SS active (on Dotimers) on a tank and seen a normal (non-crit) flash land on that tank - which shouldn't happen. When/if another paladin's SS procs, my SS proc immediately drops from Dotimers. That could be a weird latency issue I suppose, but I only have about 170ms latency.

I considered the multiple paladins casting SS idea, but I was the only paladin in a 10-man VoA this week and was still not observing more than 44% Flash crit rate (37.44% holy crit rate from gear/talents + 5% from Flash of Light glyph + a little crit from int buffs) healing a warrior tank with sacred shield active. SS had more than a 50% uptime (96 sec out of 3 min - Wow Web Stats). While I am aware that the time period wouldn't meet a statistically significant criteria, when I never observe more than my base buffed crit rate for Flash, it strikes me at least worth asking to find out if anyone else had similar experiences or if I'm just extremely unlucky.

Regarding the SS not adding bonus crit testing. An easy test is to just get naked and shield yourself and have something proc the shield. I'm not sure what a paladin's crit rate is completely unbuffed but it should yield a good enough answer to tell that SS crit bonus is or isn't bugged.

Thanks, I'll take that suggestion. I take it that no one else has noticed a problem with Sacred Shield? Also, at the moment, neither of our Holy Paladins, are specced into Divine Guardian. We have several healers having major frame rate issues in Ulduar and by the 4th attempt on any boss in Ulduar, we paladins have ended up raid healing since we neither one are having frame issues.

Endoscient · 04/21/09, 3:59 PM

Sacred Shield is infact working as it should, you can't use your anecdotal evidence if "it doesn't seem like it is critting enough", when there is no way for you to possibly know the actual uptime of the Sacred Shield absorb buff compared to when your FoLs landed. When the servers came up I used my method of fight a trivial mob with Divine Guardian and spamming FoL to test it. Here is the WWS report of it. As you can see it is clear the Sacred Shield is working as it should. I had a 31% normal Flash of Light crit rate (I was my ret spec with Divine Guardian in Holy gear). I got 85% effect crit rate on FoL over 100 casts, which is within an expected random deviation. It is extremely statistically unlikely that I could have received that many crits if Sacred Shield was not working.

KYA1337 · 04/21/09, 7:08 PM

I just tested that, with 17% (naked) holy crit, no FoL glyph.

For 144 flashes i got 103 crits, which computes to ~72% crit - a bit more than expected, but this might be due to the small sample size.

Seems like "onyxia deep breaths more" again.

edit: Got beaten to it.

Tuftears · 04/21/09, 9:34 PM

I'm trying to figure out how a 10-man raid with 2 paladin healers can handle Hodir's Frozen Blows. Is this pretty much the case where the whole raid needs frost resist gear to help the paladins have a chance to keep up? Party members take 4k every 2 seconds, so 40k over the course of 20 seconds, plus the tank is getting hit for large amounts. The tank'll be wearing full frost resist, that's no problem, but it's the raid damage I'm concerned about.

As I see it, Flash of Light has a 1.5s cast time and heals for 3.8k average. So assuming paladin A beacons the MT, paladin B beacons the lowest health person:

Paladins should be able to get off 4 heals to four different people in their assigned groups in 6 seconds, beacon covers the last person. In that time, each person will have taken 12k damage and been healed for 3.8k. (MT was healed for more, but I'm concerned with the AOE damage here)

Next round. Another 4 heals, another 6 seconds. Now each person has taken 24k damage and been healed for 7.6k, for a net deficit of 16.4k damage.

Third round. Another 4k heals, another 6 seconds. Now each person has taken 36k damage and been healed for 11.4k, for a net deficit of 24.6k damage. This generally spells death for most people.

It looks to me like two paladin healers are incapable of keeping up the heals themselves. Yes, I know, third healer should cover the difference, especially if we get a priest, and maybe if we have the elemental shaman (who usually gets traded off between our runs) he could off-heal for Frozen Blows, but I'm trying to figure if there's a better way to handle this - my aim is to try to get the bosses to be 2-healable in general, but I'm coming up blank for this particular situation.

Is there an obvious solution that I'm missing, besides 'don't bring two holy paladins to heal a 10-man raid'?

Endoscient · 04/21/09, 9:47 PM

Originally Posted by Tuftears

I'm trying to figure out how a 10-man raid with 2 paladin healers can handle Hodir's Frozen Blows. Is this pretty much the case where the whole raid needs frost resist gear to help the paladins have a chance to keep up? Party members take 4k every 2 seconds, so 40k over the course of 20 seconds, plus the tank is getting hit for large amounts. The tank'll be wearing full frost resist, that's no problem, but it's the raid damage I'm concerned about.

As I see it, Flash of Light has a 1.5s cast time and heals for 3.8k average. So assuming paladin A beacons the MT, paladin B beacons the lowest health person:

Paladins should be able to get off 4 heals to four different people in their assigned groups in 6 seconds, beacon covers the last person. In that time, each person will have taken 12k damage and been healed for 3.8k. (MT was healed for more, but I'm concerned with the AOE damage here)

Next round. Another 4 heals, another 6 seconds. Now each person has taken 24k damage and been healed for 7.6k, for a net deficit of 16.4k damage.

Third round. Another 4k heals, another 6 seconds. Now each person has taken 36k damage and been healed for 11.4k, for a net deficit of 24.6k damage. This generally spells death for most people.

It looks to me like two paladin healers are incapable of keeping up the heals themselves. Yes, I know, third healer should cover the difference, especially if we get a priest, and maybe if we have the elemental shaman (who usually gets traded off between our runs) he could off-heal for Frozen Blows, but I'm trying to figure if there's a better way to handle this - my aim is to try to get the bosses to be 2-healable in general, but I'm coming up blank for this particular situation.

Is there an obvious solution that I'm missing, besides 'don't bring two holy paladins to heal a 10-man raid'?

Protip, if people are dying while you are casting FoL, then you should use HL instead.

Varuk · 04/21/09, 10:13 PM

Originally Posted by Tuftears

I'm trying to figure out how a 10-man raid with 2 paladin healers can handle Hodir's Frozen Blows. Is this pretty much the case where the whole raid needs frost resist gear to help the paladins have a chance to keep up? Party members take 4k every 2 seconds, so 40k over the course of 20 seconds, plus the tank is getting hit for large amounts. The tank'll be wearing full frost resist, that's no problem, but it's the raid damage I'm concerned about.

As I see it, Flash of Light has a 1.5s cast time and heals for 3.8k average. So assuming paladin A beacons the MT, paladin B beacons the lowest health person:

Paladins should be able to get off 4 heals to four different people in their assigned groups in 6 seconds, beacon covers the last person. In that time, each person will have taken 12k damage and been healed for 3.8k. (MT was healed for more, but I'm concerned with the AOE damage here)

Next round. Another 4 heals, another 6 seconds. Now each person has taken 24k damage and been healed for 7.6k, for a net deficit of 16.4k damage.

Third round. Another 4k heals, another 6 seconds. Now each person has taken 36k damage and been healed for 11.4k, for a net deficit of 24.6k damage. This generally spells death for most people.

It looks to me like two paladin healers are incapable of keeping up the heals themselves. Yes, I know, third healer should cover the difference, especially if we get a priest, and maybe if we have the elemental shaman (who usually gets traded off between our runs) he could off-heal for Frozen Blows, but I'm trying to figure if there's a better way to handle this - my aim is to try to get the bosses to be 2-healable in general, but I'm coming up blank for this particular situation.

Is there an obvious solution that I'm missing, besides 'don't bring two holy paladins to heal a 10-man raid'?

Paladins should use Holy Light in any situation where healing is an issue. Also, don't forget haste. Myself, fully raid buffed, I have a 1.1s FoL and a 1.4s HL.

Using the same example, allowing for a bit of lag, you can get 4 HL's off in 6 seconds, each hitting for 10k to 11k. Over the course of 6s people take 12k damage. The deficit is much smaller. I'm not saying it won't necessarily be easy, but with people using health pots and maybe an Avenging Wrath or two it should be doable.